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Amendment 165E seeks to insert “development” instead of “growth” on the basis that change for the better is not necessarily growth. Amendments 166B and 182ZB seek to change “contribute to” to “further” in the context of contributing to the,
We believe that “further” is stronger than “contribute to”. This argument was made in the context of the
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Amendment 177F would provide for publication of the work that had been prepared. I assume that if a report of a sustainability appraisal—of the draft revision in this case—is prepared, it will be published. However, I do not really want to assume anything.
I have deliberately not tabled amendments seeking to define “sustainable development”. We all know about the dangers of starting to list items. Further, I think it is better that this legislation is consistent with other legislation. I have avoided detail not least because “sustainability” and “sustainable development” cover a concept that is continuing to develop. Accepted thinking is gradually changing and growing. Last year, during the passage of the Planning Act, there was some fancy footwork which inserted references to climate change and design. There is a reference to climate change in Clause 65(4), and to design in Clause 78(2). I do not seek to delete the latter reference but I question whether it should be such a particular aspect of sustainable development. Clause 78(2) states that for the purposes of sustainable development authorities,
Before somebody challenges me on this, I accept that good design extends beyond the aesthetic and includes, for instance, design which would achieve a low or nil carbon footprint. Nevertheless, to say that it has such a status distorts the whole of the picture.
Finally, Amendment 182ZA would insert in the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998 a sustainable economic development duty. As I have said, thinking moves on, and I would like to see the regional development agencies—if one has to have regional development agencies, as they are not our favourite quango—in line with what is happening and the duties imposed on other organisations. Perhaps I am misguided in this, but what the Government say they are doing in this part of the Bill is undermined. It would certainly leave a very big gap in policy. The role of the RDAs in the Bill and beyond the Bill is important and growing. We do not support these quangos—we do not support quangos generally—but if we are to have them, they should apply sustainability to economic development and should have wider considerations than what is relevant to their own different areas. That is in the third paragraph of my amendment.
More than 10 years ago, we debated the phrase, “where it is relevant to its area to do so” and we were told that there had to be a limit on what RDAs should take into consideration. There, thinking has moved on as well. Each RDA should be thinking outside its own boundaries as well as within them. I beg to move.
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Lord Hanningfield: We have Amendments 166ZA and 166ZB in this group. I agree with all that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, just said. Our first amendment inserts the word “sustainable”, and the second inserts,
We have talked a lot today about economic development, but we have to make certain—as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said—that it is sustainable. Therefore, we must particularly talk about the environment and the consequences of the social side of it. Unfortunately, we live with some of the problems of the rush for economic development and housing after the world war and even into the 1960s. We must consider the social side of all that we are doing and not put the economic crisis right at the forefront. All these things must be taken together, so one can have concerns about that, particularly the arguments about the greenbelt.
I do not like to refer to my county again, but areas around London are particularly conscious of the greenbelt and the way in which it protects all the counties from the encroachment of London. The greenbelt is a very valuable part of that. I would like to hear the noble Baroness comment on how some parts of the country are losing their greenbelt, which is very precious to most of the population.
Lord Best: Amendments 166A, 175A and 176A are in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. Unfortunately, she has damaged her knee and is confined to her home. She sends her apologies, and I have pleasure in speaking to the amendments on her behalf. Amendment 166A requires each regional strategy to make specific provision for meeting housing need in the region. Amendments 175A and 176A require the authorities involved in a regional strategy to consult relevant housing bodies.
