Mr Keith Hill (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Streatham, Labour)

I beg to move,

That—

(1) during proceedings on the Planning and Compulsory Purchase (Re-committed) Bill, the Standing Committee do meet when the House is sitting:

(a) in addition to its first sitting on Tuesday, 14th October 2003 at 10.30 am, on that day 4.30 pm;

(b) thereafter, on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9.10 am and 2.30 pm;

(2) the proceedings shall be taken in the following order, namely New Clauses and New Schedules standing in the name of a Minister of the Crown, remaining New Clauses and New Schedules, Clauses 5 to 11, Clause 15, Clauses 19 to 36, Clauses 44 to 53, Clauses 56 to 72, Clauses 79 to 90, Schedules 2 to 6, Clauses 1 to 4, Clauses 12 to 14, Clauses 16 to 18, Clauses 37 to 43, Clauses 54 to 55, Clauses 73 to 78, Schedule 1, and remaining proceedings on the Bill;

(3) the proceedings so far as not previously concluded, shall be brought to a conclusion at 5.15 pm on Thursday, 23rd October 2003.

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Hurst. I am sure that I speak for the whole Committee when I say how much I am looking forward to debating matters under the wise chairmanship of Mr. Pike, Mr. Hancock and yourself.

We will be discussing important subjects, both today and in future sittings. There is no doubt that the Bill, although many parts of it are technical, deals with important matters of great interest to many people outside this Room. I am pleased to say that those important matters now include Crown immunity, thus implementing a commitment upheld by Members on both sides of the House since 1994. I intend to proceed in the spirit of openness and clarity—and, I hope, with despatch. I am sure, however, that the Committee will understand that some explanation of the new matters before us will be necessary, and that hon. Members will be willing to listen to the Government's case. I am convinced that we are about to embark on a succession of constructive debates.

I hope that the first group of amendments show the Government's willingness to consider the amendments tabled by other members of the Committee. The first amendment could well be dubbed the Spelthorne amendment, in honour of a previous and, I understand, somewhat loquacious, member of the Committee. Before the sitting I provided the Committee with a series of documents to aid debate, and several copies of those documents are now available in the Library. I shall provide some of the detail that was unavoidably missing when the Bill was debated before, and I hope that we will be able to make good progress.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

I start by welcoming you and Mr. Pike to the Chair, Mr. Hurst.

I assure you that the Opposition will try to be as constructive as possible within the constraints placed on us. I also thank the Clerks, who, as we will see, have done a huge amount of work in a very short period. I also welcome the new Minister for Housing and Planning. He and I have known each other for a long time, and I am sure that our relations will be cordial, although there will be difficulties, given the constraints placed on the Opposition.

The Bill places us in uncharted waters. It was originally introduced to the House on 4 December 2002 and the House treated it with—to use the Minister's words—great despatch: it had had its Second Reading and had passed through Committee by the end of January. We then heard nothing, and assumed—indeed, hoped—that the Bill had gone away, until June when the previous Minister, the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), who is now the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, announced his intention to re-commit it. He gave me certain undertakings that we would have adequate time to reconsider not only all the parts of the Bill that we considered during its previous consideration, which was heavily timetabled, but also those that we did not consider then. We should bear in mind the fact that of the original Bill, the Committee discussed only 30 of the 90 clauses, and one of the six schedules. A large proportion of the Bill was therefore never discussed in Committee at all—and now we have more than 120 pages of highly complex amendments, most of which are Government amendments. In other words, this Bill is far longer that the original Bill, which took up 74 pages.

When the Government lay Bills before their client Parliament—at least, I hope that they regard Parliament as their client—they should try to ensure that their legislation is more correct the first time. Indeed, that is a matter of professional pride. Bills should not be introduced to Parliament until they are in a more correct form. Now we have to deal with all these highly complex amendments in just eight sittings.

When the Bill was originally considered last January, we had 12 sittings. In June, when the motion to re-commit it was put before the House, I told Ministers that eight sittings were not enough. The Minister has been very kind, offering us flexibility and the opportunity to sit for more hours, but the problem is that these matters are so highly complex that unless one is superhuman, one cannot concentrate on them for longer than the six or seven hours already allocated, so we need more days. I hope that there will be some flexibility.

