Clause 1
Planning-gain Supplement (Preparations) Bill
10:45 am
Vincent Cable (Shadow Chancellor, Treasury; Twickenham, Liberal Democrat)
I want to save most of my comments for the next string of amendments, but I will speak briefly in support of amendment No. 1.
The hon. Member for Rayleigh is right for two reasons. First, the proposals may never proceed—the Government may chose not to proceed with them, or there may be a change of Government—so there needs to be a tighter limitation on the spending commitments. Secondly, as we all know from experience with big IT projects and so on—in the private sector, as much as in government—the more money that is committed to something, the deeper Governments are sucked into it, even though they would probably think better of it if they were starting with a clean slate.
The hon. Gentleman is actually being quite generous in allowing for £25 million, and we could probably think of a much tighter constraint. However, he is trying to make the point that there needs to be a tight financial limitation on the first stage of the process. The figure is arbitrary, but it is useful to make the point, and I therefore support the amendment.