The Localism Bill-my notes.
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(The Regionalisation of the once great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)
http://services.parliament.uk/hansard/Lords/bydate/20110111/grandcommittees/part002.html
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland): The Localism Bill, which had its First Reading in the other place on 13 December, sets out our proposals to abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission and replace it with a major infrastructure planning unit as part of the Planning Inspectorate. Under the reform regime, major infrastructure projects will be decided by Ministers in accordance with the policy framework, not by a quango, so there is an urgent need for the new major energy infrastructure. The energy national policy statements in place will provide a clear framework against which planning applications for this infrastructure will be assessed. I commend these national policy statements to the Committee.
The Infrastructure Planning Commission is the independent body that examines applications for nationally significant infrastructure projects. These are the large projects that support the economy and vital public services, including railways, large wind farms, power stations, reservoirs, harbours, airports and sewage treatment works. (This is a massive and important project)
http://infrastructure.independent.gov.uk/
http://infrastructure.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/MIPreform_workplan.pdf
(11) The Bill will abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission and transfer its functions to the Secretary of State. These functions (other than decision-making, which remains with the Secretary of State) will be delegated to the Major Infrastructure Planning Unit. As is the case under the current regime, examinations will be carried out either by a single person appointed to that task, or a panel of up to five appointed people, depending on the size and complexity of the application. To ensure that applications transfer from the Infrastructure Planning Commission to the Major Infrastructure Planning Unit without interruption, the Bill includes a power of direction which will enable the Secretary of State to specify how the transition should be dealt with on a case by case basis. (See also from paragraph 32)
National Infrastructure Plan (Implementing TEN-T?)
2.3 The Government plans that over the next five years, some £200 billion will be invested in UK economic infrastructure – a step change from the past.5 The majority of investment will be in transport and energy, with investment in the energy sector almost doubling between 2010 and 2015.
3.6 The Government is carrying forward its commitment to establish a Green Investment Bank which will support economic growth through stimulating investment in the green economy.
3.20 The Government will investigate options for encouraging infrastructure investment from new sources of efficiently priced private capital. In particular, the Government will conduct an internal review, supported by external experts, to consider extending the use of the regulatory asset base model. The review will report in spring 2011.
3.21 As the Government is already considering how to encourage more investment in low carbon infrastructure as part of the electricity market reform project, the internal review referred to above will explicitly not consider extending the RAB to the electricity sector. The Government will consult on options for changes to the electricity market later this year.
On page 24, showing all 12 EU Regions of the EU now in the UK.
Summary of this Bill
The Localism Bill will devolve greater powers to councils and neighbourhoods and give local communities more control over housing and planning decisions.
Key areas of the Bill
- Provisions in relation to local government, including a general power of competence for local authorities and relevant Fire and Rescue Authorities, changes to local authority governance arrangements including provision for directly elected mayors, the abolition of the Standards Board regime, and requirements for local authorities to set senior pay policy statements.
- Provisions relating to community empowerment, including giving people, councillors and councils the power to instigate local referendums on any local issue and a power to approve or veto in a referendum a council tax increase deemed to be excessive, and enabling voluntary and community bodies and others to express an interest in running a local authority service, and local community groups to bid or buy buildings or land which are listed as assets of community value.
- Reform of the planning system; including provisions to abolish regional strategies, provide for neighbourhood development orders and plans, make pre-application consultation compulsory, and make changes to planning enforcement.
- Provisions to reform social housing including measures to offer flexible tenancies for new social tenants; create a new system of council housing finance; provide assistance for tenants to exchange their social rented property; and transfer the functions of the Tenant Service Authority to the Homes and Communities Agency.
- Abolition of the Home Information Pack.
- Provisions for London that provide the Mayor with additional powers relating to housing and regeneration.
- Abolition of the London Development
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Agency.http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2011/january/localism-bill-second-reading/
Lord Reay: The localism Bill debate The Government’s answer to this seems to be to follow the example of the developers and seek to bribe local authorities with financial rewards if they grant planning permission in the first place. There are provisions to enable this in the Localism Bill. In such a way do the Government seek to reconcile their claim to be handing more powers of decision to local authorities with their determination to impose on them their green agenda. However, it may be—I hope that it will be—that the planning system that we still have, enforced ultimately by the Planning Inspectorate that we still have, will succeed in protecting the countryside from this onslaught. In that case, our planning system, so wonderfully successful in the last century in protecting our landscape from uncontrolled ribbon development, may save it for a second time this century from the worst consequences of today’s scandalous vandalism.
