I want to start by welcoming the draft Heritage Protection Bill. The Bill aims to set out the legislative framework for a more unified and simpler heritage protection system that will be more open, accountable and transparent. I am pleased that the Bill has been designed to provide more opportunities for public involvement and community engagement in understanding, preserving and managing our heritage. These are laudable aims.

The benefits of the reforms, as set out in the Bill, are that they will enable us to preserve the historic environment and to manage its transition to the future. My main concern tonight is to ensure that, when it comes to protecting buildings, there is a balance between the past and the future. We must not let our desire to cherish and protect the past jeopardise building for future generations. I believe that more consideration should be given to wider economic and regeneration issues in the listing or designating of buildings.

At the moment, the criteria to which English Heritage has regard in determining whether to recommend that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport should list a building are the architectural and historic value of the building. The majority of listings are carried out in response to applications for individual buildings, which can be made by any individual or organisation. In addition to the listing work that is undertaken in response to applications, English Heritage also undertakes some thematic reviews of particular types of building. For example, in the 1990s, the textile mills of Greater Manchester were looked at in this way, and about five years ago cinemas across the whole of England were examined as a whole.

In my constituency, we have the world’s only listed pigeon cree—or loft, as they are commonly known. Does my hon. Friend agree that, under the Bill, the heritage, enjoyment and pastimes of the working people should be recognised, and that it should not simply deal with the great stately homes of Britain?

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, who I know has campaigned on this issue for a long time. I am sure that the Minister will have heard his fervent plea.

The draft Bill will simplify things by creating a single system for designation—to be called the heritage register—which will replace listing, scheduling and registering. However, the decision to designate will still be made on the basis of special architectural, historic or archaeological interest.

During consideration of this draft legislation, I would like other subsidiary criteria such as economic regeneration plans debated and taken into consideration before a recommendation is made to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport for a building to be designated or listed. Recent frustrating experiences in my own constituency of Stockport have led me to that view. May I make it clear that I am not making any criticisms of the individuals involved? I would like to thank Henry Owen-Jones from English Heritage for his help. The criticisms that follow are of the system itself.

Those experiences have made me believe that the designating of buildings should be more specific and spell out exactly what should be retained in any future developments. For example, clear descriptions of the materials to be used would enable future developers to tie down and contain costs and know from the beginning exactly what was required of them and how much it would cost. That would prevent expensive proposals from emerging at a later stage, often during informal pre-application discussions with English Heritage, which can severely hold up building projects or indeed jeopardise them altogether.

As I have explained, my interest in this whole issue arose out of tensions between heritage and regeneration in a multi-million pound development of Stockport college’s town centre campus in respect of one particular building. The new campus is to be on the site of the old St. Thomas’s hospital, the buildings of which have fallen into disrepair since the hospital was closed. The building in question, called merely “building 25”, was not a listed building, but because it fell within the curtilage of the principal listed structure, it was regarded as listed. It was attached to a listed building.

The problem was that English Heritage wanted to keep building 25, but Stockport college did not want to keep it. The college did not think it had any value for its vision of a 21st century educational facility and believed that its retention would compromise the design of the front aspect of its new college campus. As the building was riddled with asbestos, restoration would add further expense to the project. The college had already spent £11.217 million on the refurbishment of listed buildings as a result of pre-planning meetings with English Heritage. As the cost of refurbishment of listed buildings is 16 per cent. higher than the cost of new build, the excess costs were £1.53 million. The college did not want building 25, and the proposed alternatives of boarding it up or selling it were not ones that the college considered to be viable.

The college recognised the historical significance of the two listed buildings, but felt that building 25 detracted from the overall scheme. The frustration for the college was that it was always trying to discuss matters against a background of historical significance, irrespective of cost to its budget or the need to cater for 21st century learners.

From a heritage point of view, the college was keeping the best of the site, spending a lot of money on buildings that had hitherto been left to decay with little or no interest from anyone. It was also bringing a £55 million regeneration scheme to Stockport and simply could not go on investing in buildings for which it had no use and that it felt would serve no educational purpose.

English Heritage first advised Stockport council that it wanted to keep building 25 during pre-application advice meetings, and argument went on for months. The college spent £145,032 preparing a case for demolition, employing specialists in this field and commissioning architectural surveys to respond to English Heritage’s aspirations for the site as a whole. The college purchased the site in March and the estimated delay, due to the involvement of English Heritage, is likely to be 12 months.

The whole affair has added other costs to the project, including £37,500 in staff time and £117,000 in interest costs. It also had a major consequence for the college’s cash flow as it delayed Learning and Skills Council approval and the subsequent grants by almost a year. Ironically, English Heritage did not in the end formally object to the planning application submitted by the college, which involved the demolition of building 25.

