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Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall) rose--
Sir Paul Beresford: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not give way, as I have very little time and I have a great deal to say and much to cover.
As I was saying, the programme includes £23 million for Plymouth, under objective 2, for areas of industrial decline; £8.9 million from the Leader II programme to help rural communities in Cornwall and Devon--almost half the total for England. This matter must be put in perspective. The hon. Lady is one-eyed in her view. As the saying goes, "There are none so blind as those who will not see." The programme also includes £13.4 million from the United Kingdom's Konver II programme for areas affected by defence restructuring, which has recently been approved. The whole of Devon and Cornwall, Wiltshire, Avon and parts of Somerset, Dorset and Gloucestershire are eligible--but the hon. Lady did not mention that. There is some £3.2 million from the PESCA programme for areas affected by restructuring of the fishing industry.
Those programmes often combine with other Government programmes where the south-west has also been successful--such as SRB challenge fund in which Devon and Cornwall have won some £34 million in the first two bidding rounds. Projects coming forward benefit in many cases from both European funding andSRB funding. The SRB often provides the match funding on which the hon. Lady touched.
Mr. Robert Hicks (South-East Cornwall):
I appreciate that my hon. Friend is in a robust and boisterous mood, given New Zealand's victory, sadly, over England in the first game of the world cup. For the benefit of the House, will he differentiate between allocations--which I suspect he is talking about--and actual take-up? Most of us are worried about the low take-up in response to the very generous allocations from the various project funds.
Sir Paul Beresford:
I shall try to touch on some of the points my hon. Friend raised. I note his reference to my ancestry. I guess that he is insinuating that I have failed the Tebbit test. I usually cheer for one side but bet on the other. It looks as though I am not out of money this time.
Delays cannot be laid at Government's door, although the hon. Lady made a good attempt to do so. The objective 2 and 5b programmes were due to start in
January 1994. However, the Commission's approval was not forthcoming until December 1994--one year late. So, the true picture is that these programmes have been running for barely one year. That explains some of the difficulties mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Hicks).
In 1995, arrangements were set up for consulting local partners and inviting and appraising applications. Publicity and guidance were sent out and advice given to countless applicants on how to access the funds. The Plymouth objective 2 programme has largely been settled with about 75 per cent. of the money committed. In the objective 5b programme, more than £35 million has already been allocated,--rather more, in fact, than two years' worth of the total programme. Therefore, to a degree we have caught up on the delayed start.
Overall, more than 730 applications have been received--531 of those, 75 per cent., have been appraised and considered by local partnership working groups;154 applications have been either rejected or withdrawn;237 projects have received offers of grant totalling more than £36 million; and many more will shortly get offer letters. I note that today, to continue with the misconceptions, a letter has been received from Cornwall county council saying that 60 offer letters have been issued on which decisions have been made, and that there are 32 approvals outstanding. I am sorry about the counting--the correct figures are that 88 offer letters have been issued, with another 104 projects with the working group awaiting recommendations.
All that adds up to a remarkable achievement in one year, yet the hon. Lady apparently wishes to decry it as red tape. On the contrary, it demonstrates the considerable demand for the programmes, the effort organisations and individuals have put in to create worthwhile projects and the Government's commitment to the success of the programme. It also reflects the very hard work of our new Government office for the south-west in Plymouth. The money is getting through to the people on the ground. Almost £7.5 million of grant has already been paid.
Sir Paul Beresford:
No, I am not giving way. I have only four minutes and I need to cover millions of pounds of project money.
Surprisingly, many projects are failing to come forward with claims, especially in the first quarter. That is not to say that there is no room for improvement, especially in the south-west. My hon. Friends have been making these points and following them up for some considerable time, in contrast to Liberal Democrat Members. In the south-west, the Government office has already published some excellent guidance and targets have been set for dealing with applications within four months.
Sir Paul Beresford:
The hon. Lady had better sit tight. She asked for figures and answers--[Hon. Members: "Give way."] No, I will not give way. The hon. Lady took more than her share of the time available. She asked for answers and I am trying to give them to her.
The Government office will keep applicants informed of progress and will inform them, within eight weeks, of any issues which need to be raised, in order to keep
matters moving forward. Additional guidance and seminars are planned, in particular about private sector involvement in applications. These developments reflect the commitment of the Government to ensuring the success of European funding programmes in the south-west.
