My Lords, on this occasion I hope that the Minister will not accept any of these amendments because they do not stand up at all. As she knows, I am not happy about this clause, but the national park authorities have one of the worst reputations when it comes to dealing with applications—we cannot avoid that; when I was Secretary of State I had a constant stream of particular authorities that were quite unable to do these things properly—and the idea that somehow or other they should be put aside seems to be unacceptable. If, as we are beginning to understand, the criteria are largely those of speed, it would do the national parks quite a lot of good to get their answers in rather more quickly than they do at the moment. The idea that they have to be slower than anyone else is not an acceptable position as far as national parks are concerned. If we accepted the quantum of these amendments, there would hardly be any application anywhere in the country that would not find itself in one way or another touched by one of the designations that we are talking about.
We ought to concentrate on the issue that really matters, which is how we make the clause work in a sensible and transparent way. That is what we have been pressing for, and to try to avoid its implication by putting a series of designations outwith it does two things that are dangerous: first, it would remove any value that the clause might have, and, secondly, it would detract from the things that we are trying to say elsewhere. I want a regime that can work properly wherever in the country it is applied. I hope therefore that the Minister will not accept these amendments but that she will recognise that the reason for them fundamentally is this unhappiness with the uncertainty of the basis upon which this clause is going to be imposed.
If everyone were happy about the objectivity, correctness and clarity of the basis on which a planning authority will be designated, there would be much less of a problem. It is the unhappiness with that which lies behind most of our concern. If the Minister could put that right, I think most of us would accept that within those contexts it is perfectly reasonable to ask the planning authority of a national park to do its job within a reasonable amount of time. If it has only two planning applications a year, then obviously no Minister is going to say, “We’re going to apply the 30% rule”—I am not sure how you would apply that—and I am not too upset about that; it does not worry me too much as long as it is in the context in which all these things are dealt with in an objective and manifestly properly constituted way.
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I hope that the Minister will take away from this bit of the debate not the proposition behind the amendments but the continuing concern that the Bill has this very clear impression of not really being finished. Therefore, because we do not have the finished product, it is very difficult for any of us—even those of us who are certainly determined that the national parks will be
included like any other authority in the need to deal with people properly, succinctly and to time—not to be concerned about the lack of clarity and the fact that we are legislating for something that will end up by being merely at the whim of the Minister rather than within proper parameters laid down by Parliament.