| Planning and Compulsory Purchase (Re-committed) Bill
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Mr. Francois: I have a practical question about accountability. Let us assume that as part of the regional spatial strategy a decision is taken to build 5,000 houses in a town in an area that does not have an elected regional assembly. The people of that town are violently against large-scale house building, perhaps Column Number: 362 because they feel that their local infrastructure cannot cope with it. What democratic accountability is there for the people in that town? They cannot vote out their elected regional representative because they do not have one. They could vote against their county councillors, but the Bill denudes their county council's planning power. They can protest to their Member of Parliament, but he does not have responsibility for regional spatial strategy. How could those people protest democratically about a decision that they believe to be injurious to their quality of life?Keith Hill: If such a situation were to arise, it would be desperately serious. The premise of the hon. Gentleman's concern is inaccurate, because it assumes that the responsibility for a decision to build 5,000 houses in a locality lies with the regional planning body. That is not the case; it is the responsibility of the local planning authority and the local district. The regional spatial strategy will be a material consideration because it must be embraced in the local development framework, as he knows. The responsibility for decisions of that nature is essentially for the locality. It is true that we expect the regional spatial strategy to identify areas of growth, of stability and even of restoration of the green belt. Nevertheless, local people will not face the hon. Gentleman's scenario. Mr. Francois: I am not sure whether the Minister is right. This matter is germane to the whole debate. For many people, in acid terms, the debate comes down to this point. Will he explain which body will take responsibility for the allocation of the number of houses in different towns? In the past, responsibility has filtered through different levels. Under the new system, if it were decided to build so many tens or hundreds of thousands of houses in a region, who will decide where they go, working on the basis that most local authorities would resist large-scale house building in their backyards? Keith Hill: Perhaps I ought to clarify the situation. The Secretary of State is accountable for the regional spatial strategy, which will set the overall target for growth, but the local planning authority will decide the sites. Those houses would have to be in a development plan document for which the local planning authority is accountable. I hope that helps the hon. Gentleman. Mr. Francois: I see where the Minister is going but it does not help me. The local planning authority might have to decide the sites but it would not have to decide the numbers. The number of houses allocated to each local authority is critical. If a local authority is saddled with a certain number of thousands, it must solve the problem of trying to decide where they will go. The number of houses that each local authority gets is critical. Under the new system, how will that decision be taken? Keith Hill: Essentially, the global targets for local authorities emerge from the regional spatial strategy, but local decisions about the location of sites will be part of the local planning authority's responsibilities and will form part of the development plan document. Column Number: 363 Matthew Green: May I help the Minister? The concern is that local people's wishes and local elections will be completely ignored. I use Kidderminster hospital as an example. A health authority that was appointed by the then Secretary of State—rather like the regional planning bodies that the Secretary of State will appoint—closed it, and the then Secretary of State ratified the decision. Locally, the political party, Health Concern, which was opposed to the decision, won almost all district and county council elections. The decision resulted in the election of an independent MP with the second largest majority of any Member. It is probably one reason why I was elected, overturning a Conservative seat. The expression of tens of thousands of local votes meant absolutely nothing, but in this case, there are local powers. The Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman must keep his interventions briefer than that. Keith Hill: Let me clarify the situation even further. It is, as I have said on several occasions, not for the district authority to decide the global target and what the numbers are. However, that situation, essentially, is no different from the present situation. In the present situation, with the exception of two-tier areas, the decision is filtered down through the counties. Mr. Francois: I appreciate the Minister's courtesy in giving way. That is exactly right. Apparently, there is a county tier and the matter is then dealt with through negotiations between the county and the various district councils. However, that tier is being largely taken out of the equation. Mr. Rooney: What about structure plans? Mr. Francois: Structure plans are going. In some cases, the regional planning body will effectively be taking decisions to allocate houses to 60 or even 80 different local authorities around