From my involvement, which included several meetings with English Heritage, the Government office for the north-west and council officers, it became clear to me that if a building is listed but alongside that listing there is no description of the work that has to be done to preserve its heritage aspects, the developers cannot possibly know the costs that they might incur and, even worse, those costs will become clear only from advice by either local conservation officers from the council or the local representative from English Heritage. That organisation, of course, will be concerned to improve the heritage aspects, but doing so does not come out of its budget; every helpful piece of advice usually costs somebody else money.

The other difficulty, of course, is that it is not often clear to the recipient of the advice from English Heritage what the status of the advice is. It was clear from my involvement that the college was certainly under the impression that English Heritage was able to exercise some kind of veto on the planning application if its advice were not accepted. That, of course, is not the case. I think there is a need for a much more transparent process for striking a balance between heritage and the need to make buildings fit for the purpose for which they are developed. If, when buildings were listed, the listing were accompanied by descriptions of features that had to be retained, together with acceptable materials for restoration, developers would have a clearer idea of the costs.

In arriving at such descriptions, some regard needs to be paid to the future use of the building. For example, it is important that we provide affordable housing, but if old buildings are to be converted to flats, every extra cost imposed to meet heritage standards will affect the affordability of the housing. I understand the value of heritage, but it is also important to make buildings fit for purpose in the coming century, so we need an approach to heritage and the listing of buildings that takes that into account.

I was also concerned that money intended for further education and other public services was being disproportionately spent on buildings that had no national significance, although they had local listings, and, indeed, on buildings that were not themselves listed, but were attached to listed buildings. I do not think it right that money intended for educating young people should be spent on heritage, and there is a case to be made for having separate heritage budgets that can support such restoration work.

I am also convinced of the need for such a separate budget by another example in my constituency that involves the derelict St George’s Church of England vicarage and St. George’s Church of England primary school, which are both grade II listed buildings. The Victorian vicarage is set in a large garden and has been disused since 2001; it is boarded up because it has major disrepair and structural problems—for example, there is no staircase. Groups of children are trespassing and lighting fires inside, endangering both themselves and the surrounding area—a cause of continual complaints to the local police.

The school and the church diocese want to demolish the vicarage to make space for a much-needed green playing field. At the moment, the pupils have just a concrete playground. However, the conservation officer at Stockport council has told the church vicar that the vicarage windows or doors cannot be broken up or demolished because they are part of a conservation area and English Heritage would object, so we are stuck with a derelict, rotting building that nobody wants, can use or indeed, can properly conserve. That is another example of advice being given at an informal level. The consequences of such advice can be far-reaching. Of course, the Church could put in a planning application that involves demolishing the vicarage, but it is not clear that people understand that this is an option. There is a sense, however unreal, that English Heritage has an automatic veto.

Meanwhile, the school building itself is in need of some repairs. For example, the roof tiles have recently needed to be replaced. The school governors were told that they had to use a specific quality and colour of slate, and it turned out that the right tiles could be obtained at great expense only from Vermont in the United States. Again, on what basis was that advice given? Where is it said that only those particular tiles could be used? Why should this school use money that was intended for education to buy expensive tiles for something that nobody can see, simply because the building is listed? Surely, when listed buildings are being used, there need to be clear agreements about how the building is to be maintained. The advice should be more transparent, and it should take into account affordability for the user. These sorts of extra hidden costs can come as a shock and can jeopardise the finances and, in some cases, the continuation of projects.

Three lessons have been learned from the examples of Stockport college and St. George’s. First, the criteria for listing buildings should be widened, and more consideration should be given to wider economic and regeneration issues in the listing or designating of buildings. That is particularly important in inner-city and town-centre developments. Secondly, if buildings are listed, the listing should specify exactly what features any future developers would be expected to retain, together with descriptions of the acceptable materials to be used. Thirdly, there should be a separate heritage budget to support such restoration work so that money intended for educating young people, for example, is not diverted away. English Heritage has a statutory obligation to give advice, but with ever more complex applications involving millions of pounds of investment, we need to look again at the process of listing and the balance between heritage, the extent to which developments are fit for purpose and how those decisions are made.

The right balance has to be struck between the future and the past. Many hon. Members will have examples of derelict boarded-up buildings in their constituencies which have stood vacant for years and which no one can afford to renovate. They are not being conserved at all but just being allowed to decay. Is it not ironic that the listing itself may be a deterrent to development and may lead to decay and eventual demolition of a building that is so significant that it was listed for preservation? However, unless some account is taken of the possible use of a building in the application for listing, I cannot see how the Bill in its current form is actually going to achieve its objectives of preserving our heritage.

