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Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath moved Amendments Nos. 116 and 117:
116: Clause 14, page 7, line 33, at end insert—
“(ea) the construction of a pipe-line by a gas transporter;”
On Question, amendments agreed to.
[Amendment No. 117A not moved.]
Lord Dixon-Smith moved Amendment No. 117B:
The noble Lord said: This group of amendments, including Amendment No. 117B and the Question whether Clause 21 shall stand part, was inspired by the Local Government Association. The problem with the highways definition of what is appropriate as national infrastructure is that it is too narrow, too limited and perhaps not appropriate. Roads where the Government are the highways authority are not necessarily of national significance. Some of the projects undertaken on those roads are certainly not of national significance. When one qualifies that, there are questions as to whether the definition is sufficiently wide, but I shall come to that later.
The Local Government Association is particularly concerned about this definition. Amendment No. 117B would introduce a new clause to allow highway projects whose impact is sub-national to be devolved to a council or a group of councils. The projects may be on roads where the Secretary of State is the highway authority, but very often the impact of projects on those roads is essentially sub-regional. Obviously, the Secretary of State would still have the power to designate a highway application as a national infrastructure project under Clause 34, but that would probably remove some of the projects from the Infrastructure Planning Commission and put them back into the normal planning system, which is where the real concern of the Local Government Association lies. It is concerned that this expeditious, but slightly more remote, methodology is inappropriate for dealing with more local projects.
Amendments Nos. 168A and 168B would deal with highway projects which were not so designated. Amendment No. 168A would remove the Secretary of State’s ability to call in highway applications, except in relation to national parks. Amendment No. 168B would enable the Secretary of State to require local authorities to form joint committees to deal with trans-boundary highway applications.
The current drafting means that any scheme involving the construction, improvement or alteration of a road for which the Secretary of State is the highway authority falls automatically to the IPC. The Local Government Association does not accept that that is appropriate in all cases. We thought that this was worth, at the very
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Amendment No. 134A deals with the problem in a different way. It puts in an arbitrary cost limit below which a project might be considered local and above which one would consider it to be national. That would have the virtue of simplicity and would not impose the sort of administrative procedures which the previous amendments imply. It might be considered that the figure of £250 million is wrong, but the amendment was tabled with the intention of trying to provide a simpler way of defining a national project.
I gave notice to the noble Baroness that I intended to raise another issue in relation to these highway projects which seems to have escaped the scope of the Bill altogether, and that is Trans-European Road Network projects, which are designated by Brussels. I have to declare a marginal interest in that a TERN road runs through the middle of my farm, and happens to be my main farm track. It is also the A120, a single-carriageway road that goes straight through one village. The traffic count is over 23,000 vehicles per day, which translates to one vehicle passing every five seconds 24/7. That is an extraordinary state of affairs. There is a project for a relief road, the price of which has risen to over £500 million for almost 10 miles of road. If there was ever a case of the best being the enemy of the good, this is it; but because it is not a national road, the improvement cost has to come out of the local budget. The regional budget for highways improvement is £100 million per annum. That road will never be built, and the people of the village will never get relief.
The more important issue is this: the Trans-European Road Network is a Brussels designation and of course has nothing to do with our national policy, but these roads are supposed to provide better transport links across the Continent of Europe. Of course we are not on the Continent, but the route I refer to is supposed to link the Haven ports in the east of Essex with Ireland. That may sound amazing, but it is the purpose of the original designation. So we have a classification of infrastructure projects designated by Brussels of which we apparently take no notice. There is at least a question here of whether projects on TERN routes ought not to be national infrastructure projects. If that were the case, given the existing financial situation it would make not a ha’porth of difference to the timing of that necessary road improvement, but it might facilitate it if and when budgetary conditions eventually become easier. I beg to move.
10.15 pm
Lord Greaves: I support the general thrust of the amendments moved by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith. Clause 21 is all-encompassing, certainly as far as the alteration of highways is concerned. Trunk roads, which are the responsibility of central government, are often little different from the highways that are the responsibility of the Highways Authority. Roads have been trunked and detrunked over the years, and in many areas ordinary roads are the responsibility of the Government. Clause 21 states that:
“Highway-related development is within section 14(1)(g)”,
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if the development is the construction, alteration or improvement of it. If it is the improvement of a highway, one of the conditions, set out in subsection (3)(c), is that it,
That is a reasonable test. It refers to a “significant effect”, and the word “significant” is important.
However, the word “significant” does not apply to alterations. Subsection 4(c) simply states that,
- “the highway is to be altered for a purpose connected with a highway for which the Secretary of State is (or will be) the highway authority”.
The definition of “alteration” of a highway includes “improvement” of a highway, so there is some confusion. As the Bill stands, it seems that quite a large number of relatively small schemes would automatically be sent to the IPC. That is clearly not what is meant; otherwise, the IPC would be completely swamped by cases of relatively minor changes, alterations and improvements to highways.
