Flying in the face of democracy

The dinosaur is about to give birth. The planning inquiry into Heathrow's Terminal Five has been groaning on Stephen Byers's desk since last December. A terrified Mr Byers is reputedly to slip out a decision any day now under the Jo Moore procedure of "very good time". It should coincide with a land invasion of Afghanistan.

The Terminal Five (T5) inquiry has taken eight years and cost £60 million in lawyers' and other fees. The final report runs to 600 pages - £100,000 a page. The decision was to be based on a booming demand for more flights at Heathrow. It comes when demand has collapsed by 25 per cent and with a European Court ruling that night flights are against the "human right to sleep". The whole world has gone mad.

I once wondered if the T5 inquiry might drag on until planes became obsolete, replaced by microlights, high speed tunnels and internet conferencing. Nobody thought they would be rendered obsolete by terrorists.

But the rail network was hardly complete before Lord Beeching discovered that cars had replaced branch lines. The Sizewell B nuclear power station inquiry went on so long that nuclear power came and went in the meantime.

Stick around long enough and any grand investment will become out of date. London is now littered with derelict petrol stations, permitted to disfigure a hundred high streets and now mere eyesores. Soon the metropolis will be littered with derelict hypermarkets, followed by derelict skyscrapers. The whole point of planning was to even out these booms and busts, to think ahead.

The T5 inquiry was on any showing a public scandal. On Tuesday, the planning minister, Lord Falconer, protested that it must never happen again, though his enriched friends at the planning bar may take a different view. In a speech to the Confederation of British Industry he used T5 as a stick to beat the planning system and demand its overhaul. In particular, he wants big planning decisions - he did not say how big - removed from local government and brought under his aegis in Whitehall. Local government and communities will be allowed only to protest and "lobby their MPs". His lordship has at least a sense of humour.

Lord Falconer's speech was cynical. Every line was a crude bid to grab more power for Whitehall and ingratiate the Blair government with business. He knows that planning is almost the last area of discretion left to local democracy. He wants to crush it. There was not even a nod in the direction of planning theory or of any "green agenda". The whole tenor of the speech was directed at helping developers get their way. Nor was there any suggestion of putting these hugely significant proposals before MPs. Lord Falconer announced them to a business conference and sits safe in the House of Lords.

The T5 decision has nothing whatever to do with local democracy. The length and cost of the inquiry was entirely due to central government's appeasement of the planning bar. Like the previous-Sizewell B inquiry, it has been a lawyers' and consultants' gravy train. Another oft-cited case was the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. That was decided locally in the late 1980s under existing planning rules by British Rail in negotiation with Kent County Council. The planning was rigorous and expeditious. What scuppered it was central government overruling the negotiated route and demanding a quite different one, via Stratford. This cost hundreds of millions of pounds and added 10 years to the planning phase.

To blame localism for either decision is outrageous, a crude excuse to bring yet more local discretion under central control. Lord Falconer claims to want larger planning decisions, size undefined, determined by "Parliament". By Parliament he means the Government. He wants to decide on airports, motorways, harbours, tunnels and his "household formation units on green sites". He wants to be judge, inquirer and juror.

What is baffling is that his lordship has these powers already. The siting of new airport runways, the widening of motorways, the fate of high or historic buildings, can all be determined after due inquiry by the minister.

Nor is there a problem in speeding up local planning with fixed timetables. If something is really urgent, such as the Dome or the London Eye, temporary permission is available or a Special Development Order can be laid.

It is a fantasy that central government can make faster decisions on big projects. London's new CrossRail would have been built 10 years ago had it been left to London's planning machine. Instead it has been stalled in Lord Falconer's department for a decade. His present and former colleagues dither and have spent a phenomenal £250 million in fees, failing to decide what to do.

His department has spent four years failing to decide a future for the Tube. It spent five years failing to reach a decision on the St Paul's Precinct and Tower Bridge City. It still cannot decide on Wembley or Picketts Lock. It cannot make up its mind on the Dome. The record of Lord Falconer's department makes most of local planning seem like summary justice.

Nor is Whitehall's record good when decisions are made. It was central government that shot to pieces London's high-building controls in the 1970s and 1980s. It allowed the Hilton and Knightsbridge Barracks, the Kensington hotels and the London Docks demolitions on shortterm political grounds, denying the whole point of planning.

National politicians have never been trustworthy or decisive custodians of London planning.

This whole business has nothing to do with planning and everything to do with central control. The T5 decision has been in Lord Falconer's office for almost a year, and all he can do is blame local democracy. His indecision is clearly final. These authoritarians can leave nothing alone, least of all if it aids community freedom.

And where the hell is the mayor?