Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Public Bill Committee, 22 November 2012.

Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley)

Before we begin our line-by-line consideration of the Bill, a brief explanation might be useful to those relatively new to Public Bill Committees. The selection list for today’s sittings is available in the room for Members and shows how the amendments selected for debate have been brought together. Amendments grouped together are generally on the same or a similar issue. The Member whose name has been put to the leading amendment in a group is called first. Other Members are then free to catch my eye to speak on the amendments. A Member may speak more than once in a single debate. At the end of a debate on a group of amendments, I will call the Member who moved the lead amendment again. Before sitting down, that Member will need to indicate whether the amendment is to be withdrawn or a decision sought. If any Members wish to press to a vote any other amendment in a group, they need to let me know. I shall work on the assumption that the Government wish the Committee to reach a decision on all Government amendments.

Please note that decisions on amendments do not take place in the order that they are debated but in the order in which they appear on the amendment paper. I shall use my discretion to decide whether to allow a separate stand part debate on individual clauses and schedules following the debates on the relevant amendments. I hope that is helpful. We now begin our line-by-line consideration of the Bill.

Clause 1 - Option to make planning application directly to Secretary of State

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I beg to move amendment 10, in clause 1, page 1, line 8, at end insert—

‘(za) the local planning authority concerned had not adopted a local plan for any part of its area within a period of 20 years prior to the date on which it was designated by the Secretary of State;

(zb) the application does not relate to development affecting flood risk areas, World Heritage sites, National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and conservation areas;’.

Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 11, in clause 1, page 1, line 14, leave out

‘is of a description prescribed by the Secretary of State’

and insert

‘involves a major application of a description to be set out in regulations following a period of consultation, which regulations shall be in the form of a statutory instrument and may only be made if a draft of them has been laid before and approved by both Houses of Parliament.’.

Amendment 19, in clause 1, page 2, line 46, at end insert—

‘(e) local planning authorities with responsibility for all or part of a National Park, Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Site of Special Scientific Interest, World Heritage Site and/or a conservation area;’.

Amendment 22, in clause 1, page 3, line 7, at end insert—

‘(9) This section will cease to have effect one year after it comes into force.

(10) Regulations under this section shall be in the form of a statutory instrument and shall not be made unless a draft of them has been laid before and approved by both Houses of Parliament.’.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Davies. I have some general comments to make about clause 1, but I shall keep those for the stand part debate.

Amendment 10 stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South. It can hardly have escaped Members’ notice that the amendment would remove most of clause 1 from the Bill. In our deliberations, most of the witnesses who gave evidence to the Committee agreed that the clause was a bad idea and that it runs counter to the localism agenda that the Government claim to support. The arguments for the radical nature of the clause and its key centralising principle were absent from the Secretary of State’s speech on Second Reading. He seemed to think that he is adding to democratic accountability by including the clause, rather than reducing it, which I find somewhat perplexing. As the shadow Secretary of State made clear, the Bill will completely change the basis on which planning applications are considered by local communities and local planning authorities. Certainly, it is a radical change from the system previously in place.

On clause 1, in written evidence to the Committee, the National Organisation of Residents Associations stated:

“This proposes to remove the power of decision on planning applications from Local Planning Authorities…This is totally in conflict with the concept of localism.”

Similarly, the Town and Country Planning Association stated:

“The Bill has the affect of shifting powers to the centre of Government.”

The TCPA also disputed the key premise underpinning the legislation: that the intention is to use the powers in “exceptional circumstances” only. It made a very important point: that the Secretary of State

“can already use the very extensive existing powers to call in both applications and plans.”

The clause is therefore simply not necessary, hence our desire to remove it. Indeed, the Government, as is their forte these days, have produced little evidence in support of their many assertions about the poor performance of planning authorities necessitating a clause of this nature.

First, let us briefly look at the evidence base as outlined in the impact assessment. Much is made of timeliness issues, and only one academic is quoted. It is probably possible to find one academic in this country to say anything about anything—that does not mean it is a proper evidence base that is tested through the normal academic process of publishing and peer review.

Secondly, I would like to look at the evidence put forward by the Home Builders Federation, which we got a bit of an opportunity to test in the evidence sessions. Its evidence was actually the views of some—some—of its members. It was not backed up by evidence from particular cases.

Thirdly, we had evidence pointing to the number of applications that are actually determined, which is very high. It points to 435,000 applications being determined in 2011-12, most in a timely manner. Indeed, 85% of all minor applications were approved, and 93% of other applications fell within the correct time limits. That does not build up a picture of failing planning authorities across the country.

Ian Murray (Labour, Edinburgh South)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way at such an early stage in her dissection of this dreadful clause. She will be aware that the consultation on planning performance and the planning guarantee was released this morning. I managed to get a copy just 22 minutes ago. In question 7, it says:

“Do you agree that the threshold for designations should be set initially at 30% or fewer of major decisions made on time or more than 20% of major decisions overturned at appeal?”

Surely that would outlaw Hackney, because it performs far better than that.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

It would indeed, and probably any other Labour authority beginning with h and ending with y. I will come to that in a moment or two.

We can see from the impact assessment that the determination of major applications is slowing down, but any sensible Government would seek to find out why that is so before introducing legislation, never mind coming up with such a radical and ill-informed Bill. That point was admirably made by the Royal Town Planning Institute, which said that we need a clearer understanding of what is happening to major applications. In any case, this matter could be dealt with, at least in part, by clause 21. There is absolutely no need to designate planning authorities as failing in order for major applications to be called in or dealt with under clause 21.

Until 20 minutes ago, I was going to say that it simply is not acceptable in a modern democracy for us to be debating a clause about determining a local planning authority as failing, without having the criteria in front of us and without having a degree of knowledge about the specific authorities to be affected. I am not sure whether we have any information on the authorities to be affected, or a list, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South said, the consultation popped up on the CLG website 20 minutes ago.

Therese Coffey (Conservative, Suffolk Coastal)

As a courtesy, it was sent to all members of the Committee at 10.28 am. I appreciate that that is still rather recent, but it was an hour before the sitting started.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I will take the correction, because as I will explain, the precise number of minutes is neither here nor there. We can argue about the precise moment when it popped into our inboxes, but my point is that the period of time was very short.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

We are debating measures of timeliness and efficiency. Does my hon. Friend believe the Government would clearly fail the test if it were applied to the timeliness with which the proposals were made available?

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point.

I want to start by looking at how we got to this place and by addressing efficiency and timeliness. The Minister told the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government

“we are looking at only two measures: timeliness—whether they”

local authorities—

“are dealing with applications within the guide periods for different major and minor applications—and…the quality of their decisions.”

Quality was later defined as the percentage of major applications overturned on appeal. He said at that point that the Government are looking at one year’s measures, but we now know that that is not the case—I will say something about that in a minute or two. On Second Reading, the Secretary of State seemed to suggest that the criteria were anything that ended up with a Labour authority beginning in h and ending in y, because it was Hackney, later corrected to Haringey.

The impact assessment states that, for illustrative purposes, “timeliness” will be

“defined as the average number of major applications decided within 13 weeks as a percentage of all major decisions, assessed over a two year period.”

That is not the one-year period previously indicated by the Minister. From my cursory glance at the consultation paper, I see that those are indeed the measures that are being consulted on. According to Planning magazine, that will bring six councils into designation. There may of course be planning performance agreements or other extenuating circumstances that lead to a problem with timeliness. Unfortunately for the Minister, not one of those six authorities that might be captured by the timeliness criterion actually fits into the second criterion, which is the percentage of major decisions overturned on appeal, whether that is set at 20% or 30%. That is important because it means that Ministers have been talking all along about criteria for designation when, in fact, we appear to be ending up with six authorities designated as failing on only one criterion: timeliness. Other authorities may be brought into applications overturned on appeal, but we know from the impact assessment that, at the moment, no authorities would be captured by the second criterion, even if it is set at 20%.

Ian Murray (Labour, Edinburgh South)

We heard a lot of evidence this week and last week from planning professionals and organisations who told us that, although speed and quality are important, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Sometimes a bit of speed has to be given up to ensure that the decisions are right. That should be a conversation between the planning authority and the applicant, which is the right way to do it.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

My hon. Friend makes a good point that I hope we will return to several times in considering this clause, because the Government have not taken into consideration any mitigating circumstances that could lead to slower decision making. Such circumstances are often outwith the control of local planning authorities.

Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Scunthorpe)

We heard a lot of evidence from organisations such as the National Trust saying that it is difficult to be clear about the quality of decisions. In particular, fast decisions might determine poor decisions in the view of local people who, of course, do not have a right of appeal. Therefore, that is not measured in any way.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Indeed. My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

The impact assessment is really interesting. It sets out clearly what the clause is about, in that it will put in place a threat to local authorities whereby, if they do not assess and, in fact, do not approve applications quickly enough, they will be designated. It states:

“In the first instance, no major applications would qualify for submission direct to the Planning Inspectorate as a consequence of authorities having a record of poor quality decisions, as currently no authority has more than 20% of its major decisions overturned at appeal. Nonetheless the mere existence of the measure—and the 20% threshold—will have an indirect benefit, as it will act as a disincentive to poor decision-making by authorities.”

The impact assessment is telling local authorities that, if they reject too many applications that are overturned subsequently on appeal, they will be caught by that metric. As I have said, we are not dreaming that up; it is noted in the impact assessment. Furthermore, no mention is made in the assessment of how local authorities become undesignated. That is also absent from statements that have been made by Ministers, and it is something to which I shall return later.

In his evidence to the Committee, the Minister said that he was not able to say exactly what the measures or the criteria would be, but that he would

publish them shortly—definitely before the Committee discusses the clause”.––[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 13 November 2012; c. 9, Q6.]

Technically, he has met what he said, but that is not the spirit of the way in which the consultations should be made or how good policy is produced. With the best will in the world, none of us has had the opportunity to look in detail at a consultation document that emerged some minutes ago.

Paul Blomfield (Labour, Sheffield Central)

I refer to the specific point of the consultation document and what my hon. Friend said about the route to cease to be designated. I read the document quickly and might have missed it, but does she not find it extraordinary that there seems to be nothing, even in the consultation, about how authorities can be become undesignated. Are we not in an incredible position, given that we are considering a Bill that might take local authorities down a route from which there is no return?

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Indeed. My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. If the Government were proposing such a radical change to the way in which some planning decisions were made—decisions that hugely affect local communities—surely they would at least have thought about either time limits or clear procedures that would enable local authorities to get out of the designation period. I hope that he will allow me to leave matters there, because we have tabled later amendments that would deal with such an important issue, but he is absolutely right to raise it.

My reason for going through the process in such detail is to concur with the view of several witnesses. It is taking a sledgehammer of a clause—and probably a Bill—to crack a very small nut. The Royal Town Planning Institute made it very clear in its evidence to the Committee—as, indeed, did the TCPA and others—that procedures are already in place through the Department for Communities and Local Government to unblock sites where development has stalled and that the non-determination of major sites can already be referred to the Secretary of State, so there is simply no rational basis for the clause to exist.

As I said, I think that we must consider—it must be transparent to everyone—why the Government have produced the Bill and specifically the clause. First, I think we have to assume that it is a panic measure, one of a number dreamed up on 6 September to show that the Government are doing something about growth when they are actually doing nothing. Secondly, it centralises decision making with the Secretary of State without producing any evidence. Thirdly, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) said on Second Reading that it was blackmailing councils into agreeing to developments. I am not sure that I would go as far as that, but I have already pointed out my concerns—this is clearly in the impact assessment—that this will push local authorities into making decisions and approving applications that they consider are not in the best interests of their communities.

Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Scunthorpe)

We also heard compelling evidence from Councillor Jones that the proposal may, indeed, have the opposite effect, by creating uncertainty and a lack of growth. Councillor Jones, who welcomed the Localism Act 2011 and says that it needs time to settle down but feels that it is going in the right direction, went on to say:

“This Bill, in our view, starts to create uncertainty again and starts to bring in centralised targets that restrict local government from getting on and making things happen.”––[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 13 November 2012; c. 18, Q34.]

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Absolutely, and as my hon. Friend will know, we have heard again and again from developers that what often slows down applications is uncertainty, which often leads to developers withdrawing applications or not moving forward with sites. That does not seem to have been taken on board by the Government at all. In fact, we have also heard that, in failing to let the national planning policy framework settle down before proposing yet more legislation, more uncertainty has been put into the system, particularly with clause 5, and I hope that we will look further at that.

Bob Blackman (Conservative, Harrow East)

The hon. Lady makes a key point on the clause, but does she not accept that sensible developers and planning authorities engage in pre-application discussions to resolve many of the issues that she has raised before making a planning application that can then be established and decided upon by the planning authority within the time frame?

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. Of course we support planning performance agreements or discussions taking place at a pre-application stage, but issues can still emerge in the formal process that slow down the determination of applications and that are outwith the local authority’s control. If the Bill was really about tackling poor performance in local authorities—I accept that some local authorities are a bit tardy on some applications—there are other ways to address that problem than simply putting them into the category of failing authorities and allowing developers and those seeking planning permission to go straight to the Secretary of State for determination.

As we know that a very small number of authorities will be hit by the timing of this criterion, it seems a rather extreme measure to tackle what is a very small problem, even on the Government’s own criteria. If authorities are to be designated as failing—as I have just explained, I do not think that they should be—the Committee heard evidence that, as I have just been telling the hon. Gentleman, perhaps this issue could be dealt with in other ways. Dr Ellis from the TCPA said that it should be

“about focusing resources through organisations such as ATLAS and the Planning Advisory Service”––[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 20 November 2012; c. 92.]

It should be about supporting local authorities, investing in their skills, changing the culture and looking at performance. Crucially, it should also be about training for counsellors.

Interestingly, in all the statements that have been made from the Government’s side about the measures contained in the Bill, not once have we heard anything about what might happen to encourage and support a local authority to become a better planning authority. All we have is the designation. Yet organisations like the RTPI and the TCPA, which have been working with planning departments for many decades, have shown that we know what helps local planning authorities to improve. Indeed, the RTPI made that point very strongly in our evidence sessions. We have done it in the past: there was huge improvement in the 1990s and the decade after that. Surely, that is where the Government should have concentrated their efforts: on supporting local planning authorities to make their decisions more quickly and in line with their local plans. However, the intention was not to get planning decisions; it was simply to try to ensure, because of this panic measure about growth, that applications that might have been turned down previously are, in fact, approved.

Mary Glindon (Labour, North Tyneside)

The Local Government Association has expressed concern about whether an authority designated as failing because it is no longer able to deal with major planning applications would ever be able to demonstrate improvement in performance to get out of the designation. Should there be a way to get out of it?

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

My hon. Friend makes a very good point indeed. I hope that the Minister will make it clear how authorities will be undesignated.

Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrat, Hazel Grove)

I wonder what the hon. Lady made of the comment by the chief executive of the Royal Town Planning Institute in her evidence to us, when she said something rather to the contrary of what the hon. Lady said:

“I think the Government are adopting a consistent approach. The Government’s clear objective here is to try to persuade people to do things before they introduce a punitive measure.”––[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 20 November 2012; c. 101.]

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I am not exactly sure what the chief executive was referring to, because the Government will do nothing before designating local authorities apart from threatening them with designation, but perhaps we could explore that matter further. As I have explained, I am very unhappy about local authorities being designated at all. However, I would have thought that if the Government really want to do this, they might consider measures that fit with their localism agenda, rather than simply trying to take powers away from the local authority.

Paul Blomfield (Labour, Sheffield Central)

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Government are focusing on the wrong thing? They are trying to demonise local authorities as being at fault, and to blame them for the lack of growth, whereas there are many other factors at play, such as access to finance. We know that gross mortgage lending was 61% lower in 2011 than in 2007, and the number of mortgages fell by 50% over that period. The failure of the Government’s economic policies is to blame for the lack of growth, and in their attempt to blame local authorities they are just seeking to find a scapegoat.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. As I said, that is why there have been a number of panic measures that probably will not take us far on the growth agenda.

Ian Murray (Labour, Edinburgh South)

I should like to follow up on the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central. We have a problem. Local government funding has been disproportionately cut. Rather than trying to support planning departments and elected members by making sure that planning departments are efficient and work well, which would generate economic growth and get planning through, the Government are going to designate authorities as failing and bring them into the centre, without any mechanism in place to support them and give them back the decisions. It is a strange scenario. Local authorities are having money taken away from them. Councillors are having to make difficult decisions about whether to continue to fund planning authorities in the way they require, rather than making other social decisions. They are left in a no-win situation.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Absolutely. A number of measures in the Bill are extremely unfair to local authorities, and I suspect will make their lives more difficult than they are already being made under the Government’s cuts. I hope we can explore that issue in more detail later.

