My Lords, I thank the Minister for her extensive response, which I shall have to pore over before I come to any conclusion. I have two issues in the mean time. The requirement of the Secretary of State to have regard to a general set of provisions about climate change is not the same as linking that clearly with the Climate Change Act and the suite of targets that flow from that. Getting that kind of numerical precision of the targets into the Secretary of State’s responsibilities is important. The Minister’s point about the importance of the national policy statements for setting the framework for decisions means that Amendment 81A becomes even more important in terms of making sure that the Secretary of State does have this duty when he draws up national policy statements.
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I shall read very carefully the points made about local planning authorities, because they were extensive and I shall need to think about them. However, I was rather taken aback at the idea that some of these amendments would give rise to legal challenge, because they are couched in such a general way that they are pretty inoffensive, and are certainly not so explicit that they ought not to be in the Bill. I therefore look forward to reading Hansard and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.