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As the Committee is aware, in the Church of England we carry a very heavy responsibility for an enormous proportion of the Grade I, Grade II and Grade II* listed buildings of our nation. For that reason, I wish to support wholeheartedly the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth.

Lord Williamson of Horton: When I intervened prematurely a while ago, I said that I thought that Amendment No. 37 was wonderful. In the 50 minutes since I made that statement I have not changed my mind. It is a very important amendment for this reason: we are moving to a policy where we shall make it possible for new and important development projects, which may affect many more people than in the past, to go through more swiftly and more effectively. I support that very strongly. The other side of the coin is that people must be able to feel, in so far as these developments are likely to affect the built heritage, ancient monuments and important landscapes, that there has been proper appraisal before they go forward. That is the proper balance for citizens. I believe that that view will be shared by a large part of the population. Therefore, I support this amendment and hope that the Government will be able to accept it.

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Lord Judd:I warmly applaud my noble friend for his crucial amendment that follows from the previous debate. In moving his amendment, my noble friend

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argued that we have come to a moment of truth in our social and economic history and have to ask ourselves what sort of nation we want to be and what values matter in our society. I always feel deeply troubled that we have moved into an age of instant living, which is having far-reaching effects on our intellectual and other activities. People do not want to think about their roots and origins, but understanding our roots, origins and history is important in making a success of our current society and our future society. This amendment is central to that consideration.

I ask the Minister, for whom, as she knows, I have unbridled admiration and whom I regard as one of the more cultured and civilised members of the Administration, to remember her role is that of Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. Communities are not just a gathering of people who happen to live in a particular area; real communities have roots and have been fashioned by their interplay with the environment, the landscape and the struggles that have gone on in their vicinity. Living in a part of the country that until comparatively quite recent times was rooted in conflict—the border area of the north of England—I understand that, and it seems to me that it is important that we regenerate the significance of these issues. The amendment tabled by my noble friend emphasises that and deserves all possible support.

Lord Chorley: I find it quite difficult to follow the wonderful flow of the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I expect we shall be hearing from him again shortly. In supporting these amendments, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on the extraordinarily comprehensive, thorough and relatively brief way in which he made his case. The importance of the built heritage cannot be exaggerated. It is as important as the landscape heritage. They march together, interlocked.

At this stage, I should declare an interest as I arrived at that view from working in the National Trust for many years, ending up with the privilege of being its chairman, which was the finest job in the land, even though it was unpaid. The National Trust is built of landscape and built heritage intermixed, and we must always see them together. I was interested to note that the Bill refers to the National Trust Act 1907, which gave the National Trust power to declare buildings or land inalienable; that is to say, they cannot be subject to compulsory purchase, except through a parliamentary process. That is the huge strength and power of the National Trust and a highly responsible position. I thought it rather neat that the noble Lord’s amendment follows that clause in the Bill. That seems very appropriate.

The Earl of Caithness:I declare an interest as chairman of a community archaeological trust and a couple of heritage trusts, albeit up in Scotland, but the principle is the same. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is seeking to protect archaeology. In Caithness, we have had huge problems with wind farms, like my noble friend Lord Reay. The real problem is money. When money is offered by a developer, as it will be with these infrastructure projects, people will be very

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keen, particularly in these economic times, to raise whatever finance they can when other forms of income are hard to generate, particularly for farmers and communities. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, was right that this is about communities. I have not discussed this with my noble friend Lord Reay, but I am sure that the wind farm proposals that he faces have divided communities. In Caithness, they have divided families, have divided the county into all sorts of groupings and have destroyed communities where people were working together. The incentives that a wind farm is able to offer have destroyed communities.

With that has gone the heritage. The remote areas where people want to put wind farms and find greenfield sites are where the archaeology of our heritage still is. There is no doubt that a huge amount of our archaeology and heritage has been destroyed, often by the Forestry Commission planting trees, which was not given proper consideration and has done immense damage. We must learn from our mistakes. Let us write this into the Bill in some form now so that the things that we cherish, which will be important for future generations as well as for ourselves, are taken into account.

Baroness Whitaker: I rise briefly to support this group of amendments, which follows the debate on the previous group of amendments and the debate on the group that I introduced. Respect for good design and the beautiful landscape of the past is no less important than creating it for the future, particularly if we think of what people value about where they live.

