Planning and Compulsory Purchase (Re-committed) Bill

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Mr. Turner: I beg to move amendment No. 338, in

clause 5, page 3, line 26, at end insert—

'( ) local authorities' Landscape Character Assessments;

( ) the need to protect and enhance rural tranquility;)'.

The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to take amendment No. 342, in

clause 5, page 4, line 9, at end insert—

'(8) In this section, ''Landscape Character Assessment'' means an assessment carried out in accordance with the Landscape Character Assessment Guidance for England and Scotland published by the Countryside Agency.'.

Mr. Turner: I have a sneaking suspicion that the Minister may consider some of his remarks in response

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to the previous debate to be appropriate in response to this one. I tabled the amendment because I believed that there was a particular need for regional planning bodies to have regard to the interests of rural areas in considering their regional spatial strategy revision, as most of those regional bodies, if not all of them, will be dominated substantially by urban dwellers, and some rural areas need to be protected not only for the benefit of people who live there and those who visit there, but for the country as a whole.

Amendment No. 338 would require the RPB to have regard to the local authority's landscape character assessment, which is defined in amendment No. 342, and to have regard to

''the need to protect and enhance rural tranquillity''.

What evidence do I have for my concern that insufficient account may be taken of the needs of rural areas? First, most of the regions that the Government have designated are built around very large conurbations, with the exception of those south of the line from the Wash to the Severn. Each region centres on a conurbation with a substantial urban population of more than 1 million, whether it is Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds or Newcastle, the south-east or the eastern region, but not the south-west, where the reverse is true. The further a region is from urban areas, the less account is generally taken of its needs. I illustrate that by referring to a consultation document on airport strategy, which the Minister's colleague has just published. That document was so knowledgeable about the regions of England, and particularly rural areas, that the map that went with it placed the Isle of Wight somewhere off Portland Bill. Not only is that the wrong place, as the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) knows, but it is not even in the right region.

I fear that such ignorance may not be confined to the Department for Transport. It may be present in some regional planning bodies. It is proposed that, should regional governance reach the south-east, the region would have something like 38 representatives. My constituency would share a representative with two constituencies in Portsmouth, two in Southampton and two or three across the southern part of Hampshire. There would be very little input, proportionately, for rural areas. I believe that rural areas need to be protected, and the amendment would deal with that.

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In response to an earlier debate, to which I hope I can refer without being out of order, Mr. Hurst, the Minister suggested that PPS11 would contain a wealth of useful detail on what the regional planning body should take into account. I therefore thumbed through to find out where rural tranquillity was referred to in draft PPS11. Although I did not read every word, I could not find any reference to rural tranquillity or to landscape character assessments. Even when I turned to annexe A, the annotated bibliography of topic-specific policy, in which I expected those topics to be recorded, perhaps in alphabetical order, or perhaps thematically, I came across a page with nothing on it except the heading.

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The Minister needs to add some information to annexe A, if he would not mind. It is at page 29, for the information of the Committee, that he states that the relevant information will be available in the final version of the PPS. Will he confirm that, in the final version, the annotated bibliography will contain reference to landscape character assessments and other documents? Otherwise, I will need a very good reason to seek leave to withdraw the amendment.

Keith Hill: Let us remind ourselves that the amendment would require regional planning bodies to have regard to local authorities' landscape character assessments carried out in accordance with guidance issued by the Countryside Agency, and to the need to protect and enhance rural tranquillity when preparing a draft revision of their regional spatial strategies.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight can anticipate that I shall not necessarily immediately embrace his amendment. However, the Committee has certainly appreciated the important issues that he has raised in a series of amendments—in particular the amendment on the subject of master planning, which was ably moved in his absence by his hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir Sydney Chapman). I found it most thought-provoking, even if I had to reject it, just as I must reject the amendment before the Committee. I do not believe that the amendment would bring about the right approach to the issues. They should properly be considered in the context of reviews of national planning policies and advice, and they do not need to be specified in primary legislation.

The hon. Gentleman made something of the lack of relevant references in the famous draft PPS11. However, he is looking in the wrong place. The right place is PPS7 on planning policy on sustainable development in rural areas. That is already out for consultation and the final version will certainly cover rural topics in relation to the regional spatial strategy. Indeed, the consultation now being undertaken on the draft of new planning policy statement 7 provides the opportunity for those issues to be considered, along with other planning policies for sustainable development in rural areas and the protection of the countryside.

If the need to have regard to local authorities' landscape character assessments or the need to protect and enhance rural tranquillity were to be identified as national planning policies in the final published versions of planning policy statements, clause 5(3)(a) would place the necessary requirement on regional planning bodies to have regard to those policies.

Matthew Green: The hon. Member for Isle of Wight raised a rather pertinent point when speaking about draft PPS11. He may have been looking in the wrong place, but annexe A of the annotated bibliography of topic-specific policy is a rather wonderful page with absolutely nothing on it. Does the Minister expect it to be a common procedure for the Government to publish draft policy with blank pages?

Keith Hill: I am amazed that the hon. Gentleman should protest. It is consultation par excellence. People can provide their own draft—that is what I call community involvement.

