New Clause 29 - Strategic environmental assessment
Planning and Compulsory Purchase (Re-committed) Bill
11:00 am
Mr Matthew Green (Ludlow, Liberal Democrat)
I shall try to be brief on the new clause and amendments, which relate to an area that we covered in the original Committee in January. They would require the Government to make the planning system compliant with the strategic environmental assessment directive by July 2004. New clause 29 would ensure that all plans, from local development documents to regional spatial strategies, were subject to strategic environmental assessments.
When we debated that in January, the then planning Minister, now the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty) said:
''The draft guidance is structured to enable authorities to comply with the directive within the context of the broader sustainability appraisal framework. There may be things in our framework that go well beyond what is in the directive and enhance it . . . I do not want to pre-empt the outcome of the consultation.''—[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 9 January 2003; c. 23.]
I should like to know from the Minister for Housing and Planning whether that consultation has ended and what its outcome has been, because we are running out of time. We are talking about next July. When we were in Committee last January we had 18 months to go, so the assurances from the Minister of the time carried some weight. We are now halfway through that 18 months, and I have tabled the new clause and amendments to tease out from this Minister what progress has been made, and whether he is satisfied that the Government will meet the needs of the strategic environmental assessment directive by next July.