Lord Jenkin of Roding: I wish to draw a short point to the attention of the Minister and ask a question. It follows on well from what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, and my noble friend Lord Caithness. The amendment uses the word “landscapes” and much heritage takes the form of landscape. In recent years, I have become more familiar with the landscape on the coast of east Essex and Suffolk. It contains some beautiful coastline, some National Trust properties and the Minsmere bird reserve, which is outstandingly beautiful. One can understand that that windy coastline may, at some stage, tempt wind farm developers. I support this amendment to the extent that there must be a complete appraisal of the value of that landscape before any such proposal is put forward.

My question comes from paragraph 3.9 of the White Paper, which contains a number of bullet points about things that national policy statements would need to reflect. One is that national policy statements would:

“Indicate how the Government’s objectives for development in a particular infrastructure sector had been integrated with other specific government policies, including other national policy statements”.

On the east coast of Essex and Suffolk, there are two very large nuclear power stations. I mentioned Bradwell the other day, which may well be redeveloped and there is, of course, Sizewell, which is a prime candidate for a further nuclear policy statement. If there is to be a national planning statement about nuclear power, how will that relate to the alternative, which some people in the area are pushing, that it should all be provided by wind farms instead?

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I found myself with a friend the other day standing on the coastline. Right down to the south I could see Bradwell; further north, one could see Sizewell. I said to her: “Which would you rather have? A nuclear power station at Bradwell and another reactor power station at Sizewell; or would you rather see the entire coast, onshore and offshore, populated by wind farms?”. She said, “There is only one answer to that question. Yes, those two buildings are large, but they are quite specific, clearly located and, in a sense, one has got used to them”. She would be absolutely horrified if she thought that, in place of that, there would be a complete forest of wind turbines on and offshore, which, even if they are all working, would not produce as much electricity as would the two nuclear power stations.

As I understand it, there will be two separate national policy statements. The question is: how will they be related to each other? Will that be done by the Secretary of State putting that forward to Parliament for consideration, or will it be for Parliament to say, “We have two statements; Parliament must decide what is to be done”? I would be most grateful if the noble Baroness could explain how that is to operate.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: I was not going to talk to this group of amendments, because the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and other noble Lords have spoken so splendidly on what is a real issue, and one that we need to ensure is taken account of in national policy statements. I wanted to draw a parallel and to speak on a subject on which I have not tabled an amendment. I believe that the Minister intends to do the right thing, but I want to press her to ensure that she will do the right thing on our alternative cathedrals and churches—that is, our most important nature reserves, the Natura 2000 Network and the SSSI network, which are, in fact, equivalent to the cathedrals, churches, historic buildings, beauty and spirituality about which both the noble Lords, Lord Howarth and Lord Judd, spoke.

I can remember the bad old days of development in this country when it was almost as if every road building, airport and port proposition was an exercise in joining up the dots of our natural nature reserves, the Natura 2000 sites and our SSSIs, because they were the only open space available between existing development. I do not want us to go back to that point, because we all remember the huge conflict and public concern that there was at that time in places such as Twyford Down and Newbury. There was Maplin, which we mercifully fought off as a site for a new London airport, although I gather that the mayor favours that as a prospect. Of course, we have my favourite topic, the Severn Barrage, which would destroy a substantial number of the Natura 2000 sites and SSSIs.

I am cheating a bit in my comments on Amendment No. 37 because, although it is about the ancient heritage, archaeology, architecture and landscape, I know that the Minister intends to bring forward regulations to address the relationship of national policy statements to the habitats directive, which takes account of the Natura 2000 sites. I press her also for clarification on

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the relationship between national policy statements and the SSSI series protected under national law. I have not tabled an amendment covering those issues because I believed that that guidance would be sufficient, but it would be admirable if we could see the draft regulations before Report to reassure ourselves that there is an adequate relationship being mapped out between those alternative cathedrals and the national policy statement.

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Baroness Hamwee: I would hate it to be thought by outsiders that I was of the philistine tendency.

I was wondering about Amendment No. 37, because it is so big picture, but I shall be interested to hear how the Minister responds to it. It is important, given that national policy statements may be location-specific, so that both the medium-sized and the big picture are relevant. I am not sure that I have heard anything to this effect, but it seems to me that the real crunch is: can an NPS not proceed because of heritage and landscape issues and could an application be refused because of those issues? That would focus the mind and ensure that these matters are fully considered. I will not repeat all the things with which I agree about the importance of both of those to our culture, our way of life and all the things that we appreciate about our country.

