Baroness Blackstone (Lab)

My Lords, I will respond briefly to what has been said on this group of amendments. The Minister will perhaps be grateful to me if I do not repeat all the arguments made in the eloquent speeches we have heard this afternoon. In turn, I will be very grateful to him if he gives a full reply to all the points raised and the questions asked. I particularly want to hear from him what the Government intend to do if the planning application, as I believe the Government intend, leads to a decision to turn down this proposal. I want to know from him whether the Government’s current position—they must have some position on this—is to call it in or to accept what the experts and the politicians on Westminster City Council believe is the right decision. I give my noble friend a little warning that I will get up and ask again if he does not produce an answer to that. My main reason for speaking is that, like the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, I was at one time the Minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport responsible not just for the arts but for heritage. One of the most shocking things about this project relates to the 1900 Act, which was set up in good faith in perpetuity to protect these gardens for the use of residents and other users. We are seeing a blatant disregard for what legislators decided. Admittedly that was a long time ago, but for many years no Governments have decided to disapply the Act to this important garden. The Minister has to say why he thinks this disapplication is acceptable. It is profoundly wrong on social, environmental and political grounds, and in terms of thinking about the future of this particular part of London. I want to pick up on what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said about the heritage issues. It is shocking that UNESCO—an extremely important part of the United Nations’ activities, protecting our culture and our heritage around the world—should be ignored. I just do not think a British Government should do that. We are committed members of the United Nations, and we have been committed to UNESCO. On a number of occasions I, as a Minister, sat with my officials discussing how we would ensure that all the British world heritage sites were properly maintained, sustained and cared for, and how we should carefully select new ones when we had an opportunity to do so. As it happened, when I was the Minister responsible, I selected Kew Gardens, which was not a world heritage site but absolutely deserved to be. We gave it some funding to make sure that it could prepare an application for it. I really urge the Minister to discuss this further, not only in his own department but in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which has some responsibility for heritage issues and for what UNESCO decides to do. Perhaps he could let the Committee know whether any discussions have taken place with his colleagues in that department, and whether there has been any direct contact with UNESCO about the decision to ignore what UNESCO has been saying for the last five years. It is also important that Historic England, an agency funded by the Government, has also come out totally against using the site for this project. I rest my case. I will not say any more, but I support what has already been said, not just on this matter but by the other contributors to this debate on the whole area of planning.