Kramer and Goldsworthy on 'garden grabbing'

• Susan Kramer (Cabinet Office; Richmond Park, Liberal Democrat): MY local council has been attempting to strengthen its language under the unitary development plan. Is the Minister aware that it has been told that the language is already as strong as it could possibly be, and that if it does anything more it will be overturned by the inspectorate, and the UDP will have to be revised?

None of that has stopped developers running a guerrilla war, constantly attempting to buy every house with a sizeable garden in order to put massive and complex developments on them. Applications are often turned down on appeal, but developers will persist three, four or five times until the wretched developments eventually go through.

John Healey (Minister of State (Local Government), Department for Communities and Local Government; Wentworth, Labour): I have no idea what the precise wording of the hon. Lady's local planning policy framework is, and she has not quoted it, so I cannot give her a judgment on that. However, in a moment I shall come to the question in my mind about the nature of the evidence supporting the sort of concern that she has expressed. She has given an anecdotal example of a problem that she sees in her area. Let me make a little progress, and if she wants to come back to this point, I shall give way again.

• . . Susan Kramer: I thank the Minister for taking the positive approach of reviewing the problem. Will he consider the issues not only at national and regional level but at local level, because constituencies such as mine, where land is very valuable because houses are highly priced, are a particular target of developers? Looking at broad areas of the country, one might not find the problem, but if one looked at the specifics of some of my communities, one would find that developers bid at almost every opportunity when a single house with any reasonable amount of garden is being sold. My great fear is that in the recession, when many people will not have cash but developers will, a set of locusts will be going after all those opportunities.

John Healey (Minister of State (Local Government), Department for Communities and Local Government; Wentworth, Labour): The hon. Lady's question can be boiled down to asking whether our review will examine the evidence in local authority areas. Yes, of course it will.

I look forward to hearing from Mrs. Lait, because I am concerned that we too often see Tory councils and members of the Conservative party arguing about housing and housing numbers. That leads me to suspect, if I am honest with the House, that behind this amendment lies a serious rejection of our obligation to provide new housing for new generations. If the hon. Member for Beckenham can convince the House that that is not the case, I would welcome it, but too often the evidence from her own councils and her own colleagues has been to the contrary.

• . . Julia Goldsworthy: The debate about the focus of the review has centred largely on garden grabbing. Will the Minister reassure me that he will consider not just back garden development but development on green spaces as defined in the amendment, including

"land laid out as a public garden"

and

"land used for the purposes of public recreation"?

John Healey (Minister of State (Local Government), Department for Communities and Local Government; Wentworth, Labour): We have not yet made up our minds about the terms of the review, but I will take into account what the hon. Lady has said. A number of Members are clearly very interested in this issue, and if they wish to make their own contributions to the debate, I look forward to hearing them … …

• . . Julia Goldsworthy (Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Department for Communities and Local Government; Falmouth & Camborne, Liberal Democrat): I will be sure to pass on the many congratulations from all parts of the House on the arrival of Elowen Ruby Rose Rogerson, and I can safely say that, although my hon. Friend Dan Rogerson has committed a huge amount of time to this Bill, he would prefer to be with his family and their new arrival at this very special time.

A series of important issues arise in the groups of amendments that we are discussing, so I shall speak only briefly. The Liberal Democrats support Lords amendment No. 115, which is the culmination of concern from Members in all parts of the House. As Mrs. Lait said, the hon. Members for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) and for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) introduced private Members' Bills to protect back gardens and public open spaces, particularly in suburban areas, where there seems to be a greater problem than in other areas.

My hon. Friend Lorely Burt first raised this issue just six weeks after being elected to Parliament, and the proposal in her excellent Local Government and Planning (Parkland and Windfall Development) Bill would have gone further than this amendment, by allowing for local referendums to decide when public open spaces can and cannot be sold off. That was an interesting and innovative proposal which would have handed real power back to communities, who are rightly concerned that the character of their areas is being adversely and irreparably affected by developments in gardens and open spaces.