The Leader II and Konver II programmes have also been crucially delayed awaiting the Commission's approval. Leader II was due to start in November 1994, when Leader I ended. The Commission's approval was not forthcoming until July 1995--we are talking not about weeks, but months--and this has placed a considerable strain on the on-going projects in west Cornwall and North Tamar, whose administration costs have had to be covered without European grant. I am pleased to say that grant towards these costs--some £68,000--will be paid by the end of this month.
Sir Paul Beresford:
The hon. Lady asked for answers, but she has given me little time to answer.
There has been a complaint that the money has been held by Whitehall. That is nonsense and it shows how little some of the Euro experts understand about the system of funding. Money is paid from the funds to national Government in advance of local expenditure on projects. As the Government are a net contributor of funds, on balance we lose by that system. There are no so-called delays of Euro-funds from the Treasury.
There was also a comment about the time that it takes for the Government to examine programmes. Surely the hon. Member for Torridge and West Devon accepts that it is appropriate carefully to scrutinise funding and applications when utilising public money. We must receive value for money through those programmes and assess them before they are allowed to go forward. The systems that apply nationally for the appraisal of applications and the monitoring of projects are far tighter than for previous structural funds, and that is largely because the Government have pressed for more careful scrutiny. The money is working through the system, and the Government have exceeded themselves to ensure that the money reaches the people that it should go to in the south-west.
Sir Terence Higgins (Worthing):
I am glad to have this opportunity to raise the subject of the Department of Transport's discretionary purchase of blighted homes, and to see my hon. Friend the Minister in his place. I know that he has taken an intense interest in this subject. Today's debate is an extension of the debate which took place on 15 May last year on, broadly speaking, the same subject. Therefore, I need to spend only a little time outlining the background.
The Minister and the House will know that I have been much concerned with the development of the A27 in the Worthing area. We have had a public inquiry that lasted almost a year, the report of which has now been tabled.I expect that the Department will publish the report in the near future.
The effect of blight is almost entirely on the Government's preferred route and has little effect, if any--a matter of half a dozen houses or fewer--on the bypass route. Which route is selected is obviously a great concern because the choice will affect enormously the degree of blight. I hope that, in his reply, my hon. Friend will tell us when he expects the inspector's report to be produced and when the Secretary of State expects to make a decision on it. There has already been great concern about the length of time that it has taken to reach a decision; uncertainty is one of the major problems that my constituents face in this matter.
In relation to the choice of route, I shall say nothing more than that I hope to present a petition that contains more than 15,000 signatures of people who favour the bypass route rather than the Government's preferred route, which would have a serious effect on the town.I have no doubt at all that the bypass is the right option, and I shall do all that I can to ensure that it, rather than the other route, is selected. Meanwhile, many houses have been blighted, some of which have been purchased on a discretionary basis by the Department of Transport.
My hon. Friend the Minister will know only too well that, some time ago, the Department of Transport lost a court case on this matter. The case is now quite famous. One of the conclusions was that the criteria the Government used in exercising their discretion were not right. Consequently, a review of the various guidelines took place, and that was still taking place when we had last year's debate. The guidelines have of course been published subsequently, and they give me grave cause for concern.
The essential point is that section 62(2) of the Planning and Compensation Act 1991 states that the highway authority may
of the highway. Essentially, the criteria which are used in determining that are at issue. The Government recognise that the criteria that they originally used were wrong. The way in which they handled the matter was backed up by a number of ombudsman reports, which I mentioned in the previous debate and which the Department has recognised showed a deficiency in the process.
It is extremely important that those decisions are taken at ministerial level. They seriously affect the lives of people, and not only in relation to the road and the noise.
The decision must take into account, for example, medical conditions and the effect on job opportunities because people cannot move. Despite the assurances that I was given in the previous debate, I am concerned because my constituents have received letters from officials that say that they have decided one thing or another. This is a matter for ministerial discretion, and the responsibility should not be assumed by officials, even under the next steps agency arrangements, because they cannot take a sufficiently broad view.
The crucial point is that the Department is now prepared to include the decline of property values in the criteria it uses. It is absolutely clear that, if the value of property declines as a result of the building or proposed building of a road on a particular route--this may also be true in relation to railways--the fact that the value has declined shows that the enjoyment of the property is likely to be diminished. I should have thought that that was not open to serious dispute--the courts have taken the same view--but this is what has happened. Paragraph 7 of the guidelines states:
It contains an exception for medical reasons.