I hope the Government look at the criteria in more detail and consider at least a localist measure. In the criteria we have tabled, a local authority must not have produced a local plan for any part of its area for at least 20 years. That is important because it should at least press local authorities to get a plan in place, and, of course, local communities can be involved in drawing up that plan. It would also help inform planning decisions and enable decisions to be made without in any way affecting the democratic rights of local people or councillors, which the clause, as it stands, does.

Sub-paragraph (zb) of amendment 10 would ensure that designation does not apply to flood risk areas, world heritage sites, national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty or conservation areas. The reasons for that sub-paragraph have been given by a number of Members—those areas have particularly complex issues to deal with. Therefore, the timeliness issue may need to be looked at in a bit more depth.

It is clear that clause 1 could lead to authorities having inappropriate development, even where there are strong heritage principles at stake. I could not have put it better than Mr Sharp, who gave evidence to the Committee on Tuesday. He hoped that authorities would not have to agree to more applications. He said:

“We are already approving 89% or 90% of all applications, and trust me, you would not want the other 10%”.––[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 20 November 2012; c. 100, Q239.]

Quite. We certainly do not want those inappropriate applications in conservation areas or areas of outstanding natural beauty. I could go on.

It is extremely important that the Government take on board the points we are making with the amendment, and at least consider them as more appropriate criteria than those they have set out.

Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Scunthorpe)

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; she is being most generous. In that same sitting, Dr Ellis warned us of perverse outcomes if we get this wrong. Indeed, that is what my hon. Friend was saying. Ms Elliott pointed to the complexity of quality measures and the fact that all the other Departments that do quality measures have some form of inspection, as well as simpler measures.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes a good point. Further on in the Committee’s deliberations, we will return to the question of what might be a sensible process to have in place for assessing local authorities that might have difficulties. We should put in place measures to help them, rather than ones that will simply lead to them making inappropriate decisions, which is the current situation.

I want quickly to deal with the other amendments in the group. Hon. Members will already know from my comments on amendment 10 that I am concerned about the megalomaniac tendencies of the Secretary of State. Rather than simply allowing him to prescribe the applications that should be made directly to him—presumably on a whim, because we do not know what the criteria are—I hope they go beyond what we have seen, with the designation of a few Labour authorities. The criteria should be set out in regulations and consulted on. It should be transparent and, hopefully, consistent. We are making a real plea for proper and transparent processes to be in place before any applications are transferred from the local planning authority to the Secretary of State.

Amendment 19 draws on the points I made on amendment 10. It would ensure that areas of outstanding natural beauty, conservation areas and local authorities that cover world heritage sites are protected from being designated and therefore from the devastation that could be inflicted on them by development arising from clause 1. One can only wonder at how areas such as AONBs and national parks could be included under designation. There must be proper oversight of these bodies and they should not be included. They should be added to the list under subsection (7) of new section 62A.

I intend to listen carefully to what the Minister has to say about this issue because of the importance of our natural environment and our heritage. In any case, we all appreciate that, but these areas are important to growing tourism. If planning applications that would negatively impact on our natural environment or on our important historic cities are allowed to go through, that could negatively impact on tourism and on growth. What protection will be put in place to ensure that all development in these areas will be sensitive and appropriate and will not damage them?

We have to remember what we are discussing. Planning is important, because it ushers in development that lasts for a long time. It is hard to undo mistakes. We must tread carefully when we are playing with our natural heritage and our built heritage. I definitely want to hear something from the Minister that will protect these areas. We have heard nothing at all about what will happen to protect our world heritage sites. I feel very strongly about this because, as I suspect everyone knows, in my constituency I have the absolutely wonderful world heritage site of Durham cathedral and castle. Over the years, I have had to tackle a number of applications that certainly would have detracted from the beauty of the area. Luckily, at the moment, it does not look like my local authority would be designated under these criteria.

Ian Murray (Labour, Edinburgh South)

My hon. Friend is talking about the wonders of her constituency, the City of Durham. She is right to highlight the difficulties of having a plethora of designations across a local authority, be they world heritage sites, conservation areas or areas of natural beauty. Will local authorities across the country not have different pressures that they must consider in planning applications? A simple threshold of designation may not work for the City of Durham, but it may for other parts of the country that do not have those designations.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that I was just about to come to. The Minister has indicated, and the consultation document seemed to suggest—in so far as I was able to glance over it—that one mitigating factor that would be taken into consideration is the existence of planning performance agreements, but the document does not examine all the other circumstances that should be taken into consideration. Indeed, in coming up with this list, I thought of other mitigating circumstances, such as a local authority having to deal with major flooding issues, or having to cope with the aftermath of rioting or other, natural hazards. Such circumstances are not alluded to in any way, so we need to hear something about them from the Minister.

There is no mention of something that is actually very typical in planning: the need for an archaeological assessment. To take up my hon. Friend’s point, sometimes, the need for an archaeological assessment does not emerge until the planning application has been submitted to the local authority, because it may not have been brought to anybody’s attention, or all the information may not have been available. There is simply nothing that deals with mitigating circumstances. That is what amendment 19 seeks to address, but it also serves to point out to the Committee that planning is a much more complex process than the broad-brush assertions of Government Members suggest.

Amendment 22 should be self-explanatory. This is a bad Bill that takes unprecedented powers to the centre, and, worst of all, takes away people’s important right to make their voice known and heard on planning applications. It contains a series of measures that undermine local democracy, and as the TCPA and others point out, it runs the serious risk of breaking trust in the planning system. In most authorities, local people have a right to turn up to planning committee meetings and make their views known. Their elected representatives can do the same. It will be much more difficult to do that when the decision will be made by the Planning Inspectorate. For that reason alone, never mind the lost opportunity to support growth and good development, the provisions of clause 1 should be limited to one year only. Of course, we would prefer the clause not to be there at all, but if it has to be, the measures in it should be severely time-limited. This legislation is putting huge curbs on local people’s democratic right to influence what happens in their area, and we should tread very carefully. I hope the Minister will look seriously at altering clause 1 and at taking on board a number of our comments.

That concludes my comments on this group of amendments. I have made it clear that I think clause 1 is badly written and inappropriate, and a rushed, panic measure that does not contain adequate consultation. I will return to some of these issues later.

Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrat, Hazel Grove)

I shall be as succinct as I can. Over the past 33 years I have served on three different local authorities and sat on the planning committees of all of them, as well as serving, as the Committee will know, for two years in the Department for Communities and Local Government, so I bring a certain amount of baggage to this subject, for which I apologise. One thing I do not bring with me is a copy of the consultation document—I am 28 minutes behind the hon. Member for City of Durham—but I am grateful to her for explaining what it contains. I understood her to say that when one looks at the criteria in the consultation document, one finds that only six authorities might be caught under the first criterion—I will not read it as I speak, if that is okay—and all of those will be excluded under the second criterion. As I understood it, the import of the hon. Lady’s criticism is that, in fact, no local authority will be caught at all.

I congratulate the Minister on producing, albeit a little later than some of us would have appreciated, a set of criteria that brilliantly encapsulate the views of the chief executive of the Royal Town Planning Institute, which I put to the Committee by way of intervention earlier, stated in response to a question from me. I drew attention to the evidence that the RTPI had put in when the debate on the national planning policy framework was at its height. Of course, the institute believed at that time that the requirement for local plans by local authorities would lead to the end of civilisation as we know it, that every green field in the country would promptly be swamped and overtaken—in fact, it was such a world of devastation that one might have thought that world war three was a likely consequence. The interesting thing, as the chief executive freely admitted in her evidence to the Committee, is that it has not turned out like that: what has actually happened is that local authorities all around the country are buckling down to a job which, frankly, they should have done 10 or 15 years ago, and the “impossible” targets we were told about have all been met by local authorities.

Local authorities have the resilience and the capacity to achieve things that sometimes even central Government do not believe are possible. If it is true—I am relying on the hon. Lady’s interpretation of a Government document, which is always dangerous—that the consultation document conclusively demonstrates that no local authority will be caught anyway, it seems to me that this does exactly what it should do, which is encourage local authorities to do what they should be doing anyway.

Henry Smith (Conservative, Crawley)

Does my right hon. Friend believe that this should allay the fears of organisations such as the Local Government Association that the measure goes against localism? Is not the reality, in a pragmatic sense, that it does nothing of the kind and is only an extreme measure for extreme circumstances, which is perfectly reasonable?

Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrat, Hazel Grove)

It is quite analogous with what has been done with the national planning policy framework, which is to say that if you do the job well at the local level, there is no problem, but if you have not got a local plan, there will be a problem because you will be judged on national criteria.

The hon. Lady accepted the case that very few local authorities would be caught, but then advanced a rather strange argument that, in that case, there should not be any rules. It occurred to me that very few people commit murder, but that does not mean that we do not need rules and regulations about not committing murder. That was not her strongest argument in her presentation.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

If the right hon. Gentleman had listened to my whole argument, he would have heard that I was suggesting that, as relatively few authorities could be deemed to be failing under the criteria set out in the consultation paper, and as we have a huge bank of knowledge about how to make a failing planning authority successful by supporting it, our time and that of local authorities might be better spent looking at what measures actually improve performance, rather than simply designating them as failing and taking away their powers to determine applications, which is all that the Bill will do.

Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrat, Hazel Grove)

I thank the hon. Lady for that clarification. She is right to set about reshaping her argument because, as it was originally presented, it did not do the job at all.

Having said that, it would be helpful if the Minister referred to some matters in further detail, one of which is de-designation. The Opposition’s argument is worth a careful explanation. We can see a process and that it will not happen often, and we can see that most local authorities will work effectively to make sure it does not happen often, but if a local authority finds itself designated and will no longer be responsible for the service that it failed on, it is reasonable to ask how it will establish that it is competent to take it back. It would be helpful to know the answer to that question.

I am trying to be helpful to the Minister but I will say that a local authority would find itself taken to a higher court if it did not have a local plan, because its applications have to be judged on the NPPF rather than local criteria. Can my hon. Friend make it clear that the determinations that are taken away from local authorities will always be carried out and determined by the Planning Inspectorate on the basis of the NPPF and any local plan for the area, and that the result will not be a series of completely arbitrary planning decisions, made simply to get a result? It will also help if my hon. Friend explains what coaching, guidance or assistance will be available to an authority that has been designated, so that there is a foreseeable route for recovering its local powers and local capacity to proceed.

I know that Opposition Members, and the Minister himself, hope that no local authority will fall foul of the provision. I go along with the view expressed by the Royal Town Planning Institute that the objective is to persuade people to do things before they hit punitive measures.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrat, Hazel Grove)

I am delighted to give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

The right hon. Gentleman has made a great point of quoting the chief executive of the Royal Town Planning Institute, and he has quoted her selectively. I refer him to her evidence when she made it clear that she did not believe that the metrics were the right way in which to proceed and said,

“Our concern is that we might spend a lot of resource doing this, when there might be quicker and more elegant ways of getting performance up”.—[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 20 November 2012; c. 91, Q219.]

Does he agree?

Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrat, Hazel Grove)

I cannot see what could be more elegant and quick than a set of criteria at which every local authority looks over its shoulder and says, “I am free from that, but I don’t want to go back there.” I think that that is exactly what needs to be put in place. The right hon. Gentleman will have heard me say that I am looking forward to the Minister explaining about the coaching and support that will be available, so that a local authority that finds itself, for whatever combination of reasons, in a difficult place knows that it is not a death sentence, but an opportunity to improve.

Ian Murray (Labour, Edinburgh South)

The right hon. Gentleman is making an argument for efficient and speedy planning decisions for the benefit of everyone. What would he say to planning authorities that do not have the resources to make their planning departments conform to the kind of planning utopia that he seems to espouse?

Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrat, Hazel Grove)

There is nothing like serving on three different local authority planning committees to know that planning utopia is some way away. What I would say is that, over the course of this Parliament, the introduction of the new homes bonus on the one hand, and the restoration of business rates growth to the local authority on the other, mean that every local authority has every incentive to ensure that it deals effectively and efficiently with all the applications that come to them. I am not arguing that that means the percentage of approvals has to go up, or the quality of those approvals has to go down; but it does mean that there are opportunities for them to be speeded up. If one has a good local plan, a good system of neighbourhood planning and a lively and growth-oriented local authority, all those things are achievable.

I have pointed out what I think are some of the gaps in support of the amendments that the hon. Member for City of Durham has tabled, which are, as she frankly admitted, essentially wrecking amendments. However, I do believe there are some issues that it would be extremely helpful to hear the Minister explain in detail to the Committee.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Davies. I put on the record my thanks to all the people who gave evidence to the Committee over the past two days. Their evidence was extremely important for us. Although I did not necessarily agree with all of it, of course, it is always interesting to hear other opinions and perspectives.

I thank the hon. Member for City of Durham for what I think we can all agree was a fulsome discussion of the clause and the amendments. I will start by clearing up any doubts and concerns about the publication of the consultation document. I am glad that I have been able to fulfil my commitment to publish it before the Committee’s consideration, although I regret that such was the intensity of the interest of the Deputy Prime Minister in this subject that it took a little time for us to receive final clearance to publish. I know that the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove will be delighted that his party leader is so interested in this subject. The good news is that it is a simple document that sets out the simple criteria we are going to use, so there is no need to read all of it in order to understand the meat of what we propose.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Will that be a point that comes up again and again in the Committee: that all the faults in the legislation lie with the Liberal Democrats?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

Fortunately, there are no faults in the legislation, so it is impossible that any faults result from my esteemed coalition colleagues, the Liberal Democrats.

We all enjoyed the rich irony of the hon. Lady setting out the commitment of the Labour party as the defender of localism and local government. Even those of us who were not in the House when the Labour Government were in office remember the regional strategies that they imposed, without any democratic accountability, on local authorities.

Henry Smith (Conservative, Crawley)

I was a local authority leader during that time and I distinctly remember the undemocratic regional assemblies that sought to force planning decisions on elected local governments, which I am glad this Government have swept away.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I entirely concur with my hon. Friend. The regional assemblies were stuffed full of the placemen and placewomen of the said—now localist—Labour party. We also remember the national Infrastructure Planning Commission that was going to make decisions about major infrastructure projects without any accountability to any elected representative of the British people. We remember the attempts to force local authorities to become unitary authorities—effectively to dissolve themselves and merge with their neighbours and other tier authorities, without any reference to local people. In another area, we remember their attempt to force police forces, which were traditionally based on metropolitan or county boundaries, reflecting local communities, also to merge.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

The Minister is clearly going rather wide of the amendment. Can I bring him back to planning matters and ask him if he recognises that, under the regime of the previous Government that he has so denounced, 71% of planning applications were dealt with within the statutory 13-week period and that under his Government, that has fallen to a mere 57%. Why?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I recognise that the right hon. Gentleman has a difficult account to give. When he was in government as a very distinguished and committed Local Government Minister, either he was a true localist who just got sat on by the noble Lord Prescott, his boss and anything but a localist; or he was not a localist and has become one since moving to the Opposition Benches. No doubt his biographer will reveal all in time.

I will move on to some of the specific points related to the clause and the amendments that the hon. Member for City of Durham tabled. First, it is important to note that the two—simply two—criteria that we are proposing to use, which were set out in the consultation document, will operate separately. There is a very important reason for that: a decision that is much delayed, even if it is a good decision, is still justice denied for both applicant and the community that it will affect.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Will the Minister give way?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I will give way to the hon. Lady, but she had 45 minutes of our time, so she will not mind if I elaborate a little longer.

A decision that is not in accordance with national policy or, just as important, not in accordance with the policies that the local authority itself has set out in its local plan, is a bad decision and one that fails the community it serves. We will operate these two criteria separately, but we have always made it clear—my right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove made it clear—that we do not want to catch many authorities. In fact, our ideal outcome is that all authorities are able to improve their performance, as many have, sufficiently to avoid both criteria.

That is why we have set the criteria as proposed in the consultation document at a level where the timeliness criterion would catch a few authorities—a maximum of six, I believe, but that might change when we look at the planning performance agreements reached after the application had been submitted and other mitigating circumstances. Currently, the quality criterion would not catch any authority, and that is quite right too: if authorities are performing well, we are the last people to want to catch them.

