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Mr. Hain: I draw my hon. Friend's attention generally to clause 64(3)--he need not consult it in detail unless he wishes to do so--which makes it clear that business will need to be consulted in terms of regulatory appraisals of any regulations that the assembly might introduce.
Mr. Peter Bottomley: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This is the third or fourth time that the Government's Front-Bench spokesmen have helped to pad out the speech by the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Caton). Is it conventional to provide such assistance
to an hon. Member as we approach 10 o'clock? Is the intention to exclude other hon. Members from speaking in the debate?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Worthing, West is making accusations. Interventions are perfectly within the rules of the House--that is why I have allowed them.
Mr. Hain: For the benefit of the hon. Member for Worthing, West (Mr. Bottomley), I was seeking to draw to my hon. Friend's attention the fact that clause 64 addresses precisely his concern that business should be consulted. We have issued an open invitation to business, the voluntary sector and several other interest groups in Wales to submit their agendas to my right hon. Friend's advisory committee--and thereafter to the statutory commission--to explain what relationship they want with the assembly. It is an inclusive process, which will extend to the opening of the assembly in 1999.
Mr. Caton: I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention. I still recommend that thought should be given to the social partner approach to consultation with the economic players. Structures for consultation obviously help, but the culture of the assembly will be just as important. The electoral system, fair committee structures and rights to be heard will help to create a democratic body that is more constructive and inclusive and less confrontational than anything we have seen before.
Working practices are part of the answer but attitude is equally important. A heavy responsibility lies on the shoulders of our first elected assembly women and men. It will be their job to nurture a co-operative and
consensual culture. The location of the assembly might help them to achieve that objective. The mind-opening significance of daring even to consider basing our assembly outside Cardiff has provided enthusiasm and excitement in Swansea and south-west Wales. That has been matched only by the arrogance of some statements from Cardiff-based media.
It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
Debate to be resumed tomorrow.
Ordered,
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Janet Anderson.]
Dr. Liam Fox (Woodspring):
I shall begin the debate by making it clear that this is not another not-in-my-back-yard debate about quarrying. My constituency has many quarries within it and my constituents are used to the problems that are associated with quarrying. They are used to making sacrifices that they regard as part of their civic duty. They know that road building, for example, is an important part of improving the country's infrastructure.
I initiated the debate because I feel that a genuine injustice is being done. If the letter of the law has not been broken and if procedures have not been wrongly conducted, at least the spirit of the law has been ignored.
It will perhaps be useful for me to put on the record a brief history of Conygar quarry in Clevedon. It is a 19-acre sandstone quarry, which was worked during the 19th century. Permission was registered under an interim development order in 1947. It ceased production in the late 1950s, incidentally with a maximum recorded output of 17,000 tonnes per annum. Tipping permission for inert waste was granted in 1962. As a scrap yard, the quarry was used until 1989.
In 1990, the site was purchased by Tasplot Ltd., which took Woodspring district council, as it then was, to the High Court in that same year for denying knowledge of the planning permission. In an undefended action, Tasplot obtained £2,000 in damages, a full-page apology twice in the local newspaper, the Mercury, and a declaratory judgment on the basis that no evidence was offered by the district council and so it had to accept anything that Tasplot demanded.
Tasplot, as many of the owners of the quarry mysteriously have done, went into receivership in 1992, owing over £800,000. After much action group lobbying, the quarry was registered as dormant under the Planning and Compensation Act 1991. An appeal against that registration was rejected by the then Avon county council, which thankfully we managed to abolish shortly afterwards.
In 1994, an application by Federated Aggregates Ltd. to reopen the site with a new road across the Gordano valley was requested. Avon county council allowed extraction of only 40,000 tonnes per annum. That restriction was accompanied by 100 generally acceptable but not universally popular, by any means, working conditions.
Federated Aggregates Ltd. lost interest, as did many companies before them, and Conygar Ltd. obtained control. Recently, a local farmer, in conjunction with Conygar Ltd., appealed against the conditions. Then came the inspector's bombshell.
This is a major local issue. It affects those near the quarry and all those living in Clevedon, the largest town in my constituency. It took a recent trip by air from nearby Lulsgate airport for me properly to appreciate the sheer scale of the quarry. The sight from the air of the number of residential properties adjacent to the quarry, the development that has taken place since it was opened and, not least, the school close by, has to be seen to be
believed. Hon. Members will agree that an issue's importance can be measured by the size of one's postbag. I dealt with about five times as many letters about the quarry as about hunting.
Avon county council's conditions were not welcome, but they were accepted. That says much for the patience and understanding of the people who live nearby. They were willing to accept the conditions. The town council accepted them; the district council accepted the situation. As the Member of Parliament representing the wider area, I was willing to accept it. I pay special tribute to the action group, whose determination has achieved so much in bringing the issue to public prominence. The inspector did not share the democratic view, and it is to a point of democratic deficit that I should like to return.
