Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-23
Topic: Housing
Nicholas True (Conservative, Centre-right): I shall not follow on Clause 143 in particular, although it is an extraordinarily important debate. In a sense it reflects the tension that runs through the Bill. The Government have a clear commitment to provide 1 million homes—starter homes—and to get the country building. On the other hand, in doing that, they want to remove what they perceive, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, as obstacles. That tension runs right through the Bill and underlies this clause because one is naturally suspicious that some of the things that have been said here might have the effect of letting this clause go forward without understanding what precisely it means. The Explanatory Notes say that an example of what the Secretary of State might do would be to place conditions relating to sites of certain size, which is the point just discussed I hope the Government will be sensitive about affordable housing. It is extraordinarily difficult to do, not just in rural areas. I do not want to repeat something I said in an earlier debate, but in high land-value areas, it is very difficult to deliver affordable housing. It is really on the margins. Often in those areas, sadly one is dealing with communities that do not really want what they call social housing. The council has to take those people on and look them in the eye. It also has to take on developers and say, "We need to do this". We need a few tools in our hands to be able to do that. In going forward and, I hope, giving us a lot more information about the regulations, I hope the Government will be sensitive to that side of the argument. I understand all the suspicions that have been expressed, although the Committee has to understand the imperative for the Government to deliver building Clause 142, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, who unerringly draws our attention to every clause, is a massive clause with a massive schedule underlying it. It looks well intentioned. The right reverend Prelate said that if it helps resolve disputes, that would be good. I am all for arbitration. If the sense is that two sensible people come together and resolve the matter, of course, we would all want that to happen. But we do not have here soft arbitration, we have hard statute. This hard statute is backed up in Schedule 13 by a very lengthy set of things that will happen when this person, whoever it is, could be called in by the Secretary of State without even waiting for either the applicant or the local authority to call them in. He or she might be called in under new Schedule 9A(1)(4) in Schedule 13 to the Bill, when "a person of a prescribed description, requests the Secretary of State to make an appointment", of a person, and, "any prescribed requirements as to the consent of the … authority are satisfied" Then there is a whole set of Russian dolls—clause after clause providing what this process might do. So this is not soft arbitration; it is almost like creating a new inspectorate—it seems to be separate from the inspectorate at Bristol—to arbitrate in cases of Section 106. It may be the same as the inspectorate at Bristol—I know not. Then a whole lot of things have to happen. It looks a bit like quasi-justice. Quasi-justice is not necessarily always quick and it is certainly not cheap The interesting thing about planning—as anyone who deals with it knows—is that planning creates its own precedent. Planners have to take note of what inspectors have said in the past. They have to take note of past decisions as well as the law. These unknown persons are going to be dealing with cases, perhaps at the request of the Secretary of State, according to the Explanatory Notes taking into account, "any template or model terms published by the Secretary of State" We do not know whether they will be in regulations or what they might be. They will then give judgments on the Section 106 negotiations. It even says in the Explanatory Notes that they can, "consider two or more planning applications at the same time if the same or similar issues arise" So we have what is effectively a hard, quasi-statutory system of making assessments. These judgments will lie on the record. It may well become, in my judgment, a bit like the decisions of the inspector, something which the next arbitrator will then take notice of in a similar case—not the same case, as they can consider similar cases. The freedom of negotiation between local authorities and applicants is potentially trenched into by this process. The clause looks well intentioned, but a little too elaborate. It is a classic way in which Governments go about making law. They say, "Wouldn’t it be a good idea to bring discussions quickly to an end", because they want to get things done quickly. They think local authorities are always holding them up so they want to force them to go this unknown person to impose a decision. Once that report is issued, the local authority must comply—that is what is written in the regulations I would like to think a lot more about this going forward as a statute. It is good practice to consider arbitration, but it is very tough. We have just had a debate about basement development in which we were told it was not necessary to put stuff on the statute book as we have codes of practice and everything can be done in a soft way. Here this arbitration has to be legalistic and hard—it has to be on the statute book. I worry about that Section 106 negotiations are tough—they are meant to be. I went to a topping-out ceremony in my borough a few weeks ago with some people from one of the hardest-negotiating developers in the country. We had a good old time and they said, "My goodness your authority was tough in negotiations". I said, "Yes, and so was your business, but look what we’ve got: 300 new houses, affordable housing, community theatre and a community place in this town, which we got as a result of that negotiation". If that had gone to the person in Bristol, Peterborough or wherever who might be appointed under this system, I wonder whether any of that would have happened I asked my noble friend to reflect on this very elaborate, albeit well-intentioned, system. The Government are absolutely right to call on local authorities to try to cut negotiations short and do them as fast as possible, but we have far too much rigmarole of regulation, law and diddle-daddle in this country already, and this looks like more of that on the way.