Paul Blomfield (Labour, Sheffield Central)

I think the Minister will recognise that the debate is about carrots and sticks. My hon. Friend the shadow Minister has spoken of our concerns about the lack of carrot and the emphasis on stick in the Government’s approach. How effective will a stick be that the Minister is proudly proclaiming will affect nobody?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove answered that much better than I did. The prospect of a life sentence for committing murder is a pretty good stick, in my view. Indeed, we would all hope that it was such a good stick that nobody would ever commit murder, but I do not think we would conclude from that that we should remove it from the statute book. Sticks are threats, but they do not have to be applied to individual districts.

James Morris (Conservative, Halesowen and Rowley Regis)

I feel as though the Minister has been traduced in relation to his consultation document. I recognise that it was published only this morning, but one of the advantages of being on a Bill Committee is that I have had the opportunity to read it while others were speaking. Page 17 of the consultation document states:

“Any authorities designated on the basis of very poor performance will need time to improve, support while they are doing so and a fair opportunity to show when—and to what extent—their performance has improved.”

I welcome this statement in the consultation:

“We are proposing that any designation would last for at least a year, but would be subject to review well before that year ends, so that the authority has every opportunity for the designation to be lifted at the end of the one year period.”

I hope that helps the Minister by giving the Committee information about what the consultation actually contains.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I thank my hon. Friend, and that is extremely helpful. It might also help the Committee to listen not to me but to some of our witnesses, who talked about the combination of carrots and sticks. Katja Hall from the CBI described the clause thus:

“It would give another option and I would hope that the main benefit is just giving an incentive to local authorities that are taking too long or that have a high number of appeals upheld against them to review their own processes and, I guess, in those cases to sharpen up their act.”––[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 13 November 2012; c. 33, Q75.]

Andrew Whitaker from the Home Builders Federation said:

“We have seen a lot of change in the planning regime in terms of putting the emphasis on localism. What we have said about localism is that we have no problem with it, as long as everybody embraces the idea of localism and localism not being a barrier to growth…Therefore, with this power under localism comes the responsibility of doing the right thing.”––[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 13 November 2012; c. 55, Q38.]

I agree with that, because with every power must come responsibility.

The hon. Member for Sheffield Central asked what help or support we were giving local authorities to improve. First, we have given them dramatically more power under the Localism Act 2011 to plan for their local areas than the previous Labour Government ever did. Secondly, we have given them, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove pointed out, the prospect of direct additional grant for every new house for which they grant planning permission, and for businesses that set up and, therefore, pay higher business rates in their area. Thirdly, we are supporting them, as the previous Labour Government did, through grant to run a good planning system. That money comes from central taxpayers, and it is entirely reasonable that central taxpayers expect to receive a service in return.

The hon. Member for City of Durham, no doubt in an attempt to wake us up on a slow morning when we are debating a technical point, used some fairly lurid terms. She talked about blackmailing and even about megalomania with reference to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. The right term to use when talking about the Secretary of State is the one that he has used: muscular localism. He is, I agree, a particularly muscular localist and I am a rather more gangly one; but localists we both are.

The hon. Lady also mentioned Councillor Jones’s evidence to the Committee, in which he said that he and the LGA just wanted local authorities to get on with making things happen locally. That is exactly what this Government want local authorities to do, and the great news is that they are doing so far more effectively than they ever did when they were interfered with, bossed about and pushed around by the last Government, which the hon. Lady supported.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I really cannot let the Minister continue in this vein without a challenge. First, local plans were actually introduced under the previous Government, and they do now set primacy for local plan-making, which is a very good thing indeed. But the Minister cannot argue that this clause is about improving localism, because it takes powers away from the local authority and gives them to the Planning Inspectorate, bypassing the local community, which will have very little say indeed over what happens with particular applications. However the Minister and his colleagues twist it, this is not adding to localism; it is detracting from it. Almost every witness before this Committee made that point.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

The hon. Lady’s sense of indignation grows, but her account for the record of her own Government is still absent, and until we hear it and are persuaded by it, we will not accept the genuineness or sincerity of the points being expressed.

I shall briefly turn to the comments of the hon. Member for Edinburgh South, who talked about the effect of cuts to local authorities on their planning departments. The whole Committee will be grateful to the hon. Gentleman for taking such an interest and committing so much time to the consideration of the planning system in England—which, of course, none of his constituents have any real interest in or are affected by. We are always happy to learn from our Scottish cousins about the way they handle some planning matters. No doubt, the hon. Gentleman is aware of one particular thing that happens in his fair country: that planning appeals for many planning decisions are never referred to a separate body at all, but are taken inside the local authority. A planning decision made by one branch of a local authority, therefore, is then appealed to another branch of the local authority. All I would say is that we have different ways of doing things in the two countries of this nation; not necessarily everything that happens in his country is perfect, nor in ours. This Bill—this clause—is an attempt to help local authorities work out how to plan better.

On the specific point the hon. Gentleman raised about cuts to local government funding, he will know that we have just legislated—it may even have been in this very room last week—for an increase in fees by 15% to take account of inflation over the last few years. That means that local authorities have all the resources they need to make decisions in a timely fashion. He will also be aware of the simple logic that, if we take more decisions on development quicker, we will have more development happening in our area; we will refuse the bad ideas and agree to the good ones; and we will therefore have a better tax base. We will have more money coming through, in the new homes bonus, in council tax and in business rates. There is absolutely no reason why local authorities should conclude that it is not in their direct financial interest—as well as everything else—to improve the timeliness and quality of their planning decisions.

Ian Murray (Labour, Edinburgh South)

I am delighted that the Minister has acknowledged that planning has devolved to the Scottish Parliament. However, may I correct him on his factual inaccuracies? In Scotland, planning appeals do not go to another local authority; they go to the Scottish Government reporters’ unit, which is a separate place for appeals, so he is indeed incorrect there. May I draw him to the overall arc of this Bill—the Growth and Infrastructure Bill—which is about growth in the United Kingdom? I can assure him that if the Government do not get this Bill right and cannot create any growth—as we have seen over the last two years—it will affect my constituents just as much as his; in fact, probably more so.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I thank the hon. Gentleman and I would be delighted to be put right by him on the precise structure of the planning system. My general point was simply that the planning systems are different, and just because they are does not necessarily mean that this one, or the one that operates in his country, cannot be improved.

I will move on to some of the specific points that have been raised before I address briefly the amendments that the hon. Member for City of Durham admitted were more an attempt to reduce the clause to nothing, rather than a serious effort to improve it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove asked some important questions about the process by which a designated local authority might nevertheless recover its powers in full. That is addressed in paragraph 69 of the consultation document, but perhaps I can give a little more detail.

First, any authority that has been so designated will still deal with the vast bulk of the applications they receive. Relatively few applications received by almost all authorities are major, and it is only major applications that will be affected by the designation. They will still be operating every day, every week as planning authorities, and we will be able to follow them closely to check whether they are putting in the resources, skills and processes to do that efficiently.

Secondly, under the terms of the Bill, there is no compulsion or requirement for applicants to go to the Planning Inspectorate or the Secretary of State; they just have that option. I think if you spoke to any developer, they would say that they would much rather deal with the local authority where the application is being made. It is, frankly, a bit of a pain to have to go to the Planning Inspectorate. They will only take advantage of the opportunity we are giving them if the performance of that local authority is so bad that it overwhelms the benefit of doing it locally, consulting with people locally and having conversations and discussions where the development is proposed.

Bob Blackman (Conservative, Harrow East)

I seek clarity on two points, both of which relate to designated authorities. At the moment, when a planning application is considered by a planning authority, planning conditions are imposed as a result of determining and approving the application. One of the concerns that has been expressed is that if that right is taken away and given to the Planning Inspectorate, the local considerations of those planning conditions may be ignored or overridden. I seek clarity on what decision making processes will take place there.

I have another concern after having briefly read the consultation documents. These are major planning applications that will be removed from a planning authority, but the presumption is that they will be determined by written, rather than oral, representations. That would not allow local people to have a public airing of their concerns. I suggest to the Minister that that might need to be looked at again.

Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley)

Order. Interventions are getting increasingly lengthy. Perhaps hon. Members might consider making speeches to tease out these points in more detail, rather than making interventions.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I will address my hon. Friend’s points, but I will quickly return to the subject of de-designation—that is a horrible word; I need to come up with a better one. We have already been in touch with the Planning Advisory Service, which, as my hon. Friend will be aware, the Department funds, about the role it will play in working intensively with what we have established will be an extremely small number of authorities to understand why they are performing badly. It may be the level of skill, the level of investment, their processes or how they are organised. More radical plans might be needed. For example, if an authority was a small district, it could co-operate or even merge its planning department with its neighbouring department. All that will be done intensively. Of course, it will be possible to act intensively because so few authorities will be in this category. We hope to hear suggestions from my hon. Friend and others about how better to do this once we have—if, regrettably, we do—a few authorities that are failing under the criteria we have set out.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Could the Minister explain why the timeliness criterion is there whenever the current system allows applications to be referred to the Secretary of State for non-determination within the statutory time limits?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I was going to come on to this question. If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me I will quickly address it. The hon. Lady knows very well that the problem with that is that people can appeal on the grounds of non-determination only after they have submitted an application and then waited, and waited, and waited. We need growth urgently in this country. We need these major applications to be considered and determined quickly. The Opposition seem to feel that they can assent to the proposition that we need growth but then try to delay and block any measure other than more Government spending to bring it about. The Government understand that there is not money to spend but that there are many ways in which we can free up enterprise and enable local areas to grow.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Will the Minister give way?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I will not now because we will rise at 1 o’clock and I should like to make a little more progress.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East raises an important question about planning conditions. The consultation document makes it clear that conditions will remain with the planning authority to discharge. Of course, as it indeed does now, the Planning Inspectorate will be able to consult with any planning authority whose application it is currently considering because the authority has been designated and the applicant has chosen to make the application direct to the Secretary of State on what conditions will be necessary. As with decisions that are called in and decisions that are referred on appeal, the inspectorate will be able to have short hearings, locally, where people will be able to state their views and raise concerns just as they do now.

I will now deal with the amendments. Amendments 10 and 19 would prevent the Secretary of State from designating any local planning authorities which have not adopted a local plan for their whole area within the previous 20 years, and would exclude from designation local planning authorities with responsibility for sites covered by national designations, world heritage sites or conservation areas. I would make two points in response. First, more local plans have been produced and published in the last year than in the 10 years of the Labour Government that the hon. Lady supported, but there is only one authority that has not had a local plan for 20 years, and this is therefore an amendment that is trying to withdraw the clause altogether.

Secondly, the Planning Inspectorate, as it is now, would be covered by all of the same national rules, national laws and national guidance on areas of special designation, architectural interest, world heritage sites and the lot. There is no reason or evidence to believe that it would not be as sensitive to those concerns as the local authority would be.

Amendment 11 would introduce a requirement for the Secretary of State to consult before making regulations as to the types of applications covered by clause 1 and would require those regulations to be subject to approval of both Houses of Parliament. As we discussed at some length, we have just published a consultation paper on setting out the criteria for designating authorities. We do not want to over-complicate legislation and we want to retain some flexibility to be able to vary those criteria—up or down—over the next few years as is justified by the situation. If, of course, we discover that when we apply those criteria many of the authorities do not remain long in the designation and that the criteria therefore perhaps were too high, we can shift them. We do not believe that it is right or sensible, or indeed consistent with any of the other regimes that the hon. Lady’s Government put in place, to put in the Bill itself a definition of those criteria and the regulations that will govern them.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I hope the Minister will appreciate that it was not possible in the time allowed to go through the consultation paper in detail in advance of the Committee’s deliberations. Nevertheless, is he saying that he is consulting on criteria—and the outcome of the consultation will presumably inform the criteria that are adopted—but that subsequently, on the whim of the Secretary of State, those criteria can be adjusted?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

The hon. Lady will know that nothing is done on the whim of the Secretary of State. He, and, indeed, every member of the Government, consider things deliberately, consult on them at great length—and, in my view, in painful detail—and the same process would have to be gone through again if he, my successor or anyone else wanted to change them.

Ian Murray (Labour, Edinburgh South)

Will the Minister give way?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I am not going to give way again because I want to address the last amendment; if I then have time I will be happy to do so. Amendment 22 provides that clause 1 would end one year after it comes into force, and also requires the approval of both Houses of Parliament for any regulations made under clause 1. This is, of course, as the hon. Member for City of Durham admitted, effectively an attempt to neuter the clause. There were many pieces of legislation passed by her Government that we would have loved to have ended one year after they came into force—I suspect that there were a number of pieces of legislation that even she would have loved to have brought to an end after only a year in force—but it is not a serious proposal. We believe in the clause, we believe it should operate and that it will benefit local opportunities and local growth. Therefore, I hope that the Committee will resist the hon. Lady’s amendments and support the clause.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I did not question for a moment the Government’s or the Minister’s belief in the clause. My argument was that it is a thoroughly bad clause, that it is anti-localist and that there are much more sensible ways of driving up performance in local authorities than those he suggests. Nevertheless, I heard what the Minister said. I am terribly conscious of the fact that the consultation document came out too late for me to look at whether it addresses some of my very great concerns about clause 1. I shall deliberate further on some of the measures that we included in these amendments and so, for the time being, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I beg to move amendment 12, in clause 1, page 2, line 9, leave out from ‘1990’ to end of line 11.

Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 15, in clause 1, page 2, line 19, at end insert—

‘(3B) Applications under subsection (3) shall be subject to criteria published following a period of consultation.’.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Amendment 12 again seeks to curb the power-grabbing tendencies of the Secretary of State. Clause 1(1) will insert proposed new section 62A in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. We think that subsection (3)(a)(ii) will give too much power to the Secretary of State to decide which applications he wishes to determine. As far as I can see, it would allow him to prescribe, and so take upon himself or the Planning Inspectorate, any application at all. That is very disturbing. We certainly want to see greater clarification of what is meant under subsection (3)(a)(ii); it is surely not right for Parliament to agree to such wide-ranging powers resting with the Secretary of State. Put simply, we want subsection (3)(a)(ii) removed all together.

Other amendments tabled require the nature of applications that are to be determined to be set out in regulations and voted on, and, indeed, thoroughly consulted upon, so we have not repeated those requirements in amendment 12; however, it may be helpful to remind the Committee that that is what we would wish to see. We take up that point in amendment 15, which would make applications under subsection (3) subject to

“criteria published following a period of consultation.”

We are approaching this issue in a two-stage process. Ideally, we would like new subsection (3)(a)(ii) removed. However, if it is not the Committee’s wish that it be removed, we think that, at the very least, we must have a clearer understanding of what is meant—what sort of applications we are talking about and what the limits are on those applications.

Amendments 12 and 15 are a request for greater accountability and transparency, which we think is at present sadly missing from a number of the provisions in the Bill. We want to see the criteria and to ensure that they are consulted on, that they are set out in regulations and that both Houses of Parliament get an opportunity to vote on them.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

Amendments 12 and 15 would remove the Secretary of State’s ability to add to the list of connected applications that may be submitted to him where a planning authority has been designated and would require any connected applications made directly to the Secretary of State to be subject to criteria published after a period of consultation.

I am afraid this is another case of the Labour party rewriting history, as it deals with the trauma of losing office. When in government, the Labour party asked Adrian Penfold to look at the overlapping consent regimes, which cause a huge amount of unnecessary delay and expense on separate but parallel bureaucratic processes. With the Bill, as previously with the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, we will implement many of the recommendations of his review, which, I repeat, he was asked to conduct by the previous Government. Elsewhere in the Bill, we have our proposals for a one-stop shop on such consents.

All that we are proposing here is to apply the same sensible rationalisation that the Labour party sought when in government to those very few planning applications that will be directed to the Secretary of State directly, where an authority has been designated.

Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Scunthorpe)

The Minister is explaining his position effectively. Will his proposal take local decision making away from local people? Is that the practical effect for local people?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

Of course the problem we are trying to address is the lack of decision making for the benefit of local people when they are not being adequately served by their planning authority. It is important to stress that any connected applications would have to be related to planning applications being submitted to the inspectorate and it is limited to the types of application that fall under the Planning Act 2008. It is exactly the kind of connected applications that the previous Labour Government asked Adrian Penfold to look at the possibility of streamlining and rationalising.

It is important that we are able to prescribe more than just listed buildings consent. We are consulting on our proposed approach to a one-stop shop for consents. Although we do not intend at present to prescribe any additional categories of related consent, the response to the consultation may raise further consents that should be dealt with as a connected application. The Opposition are always keen for us to consult and respond to the results. In the clause, we simply propose giving ourselves the ability to do that. The amendments are unnecessary. I beg the hon. Lady to withdraw her amendment.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

I have to say the Minister shows sheer bare-faced cheek in trying to pretend that the Government are rationalising and tidying up. He is actually creating an extraordinarily complex and messy new arrangement in which there will be two separate routes for applications. One will go through the local authority in the normal democratic process and the other will bypass that and go to the Planning Inspectorate. It will not end there, however, because the Planning Inspectorate or the Government—the Minister—will be able to require local authorities to perform various functions.

