Planning Bill
2:30 pm
John Healey: If your contention is that Ministers and not members of the IPC on an independent basis should take such decisions, I have two things to say. First, one of our objectives has been to try to establish a system in which the roles and accountability for the discharge of those roles is much clearer. At the heart of the proposition for the IPC, therefore, is the idea of separating the responsibility for policy making, which rightly should be with Ministers and will be captured and set out in national policy statements, from the process of taking decisions on specific applications within that framework. At present, it is the case that in some circumstances for some major projects, Ministers are acting as the source of the policy—the promoters, in effect—of the individual applications and the authority that makes the decision on those applications. That is particularly true in areas of transport such as highways. In my view, that is an unsatisfactory situation. This gives us a chance to make that clearer and stronger.
The second reason is this. I have been struck by the observations of a number of witnesses whom we have heard over the last couple of days—and it is largely a misapprehension—about the accountability of Ministers in acting in the planning capacity. It has been acknowledged—quite rightly, because this is what happens—that Ministers who take planning decisions do so in a quasi-judicial fashion. Essentially, that means that the basis and the terms on which they do so are tightly prescribed by planning legislation. Ultimately, when one is concerned about accountability, that means that were I as a Minister to take a planning decision, I would not be accountable as a politician to Parliament, and I would not be accountable to Members of this House or this Committee for that decision; I would be accountable and challengeable through the courts to a judge. That is the reality of the decision-taking role of Ministers within the planning system.