My Lords, Amendments 76 and 77 are in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and myself, and this perhaps is the moment when I should make my contribution to the debate.
I read the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, at Second Reading and his reference to Rookery South. I approach this issue from a rather different angle. If one looks at the history of that energy-from-waste project in Bedfordshire, the SPP—a post-consent process; planning consent had already been given—simply allows the objectors a further opportunity to object. A lot of people feel strongly about energy-from-waste projects.
The noble Lord says that that gives rise to parliamentary accountability. I have to say that until I had studied the briefs on these two clauses, I had been entirely unaware as a Member of Parliament of the activities of the noble Lord and some of his colleagues—the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, was mentioned. I know that my noble friend Lord Brabazon has been involved in similar SPP processes and has regarded them as very long and drawn out.
This Bill is about encouraging growth and investment in the infrastructure. It really cannot make sense to continue with these, as it were, statutory procedures for delaying decisions and action on applications for which consent has already been given after the normal processes. I have to confess to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, that I have not studied closely the condition of the waterways, as he obviously has, or, perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, the ports.
These two amendments are concerned about, as am I, the application of the special parliamentary procedure for what is called common land,
“open space, fuel or field garden allotment”.
The Planning Act currently provides that a development consent order which authorises compulsory purchase of open space land or a right over such land will be subject to the SPP unless the Secretary of State has issued a certificate confirming that certain prescribed circumstances will apply. I have already said that this is a post-consent approval stage that certainly has the potential to result in—and in some of the cases, not least that of Rookery South to which the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has referred, has actually resulted in—very considerable delays for a project that had already achieved planning consent. The procedure can be very costly for the applicants—and, I dare say, for some of the objectors—and hold back the provision of infrastructure projects that support economic growth.
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Clause 22—I welcome it and want to make it perfectly clear that I support it—widens the circumstances in which the Secretary of State can issue a certificate confirming that a DCO which authorises the compulsory purchase of open space land or a right over such land will not be subject to SPP. However—and this is the point I wish to make to my noble friend on the Front Bench—there remains significant scope for a DCO which authorises the compulsory acquisition of open space land or a right over that land to be subject to SPP. I believe that the clause could go further and remove what could be a rather tiresome—and, from the economic point of view, obstructive—process, while still retaining a proper balance between the interests of promoters and the users of open spaces.
The amendments are aimed at limiting the scope of what is meant by “open space”. They do this by a very simple process. An open space, for the purposes of this clause—and I am not referring to some of the earlier clauses that we discussed—would be limited to land which has been formally designated as open space by the responsible local authority. All important pieces of open land are officially and formally designated by the local authority, but they cannot cover every single piece of open land. For instance, where there is a road junction in a village with a triangle of open land in the middle of it and somebody wants to improve the road system and would require some of it, in theory that could be open to the SPP because it would belong to the local authority. However, it would never have been designated as open land that way. There are pieces of open land where boys are accustomed to go and kick a football around, but no local authority has ever thought it necessary for that to be formally designated. It just happens to be there; but why should an important road or other development be held up simply because there happens to be a procedure which is triggered by the fact that there is a compulsory purchase of open land?
My noble friend the Planning Minister in the other place, Nick Boles, got this absolutely right when he said:
“The Government believe there is a strong argument for the special parliamentary procedure to be limited to situations where there is a real need for further scrutiny by Parliament: for example, where there is a genuine need to weigh up the public interests of allowing infrastructure development to take place at the expense of the loss of certain types of very specially protected land”.—[Official Report, Commons, Growth and Infrastructure Bill Committee, 4/12/12; col. 401.]
At another point, he referred to this as essentially our “most precious” open spaces. I am not challenging that, but, of course, all the most precious open spaces fall under designations that are already very clear and would be covered by the SPP. I am talking about the informal bits of land, land that happens to be open land but which no local authority has ever thought it worth while to designate because it seemed to be so trivial—that can somehow trigger the right of the objectors to a particular piece of development to ask the Secretary of State for a special parliamentary procedure.
It is a narrow point, but if this clause is to be effective, as I hope my noble friends in government expect it to be, this modest improvement in the situation would help the Government’s intention. I hope that Ministers feel able to agree to that. What Mr Boles said on that occasion absolutely reflects what is right, and this amendment is necessary to give effect to that.