We are in uncharted waters not only because the Bill has been re-committed—I do not believe that that has happened to any other Bill in Parliament before—but because the resolution of the Programming Sub-Committee puts the Government new clauses and new schedules first. I have never heard of a situation whereby the Government have proposed an amendment, new schedule or new clause and the Committee has dealt with that, and then had to return to the same subject for Opposition amendments. Why are the amendments not grouped as they always used

to be, with new schedules and new clauses relating to certain matters in the Bill grouped together?

I must register my extreme displeasure with the programme motion. The Opposition will vote against it. However, we will try to deal with matters as well as we can. Very unusually, I have already signed some of the Government amendments, motions, because I agree with them and hope that they can be dealt with formally. There are many amendments on the amendment paper that could be taken formally, and if we could reach an agreement between the Opposition parties, that would allow us more time to debate the contentious issues. Surely that is our purpose.

We are going to have difficulties in dealing with such a large amount of stuff. The Minister has put a number of papers in the Library today, and there is a written statement on the Order Paper—but the Committee started at 10.30 on the first day back from the recess, and we are supposed to have taken in that huge wodge of papers before considering the Bill. That is a very unsatisfactory way of doing business. The Government ought to be able to lodge the papers earlier. I accept that this is the first day back, but we should not be in Committee on the first day back if the Government did not table all the papers before the summer recess, as I asked them to.

I have registered my strong displeasure, and we will vote against the programme motion, but I hope that we can proceed with the Committee with all due dispatch.

Mr Matthew Green (Ludlow, Liberal Democrat)

I too welcome you, Mr. Hurst—and Mr. Pike—to the Chair; I am looking forward to serving under your chairmanship. Unlike the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), I will try not to take up much of the limited time that we have available.

The Liberal Democrats welcome the Bill's return to Committee, because clearly it was not dealt with in its entirety in January. We welcome the Government's use of the intervening nine months or so to come up with some welcome new clauses, particularly on the issue of Crown immunity. I hope that we can move through those with some expedience.

I am sure that the new Minister will approach the Bill in a constructive manner. I fully expect him to listen intently to the issues raised, and I hope that we can move on to the new clauses and amendments that have been tabled by both the Opposition parties, because they raise some interesting points.

I am concerned that only three of us in this Room—the hon. Members for Chipping Barnet (Sir Sydney Chapman) and for Cotswold and myself—served on the original Committee in January. We are almost halfway through the process, and all the names have changed so we are starting all over again. We welcome the Bill's return to Committee, but we are concerned about whether we will get through everything in eight sittings. We would have preferred a longer time, but we will not seek to force that to a vote, preferring to see whether the Minister will live up to his promises of flexibility, and whether we can move through the issues and achieve most of our objectives. If we do not, we

will seek to persuade him that more time should be allowed later.

Sir Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet, Conservative)

I join other hon. Members in welcoming you to the Chair, Mr. Hurst, and I look forward to working with you. Although I have announced that I shall not be standing at the next election—[Hon. Members: ''Shame!'']—I hope that this will not be the last time I shall serve under your chairmanship.

I shall speak briefly because my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold has said most of what I wanted to say. As the hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green) has rather painfully reminded me, few of us now here were on the original Committee that considered the Bill. In my experience this is a first in the context of re-committing Bills. I believe that the timetable that has been set is grossly inadequate. It is inadequate even to deal with all the Government new clauses, and the original Committee only had time to examine about 26 of the 90 original clauses.

Even the most die-hard Government supporter—if there is such a person left—would admit that there was no filibustering or prevaricating by the Opposition. The hon. Member for Ludlow was the only hon. Member carrying his party's banner on that occasion, and it is good to see two Liberal Democrats here today. My point is that the original version of the Bill was not examined adequately. It was, to use the words of the then Minister, the hon. Member for Harrow, East, ''fast-tracked''—as if that gave it some aura of distinction.

Mr Edward Davey (Kingston & Surbiton, Liberal Democrat)

For the record, may I explain that we wanted two Liberal Democrats on the Committee the first time, but Plaid Cymru insisted on taking up an offer of a place, which prevented that—although I believe that the Plaid Cymru member of the Committee never turned up.

Sir Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet, Conservative)

My memory does not go back that far, but when I said that there was only one Liberal Democrat I was not implying any criticism. One might say that even one was too many.

There is little enough time to examine the Government new clauses, and there is certainly not enough time to examine all the amendments. The only way in which we might be able even to mention the sixty-something clauses that were not examined in the Committee at the beginning of the year would be through tabling an amendment. I appeal at this late stage to the Minister—whom I wish well, and welcome to his post—to relent and relax and allow us to study the Bill adequately.