Buildings stand not in the past but in the present. They carry the heritage of the past, but they will not survive unless they can meet the aspirations of the future. Not all can become perfectly preserved museums. They have to be schools, houses or new offices. The process of listing buildings should take account of that, both in the application and when listed.

I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) has secured this debate. I am even more delighted that we finished the main business a bit early. I am not going to go on at great length, because I do not need to, but I want to take the opportunity to say a few things about the listing process.

The word “listing” is seared on my brain. Anyone who knows anything about Stroud will know that we take a special joy in the process of listing buildings. The obverse of that is that I have also talked to people who are close to suicide as a result of some of the implications of what happens when the listing process develops a life of its own. It can have all sorts of repercussions.

My right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport knows that I take a particular joy in the current proposal for C block of Standish hospital, and I hope that she will do the decent thing and not list it. The idea to list it is, to use a parliamentary term, nuts. It is the wrong sort of building for that. It would stop a perfectly good development on that site, which hopefully will be led by the NHS.

To show that I am not a philistine, I also ask my right hon. Friend to look at the proposal to list the Purton hulks on the River Severn. Those include some wonderful old barges, which were driven into the side of the river to stop its banks eroding. The hulks are of particular interest. I know that we cannot get protection for them at the moment, but hopefully the Bill, which I also welcome, will give us an opportunity to consider something that is of universal importance in the marine world and which we should be doing something about.

At one level, the process of listing is incredibly democratic. Anyone can put a building forward for listing. That is laudable. It is important that we look at the process in its totality, because it is of great importance, as I said. My hon. Friend said that the process was one of apparent transparency. I am a great fan of English Heritage, because it has saved buildings that were in a dire state of repair and in need of proactive intervention. For example, it has paid an awful lot of money to repair the roof of Stanley Mill in my constituency. It is to be congratulated on that. My only criticism of English Heritage is that it sometimes takes rather a long time to respond to applications, which can lead to difficulties because a building is, of course, deteriorating over that time. Uncertainty can be the worst outcome of all. I ask my right hon. Friend to say something about how, in the new legislative world that we are coming into, we can speed up the process of listing a building. There are occasions when a silly proposal is made—perhaps even a vexatious one to delay the inevitable development of a site—and we need to deal with that more expeditiously.

In terms of my special interest, the system is fraught with problems if a building has been listed but, over the course of history, some of the reasons for that are not clear and people are left with the problem of how to respond when there is a quite heavy-handed approach. I do not want to cast aspersions on my local authority, but again, anyone who knows anything about Stroud will know that listing is something that we do as a particular joy of life. We take a long time over it and look at applications in considerable detail. However, where those processes take that course, it can be difficult for people who are trying to take forward permitted development. The listing process makes things incredibly complicated and expensive. I hope that the Bill has something to say about that, particularly in view of the joyous phrase “development in the curtilage” of a listed building. Again, that is seared on my brain because it just means, “Look out, chaps. You are going to take an awful long time to get through this, and everybody is going to have an opinion on it, and it is going to take a long time, therefore, to reach some conclusion.” That is not fair to someone who is desperately keen to do something with a particular property.

Much as I see the process as democratic, and one that should be transparent, I hope that we can sometimes speed things along. It is not much good if we find that the process has resulted in the eventual destruction of a building either because it was too expensive to go through the process or, dare I say, because the building was in such a poor state of repair at the end of the process that all we have done is use the process in an adverse way and failed to foresee how we could have dealt with it differently.

I hope that my right hon. Friend will say some interesting things about what the Bill might do to expedite the process of listing, how we might get the process to be even more transparent—it is, as I said, democratic—and, in particular, how we can list what we should be listing and not list what we should not be listing. We need to tell people quickly that we want to get rid of that system because it is not helpful if the process hangs over everyone’s head.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) on securing the debate. She has made some extremely important points. I do not want to detain the House for long. I was not planning to speak, but as we have a bit of time, I thought I would mention one or two things.

It seems that when the listing notice comes through the letterbox, common sense goes out of the window. We need to get some common sense into the process, which is what my hon. Friend advocated. I suspect that we do not have to look any further than this building to see some of the problems that arise. Our staff struggle to maintain it in accordance with the requirements of English Heritage, which often fly in the face of common sense and what we need to do to make what is, in effect, a museum building suitable for a modern Parliament. That is frightening. No one is talking about messing around with the Chamber, but a bit of common sense needs to be applied to how some of the offices and rooms upstairs are maintained and improved, which is prevented by English Heritage.

