My Lords, I will follow the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, in his masterly demolition of Clause 12. My first point concerns the notion of relevance. Clearly, the committee really struggled with notions of relevance and found itself quoting, in paragraph 13, the memorandum, which illustrated,
“examples of the types of condition that the proposed power would prohibit. They include: ‘those which may unreasonably impact on the deliverability of a development, those which place unjustifiable and disproportionate financial burdens on an applicant, or those which duplicate requirements to comply with other statutory regimes’”.
That could probably cover every single impact of every aspect of development. These are vague and general in the extreme, so no wonder the important conclusion of the committee was that it would be,
“inappropriate for the Government to be given a power which could be used to go well beyond the stated aims of the Bill”.
Were these regulations to be enacted, the committee recommended that,
“the affirmative procedure should apply to the exercise of the powers”.
Do the Government agree that if this clause stands, the affirmative procedure will indeed be adopted?
The Delegated Powers Committee, on which I had the honour to serve for many years, does not make such recommendations lightly. This is a very serious indictment and a very serious conclusion. Do the Government intend to accept that the affirmative procedure should apply in this case?