HL Deb 23 June 2004 vol 662 cc1329-35

8.27 p.m.

Baroness Hamwee rose to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the order, laid before the House on 6 May, be annulled (S.I. 2004/1231) [8th Report from the Merits Committee].

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, is understandably leaving the Chamber. He should go as he has attended five hours of debate. I feel guilty that he has sat down again—he knows what I intend to say as I shall quote his report. However, it was the noble Lord's committee, the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, which drew this order to the attention of the House and suggested that it gave rise to issues of public policy that are likely to be of interest to us. I shall quote the most important words, which were, it imperfectly achieves its policy objectives".

Last year we debated an order modifying legislation relating to planning to facilitate the use of electronic communications. The committee's report quotes a statement made on behalf of the Government by the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, that the electronic handling and the order did, no more than create an opportunity for those who wish to use an electronic rather than a paper-based planning system. The existing paper-based system will continue to operate for as long as those engaging in the planning system wish to use it".—[Official Report, 24/3/03; col. 542.] The committee commented that that appeared to be "at odds" with that statement. It went on to say that the local planning authority was only one of the parties involved in planning applications—a statement with which I heartily agree.

It would go ill for me to oppose any local planning authority taking its own decisions on how to consult or to do almost anything and I support the use of new technology. Nevertheless, for a number of reasons, and particularly because of the report, it is right that the Minister should justify the order. I support the use of new technology, but not to the exclusion of older, more traditional methods while it is not universally available and used.

The report refers to a proposed review after three years of the operation of the order. Noble Lords involved in the debate will know the issue; the order allows for the listing and publicising of planning applications, apart from certain major ones—I use that term in the wide sense—on a website rather than in a local newspaper. In my view, it would be better to run the systems in tandem and then review the position before the abolition of the old method.

So far as I can ascertain, there has been no great consultation on the proposal by the borough's executive. I tried to find its papers on the subject, but have not been successful. So much for e-government. However, I have received a helpful briefing from officers in Camden who have explained, in particular, that ceasing to advertise in newspapers will enable them to save £25,000 a year and to spend that on more effective ways of public consultation.

That does not wholly accord with the explanatory memorandum issued by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. It states simply at paragraph 5: It is considered that using this method [the website] will improve present publicity requirements and it should also lead to an increased public awareness of planning applications within Camden". Having that explanation, it is no wonder that the committee took such a view of the order. There is no justification for the statement that using the website will mean better publicity.

The borough will be able in most cases to use only a single-site notice—in my experience, that is often not enough—to circulate information and notify the adjoining owner and occupier—again, in my experience, that is not enough. I am sure your Lordships will agree that applying the planning system must be not only open and transparent but reach out with information. We are not talking only about planning applications and rights of way when only a single notice would be required within the order.

I am not comfortable about excluding the traditional means. The House should be grateful to the Merits of Statutory Instruments Select Committee for drawing our attention to what may appear to be a minor matter. I do not know whether the Minister can give us any information, but I suspect that the Government might be considering that change for other planning authorities. Therefore, even if the change applies only to Camden, it is right that we should hear an explanation for it and that the committee's criticisms should be answered. I beg to move.

Moved, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the order, laid before the House on 6 May, be annulled (S.I. 2004/1231).[8th Report from the Merits Committee].—(Baroness Hamwee.)

Lord Hanningfield

My Lords, we also have some reservations about the order. We all want as many people as possible to he able to access e-technology, and we are all very keen to encourage growth in that area wherever possible. Statistics show that a significant number of people still do not have that opportunity. I want to comment on that because the consequences are all too apparent. Many people could be disenfranchised from gaining information and knowledge in regard to one of the most fundamental things that can impact on their lives—that is, local planning.

The Government's own figures from September 2003 show that only 48 per cent of households have Internet access, leaving the majority unconnected. That equates to an estimated 55 per cent of adults having access to the Internet at some time—the equivalent of approximately 25 million people.

More pertinent are the large variances between different socio-economic groups. Levels of access depend very strongly on income. Unsurprisingly, levels of household access were lowest among the lowest-income groups. For example, a much lower proportion of one-parent households have Internet access. Retired householders were the least likely to have access, with around 5 per cent of couples and only 1 per cent of one-person retired householders logging on. Indeed, the proportion of those aged 65 and above with access to the Internet is just 12 per cent compared with 75 per cent of those aged 25 to 44.

