My Lords, the amendment responds to a commitment made by my noble friend Lord Attlee in Committee, when the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, referred to the Planning Act 2008 in respect of road-using charging.
The aim of the amendment that they proposed was to provide greater flexibility for developers wishing to include road-user charging provisions within a development consent order.
I am pleased to say that the Government have now considered this matter further and we agree that there is a good case for making changes to the Planning Act 2008 to remove any ambiguity. This amendment will remove any doubt about whether modern methods of road-user charging, such as those using camera and number plate recognition, can be included as part of any development consent order. It achieves this, quite simply, by disapplying the provisions of Section 144(2) of the Planning Act 2008 in respect of such schemes. The amendment also deletes subsection (3) to enable the transfer of roads from one highway authority to another in appropriate cases: for example, from the local highways authority to the Highways Agency. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will agree that the amendment achieves what he was seeking, and that he will feel able to support it fully. I beg to move.