I told the Minister that I would mention the environmental setting of the quarry, because the Government talk of having a new priority for the environment. Let me tell them about us. We are a seaside town. The quarry lies at the edge of the Gordano valley, which contains priority landscape and wildlife conservation and historic landscape areas. It is a site of special scientific interest and lies within the Bristol green belt. Those facts have either been ignored or are considered irrelevant. It is important not only for the quarry in my constituency but for the situation beyond that such factors are taken fully into account in the decisions of faceless bureaucrats.
One of my biggest worries, having also been a general practitioner in a nearby town, is safety. The quarry opens into the narrow Norton's Wood lane. The matter was put well in a letter from a constituent, Dr R. J. Pring, who said:
The inspector's report must be seen to be believed. It is almost as though the report was written by one person and the conclusions by someone else who had not only never visited the district but not read the report in the first place. Paragraph 43 states:
Paragraph 40 of the report states:
I could go on and on--I could give example after example--but let me just say to the Minister that there is a democratic deficit. I was aware of it when my party was in government, and I do not pretend for a moment that that was not the case; but if Secretaries of State simply sign the recommendations that inspectors give them, and we as a democratic body have no way of redressing those decisions, what is the role of democracy in the process?
The decision is ultimately being made by a faceless bureaucrat who, on the basis of one visit to my constituency, is able to overturn what I think and what my district council, my town council, local people and the action group think. Everyone's view is irrelevant: all the rounds in the planning inquiry are meaningless except the last round. As long as the last round is won, that is enough. The Secretary of State will sign, and that is it. We as democratic politicians have no locus, and that cannot be right. What will be the Government's response to a situation that allows lorry movements to increase from 20 a day to an unlimited number, an increase in extracted tonnage by 300 per cent. to 125,000 tonnes, no lunch-time lorry restrictions, unlimited blasting and earlier starting times? All that will be to the detriment of our local environment.
That Dr. Nick Palmer be added to the Administration Committee.--[Mr. Clive Betts, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]
Ordered,
That Mr. Patrick McLoughlin be discharged from the Catering Committee and Mr. Keith Simpson be added to the Committee.--[Mr. Clive Betts, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]
Ordered,
That Mr. Cynog Dafis be discharged from the Education and Employment Committee and Mr. Paul Keetch be added to the Committee.--[Mr. Clive Betts, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]
Ordered,
That Mr. Paul Flynn be discharged from the Welsh Affairs Committee and Mr. Huw Edwards be added to the Committee.--[Mr. Clive Betts, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]
10 pm
"The lane onto which the quarry fronts is narrow (too narrow for two lorries to pass) with no footpath, is part of the local cycleway and is used by horseriders. The lane itself then exits on to a 'B' road almost opposite the road serving the comprehensive school. Travelling the opposite way, the lane narrows, and lorries would either have to negotiate about four miles of narrow lane until reaching a road for Portishead, or take a left hand turn passing through another small village and emerging onto the 'B' road at a blind crossroads."
Since the quarry reached its maximum output in the 1950s, Clevedon comprehensive school has been built. There is a busy and dangerous junction. I had forgotten how dangerous it could be until I had a narrow miss on Saturday morning while visiting the quarry site. Some 1,500 local school children aged four to 18 use the same roads. If anything happens because of the increased traffic that will result from permission to quarry an unlimited amount, more than a small amount of blame will lie with whoever's signature lies on that permission. It would be almost comical, if it were not true, that a cemetery was not allowed by the highways authority for safety reasons, but we are to have unlimited quarrying and an unlimited number of lorries on our narrow lanes.
"Although I have little evidence on the economic structure of the operation it seems to me that to prevent access from 1.00-2.00 may be unduly onerous. Nevertheless, I appreciate that the view could be taken that there would be unacceptable risk to school children at lunchtimes".
8 Dec 1997 : Column 771
The inspector accepts that there may be unacceptable risk but, lo and behold, in the conclusion, the unacceptable risk becomes acceptable. The previous restrictions that safeguarded our children at the local school simply disappear.
The inspector states:
"I consider it unlikely that large numbers of primary school children would be out at lunchtime".
There is no mention of the quarries opposite the secondary school, where a large number of pupils are out at lunchtime--pupils who deserve our protection.
"Delivery vehicles are most likely to have difficulty negotiating the (Walter Road) junction. I am convinced by the written and photographic evidence and by my inspection, that the junction is potentially dangerous and that there would be harmful effects on safety and amenity resulting from the use by heavy vehicles of the narrow lane. Most danger would be caused to those on foot and on bicycles."
The report concludes that an unlimited number of lorries would use the junction, and that--in the inspector's own words--that would be dangerous.
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