| Draft Stansted Airport Aircraft Movement Limited (Revocation) Order 2004
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Mr. Prisk: The consultation prior to this debate is to be welcomed, but if the order is made, who will speak for people in Bishop's Stortford on the planning committee to which he refers? Mr. McNulty: I have accepted that point. The planning in the first instance is a matter for Uttlesford. I am absolutely sure that the hon. Gentleman would not like people from Uttlesford or Braintree to pop over the border to East Hertfordshire to determine its planning applications. Given the nature of the Stansted planning applications that will come before Uttlesford, surrounding local authorities will have a significant input to which they are obliged under the existing and new planning frameworks. I am equally sure that it is not beyond the wit of all local MPs from the two main parties—I was going to say of all parties, but I do not think that there are any of the other kind in the immediate locality—to have their say on subsequent planning applications. All the order does is put Stansted on a par with every other airport and local community throughout the land. In the context of broader planning, the ATM limit is but one aspect of planning control. It is of course important, but it is only one aspect. If one reads the section 106 agreement between Uttlesford and BAA, one sees that it is replete with a series of limitations and controls that go way beyond the ATM limit. This is about one aspect of the limit that we seek to return to the locals. Clare Short: The regulatory impact assessment says that there was a fairly low response rate to the consultation: 33 out of 100 consultees responded. However, the list of local authorities that my hon. Friend just read out sounded comprehensive. Will he clarify whether that is all the affected local authorities, including the county councils? Mr. McNulty: I take the point, and no, it is not. Let me go through them again: Cambridge, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, Essex—most of the local authorities at county level are broadly in agreement. Chelmsford is also in agreement. South Cambridgeshire supported raising the limit to realise the objectives, but broadly wanted to keep the matter at Parliament. I am perfectly happy to report that. Epping Forest said:
Braintree and East Hertfordshire—two of the more local district councils around the airport—were broadly in favour of the parliamentary revocation. Uttlesford, the actual district council, and Harlow— Column Number: 16 which is next door—were both in favour. So of the 11 that responded—all local and with a clear locus to respond—all but two agreed the parliamentary revocation, and those two agreed the raising of the limit, but favoured keeping the decision at parliamentary rather than local level. None of the 11 was in favour of the status quo; so 9:2 agreed, all with a broad local locus.Mr. Marsden: The point, though, is that the local authorities think that they can stop further expansion, but the simple fact is that they cannot. They will go through the planning process, which will ultimately mean an inquiry, and no doubt there will be a recommendation to expand in future. They will find that they cannot stop expansion, because the Secretary of State will undoubtedly overrule any decision, and simply say, ''I'm sorry'', and allow the expansion. This is centralisation through the back door. Mr. McNulty: That is perverse. The broad thrust of the Liberal Democrat position—if I may go off on a tangent momentarily, Mr. Beard—throughout the Committee stage of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill was not as obtuse as the hon. Gentleman suggests. It was that, somehow, there should be totally localised planning, that planning should be by local plebiscite, and that Uttlesford should have no more regard for Braintree or East Hertfordshire than for the man in the moon. Of course the planning system is a national planning strategic framework within which there is local decision making, and of course there is a right to appeal and a subsequent inquiry. It has been that way, in one shape or another, since the Town and Country Planning Act 1948. No major party—for argument's sake, I include the Liberal Democrats in that description—has sought to reverse that broad trend. It is not possible to have local plebiscitary-based planning, which is the implication of the hon. Gentleman's suggestion. He is right to this extent: if the provision is revoked and the ATM returns to the local level, it will then sit with the rest of this country's planning framework, which is roughly as he describes. Uttlesford and others will have the ability to set their local limitations through planning conditions, as they have already through the section 106 agreement. It will always be available to BAA, or any subsequent developer, to take any subsequent refusal of a planning permission to appeal, in the normal way. That is what prevailed—to take an extreme example—at Heathrow's terminal 5, and what prevails up and down the land on an almost daily basis, from personal applications for residential properties all the