I want to mention two buildings in my constituency, one of which is not listed and one of which is. The one that is not listed perhaps ought to be, but everyone is frightened of the consequences of going down that route because of what it would mean for its development. The building in question is the officers’ mess in Inglis barracks. The barracks have been the home of the Middlesex Regiment for some time. When the regiment moved out, it was replaced by British Forces Post Office. Indeed, Inglis barracks are named after Colonel Inglis, who was a hero of the Peninsula war and gave the Middlesex Regiment his nickname, “The Diehards”, from the battle of Albuera—but I digress.

The officers’ mess is a wonderful old building. I am not sure whether it merits listing, but it certainly merits preservation. To its credit, the local authority has been fairly co-operative, but the Army has moved out and the whole site is to be redeveloped to provide at least 2,000, or perhaps 2,500, homes, The question is what is to happen to the wonderful old building at the top of the site. What will happen to the Middlesex war memorial and others nearby? As my hon. Friend implied, if it is listed no developer will be able to make anything of it. It will go to rack and ruin: either it will eventually fall down of its own accord, or it will simply be neglected.

We are left with a wing and a prayer. We hope that when the site is developed, whoever buys that part of it will find a use for it—perhaps as a conference centre—and will be able to preserve it without its having to be listed. We also hope that the local authority and the local community will work together to ensure that it is preserved for functional purposes, but that adjustments may be possible that might not otherwise be possible, for reasons cited by my hon. Friend.

My second example is of a building that has been listed. My constituency contains the site of the former Hendon aerodrome. I believe that it was the first aerodrome in the country; certainly it is the site of the first aircraft factory, operated by a chap called Claude Grahame-White. It is now the site of the RAF museum and a housing estate. There is also a new development on the last unoccupied part of the estate—formerly known as RAF East Camp, now known as Beaufort Park—and the developer is putting up a couple of thousand houses there as well.

The original planning permission for part of the development meant that the then derelict Claude Grahame-White aircraft factory, dating from before the first world war, had to be relocated, lock, stock and barrel, to the RAF museum site. It cost a fortune, and it looks wonderful. The relocation was a magnificent operation. The first world war aircraft collection is housed there—but so is the former RAF watchtower, also a listed building of the highest category. The original plan was for it to remain in the middle of the development and be used as, for instance, a health centre. That idea has fallen through, and the current plan is to move the watchtower to the RAF museum site, which will involve a rather complicated land swap and a very complicated financial arrangement. The developer is putting in the cash.

The watchtower is almost falling down. It will have to be taken down virtually brick by brick and rebuilt on the site, where it will be used as an education centre. That is a brilliant idea, but English Heritage, perhaps being less co-operative than it might be, is insisting that this derelict building—which will be erected in the middle of a new housing estate, surrounded by big buildings—must be marketed, and marketed in a particular way. The project will take months to complete, with the net result that a very complicated deal could well fall through, although I hope it will not.

There is plenty of good will on the part of the museum, the developers and the local authority to ensure that the deal does not fall through, but it could fall through because of English Heritage’s ridiculous requirement. No one in their right mind would buy a derelict watchtower in the middle of a new housing estate with which nothing can be done. There is a wonderful function planned for it where it belongs, in the middle of our RAF heritage only a couple of hundred yards away, and it would be restored as part of the process rather than being allowed to fall down. Yet we run the risk of the whole scheme falling to pieces—literally—because of the approach that has been adopted. Where has common sense gone? A wonderful historic building in my constituency may not be restored and used for a sensible purpose. Moreover, a site that could be used for significant housing development may not be used for that purpose either.

I think that this is what my hon. Friend was getting at. The current process means that buildings that should be preserved may not be preserved as well as they could be because of developers’ fears of what may happen, a point referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew). When a building is listed, all the attendant hassle can be counter-productive in preventing us from preserving our wonderful heritage, which is what we are trying to do.

I think that both those constituency examples illustrate the need for a common-sense approach that, unfortunately, seems sometimes to be lacking in the existing process. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will be able to assure us that the new system will allow for such an approach.

I, too, will not detain the House for long, but I am grateful for the opportunity to speak. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) on securing the debate, which is relevant to the draft Heritage Protection Bill.

I believe that the listing process has, in principle, been very advantageous in guaranteeing the protection of many of our industrial sites. I agree that it should be brought up to date, but I think that without it many parts of Britain would be much poorer. I feel that heritage is important, and like other Members I actively promote it because of its economic benefits. However, there are other stronger, deeper reasons why we promote heritage.

