Just when we thought that the nine-year hiatus of inactivity at Manston airport would be coming to an end and the near-term prospect of £500m of private investment, many jobs in the build phase and then ongoing direct, ancillary and multiplier effect jobs in their thousands were in sight, another hurdle is put in the way by the judicial system and anti-airport activists.
I am very surprised and hugely disappointed that a new judge, at a brief hearing, has decided that there are grounds for judicial review on the Development Consent Order across a narrow number of grounds. Legal uncertainty created when one judge directs one thing and then another something entirely different based upon the same presented evidence within just a few months of each other does nobody any good and merely creates uncertainty and hardly gives assurance to foreign and domestic investors that the UK is an easy or welcoming place to do business.
Lord Peter Lilley, the former Cabinet Minister, with whom I share much political philosophy and meet with on a weekly basis, highlighted in a speech in the House of Lords on the 8th of March the bureaucratic hurdles now endemic in any planning application. He highlighted that the application for a new windfarm off the Norfolk coast required 1,961 documents running to 13,275 pages. For the application for Sizewell C nuclear plant required 44,260 pages of submissions. There have been worse – National Highways, when applying to build a new 15 mile road, had to produce 30,000 pages of environmental reports, costing £267million alone. The build cost of the actual road will probably be less. Much of this is driven by ‘environmental’ requirements on the back of EU law currently embedded in our legislation and applicants having to triple gold plate applications to resist Judicial Review attack by environmental activists who now use the new religion of Net Zero to argue against any new development of any kind, not least airports. The perversity is that even a deemed ‘good’ project like a windfarm has to jump through the same hoops making the finished project vastly more expensive requiring a higher price of energy coming out the other end just to cover the nonsensical planning costs.
I’m pleased that there are robust campaigns taking place against the Mayor of London’s plans for a £12.50 per day tax on older vehicles within the entirety of the greater London region. As I’ve said before Kent residents will have to pay this simply for the right to go to work negating by some margin any wage rises hard fought for. If you want to get some idea of life under a Labour administration, this surely is it.
I was unable to support the government over the Windsor Framework last week. Whilst it may be better than the current Northern Ireland Protocol for the provision of sausages from Sainsbury’s GB to Sainsbury’s NI, it leaves too many constitutional questions unanswered or answered badly. The fact that the DUP will not re-enter the devolved Stormont assembly on the back of it makes one wonder whether the row was worth it at all?
The Boris ‘trial’ by the Privileges Committee of MPs had its day last week. Is this all a bit in the past about events long ago for which we are now uncovering good decisions and bad made at the coalface of the time in battling a little-known disease? I pose that to tease out a response. I’ve had some experience of justice in the UK, firstly as a Magistrate for 10 years and then on the receiving end of an eleven-week trial leading to acquittal. Our legal system almost doesn’t require rules: natural justice is obvious when you see it. Fairness is obvious when you see it. I have some disquiet that the Parliamentary Committee is acting as both prosecutor and judge and that all on it are politically involved either by partisanship or know the ‘accused’ closely; this would not follow in any other quasi-judicial hearing anywhere in the UK. The backstop is that MPs will have the final say on any sanction, again bound to be partisan or a vote cast according to whether you like to the guy or not or some other subtext. If suspension from Parliament for more than 10 days is the sanction then a local petition would follow, which could lead to a recall by-election. I’m not sure it should be up to MPs to decide the political fate of another MP. That decision is surely to be made by the electorate and in any event an election is not too far away, perhaps 18 months or so.
I was sorry to hear of the passing of Frank Thorley, a giant character well known across East Kent. A true local legend. RIP dear Frank.