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The amendment is unnecessary, and I hope that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight will withdraw it.

Mr. Clifton-Brown: Can I take it from the Minister's statement that in future consultations the Opposition's views will be properly taken into account?

Keith Hill: The Opposition's views are always properly taken into account—and instantaneously dismissed.

Mr. Turner: I have not had the privilege of reading PPS7—I clearly should have done so—but I am glad that we will have the opportunity for a write-in vote on the bibliography. People will be able to write their own policy. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2

Regional planning bodies

Mr. Clifton-Brown: I beg to move amendment No. 271, in

clause 2, page 2, line 3, after 'may', insert 'only'.

The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment No. 272, in

clause 2, page 2, line 5, at end, insert

'if a referendum has been held under the Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Act and it has been voted in the affirmative under the provisions of that Act.'.

Amendment No. 117, in

clause 2, page 2, line 8, leave out subsection (3).

Mr. Clifton-Brown: The amendment, if I can find it—

Matthew Green: Would I be right in saying that the hon. Gentleman is trying to say that the amendment seeks to ensure that the Secretary of State can give a direction recognising the body as the regional planning body only when it satisfies such criteria as are prescribed? At present, it is not a stipulation.

Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. He has explained amendment No. 271 better than I can, so I move quickly on to the next amendment.

Amendment No. 272 would provide that the regional authority may carry out those functions only if a referendum has been held. This is an important clause. We believe that regional planning bodies should not be created until a referendum has been held and voted for in the affirmative. It is a question of democratic accountability. Regional bodies are almost exclusively made up of indirectly elected members. No one knows who they are. They are not accountable to anyone, or are only slightly accountable. The granting of such huge powers to largely unaccountable people is a democratic deficit.

I hark back to our previous debates on whether the regional spatial strategy is the Secretary of State's policy until there is an elected regional assembly. I hope that we never have elected regional assemblies. If

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we do, the whole democratic position will change. Until then, we have a democratic problem: the Government are rushing ahead with the regional planning agenda, in which we do not believe. They should carefully consider the democratic legitimacy of that.

Matthew Green: I believe that I have already spoken to amendment No. 171, so I will move on to the amendment tabled in my name and in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton .

Amendment No. 117 would leave out subsection (3), which states:

''The Secretary of State may give a direction withdrawing recognition of''

a regional planning body. It is not so much that I want to take that power away, as that I want the Minister to explain under what circumstances the Secretary of State might withdraw recognition of a regional planning body and what the consequences would be if the Secretary of State assumed the functions of that body. That is probably how it would work. That provision is particularly draconian, and I assume that the Minister will say that he hopes that it will never have to be used, and that he would not go anywhere near it.

We need to know—I am sure that local planning bodies would like to know—under what sort of circumstances the Secretary of State would withdraw recognition, and how the system would then function. If regional spatial strategies were operating across the country and one regional planning body were to have its recognition withdrawn, there would be a great hole in the planning structure, which would have to be filled by the Secretary of State. I am sure that the Secretary of State could cope with the minutiae that I am sure will exist in every RSS in the country, but he may struggle to find the time to do so. What arrangements will there be to deal with such circumstances? Amendment No. 117 is a probing amendment. It is for the Minister to explain how, why and what would happen in those circumstances.

I take this opportunity to add my strong support to the principle of amendment No. 272, although I suspect that it is not the way to solve the problem because the drafting would have slightly odd consequences.

The Bill will take some powers away from county councils, but not all of them: they will be left with waste and minerals. Those powers are currently administered by elected county councillors, but will pass to RPBs. By next autumn, we may have some referendums, which will hopefully result in yes votes in the three northern regions. It is conceivable that six months to a year later, we will have functioning elected regional assemblies in those regions. Short of an earthquake, the Government are not going to win referendums in the south-east, the south-west or, I suspect, most of the midlands, given their regional boundaries. Therefore, it is unlikely that there will be elected regional assemblies, certainly in the south-east, in the foreseeable future. I regret that, as I would like us to have regional assemblies. The boundaries are wrong and should be changed.

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We will have a period of five or 10 years, in which powers will have been taken from elected councillors and given to an unelected body, an RPB. We will have a quasi-elected regional body—not even that; it will have people on it who have been elected to other bodies—councillors roughly in proportion to the political strength in the region—but that is not really the same. The regional planning bodies will not be accountable in such circumstances. They are accountable to the Secretary of State. Essentially, until there are elected regional assemblies, this represents a centralising of power.—Ultimately, power rests with the Secretary of State. That is of deep concern to anybody who is a democrat or a proponent of the devolution of power, as I am sure that the Minister is.

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However, for a considerable period, probably at least five years, there will be no devolution of power. Amendment No. 272 seeks—probably in an imperfect way—to ensure that the powers are not taken from the county councils and that the regional planning body is not set up until there is a regional elected assembly. Until then, we would continue to have the current structure. There is planning at a regional level—the Government office does some—but the power still rests with the county councils. I realise that that will cause the Government problems, because there will be different speeds in different parts of the country. However, that is a consequence of devolution, something that both my party and the Minister's agree is a way forward.

 

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Prepared 23 October 2003