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Mrs. Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con):
I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) on this excellent Bill. I hope that the Minister will see fit to let it proceed to Committee, as the issue is important for all our constituents. It is especially important in north
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Hampshire, as is evident by the attendance of several north Hampshire MPs at the debate. The Bill gives us the opportunity to debate a subject that is not only of concern in the minds of many of our constituents, but generates a lot of casework. By sorting out the problem, the Minister will do much to help us all.
Many Basingstoke residents feel that planning rules favour the interests of network operators over the legitimate concerns of local residents. They feel that their concerns are in many ways ignored by central Government, yet cannot be taken into account by local authorities, whose planning powers are severely restricted in the present system. As well as my right hon. Friend's Bill, I should like to consider whether other measures could be added, as I intimated in an intervention earlier.
Twenty-seven per cent. of all phone calls are made on mobile phones, but there is no requirement for developers to take mobile phone coverage into account when seeking planning permission for new developments. In Basingstoke, many new developments are a cause of concern in that regard. Hundreds of homes are being built in places such as Sherfield park and Popley fields, yet no analysis was carried out before the area was developed to assess whether there was sufficient coverage for mobile phone masts—whether more needed to be built and whether more land would be needed for that.
If indeed there is a need for increased coverage in the area, surely it would be easier and more sensible to provide that by planning in mobile phone coverage in the same way as we plan in many other utilities in advance of house building. Perhaps in that way we could also take account of the point that my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) made about the impact of mobile phone masts on house prices, which is a concern in my constituency too.
I am pleased that my local authority, Basingstoke and Deane borough council, in support of the Bill today, passed a motion on 16 February which reiterated residents'
"particular concern over the siting of masts near to schools, hospitals, and residential properties";
the widely held perception that
and the deep frustration that local authorities
Residents urged us to take part in today's debate, which I am pleased to be able to do.
Although there is a code of conduct for operators, there are too many examples of where residents' real concerns simply cannot be taken fully into account. In Basingstoke we have had numerous problems in that respect, including an operator wanting to site a new mobile phone mast right next door to a school for children with special needs, in the centre of a residential area, with the local council and local residents feeling almost powerless to stop it. The Bill would address
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many of those concerns by clarifying and firming up the current rules, thereby making the whole system more transparent and building confidence for local residents.
The Bill would help residents' concerns to be heard about the health effects of mobile phones. It would require any mast application to include a statement describing any threats to health or the environment, as well as a description of where the radiation emitted by the masts would fall—the so-called "beam of greatest intensity certificate". Both are eminently sensible measures which would increase accountability, transparency and, importantly, confidence in our planning system. The Bill would also help local residents have more say in where masts are sited by removing the automatic right to erect a mast below 15 m in height, and prevent the use of compulsory purchase powers by landowners to acquire certain sorts of facilities.
For those reasons, I shall support the Bill today, and hope that the Minister uses this opportunity to be seen to be listening to the concerns of my constituents, and the constituents of other hon. Members in the House today, to make changes in this important area.
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Mr. Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth, East) (Con): I am grateful to be called to speak in this important debate and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) on introducing the Bill. I do hope that it has more success than its predecessors, which ran into the ground, and I am slightly concerned by the inch-high stack of papers that the Minister has on the Dispatch Box in preparation for his summation. I encourage him to take the first and the last sheets and to save the rest for Committee.
I fully support the Bill. It empowers local authorities, gives greater transparency to the planning process and improves consultation with residents. This legislation is well overdue and it is interesting to hear that we are now playing catch-up with Scotland. We have heard that to date there is a national roll-out from the five mobile phone companies of about 45,000 masts, and I understand from reports that we are about halfway through; we are looking at a total of about 100,000 masts, and that is with the third generation network. Nowhere is that more evident than in Bournemouth, where every month or so we have a new application for a mast. We still require another 40 masts in the Bournemouth area.
It could be argued that because we all have mobile phones in our pockets, we should stomach the fact that we need mobile phone masts. Well, we all use cars and we all use electricity, but we still have proper regulation of where roads and power stations are put. The same should apply to mobile phone masts.
We have experienced a litany of problems in the Bournemouth area: poor consultation, and confusion in the interpretation of permitted development, which has led to demonstrations and petitions by the residents. I take my hat off to Bournemouth council for going some way to take steps to support the Bill and to try to rectify the problems that we have encountered. However, I would encourage the council to go slightly further and open up council land to mobile phone masts use—something that is not currently allowed. We still have another 40 masts to go, and there is still an awful lot of
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confusion about where they are supposed to be placed. If the Bill passes all the relevant stages, it will certainly provide a more palatable, open, transparent and fair process—something with which the whole House would agree.
Mr. Hunt: I thank my hon. Friend for texting me on my mobile phone this morning, thus allowing me to get back from my constituency in time for the start of the debate. He talks about transparency in the planning process. Does he agree that the point of that process is to balance the interests of commercial operators with those of the residents—it is not intended to side with one or the other, but to balance those interests—and that it is for the Government to justify any exemption to that planning process, not for us to argue why that exemption should be lifted?
Mr. Ellwood: My hon. Friend makes a very important point, and I thank him for making it into the Chamber in order to do so. It is vital that we arm local authorities with the necessary powers to deal with such issues appropriately, and that should start here in the Chamber.
I should like to go further than the Bill. If it is debated in Committee, I shall be keen to pursue a new clause to consider the possibility of introducing a single mast network. That may seem a little strange at first. However, we have a single network for water, but people can apply to many companies for their water. There is a single network for domestic gas, but people can get their gas supply from a number of companies. The same applies to landlines—whether from BT, NTL or any other service provider—as they all share the same system. Why cannot we have the same process for mobile phone masts? That happens in other countries; it could be easily introduced here.
Clearly, there would be some technical challenges, and such a change may well have to wait until the fourth generation roll-out of masts. However, we must start somewhere and the Bill could be the place to do so. I should certainly like such a new clause to include the idea that the Government would report back to Parliament on a feasibility study to find out whether the technical hurdles that would be encountered could be overcome.
Concern has been raised about the cost of the licences. Clearly, the company representatives to whom I have spoken seem very keen to pursue the issue. Of course, they want to protect the money that they put in during the licensing auctions that took place a number of years ago.
It is worth remembering that more than 100 years ago we had a rather confusing telegraph system, with independent companies set up in London and a spaghetti network of wires going across the city's rooftops. Eventually, the Government said, "This is too much."—the sprawl of wires was getting out of control—"Let's have a single system." That is exactly what we could have with the introduction of one network for mobile phone masts, thus reducing the number of mobile masts by about two thirds. That gets to the very heart of the problem that we are discussing.
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In conclusion, I fully support the Bill. It would provide local authorities with more power, which they require, and local residents with more say in the planning process. I hope that it will allow us to take the first steps in considering a nationwide mast network.
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