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Localism Bill

My Lords, in moving this amendment I should remind the House that I lead a London borough council, and one that under successive administrations has been and is a localist council. We are actually slightly unusual in having a regional plan that is going to stay in place, and also an adopted core strategy. We are now very actively involved with local communities in trying to create what we call ““village plans””, but for the sake of this argument I will call ““neighbourhood plans””. I do not think we need to be told by a government Bill how to go about this. I hope that does not sound too vainglorious. I am a strong supporter of giving people the opportunity, and where opportunity is not given the right and the power, to directly influence decisions affecting their lives. Nothing in the amendment before the House detracts from that. My noble friend has been an absolutely admirable listener on this Bill. The Government have made major changes, on shadow mayors, EU fines, referendums, the right to challenge and on assets of community value. I do not ask for sweeping change on neighbourhood planning. I support the Government’s wish to have local involvement in the planning system. Most other council leaders also support that and many already practise it. In many of our views, planning led from the bottom up is essential. My amendment does nothing to stop the Government’s objective there. I also recognise the Government’s wish to have back-stop—as I think it should be—regulation to enable local public engagement with planning where that is not happening. That may be necessary where communities are systematically excluded from having a voice in planning. Of course they should have a voice, and that inspiration behind the Bill is right. My amendment does nothing to stop that. The amendment proposes a system that allows the Secretary of State to permit local variety and discretion—that is, more localism and, I would argue, more trust in the best-performing local authorities. On neighbourhood planning so far in the Bill, the Government have set down one model in the rather compendious schedules. Surely councils that are engaged in local neighbourhood planning can be approved, indeed encouraged, to go on doing so in their own way. My amendment also seeks to allow that, if other local authorities have a scheme for neighbourhood planning to do the job in ways that do not coincide in every dot and comma with what is in these labyrinthine schedules, they can be given the go-ahead and frankly be spared the constant potential challenge to react to a parallel national regulatory model at the same time. We have to go on from where we are now and from where we started. With a more permissive approach, we might even learn something from the differing approaches of differing councils and communities, with different sizes and places, run by people often with different views. A more permissive approach goes with the spirit of the Bill and in no way against it. If there is in place a solid, reputable process in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of local people have become engaged, why in principle should that local authority and those local communities be caught up with having to consider or fend off demands to set up a neighbourhood forum from what may be groups of as few as 21 people? As we argued in Committee, these may sometimes even be malcontents who have lost out in community debates, perhaps people who even court rejection by the council as a device to gain publicity. That is not necessary in the ideal world. I fear we may confuse the means of how to do this with the ends, on which I sense there is wide agreement in the House. I set out in Committee a number of detailed aspects in the Bill’s area planning procedures that I do not understand. In particular, I do not understand why, under new Section 61G(2) that Schedule 9 to the Bill will insert into the 1990 Act, a local authority can designate neighbourhood areas only where a would-be forum asks for one. Why on earth can a council, informed by its knowledge of local events and the surveys it has done with local people, not go ahead and designate its own neighbourhood areas? I do not see why urban neighbourhood planning has to be done through forums that, by definition, are made up of the few rather than the many in any given area. I have argued in various places that the default position should be that everyone in an area is part of a neighbourhood planning process. The best body for facilitating that is the elected authority, of whatever size or nature, if it operates well. I have not tabled again the amendments that I tabled in Committee that dealt with a number of those issues. I hope that my noble friend the Minister may even now be able to reflect on them and clarify some of those detailed points as we move towards Third Reading. They are embraced within the case for allowing different approaches made in the amendment. In concluding, I must emphasise that my proposal is not made from the standpoint of one who opposes the Bill. It is made on the basis of active commitment and experience, as with many other noble Lords who spoke, in seeking to put the principles of this Bill into practice. From that standpoint I must say—and I have had this from a number of other council leader colleagues—that the creation or imposition of a parallel system of challenge by would-be forums will in some cases not be a help but potentially a hindrance. When the principle of allowing the best performing authorities freedom to do local planning in their own way was debated in Committee, I felt I had wide support from various parts of the House. I have been very grateful for discussions and conversations with Mr Greg Clark and with my noble friend and I am perfectly ready to accept that my amendment may not be the perfect route. It may indeed be that devising an exemption system run by the Secretary of State would create its own complexities. It may be that the operation of the system in this Bill, given the undesirability of seeking to run two parallel systems together, can be clarified in the guidance we hear about. I apologise that I have not had an opportunity to study in detail the draft guidance I hear has been published. One way or another my fundamental plea, in which I am grateful for the backing of London Councils, is that local authorities engaged in robust neighbourhood planning should not also have to grapple with the parallel legislative and regulatory framework currently enshrined in the Bill. I believe, I hope not naively, that freedom would encourage and stimulate the best councils to be leaders in neighbourhood planning. I believe, and I know from our conversations, that my noble friend and her right honourable and honourable friends share that commitment to localism and neighbourhood planning, and so I hope even now that the Government may be able to offer some more flexible way forward on this very difficult, but I believe important, matter. I beg to move.