Therefore, the order would, in effect, exclude large swathes of the population and especially those who could be considered the most vulnerable. Sadly, there appears to be a determined minority who do not see any prospect of being on-line in the future. That is, of course, very disappointing. In April 2002, 72 per cent of adults who had never accessed the Internet stated that they were very unlikely to do so in the next year. Significantly, that core group represents nearly one-third of all adults.

Therefore, while we are not opposed to advancing the cause of e-government (personally, I am very supportive of it), in placing much of what government, both local and national, do on-line—I, for one, as I said, have championed this in my own local authority—there must be an understanding that we cannot do so overnight. We must take time to educate the public about obtaining these sources of information because, without them, a significant minority of the population will be precluded from the planning process.

Surely, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, a sensible compromise would be to have both "e" and hard forms available for a suitable period of time until we managed to educate the public or until a new generation of people came along. Again, I give my personal support to that.

I recently visited Edinburgh, where the local authority is well ahead of most others in putting planning applications on-line. Two or three years ago, I looked at the planning process in New Zealand. Virtually everything there is on-line but, then again, so are most of the public. We must educate and prepare the public, but some processes will have to he put in place and it will take some time before we can fully implement the system. Therefore, we also have reservations about the order.

The Minister of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Lord Rooker)

My Lords, I shall seek to answer the points raised. I hope that your Lordships will realise that they are not justified in opposing the order, which relates only to the London Borough of Camden.

If approved, the order will release the London Borough of Camden from one of its statutory requirements to advertise certain applications in the local press. The other requirements relate to site notices and serving notices on any adjoining owner or occupier. It does not extend to every type of application. Applications submitted in accordance with environmental impact assessment procedures would still be accompanied by a local newspaper advertisement.

Planning applications which affect the setting of a listed building or the character of a conservation area will continue to be advertised in a local newspaper and by site notice. For major applications, Camden will be required to publicise the application by site notice or serving a notice on any adjoining owner or occupier and on the website. It would be other planning applications, including those which do not accord with the development plan or affect the public right of way, that would be publicised by a notice on the website. But this is not the only publicity requirement relating to these kinds of planning applications. We are not talking about e-advertising only; Camden will still have to comply with the requirement for the application to be publicised by a site notice.

The reason Camden sought to have this very narrow requirement removed is that the council considered that its publicity arrangements would be improved if the requirement was removed and it could deploy the resulting resources on a wider package of measures which it considered would be more effective.

One of these measures is the establishment of a community engagement officer whose job is to make the community more aware—not less aware of the planning system and planning applications, especially members who may not have found it easy to gain access to the planning system—for example, those whose first language is not English, the blind and partially sighted. This will be a welcome move.

The council is still, of course, required to post site notices and to serve notice by leaflet on any neighbours of the site. So the removal of the requirement to advertise in the press must be seen in a wider context.

I confess to some astonishment that the noble Baroness did not once refer to the research on this issue that was published today—copies of which were hand-delivered to everyone concerned on the Front Benches—in terms of the final report on the review of publicity arrangements for planning applications.

In that report it is made abundantly clear that the least effective form of advertising for planning applications is newspaper advertisements, those turgid public notices, usually printed in 3.5 point size—which is smaller than in the Bible—at the back of a newspaper that no one gets to. The idea that people who are not on the web will get their information by perusing those is absolute nonsense. We have today published independent research which indicates that that is the least effective method of putting information into the public domain.

So far as concerns the London Borough of Camden—which is all we are dealing with—effectively it will operate as a pilot in this regard. We do not expect to involve another London borough while we are assessing Camden. That is not to say that another authority elsewhere—perhaps a shire county or another district in a different part of the country—would be ruled out, but in London we will operate it effectively as a pilot.

The London Borough of Camden has consulted with users of the planning service—including applicants, consultees, local interests and amenity groups—about the publicity measures they would undertake instead of placing local press advertisements. These amount to the enhanced implementation of the remaining publicity arrangements set out in article 8 of the general development order, including targeted notification letters, improved use of site notices—because site notices can always be improved; for example, they could be placed at the entrance of a block of flats and community buildings, as well as on the application site itself—and an expansion of the information on the council's website.

