Day three of the Conservative Party Conference was themed: “Tackling the Causes of Poverty” and covered health, education, welfare, justice and international development. However, the controversy over yesterday’s announcement of a cut in child benefits for higher rate taxpayers was hanging over proceedings. David Cameron spent much of his morning defending the move on breakfast television.
There was some tension when suggestions by Children’s Minister, Tim Loughton, that there would be a review of the cut were quashed by Cameron. He also confirmed that means testing the payment according to individual incomes, rather than combined household income, was deliberate.
Policy Announcements
Last night saw a Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) fringe meeting with John Howell, Minister for Housing. At the meeting, he stressed that there would be no return to targets but that the National Planning Framework, when combined with the sustainable development test, would facilitate development where needed. He said: “If local authorities won’t take responsibility for dealing with the needs of their local area, then they won’t pass the sustainable development test.”
However, Mr Howell received some criticism from other speakers such as Chris Tinker of housebuilder Crest Nicholson who said that in many areas planning had now been rendered infeasible owing to costs and regulations. This was particularly poignant given that the TCPA released a comment to the press this morning, in response to Eric Pickles’ suggestion that council planning departments should merge, which said that however planning departments were structured they needed to retain the services of professional planners for the system to function.
There was also a fringe meeting organised by the Nuclear Industry Association which saw speeches from Chris Hendry, Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change, and Humphrey Cadoux-Hudson Managing Director of Nuclear New Build at EDF Energy. Mr Cadoux-Hudson welcomed earlier comments from Maria McCaffery, Chief Executive of RenewableUK, that nuclear and renewables were partners and hailed the cross-party consensus on nuclear power. He also called for the National Policy Statements on energy infrastructure to be set out in their final draft form with a timetable for delivery.
The Minster said that the Government would have to re-publish and re-consult on the statements since not doing so could land them in court. However, he also said that the planning system would become more accountable. He further announced that a white paper on electricity market reform would be released in the Spring.
Written by Nick Sutcliffe