Clause 42 - Power to decline to determine applications
Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill
9:45 am
Sir Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet, Conservative)
I was pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne did not push his two amendments, because they were unnecessary. He wanted to insert ''proposed'' before ''development'', but as the words
''to which the applications relate''
appear after ''development'', it would have been superfluous. I therefore welcome what he has done. I say that deliberately because I want the Minister to understand that our amendments are tabled in good faith and are not as trivial as he thinks.
The Minister was right to take me to task for not doing my research. I merely point out that the parliamentary time between Second Reading and the Standing Committee stage was very short. I confess that I did not spend Christmas day or new year's day studying the Bill. I thought that I owed Christmas day to someone else, and on new year's day, I was in no fit condition to read the Bill.
In all sincerity, it is monstrous to have to deal with the complexities of the Bill in 12 sittings. Just down the Corridor is the Standing Committee considering the Hunting Bill, for which I understand 20 sittings have been allocated. I am not an expert on what is going on in the other Committee, but I should have thought that the issue was quite simple and did not necessarily need 20 sittings. The Government have got things the wrong way round: the Hunting Bill Committee should have had 12 sittings, and we should have had 20 or more. I say that just in passing.
I have another apology for the Minister. His eagle eye may well have spotted that on Second Reading I said that I welcomed the intention to abolish what has become known as twin-tracking—that is, putting in identical, or almost identical, applications to the local authority. I am a reasonable person. Just as I have been persuaded by what I loosely describe as environmental organisations to table amendments that we think would improve and strengthen the Bill, so it is necessary to have a balance between the interests of the environment and the interests of
applicants, developers, promoters, house builders or whoever. I have been persuaded that there are merits in twin-tracking. I now oppose getting rid of twin-tracking summarily in legislation because I believe that it helps to speed up the planning process and getting rid of it could slow things down.