If the Minister refers to paragraph 59 on page 16 of the document that we received this morning, he will see that local authorities could be asked to do

“Site notices and neighbour notification…providing the planning history for the site”

and

“notification of any cumulative impact considerations, such as where environmental impact assessment or assessment under the Habitats Regulations is involved, or there may be cumulative impacts upon the highways network site notices, neighbour notification”.

Different procedures and different organisations are involved.

As the hon. Member for Harrow East said, if the public have concerns about the application, how will those concerns be heard? I do not think I heard a reply from the Minister as to how public inquiries will be held. Paragraph 62 of the consultation states that the

“presumption should be that applications are examined principally by means of written representations”.

That was clearly a cause of concern to the hon. Member for Harrow East. The consultation then states that there is

“the option of a short hearing to allow the key parties to briefly put their points in person.”

There is no clarity as to where that hearing will be held. Will it be in the area where the development is taking place? Will it be in Bristol at the Planning Inspectorate’s office? There is a complete lack of clarity about that. Where will—

Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley)

Order. Will the right hon. Gentleman explain exactly how his comments relate to the two amendments that we are looking at? We are considering amendments 12 and 15, so it would be helpful if he made clear how his comments relate to them.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

Thank you, Mr Davies. Amendment 15 specifically refers to applications under subsection (3), which will be subject to criteria published following a period of consultation. I had assumed that the consultation was the document we received this morning and that the criteria were those laid out in that document. I was referring the Minister to them in relation to his claim that the Government were simplifying the system. There is a lack of clarity about the criteria and the procedures to be followed under the provisions we are debating in this group of amendments. I do not accept the Minister’s claim and his reason for rejecting our proposals. I would certainly be pleased to hear his answer to the question of the hon. Member for Harrow East about where the public will be able to express their views if the procedure applies.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

It is an object of fascination to all of us on the Government side to watch the manoeuvres and contortions that the right hon. Gentleman puts himself through to portray as consistent his entire repudiation of the Adrian Penfold review that his Government set up and which, with admirable initiative, we were happy to endorse and back when we came into government.

The right hon. Gentleman knows well that all we are proposing to do is to enable the same connected applications that Adrian Penfold ends up recommending to us and which, following consultation, we conclude are connected genuinely to the original planning application to be dealt with together, because otherwise different authorities will be dealing with connected applications in different places on different time scales. We will be duplicating bureaucracy, time and expense.

Of course, duplication of bureaucracy, time and expense was practically the defining mission of the previous Labour Government, so it is no surprise to hear the right hon. Gentleman arguing for it now. However, his argument does not persuade me, and I am pretty sure that it will not persuade anyone else on the Committee. He asked how the local community will be able to make known its views on an application. That is a reasonable question, and it is one that we addressed in the consultation and we shall be listening to the responses closely. It is, of course, already precisely the same with applications that are called in, and applications that are appealed and subject to inspectorate decision. There is nothing new.

When the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues had responsibility for the Planning Inspectorate, I do not recall their criticising it for failing to discharge its duties in that regard. It will not fail in those duties now, and we are happy to take particular suggestions from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East or anyone else on exactly how things should happen, but there is absolutely no reason to believe that the process will not happen, because it happens already.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I believe the Minister is inviting me to give a blow-by-blow account of the damage that Conservative Administrations did to my constituency between 1979 and 1997, but I am sure that the Committee will be relieved to know that I will, for the time being at least, resist that temptation and focus my remarks on the amendments.

I did not seek to remove the provision that deals with connected applications, but sought simply to table an amendment that would make it clear what is meant by connected applications and for that to be transparent and readily accountable. That seems a reasonable thing to do, so I am bitterly disappointed that the Minister will not at least agree to consider that proposal. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich said, subsection (3)(a)(ii) gives extraordinary powers to the Secretary of State to prescribe the decisions he will take upon himself.

I still have concerns about the clause. I want the Minister to go away and think carefully about what has been said, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I beg to move amendment 14, in clause 1, page 2, line 19, at end insert—

‘(3A) It shall be the responsibility of the Secretary of State to ensure that all statutory requirements that would otherwise be met by the local planning authority or hazardous substances authority, in relation to a relevant application under subsection 3, are met by him.’.

Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 13, in clause 1, page 2, line 30, at end insert—

‘(4A) Before reaching a decision on an application made to him under this section, the Secretary of State must ensure that adequate consultation of the local community takes place.’.

Amendment 1, in clause 1, page 2, line 32, at end insert—

‘(5A) Any performance standards that apply to local planning authorities in the consideration of planning applications shall also apply to the Secretary of State in the performance of his functions under this section.’.

Amendment 5, in clause 1, page 3, line 7, at end insert—

‘(11) The Secretary of State shall, as soon as possible after the end of each financial year, publish a statement of the costs incurred by the Secretary of State during that year in pursuance of this section.’.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I will move on speedily to this third group of amendments in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South. These amendments are designed to ensure that when the Secretary of State or his appointed person takes on the responsibility for a planning application, the same duties are fulfilled by him as would be expected of the relevant local authority, and that the local planning authority, if required to fulfil some of these functions on his behalf, is adequately compensated for the work that is undertaken. We do not agree that the Secretary of State should be given these powers, but if he is to be given them, we must ensure that that is done properly and in a truly accountable way.

Amendment 14 highlights the point that I made about fulfilling the duties and cites the specific example of hazardous waste. As I am sure hon. Members will know, at times in determining an application the local authority has to act as a hazardous waste authority. It is simply not clear whether the Secretary of State will require the Planning Inspectorate, if he has asked it to judge an application, to act in a similar manner or whether he will leave it to the local authority to do that work and, if he does ask it to do it, whether he will give them the costs associated with the work.

I have given just one example. A great number of organisations—indeed, a growing number of people in the private sector—are anxious about how work will be undertaken in the new system, how it will be resourced and whether it will actually speed anything up. The issue of resourcing planning properly with regard to consultation requirements is taken up by amendment 13, but before I move away from amendment 14, it is important to say this: the Minister has employed the private sector and developers in support of the need for this proposed legislation, but in earlier sittings of the Committee, we heard developers express real concerns about the uncertainty that will be engendered in the planning system by the new legislation. It is very important that at the outset we are very clear about who will do what when it comes to determining an application.

One of the things that we have heard from developers is that they do know the local authority and how it operates very well, usually. What they do not know is how the Planning Inspectorate will deal with applications under the new system, particularly if the Secretary of State can ask local authorities in some circumstances to do some things, but in other circumstances he will not ask the local authority to do that; he might ask someone else to do it. That is introducing huge uncertainty and different arrangements for different applications in different places. That is a concern. I seek clarification from the Minister of how those fears among developers can be allayed.

Amendment 13 takes us back to the point about consultation. It would ensure that the Secretary of State carried out extensive and appropriate consultation on a planning application that he, under clause 1, was responsible for determining. There has been considerable confusion about what consultation will be required in relation to referred applications. I appreciate that in the document that we received, rather belatedly, this morning, some reference is made to that. Nevertheless, I hope that the Minister will provide greater clarity now. At the evidence session, he said that local authorities

“will still need to advertise applications and handle local consultation.”––[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 13 November 2012; c. 10, Q7.]

He did not say, however, what should be the nature of that consultation. In the evidence sessions, a number of witnesses, notably those from the National Trust and Friends of the Earth, expressed concern about the lack of clarity on this matter in the Bill. Both the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the Local Government Association, in evidence, stated that clause 1 could lead some communities to become increasingly reluctant to accept new development because their voices will not be heard. Friends of the Earth stated that what concerns it

“is that public participation is not explicitly mentioned. Although clause 1(6)(a) says that the local authority needs to do what it normally does, it does not specifically say that there needs to be consultation. That is something that should be up there as being important to happen.”––[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 20 November 2012; c. 164-5, Q382.]

The National Trust agreed with that. However, as the Minister knows, it goes really far beyond the expectation of a few letters going up and a notice on a lamp post. That would be the base line of what we would expect local authorities to do, but really good local authorities carry out more extensive consultation. Indeed, that is one of the reasons why applications, if there is determination, can be slowed down, because specific issues raised by local people are taken on board by the local authority and properly assessed. Given that the voice of many local people will be bypassed under this new system, we need to be very clear on the arrangements for consultation.

Mary Glindon (Labour, North Tyneside)

Does my hon. Friend agree that in cases such as the North Tyneside council planning department, which was privatised by the executive—led by the mayor with a minority on the council—the particular aim will be to make profits, so consultation may not be a priority? If the Secretary of State had responsibility on planning, there would be an excuse to bypass consultation if that saved money.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. Until now, I had not considered the possibility of planning departments being privatised. I can see that a whole set of issues might arise from those circumstances, particularly if the motive of profit is put at the centre of determining planning applications. Perhaps she will allow me some time to reflect on that, and then I could come back at some later point in Committee to give my views on the possible negative impact of those arrangements.

If I may return to my notices on lamp posts, which I think we all agree are inadequate as a form of consultation, in most major developments—the hon. Member for Harrow East made this point well earlier—we now see that most developers, particularly responsible developers, undertake extensive consultation with the local community in advance of putting in an application for planning approval.

At the moment there are a number of such applications in my constituency. They add greatly to my work load, I should say, and that of my staff, as we have to hold public meetings to assess local people’s opinions and so on. However, despite the additional work load, we all accept that it is a sensible way for planning applications to proceed, provided that—this is a big proviso—the developers take on board what local people say and amend their plans accordingly. As far as I can see, that will not necessarily be the case under the new system—even if developers go through a period of consultation, they do not need to pay any attention to what the local community says, because local representatives will not be taking the decision. I really have concerns about that. We must be clear about not only the forms of consultation but the means by which community voices are going to be heard, and, particularly, how at an early stage they can influence what a development will look like.

I want to know what the process will be, and, before we get agreement on the clause, it would also be helpful to know in more detail what in particular will be expected of the local authority. It may sound like a trivial thing to raise, but will local authorities be able to charge developers for room hire if they have a public meeting? That can add considerably to a local authority’s costs. Will they be able to charge the developers for letters that are sent out? Will they be able to charge for notices in a newspaper? And so on—the list could probably be endless, depending on the consultation arrangements. We need some clarity. Without funds or the right to determine, there is a real risk that for these important developments with the potential to have an impact on the community, consultation will be minimal. That simply is not acceptable.

Amendment 5 was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich. It seeks to ensure that costs associated with the new system are transparent and in the public domain as soon as possible. It reflects the concerns of many that the new system may be more costly and move further resources away from local authorities already struggling with huge cuts to local government. We know that the scale of the cuts is truly huge. A detailed financial projection from the LGA, published in June, warned that councils’ spending on planning and development would need to be cut by as much as 90% by 2020, so that they could make the cuts that are being imposed on them by central Government.

I see some querying faces opposite. We know that cuts are often falling disproportionately on the non-statutory elements of local government, including some aspects of planning, because local authorities have a number of statutory obligations that they are not able to cut. According to the LGA report, the funding gap will be £1.4 billion in the next financial year, rising to more than £16.5 billion by 2019-20. That is truly huge. The LGA says that the gap is in large part due to the enormous 28% cut in the amount of money the councils receive from central Government and the need for councils to protect front-line spending and statutory services. To demonstrate that, the Audit Commission produced a report last year that showed that although planning and development represents only 4% of single tier and county councils’ spend, those services will contribute 22% of savings made by councils—so planning departments are suffering disproportionately from Government cuts.

We are only in the very first years of the spending cuts, but they are already having a major impact. For example, a major city authority has told us that recently it has had to reduce four posts in its planning department. It said:

“The government seems to be taking away with one hand”—

and yet adding to its responsibilities and—

“imposing further duties posing as localism”.

Another council said that it has reduced its number of planners by three, meaning that it will have:

“Less resources available to give support to the community for the preparation of neighbourhood plans within the borough.”

Another council told us that it was reducing its staff by two. I could go on. I hope the Minister gets the message that his Department is asking more of planning departments while reducing the resources available to them.

I know the Minister will say that a number of authorities seem to be managing very well with reduced resources, and some are speeding up determination of their applications despite having fewer resources, but in advance of such a statement, I want to make two points. First, at the moment, in some areas of the country, planning departments are having to deal with fewer applications in total because of the state of the economy and because developers in the current economic climate are not bringing applications forward.

Secondly, the Minister should take the time frame on board. The full impact of the cuts has not yet hit planning departments, as I have said, so, at the moment, they may be able to deploy resources from elsewhere in the council, or to protect planning departments a little. The point is that that is not sustainable, and it will certainly not be sustainable if the economy picks up, as we all hope it does, and the number of applications increases.

Paul Blomfield (Labour, Sheffield Central)

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that not only are cuts affecting local authorities, but they are having a disproportionate impact on many of the big cities that some of us represent? The pressures on those planning departments will be even more acute.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

My hon. Friend makes a very good point indeed. Was he as concerned as me to read in the impact assessment that it was anticipated that the legislation would not place further demands on local authorities that they could not address? I thought it was naïve to suggest that the Bill and the cuts would not have a negative impact on authorities that must deal with particularly complex applications. We have had some evidence of that, because the time frame for determining major applications has been extended.

As I said this morning, a sensible approach would have been to look in detail at why local authorities are slowing down their determination of applications. When the Minister was asked that question at the evidence session, he was unable to say why applications are slowing down. We simply do not know. The Royal Town Planning Institute made the point strongly, and asked why we do not know why the determination of applications is slowing. That information would help us to understand whether the measures in the Bill are appropriate. Something has been plucked out of the air to threaten local government into approving applications more quickly, whether they are appropriate or not.

Malcolm Sharp of the Planning Officers Society said in his evidence that designated local authorities would be asked to undertake some of the work on an application, but would not receive a fee. Will the Minister clarify whether they will receive some of the fees? Mr Sharp continued:

“We all know the resource problem that local authorities are facing at the moment, which is why I went on to say that if you are not careful, you might end up in a spiral of decline.”––[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 20 November 2012; c. 94, Q226.]

We all recall Mr Sharp’s comments. In a very determined manner, he set out the hugely negative impact of these proposals on planning departments that have major applications taken from them. As we are all probably aware, planning authorities receive most of their fees from major applications so if they are taken away from them, it is not entirely obvious how those authorities will have the resources to improve and to get de-designated. There are whole sets of issues around this matter, which is why it is important that the Minister takes on board the point that is made in amendment 5 and makes it clear that local authorities will be adequately resourced for the work that the Secretary of State will be asking them to do.

Bob Blackman (Conservative, Harrow East)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I rise to speak in reply to the hon. Member for City of Durham who drew attention to some of my remarks in an intervention this morning. I have spent 24 years in a local authority, but have never served on a planning committee. None the less, I have spent an awful lot of my time objecting to planning applications that would not be approved by any planning committee. With one notable exception, every single application that was rejected by the planning committee was upheld on appeal, so the decisions of the planning committee were right, and I was right in my opposition to them.

The performance of planning authorities has dropped over the past two years, and we have to examine the reasons for that and look at what happens as a result. The hon. Lady made much of the consultation process, but good planning authorities go way beyond the consultation that is required by statute. They will advise many local people by letter, advertisement—be it on lamp posts, in local newspapers or on websites—and a variety of different ways, including contacting residents associations and other interested parties. They will take into account the views and objections of people both in writing and verbally. Clearly, we need to safeguard the process of that consultation.

When planning decisions are made, objectors often have a small amount of time in which to put their point of view, because planning committees often have to rush through a wide range of decisions. However, when the appeals process is under way, inspectors will often allow almost unlimited time for objectors to put their point of view. Perversely, if decisions are made at a national rather than at local level, local people may get more say and more opportunity to voice their objections than they do at local planning committees.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether he is talking about a public inquiry rather than a decision being taken by a planning inspectorate because planning inspectorate decisions are often written evidence only?

Bob Blackman (Conservative, Harrow East)

I recognise that those decisions are often taken by written evidence only, but planning inspectors can decide to hold open inquiries if he or she determines that that is the right thing to do. Often, that will be on the basis of the level and the type of objections that have been put in locally.

Will the Minister clarify some of the processes that will be considered by the Government when a planning inspector is going to determine planning applications, when a planning authority has failed to do so?

When a local authority fails to determine a planning application within the statutory time frame, and the applicant goes to appeal for non-determination, the local authority loses the opportunity to impose conditions on planning applications. Most good, sensible planning authorities will then rapidly bring that planning application to the planning committee and set out conditions that they would have applied had they been able to determine that planning application.

I suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister that that process should be embodied if the planning decisions are taken away from the planning authority, so that they have the opportunity to have input on conditions that they would be minded to impose, were the planning application to be considered. I hope that can be taken into account, given that we have heard the details of the process and of the consultation document only this morning.

The other consideration in the process is that we want people to feel part of it. We want local people to have an involvement. It would help to hear from the Minister greater clarity on how the process of consultation with local people will be undertaken, and how local people will have their say if decisions are taken away from the local planning committee. We should ensure that the process is seen to be clear and fair and does not mean that local people are unfortunately discriminated against because of the poor performance of their local planning authority.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

I rise to speak briefly about amendments 1 and 5. I shall be very brief on amendment 5 because my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham has spoken on that.

Amendment 1 would simply require the same performance standards that apply to local authorities at the very least to apply to cases handled by the Secretary of State under the procedure in the clause. That seems eminently sensible and reasonable and I assume the Government will accept that proposal, as they could not possibly want anyone to believe that the Secretary of State or anyone acting on his behalf, such as the Planning Inspectorate, would meet lower performance standards than they would expect from local authorities. I am optimistic that the amendment will be accepted.

I remind the Minister that the hon. Member for Harrow East—with whom I agree considerably on these issues—and my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham have both pressed him on why there has been a fall in performance in the past two years. It would be helpful to hear more about that. Current performance is a lot less than it was in the mid to late noughties when there was a substantially higher volume of planning applications to deal with. There is an issue there.

In principle, the concept that the Secretary of State and the Planning Inspectorate should meet at least the same standard of performance as local authorities must be unobjectionable and I hope that will be accepted.

The merits of amendment 5 have been set out by my hon. Friend. I will not say much more about them, other than to say there is an issue raised by the consultation document that we received this morning. One of the issues raised in the introduction is the Government’s intention to require

“a refund of the planning application fee, should an application remain undetermined after 26 weeks”.

That is set out in paragraph 9 of the document where it says,

“This would apply to all planning applications.”

The two questions I have for the Minister are, first, will that apply to applications that are handled by the Secretary of State and the Planning Inspectorate? I would hope that the same principles should apply as to those handled by local authorities. However, it is not clear, so I would welcome clarification.

Secondly, will it really apply to all planning applications, even where a planning performance agreement has been reached with the developer that envisages a longer time frame than 26 weeks? It would be an utterly perverse outcome for the local authority and the applicant—the developer—to agree a period of say, 30 weeks, because it is a complex scheme that requires a lot of careful attention, and then discover that the fee was automatically refundable because the Government’s proposal says that in all planning applications a refund of the fee will take place

“should an application remain undetermined after 26 weeks.”

That would be absurd.

I hope the Minister can confirm that is not the intention, and that the phrasing in his document issued today is not quite as crystal clear as he implied when announcing it earlier, and that there is an exception to that particular application in respect of reimbursement of fees. I hope that he will provide clarification on that point and the others that have been made, and that the Government will accept amendment 1.

Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Scunthorpe)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Davies, as it was this morning.

Like the hon. Member for Harrow East, in all my time in local authorities, I managed to avoid the planning committee. He speaks, however, with great authority on the matter and when he said that extensive consultation improves decision making, he put his figure on the pulse and highlighted an important point about ensuring that local people get better outcomes from developments in their local areas. As Mr Sharp said in his evidence:

“We all know the resource problem that local authorities are facing at the moment, which is why…you might end up in a spiral of decline.”––[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 20 November 2012; c. 95, Q226.]

Resources are tight and with powers being taken to the Planning Inspectorate, there is a real danger that the combination of tight resources and lack of clarity about what is expected will end up condensing or minimising the extent of consultation. We may then get outcomes where local people are very unhappy about what has taken place, without them having been involved, or feeling that they have been involved, in the process. In my constituency, I recently had a case in which local people felt that they had not been engaged with properly, which created a lot of difficulty for the developer. Had that been done better in the first place, it would have been a much easier process.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Does he agree that Government Members may not have thought enough about what their local communities will feel about decisions being taken away from local authorities? As far as we know, such decisions will be major, but there may be others that will have a significant impact on communities, yet people will have little opportunity to influence the outcome of those decisions and they will blame the Government.

Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Scunthorpe)

My hon. Friend makes that point clearly, and it echoes a lot of what was said by the hon. Member for Harrow East and my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich about concerns over unintended consequences. I am sure that the Minister does not intend the consequence of disfranchising and disempowering local people, and for decisions to cause more tension and more concern locally, as opposed to ensuring that there is better decision making, which is the process that is being driven forward. The national policy planning framework is settling down, and we heard a lot of evidence about the potential to improve things further. What those experts were arguing—I am not an expert, although there may be some on the Committee—was to allow the framework to settle down and go with the grain of good planning, rather than bring in changes now that will unsettle the process and create uncertainty.

I want to focus mainly on what the level of consultation is likely to be if decisions are taken to the Planning Inspectorate but consultation responsibilities still lie with the local authority. Usually such split responsibility provides the maximum potential for confusion, for things to go wrong and when they go wrong, for people to point fingers at each other. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify in certain areas how he believes things will move forward and move forward with confidence.

When we talk about consultation, we talk about adequate consultation. What do we mean by that? What is the difference between statutory minimum consultation and what we see as adequate consultation? How will we ensure that adequate consultation is delivered, rather than simply the statutory minimum, which is where the risks lie? We all recognise that good consultation improves good decision making; it is better for the developer, for the local community and for democracy. Adequate consultation in relation to the statutory minimum is an area of concern.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again; he is being most generous. Does he agree that that is particularly important in applications that affect rural areas, because of the need to ensure that all those who are likely to be affected by a proposal know about it? Putting a notice on a lamp post in a rural area is certainly not sufficient to let people know what is happening.

Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Scunthorpe)

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I have had two cases recently of significant developments in the Scunthorpe area. One was to do with changing the use of a house. Consultation notices were placed on lamp posts but the community did not feel that they had seen those notices, creating great concern afterwards and great difficulty for the developer. In fairness, the developer was trying to do things the right way, but because things were addressed minimally at that stage, the developer then had to spend a lot more time on the consultation to take the neighbourhood and locality with them—or attempt to—whereas if things had been done more thoroughly at the start it would have saved the developer time and money and saved local people angst, sleepless nights and so on.

By contrast, with a somewhat larger developer—in a rural area as it happens—everyone in the extended locality was written to, with meetings to describe exactly what was going forward. That process led to far better and more thoughtful development plans and better engagement. The change in the plans could be seen, because the community had engaged with the developer as a result. That is what we all want. It is all about balance, is it not? Only on lamp posts is not enough, but consulting for ever is too much. Where do we apply the appropriate balance? It goes back to the concept of adequate consultation. I think that there is recognition that adequate consultation is greater than the minimum, and is what we would prefer, but at the moment there is lack of clarity about where the balance would lie.

If the Secretary of State has responsibility for the application through the Planning Inspectorate, there are fewer incentives for the local authority to carry out extensive consultation. We have already heard concern about the loss of the fee for the application. Paying it directly to the Secretary of State could compound the problems of the planning authority, with the unintended consequences of affecting its performance in relation to time limits.

I return to the point made so well by the hon. Member for Harrow East. We need to be careful with the changes, so that people do not lose out because of the planning performance of their local council. They should not be disfranchised of their purchase and leverage on decisions taken in their own communities. I do not feel that there is sufficient confidence that the provision, as drafted, will go with the grain of localism, rather than completely against it.

Paul Blomfield (Labour, Sheffield Central)

I welcome the opportunity to speak briefly about community engagement. I cannot claim to have the experience of the hon. Member for Harrow East or my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe, as I have served on neither a planning committee nor a local authority. Nevertheless, over the couple of years since the election, I have been engaged in representations made by constituents on several planning applications.

The point that is crucial to the process is that people wanting to express concerns are confident that they will have an opportunity to voice them effectively and that they will at least be properly considered. The hon. Member for Harrow East raises real concerns about community engagement. He said that the Planning Inspectorate had the opportunity to conduct public inquiries. From my relatively low experience base, I understand that such inquiries are very rare and happen only in exceptional circumstances. If that is not the case—I see that he is not agreeing with me—I will welcome any further observations.

If that is not now the case, it certainly appears that it will be under the proposed procedure. During our discussion, I looked again at the consultation paper, particularly at paragraph 62, which states:

“The Bill allows the Secretary of State to determine the procedure to be followed where an application is submitted directly to him. We propose that the Planning Inspectorate should choose the most appropriate procedure to employ on a case by case basis”—

which could, but the implication is that it will not very often—

“be an abbreviated form of hearing or inquiry”—

because the presumption is —

“that applications are examined principally by means of written representations”.

That is a point of concern that unites both sides of the Committee, because if we are to have confidence in the system, people will want more than the opportunity to submit written representations. They will want an opportunity to provide oral evidence and to be cross-examined on their views, and to be sure that their views are heard.

I hope that the Minister, in responding to hon. Members’ concerns, will be clear about the opportunities the Government envisage under the new arrangements. What opportunities will there be to give oral evidence, and how will the submission of oral evidence be facilitated? At the moment, hearings that provide that opportunity are held in the locality. When such hearings take place, apparently only in exceptional circumstances, what will the real opportunities be if they are held in London or somewhere remote from the communities concerned?

James Morris (Conservative, Halesowen and Rowley Regis)

In a recent Select Committee examination of some of the proposals, the Planning Inspectorate was clear that it does not consider itself a centralised service; it perceives itself as an inspectorate that, even today, operates in localities. As we can see from the report of the exchanges in the Committee, the inspectorate is minded to ensure that where there are existing inspectors in localities, it will continue to deal with cases in that way, which relates to the issue raised by the hon. Gentleman.

Paul Blomfield (Labour, Sheffield Central)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that further information, and I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to confirm in his remarks not only that there will be extensive opportunities for oral submissions, but that where such hearings are organised, they are, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, held in the communities relating to the application and are accessible to the people who have concerns to raise.

Mary Glindon (Labour, North Tyneside)

Unlike some other hon. Members who have spoken, I have experience of being a councillor—for 15 years in North Tyneside. For many years, I actually sat on the planning committee, so I probably know the procedures inside out and I know the wrath of the public if they feel that they are not being listened to or that a decision did not go their way—perhaps quite rightly at times.

My experience is that consultation and giving people information allows them to accept decisions. Bringing the issue down to local level is important. Several years ago, the planning committee that I sat on actually took the decision to allow members of the public with objections to attend the planning committee and make those representations themselves. If such decisions are removed to the Planning Inspectorate or to the Secretary of State, where would that kind of interaction take place? Could it be achieved? That was consultation at its best. After the site visits and sharing of information, there was a real opportunity for people to be at the heart of planning in the committee process.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Does my hon. Friend agree that the point about the way planning committees operate is that having heard what local communities say, democratically elected councillors then have to make the decision? The decision is not made by planning inspectors, who are not responsible to anyone except the Secretary of State; they are simply not accountable locally in the way that councillors are.

Mary Glindon (Labour, North Tyneside)

I agree that accountability is extremely important, because planning is one of the most interactive and closest functions to local people. That is why the whole issue of consultation in the amendment is crucial. Where else do people actually have so much to say? If we look at local newspapers, people often talk about planning and development. It is a function where decisions have to be made purely on a quasi-judicial basis in a considered way, but due account must be taken of all the information that is submitted from all the people who can apply to be consulted. While consultation is about local people, it is also about local organisations, which have a statutory right to be consulted. It could be haphazard to remove that decision to the Planning Inspectorate. As the hon. Member for Harrow East said, there may be an inspector in the area, but the Planning Inspectorate may not have someone in every area to engage with and consult local people.

I end with a cautionary tale about matters being referred to the Planning Inspectorate or the Secretary of State. Some years ago, a planning application was made in my constituency to build a small housing estate on the riverside. The people who lived along the river, whose estates had been built due to the industry that was previously located there, were quite happy to have the application rejected. That was because they hoped that there would be industry again on that part of the river, and their hopes were eventually realised.

Unfortunately, the developers decided to appeal and the decision made by the Secretary of State was that a small estate could be built, because there was only a possibility of industry coming back to the area. The current situation is that the planning committee recently gave permission to build a fantastic new shed, which will be part of the renewables industry. When I say “shed”, it is probably not quite as big as this building but it will still be something that has never been seen on the banks of the Tyne. Unfortunately, the people who will live in the shadow of that building are on the small estate that was built against local wishes, because people wanted to see industry in that area again. The Secretary of State does not always know what is best and people removed from an area do not always know what is best for it. Public consultation and consideration are extremely important.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

It is fair to say that we have had a full discussion of this group of amendments. Of course, much of the discussion on both sides of the Committee has focused on the important issue of consultation, so I will try to address—more briefly—some of the other issues that were raised, before ending with a consideration of the various points that were expressed and the various questions that were asked about consultation.

To begin with, regarding the issue of costs and the planning fees that will be attached to those applications that might end up being referred directly to the Secretary of State, there are a couple of things that it is important for members of the Committee to understand. The first is that, as everybody knows, planning fees—even with the 15% increase that we have just introduced—do not cover the full costs of considering a planning application. What does that mean? It means that it costs a planning authority more to consider an application than it gains in revenue from the planning fee. I am not encouraging local authorities to take this opportunity, but logic dictates that if a local authority no longer has to consider a major application, the cost that it would no longer incur would be substantially greater than the fee that it would no longer receive.

Indeed, the real question is how the Planning Inspectorate will deal with the fact that the fee it will now receive will not be as great as the cost of considering an application. In our plans for the resourcing of the Planning Inspectorate, we are absolutely alive to the issue of ensuring that we resource it sufficiently so that it can handle these applications, because the fees do not cover the costs. It is simply absurd and nonsensical to suggest that planning authorities will suffer financially by losing these applications and the associated fees, because the fees are insufficient to cover the costs of dealing with the applications.

Paul Blomfield (Labour, Sheffield Central)

The Minister is clearly indicating that there has been some significant scenario planning to anticipate the level of additional demands on the Planning Inspectorate. Can he say what additional level of resource he is planning to allocate to the inspectorate?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

It would be entirely premature to go into that matter now because only today we published a consultation document on what the criteria should be, and the Opposition seem very keen on consultation. Only after the criteria are absolutely determined will we know how many authorities will be caught by them. Then and only then, when applications start coming forward, will we have any idea about how many of those applications will come to the Planning Inspectorate. Fortunately the inspectorate is a large and very efficiently run body, with a wide range of responsibilities, so it has sufficient flex to anticipate additional responsibilities without absolutely having to hire people or create teams now for a level of responsibility that it is impossible to anticipate until the consultation document has been fully responded to and we know how many authorities will be caught by this process.

Paul Blomfield (Labour, Sheffield Central)

Is the Minister not concerned that in the last year the Planning Inspectorate was significantly slower than councils in considering non-householder appeals? I assume that is partly a resource issue.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I am not concerned, because it was considerably faster than any of the authorities that have a chance of being caught by the process. Everybody in the Committee, and no doubt everybody in Parliament, is saying that we would prefer for every single planning application that currently goes to a local authority to carry on going to a local authority, and for local authorities to consult widely and make timely decisions that accord with their own and national policy. That is, for all of us, the ideal outcome. What we are creating in the Bill is pressure on the very few authorities that fail to do that. We are creating an alternative route to ensure that the pressure is real.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

On a more technical point, the Minister said that authorities should not worry about costs, because the cost of processing an application is greater than the fees, and they could therefore be net gainers if the application goes to the Secretary of State. He will realise that it is not quite like that. The Secretary of State has power to require authorities to do certain things as part of the processing of the application. I highlighted some of them earlier, and there are others as well. Ultimately, the question whether local authorities gain or lose will depend on the costs of the various things that they are still required to do while getting no fees at all. We will come back to the issue in a later group of amendments, so I will not push your patience further by pursuing it, Mr Davies, but it is an important point to put on record.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

If I may respond, Mr Davies—I too will be brief on this point—it is, of course, also the case that all local authorities receive substantial grant to conduct those processes. The processes left with them, therefore, should absolutely be resourced from that grant. Finally, on the question of costs, I point out that just yesterday, the Audit Commission report “Tough Times 2012” showed markedly lower reductions in councils’ planning budgets in 2012-13 than in 2011-12. Furthermore, as I said this morning, we are actively encouraging planning authorities to be innovative about co-operation and, if they are small, even to consider merging their planning department with a neighbouring authority’s. That is how to achieve more for the less the last Government left us.

