Planning Bill

moved Amendment No. 37: 37: Clause 5, page 3, line 5, at end insert— ““( ) Before designating a statement as a national policy statement for the purposes of this Act, the Secretary of State must carry out an appraisal of the impact of the policy set out in the statement on built heritage, scheduled ancient monuments and important landscapes.”” The noble Lord said: This debate follows on very well from the extremely important debate that we have just had. These amendments all relate to heritage. We are debating legislation that would create vast new powers to sweep aside what may be in the way of new development. The Infrastructure Planning Commission, in the Bill as before us, would have powers to set aside the all-too-fragile system that has been developed, through the experience of many decades, to protect the historic environment. At Stansted, a second runway would require the demolition of two scheduled monuments and 13 grade 2 listed buildings. Other monuments, higher-grade buildings and conservation areas would be seriously affected, including a grade 2* listed church. Some time ago, Southend Borough Council, ambitious for its airport, proposed to dig beneath the grade 1 listed St Laurence Church, insert a raft and roll the structure to a site nearby. That did not happen, but the borough has now issued a new issues and options document for the Southend Airport joint area action plan, which at this stage omits to say what might happen to St Laurence Church, although ominously a picture of the church appears in the document. I mention these simply as two current illustrations of the inevitable clash between development and heritage as we seek to improve our national infrastructure. In our small, densely inhabited and built-upon country, we have to proceed, not dilatorily, but with immense care as we plan for new development, especially major infrastructure. I am not saying, of course, that heritage ought always to prevail. I am seeking in these amendments to ensure that we are enabled to make such decisions on a fully informed and careful basis and that we do not damage or destroy heritage without thinking in a balanced way about what we are doing. No one disputes that we need a capacity to take planning decisions—and certainly to take planning decisions where heritage is concerned—more expeditiously, or that we are going to have to provide new sources of energy supply, new transport infrastructure and so forth. But equally, I suggest, no civilised or sensible person wants such innovations to be unnecessarily at the expense of our treasured historic environment. We must not throw the baby out with the bath water. I appreciate what the Minister said at Second Reading about the Government’s determination to ensure that national benefits are balanced fairly against local impacts. I am not sure, however, that she quite stated the issue as it really is. Local heritage may be of national importance, and cumulatively the web of local heritage is essential to the fabric of our country. My noble friend also assured us that national policy statements, "““will reflect existing policies and priorities where relevant, such as the protection of habitats or heritage””.—[Official Report, 15/7/08; col. 1161.]" I believe, however, that we have more to do to ensure that heritage is appropriately safeguarded in the Bill. The Government anticipate, the Minister has told us, a dozen or so national policy statements. Amendment No. 37 would lay a duty on the Secretary of State, before designating a national policy statement, to carry out—and I would also say publish—an appraisal of its impact on the built heritage, scheduled monuments and important landscapes. Amendment No. 175 would require an applicant for an order granting development consent to demonstrate full regard for conservation of the built environment, scheduled monuments and important landscapes. Under Amendment No. 187, an applicant would have to consult, during the pre-application process, English Heritage or Cadw, and under Amendment No. 214 the IPC in turn may accept an application for consideration only following its own consultation with English Heritage or Cadw. Amendment No. 377 would require that an order granting development consent that affects any grade 1 or grade 2* listed building must be subject to special parliamentary procedure, on the analogy of provisions already in the Bill requiring special parliamentary procedures where a development order would affect local authority-owned land, National Trust land, and commons, open spaces and field garden allotments. Amendment No. 439B would add to the list of what is regarded as infrastructure in Clause 202 buildings, monuments and sites that have been designated as significant heritage assets. I certainly contend that heritage should properly be regarded as infrastructure. In the past 10 years, recognition has at last come in all parts of the country, and especially in old industrial cities and areas facing difficulty in adapting to the modern economy, that heritage is a cardinal economic asset. The Government have strenuously and successfully promoted heritage-led economic regeneration in Leeds, Newcastle, Birmingham, Norwich, where I live and where I am a board member of the Heritage