Planning Bill

moved Amendment No. 12: 12: Schedule 1, page 142, line 25, leave out paragraph 6 The noble Lord said: My group of amendments has one objective and that is to get rid of the concept of the council, which seems to me to be superfluous and an expensive and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. The Bill starts by defining the Infrastructure Planning Commission and nationally significant infrastructure projects. Clause 36(2) states on page 22: "““An application for an order granting development consent must be made to the Commission””." It then goes into pre-application procedures and states in Clause 59(2) on page 35 that the commission must decide whether the application, "““is to be handled by a Panel””," which is, in effect, a sub-committee of the commission, or by a single commissioner, depending, one imagines, on the importance of the application. Clause 59(4) states that the commissioners responsible for making the decision must be members of the council. This is the first mention of the word ““council”” and you have to go to paragraph 6 of Schedule 1 on page 142 to discover what is meant by the council. Paragraph 6(2) of Schedule 1 states: "““The members of the Council may be different for different purposes””." Sub-paragraph (3) states: "““Those purposes include (in particular)—""(a) the purpose of deciding a particular application referred under section 82;""(b) the purpose of responding to consultation about a matter””." Behind this helpful definition the council is effectively a sub-committee of the commission, falling between the commission, the panels and individual commissioners. It seems to me that the function could just as well be performed by a sub-committee of the commission or by one of the panels. I believe that the council represents an unnecessary and expensive extra layer of bureaucracy. My Amendments Nos. 12 and 13 and all the rest are designed to remove the concept of the council from the Bill. I beg to move.