Schedule 1
Planning
5:00 pm
Jacqui Lait (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Beckenham, Conservative)
I do not think that we will take too long over the amendments, but we want to ensure that the commission, which, sadly, we seem to have been landed with, does not turn into an enormous great quango costing us all vast sums of money, so it seemed to us that the best way to do so would be to limit the number of deputy chairmen and the number of commissioners.
We have our concerns about the number of cases that will be brought forward and the time that they will take, and taken together, the two will clog up the system very quickly. However, we want to ensure that the commission does not become over-large and over-mighty, absorbing too much of the costs associated with the planning system, so we have tabled amendments Nos. 214 and 215
Amendment No. 216 deals with a different point, because we want to ensure that the commissioners have regard not only to effectiveness and efficiency, to which the Minister has referred, but to fairness. It has probably become clear from the worries that we have already enunciated that we have serious concerns, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said, about the right to be heard of the little people. We must also ensure that when a point is made and new information comes forward that the promoter or contractor of a scheme has not considered—one can imagine that they would be horrified that such a thing had happened, but it is not unknown—they, too, have the right to be heard and to challenge the information, so that they, too, feel that they have had a fair hearing. We want to include in the Bill that the commission should act fairly, as well as effectively and efficiently. That explains and sets out the reasons for the amendment.