Planning Bill

My Lords, I listened closely to what noble Lords said. We have returned to a topic that has been assiduously pursued by my noble friend in ways that I can well appreciate. There is little that divides us when we consider the importance that we attach to protecting our heritage. I listened to the contributions from all around the House, which clearly put an obligation on me to explain as clearly as I can why we cannot accept this amendment. In so doing, I want to give every assurance to noble Lords that the Bill and the protections that will be carried forward will be more than sufficient to safeguard what noble Lords are concerned about. I shall also address the other issues that arise in the course of the argument. My noble friend raised similar points in Committee, since when my officials and I have been in contact with him several times. I had hoped that we had been able to offer him the reassurance for which he was looking that the system that we are creating under this Bill will continue to maintain the highest levels of protection for heritage assets. I know that this House takes the issue extremely seriously and I was grateful that my noble friend gave me advance warning of what he was going to say on Report. Let me try again to reassure all noble Lords who, rightly, want to be absolutely sure that the Bill does not deliberately or inadvertently reduce the protection available to our precious heritage and, in so doing, also to reassure the voluntary heritage organisations that have joined the debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, we all have a common aim of maintaining existing statutory protection for heritage under the new infrastructure regime proposed in the Bill. I am grateful to my noble friend for outlining the other legislation and sharing with us details about why he remains concerned that the Bill will not deliver that objective. He is right when he says that Sections 66 and 72 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 will not apply to the new regime, but he knows that there is nothing sinister in that, as we are disapplying many consent regimes in so far as the new single consent regime will replace them. The Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act 1953, which he cited, is untouched by the Bill. In contrast to what my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, Clause 33 does not specifically disapply the protections for heritage in the 1979 and 1999 Acts. Clause 33 clarifies that nationally significant infrastructure projects do not need to seek separate listed building consent, conservation area consent or, indeed, scheduled monument consent, as those will be incorporated in the development consent order granted by the IPC. As I will explain, the fact that those consents will be contained inside the single consent regime in no way entails a reduction in the protection of our heritage. I can do no more than reiterate in large part what I said in Committee. Under the Bill, a project that meets the threshold of a nationally significant project will require a single development consent. We have agreed across two days of debate on Report alone that that is one of the great prizes of the Bill. We are moving from the position where NSIP promoters need to secure a multitude of consents, including many, if not most, of the consents mentioned in Clause 33, to a position where a development consent order will cover all of them but will not require any consent under any of the existing consent regimes mentioned in Clause 33. We certainly do not intend through the streamlining of consent regimes to undermine the vital protections that exist for heritage assets. Why should we take such a risk when we are completely in agreement about the unique value of our heritage and the need to be as vigilant as possible against any sort of vandalism? We intend through the Bill and secondary legislation to require that, when the IPC makes decisions on projects that would have implications for heritage assets, it must decide on those works in exactly the same way as a decision-maker under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. We intend to replicate the tests set out in Sections 66 and 72 of that Act in the decision test in Clause 102 for the IPC and in Clause 103 for the Secretary of State by prescribing considerations set out in Sections 66 and 72 of the Act as matters to which the decision-maker must have regard. Clause 102(2)(c) gives the Secretary of State the power to do that by a set of regulations that prescribe matters to which the IPC must have regard and Clause 103(2)(b) provides an identical power for cases where the Secretary of State is the decision-maker. In practice, the IPC, in considering whether to grant development consent that would affect a listed building, will have to have special regard to the desirability of preserving the building, its setting or any features of special architectural or historic interest that it possesses. It will be likewise for cases of major projects that affect conservation areas and scheduled ancient monuments. My noble friend has argued that his advisers feel that regulations along the lines that I suggest will provide a significantly lesser level of protection than exists at the moment. I simply disagree with him. The fact that the protection is being enabled through regulations does not diminish or compromise its content or force. Decisions on works forming part of an NSIP that would affect listed buildings and other heritage assets will continue to be subject to the special considerations that form part of the existing heritage protection regime. That will be what the law requires. In practical terms, it would be as difficult to water down regulations about how NSIPs that affect heritage assets should be considered as it would be to water down primary legislation affecting them. I remind noble Lords that Clause 224(5)(e) makes it absolutely clear that regulations under Clause 102(2)(c) or Clause 103(2)(b) are subject to affirmative resolution. My noble friend knows as well as I do how seriously this House takes its responsibilities in scrutinising and voting on affirmative regulations. It would be a brave Minister indeed who—not least knowing the assurances that I have given on the record—attempted to revise the affirmative regulations that we intend to introduce under Clause 102(2)(c) in such a way as to dilute heritage protection. I say one other thing to my noble friend and other noble Lords, because I know the level of concern in the Chamber. The protections in the Bill have not been designed and advocated simply by my department, which is responsible for planning. They have the full approval