Moving on to the subject raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West—

Bob Blackman (Conservative, Harrow East)

East.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East. I apologise to the people of Harrow West and East, and to my hon. Friend.

On the question of conditions, it is absolutely right that conditions should be designed and suggested locally, which is why local authorities will be able to recommend appropriate conditions to the Planning Inspectorate as part of their representation on an application.

The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich asked whether performance standards would apply to the Secretary of State. He was not quite right, although I accept that he did not have a great deal of time, even with lunch, to read every word of the consultation document. Paragraph 72 makes it clear that the planning guarantee of 26 weeks will apply:

“A similar 26-week limit would in future apply to the Planning Inspectorate where it is determining planning applications submitted to it directly as a result of the proposals in the Bill.”

If he looks a little further down, paragraph 74 says that planning performance agreements will, of course, be taken into account and excluded from the scope of the planning guarantee. By that we mean not only planning performance agreements agreed before the submission of the application but planning appeals subject to bespoke timetables. I hope that reassures the right hon. Gentleman a little.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s amendment about applying the standards, there will be full transparency, as is currently the case with the Planning Inspectorate, and, I can assure him, enormous embarrassment if the Secretary of State proves slower than the authorities whose work we are picking up. I assure him, for fear of his wrath and poking fun at me in the House, that there will be lots of pressure if that happens.

The right hon. Gentleman and several other Members asked why the timeliness of applications has declined in recent times. There is no mystery. We face a completely different financial environment in all aspects, all branches, all tiers of government than was previously the case. It may be appealing, at some level, to some local authorities to make decisions on the resourcing of their planning departments—despite the fact that they receive grant revenue and fees for planning applications—which undercut the ability of those departments to perform as they should. One can understand why they might do so, because, of course, most authorities are very concerned about services for vulnerable people in their areas and absolutely want to protect them, and we applaud that desire. It nevertheless remains their statutory duty to conduct planning—that is why they are given the grant—and to do so within the time lines.

It is interesting that many authorities subject to the same constraints—I understand that the hon. Member for City of Durham has been expecting me to say this—have managed not just to maintain their performance but to improve it while facing similar cuts. They simply have to be more innovative in working out how to run a planning department; innovative as North Tyneside authority sounds as though it is being by bringing in the efficiency of the private sector to serve the public interest and politically accountable decision making, which I know is what is happening in North Tyneside.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

Is it G4S?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I think we had better not discuss all the contracts that the right hon. Gentleman’s Government made with that company.

On the subject of consultation—

Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley)

Order. I hate to cut the Minister off in full flow, but there is an extremely persistent, irritating and distracting tinging noise coming from some kind of device on this side of the Committee. I do not mind Members using some kind of device, but its sound should be switched off, otherwise it should be switched off altogether. [ Interruption. ] It just went off again to illustrate the point. Whoever it is should switch it to silent or switch it off altogether.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

Thank you, Mr Davies. I have to say that I find a bit of musical accompaniment a pleasure, but I understand why it is disturbing to you. I think that it may be coming from the back row. Perhaps the back row would like to investigate. Everything always comes from the back row in class, does it not?

On consultation, first, I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for the bit of Harrow that I did not say the first time for bringing this up, because he is absolutely right that consultation is critical to ensuring that decisions are made so that people feel that they have had their say. There is a slight irony in the position of Opposition Members, because they are urging us not to introduce the clause on the basis that there is already the power to appeal for non-determination and have a planning application considered by the Planning Inspectorate. However, they have made no complaint to me about the level of consultation that would then be conducted by the Planning Inspectorate. So I see a certain mystery in the position of Opposition Members but none at all in my hon. Friend’s.

I have heard the will of the whole Committee, and indeed the House, that we should take very seriously the very rare occasions when the Planning Inspectorate deals with an application for the very first time. When no subsidiary or lower-tier authority has been through an application process and made a determination, it is all the more important that consultation happens properly. I can reassure my hon. Friend and the whole Committee that hearings are a genuine option and, of course, that any such hearings should be held locally.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis for raising an extremely important point, which I did not realise until I visited the Planning Inspectorate headquarters in Bristol, which is that the vast bulk of its employees and almost all its inspectors do not work in Bristol. They probably have no more attachment to Bristol than any member of the Committee. They are scattered across the country and are allocated to jobs not usually in their exact area, because they should not be conflicted, but nevertheless within reachable distance. It will therefore be straightforward and normal for inspectors to hold hearings in the locality where an application is made. I will ensure that when the Planning Inspectorate considers an application under clause 1 that has not been heard before by another authority, it will look more generously at the criteria it applies in judging whether a hearing should be held.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

The Minister has given an important reassurance. Has he checked with the Planning Inspectorate whether it had personnel right across the country. I understand that they work from home, which could be anywhere. It generally does not attach people from the area in question to particular applications, so we are not necessarily reassured on those grounds.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I warn the hon. Lady that we are going into an amazing thicket. The Planning Inspectorate has the most baffling multi-coloured spreadsheet I have ever seen, showing every inspector and what they are working on. She is right that it is careful to avoid conflict by avoiding putting inspectors who live in a particular community on an application that has been made there. Equally, it tries to have some logic in seeing which inspectors are available and ensuring that people do not have to drive all over the country to hold hearings. It is not beyond the capability of the Planning Inspectorate to cater to my request of providing more local hearings when it considers major applications that have never been heard before by an authority than it might do when considering appeals.

Paul Blomfield (Labour, Sheffield Central)

I welcome the statement the Minister has just made. As I understand it, where consideration has not previously been given to a case, in most instances, he would encourage the Planning Inspectorate to hold a hearing so that local communities could have a voice. That is very welcome. Would he therefore agree to revise the consultation paper where the Government say clearly that the presumption is that applications will be examined “principally through written representation”?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I find it rather amazing to first be attacked for the paucity of our consultation proposals and then, having listened to the first fresh-off-the-presses responses and indicated that I am minded to take them into account, be told that I should change the consultation document. No, I will not change the consultation document, but I will go on listening to the hon. Gentleman’s and everybody else’s responses to it as we determine exactly how the clause will be applied and implemented. I cannot help but note that the hon. Gentleman was one of the few people who contributed to the debate who said that he had never served on a planning committee or, indeed, on a local authority. All I can say is that it is therefore not surprising that he is so youthful and carefree.

I hope that I have been able to satisfy some of the concerns that Opposition Members and my hon. Friends have raised, and I turn briefly to the amendments. On amendment 1, as I said to the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, we will use the power of embarrassment, which is often a greater power than any regulation that Parliament makes, to ensure that the Planning Inspectorate and the Secretary of State subject themselves to the same strictures that we apply to others.

On amendment 5, I do not want to add an administrative burden of specifically reporting on costs. The Planning Inspectorate already publishes a full annual report and accounts, which is presented to the House. I believe that that will be an adequate measure of its financial performance in dealing with these responsibilities.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

The Minister’s response implied that this was simply a matter of the Planning Inspectorate’s costs. He will appreciate that there are other costs. There may be some costs falling to the Secretary of State. There certainly will be costs falling to local authorities that are required to perform functions under the Bill. The purpose of the amendment was to obtain a statement of the total cost, not just the Planning Inspectorate element of that. Would the Minister like to deal with that issue?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I am inclined to resist the right hon. Gentleman’s amendment, but I will certainly take away the point underlying it and come back to him and the rest of the Committee with a view about what level of transparency on the specific costs is possible.

Amendments 13 and 14 would require the Bill to specify that the Secretary of State must meet the relevant statutory requirements, including consultation of the local community. That is of course unnecessary, because the Secretary of State, as is currently the case when he makes planning decisions, will be required to comply with all the requirements of the planning Acts in dealing with planning applications submitted directly to him, including the requirement to consult the public. In view of the indication that I have given that I will encourage the Planning Inspectorate to deal with those applications and the consultation requirements, I hope that the hon. Member for City of Durham will be happy not to press her amendments.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

These amendments deal with some of our major concerns about the Bill. I have heard what the Minister has said this afternoon about consultation and the fact that more opportunities will be made available to local people to have their voice heard. Nevertheless, I still have concerns about the way in which the local community will be bypassed in the overall decision making, so I am minded to press amendment 13 to a vote.

Also, I am having some trouble following the logic of what is happening on costs. The Minister seems to be suggesting that at the moment, local authorities do not get enough money from fees to cover their decision-making processes fully. Now, the sum of money that they currently get will be taken away and given to someone else, but they still might have to undertake all the work on the application, even though they will not get any fee for it. That is somehow supposed to improve the overall decision-making process. I simply cannot follow that logic, either. To assist us in knowing what will happen with regard to costs, we also need to press amendment 1 to a vote.

Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley)

If I understand the hon. Lady’s intentions correctly, may I first ask her to withdraw amendment 14?

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I beg to move amendment 16, in clause 1, page 2, leave out lines 33 to 40 and insert—

‘(6) The Secretary of State must set out in regulations, following a period of consultation, the exact responsibilities of local authorities designated under section 1(1) in relation to planning applications made directly to the Secretary of State.’.

Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 17, in clause 1, page 2, line 39, after ‘particular’, insert ‘designated’.

Amendment 18, in clause 1, page 2, line 39, after ‘to’, insert ‘designated’.

Amendment 2, in clause 1, page 2, line 40, at end insert—

‘(6A) Any costs incurred by a local planning authority in carrying out directions given under subsection (6) shall be reimbursed by the Secretary of State.’.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

With the amendment we seek to amend proposed new subsection (6).

I am not sure that I have ever come across a piece of legislation that simply gives the Secretary of State the power “to do things”. At this stage in the Committee’s proceedings we might all need to be woken up, so I thought that we might have two competitions this afternoon—I am being absolutely serious. First, proposed new subsection (6) states:

“The Secretary of State may give directions requiring a local planning authority to do things in relation to an application”,

but without telling us what those “things” might be. Hon. Members might be finding our proceedings a little boring, so I wondered whether the degree of licence that that provision could give the Secretary of State might trigger the imagination. We can have a competition to see who comes up with the most bizarre thing that the Secretary of State might ask a local authority to do under such a general provision. I have not quite decided on the prize, but it is worth us at least thinking about the matter. Secondly, we can think about what the local authority could do in response to those “things” that it has been asked to do by the Secretary of State.

We ask—as proposed in the amendment—that we move out of the realms of the imagination and whims of the Secretary of State and look at sensible, different wording. To be sensible policy makers, we must set out clearly in regulations that have been subject to consultation and the scrutiny of both Houses of Parliament what is meant by “do things”. I am tempted to ask the Minister at this point exactly what he had in mind. Why do we have language in the Bill that seems to so inappropriate to legislation?

That is my competition for the members of the Committee. If I may, however, I also have a competition for the officials, or indeed for anyone else in the room: to come up with a previous piece of legislation that gave licence to a Secretary of State “to do things”, without in any way indicating what those “things” might be. I accept that this might not be the first time that Parliament has considered the phrase, although it would be interesting to know how many times it has been used in the past.

The language in proposed new subsection (6), and the licence it gives to the Secretary of State, is one thing that is wrong with it. The second, which is equally serious, demonstrates why consultation with local authorities is a necessary prerequisite for any action taken under clause 1—they may be asked to do unspecified things that are not possible, outwith their resources or would not necessarily be helpful. I am sure that the Secretary of State would not think of being so unreasonable. However, one can never be sure, and I would prefer that the Bill tied down the number, nature and extent of “things” that the Secretary of State can ask local authorities to do.

In a time of reducing budgets for planning departments, they must be able to assess whether a Secretary of State is asking them to do things that are reasonable—and, most of all, affordable—especially because, as we have already discussed to a degree, the fee for assessing major applications is to be removed from them and given to the Planning Inspectorate. In a sense, that is what makes the phrase

“requiring a local planning authority to do things”

so hard for local authorities to stomach. They have genuine, legitimate concerns about what they could be asked to do under that general provision in proposed new subsection (6) without having the resources to enable them to do it.

The next stage—which we have not considered so far but which I will come back to later in the Committee’s deliberations—is what happens if the local authority, having being asked to do thing A, unspecified, does not wish to do thing A, unspecified, because it has no money or resources to be able to do it. There is nothing so far in the Bill or in the consultation, as far as I can see, that would help it appeal against that decision. We must therefore know exactly what the Secretary of State can ask of an authority and how it will be paid for. Such requests, or should I say diktats, from the Secretary of State are also likely to make it more difficult for local authorities to plan their work programme, especially if a number of requests come in out of the blue.

Again, I hope that the Committee will realise that a very serious point is being raised here. What could happen is that unknown to a local authority—it having been designated under the spurious criteria in the Bill—a number of applications from a number of developers land with the Planning Inspectorate. The Secretary of State would then go to his list of “things”, which could be quite extensive, although unspecified. An authority might be asked to do a lot of things at very short notice, because the Planning Inspectorate would not want to fall foul of the time clauses and would simply not be able to deliver on those requests. The authority could therefore find itself designated for a much longer period than would have been the case if a more sensible system had been in place.

Proposed new subsection (6) essentially makes the whole system of designation and of determining applications centrally completely unworkable. There must be a clear set of criteria that sets out clear circumstances and a proper time scale, and local authorities have to be properly resourced to do the list of things, whatever they are, in a timely manner.

I will address amendments 17 and 18 together. The Secretary of State’s power-hungry tendencies go further than simply prescribing things that he wants people to do, especially when one considers proposed new subsection (6)(a) and (b). The applications that would be introduced under those paragraphs are not clear. I have real concerns about that, because paragraph (a) refers to

“a particular application or to applications more generally”.

I think that means applications to a designated authority, and only to a designated authority, but that is not 100% clear. Clarity on that would be helpful.

I have a similar point to raise about proposed new subsection (6)(b), which states that directions

“may be given to a particular authority or to authorities more generally.”

The amendments would make it clear that those are designated authorities, so instead of referring to a “particular authority,” which could be any authority, the paragraph would refer to directions to

“a designated authority or to designated authorities more generally.”

I tabled the amendments because we are not sure which authorities would be caught by requests to do things under proposed new subsections (6)(a) and (b). We are therefore concerned that a well run local authority that meets all its timing obligations, and that everyone says shows very good performance, might suddenly, out of the blue, be caught by a series of requests from the Secretary of State to do things in connection with a set of applications that have nothing to do with it as an authority but might have something to do with another authority that has been designated.

I know I am labouring the point, but the legislation is not clear. The Minister has to give greater clarity, first, on “things” and, secondly, on proposed new paragraphs (a) and (b). What applications does he have in mind? Which authorities will come under those provisions?

Finally, I want briefly to address amendment 2, which was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, and is so reasonable that I cannot understand why the Minister would not simply accept it. If the Secretary of State asks local authorities to carry out “things” under proposed new subsection (6), they need to be reimbursed by the Secretary of State for doing them. Designated authorities will be bankrupted and prevented them from carrying out their other duties effectively if they are not recompensed for the work they have to carry out. Indeed, under proposed new subsection (6)(b), other authorities may be drawn into this loop of having to pay for things they had not planned for, because we are not clear what they are going to be asked to do. Will the Minister tell us, first, what proposed new subsection (6) actually means and, secondly, why he does not think it reasonable to reimburse local authorities for the work they are being asked to undertake on behalf of the Secretary of State?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I did not anticipate that we would end up having a discussion about plain English. I hope you will forgive me, Mr Davies, if I say that I sometimes find the subject of plain English rather more interesting than the subject of planning regulations, so I will briefly divert on to it.

The hon. Lady seems seized by the fact that the Bill suggests that the Secretary of State will be able to direct local planning authorities to do “things”. Of course, if the Bill were a perfect bit of new Labour legislation, no doubt we would have said that we require a local authority to undertake processes, to publish materials, to operate procedures and to adumbrate consecutive interventions, but, actually, all that would have meant was “do things”, so it seems right and proper that, in an attempt to make legislation comprehensible to members of the public—and indeed to Members of Parliament—we try to keep it simple.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

May I ask the Minister to reflect on the possibility that if it came from the right of the political spectrum, there might be a temptation to give the Secretary of State the power to “do stuff”?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

The interesting thing is that the right hon. Gentleman anticipates a point I was about to make. If I had been given the freedom, indeed I would have written “do stuff”. However, I deferred, as always, to parliamentary draftsmen and my officials.

The clause makes it clear that the Secretary of State can ask a local planning authority to do things only in relation to an application made under proposed new section 62A. Therefore, those things—those processes and those procedures—have to relate to the normal handling of planning applications under the terms of planning legislation. They cannot be outwith that set of actions, so there is no risk of members of local authorities being asked, as my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal said from a sedentary position, to run naked down the street, or indeed to do anything else that might cause additional expense to the local authority or outrage to the local population. I reassure the hon. Member for City of Durham that there is no reason to worry.