the whole region. In the past in my home county, decisions were usually taken in Chelmsford and negotiated with the other councils in Essex; now they will be taken in Cambridge. Theoretically, those decisions will be taken for the whole of East Anglia under this model. What accountability is there in that? Ironically, when it comes to health, the Government have gone the other way. They abolished regional health authorities because, they argued, they were out of touch, and created strategic health authorities on a county model because they believed that such bodies were more responsive to local needs. Keith Hill: The hon. Gentleman slightly over-eggs the pudding in suggesting that Cambridge is so remote from Rayleigh that it cannot be aware of the local circumstances. There must be a geographical locus for such a body in any circumstances. However, let me reiterate that the body is not wildly unaccountable. It is constrained by statutes, instead of administrative law; the Secretary of State is accountable to Parliament and his decisions are subject to parliamentary scrutiny; and, of course, the regional planning body, in its majority part, comprises elected members, who are accountable to their own Column Number: 364 authorities. To that extent, we are not talking about an organisation that is wholly removed from any kind of democratic scrutiny or accountability. It has clear lines, in the traditions of our democracy, to democratic accountability.Matthew Green: The one area that will be considered as part of the regional spatial strategy that is currently considered by counties is transport and roads. Decisions on roads will move up from county level. I am talking not about trunk roads, but about A and B roads. Planning decisions on new roads will pass up to the regional authority. That is clearly a case in which a matter that is currently decided by elected councillors will be decided, at best, by people who have been quasi-elected—and I do not believe that it is as good as that. Keith Hill: Let us remember that the Secretary of State does not appoint regional planning boards: 70 per cent. of the members of regional planning boards are decided on the basis of appointment by local elected authorities. They are elected members, like ourselves, and we would expect them to be responsive to the needs of localities. The other element that comprises the regional planning board is the representatives of the economic and social layers in the locality, who are also representative of local interests. Hon. Members have ridden the horse of unaccountability a little too hard. There are issues, and they would be considerably simplified by the emergence of elected regional authorities, but in the meantime we are not talking about the arbitrary disposition of powers by regional planning bodies.
4.15 pmMr. Clifton-Brown: As the only Member of Parliament who has ridden winners under rules, I am going to ride this race a lot harder. If a remote, unelected regional body makes a huge increase in a local authority's allocation of houses, there will be a lot of democratic dissatisfaction in that area. The Government's record on such matter is not very good. The communities plans are an example of that. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) tells me that his local authority was not consulted before the community plan was announced, yet the housing allocation there is to be doubled at a stroke. If the Government behave like that, it is not surprising that, as the hon. Member for Ludlow says, local people will feel aggrieved and will take it out at the local elections by electing somebody else. The Government will have to address that problem, because there will be widespread dissatisfaction. Imagine the local authority in my constituency, in the Cotswolds in north-east Gloucestershire, having a hugely increased allocation imposed on it by a regional body sitting 200 miles away in Exeter. That is not local democratic accountability, and the Minister will have to address the problem. Keith Hill: The hon. Gentleman speaks as though we were totally lacking in experience of regional bodies, but we have had the experience of the regional Column Number: 365 development agencies and we make dispositions about which localities should receive investments through grants, for transport developments, for example. Now we also have the experience of the regional housing boards, where, again, there is a grouping of representatives of the local authorities that, in part, have recently been asked to make dispositions with regard to housing investment. There are always difficult choices in such situations; nevertheless, we have some experience that it is possible for regions to come together and agree about local dispositions within such bodies.The examples from south-west Bedfordshire, the so-called growth areas, the global issues in the wider south-east and RPG9, which sets targets for housing growth relate to that. I fear that you may intervene on me at any moment, Mr. Hurst, because you think that I am going wider than the subject before us. I shall simply tell the hon. Member for Cotswold that despite all the protests about higher housing targets, it should be recognised that most of the growth catered for in the relevant provisions is indigenous growth. Local people who require more houses—
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2003 | Prepared 23 October 2003 |
