Planning Bill

I shall reply very briefly to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. I have some sympathy with the way the argument has flowed across the Chamber. It is essential that we treat everyone equally in the light of their right to be heard. The IPC will have a means of dealing with vexatious processes, but the noble Lord was right that we expect the national debate by and large to be swept up in the debate on the NPS. What the local application does, in a way that has not been achieved in any of our public inquiry processes so far, is identify the role of the local voice. It gives statutory consultee status to local authorities and makes sure that there is a local impact report. My noble friend is right that these are nationally significant projects, but they will sit in a local community. It is important that that local community feels it owns that process. There is no way that in a democracy one can exclude people from making their voices heard. We have tried to design a process that balances efficiency and rights. Through the pre-application process, the preliminary hearing and the engagement with promoters, we expect local people to have a close and intense engagement. There will be a balance of interests to be served. In relation to what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, I stand by what I said. I think that in a range of ways, not least the ability of the IPC to bring in people, if it so chooses, to do the questioning for it, she is absolutely right, and I would not assume for a moment that anything that I said about the exclusive nature was the thing that she was primarily concerned with. She was concerned, as were the lawyers, about the efficacy of the process and its ability to tease out and challenge the nature of the technical evidence so that the best judgments are made. I believe that the IPC, as it will evolve, will be able to do that in a way that does not exclude people being heard on the floor of the process and does not deliver them into the hands of people who speak for them. People must speak for themselves, ask their own questions and feel that they are in charge of the process in a way that they are not at the moment.