My Lords, I will be brief. In this group, I have Amendments 116, 117, 118 and 119. The first three seek to leave out “highway” on page 24, lines 14, 16 and 17, and insert “transport project”. We thought that would make the issue clearer. New Sections 6D(3), 6D(4)(a) and 6D(4)(b) in Clause 27 use “transport project” and I therefore did not understand why later in the same clause it was referred to as a highway scheme. Can the Minister explain why that is the case and if my amendments are not necessary? If they are, I hope he will accept them as it is odd to move from the wider and encompassing definition of transport project to the narrower definition of “highway”.
Amendment 119 seeks to provide further clarity by removing “announced”. In these sorts of schemes you get into arguments about when things were announced so we thought it would be much clearer to put,
“first proposed in consultation with the public”.
There will be an actual date on which a consultation is started and when papers and a clear plan are sent out. We thought this would be much better as we do not want disputes later because everyone is arguing about when the scheme was formally announced. That is the purpose behind the amendment and I look forward to the Minister’s response.