My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for the amendments they have tabled, in particular the noble Lords, Lord Greenway, Lord Jenkin and Lord Berkeley, for setting out their proposed amendments to Clause 22. Questions have been raised about the Government’s position in putting forward Clause 22. It may be helpful if I first set out the issues that the Government are trying to address through this clause.
Clause 22 amends the provisions in the Planning Act 2008 which set out when special parliamentary procedure will apply to a development consent order
which authorises the acquisition of specially protected land. It also repeals the separate certification process required in certain cases. The Planning Act 2008 brought together a range of different consent regimes for nationally significant infrastructure into a single development consent order. The overall aim of this regime is to provide a more efficient and quicker consenting regime for very large infrastructure projects. Development consent orders can include authorisation for the compulsory acquisition of land, but when certain categories of specially protected land are acquired, special parliamentary procedure can be triggered. The decision by the Secretary of State that such land is to be compulsorily acquired is then transferred to a Joint Committee of Parliament for confirmation. While the special parliamentary procedure is undertaken, the development consent cannot come into effect and work on the infrastructure project cannot start.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, talked about the reasoning behind such measures. Delays to infrastructure projects can have a significant knock-on impact in delaying benefits to the local and, indeed, national economy. In the case to which the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, referred—the Rookery South project in which he was involved—the special parliamentary procedure was triggered for an infrastructure project under the Planning Act. The special parliamentary procedure added more than a year to the consent process. I understand that during this period no work was possible on the project, delaying the creation of up to 300 construction jobs and 80 permanent jobs that would have resulted when the project was up and running.