My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for his amendment and for enabling a short debate on NSIPs, because I think it is pretty important.
I ought to say that, before I was elected to the other place, my job was to work on various national infrastructure projects, or NSIPs—when I started working on them, they were not called that, of course, but that all changed—mainly around energy and water. I remember vividly when the new regime came in, back in 2008, under the Planning Act. At the time, it was a big change but very welcome because, as people have said, projects just got stuck all the time. As well as establishing statutory timescales and a streamlined DCO process, it brought more attention to the importance of public consultation. This helps local communities to understand why a project is happening near them and can unpick some of the problems and help move projects on.
It is worth pointing out that, since the NSIP system came into force in 2010, 113 transport, energy and wastewater projects have been considered, which shows a huge difference from the system we had before. It has sped up the planning process between submitting an application and the DCO being granted. We know that in the national infrastructure strategy in 2020 the Government committed to the NSIP reform programme, which aimed to speed up timescales by up to 50% for projects entering the system from the end of this year. It is really good to see this included in the levelling-up Bill, because projects can still get horribly stuck.
One that springs to mind from personal perspective is Hinkley Point C. I think that I started working with National Grid on the connections into Hinkley Point C in 2007, and one of my jobs was to do the timeline for the project. Every six months I would add another year or two on—and so it continues. It is getting there, but it is many years behind, and the trouble is that you then have an enormous amount of extra cost. Anything that can be done to support that fast-track consenting that the Bill suggests—faster post-consent changes—is really to be supported.
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I am also interested in the fact that there is the section on charging developers for expert input, so that government agencies providing the technical expert advice on DCO applications can charge developers for their NSIP services. Developers should be able to afford to do that, if it speeds up the process and helps to get that expert advice. Delays are what cost developers the most money, so we need to keep those things moving.
One thing that I am particularly interested in is the innovation and capacity building for local authorities affected by NSIPs. We know that the levelling-up White Paper recognised the need for the inclusion of local leaders to have the power and accountabilities to design and deliver effective policies for driving infrastructure projects. In the NSIP policy statement, local authorities representing the needs and views of local people are identified as being right at the forefront of delivering local impact reports, working with developers and ensuring that all the plans are properly integrated with local infrastructure. Having worked on NSIPs and knowing people who continue to work on them, I know that the capacity issues in key agencies and within local authorities can still seriously hold up granting a DCO for major projects. While the section on NSIPs in the Bill is good and will help, until we improve capacity issues we will still get stuck.
I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, that it makes sense to review progress and for that to be part of keeping things moving forward. However, if it is down to capacity issues, the Government really need to look at how that affects delivery of DCO consent—that is what we are talking about—and how the numbers of qualified staff and staff training can help to increase capacity so that local authorities and statutory agencies have the right people, and enough right people, to move this forward.