Localism Bill

My Lords, I am very pleased to support these amendments. They are some of the most important ones in the Bill because I get the impression that the Bill somehow dilutes the sustainability agenda and gives rather confusing messages, as we have heard. It is going to encourage more development, possibly in the green belt, if the Times article can be believed. Then we have the nimby’s charter which allows anybody to have a referendum if they want to stop big projects. At Second Reading, I said that if the Secretary of State wants to build his high-speed line to Birmingham, he will have 25 referendum votes against it all the way through the Chilterns. I do not know whether that is the way to build a sustainable railway. The problem we have at the moment, which I hope these amendments could help dilute or even get rid of, is that over the years we seem to have built up a policy whereby we believe in sustainability unless it costs us more. Then we somehow find a way of saying, ““We are going to have to do this even if it costs more”” or ““If it does not cost any more and is cheaper, it may use up a bit more CO2 but we cannot help it””. For example, we have got the 80 per cent carbon reduction target, which this Government have confirmed. But I suspect that if there are problems with nuclear power stations—I hope that there will not be any but if there are—windmills or something else, the dear old coal-fired power stations will be fired up as no Government will allow the lights to go out if they can pollute the atmosphere with a bit more CO2. The same would happen with transport. I have just been involved in investigating with Thames Water the tunnel that will collect all the drainage from London and go from somewhere in Hammersmith underneath the river towards Beckton. I discovered that Thames Water is planning to remove all the spoil by road, which I calculated would be about 500 trucks a day from central London. That is about 10 times what Crossrail was criticised for when it was moving spoil from one of its stations. I was told, ““This is all very fine. If you want us to be more sustainable and not cause quite so much damage to the residents of London, it will cost someone £70 million more””. I asked where the evidence was for this and was told that the regulator would not allow it. We are still in discussions but it is extraordinary that it can claim that this is a very sustainable solution. It might make the river cleaner, but we need to debate whether it is the right solution. The fallback situation was, ““We will use road unless someone can pay us extra””. To some extent, that reflects the national policy statement, to which we will come in future amendments, which basically says that you should use river or railway transport rather than road if it is economically viable. Of course, the figures can be adjusted to suit whatever you want. The important thing is that even for those big projects, the policies as set out in these amendments need to filter down, as other noble Lords have said, all the way through the planning system to even the smallest planning application and discussion. It seems to me that this is a good way of setting out the structure, about which we can debate many more things later. I join other noble Lords in asking the Minister when we will see this national planning policy framework. I would also ask—again, this will come up later—whether it will be statutory, voluntary or advisory. On the basis that the House of Commons is required to approve and debate national policy statements, will the House of Commons and, I hope, the House of Lords, be asked to debate this one? There is quite a lot to talk about on this and a lot of questions to be answered. I join other noble Lords is asking this fundamental question. Do the Government accept the need for some comprehensive sustainability definition in the Bill?