Localism Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, spoke to his amendment so comprehensively that I want to add only one point. As my noble friend on the Front Bench indicated, the Government’s own amendment came to light only a week ago. I should like to say a very warm thank you to him and to the officials who recognised so swiftly that there had to be a change to the 2008 Act to prevent quite unnecessary use of the special parliamentary procedure, or SPP. I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said: there are still too many examples where such procedures will or could need to be invoked. If anybody makes an objection—for instance, where one is dealing with local authority land—and that objection is sustained, it will have to go through this special parliamentary procedure. While the decisions on major infrastructure projects were being taken by the Infrastructure Planning Commission, a quango, that may have been a necessary parliamentary protection. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has said, under the new procedure, perhaps from April 2012, these decisions will be taken by a Minister accountable to Parliament. This changes the nature of the necessity for these other protective procedures to be built in. Like the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, I would very much welcome an indication from my noble friends on the Front Bench that they will look at this again. I understand that, in the short time that we have had to deal with this—it came up only on Report in this House—it has been difficult for Ministers to go as far as we would perhaps like. However, with the review coming up, there seems to be an opportunity to have another look at this so that it gets somewhat nearer the one-stop shop that was originally offered by the Ministers in the previous Government as being the major benefit of the new Infrastructure Planning Commission. It most manifestly is not a one-stop shop at the moment. Maybe it never could be a one-stop shop but it could certainly have fewer than the 42 consents that are necessary for these major projects. I hope my noble friends will be able to give us some reassurance that they are sympathetic to this and will, in the review, look at it very carefully with a view to coming somewhat nearer the original objective that was held out to Parliament when the 2008 Act was introduced.