In recent debate in Westminster Hall, the issue of planning reform in the UK has been brought to the forefront by Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski.
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00:00 investments for those who will never live there. Thank you.
00:03 Daniel Karwiziski.
00:05 Thank you very much, Prince.
00:07 In May of this year I will have completed 19 years service as a Conservative Member of Parliament representing my constituency.
00:17 And I think for me, on reflection, reflecting back on those 19 years, I think the planning system,
00:26 the current planning system and the ramifications of it are one of the greatest concerns for me and many of my constituents.
00:35 And I'd like to highlight a particular, very important infrastructure project in my constituency,
00:40 because as a Conservative, the thing that I'm most interested in is value for money for taxpayers.
00:47 And we've been talking about Shrewsbury, of course, a beautiful town in Shropshire,
00:53 more listed buildings than any other town in England.
00:56 Tourism is extremely important for us. It's our number one income generator.
01:00 But it's a very historic town which was built hundreds of years ago.
01:05 And it's struggling to cope with the huge increase in house building and people moving into our community.
01:13 We've been talking about completing the ring road around Shrewsbury for 50 years.
01:19 And I was approached by the Shrewsbury Business Chamber some years ago.
01:26 The late Graham Galliers, the head of Shrewsbury Business Chamber, came to see me and said,
01:31 "The one thing you need to do as the Member of Parliament is to secure the funding to complete the ring road around Shrewsbury,
01:39 because that is at the very centre of economic sustainability for your constituency."
01:46 I used my position in the House of Commons to lobby for funding for the completion of the ring road.
01:52 It's basically 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock has been missing.
01:57 So the ring road is there, but 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock has been missing for 50 years.
02:02 And completing 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock will actually free up the whole north-western segment of Shrewsbury,
02:10 which is undeveloped, and the construction of this ring road will be the catalyst for a massive private sector investment
02:19 in that vacant, empty north-west segment of Shrewsbury.
02:25 I was delighted when the then Secretary of State for Transport came to see me in February 2019.
02:34 I'll repeat that figure, that date, February 2019.
02:38 Exactly, actually slightly more now than five years ago.
02:42 He came to see me in the House of Commons Chamber and said, "Good news, you've got the funding for the north-west relief road."
02:49 That was five years ago.
02:52 I live in Colton Hill in the centre of Shrewsbury, and I see the extraordinary congestion that takes place in my town.
03:00 We're a small county town, but it takes over an hour to get from one end of Shrewsbury to another because of the huge amount of congestion.
03:12 And of course, as I've said before, massive construction.
03:16 There's a huge flow of young professional couples leaving the black country and moving into Shrewsbury.
03:24 Working practices are changing very rapidly.
03:27 Why live in Birmingham or Wolverhampton or the black country when you can live in beautiful Shropshire
03:33 and bring your family there and enjoy the countryside?
03:36 So people are starting to move to rural areas like ours and then commute intermittently towards Birmingham and inner-city conurbations.
03:46 And so this flow of people will only continue as it has been coming into Shrewsbury and Shropshire.
03:54 So five years ago I secured this funding, and over the last five years I have watched the ping-pong that's been taking place between Shropshire Council,
04:06 my democratically elected local council, Conservative Council, which is elected by people and accountable to the local people.
04:15 I've watched the ping-pong between Shropshire Council and the Environment Agency.
04:21 Each side blaming the other for the extraordinary delays that have been taking place in trying to get this project through the planning process and for construction to start.
04:35 In my frustration as to what was going on, I said nothing for the first year.
04:40 I said nothing for the second year.
04:42 I watched with increasing desperation and concern, but I said nothing for the first year, nothing for the second year, nothing for the third year.
04:52 Well, eventually I said I can't allow this to continue. I must intervene.
04:59 So I asked to see the new chief executive of the Environment Agency.
05:04 The Environment Agency, of course, share the building, the Home Office building just around the corner.
05:09 And I wrote to the new chief executive of the Environment Agency, Mr Duffy, who had worked as a civil servant of the Treasury and now has become the chief executive of the Environment Agency.
05:21 And I asked him in a polite letter whether I could meet with him and bring some of my councillors, the portfolio for highways.
05:29 Initially I was told that he would only see me, that he refused to see my councillors.
05:36 And we went through a bit of an argy-bargy in order to ensure that they were ultimately the portfolio holder for highways and others were able to join me.
05:47 And this is all about the construction of a bridge over the River Severn, because the Northwest Relief Road is a segment of the road where we need to build a bridge which goes across the River Severn.
06:01 And of course this bridge, and as with so many other construction projects, there is no alternative, this bridge comes relatively close to an aquifer from which drinking water is taken for the people of Shrewsbury.
06:16 And that is why I am told there are such significant delays.
06:21 But do we need, I mean I'm going to say something controversial and there will be a lot of people who violently disagree with me, but then again that's politics and that's democracy.
06:30 But do we need these quangos? Do we need the Environment Agency? Yes of course we do.
