Planning Bill

I have a couple of amendments in this group. The variety of ideas in the group and the contributions tonight indicate a lot of concern about how this will work. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that the Government have done a great job in getting this far with an extremely tricky issue. She asked how we would scrutinise and approve a national policy statement for Heathrow, or other airports, which would include a site-specific third runway. Would that mean that the whole House approved the creation of a third runway? It is an interesting question, which we must debate. The House would be well advised to scrutinise these NPSs separately. We will have to find a way of doing it, as there will be quite a lot to get through given that each sector has an NPS and they have to be updated. We will have to find a way of doing it. As suggested in my Amendment No. 82, when we scrutinise a statement we should be able to approve it or not, along with the other place. This raises some interesting issues. I do not have a solution and I am not sure that anyone else has come up with one, but we have had a good debate about it. I would like the opportunity for a small scrutiny committee, which could co-opt Peers with particular expertise in different fields, to be able to do this, but how it would do it and how long it would take need discussing in the next week or two.