My constituency is not one that the uninitiated would automatically assume had a range of listed buildings, but it has many, which people might find surprising. A lot of those buildings tend to be industrial. There is the Washington “F” Pit museum; Washington old hall, the ancestral home of George Washington; and Penshaw monument, which was built to commemorate Lord Lambton, or Radical Jack as he was known because of his support for the 1832 Reform Act. There are many examples in the constituency where listing has helped.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the brave campaign of the Ryhope allotment holders, who a decade ago won listed status for their pigeon cree—the world’s only listed pigeon cree. We use the term “cree” in the north-east, but many will know it as a loft. The honourable Tony Banks, a former Member of the House who is no longer with us, supported and secured that listing. I dread to think what would have happened to that early example of a pigeon cree without it.

There has been tremendous support for the cree. The men were particularly heartened on Christmas eve when they held a vigil in support of the pigeon cree, and the Prime Minister congratulated them on the 10th anniversary of its having received listed status. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport visited earlier this year and met the men involved. Last week, I received a letter with American stamps on. When I opened it, I found it was from a Hollywood superstar and his wife, who had appeared in panto in Sunderland and had read about the Christmas eve vigil that we held with local children to support the cree. That letter was from Mickey and Jan Rooney, who are still going strong and who are of a ripe old age. They wrote to me, and via me to the men, to say how much they supported the campaign and that they would be more than keen to do anything that they could to help.

I have given those examples for a reason. In what is a fast-moving world, particularly for young people, listing and our industrial heritage provide a compass point. There are fewer and fewer things that unite us, because it is a disparate world that we live in. Heritage is incredibly important, not just for the physical representation but for what that physical representation means.

People see the winding gear at Washington “F” as a symbol. The pit heaps and other traces of our industrial past may have gone, but what lives on through communities is the sense of comradeship and belonging, and the values that were strong in years gone by. That is why I support the Bill that is coming before the House.

There has been an explosion of interest in heritage. It has been great to see locally that miners’ banner groups have been formed in Washington and Herrington Burn and are putting on displays. Local people are getting involved. A local school is celebrating its centenary: last week, I visited the John F. Kennedy primary school, where local children have worked with pupils who attended the school in the 1930s and they have all come together to support their heritage. Heritage is important as it can give us that sense of community. In many ways, changes in society mean that we do not always have as strong a sense of community as we had in the past.

We often have very good debates on the Adjournment and the contributions of all hon. Members tonight have been very important. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) on securing the debate. I formally acknowledge in the House the excellent work that she does on behalf of her constituency, both in the constituency itself and in representing her constituents’ interests in Parliament. I have discussed with her informally on a number of occasions the issues that she has raised formally during the debate. I am pleased that she has been able to put her concerns on the record. We have a draft Heritage Protection Bill, which the Culture, Media and Sport Committee is currently considering, and I hope that it will take into account the comments of the Members who have spoken—none of whom serves on the Committee—when making its representations to Ministers as we take the Bill forward.

Let me begin by endorsing what my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Washington, East (Mr. Kemp) said. Like him, I firmly believe that, at its best, conserving our heritage, including our industrial heritage, is crucial to building strong communities. Sometimes the best of community spirit comes out of celebrating and understanding our past, and of using that to reflect the values of the present and to inform how we think about the future. Heritage, at its best, has a very important role to play in building identity, cohesion, a sense of community and strong communities.

Every city, town and village in our country is made up of a collection of buildings that portray how it has evolved over time. There is a duty on all of us in government to make a list of those buildings that are of special architectural and historical interest. The way in which we designate them is intended to allow the planning system—we will come on to whether or not it works—to protect the buildings and to enable the management of our heritage to be carried out in such a way as to ensure that we leave a legacy for future generations that reflects the strength of our past.

I want to pick up on various issues raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Stockport, for Stroud (Mr. Drew) and for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), but with particular reference to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport. She talked a lot about the transparency of the system. She then talked about our having a clearer understanding of, on the one hand, the roles and powers of English Heritage, with its responsibilities for listing and the listing system, and on the other, local authority planning departments and officers and what they have to do within the planning framework. She also talked about the importance of English Heritage giving a clearer indication, when it lists, of the implications of listing—the features that would need to be listed and retained, and matters on which it would have a view and on which listed building consent to alter the building would be required. She talked about the importance of subsidiary criteria to which English Heritage should have regard in listing decisions—not just the statutory criteria, which are those of special architectural and historical interest, but also the wider economic and regeneration implications of listing. Finally, she talked about whether we should have a separate heritage budget so that the costs of protecting our heritage are much clearer. I would like to deal with each of those points.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud has talked to me at length outside the Chamber about the issues that his constituency faces. He will understand that the hospital issue is currently under consideration, but I will say to him that I have asked that the relevant health authorities also have the opportunity to put in their representations so that I can balance them against the representations of English Heritage. He raised a number of issues that I shall address. One is the importance of marine heritage assets. We address that issue in the draft Heritage Protection Bill, and I agree with him that we will want to bring the management of those assets into the more coherent framework that we are attempting to establish through the Bill.

