My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 48ZA and will introduce it very briefly. Your Lordships may recall that in Committee I moved that Clauses 22 and 23 should not stand part of the Bill. I defended the principle of SPP at some length, which is one of the reasons why I did not speak or respond to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, on the previous amendment. Having served on the Rookery South inquiry, I think that the SPP procedure is important and, for democratic reasons, deserves to exist. I regret that the Government have taken a decision which means that in many respects the SPP will disappear.
Clause 22, in particular, threatens open space. When open space is threatened with a development consent order and compulsory purchase, and where there is no suitable exchange land or the exchange land is deemed to be too expensive, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government may himself decide that the DCO need not be subject to special parliamentary procedure. He would also need to be satisfied that it is strongly in the public interest for the development to begin sooner than is likely to be possible if the order is subject to an SPP. I know that Ministers complained at earlier stages of the Bill that the Rookery South SPP took too long. I do not agree. I think that the SPP inquiry which we conducted was thorough and it was important that it was carried out.
I am not tonight moving that Clause 22 be removed from the Bill. I am effectively inserting a sunset clause so that it would be possible for the Government to demonstrate that it was necessary for the special powers to be withdrawn for up to five years, and it would be necessary at the end of the process for them to win that argument again. I understand that there are pieces of open space that the Government may wish to see acquired compulsorily as part of an urgent planning matter. That is why I am not opposing the existence of Clause 22. However, the safeguard which the insertion of this sunset clause would ensure is worth considering. I beg to move.