Let me be a little more serious for a moment. It is important that legislation is not over-specific, and that is why we have regulations. The hon. Lady and her hon. Friends made great play of the need for the Government to consult widely on exactly how the provision will work, be applied and play out in practice, and that is indeed what we are doing. In paragraph 59 of the consultation document—again, I am happy to admit that the hon. Lady may not have had the chance to see this specific paragraph—we have said:

“Where a planning application is submitted directly to the Secretary of State there will be a small number of administrative functions which, for practical reasons, will need to be carried out locally. We propose that these should continue to be undertaken by the designated local planning authority”—

however—

“we would welcome views on whether alternative approaches should be considered, such as the use of a local agent.”

The point of all that is that the fine detail of how the provision will work and operate is a matter for consultation. That is why we have a Bill Committee and a consultation process. We will reflect the responses in the precise arrangements. Indeed, once those arrangements have been put into regulations, we will be able to adapt and amend them if we discover, from the process of actually doing it, that an alternative arrangement would be better.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I want to check that the Minister is confirming that there will be a set of regulations attached to proposed new subsection (6) that will enable us to understand what is meant.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

Being new to the game, Mr Davies, I might have used the word “regulations” loosely. Whether it will be regulations, guidance or some other kind of published procedure, I do not know, but one of those will be available. I am making the point that this is all subject to consultation and that we are open to suggestions.

I shall now address the amendment relating to costs, because it appears that Opposition Members did not understand the point that I was trying to make about how planning activities are funded. They effectively have two main sources of revenue: fees for planning applications and central Government grant for fulfilling statutory duties. The fees for those applications that are now made directly to the Secretary of State for those designated authorities will pass to the Secretary of State. The local authority, however, will continue to receive its central Government grant to fulfil its statutory duties as a planning authority. It will still receive revenue through that grant which, as we make clear in the consultation document, will make it able to fulfil a narrow range of administrative functions currently connected with the process of considering a planning application. No new processes are being invented, so no extraordinary, unfamiliar or unanticipated costs will be attached.

The other thing to remember is that the whole point of the provision is to create a deterrent to the behaviour that would lead to an authority being designated and temporarily losing its power to determine these applications. We want it to be a deterrent, so we do not want to get into the absurd position where some wholly irresponsible authorities—I fear that there might be one or two in the country—actively seek to be caught by the measure so that they can slough off the responsibility for deciding controversial major applications to the Planning Inspectorate.

The hon. Member for City of Durham shakes her head, but there is an authority, as I have said before, that has not had a local plan for decades. I suspect that is partly because it has not been willing to deal with the difficult choices and trade-offs required of a planning authority. Many members of the Committee have done that job and have all referred to the intense local feeling that comes with being a planning authority and with fulfilling democratic responsibilities. I am certain that any hon. Member who has served on a planning committee did their role properly, well and speedily, and that they dealt with the controversy. However, there are a few authorities that are not willing to do so, and we want the provision to act as a deterrent to that kind of irresponsibility.

I argue that the amendments are unnecessary and beg the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich and the hon. Member for City of Durham not to press them to a Division.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I heard what the Minister had to say about things—

Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Scunthorpe)

And stuff.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Yes, and stuff, although it is things that we are dealing with. Perhaps when I get the opportunity to look at the consultation paper in more detail, I will be a little happier that, before the Bill passes, we might have a firmer idea of what is meant by “things”. We might even have regulations or guidance to help us so, on that basis, I shall not press amendments 16, 17 and 18.

I am extremely concerned, however, by the Minister’s comments about costs and not passing on a section of the fee to local authorities for the work that they have carried out. That seems to place authorities that are already struggling with the designation in the even more difficult situation of being asked to undertake work without additional resources. I therefore plan to press amendment 2 to a Division, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw amendment 16.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I beg to move amendment 20, in clause 1, page 2, line 47, leave out from ‘publish’ to end of line 48 and insert

‘following a period of consultation with local authorities’.

Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 3, in clause 1, page 3, line 7, at end insert—

‘(9) The Secretary of State must consult representatives of local planning authorities before publishing the criteria described in subsections (8)(a) and (b).’.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

It is our contention that proposed new subsection (8) gives the Secretary of State far too much licence as it will allow him to publish in a manner in which he “thinks fit”. In addition to worrying about the word “things”, I am now worried about what the Secretary of State thinks is “fit”—I am not terribly happy with this form of language. Indeed, thinking about what the Secretary of State thinks is fit is not really a place I would wish to go this afternoon, or at any time at all.

Amendments 20 and 3 would ensure that adequate consultation with local authorities would take place before the criteria on which designation is to be made is published and then applied. Today, we have stage 1 of that process and I welcome the consultation document, even though it is rather belated. I am pleased that it is in the public domain, and I hope that local authorities and others will take the opportunity to respond to it. However, as we all know, consultation is effective only if the people who are being consulted are actually listened to and if their points are taken on board and applied.

A number of witnesses who gave evidence to the Committee, including those from development organisations, said that while timeliness might be a factor, what really concerned them was something other than what is contained in the consultation document. Now that I have briefly seen the consultation document, I am not sure that it allows local authorities or anybody else to put forward other criteria. I will read it in more detail over the weekend, but it certainly does not appear to make it easy for respondents to suggest other criteria.

The witnesses gave us the consistent message, which, unfortunately, the Minister and his colleagues do not seem to have listened to, that the important thing was not timeliness but certainty. They said again and again that they wanted certainty. The second point that they raised was the quality of decision making. When asked what the top two criteria should be, Mr Whitaker from the Home Builders Association took a different line from the Government:

“you have to have timeliness in there, but it is outcomes that we want to measure. We want local authorities to deliver what they say they are going to deliver, when they are going to deliver it.”––[Official Report, Growth and Infrastructure Public Bill Committee, 13 November 2012; c. 69, Q68.]

The two points that the witnesses brought out were certainty and quality. When they talked about quality, they did not mean the number of applications that were overturned on appeal; they meant the outcomes on the ground for them or, I suppose, for the local community, although Mr Whitaker did not specifically mention that.

Even developers are questioning the criteria, but timeliness is also not as straightforward as the simple criterion would suggest. In his evidence to the Committee, Mr Sharp made the helpful point that the determination of applications is often held up by highways issues outwith the control of the local authority. Many such issues complicate the picture about how applications are determined and the time frame within which they are determined. I want to elaborate on some of those issues, but they fall into the next group of amendments. Amendments 3 and 20 are simply designed to challenge the criteria that the Government have proposed.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I refer the hon. Lady to page 21 of the consultation document, which lists the consultation questions:

“Question 1: Do you agree that local planning authority performance should be assessed on the basis of the speed and quality of decisions on planning applications?”

There is a question mark at the end of the question, as is customary. That, to me, is certainly an invitation to say whether those criteria are the right ones, or whether others should be suggested. I look forward to the hon. Lady’s response to the consultation and to her suggestions—and, indeed, anybody else’s—of what the criteria should be.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Will the Minister confirm that none of the questions prompts the consultees to suggest additional criteria, beyond the question about whether the Government are using the right ones? Is there a specific question about other criteria?

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I do members of the public the honour of thinking that they understand that, when they are asked whether they agree that certain criteria are the right ones, they can come up with alternatives. If they do not think a criterion is right, they presumably think that there is a better one. I think that the hon. Lady is splitting hairs. It is also clear that consultation is done for all such proposals. We have consulted on the proposals, and the previous Labour Government often carried out consultations, not that they always listened to the responses. Consultations take place when Governments make proposals. She knows full well that it is always possible and, indeed, quite often happened when her Government were in power that they are challenged in the courts under judicial review if they have not consulted. There is absolutely no necessity to put into a Bill the requirement to consult or to consult specifically with local authorities. For that reason, I hope that the hon. Lady agrees that her amendments are entirely unnecessary, and I ask her to withdraw amendment 20 and the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich not to press them.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I have heard what the Minister said, but it would still be my preference for the sake of clarity and to help consultees for them to be asked specifically to propose other criteria if they thought that that was more appropriate. However, I accept his point that, at least, some people might use the suggested proposal for that purpose, even though others might not. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I beg to move amendment 21, in clause 1, page 3, line 7, at end insert—

‘(e) and the length of time for which a local authority is to be designated’.

Philip Davies (Conservative, Shipley)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 4, in clause 1, page 3, line 7, at end insert—

‘(10) The Secretary of State shall by regulations make provision for an independent body to consider appeals by local planning authorities which have been designated for the purposes of this section against such designation.’.

Amendment 23, in clause 1, page 3, line 7, at end insert—

‘(9) Before designating an authority under this section, the Secretary of State must serve a notice of intention to designate (“the notice”).

(10) The notice shall—

(a) give reasons for the service of the notice, all of which must have regard to the criteria published in accordance with subsection (8);

(b) give the authority or authorities named in the notice a period of six months to take all reasonable corrective actions specified in the notice;

(c) allow a period of four weeks for the local authority on which notice is served to appeal against this notice (the grounds for which appeal may include mitigating criteria, set out in regulations, such criteria to include planning performance agreements, extenuating local circumstances, actions of statutory consultees and/or relevant agencies or government departments, views of the local community, natural events, architectural and heritage concerns, environmental and conservation concerns).’.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

The last group of amendments to clause 1 would allow local authorities time in which to appeal the designation as a failing planning authority. Amendment 21 would make it clear that the designation itself should be time-limited. I should be grateful to hear from the Minister exactly how long he considers that a designation should remain in place.

Several members of the Committee have said today how worried they are that clear criteria are not in place for de-designation. We want clear time limits to be put in place for the designation. If the Minister wishes to attach criteria to the de-designation, that is something that he should do, and we would be happy to know those criteria and comment on them.

Amendments 4 and 23 would allow an appeal mechanism to be in place. An appeal could be made first on the designation itself. To have designation thrust upon a local authority without it having the opportunity to challenge the designation formally is extremely unfair to that local authority. We therefore want the authority to have the opportunity to appeal to an independent panel, so that the designation can be examined to see whether it was fair and the criteria were applied correctly.

Such a process might be covered under the consultation document, but that is not clear. Under amendment 23, we would make it clear that there should be a period of notice that would allow local authorities six months to improve. In terms of the carrot and stick, that is a much more balanced and much fairer way forward.

If the amendments were accepted, local authorities would have a choice about how to proceed. If they did not accept the designation, they could appeal to an independent panel that would assess all the evidence being used by the Secretary of State and would, in a short period, decide whether the designation should go ahead. That would allow local authorities to feel that they were being adequately consulted, that their views were being taken into account and that any evidence contrary to the Secretary of State’s evidence would be considered. There would be a formal negotiation, rather than simply allowing for a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, which the Minister suggested that he might accept once the local authority had been designated.

To-ing and fro-ing and upping and downing, and whatever else, is not strong enough. We want to ensure that local authorities have a formal mechanism to challenge the designation. That is reasonable. No Committee member, for example, would like to be categorised in any circumstances as failing without having some appeal mechanism in place. We all have that as part of employment legislation, providing that we have been working for an employer for long enough and that is generally, legally, considered quite reasonable. I should like the Minister to say why he thinks that the amendment cannot be accepted when it is so reasonable.

Under amendment 23, if the local authority accepted that it should be designated and decided not to appeal against the designation, it would be given a period of time in which to improve before the designation applied. With that amendment, I am pressing the Minister to provide more detail about what period local authorities would have to improve, what would be a reasonable corrective set of actions and what else would have to be taken into consideration. I gather from the consultation document that the Minister might be thinking about that.

It is critical that I spend a moment or two considering the criteria set out in paragraph (c) of amendment 23, because there is concern that if crude measures are taken—I hope that the Minister will forgive me for saying that the measures that he is consulting on are rather crude—at some stage in the process there has to be a space for consideration of mitigating factors. Previously, I was an academic who spent many hours chairing mitigation panels, where students stated why they had not submitted an essay on time or why they could not turn up to an exam, and so on. I can probably write mitigation circumstances ad nauseam. If students can do it for a piece of work and there is a process that allows mitigation to be considered, before we take the drastic step of designating a local planning authority as failing, we should have somewhere where mitigation circumstances can be taken into account.

The Minister mentioned planning performance agreements, but there could be other extenuating circumstances, such as authorities waiting for information from statutory consultees or other relevant agencies, including Departments. An issue or set of issues could affect the local community’s views. As I mentioned earlier, natural events, architectural and heritage concerns or environmental and conservation issues could all quite legitimately slow down the process. That would not necessarily happen all the time. A set of circumstances could pertain to a certain period. Nowhere can I see that being taken into consideration in the Bill.

I hope that the Minister will reassure us that there will be a fair process that will allow local authorities the opportunity to come back at the designation with a series of reasons as to why it should not be applied, and that those reasons will be fairly considered by the Secretary of State. Indeed, if local authorities are not happy with the designation and do not think that it should apply, I hope that an appeal mechanism will be open to them. The amendments are fair and reasonable, so I hope that the Minister will be able to take them on board.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I am tickled to learn that the hon. Lady is an academic who has chaired a mitigation panel on several occasions—[ Interruption. ] I would like to have her attention for a moment, because I want to ask her whether she would, in that capacity, have been willing to accept the mitigating circumstances that I once had to present to a tutor of mine. I had to explain that my essay for my tutorial had been run over by a double-decker bus and had caught in the wheels. I am sure that the hon. Lady was more forgiving than my tutor, because although that was true—I even had one of the pages with tyre marks on to prove it—he decided that I had entirely confected the circumstance and gave me no points at all for the essay. I am sure that the hon. Lady was of a more generous disposition.

I hope that it will reassure the hon. Lady and other members of the Committee a little to learn that in paragraph 68 on page 17 of the consultation document, we make it clear that we are proposing that any designation of an authority as a poorly performing authority

“would last for at least a year, but would be subject to review well before that year ends, so that the authority has every opportunity for the designation to be lifted at the end of the one year period.”

The period could, of course, last longer if the local authority failed to satisfy us that it was going to improve its processes, but I will be honest with her: that would be a failure not only for the local authority, but for us. If, through the intensive work that the Department and others will be doing with such authorities, we have not managed after a year to help them to improve their processes and arrive at a position where they can discharge their responsibilities successfully, we will have failed as much as the local authority.

The hon. Lady suggested that there should be an independent panel to which an authority that is at risk of being designated could appeal. This reminds me of the Prime Minister’s recent statement in which he described her party as a party of one notion—spending and borrowing—because perhaps I could perhaps say, “One and a half notions,” with the other being that the answer to every question is a new bureaucracy. The truth is that neither the Secretary of State nor I, as the Minister with responsibility for planning, nor anyone who works at the Department for Communities and Local Government, nor anyone in the Planning Inspectorate—nor any member of the Committee—wants to be taking decisions about such applications or to be depriving any local authority of powers. We will do so only as a last resort in the extreme circumstance when they are persistently failing to discharge their responsibilities. There is no need for an independent panel, because if authorities can present us with evidence as to why the data are misleading or incomplete, or have been overhauled by recent developments, we will have every interest either to resist designating them in the first place, or to ensure that they are de-designated as soon as possible, once we have assured ourselves that they will not slip straight back into the position that got them there in the first place. There is therefore no need for the independent body that the hon. Lady suggests.

Similarly, there is no need to give formal notice to an authority and for a period of six months to take corrective action. I assure the hon. Lady that almost every planning authority has already worked out whether it was at risk of being designated, based on my indication in evidence of what criteria we are likely to focus on. Certainly since this morning, when the consultation document specifying the criteria that we propose to apply was published, every authority that might be caught by any criterion will know that it might be caught and is looking to see what it can do to avoid that. The notice has been well and truly given. If an authority’s performance improves dramatically over the next short period, there is every chance that it either will not be designated, or will be able to leave the designation quickly.

I hope that that reassures the Committee that we have no desire to do this process and that we want to stop doing it as soon as we responsibly can. Ultimately, however, we are not willing to live with the persistent failure of a few authorities to discharge their responsibilities. That is what the clause is all about. I urge the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

I have to say that I felt that the Minister’s case was utterly unconvincing. Earlier in our debates, he and his right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove cited the illustration of murder, saying that clearly no one wants murder to occur, but it is nevertheless necessarily for it to be illegal to ensure that there is a disincentive for people to carry out murder. We may or may not agree with that analysis, but one thing we would never say is, “And in order to ensure that this works effectively, there will be no right of appeal against a conviction for murder.” That is, however, in effect, the argument that the Minister is asking us to accept. He is suggesting that as the measure will be used only infrequently, and as the Secretary of State will be acting in the best possible interest to try to improve performance, there is absolutely no need for a right of appeal. Nonsense. That is an argument in favour of arbitrary power to be exercised by the Secretary of State, with no redress.