It is a travesty that much needed green space in urban areas is lumped into the category of brownfield land, and that the Government are insisting that there is not a problem when eminently developable, genuinely brownfield public sector land lies largely unused. Earlier this year, my hon. Friend Lembit Öpik received a ministerial response stating that 70 per cent. of the land owned by the Department of Health is not being used. Ministers cannot insist that communities accept unquestioningly new development on their public open spaces without at least putting their own houses, and the land on which houses could be built, in order. There is a large amount of brownfield land in my constituency, but it is highly contaminated from heavy metals from mining. Even in such areas, there is a hierarchy of brownfield sites, and often back gardens are the most attractive and most affordable to develop.

I hope that the review will look into such concerns and that it will be forward-looking in scope as well as backward-looking. There are great concerns in my constituency that the housing targets set by the regional spatial strategy can be fulfilled only by developing every available space in the entire constituency.

Susan Kramer (Cabinet Office; Richmond Park, Liberal Democrat): Is my hon. Friend aware that one of the attractions of garden grabbing is that developers are usually in a position to build a small development? They always build nine units in my constituency, because at 10 they would have to provide one social housing unit. If they take on much larger plots of brownfield land, they have to put in significant amounts of social housing. I have two local authorities that are desperately trying to increase social housing in our area, but they are finding that the whole interest of the development community is in using gardens for luxury housing.

Julia Goldsworthy: My hon. Friend makes a good point about how the incentives are skewed towards the development on gardens in too many cases.

In announcing his review today, the Minister is being very helpful. The Minister in the other place, whom my colleagues there have said was helpful and courteous throughout, has used the excuse that there has not been time to consult on the implications of this amendment. The review is very welcome, but I am not clear why there has been no opportunity to initiate such a review before today, given that the Bill has been going through the House for 11 months and the issue has been raised on numerous occasions by Back Benchers. I would appreciate some comment from the Minister on why a decision has now been taken to carry out that review, given that it would perhaps have been more timely to have made such a decision earlier. It is a little frustrating, because Ministers have been constructive in another place on a number of other issues, so it would perhaps have been more sensible for the Government to have tabled their own amendment to reflect the concerns that residents all over Britain have about this issue. Such a provision could have been inserted into the Bill and perhaps made subject to regulation. That would have given a lot of people more confidence that this issue was being directly addressed.

Caroline Spelman (Chairman of the Conservative Party; Meriden): To pick up on the point made by Susan Kramer, should not the review closely examine whether the Government's failure to define gardens correctly as gardens, rather than as brownfield land, has thwarted their endeavour to ensure that a significant percentage of the new homes that are being built are affordable? As she has pointed out, the failure to define gardens correctly has thwarted the Government in their own objective, and that should form part of the review.

Julia Goldsworthy: The impact of the lack of classification should be considered in that review. In a way, the amendment would make it easier for the Department to conduct such a review, because a clear classification of green space and brownfield land would make it much easier to separate the differential impact of development in these different areas. The lack of such differentiation at present makes the review's job more difficult.

The amendment involves a second principle that should be raised, and it places clear blue water between ourselves and the Government. The amendment says that guidance issued by the Secretary of State or the regional planning authorities cannot simply override local priorities, and we share that approach. The local authority and local views should take priority and precedence, yet this Government seem determined to subject communities to a litany of regional and national policies and targets that will necessarily trump local priorities in the pecking order and that, in many cases, will take a bulldozer not only to valued green spaces, but to local democracy. This is one example where the Government take that approach, but there are many others in the Bill. One need only look at the approach on national policy statements and on the Infrastructure Planning Commission to see that.

Lorely Burt (Shadow Minister, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform; Solihull, Liberal Democrat): May I offer my hon. Friend another example? In Solihull, the Government have ignored our regional development plan and have commissioned another independent consultancy, Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners, which has come up with recommendations that treble the already agreed allocation of new housing for the borough of Solihull. Perhaps she might like to ask the Minister how that can be and how it sits with the comments that he is making about putting decision making in the hands of the people who are elected in their local areas.

Julia Goldsworthy: In too many cases, it seems that the wishes of the local community are being undermined by the Bill, yet it is an opportunity to promote them. The Minister is in denial about the scale of the assault on back gardens and on small, but often highly valued, open spaces in urban areas. I welcome the door opening a crack, through the chance to examine this issue in the review, but before we are fully reassured we will need to hear much more detail on its terms and implications.