Such an approach will allow proper protection and celebration of those assets, which are important in Britain, given that it is an island and is thus surrounded by a lot of sea. I believe that 12 miles of sea is in the ownership of the Crown, so we have to employ a complicated mechanism to ensure not only that the Crown takes its proper responsibilities, but that it is properly compensated for any work that it has to do in protecting marine heritage assets. I would like to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud that we are examining the whole issue of marine heritage assets and how we can best ensure, in this radical review of how we manage all our heritage assets, that such assets will also get their proper place in the ecology of our heritage.

My right hon. Friend is making an important point; I grew up by the seaside, so I feel very attached to the things that she is saying. Could she say how that approach fits in with the draft Marine Bill, which deals more with the natural heritage around our coastline? Could she say a little about how the two aspects will interlink?

I am conscious of the fact that the two measures have been drafted in such a way as to ensure consistency in our approach, although I have yet to look at the draft Marine Bill to see precisely how those links are properly established. My officials have told me that in the drafting of our Bill, we have been conscious of the fact that two measures are being considered.

Order. I wish to intervene to make two points. First, I would not want the right hon. Lady to find herself all at sea in terms of what we are meant to be discussing. Secondly, although she was seeking to address her hon. Friend, it would be helpful if she could remember that the microphone is important if her words are to be recorded properly.

I am grateful to you, Mr .Deputy Speaker, for drawing my attention to that point. I certainly want to swim, not sink. I am in slight danger, on this territory, of not yet being totally familiar with the content of the draft Marine Bill, but it is my job, as the Minister responsible for taking the draft Heritage Protection Bill through the process of consideration by both Houses of Parliament, to ensure consistency.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud also mentioned the importance of democracy in how we consider whether we should list assets for future generations. I agree with him that, on the face of it, we consider such things in a very democratic way; anybody can ask English Heritage to consider whether to list a particular building. Interestingly, the owner of a building need not be informed that such an application has been made, and, therefore, that the process of considering whether or not to list has been undertaken.

Two different principles are at play here. One hates to see an order made about other people’s property without their knowing about it in the first place, but there is always a risk, given the length of time that the process takes, that if a building owner is told that an application to list a particular property is being made, they might knock the building down before the decision is taken. I believe that that happened in a case relating to Kensington town hall a little while ago. One of the real problems that we face is that there is no stop notice arrangement, whereby once an application has been made, it protects the building from demolition while the process is under way. Perhaps my right hon. Friend might think about providing in her Bill that once an application is made, no action can be taken to knock a building down until the process is completed.

My hon. Friend takes the words out of my mouth. The way in which we propose to handle that point in the draft Bill is to ensure that the owner is given the right to know that an application to list has been made. We will couple that with a new provision that once an application has been lodged, no action can be taken to demolish or alter the building until consideration of the application has been concluded. Those two new provisions will ensure a much fairer and more democratic—to use the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud—approach.

If certain owners of buildings that may be listed were given warning, the danger would be that some of our heritage would be lost. Some people just lease out buildings. The people who love buildings, look after them and want them listed are not necessarily those who might want to develop a site. The stop notice would need to be coupled with tough and effective penalties and enforcement measures. A £5,000 fine will mean nothing if a developer stands to make millions of pounds from developing a site.

That is a very pertinent observation. My officials and I are currently considering how we should modernise the penalty regime to make it relevant to the 21st century through draft clauses for the Bill. I shall take away that thought. Consideration of the draft Heritage Protection Bill will be the first time in a generation that both Houses of Parliament will have the opportunity to consider this hugely important aspect of our environment. We are constantly reflecting on how to achieve a balance among the rights of the individual owners, protecting our heritage and facilitating modern development to encourage buildings that are fit for purpose today.

My right hon. Friend mentioned how buildings will be designated in the future, and I wish to give her another example. A town such as Stockport will have five or so school buildings from the turn of the last century that are all very similar. An application will be made to list one of those buildings, and it will rightly be listed because of its architectural value. Six months later, another application may be made to list one of the other very similar schools. When applications to list buildings are considered, some information should be provided about whether similar buildings in the area have already been listed. The local authority should perhaps be required to consider all similar buildings and make an application for one of them to be listed. Otherwise, five years later all five will have been listed, but they are all the same.

Some interesting issues emerge as we think about the new regime that we want to bring in to protect our heritage. I have felt in the year for which I have had responsibility for this area of policy that all too often those who are immersed in the world of heritage protection have a distinct view that does not relate to the view of many people with other interests in society.

