Clause 1
Planning Bill
12:15 pm
John Healey (Minister of State (Local Government), Department for Communities and Local Government; Wentworth, Labour)
The principal responsibility in testing the evidence before the commission will be for the commissioners conducting the hearing. We will look at that area in detail. They will be guided in the way that they do that, but given discretion where they think that it may be required.
I will now move on to the hon. Member for North Cornwall’s amendment. I congratulate him on his new job, leading for the Liberal Democrats on the Front Bench. He was right to thank the witnesses who appeared before the Committee. Beyond that, I think that he was still warming up in the fairly brief comments that he made. If I missed any questions or points that he put to me, I am sure that he will let me know.
Like other members of the Committee, the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon brings great experience to these matters and to the Committee’s scrutiny. He loyally supported the position of his Front Bench on the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Beckenham. As he rightly said, most of these matters are ones of detail and are perhaps for subsequent examination under other amendments that we will consider.
The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy who speaks for Plaid Cymru said that the Planning Inspectorate was the answer. He was worried, first, about the cost and, secondly, about the fact that we were having to legislate. On the latter point, I hope that I answered the concern about the 2005 rule changes, but, even if we were looking to use the Planning Inspectorate, primary legislation would be required in many cases.
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was present for the evidence session in which we covered the question of cost. We estimate the running costs of the commission to be around £9 million. Last year the budget for the Planning Inspectorate was more than £56 million. Up to 35 commissioners will be required to run the commission. Inspectors for the Planning Inspectorate, both those who are salaried and those who are consultant, total over 400. We estimate that the commission will hear up to about 45 cases in any one year. Last year, the Planning Inspectorate not only received but decided more than 900 separate inquiries on appeal. That should give him a sense of scale and proportion for the commission. It may also cause him to question whether it is plausible that a body charged with such traffic and work could develop the kind of expertise and give the kind of consideration that we require for such very important few major infrastructure project applications.
Finally, if the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy reads Hansard tomorrow, I think he will find that he slightly overstated his case. He suggested that the commission was the biggest quango ever put in place. I was Minister with responsibility for adult skills at one point, responsible for the Learning and Skills Council. I have rather lost track now, but I believe that the budget of the Learning and Skills Council is about £9 billion in the current year.