Planning Bill

I would like to speak to my Amendment No. 191, which is in this group. It relates to our discussions last Tuesday. I am mystified, because we have as policy, firmly entrenched and working very well, the principle that the national park authorities are responsible—if they are responsible for anything—for planning. Yet anyone proposing to undertake action as referred to in this clause is not required by law to consult the national park authorities. My best interpretation, as I said last Tuesday, is that this is an extraordinary oversight. My worst interpretation is that it is quite sinister and is actually the beginning of a deliberate policy to undermine the authority of the national park authorities. It is as serious as that. I simply cannot believe that my noble friend, with her deep commitment to the parks—which I know from first hand, from meetings with her at the department and elsewhere—could possibly be going along with a policy of that kind. Therefore, I want to believe that my first interpretation was right and that this is an oversight, which must be corrected. I also emphasise that I very much support the concept of strengthening national planning. At the moment, we are in a mess. Just to take the contentious issue of windmills, for example, we have one tactical skirmish after another, wasting masses of time. We need a national policy, but the right national policy. It needs to insist on strategic considerations, but also on the importance of the social dimensions of planning, so that we do not end up with the least articulate and most deprived communities having all the energy developments dumped on them—the waste, infill, pylons and windmills. We must also have in mind, as I have emphasised on several occasions, the whole quality of our society and why we need energy—why we need a strong economy to preserve a United Kingdom worth living in. What the national parks are about is essential if we are not to slip into becoming a bland, suburbanised society throughout the country as a whole. I feel passionately about this, as my noble friend knows and I therefore hope that she can reassure us. I welcome the whole tenor of this group of amendments and I very much welcome the amendment about the handicapped. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, is doing a tremendous service to the Committee by keeping that priority constantly before us. That is splendid and it matters and I hope my noble friend can reassure us. I would like to make one correction about what I said on Tuesday in the context of the other debate. I sometimes get a little caught up in the past—I suppose we all do at our age—and I referred to being a vice-president of the Council for National Parks. In the past few weeks, we have had Charity Commission approval to change our title to the Campaign for National Parks.