The Lord Bishop of Chester: My Lords, in the gap I doff my warm woolly hat, or even my mitre, in three directions—three areas where I think the policy statements are inadequate. The first has been covered partly by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and partly by the noble Lord, Lord Reay, from very different perspectives: the economic impact of these policies simply is not spelt out. Where is the £250 billion that is required by 2025 to come from? How much will be paid by consumers through their electricity bills? My electricity bill in Scotland currently has government obligations of about 7 per cent. That will be much greater in the years to come. How great? If electricity bills in this country get out of sync with those of other competitor countries, it will produce unemployment, which is a moral consequence of policies that one does not always or often accept. How can this be spelt out in a way that is much more transparent? At the moment there is simply a deathly silence.
Lord Deben: That leads to me to answer a point that I hope the Minister will emphasise: of course we are doing more than other people, because we are taking the lead and because we want the physical and financial advantages of doing so. If we want to get other people to do it, we have to do it first ourselves. I say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester that I am entirely in favour of co-operation with our neighbours, but if we want that co-operation we have to set the scene and the leadership example. My only concern about the coalition policy on this is that we have to recognise that this is above all a European issue, that we have to work within the European Union, that the EU is crucial to the future of this, and that a little less attacking of the EU and a little more support for it would make it very much easier to deliver what we need to do.
Baroness Smith of Basildon: From these statements, there has to be the political will to tackle the issues. As much as we welcome what is in these documents, the Government will want to show that they will put support and investment behind these policy statements for them to be truly effective. In this regard, can I raise two areas of concern? The first relates to another clause in the Localism Bill and the Government’s plans to abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission and replace it with a new body called the major infrastructure planning unit, within the Planning Inspectorate. When the IPC was established in 2008, the intention was for it to be an independent body with the expertise to make balanced independent decisions without ministerial political influence. It sought to make the planning system for major infrastructure projects quicker, more efficient and set within clear guidelines, whereby it would be more predictable. That laid down the right conditions for investment in the kind of energy infrastructure that we urgently need.
Under the new system proposed by the Government, the new body, the MIPU, will make recommendations to the Secretary of State, who will make decisions in accordance with these national policy statements. The Government will have to ensure that these plans do not add delays to the system or remove the clarity and certainty that the industry needs if it is to invest in energy infrastructure, particularly renewables and, as we will be discussing later in the week, nuclear.
Also, given that the Localism Bill is not due to be enacted until 2012, it would be helpful if the Minister said something about the transitional arrangements and what will happen before the MIPU is established. I am sure he will understand that we are anxious that a further change in the system should not create delays that have a potential impact on energy security.
My other concern is about the investment required. I concur entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, about the need for certainty in this. Can I ask the Minister for further information on the green investment bank in this regard? We already know that the £1 billion investment being proposed is significantly less than the suggested figure of around £6 billion needed to make the necessary impact, but I know that the Government hope that private investment will be brought in.
Lord Marland: The reason we are doing this is that this is a subject that transcends all Governments. It is fundamental to the country that we have a time line that goes to 2100, as I shall enunciate in a few minutes. In fact, our own pathway goes to 2050. So this is a major subject that in my view is largely outside the subject of party politics. As I think everyone will also understand, we have some serious heavy lifting to do. We have had a long time of inactivity; a long time of resting on the laurels of the wonderful wealth of oil from the North Sea which has kept this country afloat. As I said in an earlier Question today in answer to some of the noble Lord’s questions, we have got to spend more than £110 billion on our infrastructure just to get it up to scratch in the next 10 years. This is a massive project that confronts the Government today.
The noble Lord also asked whether we should put faith in ETSs. ETSs are what we have got as a European standard. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, we should listen to the EU on these subjects. I do not entirely agree with him, but we should listen on some things, and I think that this is good because it works. We should challenge it the whole time and ensure that it is ticking the box. But there is a considerable take-up in this area.
