My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 48ZC, 48ZD and 48AA. These amendments repeat amendments that I moved in Committee. They would exclude quarrying and open-cast mining from the definition of business and commercial developments; require regulations to limit the definition of business and commercial projects in order to exclude areas of special historical or environmental importance from the type of applications that could be permitted to bypass the local authority; require the Secretary of State to publish the reasons for his decision to assume authority to decide the outcome of an application, including the reasons for which he considers the application to be nationally significant; and request that the local plan will have primacy where there is no existing national policy statement of relevance.
I thought it important that even at this late hour we had an opportunity to debate what is quite a significant change brought about by the Bill. There is one specific issue arising from Committee that I would like to clarify with the noble Baroness. I am not sure who to address and I have got it wrong each time so far. The noble Baroness and the noble Lord are confusing us by changing between Committee and Report. They are clearly able to cover the waterfront between them.
The subject of opencast mining is extremely sensitive and controversial in the communities where it takes place. The current issue is whether this will or will not come into the definition of business and commercial development. In Committee, the noble Baroness was vague on this point. She said:
“We therefore consider that some minerals schemes could be capable of being of national significance, but again we wish to consider the consultation responses before we reach final conclusions about the forms of development”.—[Official Report, 4/2/13; col. 62.]
Is she able to say whether that further consideration has been given and what kind of mineral schemes, if any, would in the Government’s view be capable of being of national significance? This is a new issue which was left very much in the air after Committee and I hope that if she is not able to give me a reply today she will be able to write to me afterwards. I beg to move.