of DCMS, the national custodian of heritage, and of all Ministers in that department. They would not contemplate a dilution of protections. I hope that noble Lords will be content with those joint assurances. I also hope that they address my noble friend’s specific concerns about the 1990 Act. I should add that of course our regulations will require the IPC to take into account the tests in the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979, where an NSIP site includes a scheduled monument. The noble Lord, Lord Williamson, pointed out that we have included many amendments in the Bill. We have done so with good reason. The Bill has been significantly improved by the contribution of noble Lords across the House. It is not a question of overloading the Bill; it is a question of the impact of the amendment. The amendment would cause problems with national policy statements. In short, it would undermine the integrity of the NPSs. As noble Lords know, we intend national policy statements to take account of and reflect the range of policy issues relevant to decisions on nationally significant infrastructure. The amendment risks undermining that balance, because it isolates heritage for special treatment. It would wrench around the direction of travel in which we want to proceed by adding special requirements for heritage that will not be placed on any other aspect of policy. Such a step would weaken the coherence and effectiveness of the NPSs. It would cut across our objective of creating a streamlined single consent regime. It would also undoubtedly invite a host of similar, understandable requests from other sectors. I have already rejected, against strong arguments from noble Lords opposite, the possibility of identifying flood risk as a separate and paramount issue. Other issues are equally significant: biodiversity could make an equal claim, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, intimated in Committee. If we follow the logic of specifying all important issues in the Bill, we would end up not only with an unwieldy list in primary legislation but with the NPSs not reflecting but refracting policy. I am grateful to my noble friend for reminding the House that we have already made it clear that we intend that NPSs will be required to take account of policy set out in planning policy statements where they are relevant, including the crucial ones on heritage and archaeology, PPS15 and PPS16. They will be doing so in future on the basis of revised, updated and stronger policy. That work is being undertaken now by my department in close conjunction with English Heritage. It will be an important opportunity to strengthen protection and to raise the profile of policy in relation to heritage and archaeology to ensure that it gets appropriate weight in decision-making. My noble friend’s amendment also includes parks, gardens and battlefields specifically, from which I infer that he wants to provide them with comparable protection to that for listed buildings. Since we discussed this last week, he will not be surprised to hear that we do not believe that it would be appropriate to extend protections in this way. The Bill takes account of current legislation. The noble Lord is right that there is nothing on the statute book on parks and gardens that is similar to the specific consents that are required for works on listed buildings, scheduled monuments or conservation areas, but this is why the Bill does not mention them. The Bill is about nationally significant infrastructure projects and enabling them to obtain the consents necessary to allow them to proceed. However desirable it may be, the Bill is simply not the place in which to rewrite the existing system or to extend the protection regime. Doing this would turn the Bill into a Pandora’s box of legislative opportunism. Our system of designation, combined with the opportunities provided through community consultation and the use of local lists, is designed to help us to make admittedly difficult judgments about what it is most important to preserve, and I do not wish to undermine that unintentionally. The noble Lord knows that I cannot comment on future legislative Sessions, but I can say that the Bill has been drafted according to the current statute book and that putting parks, gardens and battlefields on to a national register would not confer any additional legal protection. It would send the signal that they should feature more prominently in any consideration, but that signal could also be strongly sent, if we so chose, in our revised and updated planning policy statements 15 and 16. That would bring parks, gardens and battlefields to the fore very effectively. It is not necessary to put into the Bill the protections that the noble Lord wants to achieve his objectives. His objectives can be achieved more appropriately in other ways. Let me finish by giving a few more assurances. We have already put into the Bill—and have been delighted to do so—things that will strengthen the involvement of the national parks; we have clarified further how and when NPSs can be reviewed; we have provided for greater challenge in the examination process; we have made it clear that there must be a new appraisal of sustainability whenever an NPS is issued or revised; and we have clarified that the Secretary of State, when preparing NPSs, must have the objective of contributing to achievable sustainable development, which includes having regard to the desirability of mitigating or adapting to climate change and to achieving good design. These are all very good changes, driven by your Lordships. We envisage that all NPSs will explicitly address heritage issues that are relevant to the sectors covered by them and we will ensure that heritage protection bodies such as English Heritage and Cadw will be specified as statutory consultees in the NPSs. This recognises the arguments posed by the noble Lord and specifically secures heritage organisations such as English Heritage as partners in the creation and content of the NPSs. They will be statutory consultees for individual applications that could affect heritage assets. We have bound what we have done with a concern for heritage at every stage of the process and throughout the changes that we have made in the Bill. Given the earnestness with which I am saying this, I hope that noble Lords will understand that we have done everything conceivable to ensure that the protections that we currently enjoy are repeated and enforced in the Bill. I am grateful to my noble friend for allowing us to have such a thorough debate on this, but I hope at this point that he is satisfied that we have done our best and that we have satisfied his concerns.