Had the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, been with us, she would have made the following remarks. The Bill will mark a major shift in regional strategy and decision-making for all regions outside London. Regional assemblies currently have responsibility for housing and planning at regional levels and oversee the development of regional spatial strategies, regional housing strategies and regional housing investment advice to Ministers. However, under the Bill, assemblies will cease to exist and these responsibilities will pass jointly to regional development agencies and local authority leaders’ forums. These bodies will be required to produce a single regional strategy that must include elements for economic development and planning, but will not include important stakeholders—housing providers and trades unions—which the forerunner regional assemblies did. There is a risk that if this wider strategy is developed without specific housing objectives and with no input from housing experts such as the Homes and Communities Agency, housing providers or other stakeholders, there will be no clear mechanism or accountability for delivering the homes which this country desperately needs. Whereas the regional assemblies specifically address wider housing objectives, such as meeting housing need through regional housing strategies, the new structure will place an overwhelming emphasis on the economy from RDAs, and on planning, transport and the economy from
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Shelter and the National Housing Federation support these amendments, pointing out that more than 4 million people are on waiting lists for social housing in England—1.6 million households, which represents around one in every 13 households in the country. The Local Government Association expects the figure to rise to 5 million by 2010. There is a desperate need to build more homes in order to meet growing needs, and this should be a priority that is reflected in the regional structure. If she had been in her place, the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, would have said, “If my noble friend accepts these amendments, each regional strategy will then include specific measures to address housing need and the relevant housing organisations will be able to influence the strategy at an early stage. These changes to the Bill would surely be highly desirable”. On behalf of the noble Baroness, I beg to move.
Lord Greaves: This is a large and important group of amendments and is one of the two groups that are the meat of our discussions today. I am assuming that the Marshalled List I have before me is correct, so I shall speak to Amendments 165D, 177A, 177B, 177E and 177F, and to the question of whether the clause should stand part. First, however, we extend our sympathies to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. It is no criticism of the noble Lord to say that we would rather that she had been in her place to move her amendment. We look forward to her coming back.
These are the proposals for a new system of regional planning that will be called the regional strategy. If I have understood them, the strategy will be two plans or strategies in one. The regional spatial strategy, which my noble friend pointed out we have had for only three or four years, is to be abolished or subsumed into the new regional strategy. In addition, we are to have the regional economic strategy, which until now has been produced by the regional development agencies and is one of a number of strategies that informs the regional spatial strategy. We have to understand how the new system is going to work in relation to these two quite different functions. They are closely related, but they are different. The RDA is not mainly a strategy-producing body, but an investing body. It is a means by which funds from the Government, the private sector and other public bodies are channelled into particular projects in a region, which is what their economic strategy and planning is about.
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We also have the regional spatial strategy. When we were dealing with the Bill four years ago, we wrestled with the change from pure land-use planning into spatial planning and the difference between them. The truth is that it is a gradation. There had been a lot of spatial planning for a long time, but the emphasis was put on something more than simply land-use planning. It was indicative and an attempt to be proactive. Nevertheless, it was still part of the planning system.
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The regional spatial strategy is part of the development plan, which allows authorities to judge the merits of development proposals as they come forward. It consists of the regional spatial strategy, the local development framework and the local development documents, which are all being rolled into one. Is there a conflict in rolling into one document the policies, which are to be carried out actively to produce development, with the development plan, which judges those policies in which planning authorities—at whatever level, from the local planning authority to the Secretary of State—will have to judge policies when they come out? No doubt there will be a relationship with the national policy statements produced by the Infrastructure Planning Commission as they relate to that region. There is a difficulty here and I do not understand why the Government want to do it.
I have the first part of the regional spatial strategy for the north-west, which has been adopted. For a few months, we have had this document, which will now be put on one side. Part of its title is “Regional Spatial Strategy to 2021”. If only Governments could think in that sort of timescale, the whole system would be a lot better. I have brought this document because under the part entitled “Policy Context”, in which this RSS has been put together for the north-west, a number of important strategies are listed: the regional economic strategy; the regional housing strategy and a lot of other strategies, including the regional rural delivery framework, the north-west waste strategy, the sustainable energy strategy; the climate change action plan; the freight strategy; the regional health investment plan; the north-west tourism strategy; and the vision for coastal resorts, which would include Blackpool.
It is interesting that the regional economic strategy is at the top of the list, has a paragraph of its own and is obviously the most important. This strategy provides a regional framework as part of the policy context for the RSS. On the regional economic strategy it states:
“The RES provides a regional framework for economic development, skills and regeneration ... It identifies five priority areas—business; skills and employment; regeneration; infrastructure; and quality of life”.