I find that argument totally unconvincing from a party that claims to be localist. There can be nothing worse than taking away powers for local authorities to decide issues with no appeal against the Secretary of State’s decision. It is evidence of arbitrary, high-handed and unacceptable government, and I am astonished that the Minister is advancing a case in favour of it.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

Given the strength of the right hon. Gentleman’s opinion and the passion with which he spoke, it is puzzling to read section 15 of the Local Government Act 1999, which was passed—even my moderate grasp of history suggests this—by the Labour Government of whom he was a distinguished member. That section gives the Secretary of State—then the noble Lord Prescott, no doubt—the power to direct authorities to take actions, and ultimately to direct another body to take over specific functions of a council. I do not remember that section setting up its own specific, tailored and independent panel to hear appeals against decisions made under it, but no doubt the right hon. Gentleman voted for and supported the provision when he was in government.

Of course, the right hon. Gentleman is aware that any action by a Government that is somehow egregious may be tested in court under judicial review. There is nothing to stop a local authority that believes that its designation is unfair and should be terminated at once from taking us to court to demonstrate that we are going further than the law allows. There is absolutely no reason for the further bureaucracy that he suggests, and I urge him to see the error of his arguments.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

With respect to the Minister, I ask him to do the same thing.

The amendments do not call for a huge bureaucracy. They simply propose an independent process, which could mean cobbling together a few councillors from outside the areas affected to carry out the job without any huge bureaucracy. What is creating a huge bureaucracy is adding substantially to the numbers of inspectors in the Planning Inspectorate. They fit the criterion of bureaucrats, in that they are accountable to no one except the Secretary of State.

I take the Minister’s point that local authorities now know the criteria and can change their behaviour. Nevertheless, under his proposals, they cannot challenge the criteria—hence our point about the appeal system—and nor can they put forward mitigating circumstances before a designation is made, although I understand that we might get more information about that in due course. Given that we may receive further information about a possible negotiation process, and in the hope that the Minister will take a more considered approach to our amendments and perhaps come back with fairer proposals, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

Mr Davies, I imagine that you are tired of hearing me make arguments in support of the clause—I am certainly tired of hearing myself making such arguments—so I propose to be brief.

The Government believe that, when possible, power should be exercised as closely as possible to the people it affects. That was why we passed the Localism Act 2011, which was one of the most radically devolving reforms for a generation. However, we also believe that with power comes responsibility—the responsibility to serve the local community and to take decisions on its behalf. That is why, with some reluctance, we are introducing the clause, which will ensure that along with the many freedoms, and many carrots, as some have described them, in the Localism Act, there will also be a stick to act as a deterrent for those very few authorities—I am happy about how few authorities will be caught by these proposed criteria—that need to know that they are being irresponsible and failing in their duties to the public who put them in office. We will not allow that to continue. Our proposals are narrowly targeted, temporary and eminently fair, so I urge the Committee to support the clause.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

The Minister does himself a great disservice: the Opposition would like to hear a lot more from him justifying the Bill because I do not think that we have heard, at all, from either the Secretary of State, or the Minister on Second Reading, or during our deliberations today, why the Bill, and this clause in particular, are necessary.

I want to look at how this clause is an attack on localism and at why the Opposition have real concerns about its negative impact on local democracy. Last week marked the first anniversary of the Localism Act 2011. That Act was introduced with the apparent intent of handing more power to communities and local councils. It was built on promises, such as the pledge in the coalition agreement, to

“return decision-making powers on housing and planning to local councils”.

It is odd that those words were used, because I have been involved in planning for a long time, and the system has always been such that, in the first instance, local communities and their councillors could judge a planning application. However, the Secretary of State introduced the Localism Bill by saying that he was

“getting out of the way and letting councils and communities run their own affairs”—

so that they could—

“restore civic pride, democratic accountability and economic growth—and build a stronger, fairer Britain.”

It strikes me as rather odd, given how the Secretary of State introduced the Localism Bill, that in this Growth and Infrastructure Bill he is doing the very opposite of that. He is not getting out of the way of local councils; he is getting right in there, taking away their planning powers and either giving them to himself or to someone who acts on his behalf. He is not letting councils and communities run their own affairs because he is taking away their decision-making ability on planning applications and giving it to someone else. As for restoring civic pride, I wonder how local authorities designated as “failing planning authorities” will be able to convince their local communities that this is the Secretary of State helping them to enhance local civic pride.

Bob Blackman (Conservative, Harrow East)

I listened to the hon. Lady’s remarks with astonishment. The whole point of localism is that decisions are taken at a local level, for the benefit of local people. The Bill, and this clause in particular, are for where there has been a failure to take those decisions for local people, so the Government and the Secretary of State have stepped in to stop a local authority failing local people.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

We have been arguing this afternoon that the failure that the hon. Gentleman describes is on very narrow criteria. In fact, it is based on one criterion, which is timeliness—[ Interruption. ] Does he want to correct me?

Bob Blackman (Conservative, Harrow East)

I realise that the hon. Lady has not had a chance to read the consultation document, but we have had the opportunity to do so during the day, and it makes it clear that there are a series of processes by which the Secretary of State may choose to intervene. It is not just one, it is a series, and it is clear that it will be on that basis that the Secretary of State may choose to intervene when the failure has taken place.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification. Having looked at the impact assessment and the consultation, I was aware that the Government are considering only two criteria. One is timeliness—the number of major applications that are determined within 13 weeks. The second is the percentage of major applications that are overturned on appeal. There are just two, but we know from the impact assessment that no authorities fall into the second criterion. If the Secretary of State is going to designate local planning authorities as failing, he is doing so on the basis of one criterion only, and that is timeliness. We are suggesting that there may be a set of mitigating circumstances that would mean that it is simply not fair, appropriate or accurate to designate a local planning authority as failing in that way.

I am anxious to make progress, so I will continue my comments about civic pride. I cannot see how the provision will add to civic pride or democratic accountability. The Bill—this is critical—is the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, so we would expect clause 1 to say something about growth, but it does not. It continues in the same vein as the Government in the last few months. They have said endlessly that lack of growth in this country is because of planning, and not the lack of a growth strategy.

Now we have a Bill that gives the Secretary of State unprecedented powers, which are clearly outlined in clause 1, to strip local planning authorities of their ability to decide planning applications. Somehow, suddenly, the removal of planning powers from six or fewer authorities is supposed to generate the huge amount of growth that we need to see across the country. Well, I am not sure.

The Local Government Association has branded the move as being without justification. That is unsurprising because, last year, councils approved 87% of all planning applications. That is a 10-year high in the approval rate, and clearly signals that the planning system is not the root cause of the housing crisis or the lack of growth. The clause fails to address the problem, and will not provide growth. Developers are not building because people are not buying houses and banks are not lending. Figures released last week showed that mortgage lending has fallen again. It is down 6% on September’s figure, and around half the level of a normal year.

A joint report from the Chartered Institute of Housing, Shelter and the National Housing Federation reveals that there has been a 24% fall in the number of units granted planning permission since the coalition Government came to power. There is an issue. We need more houses to be built, and we need more businesses to expand, but the problem cannot be laid at the door of the planning system. Clause 1 is misguided and will not deliver the growth that we all wish to see.

Paul Blomfield (Labour, Sheffield Central)

I think the Minister does himself a disservice. We are not tired of hearing him make the case.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

You soon will be.

Paul Blomfield (Labour, Sheffield Central)

No, it makes such a welcome contrast from Second Reading, when it seemed that the Secretary of State was most reluctant to talk about clause 1. There was some embarrassment about the provisions being made, and understandably so.

I am sure that it will not have failed to strike Government Members that opposition does not just come from the Opposition. Sir Merrick Cockell, the Conservative leader of the LGA, has spoken against the provision. During our evidence sessions, we heard Councillor Mike Jones—the Conservative chair of the LGA environment and housing board and the Conservative leader of Cheshire West and Chester council—make a powerful case against the provisions of clause 1.

I draw the attention of Government Members to the observations made by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury when he was the planning Minister. He said:

“we should move away from a system of planning by development control, where recourse is made to the Planning Inspectorate rather than local decision makers”. —[Official Report, 17 May 2011; Vol. 528, c. 273.]

That was May 2011. What a difference a year makes.

Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Scunthorpe)

The schizophrenia of the Government is well described by the Minister in his attempt to explain why we are taking this centrist action when the thrust of policy should be localism. I draw attention to the strength of opposition to clause 1, on which the case has not been proven. The Royal Institute of British Architects said that the clause fundamentally undermines the democratic principles of the planning system and the need for decisions on planning applications to be taken at local level. The CPRE said:

“There is a risk that local authorities will feel pressured into making swift decisions”,

which will not be quality decisions. The LGA has cross-party support for the deletion of clause 1. The LGA is a body that understands planning inside-out. There is a real danger that the clause will move us away from the localism agenda. It will be counter-productive, because it measures the wrong things.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is particularly extraordinary that the Minister is not listening to the LGA, given that the party in political control of that organisation is his party? He should pay attention to what it is saying. Does my hon. Friend also agree that the reason why the previous planning Minister was moved was because he so rejected the approach that clause 1 takes, which is profoundly anti-localist?

Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Scunthorpe)

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. It is puzzling. Many of us have not been in this place for very long, but what often puzzles me is the desire of politicians to do something where there is a perceived problem. In this case, it is a problem, but the criteria published for consultation today appear not to catch many failing authorities. We perceive a problem, therefore we legislate to deal with a problem that we are not even sure is really there. I am anxious that, as politicians, we try to listen to the voices of people who know what they are talking about, such as those from the LGA, and the variety of other people who have come before us. The Minister himself earlier pointed to the need for planning authorities to have local plans and things of that sort. Our attention should be focused on those qualitative issues, rather than on performance indicators that may drive outcomes that are exactly the opposite of those we all aspire to achieve.

Nick Raynsford (Labour, Greenwich and Woolwich)

In his short defence of this clause, the Minister claimed that the Government were acting only reluctantly. I have to say that it is rather strange to be going about things if one is reluctant. We heard the evidence of the experts—the planning officers who came before our Committee when we were taking evidence—and every single one told the same story: they had had no prior discussion whatever; the measure was simply announced by the Government. Those experts made it very clear that they were all uncomfortable with that. In the words of the chief executive of the Royal Town Planning Institute, they considered that alternatives that might have been “quicker and more elegant” would have been preferable.

I am afraid the case is unconvincing, and my hon. Friends have put their finger on the reality: the previous planning Minister was totally opposed to this measure, because it is clearly a breach of the localist principles that he espoused. Those principles have been dropped and we are now seeing an extension of centralising powers in a Bill that is absolutely stuffed full of extra powers for the Secretary of State. It is a very sad day for planning and for localism, and, I have to say, it is an illustration of what happens when Governments are driven by short-term political expediency rather than by principle.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

This has been a fascinating four and a half hours, chiefly as a journey into the psychodrama of the Labour party in opposition. We have seen Labour Members wrestle with the gargantuan task of trying to airbrush from the history books their record as part of the most centralising, least listening and least accountable Government ever. At the same time, Labour Members have tried to put themselves on the side of all local authorities, no matter how poor their performance or how egregious their failure to take on their responsibilities and take decisions on behalf of local people.

It has been a fascinating few hours for that reason, but it has not been persuasive. I therefore urge the Committee to vote that the clause stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 1 - Planning applications made to Secretary of State: further amendments

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I beg to move amendment 24, in schedule 1, page 33, line 16, after ‘may’ insert

‘with the agreement of the designated local planning authority and the applicant’.

Schedule 1, particularly proposed new section 76D(2) to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, hands the Secretary of State the extraordinary power to dismiss a person appointed to decide an application under clause 1, and appoint another person, at any time before the decision is made. The schedule does not outline the circumstances in which that would happen, and there are concerns that it could be both detrimental to the process and prejudicial to the decision. Amendment 24 would ensure that any decision taken under the schedule is done with the agreement of the parties affected by the decision, which is clearly in the interests of everyone involved.

As currently drafted, the schedule suggests that not only is the Secretary of State uncomfortable with local people taking local decisions, but that he does not believe that qualified planners would necessarily be any more capable of taking decisions properly either. That raises the question of whether stripping local authorities of their powers will actually do anything to speed up the planning process. If an appointee is dismissed, presumably because he or she is doing the job badly—at least in the eyes of the Secretary of State, although that is not actually clear, given that we have no circumstances to look at that explain why somebody would be dismissed—will the new appointee be subject to the same time limits using the same potentially flawed evidence, or will they begin from scratch? We may find that they get to 13 weeks, and, on some ground that we do not know, the Secretary of State decides to get rid of somebody and appoint another person. Do they then start all over again in another 13-week period? Even if they do not, how is somebody who is appointed halfway or at week 12 and a half supposed to take on board all the different bits of evidence that relate to an application and make the decision by week 13? Is this really a system that is better than one of local determination?

Is that complication the reason why the impact assessment states that the Planning Inspectorate will decide 80% of planning applications referred to it in under 13 weeks, and will the remaining 20% take longer because the Secretary of State will keep sacking and appointing until it seems he is going to get the answer he wants? I can see some smiles on the faces of Government Members, but at this point in time we have absolutely no idea why it is possible for the Secretary of State to revoke the person’s appointment and appoint somebody else to determine the application instead. It is an extraordinary thing to do with to begin with; we might find it reasonable if we understood the circumstances the Secretary of State had in mind, but he has not bothered to tell us. Amendment 24 would mean that, if he is going to do something so extraordinary, he should at least have to consult other people and get their agreement. In that way, even though Opposition Members do not like it, in a sense the process will be seen as legitimate and stand a degree of public scrutiny. As currently drafted, the schedule certainly does not.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

The one thing I have learned today is that it cannot be dull being the hon. Lady, such is the fertility of her imagination and the wild dreams that grip her every waking moment. I really do apologise for this, but I am afraid that the reality is just a lot duller. The way it works is that, when taking a planning decision, the Secretary of State has to appoint an individual. That is the way the law works. If, in a local authority, a planning officer is assigned to a particular case, and that planning officer is ill or suddenly it is discovered that they are conflicted because of some other interest—family or personal—and cannot determine the case, a local authority can move the case to another planning officer, because it is the authority that has the responsibility to determine the application. In the law, however, when the Secretary of State takes over an application, he has to appoint an individual, an inspector, who is then responsible. Although the inspector is one of many inspectors employed by the Planning Inspectorate, when that inspector—unfortunately and in rare circumstances—falls ill or is discovered to have some conflicting interest to do with the application, we need the Secretary of State to have the ability to appoint another planning inspector to take over the task because of the unfortunate circumstance. I am sorry to bring the hon. Lady back down to earth with a bump, but that is the reality. I hope, therefore, that she will withdraw the amendment.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

I assure the Minister that I am well grounded and definitely have my feet firmly on the carpet beneath me, because I am reading what is in front of me—what this particular bit of schedule 1 says, as opposed to what the Minister has just told us he believes it says, which are two very different things.

One of the things that I have learned today is that the Minister has a lot more trust in the Secretary of State than I do—or in any future Secretaries of State. I would like the Minister to go away and think about the issue and to bring something back that gives clarity to what is meant.

The Minister described a set of circumstances in which, for example, the planning inspector attached to determine the application was ill or something had happened that meant that he or she could not continue to determine the application. That is not, however, what the schedule says. The proposed new subsection states that the Secretary of State, presumably on a whim because no criteria are applied, can “revoke the person’s appointment” or “appoint another person”. It does not even limit the number of times that he can do that. Based on what is in the Bill, he could carry on appointing a person until he gets the right answer. I will happily withdraw the amendment if I can get some indication from the Minister that we will at some stage get a reassurance about the circumstances in which the provision is likely to be used and come into operation.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I thank the hon. Lady for offering that invitation. I am sure that there will be all sorts of elaboration of the processes that the Planning Inspectorate will be expected to go through. I do not know what form those elaborations will take—I shall not make the mistake that I made previously, of saying that there will be regulations, but I am sure that there will be such elaborations and I trust that they will provide her with the reassurance that she seeks.

Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)

On the basis of that at least partial reassurance, I will give the Minister the opportunity to go away and think about it, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Nicholas Boles (Conservative, Grantham and Stamford)

I hope very much that the Committee will agree, at one minute to 5 pm, that schedule 1 should be the First schedule to the Bill.