Economic and Regeneration Trust, and many other places. A splendid instance of a comprehensive and imaginative plan for regeneration is the strategy for historic Gloucester now being developed by the Gloucester Heritage Urban Regeneration Company. It would be economic fecklessness to allow, in a hasty attempt to modernise the national infrastructure, economically valuable heritage assets—heritage infrastructure—to be destroyed. If, however, following careful cost-benefit analysis of development proposals that entail loss of heritage, it is decided that the greater advantage for the public interest is in the new development, then the community infrastructure levy should be available to support compensatory refurbishment of heritage assets in the same authority area. Amendment No. 442, therefore, provides that regulations may specify criteria for determining allocation of CIL resources to conservation of heritage in areas where development orders permit the loss of some part of the heritage. If heritage-led developments have to pay the CIL, it will be particularly important that heritage should also be able to benefit from the CIL. Otherwise heritage, already too vulnerable for lack of both public and private investment, will be rendered poorer still. Heritage charities will also be intensely interested in the conclusion of the Government’s deliberations on charities and the CIL. I note the Government’s intention to discuss details of the CIL regime with key stakeholders and engage in full consultation on the CIL regulations. I trust that the heritage charities will be fully involved in these discussions and consultations. Perhaps the most important of these amendments is Amendment No. 399, which would add a new clause establishing a general duty on all public authorities, in exercising planning functions, to have regard to the purpose of conserving the historic environment. In tabling this new clause, I am seeking to create a duty in relation to the historic environment analogous to the duty to conserve biodiversity set out in Section 40 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, which stipulates: "““Every public authority must, in exercising its functions, have regard, so far as is consistent with the proper exercise of those functions, to the purpose of conserving biodiversity””." The section goes on to say that conserving biodiversity includes, "““restoring or enhancing a population or habitat””." It defines ““public authority”” as a Minister of the Crown; the National Assembly for Wales; a public body, including a government department, a local authority and a local planning authority; a person holding an office under the Crown, created or continued in existence by a public general Act, or the remuneration in respect of which is paid out of money provided by Parliament; or a statutory undertaker. It is excellent that we have created this widespread duty to conserve biodiversity. We should now create an equal widespread duty to conserve the historic environment. The proposed new clause in Amendment No. 399, borrowing the precise wording of the NERC Act, requires that: "““Every public authority must, in exercising its planning functions, have regard, so far as is consistent with the proper exercise of those functions, to the purpose of conserving the historic environment””." At the moment policy places decidedly less value on the historic environment than on biodiversity. The new clause would correct the imbalance. Of course, there is no equivalent for the heritage of the United Nations Environment Programme Convention on Biological Diversity of 1992, but there should be; it is a challenge for those across the world who care about the built heritage and the historic environment to bring one into being. Meanwhile, there is no pressure through treaty commitment on the Government to write into legislation a similar duty in relation to the historic environment. However, they should do so. It has been well said that heritage is the national imaginative fabric. It is the temporal dimension of our civilisation. Many people grieve at the casual desecration and waste of our heritage that has occurred in boom times at the hands of insensitive development. This is a moment, the end of a boom time and a historical turning point, when politicians in the western democracies need to re-examine the habitual assumptions of our politics. The cataclysms in the financial markets have brought home to our peoples that an unbalanced and excessive pursuit of material gain—the pursuit of wealth at almost any cost—leads to disaster. People are in revulsion against trashy values. They are questioning, with a new intensity of concern, the get-rich-quick values of the past 30 years. I do not, of course, say that we do not have to struggle might and main to retrieve our economy, but this is also a time when citizens will respond with relief and enthusiasm to policies which espouse non-material values, which enable continuity of the things that we have cherished and which help us to rediscover what can make us a decent, mutually supportive and respectful community. Among the best ways possible to do this will be for the Government to commit themselves much more strongly to policies that will sustain our heritage. I beg to move.