I repeat, key aims and objectives—
the regional development association—
It is very much a proactive document, which is full of activity for carrying out policies.
Clearly, planning documents guide development. They should guide what should happen, what should be stopped in some places and what should be promoted in others, but it has a different function from that of spending other people’s money to achieve things. Putting them together in one regional strategy is fraught with difficulties. That is the general stuff for the clause stand part debate.
I shall speak briefly to the amendments that I have tabled. Amendment 165D seeks to disentangle sustainable economic growth and sustainable development or
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The matters to be taken into account in the revision in Clause 71 are quite interesting, because they relate closely to the matters set out in Part 1 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, which is about the RSS. As my noble friend said, it is to be repealed. However, the matters are slightly different and relate to slightly different things. When the Bill refers to,
- “national policies and advice contained in guidance which has been given by the Secretary of State”,
as something to which the responsible regional authorities must have regard, that is the same wording as in the previous Act, which is being repealed. As far as the RSS is concerned, there is no difference. However, the economic development side of it—the part that is coming from the RDA—is new. The question is how far it represents a greater degree of dirigiste economic planning from the centre. It clearly says “national policies” on development. There is an issue here that needs resolving.
Amendment 177B is about the resources that are available. The wording is again lifted from the 2004 Act, which referred to the planning process: the creation of the regional spatial strategy. The implication is that the resources are the resources available for putting that plan together. The implication of what is now going in is that the resources that are available are the investment resources that will be available for carrying out projects in the region. That is quite different and separate, and something that we need to ask the Government to allow us to understand. They need to explain why the same wording is appropriate for economic development activity rather than simply for planning activities.
The next amendment has been moved to another group. Amendment 177E is about the appraisal of the sustainability of the regional strategy when it is being put together. There has to be an appraisal of sustainability. I propose to insert the words “economic, social and environmental” before “sustainability”. The amendment is designed to probe just how far this new regional strategy is a shift of emphasis away from spatial planning and land-use planning towards proactive economic planning where the investment decisions will determine the planning decisions that come from them, how far it will be economic, and how far social, and particularly environmental, aspects will be taken into account at that stage. Is this what it looks like: a shift towards a purely economic emphasis in the regional strategy compared with the present regional spatial strategy? If it is not, why is it not?
I think that that covers the amendments in my group, but I want to add a final brief comment. Because the football match was snowed up this weekend
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It is all there on the internet in something called RS2010. The process has gone as far as commissioning people to produce a fancy logo, but I do not know how much that has cost. There is a Principles and Issues Paper, which I have not yet had time to read. Then there is a “think” piece on moving towards a north-west single regional strategy, produced by SQW Consulting. It is about 50 or 60 pages long, and I have not had time to read that either. Then I discovered that there is a standard letter—I am not sure to whom—signed by the chairman of the regional development agency, the NWDA, and the chairman of the new leaders’ forum, which is a proto-leaders’ board in the north-west. He is someone called Lord Peter Smith, which I think is an alias for the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh. I was hoping that he would be here today to explain it all to me, but he is not. Perhaps he is too busy with all the north-west organisations, for which he no doubt does an excellent job.
I am a little concerned that this process is rushing off apace in the north-west. It is at the stage of the initial consultation on principles and policies, and it will be a few weeks at least before this legislation gets through Parliament. However, although this performs a useful function in that it shows us what it might be like for everyone in the future, I am not sure that this is how to go about things.
Baroness Andrews: The snow brought many blessings, but clearly it brought its downsides as well. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Smith, is not here to answer those questions, but I shall do my best to say what he might have said.
I do not want to spend too long on this, but it is important that I contextualise this debate because many issues have been raised. I genuinely think that noble Lords opposite are struggling with some misapprehensions about what might happen and what is, and was always, intended. This takes us forward from the brief debate that we had on the previous group.
