My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has made a very powerful argument of principle. He has also pointed out that the sums of money involved are considerable, and it should of course be the Government’s job, if we are promoting growth and development, to see that the costs to businesses are kept at the lowest level possible. That is clearly not being done at the moment. The noble Lord quoted a daily rate, which of course is high for professional people such as these. The National Infrastructure Planning Association estimates that on its conservative assumption of single inspectors examining applications four days out of five, panels of three inspectors examining on nine days out of 10 and panels of five examining on 19 days out of 20, the total overcharging has been of the order of £470,000. The sums of money that we are talking about are considerable.
However, the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, kindly wrote to me on this issue, because we had a long debate about it in Committee. She made an argument which I think is worthy of consideration but that leaves me wanting to ask her a question. Her argument is that the principle at stake should not be the number of days worked but a reasonable recovery of costs. In her letter to me, she says:
“We do not therefore consider that it is helpful to focus purely on the days worked by Examining Inspectors or the time that they record as there are wider costs involved in the process of examining a nationally significant infrastructure project”.
If that is the defence of the policy—that the relevant consideration is not the number of days worked but the recovery of costs—I think the Minister should feel bound to give the House information about how the costs relate to the charges that have been made. If the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, is not in a position to give that information to the House this evening, would he please write to us with it afterwards? For my part, and I suspect for the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, we might wish to return to this on Third Reading.