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The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 111ZF, I note that grouped with it are our Amendments Nos. 111ZG, 111A and 112ZC. Also grouped with the amendment are Amendments Nos. 111ZFA, 111B and 112—to which I and my noble friend Lord Addington have added our names—and Amendments Nos. 112ZA, 112ZB, 112A and 113B together with the Question whether Clause 38 shall stand part of the Bill. Of course, if I had mentioned sustainable development rather than recounting a list of the amendments in the group as noble Lords were leaving the Chamber, that might have attracted them to stay. I want to record that in Hansard.
We have reached a hugely important part of the Bill. I suppose that it is in the nature of scrutinising legislation that not only do the scrutineers from time to time seek to delete or alter provisions, but when we support them we seek to improve them, if I can use the term without incurring too much wrath, or, as is perhaps the case here, to extend their effect. I make all my remarks on this group of amendments with that in mind and hope that the Committee will understand that that is our intention. We are keen to strengthen the provisions regarding sustainable development and to ensure that they have a practical effect.
At present Clause 38 provides that persons or bodies exercising certain functions must do so,
My name is added to Amendment No. 112. I am not sure whether the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, will be able to speak to it because she is not in the Chamber, but it is her amendment. I wish to speak about paragraph (a) of her amendment, which raises the issue of access as part of the question of sustainability. I had prepared a probing amendment to cover just that aspect, but as this amendment had been tabled my name was added to it.
The noble Baroness rightly raises the question of access as part of the social limb of sustainable development because there is a risk of it being sidelined and limited to development control rather than to strategic planning.
Amendment No. 111ZF seeks to extend the duty to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development, or whatever term we end up with in Clause 38(2), to development control. Clause 38(1) refers to the regional spatial strategy function and to local development documents. It may be that the Minister will tell me that it is not necessary to refer specifically to development control because of the reference to Part 2 and local development documents which will obviously have to be had regard to when a local planning authority exercises development control functions. That reference means that the concept does apply.
Amendments Nos. 111ZG and 111A go to the heart of our concerns. The words "the objective of achieving" sustainable development, as they appear in Amendment No. 11ZG, have been urged on us—and no doubt on the Government—by a very large number of organisations. The words "with a view to", "contributing to" or "having regard to" in the Bill are not as strong as we would like them to be. The amendment is designed to make the actual achievement of sustainable development a primary rather than a peripheral concern.
I understand that the term "objective" has been litigated, so it will not be new to the courts or something which they would have to define. Amendment No. 111A suggests that the persons exercising the functions must do so with a view to the "principles of sustainability". That is a home made amendment, but one which seems to me to express something more than sustainable development as it is now. It takes us back to what sustainability and sustainable development are about. I believe that it might be helpful.
Amendment No. 111ZC requires impliedly that policies and advice are the subject of Clause 38(3). We want guidance in this instance. Whatever form it takes it must address what is meant by sustainable development.
We disagree with the view that sustainable development, if it is not capable of definition or if there are difficulties with it, should not be part of the Bill. That seems to us not to meet the argument at all. The definition may change as we as a society understand
At Second Reading the Minister spoke about finding a form of words which would meet the Government's requirements—he referred particularly to the sustainable communities plan—while not meeting with adverse comment from lawyers. On this occasion it is the lawyers who need to find the words to say what almost all of us seek to see the Bill achieve. I beg to move.
Baroness Hanham: I have three amendments in this group. All of them relate to the extremely important point about the definition of sustainable development. Part 4 of the Bill relates to development control in England and Part 6 to planning in Wales.
Clause 38 is a potentially beneficial clause of substantial effect in planning decision-making. However, at the moment it fails to achieve its objective on three counts. First, it excludes from its ambit local development orders and statements of development principle, the former being found under Clause 39 and the latter under Clause 41. Although at the moment we object to the statements of principle, they are in the Bill at present. Together with the local development orders they form the bedrock of the Government's local planning decision-making and local development control under the new system.
Excluding Clauses 39 and 41 from Clause 38 would unreasonably limit the statutory requirement for the achievement of sustainable development at a local level in making day-to-day planning decisions. By doing so the Government would be abdicating their responsibility in this respect and causing an apparent anomaly. The requirement would be applicable to the planning of schemes and plans but not to the coal-face, which is development control.
Secondly, an undeniably important part of the planning system in this country is to stimulate economic activity and regeneration. The Department of Trade and Industry relies on it. It is recognised by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Adherence in the clause to sustainability alone gives insufficient weight to economic regeneration. It is a vital component of planning decision-making for business and commerce, and hence the amendment to ensure sufficient recognition of economic regeneration factors in the decision-making.
