Planning Bill

This goes to the heart of the role of the IPC and why it has to be independent. The IPC can reject an application even if it is in accordance with the NPS, because the local adverse impact outweighs the potential benefits. It is not a million miles away from what planning inspectors do at the moment, when they look closely at local impacts and benefits. We have processes in planning—for example, sequential tests—which will apply to the application processes as well, so the commission will not invent a completely new system. It will be able to reject local applications also if it is clear that there has been a breach of EU or domestic law. I cannot enlighten the noble Baroness greatly. Applications will be considered case by case. There will not be very many of the big cases with which we are concerned. Each one will probably bring some local benefit; other people may see an adverse effect. However, we will have to wait until those applications start coming in. The great task of the 35 expert commissioners, who will have a range of expertise, not least in testing evidence, will be to give people the confidence to express their fears in a session with them. We will return to these issues later in the Bill, when we talk about the processes of the IPC, but, for the moment, I cannot go further than what I have said.