It seems strange and unfair to me that the Government new clauses should be given precedence in Committee, although it is quite understandable that that should happen on Report, for practical as well as technical reasons.

My final point is about something that emphasises the Government's approach. For several weeks I have had a little battle at business questions, with successive Leaders of the House, about whether, if the Bill were re-committed, there would be an opportunity to examine the clauses that were not examined in

Committee originally. First the response was of the ''very much regret'' kind; it moved on to, ''We will look into this,'' and then to ''The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point.'' Finally we were advised that we would be able to consider the clauses that we could not discuss the first time round. Technically that is correct. As I understand it, we can, in the eight sittings of this Committee, raise the clauses that were not considered previously. However, in reality there will be no time—or, if there is, we will be able to do the job only in a technical sense, and not adequately.

I am sorry to sound so depressed and pessimistic. I assure hon. Members that I want to be constructive in trying to improve the Bill, but we must have this little bellyache now and put on the record that this is the most unsatisfactory way to examine a Bill. Whatever our political prejudices, it is Back Benchers' duty to ensure, first and foremost, that Bills are properly examined and, if possible, improved.

Mr Keith Hill (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Streatham, Labour)

I begin by expressing my gratitude for the spirit in which the hon. Member for Ludlow made his observations, and for the kind words of the official Opposition, who have stated where they stand.

The primary purpose of the reconvened Committee is to consider the new substantive Government amendments, and the programme motion reflects that. We will consider all Government new clauses first, all other new clauses next, followed by the clauses that were not fully debated before and, finally, the clauses that we have already debated.

The documents that I released to the Committee, as promised, relate mainly to later aspects of the Bill, so Committee members should have the opportunity to absorb their content before we come to the matters involved.

The motion includes no knives and I reiterate my willingness to be as flexible as possible: if we need more time, we shall have it. Members have referred to the original proceedings, but of the 90 clauses in the original Bill I know of only 24 that were debated. That does not necessarily imply that the Committee had inadequate opportunity to deal with the Bill in totality. This Bill may contain 90 clauses, but much of it is procedural, interpretive or technical. Indeed, four clauses relate to the correction of errors. I understand that there was an exchange about that in the earlier proceedings. Some 14 clauses relate to general provisions—in other words, they are regulation-making powers, supplementary or interpretation provisions, or repeals, or they deal with commencement and extent. Some 19 clauses relate to Wales—I do not disparage that principality, which is the land of paradise—but many of them reiterate other parts of the Bill.

I tabled all new clauses and amendments in good time for the sitting, and there are about 30 new clauses for debate. The rest of the Government amendments are minor and technical, although extremely voluminous. We can play games with the numbers, but the apparent volume is misleading. The Scottish

amendments are exactly the same as the English in principle and application, but are tweaked slightly to reflect Scottish legislation. We do not expect them to detain the Committee unduly.

I understand the Opposition's arguments, but I believe that we are all committed to dealing with the Bill in the spirit of openness and clarity and with dispatch. For those reasons, I commend the programme motion to the Committee.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

Before we vote, I raise one other matter with the Minister: the illogicality of the order of consideration. I refer the Committee to the part of the Bill involving plan making, which is the most important as the rest of the Bill will hang on it. Unfortunately, plan making is unnecessarily complex and will hold up the planning system. We are to consider clause 15, going back to clauses 2 to 6 and back again to clauses 1 to 4 and forward to clauses 12 to 14 and clauses 16 to 18. Surely the one good thing about the Bill is that it is set out logically. We should consider it in that logical order as far as possible while bearing in mind what the Minister is determined to do in relation to the Government new clauses and new schedules, which I understand, although I do not agree with it.

Mr Keith Hill (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Streatham, Labour)

The order of the debate reflects the logic of the order of the Government new clauses. I reiterate that if we can deal with those rapidly, we can move on to what the hon. Gentleman regards as the meat and drink of the measure.

Question put:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 8, Noes 4.

Mr Alan Hurst (Braintree, Labour)

I remind the Committee that there is a money resolution in connection with the Bill, copies of which are available. I also remind Members that adequate notice should be given of amendments. My co-Chairman and I do not intend to call starred amendments, including any that might be reached during and after this sitting.New clause 4 Effect of revision or revocation of development order on incomplete development