If I could wave a magic wand, of course we would have targeted regional planning. It makes complete sense. It requires a lot of cross-government co-operation, and now that we have been in government for six to nine months, it is a subject where we should be looking to achieve, particularly if we are going to develop the offshore renewables industry. If this is going to become one of our great exporting subjects, we should have a centre of excellence, and I have suggested to our Secretary of State that that is a subject we should take on. I am grateful for those comments.
I have mentioned parliamentary process, but will now mention it in more detail. I am not going to try to second-guess the parliamentary process regarding these national policy statements. It is not for me to do so; I am only a young whippersnapper in this world. But the changes that are being made through the Localism Bill will give the opportunity, within a 21-day period, for people to register their amendments, and then there will be a vote on them. The difference between now and then is that that vote will be binding, whereas before it was not worth the paper it was written on. If you add that to the general consultation that we are having through these various debates and parliamentary issues, I feel confident that all noble Lords will recognise that we are having our say. The Energy Bill is starting in this House, where it will be honed, argued over, debated and made fit for purpose. That shows the intent of the Government and the recognition of the excellent contribution that noble Lords make here.
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(Binding? No Parliament may bind eh?)
Localism in the New Global Legal Order
Dr. Yishai Blank
Tel Aviv University - Buchmann Faculty of Law
Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 47, No. 1, 2006
Abstract:
Local governments are increasingly becoming major actors in the emerging global legal order. The United Nations, the World Bank, the European Union (“EU”), and other international and transnational institutions are beginning to view local governments as vehicles for the advancement of policies on a global scale. Local governments are transforming into objects for international regulation and are increasingly used as a means for disseminating and implementing global political programs, financial schemes, and governance strategies. The traditional legal focus on state actors is shifting on to local governments, giving them independent legal status in the new global order. Local governments are obtaining international duties, powers, and rights; enforcing international standards; forming global networks involved in the creation of international standards; and becoming objects of international regulation. It has indeed become impossible to understand globalization and its legal ordering without considering the role of localities: They have become prime vehicles for the dissemination of global capital, goods, work force, and images.
The evolving global status of local governments manifests itself in international legal documents and institutions, transnational arrangements, and legal regimes within many countries. To date, however, there has been almost no academic account of this significant legal transformation. International legal theory has remained captive to the centralist and unitary conception of local governments, according to which they are mere subdivisions of states and thus undeserving of any theoretical analysis. And while international legal theorists have analyzed the extension of international law over nonstate entities such as private persons, non-governmental organizations (“NGOs”), and transnational corporations, those same theorists have ignored the profound transformation of localities into independent actors in the international arena. Likewise, local-government scholars have ignored the impeding global pressures on localities, treating the interaction of localities with global and international norms and institutions only sporadically.
In contemporary international legal practice and policy making, however, localities are already being recast as independent semi-private entities, no longer mere state agents subsumed by their national governments. United Nations agencies, the World Bank, and various transnational institutions emphasize both the need to delegate and devolve power to local entities and the potential of localities to act like private corporations or other components of civil society. As such, localities' ability to generate wealth and economic growth, their need to be financially viable and self-reliant, and their capacity to promote good governance are given prominence over other traits of local governments. With this reshaping of localities comes a new set of ideas about the desirable relationship between state and local governments, including the ideal level of local autonomy, the ideal division of power between national and local levels, and the amount of flexibility that should exist to adjust that division of power.
Many of the legal changes accompanying the new global vision of local entities are only beginning to appear. The activities of a special U.N. agency aimed at formulating a World Charter on local self-government have not yet given rise to a binding international legal document. Regional treatises and transnational agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”) and membership in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT,” now the World Trade Organization (“WTO”)) have only started to affect localities and local-government laws, while states' and local governments' compliance with emerging international standards is slow and far from complete. Nonetheless, it is possible to predict the results of this transition as well as to analyze its justifications and normative ramifications.