The Bill has been drafted with motorways in mind. The motorway where I live is a principal road, not a trunk road, but most motorways are trunk roads. The Bill was drafted with large-scale roads such as motorways and major dual carriageways in mind, not the relatively ordinary A-roads which constitute many trunk roads. The Government should look at this again to ensure that they do not put schemes before the IPC that ought not to be there.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Adonis): I am glad at this late hour to be joining the Committee’s deliberations as we come to the important provisions on the nation’s transport infrastructure.
Amendments Nos. 117B, 134A, 168A and 168B would remove highway developments from the scope of the new development consent system and would present an alternative way for highway schemes to receive consents of planning permission from a joint committee of local highways authorities. As the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said, that proposal has been put forward by the Local Government Association. The amendments would oblige the Secretary of State to decide on a case-by-case basis which road schemes he believed should be decided by the IPC. The implication is that other road schemes are not of national significance and so should be decided by alternative means. Amendment No. 168B suggests the model of a joint committee of local highways authorities.
The concern raised by these amendments is that there should be a proper measure of devolution in the consideration of road schemes. To meet this concern, my officials have been in contact with the Local Government Association over the past few months and the Government expect to consult soon—I hope later this year—on the possibility of devolving full decision-making powers on local highway schemes to a local level, which will go some way to meeting the concerns of the LGA.
We have also listened carefully to LGA concerns on the Bill more generally, hence under the Bill local authorities have a strong role in the IPC process at pre-application stage and special roles at examination stage.
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Alterations and extensions to the strategic road network are matters of national significance, hence the threshold in Clause 21. Roads for which the Secretary of State is highway authority are strategically vital for national flows of traffic, both passenger and freight. Improvements to this network can have wide-ranging effects, and even changes to small bottlenecks can have great implications for the coherence of the overall network. The noble Lord said that many of these works are very small scale, but their impact on the national network can be significant. For example, the current A1 Peterborough to Blyth improvement scheme includes works to six junctions along a 64-mile stretch of road passing through three county or unitary council areas and five planning authority areas. Each of the individual junction works might be thought of as less than nationally significant, but they are located in three planning authority areas and would have needed separate planning processes if such decision-making had been devolved. Of course the A1 is an important north/south route linking London and the south-east with the midlands, the north and Scotland.
This scheme, as a whole, taking all the works together, will deliver benefits both to the local area and much more widely across the country. As such, it is important not to be misled into equating the physical size of a project with its potential impact on the network and its potential national significance. However, even in respect of the strategic road network, we have taken significant steps of devolution. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to the detrunking exercise which has been taking place over the past decade. The desire to see that local decision-making was stronger in respect of roads that did not have a national network role was a major factor behind the extensive detrunking programme begun in 1998.
We are coming to the end of the detrunking programme and some 200 routes have been detrunked already. I have a list which I can circulate to Members of the Committee. There are now only seven routes in the entire country which remain to be detrunked; under the programme, around 30 per cent of the strategic road network has been transferred to local highway authority control. There has been a very significant devolution of decision-making control away from the Secretary of State as a result of this process. That figure of 30 per cent is a powerful testament to our commitment to devolve real control over the roads network to local authorities where there are not genuine strategic interests at stake.
Looking to the future, we recognise that patterns of traffic change over time, so the strategic road network will also continue to change. The position, I fully accept, is not static. I would be happy to look at particular routes, or part of routes, where it is felt by the LGA that the national/local balance is not correct. If the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Dixon-Smith, wish with the LGA to bring such routes to my attention, my officials would be content to look at them. However, our bona fides in this area are very strong, given the effect of the detrunking exercise.
Let me deal with the point of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, on trans-European network routes. I understand his point that these are not referred to in
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Lord Dixon-Smith: I have no particular desire to fall out with the people of Ramsgate over whether the route to their port is a strategic route. Will the Minister answer the questions about the A120 which I specifically raised? All the evidence that I have heard so far is that this is treated not as a strategic route but as a regional road to be dealt with entirely on a regional scale. It is a major problem.
Lord Adonis: Despite my extensive brief, I do not have brief on every single A road in the country. I promise to write to the noble Lord when I have briefing on the particular issue to do with this road.
Lord Dixon-Smith: The A120 runs from the Haven ports of Harwich and Felixstowe. It is supposed to go across country and ultimately be a link with Dublin, but there is an intervening bit of sea, which really means Holyhead.
Lord Adonis: I will look at the issue of the A120 and come back to the noble Lord.
Perhaps I may make one comment on the noble Lord’s proposal in respect of joint committees. We have discussed with the Local Government Association ways that we can improve the balance between local and national roads. However, we are not attracted to its proposal. We are not sure that the joint committees would have the capacity to take the decisions which the noble Lord proposes to give to them. There is also one major flaw in the proposal—I can see why it is there, because I assume that the amendment was drafted lock, stock and barrel by the LGA, but it completely undermines its effectiveness—which is that no proposal can be referred to a joint committee of the kind proposed by the noble Lord unless, as subsection (4) of the proposed new clause states,
The whole purpose of the proposal, which is to produce a more streamlined decision-making process where proposals involve more than one local authority, would be undermined if all those local authorities did not agree in the first instance that such a proposal could go to such a joint committee. I can understand, in light of the lowest-common-denominator way in which the LGA often works, why this part of the amendment is there, but that does not mean that it would be an effective remedy to the issues being addressed by the Bill.
