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Mr. Hollobone:
I mentioned earlier potential confusion in the planning system. As my right hon. Friend knows, district councils have extensive planning powers, and they may or may not have regard to encouraging microgeneration schemes in their plans. Once those plans are decided and approved by regional assemblies or the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, they are set in stone. However, an energy measures
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report could then come along suggesting a different tack. On what basis will appeals against the applications that planners will make be determined?
Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who anticipates what I will have to say later about potential conflicts between the different levels of local government mentioned in new clause 4. One of my amendments seeks to tease out the conflict that will exist between the desire for more microgeneration and, for example, the conservation areas that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (David Lepper) mentioned earlier. The new clause is shot through with potential conflicts. In many people's minds, macrogeneration, which involves wind turbines, and microgeneration—little windmills on people's houses—give rise to potential planning conflicts. That is to say nothing of the conflicts between the various planning authorities listed in new clause 4.
My hon. Friend has made a very important point and I hope that, before we get anywhere near resolving whether we support the new clause, somebody somewhere will give us an answer to such questions. I look forward to that. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle or the Minister will seek to catch your eye again, Madam Deputy Speaker, to spell everything out for us, to put our worried minds at ease. I await that moment.
Gregory Barker: We know that my right hon. Friend's local authority does not support him in his view. We know also that the Local Government Association and Kent county council does not support him in his view. Has any local authority contacted him to ask him to raise these matters on its behalf?
Mr. Forth: No. If authorities are so lacking in diligence not to do so, they must answer to their voters. I am serving the voters of my constituency by asking questions on their behalf. My view of local government is that councillors are elected representatives in their own right. They make their own decisions, which I honour and respect, as I respect them to honour and respect mine. That is a view to which I have held throughout my time in the House, and I will continue to maintain it.
Shortly, I will ask some questions about what local authorities can or cannot do. That will apply to all local authorities.
Mr. Chope: Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) indicates a lack of reality about what happens within parish councils? How is a parish council to have ascertained the details of new clause 4, which was tabled only a few days ago? Often, parish councils do not have anyone to support them other than a part-time clerk.
Mr. Forth:
We will come on to parish councils shortly. We will want to examine what their role is supposed to be under the terms of new clause 4. We will go through each of the authorities in turn and ask that same question. We might even bring in the Mayor of London, who knows, or the Greater London Assembly. The
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mayor and the assembly are not mentioned but probably they should have been. That is something that the Minister was not able to explain to us. When he sums up and seeks to persuade us to support the new clause, perhaps he will be answering all these questions.
I think that we have reached new clause 4(3). We have identified the fact that an official in each local authority will be studying the energy measures report and deciding what the local authority will do about it. That immediately raises the question of what local authorities will do to improve efficiency in the use of electricity, increase
by microgeneration, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases or deal with so-called fuel poverty.
It may be that the answer lies in what the Minister has already told us, and that is that there are some excellent local authorities that are doing some excellent work and demonstrating how some or all of the objectives that we are considering can be fulfilled. In that case, why do we need the new clause or the Bill? There is an apparent paradox in that it is all happening already, and a jolly good thing too—that brings in our old friend best practice. In the days when I had the privilege to serve in the previous Conservative Government, that was one of the buzz terms to which we were most attached. Best practice was supposed to be the answer to all problems. Maybe best practice would be the answer in this instance. Perhaps the local authority umbrella body that has been mentioned with such affection should be contributing by disseminating best practice. Instead of having Bills and other legislation, bureaucrats, bureaucracy, targets and all the other things that we in this place are becoming increasingly fond of, why cannot we have a simple and informal procedure out there in the real world—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. New clause 4 is quite lengthy. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman could find more relevant matters to which to address his remarks.
10.15 am
Mr. Forth:
I have plenty of ammunition, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am exploring some of the possibilities that I thought were germane to the new clause. I will be guided, as ever, by you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Do not worry, I will not run out of material. I have not yet moved on to fuel poverty, which will be the main thrust of my remarks. I am now going through the preliminaries. It is a bit of a warm up. It is important that we explore in some detail a new clause of such dimension. As my hon. Friend has said, it was brought forward so late in the day. It was a pleasant surprise to see it set out in the amendment paper, but it caught us all as a bit of a surprise. Perhaps you will forgive us, Madam Deputy Speaker, for not being quite as well prepared as usual, and perhaps not being able to examine these matters in the detail that we might otherwise prefer. This is just a cockshy at it. It is an amateurish attempt at a late date to tease out some of the salient features. If I miss the target occasionally, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sure that you will be as forgiving as ever.
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I move on to the partial answer to the question that I have raised. The new clause states:
the clause is trying to be helpful—
"means any way in which a local authority can exercise any of their functions, including . . . taking any particular step in the exercise of a function, or . . . not exercising a particular power".
Perhaps this begins to answer the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone). Perhaps there is a hint that local authorities should be looking the other way in planning terms when something of this sort is in the offing. Perhaps they should not be fulfilling the normal duties that we would expect of them if they are not to exercise a particular power.
That is rather worrying to me because a potential conflict could arise between the desire for microgeneration and the objective of our planning regime to protect amenity, whether it be visual, noise or whatever. That will be the subject for a later debate under a later amendment. However, the issue is germane in considering the new clause.
There is another unresolved question. What are we expecting local authorities to do in not exercising a particular power? Does that have any sinister connotations in an easement of the normal rigours of our planning regime and what we expect of it?
Mr. Chope: Before my right hon. Friend moves on, will he respond to my concern that the Secretary of State will be able to second guess local authorities under the new clause? It is only if he thinks that something will be one of the effects set out in subsection (3) that that can be a requirement upon a local authority to take account of the matter, even if it disagrees with the Secretary of State.
Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I have not mentioned that. I will come on to potential conflicts under subsection (6). As ever, the Secretary of State will play a vital role. He is explicitly referred to in the new clause. He is given an explicitly leading role. That gives rise to the possibility of some conflict given the view that the Secretary of State may take as against the view that local authorities, at their different levels and with their different perspectives and priorities, might have. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle said that he would not move the new clause in his name but he referred to it. He used the word "priority". He said that he wanted local authorities to give priority to climate change. That worries me.
That raises the important question of where in the priorities of a local authority does my hon. Friend think that climate change should come as against, for example, the welfare of the elderly, the protection of young people, the improvement of the local environment and the management of traffic, social services and the plethora of local authority services that bear directly on the well-being and everyday lives of our constituents and our taxpayers?
It sounds good to say that climate change should be given priority. No doubt the interest groups that seem to have ever more influence in our affairs in this place will be pleased when they hear someone saying—someone of the eminence of my hon. Friend—that we will ensure that local authorities give priority to climate change.
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That is priority over what? I want to hear what will suffer in terms of the priorities of local authorities if we allow climate change to go to the top, or near to the top, of the agenda. We cannot give something priority meaningfully without something else suffering. I want to hear much more about what will suffer if climate change, so-called, is given a much higher priority and a better role.
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