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Localism Bill

My Lords, I have Amendments 205ZB and 205ZC in this group, to which I will speak. I immediately welcome the Government’s amendment moved by my noble friend the Minister, which leads this group, and express appreciation for it in response to what was said in Committee. It still does not go quite as far as I wished, as expressed in Amendment 205ZC on the Marshalled List, which I moved in Committee on behalf of the Heritage Alliance. Amendment 205ZB addresses that. I shall not rehearse everything I said on the previous occasion, except to explain why I have put it down again and to repeat the final sentence of my speech in Committee. On that latter occasion, I said that the amendment’s essence was to make sure that there is a consideration of cultural well-being in addition to the considerations that the Government have placed in this part of the Bill. As to why I have repeated this amendment, last Monday night I said that I understood and concurred with the Government in their emphasis on economic growth in their planning policy, but I retain a concern that we shall not have fully done our job of scrutiny on this Bill unless the Government have made their peace more fully with the heritage lobby. Since last Monday, I have spoken to the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, to air my concern about this issue. I received their encouragement to bring it back to your Lordships’ House. I recall the treatment, perhaps due to their funding decisions towards the heritage, meted out to DCMS Ministers in the previous Government at the annual dinners of English Heritage. Of course I realise that in such an instance the Government are the Government are the Government. But it is not DCLG Ministers who will carry the can in terms of criticism of the Government’s planning policy within that heritage arena but rather their DCMS colleagues if some planning cruces are left unimproved. The Government will know better than I how they can resolve this matter but the acceptance of Amendment 205ZB would be a helpful sign that they understood the problem. The Minister may well say that the word ““environmental”” embraces ““cultural””. But environmental is much more of a portmanteau word; the old contradistinction between the Department of the Environment and the Department for Culture, when in 1992 the responsibility for the built environment was separated at the creation of the new department, itself makes the separate culture point. That is reinforced as a cultural emphasis when I say that I have no emotional capital tied up in the words of my first amendment but I hope that the Minister can recognise the significance of the issue. I should add that within the Heritage Alliance, this view is particularly held by the Theatres Trust, which falls into the area of responsibility of DCMS. I beg to move.