This Article attempts to formulate preliminary lines of investigation into consequences of an emerging global regime that expands the role of localities, while also analyzing the normative underpinnings of the role localities could have in a world governed by a multitude of jurisdictions, some territorial, others less so. Part I traces recent changes that demonstrate the new role of localities in international law. Part II analyzes the normative justifications often used to legitimate the transformation of localities into prominent global actors: economic efficiency, democratic potential, and localities' unique role as normative mediators between communities and states. Finally, Part III sets forth a normative and theoretical analysis of the role localities could and should have in the emerging global legal order.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1020103
Localism Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Secretary Pickles presented a Bill to make provision about the functions and procedures of local and certain other authorities; to make provision about the functions of the Local Commission for Administration in England; to enable the recovery of financial sanctions imposed by the Court of Justice of the European Union on the United Kingdom from local and public authorities; to make provision about local government finance; to make provision about town and country planning, the Community Infrastructure Levy and the authorisation of nationally significant infrastructure projects; to make provision about social and other housing; to make provision about regeneration in London; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 126) with explanatory notes (Bill 126-EN)
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Localism Bill
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110117/debtext/110117-0001.htm#1101176000001
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I am glad to see the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) in her place. Had she not arrived, I might have raised a point of order myself to allow her to get here.
The present situation is not Labour's fault. I do not blame the Opposition for the excessive centralisation that has come to characterise government in this country. Command and control is, of course, naturally appealing to the Opposition, but in fairness, they only accelerated an existing trend. If they boarded the moving train of centralism, there cannot be any doubt that they drove it to its terminus: grand centralist station. So, the Labour party is not entirely to blame; it is just mostly to blame.
The Bill will reverse the centralist creep of decades and replace it with local control. It is a triumph for democracy over bureaucracy. It will fundamentally shake up the balance of power in this country, revitalising local democracy and putting power back where it belongs, in the hands of the people. For years, Ministers sat in their Departments hoarding power like misers. Occasionally, grudgingly and with deep resentment, they might have loosened their grip on the reins of power, only to tighten it almost immediately. Uniquely, they managed to fulfil the wildest dreams of both Sir Humphrey Appleby and Mr Joseph Stalin. That strangled the life out of local government, so councils can barely get themselves a cup of tea without asking permission. It forced a central blueprint on everything from local public services to housing and planning, regardless of what local people want or need. It left councillors hamstrung, front-line public servants frustrated and residents out in the cold.
The reasoned amendment owes much to the pragmatism of St Augustine: "Oh Lord, make me a localist-but not just yet." Preserve us from the wickedness of delegated powers. Yet, as I said earlier today to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), I do not recall those concerns being raised by the current Opposition during the passage of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, which in a mere 176 clauses, contained 86 delegated powers. The number of such powers in this Bill is, therefore, entirely the norm and entirely in keeping with the way in which legislation has been put together, with one important difference: this is a deregulating Bill.
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con): I hope that my right hon. Friend does not miss the opportunity to mention the great pilot of centralisation, John, now Lord, Prescott, who, in moving from the social status of waiter to that of a passenger on cruise ships, was so damaging to local government.
17 Jan 2011 : Column 559
Mr Pickles: I have to say that I have great affection for Lord Prescott, and I am particularly enjoying his current advocacy of insurance on television.
The Bill is based on a simple premise: we must trust people who elect us and we must ensure that we trust them to make the right decision for their area. To misquote Clint Eastwood: "A Government needs to know its limitations." We do not have all the answers but we have to have the courage to encourage local solutions. The Bill is made up of four main elements: London governance, planning, localism and housing. The London element is relatively straightforward and redistributes power away from quangos and back to elected officials and communities. The settlement has been agreed by the Mayor of London, the London assembly and the boroughs, and it is based on consensus across the political parties. I would like to pay tribute to the constructive way in which the Mayor, the assembly and the London boroughs, regardless of their political persuasion, have worked together on these arrangements.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab): If this is all about giving away powers from Whitehall, why does the Bill transfer 126 new powers to the Secretary of State?
Mr Pickles: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was distracted by something in the Chamber more interesting than my speech, but I have already dealt with that. I politely pointed out that in previous, much smaller Bills introduced when the Labour party was running these matters, the proportion of delegated legislation was much higher. I am here to be helpful.
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