My Lords, I will speak briefly, although I feel rather rash in doing so after the compelling interventions we have heard. As I understand it, this power applies to any enactment, not just, as the noble and learned Lord said—I am sure misspeaking—to what is in this enactment. My position is as a lay person, but also someone who was for a long time in the usual channels, interested in the drafting of legislation and how that was done by a Government whom I opposed for 13 years. I have to say that we would have looked a little askance at this sort of thing in those years in opposition. I understand the innocent intent and perfect integrity of the present Ministers involved, but the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, rather anticipated my thought: if clear drafting instructions are given on what is required to be enacted and a Bill is properly drafted by expert draftsmen, there should be no need for the sweeping brush to be around afterwards. That is really how legislation should be presented to Parliament.
This is the second piece of planning legislation we have had in a year. I submit that there has been time to think through these things, but it is the wider point that concerns me. This is not an ad hominem, or a criticism of Ministers here, but this will become a practice—I was struck by that paragraph in the Delegated Powers Committee report. It will become part of the constitution if Parliament continues to accept, in Act after Act, that Ministers of the day can be given power to change any other enactment as a result of something that arises out of their further ruminations or representations on it. I hope that my noble friend will consider this carefully.
The other thing I would say, in the broader context of planning and the challenge of getting more housing and more things done, is that there is immense distrust out there—anyone who lives with the planning system knows the distrust and fear that people have that the system is loaded against them. The system is actually fair, and bends over backwards to try to be fair, but if government arms itself with powers to change the rules if something does not quite work out as might have been intended in the first place—instead of building that consent for new planning and new development that I want, and which I know the Government want—it may add to the sense, so eloquently expressed by my noble friend Lady Cumberlege, that the system is loaded. That must be something to avoid. Although my main objection is on the wider constitutional principle, as a practitioner—a local authority leader who has to stand between the forces of government and popular feeling—and as a layman, I argue that we should be particularly cautious in the context of this legislation.
7.15 pm