The special development order will not simply replace the requirement to publicise certain planning applications in the local press with the requirement to publicise the same applications on the website. Camden is still required to publicise by local advertisement planning applications involving an environmental impact assessment as the provisions are set out in an EU environmental impact assessment directive. As I have said, the special development order for Camden will effectively act as a pilot to establish the effects of removing the requirement to advertise in the press. We envisage this lasting for about three years.

I know that the Merits Committee made a point about this but, with all due respect, this issue could have been prayed against in the other place for 40 days. It was not. There is a keen feeling that less publicity would be bad—particularly in view of the discussions that we have had on the Planning Bill to change the culture of planning, to get greater public interest and better public consultation—and would go against the grain.

The point is that it is not just a whim of Camden. I understand that this matter has been around for two to three years; it has not appeared overnight. This matter has taken a long time. Today we published the report by the consultants who have considered the issue. I shall not go into all the detail because there are 10 or 12 recommendations. However, it makes clear that the least effective—I repeat "least effective"—way of informing the public about planning applications is notices that are put in newspapers, buried away in the public notices.

This matter relates to a very narrow area of planning applications. It is true that Camden has estimated that it will save £25,000 per annum. Today's report publishes some other figures for other authorities. Camden will use that money for better publication of notices and more targeted site notices.

Both methods currently run in tandem as a result of the Section 8 order. This pilot is the only one of its kind at present which seeks to remove the newspaper methods and therefore is being run as a three-year pilot. It is not for general application. I consider that it is a pilot for London. One has to be sensible about this. There may be other authorities that would like to run a pilot, although I know of no application to do so.

The £25,000 appears to be chicken feed, but the community officer, who I understand is already in post, is working on this. The issue for Camden has been around for a long time. I could go over the history of why Camden asked for the measure in the first place and of how it will receive a better grant if it delivers what it is supposed to deliver. This matter will not go away. We shall be watching the effectiveness from the centre.

This is not something underhand, nor is it something that the Government are trying to force through without any debate. In the other place, the 40-day order was not prayed against and there was no debate, although there was plenty of opportunity for that. There is no secret about this. Camden has consulted its users and the amenity groups about better publicity. So far as I know that has been accepted and, as a pilot, it is worth trying to operate for three years, particularly in the London area.

Baroness Hamwee

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, for acting as a swifter messenger of the research than whatever method was used by the Minister's office. The Minister is easily astonished if my failure to refer to something that I had not received astonishes him. I am sorry that I was not able to take account of the fairly weighty report. I look forward to reading it.

The Minister was critical of the Merits Committee's comments on the order. In my opening remarks I said that I was not surprised by the comments that it made, given that the explanatory memorandum by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister went almost nowhere to explain why Camden was seeking the order and what it intended to do by way of alternative. It is helpful to have that on the record of the House. As I said, the explanatory memorandum simply said that it is considered that using this method will improve present publicity requirements. It would be quite puzzling to anyone reading that to understand how that could be, without the gaps between the lines being filled in.

I was pleased to hear that it is proposed that there should be extra notices for adjoining occupiers. That is entirely a good thing. I hope that, since this is to be a pilot—and I am grateful to the Minister for confirming that—the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister will take careful note of how it is implemented and will have fairly strict criteria for evaluating it.

I think that it is now up to the overview and scrutiny committee, or whatever arrangements they have in Camden, to ensure that the savings are applied effectively. The Minister wants to come in before I—

Lord Rooker

My Lords, as the noble Baroness is finishing, the history of this came out of Camden's best value inspection in 2000. It has been around a long time.

I might add that—and for the avoidance of any doubt I will put it on the record—tomorrow I shall seek out the authorities of this House—Black Rod or whoever is in charge—for an internal inquiry about the postal arrangements. I am fed up to the back teeth of having material sent over here to named Peers on the Front Bench. I have been out all day. The train was 90 minutes late, so I have not had time to check. I only got back into the House at a quarter to eight.

The report was sent to named Peers, two on the Liberal Democrats' Front Bench and two on the Conservatives' Front Bench. It was specifically published this morning to get it over here into their hands so that they had it. This is just once too often as far as I am concerned, so I am going to find out what is happening inside this place.

Baroness Hamwee

My Lords, I am grateful for that. Perhaps I should confess to a little relief at not having to read the however many pages when I arrived about three-quarters of an hour before the debate.

As I was saying, it is up to those who exercise the overview and scrutiny functions in the local authority to ensure that the savings Camden say they will make are applied as effectively as we now understand is proposed. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.