06:37 I see some snorting and guffawing from the opposition benches.
06:41 Of course we do, of course we need the Environment Agency. We need the Environment Agency in order to work with us and our authorities on mitigating flooding.
06:51 I chair a caucus of 38 Conservative Members of Parliament who have the River Severn flowing through their constituencies, Britain's longest river.
06:59 We're working in a very constructive way with the Environment Agency and the River Severn Partnership to try to lobby collectively for additional resources to tame Britain's longest river.
07:09 Yes, I see a relevance in that. But do we need this sort of level of interference from an unelected, unaccountable and clearly lacking in transparency organisation to scrutinise a democratically elected council
07:32 that is responsible to the people of Shrewsbury, that is elected, that can be thrown out by the electorate if they make a mistake, an environmental mistake.
07:43 They've hired some of the best advisors, environmental advisors, construction companies to try to build this bridge.
07:51 Can we afford, as a nation, this level of excessive engagement between the Environment Agency and a democratically elected council?
08:04 I would argue we don't. I would argue that I actually trust the local council with all of its resources, all of its good intentions,
08:14 with local councillors who are part of the community, local councillors who drink the water that we take from the aquifer, local councillors who are elected and accountable to the people.
08:26 Can we entrust our councils to make these decisions and to build essential infrastructure projects for our constituents?
08:34 Or do we need this outside body?
08:37 And of course, at the end of the day, what worries me more than anything else is that I secured £58 million for this road in February 2019.
08:48 £58 million. Now, I think the end project is going to cost about £140 million or maybe £150 million.
08:58 Now, that's just my project in Shrewsbury. I think we're going to be spending an extra £100 million on this project as a result of the massive delays that have taken place.
09:10 And if this is being replicated across the United Kingdom, which I know it is, and I've spoken to other Conservative MPs who have their own serious concerns about the lack of engagement from the Environment Agency,
09:23 then we're really starting a process of massive additional costs which are going to be very difficult to meet.
09:33 And it's this lack of urgency. I can show you, Mr Betts, a file seven inches thick of my correspondence with the Environment Agency over the last five years on this one project.
09:47 If you'd like, I can show you the seven-inch thick file of all the correspondence that I've got into with the Environment Agency on this one project.
09:58 So I'm very unhappy with that, and I'd like the Minister to know that I have serious concerns as to the impact on taxpayers, my local hard-working families who are paying their taxes,
10:10 and yet the lack of urgency, the lack of accountability from Mr Duffy and his officials on this matter is clearly very disturbing indeed.
10:21 Now, last week we had a very positive announcement, which is an extra £244 million designated for transport projects in Shropshire.
10:35 But how have we got that £244 million? We've got it because HS2 has been stopped, has been cancelled.
10:46 I was a great supporter of HS2 because I was told that one of the reasons why we didn't have a direct train service between Shrewsbury and London,
10:55 the only county town in England without a direct train service to London, one of the reasons we didn't have it was a lack of capacity on the network,
11:02 and that HS2 was going to free up and build for future generations and increase that capacity.
11:09 I think what the Victorians did is fascinating because they built not for themselves, they built for future generations.
11:15 You plant the row of trees, you're not going to benefit from the shade yourself, you'll be gone, but those who follow you will benefit from the shade.
11:25 And the Victorians understood that, and they built for future generations.
11:30 The London Metro system, which I use almost every single day, is a classic example of building for future generations.
11:38 And so I was very saddened that the Prime Minister ultimately decided to scrap the project, but cognisant that there was no alternative.
11:50 Because of the huge additional costs for this project, because of NIMBYs and people who campaigned against various aspects of it,
12:01 therefore leading to massive increases in costs.
12:05 So we've benefited in Shropshire for an extra £244 million. Thank you very much, Treasury.
12:12 I will be spending that £244 million as quickly and as expeditiously as we can in Shropshire,
12:20 but we've only got it as a result of the destruction of a major national infrastructure project because of these environmentalists and NIMBYs.
12:31 I think the pendulum has swung too far away from governments, from councils, from members of parliament,
12:42 from people who are elected and responsible for delivering major infrastructure projects which are essential for people.
12:53 I think the pendulum in our society has swung too far away from those people who are in positions of responsibility and accountability.
13:04 And that pendulum has swung towards the environmentalists, the environment agency, the NIMBYs.
13:14 And we all have thousands of NIMBYs in our constituencies.
13:18 We need to recalibrate this equilibrium in order to ensure that more power is brought back to engineers, architects, designers, planners,
13:30 councils, governments and members of parliament, because otherwise we are going to sink,
13:36 and I want the Minister to remember this, we are going to sink into a quagmire in this country
13:42 whereby we cannot build essential infrastructure projects and they will double, triple and quadruple in price.
13:49 That is something which is simply unacceptable and I look forward to hearing from the Minister
13:54 as to what her intentions are to streamline and improve the planning process
13:59 so that examples like my North West Relief Road do not occur in other constituencies in the future. Thank you.
14:05 Thank you.