Report, Together with Formal Minutes, Oral and Written Evidence
The Localism Bill will devolve powers to councils and neighbourhoods and aims to give local communities more control over housing and planning decisions. It includes measures to reform the planning system, the provision of housing and a range of local authority governance issues. The Bill will abolish Regional Spatial Strategies (which set a regional-level planning framework for England) and will establish neighbourhood plans and neighbourhood development orders, by which it is intended that communities will be able to influence council policies and development in their neighbourhoods. The Government intends to introduce a 'presumption in favour of sustainable development' as set out in the Conservative Party's 2010 Green Paper 'Open Source Planning' and then in the Coalition Agreement. The presumption does not feature in the Localism Bill, although it will be included in a new National Planning Policy Framework. Evidence taken by the Committee highlighted a number of potential risks with the proposed reforms. These included: fairness in influencing neighbourhood development; monitoring the cumulative impacts of locally determined planning decisions; and the application of sustainability and climate change duties to neighbourhood planning. The Committee feels that the Localism Bill must provide a statutory duty to apply the principles of sustainability in the planning system and other functions of local government and provide a commitment to define the term 'sustainable development' in the planning context. This would include in the Bill the five internationally recognised principles of sustainable development as set out in the 2005 Sustainable Development Strategy. This should then be developed for the National Planning Policy Framework
The Committee feels that the Localism Bill must provide a statutory duty to apply the principles of sustainability in the planning system and other functions of local government and provide a commitment to define the term 'sustainable ...
Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12, Vol. 1: Report, Together with Formal Minutes
This report concentrates on the issue of whether witnesses have previously misled a select committee of the House of Commons over the extent and knowledge of phone-hacking. The Committee concludes that several individuals misled the Committee in 2009 and more recently, and that the News of the World and News International corporately misled the Committee about the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they carried out into phone-hacking, made statements that were not fully truthful, and withheld documents. The companies' directors - including Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch - should be prepared to take responsibility for these failings. The Committee reports its findings for the House of Commons to decide whether a contempt has been committed and, if so, what punishment should be imposed.
In the last decade, the Committee's predecessors have conducted three separate
inquiries into press standards, taking a special interest in privacy. In the last
Parliament, as part of the most recent of the three Reports—Press standards,
privacy ...
The Commons Home Affairs Committee "deplores" News International's attempt to "deliberately thwart" the original investigation into phone hacking in 2005-06 but also states that the police set aside a huge amount of material that could have identified other perpetrators and victims. The committee agrees with John Yates's own assessment that his 2009 review of this investigation was "very poor", that he did not ask the right questions and that he was guilty of a "serious misjudgement". The committee criticises Andy Hayman's cavalier attitude towards his contacts with those in News International who were under investigation which, even if entirely above board, risked seriously undermining confidence in the impartiality of the police, and accuses him of deliberate prevarication in order to mislead the committee. It urges the swift and thorough investigation of allegations that payments were made to police officers by the media, which will help to establish whether or not such payments may have influenced police inquiries into phone hacking. The committee welcomes DAC Sue Akers's decision to contact all potential victims of phone hacking by the News of the World as part of the current investigation, but is alarmed that only 170 have as yet been informed. At this rate it would take years to inform all of the several thousands of people potentially affected. The committee therefore recommends that extra resources are allocated to her investigation, by the Government directly if necessary. The committee also expresses concern about both the scope and understanding of current laws on phone hacking, with prosecutors and police still arguing over the meaning of relevant sections of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. However, this was no reason for the Metropolitan Police to limit their investigation of these matters. Finally, potential victims of phone hacking should be given a means of seeking formal advice from the Information Commissioner and easier access to redress. The Information Commissioner should be given additional powers to deal with breaches of data protection, including phone hacking and blagging. Mobile phone companies should give greater prominence to security advice in the information provided to their customers. The report sets out 24 conclusions and recommendations.
During the evidence Mr Yates gave the Home Affairs Select Committee on
Tuesday 29 March, he mentioned that the police were carrying out research into
allegations that police officers were being paid for information by journalists.
