Planning Bill

I have listened to the Minister with great care, and it is extremely interesting. She will remember the Caythorpe gas storage project, which I discussed with her on more than one occasion. In that, there was a ministerial Statement—by Alistair Darling, as it happens, when he was Secretary of State at the then DTI—that more gas storage was imperative if we were going to get the security we needed. That was, in a sense, a ministerial policy statement. It was reduced to one sentence in the 12-page letter of decision from the noble Baroness’s department. Why have these so-called policy statements from the past had so little weight when Ministers take decisions? It was there—why could her department not say yes?