In the National Interest

December 6th, 2006

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The difference made by one consonant: on the day Baker and Co’s report on the Iraq catastrophe emerges, I’m writing instead about the Barker report (PDF, 494Kb) on the provision of housing in the UK.

Parochial, moi?

The huge importance of Barker lies in the way it falls into line with the thinking that underlies both wider government policies on development and ‘energy security’, and current plans for large capital energy infrastructure projects. Collectively, these have deep repercussions, not only for planning regulations, but for human rights in the UK as such, an issue which goes far beyond the objections raised by Friends of the Earth and the Council for the Protection of Rural England concerning the likely effect on green belt land.

Put simply, the Barker report represents another of a series of serious interlinked threats to local democracy and individual rights, and as such deserves your full attention.

The general tenor of the report – planning is necessary to constrain the market but it must respond to market signals – certainly represents what seems to be the government’s default position on infrastructure development. Nonetheless, it proclaims that what is required are ‘decision making procedures that take full account of the wider costs and benefits of housing development, including environmental and amenity costs’ (p. 32). These ‘wider costs’ are often those which depend on local perceptions of the value of a particular site, and which people might even resist reckoning as quantifiable ‘costs’, by insisting that, say, the amenity value of a particular landscape is not at all commensurable with the projected financial gains of building a leisure centre on it.

However, the report contains passages that, seen in relation to the other areas of government policy I mentioned, sound an alarm:

Creating a more flexible housing market requires greater responsiveness at the local level in releasing land for development. More land should be released when market signals indicate that housing shortages and affordability problems are growing. Releasing more land by revisiting the whole plan-making process from scratch would not, however, result in timely outcomes. Instead, local plans should be more realistic in their initial allocation of land, and more flexible in bringing forward additional land for development. (p. 41)

There is currently a clear presumption in favour of development which conforms to the local plan in the UK, though that presumption may be defeated if the planning authority consider there to be other material considerations which mean that the application should not be granted. A number of submissions to the Review suggested that the presumption in favour of development should be strengthened. (p. 45, bold emph. added)

The essence of the threat such proposals pose has to do with the way the idea of the public or national interest is increasingly being used to help justify planning decisions that will adversely affect huge numbers of people living in and around the projects that result. Simon Jenkins is near the heart of the issue when he writes of the CBI:

That body is outraged that local people sometimes obstruct its property-developer members (whom Barker treats as synonymous with “economic prosperity”).

To treat a given private interest as definitive of the general interest (”economic prosperity”) could almost be called the essence of political argument; the purpose of political authority is to measure and manage the competition between such arguments. The problem with Barker’s review is that she potentially makes it even easier than it already is for powerful private interests to override local objections to their projects in the name of ‘the national interest’. Certainly, the definition of the ‘national interest’ is always up for grabs, like ‘the good life’, ‘sustainability’, ‘the future’ or any other sublime object of ideology. It remains beyond all the individual private interests, but only becomes articulated in relation to them. However, the risk at the heart of politics is always that the loudest voice gets to define what the essence of this public good is, and that is why democratic systems need to structure decison making processes so that the volume is turned down enough to allow others to speak and be heard.

The problem with planning, considered as a political issue, is therefore one of balancing the local costs of a project against what the national interest is proclaimed to be - but in an atmosphere of real or contrived urgency, the very possibility of a balance being struck is eroded. When Alastair Darling lodged a Statement of Need in the Commons on July of this year concerning the future of ‘energy security’, which was directed to planning authorities, NGOs and local communities where infrastructure projects might be built, this was accompanied by a written statement to the Lords which contained the following:

To meet this challenge we require a regulatory environment that enables the development of timely and appropriately sited new gas supply infrastructure projects […] Government policy establishes broad objectives, which are supported by light touch regulation. The private sector then takes commercial decisions to develop the infrastructure that can maintain and improve the reliability of energy supplies. […] The DTI recognises the importance of local democracy in the decision-making process, and the significant contribution that local involvement makes to the quality of decision-making. The views of all stakeholders must be taken into account. But if we are to maintain a rigorous planning system, it must also enable decisions to be taken in reasonable time. A balance must be struck between meeting the concerns of local authorities and those they represent, and the national need for infrastructure that will provide us with secure energy supplies. (Lords Hansard cWS9-10, 16 July 2006)

The language is the same: ‘broad objectives’, ‘reasonable time’; specific planning developments have to be based on commercial, i.e. market-sensitive decisions. And overall, the need for ‘striking a balance’ is juxtaposed, once again, with the presumption of development, which Barker has recommended should be strengthened. Put simply, the national interest is, increasingly, that the infrastructure gets built - whatever.

An example of a current energy infrastructure project that shows how this imbalance plays out is National Grid’s proposed LNG pipeline in South Wales.

This project forms part of a response to the Government’s energy white paper of 2003 which called for infrastructure investment to create reliable supply routes for energy, but also for a low-carbon economy (minimising as far as possible reliance on gas). The Government proclaimed that it needed to balance reliability of supply with the overall sustainability of energy use, a requirement which includes reducing the amount of energy use overall, particularly by the electricity generating sector and by industry.

The probable local impact of the pipeline has been effectively whitewashed in the environmental impact assessment that accompanied NG’s planning application, which relies on, amongst other dubious instruments, highly questionable risk assessment methodology and extremely subjective definitions of environmental value. But the key point of the planning proposal is that NG claims it is ‘in the national interest’; that it will provide enough capacity to cope with the level of demand for gas that the company forecasts for the next 10-15 years. Here we have the problem to which Jenkins alluded: the definition of the national interest appears to be miraculously in accord with the private interests of the party who offers the definition –increased demand for gas stimulated by new infrastructure. What is particularly interesting about the position here is that the government relies on NG, since energy privatisation a private company, for statistics about gas demand. In other words, the advisor who has the prince’s ear, and whose advice will help to guide the formation of energy policy, is not a public servant, but a company whose first responsibility is, as Milton Friedman would have reminded us, is to its shareholders.

Other than suspicion over the coincidence of the national interest and the particular interest of NG, and thereby of its shareholders, there are various reasons to question NG’s interpretation of the ‘national interest’. The government has spoken of the need to invest in a mixed energy economy, to provide enough generation capacity to allow for fluctuations in availability of supply. This is not the same as responding to demand. The government’s own avowed position on sustainable energy supply requires the shift to a low carbon economy which, as the DTI has itself said, will require reducing reliance on gas. Further, independent research questions NG’s own interpretation of the connection between the national interest and its plans – here (PDF) the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies points out that current LNG projects are probably far too many in number given likely levels of demand over the next decade. Finally, NG fails to consider whether climate change might lead to a reduced level of demand for gas overall, as is pointed out by the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority (PDF).

NG has couched its planning application in precisely the terms used by Barker, and by the statement to the Lords, stressing the urgency of need and with it seeking to reinforce the presumption in favour of development. This presumption makes it very easy indeed for the national interest to be articulated in a way that is favourable to private companies who are seeking to profit from development. In times of real or perceived emergency, the power of government to decide the exception can be one of the most serious threats to liberty there is, as the US government continues to prove every day. The Barker report, like the underlying tone of government energy policy and the on-message planning proposals of private companies like National Grid, threaten to erode the few safeguards that protect local communities from being subjected to unjust costs and harms – and it does so by, in effect, claiming for planners the power to ‘decide the exception’ in relation to infrastructure projects: the point at which local objections, which in ‘normal circumstance’ would be honoured, must simply be ignored in favour of what a developer submits is ‘in the national interest’. If this policy trend is allowed to continue, then the imposition of unjust costs and harms on local communities in the ‘national interest’ will become our common future.

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