Localism Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing his amendment and allowing me to speak to my three amendments in this grouping. He has agreed to respond after this, and it is very welcome that we can do it in this way. I shall just make a very small comment on government Amendment 53. While I welcome the amendment—it is good to see that the Government recognise that some changes have to be made to the Planning Act in this regard—it does nothing for the point that I shall come on to shortly. In a wider sense, the special parliamentary procedure seems to be an additional safeguard in the 21st century, with a rather heavier touch, as I shall come back to several times, than the approach taken in the Harbours Act or the Transport and Works Act orders, which are two of the principal order-making regimes that the Planning Act draws on and replaces. I turn to the amendments in my name. The House will recall that, both in Committee and on Report, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, my noble and learned friend Lord Boyd and I moved, and spoke in support of, a number of quite technical arguments, which we thought were pretty important to the Bill, designed to make a number of changes to the provisions of the Planning Act 2008 dealing with the new regime for considering national infrastructure projects, which are currently operated by the Infrastructure Planning Commission. The Planning Act is a distinct improvement on the many regimes that we had before for the types of infrastructure that it replaces, and I think that it is settling down. My concern, which I expressed previously and will have to return to shortly tonight, is that this Bill should have gone further and made more changes to the 2008 Act that are either a necessary or logical consequence of the IPC's abolition and the return of decisions to Ministers or are simply required to make the 2008 Act work better. I have been briefed in particular by the National Infrastructure Planning Association, which has people with great experience in this field. I welcome the Government's intention to keep the new regime under review, but it would be helpful to hear from the Minister tonight a little more as to quite what they are going to review and when. The House will recall that the Minister, Greg Clark MP, said in a Written Ministerial Statement that the Government are, "““listening to industry, representative groups and others using the system … and will be exploring opportunities for improvement to ensure the system has the right mix of certainty, flexibility and efficiency””.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/3/11; col. 73WS.]" That is good. In the impact assessment for the Bill’s provisions on major infrastructure projects, published in January this year, we are told that, in relation to the policy behind the preferred options, which is now reflected in the Bill, "““It will be reviewed 04/2014””." I would like to hear from the Minister how this review will take place. Before discussing in more detail the issues focused in these amendments, I want to mention a very recent development that appears to be highly relevant. Apparently, "““The European Union is concerned that the single market is not operating effectively because of a lack of integrated energy, transport and digital infrastructure””—" I certainly support that view— "““and is also not moving to a secure, low-carbon energy future quickly enough””." On 19 October, only a couple of weeks ago, the European Commission launched two new proposed regulations to address this: the ““Connecting Europe Facility””, which is about to spend €50 billion on all three sectors of infrastructure, which is a great deal of money; and a focus on energy infrastructure, for which the Commission will require new authorisation regimes because such projects will have to be subject to a special ““permit granting process””. It is a bit complicated, but €9 billion has been earmarked for energy projects. The Government will have to change regulations or legislation to allow these internationally significant infrastructure projects—which are apparently called ISIPs, as opposed to NSIPs or something—that will sit above, or instead of, the Planning Act regime for nationally significant projects. There are various processes and timetables set out for this and the pre-application consultation requirements are quite prescriptive. I understand that all these are required to be in place by 1 September 2013, which is only nine months after the regulation is due to come into force. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister how the Government intend to do this and make sure that the money being offered from the EU is available. I am grateful to the Minister for arranging a meeting between his officials and myself and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, between Report and now. We had a very useful meeting and I take the opportunity to thank Ministers and officials for the very helpful discussions. We should have had the meeting some time ago, but we did not—as was said at Report. However, I hope that, even so, we can make progress. Turning to the amendments themselves, I should say that Amendment 87 relates to the Minister’s amendment about development consent orders and the need to have special parliamentary procedures where there are objections. As the Minister said, it could take about nine months extra if one had to go through these procedures. I still wonder why we have to go through these procedures when there should be a single consents regime with a harmonised set of requirements and procedures, which I call a one-stop shop. I compare the complexity and difficulty of this with the transport and works orders and the harbours orders. On Report, the Minister referred to the Planning Act drawing on long-standing and well-established protections from compulsory purchase orders for certain types of land. He thought that our proposals then would significantly weaken them, but I do not accept his reference to a two-tier system—why it should go further than happens with the TWA and the harbours order. The House will recall that the only project so far to be approved by the IPC, which is Covanta's proposed incinerator in Bedfordshire, will now have to be approved by this House and the other House under SPP. A lot of people may not like these incinerators but that has gone through a process and, again, will be subject to six to nine months’ extra delay. I hope that the Minister can indicate that these issues will be reviewed in the light of experience. The next amendment in the group, Amendment 88, refers to the regulations made under Section 150, which deal with construction-related consents in England. Again, we discussed this quite thoroughly on Report—so much for having a one-stop shop, as there are still up to 42 other consents required from regulators in England and a further 36 in Wales. I still have not discovered why there are so many extra ones in Wales but it may be that the noble Earl will take the view that it does not matter very much. Again, the point is that it would be very good for those developing new projects to be able to reduce the number of these other consents which they have to get. I wonder whether the Minister would be prepared to give some kind of timetable and a commitment to reviewing this number, and even to produce a report to Parliament every year for the next few years. That could challenge his colleagues in other departments on whether they really can be brought underneath this umbrella of the one-stop shop. Finally, on Amendment 89, again, we have discussed the creation of criminal offences in some detail but it is still a worry that the types of offences which can be introduced through this process are not sufficient for the types of projects and offences which might be required. Again, that provides a much greater limit than the Transport and Works Act orders do, which is why I wanted to see whether we could include railways and construction in tidal waters. One example which springs to mind is the question of trespass during construction, which could well occur on the high-speed line—assuming that it gets built—or on some of the offshore wind farms, if people can get around there. Trespass is a very difficult thing to stop if you do not have the right regulations, and it would be good to see whether the Minister would be able to extend the existing criminal offences to the two issues in this amendment. To sum up, we have made progress on these issues in discussions on the Bill but we have certainly not gone as far as I would have liked to see. However, is the Minister prepared to tell us a little more about the issues that I have raised and about three things in particular? First, there is the impact assessment on how the Planning Act 2008 has worked in respect of projects through the IPC and its successor, which I believe is supposed to be there in 2014. Secondly, there is how this connecting Europe facility will work and whether the Government are keen that projects here should get the extra €9 billion that will be available for energy alone. Finally, can I press him to have an earlier review and a progress report to reduce significantly those 42 consents, plus the 36 in Wales?