My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. As the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, acknowledged, these regulations are not about energy policy or the planning process more widely. However, important issues have been raised by noble Lords which I shall seek to clarify and respond to. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, echoed some of the concerns expressed by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I very much regret—my colleagues in the department share my view—that that committee felt moved to comment on the process that we followed in bringing forward these regulations. As I said in my opening remarks,
we recognise the importance of providing Parliament with sufficient time and evidence to scrutinise the documentation and the responses to the consultation. In laying the material before Christmas, we did not expect the significant delay that then transpired between that happening and the consultation responses being provided. I assure noble Lords that there is no conspiracy here but I very much take on board the criticism and will reflect on it for the future.
The noble Lord’s remarks on the length of the consultation exercise and the consideration of responses to it were echoed by my noble friend Lady Parminter and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton. It is important for me to stress again that these regulations are very narrow in their purpose. They clarify the existing law and ensure that the Government’s long-standing intention is clear. The other regulations, which are not before us today but were referred to in the scrutiny committee’s report, are important as far as a change around notification is concerned. Those regulations focus very narrowly on notification prior to an application being made by a relevant organisation and certainly do not affect the ongoing process of consultation, which is very important to the process that will be followed if exploration is continued. Therefore, we thought it right to follow the principles set out in the Cabinet Office code, and we felt that six weeks was an appropriate and proportionate amount of time for the consultation period.
As regards analysing the responses, we considered them very carefully but, not surprisingly, because shale gas is a contentious matter, many of those who responded to the consultation, and certainly those who opposed these regulations, used it—this is perfectly understandable and I am certainly not criticising anyone for doing this—to express their opposition in principle to shale. Once the responses were carefully analysed, the number of those who opposed the regulations were opposed less to what was being proposed in the regulations than to the principle of shale itself. They were therefore addressing a different matter in their responses. We have published the consultation responses, albeit belatedly. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked for further detail on this, and our analysis of the consultation is already available in the public domain.
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The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, asked about the impact of the regulations and questioned whether we have done enough to assess their impact. As I mentioned in opening the debate, we considered the impact of these regulations on both the public sector and the private sector, but we did not feel that the extent of that impact was so great as to justify the level of detailed assessment that might quite rightly be expected in different circumstances.
My noble friend Lady Parminter asked about the ongoing process of consultation as progress is made with shale exploration. I say to her and to the Committee that the changes we have made are very much around clarifying an existing point of law. As far as the process of consultation and notification is concerned in the future, there is absolutely no question whatever of removing the requirement to notify landowners
and tenants. What is happening here is a change to how that is done. Furthermore, applicants must still negotiate with landowners and tenants to gain access to their land. I should say that these proposals are part of an ongoing process as far as consultation is concerned within the planning process. They mark a minimum and they certainly do not prevent any applicant from engaging with local communities beyond what is required as the legal minimum. We still expect and would strongly encourage early and proactive engagement with local communities prior to an application being submitted. If an application was then to progress, that would lead to full consultation with local communities.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked some specific questions about the regulations before us. He asked what work has been done to assess the average costs of processing oil and gas exploration applications. As I think I have already explained, we have not made a separate analysis of the costs of handling oil and gas consultations in isolation. The fees are not calculated in that way. They are based on the average cost of determination across all local authorities in England.