There is nothing in the legislation that requires both criteria to be met. It is clear that, if the value has declined, that would be a necessary and sufficient condition for discretion to be exercised. I take the view that it is unreasonable--which is an important aspect of it--if the Department does not act in that way because the legislation says nothing whatever about also taking noise into account. In a sense, that is the crux of the matter. If one were merely to take the diminution in value into account, the discretion would have been exercised in a great many other cases. I shall return to this issue later.
I do not know whether it was as a result of this impending debate but, yesterday, I suddenly received no fewer than three responses from the Department about particular cases. My secretary, who is perhaps more cynical than I am, expressed some surprise at their timing. However, I must say that they have given me further cause for disquiet.
One response says that the individual cases are being reconsidered with all the evidence and that
In effect, the Department is saying that it will defer consideration of whether to exercise discretion to buy until nine months before the start of construction. Myhon. Friend the Minister is nodding in the affirmative.
People are suffering from medical conditions, it is accepted that their property has been seriously affected, and yet they are now being told that they can re-apply later and that the Department may or may not then exercise its discretion. That creates a degree of uncertainty for people who are suffering from serious medical
conditions, as the Department recognises, which is really quite intolerable. It is simply a device to improve the Treasury's cash flow, or it may, ultimately, not happen at all.
When individuals' lives are being seriously affected in this manner, such delay should not occur. Since I have not previously received many letters like those I have mentioned, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will carefully examine the issue. I do not think that one can procrastinate as the Department is now proposing.
I return to the question of diminishing value. The situation is developing in an interesting way. In many cases, my constituents have received replies that say that the Department recognises that the value of their property has diminished, but that the question of noise must also be taken into account. That is the Department's view, and it is not what is stated in the legislation. Some of the cases have been refused on the basis that the two criteria have not been met. I have had trouble having the diminishing value quantified but, fortunately, a couple of months ago, I received a letter which was sent to my constituent that recognised a reduction in value and quantified it. It said:
The letter then lists the unaffected market value as £150,000, the current market value as £125,000 and the reduction in value as £25,000.
Despite that, the Highways Agency is not proposing to purchase the property, even though my constituent has clearly suffered a loss of £25,000 as a result of the Government's road scheme. The application is being turned down on the grounds that noise must also be taken into account. That is not right, and bears out what I said previously. The building of roads and infrastructure--it is also true for railways--is, effectively, highway robbery. Roads are being built at the expense of people who happen to have the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The cost should be borne by the community as a whole. People should be compensated or their property purchased to avoid suffering, which is no fault of their own, as a result of a Government decision over which they had no control.
I do not doubt that, over the Minister's head, is the shadow of a Treasury Minister. Although my own halo is a little out of date, it is still there, and I do not doubt that the sums involved are substantial. Across the country, we are probably talking about hundreds of millions--perhaps billions--of pounds and I can understand why my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be concerned about it. All that that sum reflects is the extent to which individuals are suffering as a result of present policy. I therefore argue strongly that we ought to change the policy and that at least one of the necessary and sufficient criteria ought to be reduction in value.
Another point, which I made in the previous debate, is that we are talking about gross cost to the Exchequer. Once the road has been built, the properties purchased by the Department can be re-sold. Although they will be worth less, they will certainly not be valueless. It is important to consider the long-term net cost rather than the gross cost.
1.30 pm
"acquire by agreement land the enjoyment of which will in their opinion be seriously affected by the carrying out of work or the use"
"We will not normally offer to buy your property unless we are of the opinion that it will be seriously affected by BOTH diminution in value AND noise arising during the construction period or during the first year following the opening of the road to traffic".
"I am able to inform you that, based on the current information, we have formed the opinion that your enjoyment of your property will be seriously affected by the severe aggravation of an existing medical condition by physical factors caused by the construction of the Worthing-Lancing improvement.
However, these physical factors are not likely to arise for another two years when the construction of the scheme is expected to start".
"We have carefully considered the valuation evidence submitted by the Agency's Valuer and have concluded that the diminution in value due solely to the road scheme is 16.7 per cent."
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