My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for outlining his support for Clauses 17, 18 and 19, and for explaining the reasons for tabling his amendment and seeking clarification about what we are intending with the proposals outlined in Clause 19. I hope that I am able
to give him the reassurance he is looking for. I will do my best to be simple and straightforward in explaining this, but it is quite a technical thing to explain. I am quite confident that we share the same objectives, so I will give it a go and if needs be we can always talk further, I am sure.
Clause 19 will provide the framework for changes to regulations that will provide a quicker and simpler process for making changes to development consent orders. We will be consulting on changes to regulations shortly. For non-material changes, we will be proposing that responsibility for publicising and consulting on an application should in future lie with the applicant rather than the Secretary of State. Crucially, that will bring the process for making a non-material change in line with the rest of the Planning Act. In moving the responsibility for publicising and consulting on an application to the applicant, the Government want to ensure the necessary flexibility in the regulations to ensure that non-material changes that are unlikely to have significant impacts can be made quickly. In view of that, we intend to retain the provision in the existing regulations that would allow an applicant not to consult someone, but that would be only where they had gained the consent of the Secretary of State to do so.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and others who may be interested in this part of the Bill, have seen the briefing paper which we prepared in advance of this Sitting of the Committee. We circulated it by e-mail earlier this week. I will happily send it round again if anyone has not seen the document to which I am referring. The briefing paper gives a preliminary indication of the changes to the regulations on which we will consult later this month, so the consultation should start fairly soon.
The briefing paper does not suggest that we intend to change the current consultation and publicity requirements for non-material changes. I hope that once noble Lords have had the opportunity to consider the consultation paper on changes to the regulations, they will be reassured that the Government are not proposing to use the power of discretion provided in Clause 19 to allow applicants to decide who they should and should not consult. Applicants will continue to consult those persons and bodies set out in the regulations unless they have the consent of the Secretary of State not to do so. Given those comments, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, feels able to withdraw his amendment.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about progress on applications and decisions through the nationally significant infrastructure regime. Twenty applications have now gone all the way through the system and 19 have been granted consent, so that is a 95% approval rate. There was one refusal, which concerned the Preesall gas storage application. This project is being redetermined following judicial review. Four applications have been decided in 2014, with another nine expected, and 13 were decided in 2013. Two were decided in 2012 and one in 2011 through the Infrastructure Planning Commission. Therefore, the regime is being used, and we can see from the number of applications that the process is working. There are 56 applications in the pre-application phase and more in other parts of the
system. I hope that gives the noble Lord the information he was looking for and that I have given him the reassurance he sought on this part of the Bill.