All too often, particularly in the Department for Communities and Local Government, excellent reports are commissioned but then, unfortunately, gather dust on top shelves once they have been completed. Members across the House are acutely aware of the need to build more housing, particularly social housing and affordable housing. We have suggested innovative ways to increase our social housing stock after a decade of failure in that area. As ever, the aim surely must be not only to build houses but to foster and maintain living, vibrant communities. It is not just about plonking people in rows of boxes; we must create places in which people want to live, work and grow up. We need places that are not just environmentally friendly but a friendly environment in which to live. Back gardens and open spaces in which to meet and play are essential to achieving that aim, so, for those reasons, my hon. Friends and I will support the amendment.

• . . Julia Goldsworthy: We Liberal Democrats welcome Lords amendment No. 160, which improves the Bill by seeking to reassert the role of the other place. It is a matter of great regret that the Government are attempting to freeze the second Chamber out of considering important regulations. The Minister argued that we are talking about a matter of financial privilege for this House. That sets a dangerous precedent for other regulations, and is not consistent with the consideration that the Lords give to other issues, such as council tax and business rates, which are both collected locally, and the business improvement district levy. Why should the CIL regulations be any different from regulations on those issues?

The Government have rightly removed the Secretary of State from the list of CIL charging authorities, so it is clear that we are talking about a matter for local determination, and not national taxation. The House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee accurately reported that the receipts from CIL are not to be paid into the Consolidated Fund, but will be spent by the receiving body. Crucially, it also reported that key clauses that the legislation will leave to regulations are not obviously financial. The regulations relate to liability for the charge, charity law, rights of appeal and compensation, all of which are issues of legislative principle, not financial privilege.

Baroness Hamwee, my colleague in another place, argued that the provisions are so ill thought out that clause 207 should be excised altogether and brought back in another Bill, when Ministers know what they want to do. Instead, the Government have tried to put the charge on the legislative express train, whose final stop will be a 90-minute debate in a tiny Committee of this House.

Unfortunately, this is not the first assault on the role of the other place; Ministers have had a go at doing the same thing before, with proposals to thwart the role of the House of Lords in deciding on secondary legislation. The Joint Committee on Conventions looked into the issues in detail in 2006, and comprehensively rejected the case for impeding the ability of peers to say no to regulations on occasion. Indeed, it found, quite specifically:

"There are situations in which it is consistent both with the Lords' role in Parliament as a revising chamber, and with Parliament's role in relation to delegated legislation, for the Lords to threaten to defeat an SI. For example ... when the parent Act was a 'skeleton Bill', and the provisions of the SI are of the sort more normally found in primary legislation".

Part 11 of the Bill is so skeletal as to be positively emaciated. That is why we tabled amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 160-to restore the basic right of a second Chamber in a bicameral Parliament to reject, in the last resort, a legislative proposal of which it does not approve. Ministers sometimes seem to forget that statutory instruments are legislation and should be treated as such. It is only right to treat them in that way, in terms of process, because we get better regulations as a result. The amendment is a welcome step forward.

Clive Betts (Sheffield, Attercliffe, Labour): Given that we are talking about matters that are not subject to the Parliament Act, is the hon. Lady saying she believes that the other place should have a right to veto legislation passed by this House?

Julia Goldsworthy: No, not a veto. I just think it is appropriate that the treatment of regulations made under the Bill should be consistent with the treatment of other regulations. The House of Lords has a right to consider issues such as council tax, business improvement districts and the levies that I mentioned, but are not given financial privilege; I see no reason why the regulations that we are discussing should not be viewed in those terms.

Almost all the substantial improvements made to the Bill are the result of pressure in the other place. It seems inappropriate to exclude the Lords from the process of putting flesh on the bones of this legislation. Peers have succeeded in getting some detail in the Bill, which is an improvement on what we had in this place. The process has proved that they are well placed to make rational, reasonable improvements as a result of genuinely cross-party consensus. On climate change, commons and open spaces, national policy statements, cross-examination during planning hearings, and people's right to avoid nuisance, the House of Lords has made a real difference to the Bill. It is better for their work on it, and the Minister should recognise that by withdrawing his opposition to a sensible amendment. He should allow another place to do its work, as we do ours. Those of us who believe in a bicameral Parliament should support the amendment.

