My Lords, I hesitate to take exception to any remark made by my noble friend, who I have admired and worked with for so many years, but local authorities are charged with the responsibility of administering the planning system and have knowledge of so doing. It is hardly surprising—in my view, they would be failing in their professional duty—if they did not respond to a consultation which affected the rights of planning authorities. In declaring my interest as leader of a local authority, I confess that my own authority was probably one among the number that raised a few question marks about the clause as originally drafted, so I hope that the Minister will not dismiss the representations made just because they are made by local authorities.
I strongly agree with my noble friend that the changes she has introduced are positive. I was one of those who expressed concerns at an earlier stage of the Bill about the breadth of Clause 1, as it was then drafted. My noble friend, in her typical way, has listened to those concerns, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, very generously acknowledged. We have come a very long way and I hope that we will be able to do that on later aspects of the Bill. Therefore, I, too, thank my noble friend.
I have some sympathy in spirit with Amendment 10. I am perhaps breaking a habit in this regard: I, too, agree with what Mr Boles said on the matter of design. There is a question of whether that is a matter for the Bill but I agree with the analysis that planning would be so much easier if design were better. I would remark only that, as I said at an earlier stage, we must avoid the risk of any kind of moral hazard in this legislation. In terms of openness and the way in which designation is made, it is still not clear to me—it is certainly not inherent in the Bill—that where a future Secretary of State makes a designation and takes the game away from a local authority with the view of making a judgment on a major planning application, it must be the case that any representations made to the Secretary of State before he makes that designation become matters of public knowledge, in the same way as representations in terms of planning are placed on a website.
I have not tabled anything in this respect, but I hope that in response my noble friend will make it clear that there will be absolute transparency in that respect. There can therefore never be any suspicion that any powerful interest has got at any Government behind the scenes, leading to the designation of a local authority which may have been a little bit awkward to somebody who wanted to get a major planning application through. That is not an obstacle to what my noble friend has put before us, which I welcome, but perhaps she might be able to respond—if not now, in correspondence—on that specific point of transparency.