way up to major commercial property. None of that is changed, affected or impacted on by the parliamentary revocation of ATM limits and the restoration of them to Uttlesford. Whatever BAA does or does not plan for Stansted is not changed by the movement back to a local level. As most local authorities in the area agree, the proposal is simply a reversion to what prevails at every other airport in every other district Column Number: 17 and community: the ability of the local district council to set traffic movement limitations in accordance with its broader planning policy.Mr. Prisk: The Minister referred to the conventions of the planning system, but if the order is revoked and the decision goes to the local authority, who from East Hertfordshire district council will vote on the matter? The answer is surely no one—therefore, the people's voice is removed. Mr. McNulty: I cannot but agree with the hon. Gentleman in the context of local planning. At any subsequent inquiry, however, should Uttlesford determine that it does not want or like an application, East Hertfordshire district council and all the MPs from Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk can toddle off to the inquiry, as I regularly do, and act as the voice of Bishop's Stortford, East Hertfordshire, east Yorkshire, and everywhere else. That is part of the prevailing system, which also prevailed when Uttlesford determined that the limit should rise to the equivalent of 241,000 ATMs and 25 million passengers per annum. That system prevails in all but the one regard we are considering, and we think it more than proper that ATM limits in the first instance be set by the local district council, not by Parliament. That is the case for every other airport in the land. We said clearly on 16 December—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman read the White Paper very carefully, as I know that he eagerly awaited it—that we would seek to do this, and have sought to do so at the earliest opportunity. Clare Short: An Opposition Member asked why the decision is being taken now. I am quite persuaded by the strength of the local authority support, as that seems to be a strong voice of localism, but did BAA want this? Is it in any way linked to the decision about the new runway? Why have the Government brought it forward now? I want simply to protect the right of local people to be fully consulted and to be able fully to influence the decision. I do not want Parliament colluding on something that gives away the authority to influence that decision and get it as right as it can be for people who live in those local communities. Mr. McNulty: That is an entirely fair point, but we rushed partly because of the anomaly. Before Uttlesford was in a position even to think about returning any subsequent BAA application to develop the airport, a planning agreement between Uttlesford, Essex and Stansted airport on behalf of BAA was signed in May 2003. That agreement moved the goalposts to an annual ATM limit of 241,000, and up to 25 million passengers per annum. That has been around for a year, and has been agreed between Uttlesford and the local BAA, in the context of the terminal expansion and other elements of Stansted's expansion that they need to cope with now, and is completely outside the scope of the order. The order is about regularising the planning agreement that already prevails between the local council and BAA. If the substantive planning controls that Uttlesford sought with BAA are to mean anything, we need to get to a stage at which the ATM limit is locally Column Number: 18 determined, and we need to do that now. Otherwise, the agreement, which was fully agreed by Uttlesford and BAA, will not be achieved, because Stansted is already at or close to the extant limit agreed by Parliament. If we want to move forward to what the local community in Uttlesford agreed for existing programmes and plans—never mind any expansion or new runway—we need to allow the council rather than ourselves to determine the limit.In principle, that limit should be determined locally in the first instance, and then, as the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Marsden) said, BAA and Uttlesford can take their chances through the broad planning process. Clare Short: Did BAA lobby for the decision? Will the Minister tell us straightforwardly and factually? Mr. McNulty: No, not as far as I am aware. It certainly did not lobby me and I have not seen any bit of paper from BAA or anyone else that says, ''The moon is going to collapse unless this parliamentary limit is revoked.'' The subject has been on the table and topical since the planning permission was granted. In the broadest sense, Stansted Ltd., BAA, Uttlesford and others have been talking about how the parliamentary limit should be revoked and things returned to a local level. Have I been lobbied specifically, sat down in a corner, locked in a chair, harangued, shouted at or even politely talked to by BAA saying, ''We need revocation of the parliamentary limit or the world will fall in''? The honest answer is absolutely not.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2004 | Prepared 29 June 2004 |