I know from personal experience about the elite in heritage protection. As I mentioned earlier, because Tony Banks came and visited the site in my constituency he was able to go back, engage in discussion and ensure that it was listed. If he had not been prepared to make a 600-mile round trip as a serving Minister, to see the site and to talk to the people, I am not sure that things would necessarily have happened that way. Does the Minister agree that the Bill needs to include some sort of process? I hesitate to use the word “re-education”, as it sounds a little Soviet, but there needs to be a wider understanding among the heritage elite that listing is not just about certain types of buildings. It should be about something that represents millions of people, their pastimes and their employment in Britain, too.

I could not agree more with the sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend. Our industrial heritage and working-class heritage are also crucial.

There is a real difficulty, which we are debating tonight, with buildings of relatively recent construction. On the whole, buildings are not listed according to a thematic review. One would like to get to a position where English Heritage, as the responsible authority, would decide to look at all the schools in Stockport, all the churches in Hendon or all the pigeon crees in Houghton, and would take a view, looking at the matter thematically, about what we should conserve for future generations. At present, that does not happen. We tend to have a spot-listing system whereby a planning application is submitted to demolish or alter a building and somebody with a heritage interest, usually somebody connected to one of the national organisations that are particularly concerned with heritage matters, will submit an application to list.

My right hon. Friend made an important point, which she then started to move away from, about the question of very modern buildings, which might be only a few years old. We have some wonderful architects in our country designing some wonderful buildings. One has only to look at the Gherkin, for example, which is one of my favourites. That ought to be a listed building, and perhaps we ought to list it now rather than in a few decades’ time. How do we ensure that our wonderful modern architecture is preserved and that we do not simply end up preserving Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian town halls, for example? How do we ensure that we reflect throughout our listing process the full range of our country’s thousands of years of architecture?

During my preparations for tonight’s debate, I came across Westminster bridge after having visited Stonehenge today, and thought, “I wonder whether anybody has put in an application to list Portcullis House.” I do not know what advice English Heritage would give about that building; I am not allowed to prejudge these matters, as I make the final decision. There are some splendid modern architectural buildings, but the judgment that we have to make, which is much more difficult in relation to relatively recently constructed buildings, is about which buildings will be hugely important and which buildings future generations will want to see so that they can understand what life was like in the 20th and 21st centuries. Those are incredibly difficult judgments.

On the whole, applications for listing, particularly of recently constructed buildings, tend to be for public sector buildings, such as schools.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport asked an important question about the costs that arise when a building is listed and its conservation thus ensured. No consideration is given to the cost or resource implications of listing; indeed, it would be completely unlawful to take them into account.

People in the heritage world say that buildings should be listed only on the basis of their architectural or historic value or special interest. Listed building consent comes through the planning system, and the decision about whether that should be given is the appropriate context for thinking about the economic implications of a decision to maintain, alter or demolish a building.

The difficulty is that consequences follow immediately from the decision to list a building. It is strange that when a decision about listing is challenged, it is said to be somebody else’s problem. Surely the intention when listing a building must be to protect it, because it is seen as special. It appears that the very act of listing a building sets off a train of events that means that that building will fall down seven years later because the resource costs of development are too great. The process almost determines that the building will be demolished, not preserved.

My hon. Friend made that point at the start of the debate, and she is right to have done so. The existing legislation contains provisions—we are proposing similar provisions in the draft Heritage Protection Bill—so that in the circumstances that she describes, two things can happen. First of all, grants are available from the Heritage Lottery Fund or English Heritage that can be used to support the maintenance and conservation of buildings. Secondly, the draft Bill provides that either English Heritage or a local authority can take responsibility for carrying out essential repairs to conserve the building. The body involved could either meet those costs or pass them on to the building’s owner.

However, our concern is similar to the one that my hon. Friend expressed earlier, and it is that local authorities may be reluctant to take action to list for fear that the cost of repairing or enhancing the building might have to be borne by local council tax payers.

Is it better to have half a cake or no cake at all? That question is at the heart of the argument presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey). We have all seen the television programme in which one wonderful building is chosen from each region and then the whole nation votes—that shows how popular this subject is—on which should be preserved. As a result, the other 10 or 11 buildings, or however many of them there are, are left at risk of falling down. The programme shows the state of all the buildings, and how urgent it is to find the money to restore them. However, despite all the publicity and national effort, only one of the wonderful buildings shown in each series can be preserved. How many buildings are simply falling down for lack of money? Might not some other approach—perhaps a lessening of the restrictions—be appropriate? That might allow us to succeed in preserving something of a building, even if not the whole thing.

