Lord Inglewood (CB)

My Lords, I will speak particularly to Amendment 97, to which I have put my name. I am an owner of a listed building, and I have been involved with a large number of others, both as an owner and a trustee, over a long period. I am also president of Historic Buildings & Places, which is one of the national amenity societies, and I ought to add a confession: I am a geek about old buildings, having become a life member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings as a 21st birthday present. I echo the general comments that have been made on this grouping more widely. The proposition behind Amendment 97 is relatively simple; it was laid out in some detail by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, so there is no advantage in my going over much of it again. Listed building consent is an integral and important part of the overall town and country planning code of this country—albeit its character is a bit different from the general rules about development, as the noble Lord speaking previously pointed out. In reality, its scope is wider and deeper than the general planning rules in some ways and relates to matters of historic and architectural significance, which are very important to place-making—which is one of the things at the centre of current thinking about the future spatial development of this country. Sometimes, these things are hardly noticeable to the layman; they may not necessarily be understood. It is the reality of the world in which we live that many of them are overlooked and go by default—sometimes, I regret to say, wilfully and sometimes not. Against a background of that kind, charging a fee is likely to encourage more of the same—more turning a blind eye and more hoping that nobody will notice. We are talking about physical things here, and our response should be pragmatic and to accept this reality. As was commented on by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, some may say that some listed building consents are integral to big, visible schemes. As he said, in those circumstances, regular planning consent—if I can call it that—is invariably required for the wider scheme of which they are an integral component. That is the way that the matter should be dealt with. I simply suggest that this amendment represents a realistic and pragmatic way to make the system work as well as it can, simply because charging a fee is unlikely to make the system as a whole work in the public interest.