Lord Dixon-Smith: This is another of those areas where there is general agreement. The noble Baroness has put her assent in terms that force me to my feet to agree; otherwise, I might have stayed seated. We need to recognise a difficulty, because Amendment No. 37 applies to national policy statements. There is a problem with that because the majority of national policy statements will not be site-specific. Because they are not site-specific, it will be difficult to apply assessment of the heritage aspects of a particular development. The noble Lord has already tabled amendments in this field and may need to think a little more on Report about how we build consideration of the detailed subjects into the procedures of the commission and the procedures which the applicants are required to undertake. That is where the real work will have to be done.

When you deal with the applicants' procedures, part of the application might be to enhance and improve conservation of buildings, and so on. That is a separate consideration, but I thought it worth mentioning here. It will be difficult to consider those matters under Clause 37 whereas, later in the Bill, we can do something practical about these issues.

Baroness Andrews: This has been another excellent debate about, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, things that we all appreciate. I am grateful for the kind words of my noble friend Lord Judd. We spent a very interesting but rather long evening in a church hall listening to a lecture on the history of water power in the Lake District, accompanied by many different slides, as I remember. The argument was that many communities had been built around the industrial heritage. That is now of course the rural heritage, but

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it was kind of him to say what he did. I hope that it is true because I do not need to be persuaded again of the value of what we are discussing in these amendments. The absolute test of our planning system is its ability to reconcile the need to protect heritage, however we describe it, as well as the need to provide the things that we need to thrive as a community. In this context, we are talking about infrastructure. The point about our planning system is that it provides that robust protection. This is about what shapes, frames and nurtures community, which is why it is important.

This Government have a fine record of promoting heritage as the source of regeneration as well as an asset of conservation. We have strengthened the protections for world heritage sites, and we are about to strengthen our planning statements on planning the historic environment and archaeology by bringing together PPSs 15 and 16. We are proud of what we have been able to achieve because we take it extremely seriously. I will respond to noble Lords’ amendments in turn and with sympathy, but first I should say that the test is whether the amendments would improve the system, which does work, in the context of what the Bill is about.

Amendment No. 37 would require the Secretary of State to carry out a specific appraisal of the impact of the relevant policy on the built heritage, scheduled ancient monuments and important landscapes in addition to the existing appraisal of sustainability. I will write to the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, on the points that she made, because she did not table a formal amendment and I do not have a formal response. I have talked about how our new protections of heritage, such as bringing together PPSs 15 and 16, will strengthen what we already do. They will in turn critically feed into the national policy statements and will be taken account of in IPC decisions, so we already have the foundation for the sort of protections which my noble friend Lord Howarth seeks.

It would not, however, be productive to require a separate appraisal of heritage. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, made an important point about the sheer difficulty of doing this, given the nature of the NPSs. It could also be counterproductive, because heritage and sustainability are interdependent but are not always seen to be so. When we link the two, we create a platform to advocate that what we build must be both. As I said in our debate on design, it would lead to competing demands for a separate appraisal and for the disaggregation of the very thing that we are trying to make the great strength of these national policy statements—their ability to carry and integrate policies and apply them so that we are all certain of what will be achieved and of what is predictable for those who want to invest in our infrastructure and those who will have to live with the consequences. I cannot accept Amendment No. 37, on those grounds.

I assure my noble friend Lord Howarth that the process of appraising sustainability will have to take account of heritage matters. There is no way in which it cannot. It will cover the effects on the natural and built environment and the landscape and the cultural heritage, including architectural and archaeological heritage. All this will be fully and properly assessed as

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part of the appraisal of sustainability, which I hope reassures my noble friend Lord Judd, too. These will be considered at a strategic level and, where they are identified as key sustainability issues, they will form a focus point in the process. That is the purpose of integration. Both the appraisal of sustainability and the NPS will be subject to public consultation and to scrutiny in Parliament.

Amendments Nos. 175 and 187, which would amend Part 5, aim to add specific provision for heritage to the pre-application process. Clause 36(3) makes it clear that certain details and documents must be included in an application for an order granting development consent. Amendment No. 175 seeks to add a requirement that applications must also demonstrate full regard for the conservation of the built heritage. Amendment No. 187 would specify English Heritage and Cadw as statutory consultees for applications in their relevant areas.

