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Planning and Energy Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. I am grateful for the wide support that the Bill has received, not only from my co-sponsors from all parts of the House, but from those councils at the forefront of good energy practice, the Local Government Association and our energy industry, which is ready and willing to help meet the challenge of climate change. This is not a big Bill, but it does one important thing: it will enshrine in law, I hope, the so-called Merton rule, which I shall describe in more detail. Back in 2003, the London borough of Merton adopted in its local planning documents the policy that, for new developments, at least 10 per cent. of the new energy required must come from renewable or low-carbon sources on or near that development. The aim was to reduce the amount of energy that had to be brought in from miles away and to encourage microgeneration and more energy-efficient buildings, which would use less energy in the first place. The Bill therefore gives Merton-style planning policies statutory protection. I should emphasise that it does not compel other councils to follow Merton, although around 100 are doing that. I should add—perhaps because the ghost of our late colleague Eric Forth seems to haunt this place on Fridays—that the Bill does not compel anybody to do anything. What it does is to put on the statute book the ability of a council to adopt a Merton-style policy, if it wants to do so. Without the Bill, councils will be left uncertain as to whether the policies that they adopt will remain legal. Nothing illustrates that uncertainty better than the shifting position of central Government since Merton originally adopted its policy. I welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box, but Ministers have blown hot and cold on Merton policies. First they encouraged Merton; then last summer we heard a new draft planning policy statement that seemed to back off. It looked as though borough-wide policies might be excluded or even that off-site energy might be included. Then last month, three weeks after I had sent a copy of the Bill to the then Minister, the latest text of the planning policy statement appeared, which said that borough-wide policies could be included and that off-site energy supplies would definitely be excluded. I welcome that improvement, but there has been too much to-ing and fro-ing, and we are still not clear about what central Government's final position will be. We now have the guidance to follow that planning policy statement, and all the lobbying and counter-lobbying will begin all over again. The whole point of the Bill is to get away from all that and give councils the certainty that they need, so that they are no longer dependent upon a supportive Minister or at the mercy of the latest lobbying of No. 10. The Bill therefore sets out, very simply, that councils can—not must, but can—set a minimum requirement for local energy generation and energy efficiency standards that are higher than the minimum. The big volume house builders would of course prefer a single set of rules for the whole country; but I want to be clear to the House that I would not be promoting the Bill if I thought that it would inhibit the future development of new affordable housing.