Further written evidence reported to the House
Planning Bill
9:15 am
Hugh Ellis: There are parts of the Bill that we do support, which are sensible. The two primary aspects of that are that a unified consent regime would help immensely, and I think that there is consent around that, and also statements of national policy, where those statements—and this is absolutely vital—are not site-specific. That changes everything in relation to our view of national policy statements. A firm statement of national policy is the sort of thing that was absent in terminal 5, for example, and it would certainly have dealt with that delay.
Our point is that there are multiple sources of delay and that in responding to those multiple sources we need, for example, to focus as much on the competence of developers as we do, if you like, on the constitutional issues around citizenship. Our point is that we may regard the debate about particular development as being frustrating from our particular point of view, but it is vital that there is full scrutiny of the process. In particular cases, like Nirex for example, some people may regard the debate around Nirex as frustrating because NGOs brought forward expert witnesses. That proved that that deep-level disposal of nuclear waste option was unsound and the inspector concluded that it was unsound. Our contention would be that it is very difficult to see how that would be brought forward under this regime.
So we are happy to see that managerial reform. By all means, let us timetable inquiries, let us provide support for third parties, let us create national policy frameworks, let us unify consent, but at the same time let us make sure that there is an arena, a robust arena, where people can come along—not NGOs necessarily, but ordinary citizens—and test the evidence. At the moment, the planning inspector has powers to, for example, rule out evidence that is frivolous or repetitious. All those things are there to help to manage the process, and they are largely untested because they were only introduced in 2005. Our case really is that we should test the system before we introduce a system that we do not think is sound.