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Mr. Jenkin : I do not wish to detain the House, because the amendments have been discussed at some length. Nor do I wish to detract from the achievements of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) in getting the Bill thus far. He is addressing an important concern, particularly for constituencies such as his own, as I made clear when I spoke on the matter on 10 May.
I first became interested in noise--it is important to qualify our discussions on the amendments in this context--when I was a schoolboy, and I was given an essay as a punishment entitled "What noise does grass make when it is growing?" More particularly, another title, "What noise annoys an oyster most?", was most apposite for someone who became a Colchester Member of Parliament. Noise has been a preoccupation of mine for many years, and it is therefore a pleasure to support my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North in his overall objective of getting the Bill on to the statute book.
I share the concerns of a great many hon. Friends who have spoken in this debate about the amendments. On 10 May, I made it clear that my support for the Bill was based on the fact that it was an enabling and decentralising measure. It gave powers to local authorities, not obligations. Over the past 20 or 30 years, we have centralised too much--perhaps to the detriment of good public administration and of the public accountability of local authorities.
I thoroughly concur with my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Luff), although I was disappointed that he did not quote from my speech at length, as I am far too modest to do so myself. However, I reiterate what I said on 10 May, and I refer my hon. Friends to those comments. I also agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh), whose scepticism about the effectiveness of legislation to deal with every eventuality is entirely justified. The great strength of the Bill is that it gives local authorities discretion to use extra legal powers, rather than an obligation. That was reflected in the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) and for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson).
I have great respect for what my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) said about his frustration that local authorities do not do enough of what we want, but in a democracy in which we respect local
democracy, that is a matter for them. We must impose obligations and restraints on local authorities to fulfil certain criteria, not least those concerning matters of money, debt and taxation.
Our constituents require protection from excesses in those respects that would upset the general conduct of the economy; but in a matter as localised as noise, even I become a strong supporter of the Delors concept of subsidiarity where there is clearly a strong argument for allowing decisions to be taken at a much more local level than that of a national Parliament or a Secretary of State. That is what draws me to discuss the amendment. I am very interested in the process of argument and decision that concludes with us discussing the amendments in the House today.
Mr. Dykes:
My hon. Friend raises an interesting point which, I think, is in order--the relationship between local and central Government as expressed in the amendment. Many people feel that, surprisingly, the previous Conservative Government interfered too much in local government and centralised too much, whereas we have always believed in decentralisation. Local authorities have been given an excessive burden in having to keep up with central Government edicts without the adequate financial resources to do so. We need a period of peace and calm in local government, and we should let it make more decisions--probably with less strident party politics. We should return to the good old traditions of British local government at its best.
Mr. Jenkin:
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend, as I was earlier this morning when he ticked me off in the Library for using a dictating machine. I apologise to him for that again. [Hon. Members: "Noise pollution."] It was indeed a type of noise pollution, for which the rules and mores of the House have made provision. We did not need a policeman or a man coming around with a noise meter, and I am pleased to say that we managed to sort it out between us. I must say, however, that I find my hon. Friend's manner a little abrupt at times--but I am not in the least offended. Perhaps naturally, I feel admonished by my hon. Friend, but the matter is now on the record and I feel that I have got it off my chest. I have nothing more to complain about.
I wonder what process of discussion took place in the private offices of Ministers of the Department of the Environment when they were considering their reaction to the amendment. If my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary gives a welcome to it, as I fear he will, I suspect that he will do so with a little hesitation. He knows that further powers for Secretaries of State for the Environment over local government are un-Tory and should be taken only reluctantly.
I suspect that my hon. Friend's initial reaction was that no further power should be taken and that some of the attractions of the Bill were its enabling and decentralising characteristics. But time passed and there was the drip, drip of the permanent secretary and his colleagues: "Minister, this power would never be exercised in any particular circumstances that we can now envisage, but it would be sensible to have a reserve power, something that we might rely on; otherwise, Minister, we would have to
introduce primary legislation, which would be of great inconvenience to you and your ministerial colleagues, and to your friends in the House." I can understand exactly how my hon. Friends' determination to be decentralising Ministers was whittled away and seduced from them by the purring noises of their civil servants.
The danger is that we shall not always have--
Mr. Clappison:
I wish to reassure my hon. Friend that I have not been whittled away or worn down by any dripping. I have, however, listened to the voices--in some instances, siren voices--of some of those who sit around my hon. Friend on the Government Benches. I have tried to respond to their representations. My hon. Friend will appreciate, on the very basis of the argument that he is developing, that there have been two rather conflicting points of view advanced at different stages of the Bill's consideration.
Mr. Jenkin:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention.
The conflicting advice that my hon. Friend is receiving from my hon. Friends reflects the wide range of experience that individual Members have of their constituencies, ranging from the empire of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle to the pocket handkerchiefs of colleagues who represent London constituencies. I represent a constituency that is a mixture of the two, if anyone can imagine an empire tied to a pocket handkerchief. That, however, represents the urban and rural nature of my constituency. The Bill might apply appositely to part of the urban area of my constituency but with some discomfort to the rural areas. It is entirely appropriate that the matter should be left entirely to the discretion of local authorities.
Mr. Couchman:
I find it difficult to differentiate between noise created in the urban part of my hon. Friend's constituency and noise created in the rural part. It would seem that noise nuisance is noise nuisance wherever it takes place, and that there should be no differentiation.
Mr. Jenkin:
If that were the nature of the Bill, it would be taking much more wide-ranging powers than in fact it is. The Bill concentrates very much on neighbour-to-neighbour noise, domestic noise. We are not dealing with industrial noise or noise caused by farmers in rural areas. A farmer who uses a chainsaw in the middle of the night or a farmer's pigeon scarer making noise in the middle of the night would not be covered by the Bill. The Bill is confined to the problem of neighbour-to-neighbour noise, which tends to be a problem of the urban environment.
Mr. Couchman:
Does my hon. Friend say that no neighbours create neighbour-to-neighbour noise in rural areas? Are houses in the rural areas of his constituency so far apart from one another that noise cannot be heard from neighbour to neighbour?
Mr. Jenkin:
I am not saying that, of course. Itdoes not take a great stretch of the imagination, however, to recognise the statistical probability of neighbour-to-neighbour noise in an area of high population density as opposed to one of low population density.
I think that we can safely say that the Bill is aimed at urban areas. It is interesting to note that hon. Members representing urban areas are the strongest champions of the Bill. Indeed, I champion the Bill on behalf of the urban areas in my constituency.
11.30 am
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