Here I must reiterate familiar arguments. The decisions of the IPC will depend on the national policy statements, and it is essential that they set out policy as clearly as possible on the type of infrastructure in question. When taking decisions, therefore, the IPC will take into account the NPS, prescribed matters and the local impact report. This is where local significance and local heritage come into play. As my noble friend Lord Howarth said, local heritage is of deep concern to local communities. Under Clause 58, local authorities will be invited to submit a local impact report, once an application has been accepted, which will give details of the likely impact of the proposed development on the authorities’ area. They will be bound to assess the impact on the local environment and to have an environmental impact statement. Where applications are accompanied by an environmental impact assessment—we expect that most will be—the EIA will look at the likely significant impacts of the proposals, many of which will include effects on landscapes of historical, cultural or archaeological significance, which all fall under the heritage umbrella.

Amendment No. 214 is also part of this concern, and would require developers to consult English Heritage and Cadw. The pre-application procedure requires consultation with local authorities, affected people and parties, and statutory consultees. It has yet to be determined which bodies should be statutory consultees for this purpose, and it would not be right—it would be too constraining and too rigid—to set out a list in the Bill. We do, however, expect English Heritage and Cadw to be specified for applications in their relevant areas. I hope that my noble friend is reassured by that.

Amendments Nos. 377 and 399, which would amend Part 7, aim to place additional protections on listed buildings. Acceptance of Amendment No. 377 would mean that development consent orders, which affect listed buildings, could proceed only if subjected to special parliamentary procedure. I was grateful for the explanation given by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, of how those procedures have attached to the National Trust property.

Members of the Committee are no doubt aware that special parliamentary procedures are complex and extremely time-consuming for everyone involved.

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Frankly, they are usually avoided if at all possible. I think the idea would strike fear into the heart of those who look after our heritage if they felt that they had to go through these processes. Some special parliamentary procedures appear in the Bill because these provisions are based on existing legislation, in particular on equivalent provisions in the Acquisition of Land Act 1981, to which the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, referred. In short, we are replicating existing legal provisions only in so far as they are already established features of the protection of special types of land against compulsory purchase.

In all sincerity, we do not believe that it is sensible or necessary to extend the scope of special parliamentary procedures to new areas, given the complexity and extra time that this would involve. In the context of the Bill, it would run counter to the need for a faster, less complex single consent regime, which is one of the great prizes that the Bill has to offer. Again, let me reassure the noble Lord that the fact that we are moving towards a single consent regime absolutely does not imply any reduction in the protection granted to heritage assets. We do not intend promoters of major infrastructure projects to have to seek a separate listed building consent or conservation area consent. There will be no need for a separate bit of paper. However, heritage will be looked at specifically under the single consent regime.

I stress, because this has inspired much of the debate this evening, that there will be no reduction in the justified protections which our listed buildings and heritage assets currently enjoy. We intend the IPC to consider specifically the justification for works that would affect a listed building or a heritage asset by using the same considerations that Ministers and local planning authorities presently apply under the existing heritage consent regimes.

We intend that in considering whether to grant development consent that would affect a listed building, the IPC shall have special regard to the desirability of preserving the building or its setting or any features of special architectural or historic interest which it possesses, and likewise for cases of major projects which affect scheduled monuments and conservation areas. To make that clear, we intend to prescribe these matters in the decision test under the powers already in Clause 101(2)(c).

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Where the IPC considers that works to listed buildings and so on are not justified, it should not grant consent for such works. It may be that the IPC will approve other parts of the application which would not affect the heritage asset, but decisions on whether to authorise works that would affect heritage assets would be taken specifically in terms of heritage value and not merely as one factor among many. As I said, and the noble Lord might appreciate my reiterating it, we intend that the IPC will contain sufficient heritage expertise in order for it to reach those decisions. I hope it is clear that we are determined to maintain the protections that these buildings enjoy.

Amendment No. 399 would place an additional duty beyond those already found in Sections 66 and 72 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation

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Areas) Act 1990 for planning authorities to have regard to the purpose of conserving the historic environment. It is important to say that because this is where the protections lie. As my noble friend Lord Howarth knows, those duties are: to have special regard to the desirability of preserving the building or its setting or any features of special architecture or historic interest which it possesses, and to have special regard to the desirability of preserving and enhancing the character and appearance of conservation areas. Those are extremely strong and explicit protections. We already have them and we observe them.

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