Thirdly, sustainability can mean all things to all men. However, it is capable of definition as we demonstrate in our succinct new clause. But to leave the definition to secondary legislation or policy made by the Secretary of State, or to leave it to the courts to sort out later, would be to shirk responsibility within the terms of the Bill and it is unwarranted.
A definition is important to give guidance to the public and those in the planning system as to what the Government and, more importantly, Parliament
The meaning that we propose in our new clause has legal basis. It has as its derivation the definition concluded at the UN Human Environment Conference 1972 in Stockholm. It appears on the Government's own website. As time passes and definitions become more and more extensive and complicated, as Amendment No. 112 demonstrates, our amendment takes us back to the root definition of 1972, updated by the words "and natural". It is simple, universal and it has been recognised for the past 30 years. We believe, therefore, that this is a definition which will stand not only the test of time, but put on the face of the Bill, will stand as the definition of sustainable development which, after all, is what the Government are seeking to achieve in many ways in this planning Bill.
Lord Greaves: I have two amendments in this group—Amendments Nos. 112ZA and 112ZB—which are amendments to Amendment No. 112 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, and my noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lord Addington.
As I understand it, Amendment No. 112 has been tabled in order to engender a discussion on the aspects to be included in the concept of sustainability. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, has just said that sustainability is very often all things to all men; I would no doubt add "to all women, too". However, that is the precise difficulty. What "sustainability" means to a business person and what it means to an environmentalist are entirely different. It risks becoming a weasel word about which everyone says, "Yes, it's a wonderful idea. It's like motherhood and apple pie, and we are all against sin". But, unless we talk about what it means, it becomes relatively meaningless.
Amendment No. 112 talks about social progress and the environment. Paragraph (c) refers to,
My first amendment would merely add the word "communities" to the concept of social progress. I am not sure that it would provide the most elegantly worded amendment in that there would then be a reference to "access to communities". However, at this stage, these amendments are for discussion and not for writing into the Bill. Therefore, I am not too concerned if the wording is not as elegant as it might be.
However, it seems to me that communities are the most fundamental part of the concept of social sustainability. Ultimately, everything else—whether public services or access to education and employment or housing—comes down to the local communities of which they form an important part.
My second amendment—Amendment No. 112ZB—is rather more important. It is an attempt to tease out from the Government what they see as the priorities between economic growth and all other desirable issues, particularly environmental ones. We cannot get away from the fact that a conflict often arises there and one must make a choice. You can engage in some form of development which results in higher economic growth in the short term or you can say, "No. Considerations of protecting the environment", in this case, "or perhaps longer-term sustainable economic growth must take priority over the immediate—perhaps selfish—interests of those of us who live here and now and would benefit from that immediate economic growth".
There are conflicts. Most of the arguments surrounding major planning applications encapsulate the conflict between people who say, "This has to happen because it produces more jobs or more housing for people", and those who say, "Yes, no doubt it may do that, but the environmental or ecological consequences, or whatever, are not worth it. The short-term economic gain is not worth the longer-term environmental loss". Therefore, this amendment suggests that the emphasis should be firmly on the environmental aspects and the prudent use of natural resources rather than on short-term economic growth. That is certainly where I stand.
I tabled the amendment to find out what the Minister has to say about it and to tease out again just how far this Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill is intended to stimulate economic growth at the expense of other factors, such as the rights of people to object to that growth or to take part in the system. In particular, I want to find out how far it is intended that the planning system, as amended by the Bill, will make economic growth easier at the expense of other factors, such as environmental ones.
"( ) under Part 4 in relation to all development control matters;"
"with a view to contributing to the achievement of sustainable development".
I am aware that the Government are concerned not to use primary legislation to lock us all into a definition of "sustainable development" when the concept and the term are developing, if I can put it that way. I believe that a new version of planning policy guidance note 1 is to be issued shortly which will address that. I share
the Government's concern about the matter. It is important not just to get it right for this moment but to get it right in a way that will stick.
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"prudent use of natural resources",
and paragraph (d) talks about,
"maintaining high and stable levels of economic growth and employment".
All those things are important. Yet neither in this amendment nor in the debate about sustainability is there a recognition of the ways in which different types of sustainability may conflict and the best ways in which they can be maximised in order to provide the best possible outcome involving trade-offs, compromises and, inevitably, priorities.
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