My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on whether keeping this clause in the Bill is sensible. I share his views entirely about the vagaries of the local planning system. It is true to say—it would be good if the Minister could confirm it at some stage—that not only are there not many neighbourhood plans in existence, but some local authorities have not yet published local plans, far less had them accepted. This provision might be okay in places where they have thought about it, but so many have not and show no signs of doing so.
The National Planning Policy Framework only encourages local planning authorities to consider identifying suitable areas for renewable energy sources and as a result the links in the chain that could fail are rather long. A local authority might not have got to the stage where it had a local plan and therefore there cannot be neighbourhood plans, because they have got to be in a consistent process with the local plan, and there is only a vague nudge in the direction of considering whether suitable areas have been identified for renewable energy. It does not feel like a well-honed local set of circumstances for fostering that vital and, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, pointed out, cost-effective way of meeting some very stringent climate change targets and budgets. I have concerns about the removal of the Secretary of State’s consent in this respect.
It is rather strange that we are moving in one direction for fracking consents and in another for onshore wind consents. I simply make that remark without having any belief that there should be one without the other. I must confess that I need to meet my noble friend Lady Worthington to talk about some impacts of fracking other than simply energy generation, carbon reduction and cost.
There is one other issue in respect of the localisation of decision-making in terms of onshore wind, which is how we get some strategic perspective. It is going to be abominably difficult to meet our carbon targets, and we will need every tool in the toolkit to do so. In this clause, there is no mechanism for that happening on a scale larger than a neighbourhood or local plan, yet many of these decisions involving technologies other than onshore wind need to be part of the mix on a local and national basis for these decisions to be looked at on a more strategic basis at a higher level than the local planning authority.
I hope that the Minister will come back to us with answers to some of the questions we are raising about the advisability of removing the Secretary of State’s permission.