Planning Bill

moved Amendment No. 7: 7: Schedule 1, page 141, line 9, after ““(““deputies””),”” insert— ““( ) at least one person appointed by the Secretary of State with experience of, and capacity in design,”” The noble Lord said: I shall speak only momentarily to introduce the amendments in this group. It is appropriate to consider them following the wider debate that we have just had on the members of the IPC and its council and on aspects of their duties. However, the amendments in this group are only a trailer for the fuller debate on design that we shall have when we reach the group that begins with Amendment No. 28. My noble friend Lady Whitaker and I have tabled these amendments because we feel, as I know do noble Lords on all sides of the Committee, that it is essential that the IPC should be fairly and squarely committed to promoting high-quality design in the developments that will fall to it to consider. My noble friend the Minister told us at Second Reading that the IPC will, "““consist of experts in a range of fields, including community engagement, planning, local government and the environment””.—[Official Report, 15/7/08; col. 1161.]" She has just added engineering to that illustrative list. However, she did not, for whatever reason, include in her illustrative list, either at Second Reading or today, experts in design. Yet we are legislating to create a massively powerful body that will take outstandingly important planning decisions that will affect the quality of life in this country for many years to come. I have therefore proposed in my amendments that decision makers on the IPC, including commissioners on its council, should include at least one person with experience of, and a capacity in, design. That is what Amendments Nos. 7 and 14 would require. Noble Lords will recognise the wording of those amendments as being drawn from the Government’s own wording in the Housing and Regeneration Act. This is only a token of what is required and I absolutely take the good sense of what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, said in the previous debate: it is not a solution to the problem to appoint to a large body of some 35 commissioners one person with special responsibility for design. That person risks becoming rather tedious on the subject and there is a risk that the other commissioners will feel that design is not part of their responsibility because the design commissioner is there. That would not work well. I note also that my noble friend the Minister rightly said that we are looking not only for experts, but for good generalists. Our proposal would be only a token of what is required. The whole culture of the IPC should be imbued with a commitment to good design, but these amendments are intended only to flag up the wider issue of design. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, for acknowledging the importance of that. I support also Amendment No. 17 in the name of my noble friend Lady Whitaker, which would require the IPC to give details in its annual report of the design quality of developments that it has approved. That is a much better amendment than mine, as I would expect of my noble friend. She offers a practical and easy way to require the IPC regularly to give an account of how it has acquitted itself of an important part of its responsibilities. I beg to move.