I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to grant local authorities increased powers of compulsory purchase; to amend the law relating to land valuation and compensation; to make provision requiring landowners to fulfil conditions relating to planning permission; and for connected purposes.
Mr Speaker, it will be of no surprise to you or any Member that I begin this speech by extolling Hull’s virtues. Hull is a growing, successful city that is attracting significant investment and undergoing really positive change. The council has already granted numerous housing, commercial, industrial and educational permissions, the majority of which have been implemented, and taking vital steps to secure our future. Members who were present at my Westminster Hall debate yesterday will have heard me talk about one such step: Hull’s bid to become Yorkshire’s maritime city. They will have heard me talk about the proud place that the sea plays in the history of Hull and how, for years, the shipping and deep sea trawling industries dominated our economy and their buildings stood prominently along our skyline. One such building was the Lord Line building on St Andrew’s dock, which was constructed for the Lord Line trawler fleet in 1949. The Lord Line building is locally listed and a site of personal significance to the people of Hull, as it is one of the last buildings relating to Hull’s fishing heritage. It is the site of the dock where the fishing boats used to come in and out when we were the capital city of the UK fishing trade, but it has been left to go to ruin, causing great upset in Hull’s fishing community.
Young people go in there for reasons that I do not wish to elaborate on here. We can see from the discarded needles, from the bricks thrown from the top of the building and from the fire engines that attend the site regularly that it is not being properly safeguarded or protected. There will end up being a tragedy there, because people keep going to the building and it remains unsafe. If you ask people who is to blame, they will answer: Manor Properties. The company owns the Lord Line building and has a habit of promising wonderful, big, pie-in-the-sky dreams to the people of Hull. It would have been fantastic if it had been able to deliver on its original proposals, but time passes and the work is not done. The building continues to be damaged and to lose its integrity, and a vital and beloved part of our history as a seafaring city goes to rack and ruin.
This is an exceptionally important local issue, and it is one that goes to the very heart of the concept of property rights and what we value in this country. The question that we, as the representatives of the people, must answer is whether owning something gives someone the right not just to use it and earn from it but to actively destroy it, especially when it is of cultural significance to others. Of course this is a philosophical question, but that does not make it any less important to answer. If anything, abstracting the question makes it easier to answer. Imagine if, instead of a building, the thing being owned was a priceless piece of art or a beloved public service. There are few among us here who would say that anyone, even those who own such artefacts, had an absolute right to take a shredder to the Mona Lisa, for example, or to destroy our NHS. The fact that we can accept that there is no absolute right to destroy property that one owns is one of the bases of our compulsory purchase system, but unfortunately, in one area in particular, our current system of compulsory purchase does not go far enough. This is a situation in which a property developer continually fails to fulfil the conditions of their planning permission within a reasonable amount of time, such as in the Lord Line case. It is such situations that my Bill seeks to address.