Clause 4 - Assistance from certain local authorities
Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill
11:00 am
Mr Tony McNulty (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Harrow East, Labour)
The only prevention or ban in the Bill, as I have tried to say, relates to the discharging of the RPB's statutory duty. The Bill prevents assistance in the publication and submission to the Secretary of State of the draft revision of the RSS, because that is very specifically the statutory function of the RPB. That is the import and effect of all the different cross-references between Bills.
Nothing in the Bill prevents assistance simply in drafting informally or otherwise considering subsequent revisions to the RSS, but the element of the statutory function, the core of the two-tier regional and local planning system that is to be put in place, cannot be usurped or passed on to anyone else. It must be discharged by the RPB.