Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-23
Topic: Housing
Donald Foster (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, so often during our deliberations on the Bill we have been hampered by a lack of information. We have not seen the draft regulations—we have discussed that many times. We have not even seen the result of the consultation that is currently taking place. Of course, we should remember that that consultation is not due to finish until 15 April and the responses are going to be analysed over the summer, so we will have finished all our deliberations on the Bill long before those responses have even been analysed Furthermore, we have not seen the Government’s response to the excellent report by the DPRRC. I remind noble Lords that last night the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, said: "I also confirm to noble Lords that I will be responding to the DPRRC report tomorrow, as well as giving my intentions for Report".—[Official Report, 22/3/16; col. 2276.] I have been checking on an hourly basis, with all relevant bodies, including the Committee Office, whether they have received that response. I say to the Minister that I am certain that even though that has not yet been made public she will have a copy of it, and I hope that when she replies to this debate she will furnish the House with details of the Government’s intentions in relation to this part of the Bill and their responses to the committee’s recommendations and concerns, of which there are a large number Those concerns are in addition to those raised by my noble friend Lord Greaves and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham—concerns that I share. They add to what the committee says. It talks about the Bill being drafted very widely, in terms of the powers conferred on the Secretary of State, and goes on, in paragraph 38, to say: "These are important provisions which, in effect, empower the Secretary of State to require local authorities chosen by him to privatise the processing of planning applications for a trial period. The impact on local authorities and their staff, and on those submitting planning applications, could be considerable" Yet we have no details to enable us to work out in detail what that impact would be The committee goes on to say: "It is striking that the clauses contain no requirement on the Secretary of State either to consult before making pilot regulations, or to publish a report on the outcome of pilot schemes" This is a point raised, quite rightly, by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and is covered by an amendment from my noble friend, which comes later Most damningly of all, the committee then goes on to describe the powers given to the Secretary of State as "almost unfettered discretion", on an issue about which we have no details with which we can work out what should be done. Not surprisingly, therefore, the committee goes through a long series of recommendations —changes to the legislation that it would like. There is a requirement to set out the intended purpose of the pilot regulations on the face of the Bill; to specify that the affirmative procedure should apply to every exercise of the powers conferred by the clauses; to require the Secretary of State to consult local authorities and other interested parties before making regulations; and to provide on the face of the Bill for the maximum duration of pilot regulations. The committee’s report goes on to say: "We also consider it inappropriate for the Bill to confer these highly significant powers on the Secretary of State without also requiring him to prepare and lay before Parliament a report on the outcome and effectiveness of each pilot scheme" My point, in going into some detail about that, is that we know that the Minister will have with her now a response to each of those points. It is incumbent on her to share those responses with the House before we finish our deliberations on these clauses in Committee. However, we also need from the Minister some clarity on other issues—for example, the pilots themselves—because we have at last been furnished with a timetable for the various bits of secondary legislation that will come before us. I am grateful to the ministerial team and their staff for providing us with that, but it is not a great deal of help when every single page that we have been given has a heading that helpfully says: "Timings are indicative and may change as policy develops" I remind the House what it says in the limited information with which we have been provided in relation to the section headed "Processing of planning applications by alternative providers": "How many SIs are currently planned? One. What procedure? Negative", which I hope will change to affirmative. It then asks: "What will they deal with?", and says that: "The regulations will cover … the scope of the pilots" Later on, it talks about "pilot areas" and so it goes on, with reference to pilots in the plural. Indeed, we know that in the memo to the DPRRC the memorandum said: "It is likely that different procedures may be trialled in different pilots, to see what works best" It is quite clear that the intention is to have a number of pilots, yet when I look at the question: "What are the key timings?", it tells me that is not going to be a long time. It says that the consultation, "closes on 15 April and the responses will be analysed over the summer, and the pilot scheme designed as a result" Here the word is singular: there will be one type of pilot rather than multiple pilots, so confusion begins to set in as well There are then confusions in relation to other aspects of the legislation. We had a discussion at a late hour last night, instituted by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, with her excellent amendment at midnight on the issue of planning fees. What we learned during that deliberation was that the vast majority of councils lose a great deal of money from the planning process. The average recovery is about 50%. We know that London boroughs, for instance, are losing somewhere in the region of £40 million each year on the operation of their planning departments. We also discovered that the increase which the Government are considering is to be no more than inflation since 2012 and that some councils deemed to be underperforming will get less than that. From the current plans, we therefore know that local authority planning bodies will continue to lose a great deal of money from this process. The question then has to be asked: if in some places we are going to privatise the process and bring other bodies in, how are those bodies going to come in knowing that if they have the government-prescribed fee scheme they will lose a great deal of money? It is simply not going to happen, so what is in the Government’s mind in relation to the setting of fees? I have done a detailed analysis of all the documents to try to help me work out what the fees should be. I looked, for example, at the technical consultation document with this very intriguing headline, which suggests that we will get a good detailed answer: "Question 8.2: How should fee setting in competition test areas operate?" But it reads: "In competition test areas, applicants would select who they want to process their planning application and pass it direct to the provider with the appropriate fee" That is all it says about the fee structure within the technical consultation document. The Explanatory Notes are equally helpful, telling us that: "Clause 147 provides that regulations may set out how fees will be set, published and charged" But since we do not have any of the details because we do not even have draft regulations, we are in a great deal of difficulty The Government are going to find themselves in real difficulty if they allow full cost recovery and a profit for some people who come in, compared to local councils, which will charge only 50% of that price. That is hardly a good way of testing the so-called competitive market. It fails to take account of the many difficulties that different local authorities will face. We will have an opportunity to discuss this in a bit more detail in deliberations on some of the other elements of this legislation I want to end with one other area of confusion. It is pretty clear from all the documentation I read that the Secretary of State is going to decide which local authorities’ planning departments will have competition forced on them. I have looked very closely at the Government’s consultation document and I wish to read to the Minister what it says in chapter 8, paragraph 8.1: "Nor is this about preventing local authorities from processing planning applications or"— and these are the words from the Government’s own document— "forcing them to outsource their processing function" Can the Minister tell us whether this is about forcing some councils to do this, or not? You cannot have a situation where the Government go out to consult on something and tell the people whom they are consulting one thing, when the reality of what they are planning is totally different.