My Lords, this was tabled as rather a probing amendment, given the situation that has arisen, and I am grateful to noble Lords for their
contributions. I do not wish to detain the House on this for too long but I will say that this has nothing to do with retrospection; I absolutely disagree that someone who develops a wind farm or any other energy-generating station over 50 megawatts is necessarily going to be the operator. It is a fact in industry in Britain and worldwide that the developer is often not the operator, in whatever industry we may talk about—they are two entirely separate processes. If you took the view that they had to be the same legal person then you would probably have to go back to 17th-century economics, let alone 21st-century ones. It does not work that way any more. It would also bring the practicalities back into line with the English and Welsh situation. In no way does this amendment make any judgment about whether people should be able to judicially review such decisions; clearly they should be able to do so. I would hope that such actions would not be vexatious, and I am sure that this one was not. Indeed, there was a judgment parallel to the licensing one concerning the wildlife directives, on which I make no judgment at all. It might have been completely valid in terms of their application.
With this amendment I was simply trying to bring the situation back to some certainty and to the situation that was understood prior to this judgment. That is not in itself retrospective. However, I am persuaded by the Minister that perhaps the right course is for this to go through the appeal process—I certainly do not think that it is a good idea for Parliament to interfere with that—and then the situation should be looked at. I am highly persuaded by the argument put forward by my noble friend Lord Forsyth about the reaction of the Scottish Government, in that clearly the rule of law is the rule of law wherever we are within the United Kingdom, and I would never wish
to pull the carpet from under that important principle in how we live our public life. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.