Deregulation Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-11
Topic: Housing
Eric Lubbock (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, if the provisions regarding short-term lettings were unsatisfactory, these provisions coming before your Lordships at this stage of the Bill are unsatisfactory in spades. The amendments that we are now looking at are in substitution of the new clauses reducing the power of Parliament over the order-making power to designate land as urban development areas and to establish Urban Development Corporations. The Delegated Powers Committee received those amendments originally on 25 October, and a memorandum explaining the nature and purpose of the proposals on 26 October, giving it time to report at lightning speed on 29 October. The report severely criticised the original proposals as a breach of the undertaking in the consultation document to obtain express parliamentary approval for these proposals, and called on the Government to withdraw them before the next stage in Committee The amendments were accordingly withdrawn but, unfortunately, as the Delegated Powers Committee pointed out in its further report published yesterday, the two new clauses that we are now considering still provide for parliamentary approval to be via negative, rather than affirmative, resolution until 31 March 2016. This means that until that date, interested parties would not have the right to petition against orders designating UDAs and establishing UDCs, as has always been the case in the past, leading to the hearing of evidence in a committee on the matters raised in the petition. The Government recognise that your Lordships would need time to consider and debate such a major reduction of our powers of scrutiny, but are insisting that in the case of Ebbsfleet—the only proposal likely to be affected by these amendments—they must pre-empt a more general debate I understand that in the consultation, some three-quarters of the respondents were in favour of this new town and one-quarter of them were against. That does not tell us whether any of the antis would have gone to the length of petitioning, but any who were minded to do so have been deprived of their rights although, as the Delegated Powers Committee points out, the Government gave no indication of this in the consultation. I am keen that Ebbsfleet should go ahead rapidly, but I regret the Government’s assumption that they could trample on the rights of scrutiny and the rights of private interests to be heard. They should have started the Deregulation Bill earlier in the Session or, at the very least, they should have found time for a debate on the proposal in the Minister’s letter that the negative procedure is appropriate for all UDC proposals, subject to a statutory right to consultation. I make no comment on the Government’s argument in the memorandum they submitted to the Delegated Powers Committee that the affirmative procedure leads to uncertainty, delay and a loss of business confidence which acts as an impediment to the process of regeneration that the UDCs are expected to deliver We are talking here about taxpayers’ expenditure of £1 billion on the infrastructure of these new towns, the first at Ebbsfleet in Kent, followed by others at Bicester, Ashford, Oxford and Northstowe in south Cambridgeshire. If the advice of David Rudlin, the winner of the Wolfson Economics Prize is being followed, they are the precursors to a further 35 similar new towns, giving a total of some 600,000 new dwellings, that will, "take a confident bite out of the green belt" Ebbsfleet is entirely brownfield, as we have discussed, but that cannot be true of all 40 new towns that are planned. How do the Government intend to amend the National Planning Policy Framework to avoid inconsistency between the NPPF’s severe restrictions on development in the green belt and the new towns policy of taking a confident bite out of it? Or do they intend to make ad hoc decisions in each case as it arises Will the Minister say how the new towns will make a proportionate contribution towards meeting the dire national shortage of affordable homes? In the case of Ebbsfleet, Land Securities says that it has plans to develop up to 10,000 homes, but is there not a Section 106 agreement for the company to make a contribution towards infrastructure costs in lieu of any obligation to ensure that a given proportion of the homes are affordable? In his helpful letter of 9 February, my noble friend said that the UDC will not have plan-making powers but will have to determine applications within the context of the affordable housing policies set out in the Dartford and Gravesham local plan core strategies, both of which require private housing developers to deliver 30% of the units as affordable housing Land Securities is not building any houses itself, but will reach deals with housebuilders on parcels within the site. The Section 106 agreement that the company reached with Dartford Borough Council does not require any affordable homes, the money being allocated to schools. The local MP, Gareth Johnson, says it would be wrong to suggest that there will not be any affordable homes and that it would be a matter for the local development corporation, but surely that is not the way it works. Since all the land is owned by a single company and its objective will be to maximize returns for its shareholders, the LDC will have no say in the matter, unless it uses its compulsory purchase powers. Will there be anything in the rules of the LDC that will encourage it to use those powers to achieve a proportionate mix of affordable housing? How else does the Government think that Ebbsfleet and the other new towns will make any provision for people who cannot afford to buy I also asked my noble friend last week how the Government would ensure that LDCs would provide appropriate accommodation for caravan-dwelling Travellers, whose needs are even less likely to be a priority for developers. My noble friend said that they would be required to plan for the needs of Travellers in the same way as local authorities. Does that mean that they have to start from scratch with a needs assessment? Would it not be simpler for them to reach agreements with the local authorities contributing to their area to assume responsibility for a proportion of the needs that have already been identified and assessed by those councils?