The problem with which we are struggling—in a way, it was described by the noble Lord when he asked whether we are imposing a conflict between the people who design the strategy and those who implement it—is that quite simply huge challenges face the regions in which the architecture is not sufficiently joined up. I shall go on to talk about how the spatial strategy and spatial dimensions will inform the regional strategy.
In essence, we all know that we have very different regions in this country. They proceed at different paces on all sorts of different things, and they are rich in
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A false dichotomy between growth and development has surfaced in some of these amendments. There is also an unnecessary fear that economic development will somehow triumph over and destroy our ability to protect, enhance, preserve and make the most of our environment, which we are trying to do in this country in many ways, not only in policy and legislation but in behaviour.
The growth that we are now talking about has to be driven to meet the challenge of globalisation, which we have seen so graphically in the past six months, and has to be sustained within environmental limits. We have said so in all our documents and arguments. But growth also enhances the environment and social welfare, and avoids catastrophic extremes in future economic cycles. Frankly, the economic health of our economy will be dependent on how proactive our regional authorities’ capacity for accommodating and promoting sustainable economic development is. However, it is not growth at all costs; this is about sustainable growth.
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The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, described in his inimitable way what was wrong with the present system. One way of addressing this issue is to recognise that, yes, we have in the past few years had the development of a challenging and different notion of planning—spatial planning. This has certainly taken us forward. The regional spatial strategies, many of which are now nearing completion, have done extraordinary service in bringing forward understanding and a view of future development that is different from anything we have ever done before. It has been a struggle. Part of the response has been to try to reduce the opportunity for confusion and contention in the next stage of the regional economic strategy by building a much better process into the Bill.
The noble Baroness asked whether this meant that the spatial strategy is somehow lost or diminished. The answer is absolutely not. We have been developing our spatial strategies, taking into account such intelligence as we have had at our disposal in the regions. I say “our spatial strategies”, but of course the regions have been doing that. At the same time, RDAs’ regional economic strategies for skills, investment, business support, manufacturing support and the observatories for people applying for skills and work have been developed separately. Many of these strategies are related to spatial planning but they have not been sufficiently joined up.
People who are trying to deal with this problem have said to me that, despite the successes at regional level, we could be more effective. Previously, organisations in each region have had to deal with a muddled set of strategic plans: one for economics planning, one for spatial planning, and one for housing. This has meant that businesses, individuals and communities have often been confused about who was responsible for what and what the priorities were. Duplication of effort,
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At the moment, when we consider integrating spatial and economic elements, for example, in relation to land-use planning, we might allocate housing numbers in a particular region. But in a spatial regional strategy we would make sure that housing allocations were underpinned by other sound strategies—for example, in the areas of transport, skills and jobs for settlements, the provision of public services and so on. We have done as much as we can in the spatial strategies to make sure that they are informed, but they are not strong enough or close enough to make a real difference to outcomes.
We have to get greater synergy and greater alignment. The benefits of this will be the creation of a less complex, less divergent and less time consuming system for everyone. The noble Lord is not right to describe this as more bureaucracy. The benefits will be greater co-operation and synergy between local government and the regional agency, instead of how the assemblies were not able to get purchases on those processes. They will have an opportunity to do so now because they will have to work together to produce a coherent plan for the development of the region. They will have to relate to the spatial elements of the strategy for economic development, housing, planning, energy supplies and transport in the context of generating sustainable development and growth. That will focus the funding for infrastructure regeneration.
The regional strategy will map out the kind of skills that are needed and the things that we will need to anticipate and plan ahead for. All this will help with managing climate change and mitigating it. It strengthens our ability to plan effectively and collectively for the future; it helps us to be more strategic and makes for a clearer framework, which everyone can recognise, of where the conversation takes place. It also means that we will have the benefits of transparency. This is an important point. At the moment, the examination in public of the spatial strategy kicks in at the final stages of the process. The examination in public in the process of making the RES will be at the formative stage, at the start of the drafting of the strategy, so that it can advise on the evidence base and issues of principle, and can flag up where the contentious issues are likely to arise. It will not all come at the end in a cliff-edge finale.
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