Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2009

I did not think that I had to declare an interest here, but, if we have to declare childhood interests of having grown up on the coalfield, I grew up on the Yorkshire coalfield, near Wakefield, for all my teenage years. I was just thinking of the slag heaps of old and existing pits, on which we used to spend our time playing games such as cowboys and Indians and then, when one got a bit older, other sorts of games on the old slag heaps, or muck stacks, as we called them locally. They certainly polluted the atmosphere in a dreadful way. They polluted the water courses, the groundwater and the landscape. I suppose that the coal industry of that sort has all gone from those areas nowadays, and we are left with the consequences. On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I support the regulations. I just want to make four points. First, although I would be interested to hear about the information provided to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, as a method of transposing the regulations, it seems to us that to incorporate them into the 2007 regulations, which cover permitting generally, is very sensible. It will be interesting to hear what the Government have to say. My second point is just a general moan, which I usually make on these occasions, about the fact that the Government seem utterly unable to meet the timescales laid down in European directives for transposing them into our national legislation. There was a deadline of 1 May 2008, two years after the regulation had been approved. Regulations do not suddenly appear out of a popgun; they have been discussed for a considerable time in Europe, in the Council of Ministers or elsewhere, so the Government knew that they were coming. It is pretty poor that we cannot pass them on time regularly. There are a lot of complaints about European legislation in this country. This is very sensible legislation. There is no reason that it could not have been passed on time. The Minister said that 17 out of 28 countries have formally notified that they have managed to do that so far. Some are more laggardly than we are, but that is no excuse. My third point is that the Merits Committee drew to our attention that most of the objections—the consultation responses, I should say—made by industry sources suggested that decisions should be not for the Environment Agency but for the mineral planning authorities, which I take to be the county councils and the unitary authorities at local level. As someone who always instinctively says, "Do it through the local authorities", I would like to hear why the Government think that it should be done by the Environment Agency. At the moment, they have stated that they think that that is right, but they have not explained why. I would also like to know what reasons the consultees putting forward those views from the industry gave for believing that the mineral planning authorities would be more appropriate. I can think of three reasons that they might have put forward. They might have thought that local authorities were efficient than national quangos, because they usually are. They might have thought that local authorities would impose less onerous conditions and constraints, so that they could get away with having to do less. They may simply have thought that having planning and licensing decisions, the permitting decisions, made by the same authority was more sensible, providing a one-stop solution. Those are reasons that I have thought up that people might have put forward. Were those the reasons, or were there others? It would be interesting to hear that. Finally, what real difference will the regulations will make to people in the industry, as opposed to the existing regulatory system? The Minister may not be able to answer all that today, but it will be interesting to have those answers in writing and placed in the Library. Having said that, we are very content to support the regulations as they stand.