Planning Bill

What concerns me most about the IPC, apart from its unaccountability, is of its independence. I view independence as being the detached professional independence of a judge or adjudicator, someone who is not committed to any industry or political viewpoint relevant to the inquiry on which he is adjudicating. A planning inspector is such a person. He may well find in favour of a certain type of application on one occasion and against on another. The Planning Inspectorate has developed this culture over many years and thereby has painstakingly won the confidence of the public. On the IPC, as I see it, all the industrial and political interests will be jostling for representation and the resulting appointees are very likely to have committed viewpoints, if not agendas. Surely we do not want a situation where the outcome of an inquiry is considered to be a foregone conclusion once the identity of the commissioner or commissioners is public knowledge. As the CPRE says in its brief of 19 September: "““The creation of the IPC does not suggest a body designed to engage fairly with all the different interests involved in planning, rather it suggests a body specifically charged to sponsor and approve developer applications for new infrastructure through the planning process””." I thoroughly endorse those words. I fully appreciate the need to try to enable us to reach major planning decisions more quickly. It would help if Governments stuck consistently to convincing policies. But like the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, who I thought made a brilliant speech, I would prefer it if we sought to improve further the system we have rather than launch into the uncharted waters of the vastly more expensive system proposed in this Bill. However, I would go further than the noble Baroness and prefer us not to have the IPC at all, and if the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, pursues her amendment to remove Clause 1, I will support her in the Lobby.