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Lord Dixon-Smith: I am grateful to the Minister. He has dealt with these issues fairly extensively and, at this hour of the night, I shall not reply in great detail. I accept his point about trying to get all local authorities dealing with a particular application to agree. Having been a member of a local authority, I am all too aware of the difficulties of local authority co-operation. It is very easy to say it, but it is not as easy to achieve.
I was pleased by what the Minister said about the work that had already been done on devolution of schemes to local highways authorities. I appreciate also that when one starts improving a road such as the A1, which I occasionally use, while the individual schemes may be small, their impact is of major significance if you start to bang them together. The A1 is one of the major trunk routes in the country that still needs considerable improvement. The Minister has been very helpful and we will study his reply in detail. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Dixon-Smith had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 118:
The noble Lord said: I am going to duck out on this one. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in his response to the earlier amendments, gave us some reasons why mission creep might in certain instances be desirable. I need to think a little more about what exactly he said.
[Amendment No. 118 not moved.]
Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 119:
119: Clause 14, page 8, line 2, after “State” insert “shall keep under review the thresholds provided under sections 15(2)(c), 15(3)(b), 17(5), 18(2), 19(1), 22(3), 23(3), 25(4), 28(1) and 29(2) and”
The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 120 and 121. Reading the amendments together in respect of the review of what should be included and excluded as a nationally significant infrastructure project, noble Lords will see that my proposal amounts to the Secretary of State keeping the thresholds under review and being able to amend them, but not being able to add or remove projects. Addition and removal seem to give the Secretary of State more power than is appropriate. I acknowledge that the clause requires an affirmative resolution and that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee considered the point and let it go. However, in doing so, it stated:
“We should note that the memorandum has not sought to make a case for the removal of types of project, though we assume that the Minister will be able to do so to the House”.
This is my invitation to the Minister to make that case. I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: Although the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, did not move his amendment, I suspect that we are going to debate the issue in any case. On that basis, he may want to come into the debate.
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I understand that this is a very important matter. As we know, Clause 14 sets out the broad terms of types of project that would be nationally significant infrastructure projects for the purpose of the Bill. The detailed threshold for each type of project is then spelt out in subsequent clauses, Clauses 15 to 29. The Government’s view is that while it is very important to set these out in the Bill as they are, there also needs to be some flexibility. That is why we think it right that the Secretary of State should have an ability to make secondary legislation at a later date to respond to the changes in technology and national need that might arise in future.
We have already had a discussion on one type of technology that might need to be embraced in the Bill. We cannot foresee the future and the speed of technological development, but clearly one must hope that, particularly in view of the huge challenges that we face in relation to energy security and climate change, new technologies will come along to help us to meet those challenges. It is very important that this Bill allows us to meet those needs, albeit with appropriate safeguards.
I understand why the noble Baroness who has moved her amendment and the noble Lord who has not moved his have legitimate concerns in this area. The noble Lord has already referred to yesterday’s debate on counterterrorism. Although this is of a different order, we are debating some of the same questions about how far it is right for a parliamentary Bill to seek to anticipate future changes with the necessary safeguards and where there should be a boundary.
We think that we have got the balance just about right here. The noble Baroness’s amendments would remove the Secretary of State’s ability to add new types of infrastructure to the types that can be defined as nationally significant under the Bill or to remove types of infrastructure where the Secretary of State subsequently decides that they should not be designated as being NSIPs. It also introduces a new statutory duty for the Secretary of State to keep under review certain thresholds for NSIPs specified in the Bill and limits the Secretary of State’s power to amend thresholds, so that it can be exercised only in relation to those thresholds that are subject to this statutory duty of review.
The new system will deal with nationally significant infrastructure projects in the fields of energy, transport, waste, water and waste-water, and clearly what we think of as being nationally significant in these areas may be subject to change. At the same time, we want the definition of an NSIP to cover only projects which really are of national significance. The obvious example in the energy sector is offshore renewable projects. Changing technologies may also mean that in future we have a national need for a new type of transport or energy infrastructure, and one which is not covered by the terms of the Bill as we read it today. We have already debated carbon capture and storage technology as being one potential candidate, depending on how the technology advances. That is why we think that the Secretary of State should have a power to alter these thresholds in future.
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10.45 pm
The Committee can be assured that strong parliamentary safeguards remain in any such actions. Any set of regulations that alters the thresholds in Clause 14 would be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, which would ensure that Members of this House would have the opportunity to deal with and if necessary vote on the contents of any revision.
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