Planning Bill

I am responsible for Amendments Nos. 122 and 126, which are designed to address the offshore infrastructure, as has been mentioned by previous Members of the Committee. The Minister, with his dual ministerial function, is probably more aware than anyone of the connection of this Bill with the Climate Change Bill and the Energy Bill. My noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith has indicated that there is a fourth Bill connected with this—the forthcoming marine Bill, which is at draft stage. It makes provisions for offshore infrastructure, so I seek through my amendments to probe the Minister on how this Bill will interact with the forthcoming marine Bill. My concern is that, as this current Bill is presented, it ignores the advent of the forthcoming Bill and the creation of the Marine Management Organisation. As the World Wildlife Fund and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds pointed out in their excellent brief, this Bill gives the Infrastructure Planning Commission the power to determine proposals in the marine environment—notably offshore generating stations of more than 100 megawatts in Clause 15 and airports in Clause 22. That is really inappropriate in light of the fact that we have a draft marine Bill, which actually has provision for a marine spatial planning system and a specialist marine management organisation—the MMO—to simplify the plethora of regulatory regimes in the marine environment. Given that the IPC has a role in the marine environment running counter to the Government’s stated aim of generating a strategic overview and reducing complexity at sea through marine planning, how are these two things reconciled by the Minister? Within the marine environment, the MMO should surely make all decisions on behalf of the Secretary of State acting with Welsh Ministers when they are involved because of the devolved powers to the coastal regions adjacent to Wales. These two amendments would mean that the decision-maker remained the Secretary of State—or the Secretary of State in collaboration with Welsh Ministers—until the MMO was created through the marine Bill. To my mind, that is a sensible arrangement and I hope that the noble Lord will agree that there is an imperfection in the way that the current Bill is drafted in that it fails to recognise where we will be taking this legislation when the marine Bill turns up.