Planning Bill

I shall speak to two amendments in this group. On Amendment No. 216, I am probably fighting a managed retreat, but I think that I have a good defensive position. The Minister has already ably stated why she rejected my earlier amendment that attempted to direct the applicant during the consultation process. I am happy to accept those arguments, but she did say—probably pre-empting my weekend reading, to which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, referred—that the IPC have to be satisfied that this was a properly managed consultation process. It occurred to me that, if the Bill stated that the IPC had to have regard to the response of the applicant to the consultee, that would be enough to force the hand of the applicant in how it handled the consultation process or, more important, how it was seen to have handled it. As I said earlier, the applicant has a huge financial interest, which will get in the way of a fair, unbiased—or even a seen-to-be-unbiased—consultation process. I cannot see how an amendment—either mine or something similar from the Government—could possibly interfere with the Government’s purposes. Indeed, if we took the Minister at her word, my amendment would fulfil the Government’s purposes and spell them out in the Bill. I hope that she can accommodate my point. It is a small amendment that directly confirms the Government’s stated wishes. Amendment No. 221A reverts to the time limit of 56 days, not 28 days. I am not going to cover that ground again, but this amendment represents the last chance that an individual or a local authority might have to make their input. One could argue that the authority would have known about an application for a long time and that 28 days would be quite enough. However, although the authority will know about an application, it will not know the final details until that application has been submitted. It is a bit like the CIL clauses in the Bill. We knew that they would be there, but we did not know how they would work out until the Government recently tabled all their amendments and we could start thinking about them and making our case. The Minister seemed to recognise the points that I and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, made on the number of professionals and consultants involved in submitting a considered opinion. She said that 28 days was just a minimum but, as has been said on the 14 days, minimum time limits are what usually stick in practice. I think that I heard her say that she would consider our arguments on this point. I take this opportunity to urge her to consider this matter positively.