Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

As there was a reference to me, perhaps I should intervene. I apologise for not having associated myself with this endeavour previously, but in the week before the recess I was hospitalised. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for her amendment. I should explain that I am president of Friends of the Lake District and the vice-president of the Campaign for National Parks. Perhaps I may make a general observation; my noble friend knows absolutely that I am enthusiastically behind the Government’s intent in this Bill, as I am in the Planning Bill, to get shape, purpose, direction and drive into our planning processes and to strengthen them. I take second place to no one in that. However, she also knows that I am very much at one with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and her fellow Peers, in believing that the strength of national planning depends on the quality of the consultation process before it is formulated. Consultation is crucial; the more consultation there is, not just in the spirit, the stronger will be the plan that eventually emerges, because you have the maximum possible public goodwill and understanding with you. You do not find yourself in a situation from the moment that the proposal is put on the table and concluded that you are in a clawback situation and are fighting defensive action against people who, very often, might not have been as strongly opposed if they had been consulted. Consultation is not only wise, but important in principle. Indeed, my noble friend was exemplary in the Planning Bill in the way that she took the point about the national parks and co-operated; she almost took over the amendment to the point at which it was included in the Bill. That was because the national parks have a specific purpose, which is established nationally and repeated in legislation, to act on behalf of the nation, not just the local community, in ensuring that certain principles and priorities that might not be focused on with the degree of importance that they deserve are taken seriously regarding these unrivalled assets to our nation’s heritage, psychological strength and the rest. I could not help but feel, when I looked at all this, that there must simply have been an inconsistency—that something that had been specifically been covered in the Planning Bill had somehow not come across into the context of this Bill. From that standpoint I hope that my noble friend will be able to look seriously at what the noble Baroness has argued and accommodate it. In the spirit of everything that my noble friend said on the Planning Bill, it is vital that it is recognised and repeated in the Bill that national parks are special and, in that context, have to be well represented in these processes.