Planning Bill

Before participating in the Committee I should declare an interest as a farmer, landowner, member of the CLA, NFU, RICS, RSPB and CPRE, and chairman of the Charities’ Property Association. I think that covers it. The debate so far has largely centred upon who takes the ultimate decision, but there are many issues in the clauses. Taking the proposition of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that Clause 1 should not stand part of the Bill as a basis for my intervention—I know she said she did not raise the issue in a particularly serious note—it may be worth reiterating the strengths of the IPC. As many noble Lords said at Second Reading, we need to find a way of speeding up the delivery of our major infrastructure projects and, as has been said again today, especially those projects designed to counter the effect of climate change. The obvious way to do what seeks to be done is to separate the principle from the details. As has been said several times today, the principles are to be dealt with in a democratic fashion at the national level through the full use of Parliament—we shall come to that debate in due course—but the details will be dealt with by the IPC. This will be a national body which, at the same time, will adjudicate on local details at a local level, in a way whereby everyone will have their say but without causing needless delay, I hope. Delay is a bad thing not only for our national destiny, as it were, but also for locals. There is nothing worse than having your neighbourhood or your lives blighted by the possibility of, say, a bypass or a major project. Very often, even a bad decision is better than no decision at all for 10 or 15 years. For the purposes of translating the principles laid down by Parliament in a way which works in the considerable demands, worries and concerns of locals, it is vital that the IPC, or something similar, is created. I do not believe the Planning Inspectorate could do the job. Large national projects, often covering several planning authorities, need a different kind of expertise and experience. It is right that a special body should be set up for the purposes of interpreting the national policy statements and cross-referencing or cross-gridding them with local demands and concerns. This is very important. Where local concerns outbalance the national policy statements, the IPC should and must be able to say no even if the application conforms to the national policy statement. It should be able to say, ““Such and such a spot is not suitable for a dam or a railway interchange or the right route for a pipeline, so go away, you applicant, and think again””. I hope the Minister will confirm this when she responds to the debate. We will come to the make-up of the IPC in a moment, but I repeat that it needs to be created and brought into being. Turning to the narrower issue that has dominated the debate about who takes the ultimate decision, I am yet to be persuaded that the decisions will need the interference of a Minister after all the processes that will be gone through when the legislation comes into being. The IPC’s decision-making process will be carried out in public, with all representations, written and oral, open to public scrutiny and comment. To date that has not applied to ministerial decisions, which have a reputation of being political decisions taken behind closed doors, with a suspicion that a Minister or civil servant, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, pointed out, had been got at or had already made up their mind. As has been said, many of these projects will have been initiated, either directly or indirectly, by a body of government and it is totally wrong that the Government should then decide on them. There is already a strong suspicion that planning decisions by Ministers are politically motivated and depend on how the Government of the day want to be viewed in a particular constituency. For instance, is a bad-neighbour project more or less likely to end up in a marginal constituency? Is a decision likely to be different if it is in an opposition constituency? Whatever the rights or wrongs of these suspicions, I do not believe that the planning system should be seen to be politically motivated. The IPC decisions will be taken on the basis of the democratically agreed national policy statements and will be decided on in an open process. I still hold to the view that, once they have decided on the national policy statements, we should then keep the politicians out of the process.