. . Julia Goldsworthy: To follow what Mr. Truswell has said, Lords amendments Nos. 2 and 8 concede an important principle, concession on which we struggled to get in this place and had to go to the other end of the Palace for the Government finally to concede.

However, there is still value in pressing for that extra step forward. I, too, was disappointed by just how qualified is the phrase

"have regard to the desirability of".

As Mrs. Lait said, that smacks of a box-ticking exercise just to prove that regard has been given, rather than an effort to make a material impact on any decisions made. I urge the Minister to think again if he wants to send a clear signal, because amendment (a) would make it clear that the duty was categorical and not qualified.

There is also an important point about the need for good-quality design as well as environmental sustainability. Amendment No. 1 builds on that important principle in the Bill. On the environmental theme, it is good that under amendment No. 102 regional development agencies would have such an obligation.

The review of national policy statements is another significant area covered by this group of amendments. We welcome amendments Nos. 3, 9, 10 and 11, which set out more clearly the circumstances in which the statements can be reviewed. The Liberal Democrats hope for a rigorous scrutiny process for the statements involving both Houses of Parliament. Although the amendments do not build in the level of scrutiny that we think desirable, it will none the less be important that work that has been done is not undermined by an errant Secretary of State reviewing and changing the statements at will. It must be welcome that there will have to be a significant change in circumstances, which was not anticipated at the time of the initial statement, for those changes to take place.

The amendment, along with amendments No. 4 and Nos. 70 to 72, allows for part of a statement to be reviewed, so it precludes the baby from being thrown out with the bathwater. If a review is needed, only parts of the statement for which the circumstances have manifestly changed should be reviewed. We welcome also amendments Nos. 20 to 24, which make similar changes to the provisions relating to any legal challenges that may be brought against the NPS. In a similar vein, amendment No. 7 would give the House of Lords the right to report on statements in its Select Committees, and to expect a response. That is important, right and proper, but I would have preferred a greater role for both Houses, with voting on the statements themselves.

Amendments Nos. 12 to 19 on retrospection are welcome. They respond to concerns that were raised in another place, not least by our former colleague from North Cornwall, Lord Tyler, that clause 12 could introduce elements of retrospective legislation by allowing previous Government statements of policy to become designated national policy statements without proper scrutiny. The air transport White Paper was of particular concern in that regard. We are particularly pleased that clause 12(4) is to be excised from the Bill to ensure that the "Parliamentary requirements" in clause 9 will have to be met afresh when an old policy statement is to be designated as an NPS.

We also welcome amendment No. 63, which removes the word "exceptionally" from the provision on people being given oral hearings. I was disappointed by the Minister's reluctance to give local people their say, but it is good that there has been some movement. However, amendments (a) to (c) to amendment No. 65 would strengthen the measure further, and it is absolutely right that the same rights should be extended to people who are cross-examined as to those making representations to the commission.

I pay tribute to my colleague Baroness Hamwee, who worked hard with the Minister in the Lords to have amendments Nos. 68 and 69 added to the Bill. We consider that to be a quiet, but significant, Liberal Democrat achievement. It is vital that local planning authorities' policies are considered along with national policy statements when the commission takes decisions. Amendment No. 69 ensures that the panel or council that takes the decision on an application may have regard to conditions for deciding applications that are outwith the NPS. That is certainly welcome.

I welcome also the Minister's clarification of amendments Nos. 76 to 78, because it was not clear to me from reading them that they were the Government's way of saying that the IPC's functions will be reviewed in two years' time. I am glad that that safety valve is there, but that could be made more explicit, as that seems a roundabout way of doing things. Some important issues have been raised, but I shall conclude now, as I want to give Mr. Drew time to speak to his important amendment.

Related Links

• • Susan Kramer Accuses Back Garden Developers Of Conducting 'Guerrilla War' Over Green Spaces