That is an extremely interesting line of argument. I hope that the Select Committee will have regard to the proceedings of the House this evening when they consider what advice to give me.

I have been reflecting on a whole range of issues, especially in connection with recently constructed buildings and in particular because so many of them have to be funded through the public purse. Let me take an example that will be familiar to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon. The old London county council fire stations were all constructed at about the same time, and many of them are splendid parts of our English heritage that we would want to conserve. However, there is a little problem: a modern fire engine cannot get into an old LCC fire station. What can we do about that? Clearly, we want future generations to be able to see some of those fire stations, and to see what wonderful, aesthetically pleasing, architecturally well-constructed buildings they are, and what their historic value is—what they add to the community. Clearly some of them can be used for other purposes. They could be, and have been, used to create housing units or flats. However, the chair of the authority with responsibility for the fire service came to see me—I am trying to think what the authority is called.

LFEPA.

It was the previous chair; this was some three or four months ago. She said, rightly, that there were parts of London where the fire authority had looked for an alternative site for a fire station, to ensure the safety of the local population, but were unable to identify such a site. The result of listing old fire stations would therefore be to put at risk the health and safety of residents in London. In those circumstances, the question that we ask ourselves is whether a thematic review could be undertaken of all the fire stations built by the LCC, and whether we could decide on a few that we wanted to list and conserve for future generations, without feeling that we had to conserve the lot.

Again, that is the halfway house argument. What I was saying from a sedentary position is that the name of the organisation is LFEPA, the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. Surely there are two aspects to this issue. First, there are fire stations that should be preserved pretty much as fire stations, perhaps even as museums. Secondly, there are buildings that are worth preserving, but with a different function. For example, in Hammersmith there is a brand-new fire station, and the old fire station has been turned into a bar. The façade and the building are still there, but the building has a different function. It is not preserved in the listed sense, because it has been completely knocked about, but there is still something left of it, although the whole lot has not been preserved.

I agree entirely. I cannot find the words in my notes, but at present one cannot have regard to the fact that there are a number of old fire stations, and that preserving and listing a few would be sufficient for ensuring that future generations could enjoy our current structures.

My hon. Friend talked about the way in which common sense appears to go out of the window in the listing system, and he gave the example of two buildings in his constituency. I have had to deal with watchtowers in a number of constituencies across England in the past few months. I wonder whether, when derelict buildings become heritage assets, there is a point at which we perhaps take the wrong view.

Let me help with a few facts. There are 2,000 applications every year to list, and 30,000 applications each year for listed building consent. There are only 100 cases a year in which alterations to listed buildings are agreed and buildings are demolished. The system is very slow. English Heritage tries to make a decision within six months, but the process can take longer. As all hon. Members have said, seeking listed building consent is also extremely slow—but there are reasons for the delay. The planning guidance states:

“once lost, listed buildings cannot be replaced; and they can be robbed of their special interest as surely by unsuitable alteration as by outright demolition.”

I hope that the new system will speed up consideration. We are cutting out the duplication, so English Heritage will make the decision. I hope that the process will be much more transparent, that the owners will be notified and that there will be a much better description, in much more accessible language, of what is being listed and why. That would help. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, I undertake to look further at how we can improve transparency. I will write to her about that.

My hon. Friend talked about the separate roles of those with responsibility for listing—that is, English Heritage representatives—and those who give planning permission for listed building consent. We need to improve the professional and public understanding of those separate roles. I undertake to consider that and see what further work I can do, and I shall come back to my hon. Friend. English Heritage has the information, and I agree with my hon. Friend that in the interests of transparency it should be able to provide it.

We are in much more difficult territory in respect of the criteria for listing. At present, there is a hierarchy of criteria. The statutory criteria relate to historical and architectural interest, and, as we have said, there is no discretion on selectivity. Beneath that lies the planning policy guidance note, which we are reviewing; we will see whether we can have regard to some of the issues raised tonight. Beneath that, English Heritage has introduced selection guides, which provide the technical information demonstrating the features that need to be considered. Again, we can look at that.

However, if hon. Members wish, as they have suggested, to try to alter the statutory criteria, they will need to do so through the process of considering the Heritage Protection Bill. I have to say that that idea would be highly contentious for many other stakeholders in the heritage world. However, this conversation between parliamentarians and that world is important and needs to take place.

My hon. Friend raised the issue of separate accounting. That is pretty difficult, but I have great sympathy with the motivation for it. Why should money set aside for education facilities be used to protect heritage assets? My hon. Friend’s request is fraught with practical difficulties, but I shall have a look at it and come back to her. This debate has been really interesting. I thank hon. Members for their contributions, and I draw my comments to a close.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twelve minutes past Nine o’clock.