Schedule 1
Planning
5:00 pm
Dan Rogerson (Shadow Minister (Arts, Culture and Heritage), Culture, Media & Sport; North Cornwall, Liberal Democrat)
The hon. Lady did not explain clearly what is behind the amendments. She will be aware of where my views lie from our recent discussion on whether or not we should have an IPC at all. However, I am concerned that, if the Bill proceeds through the House and we are to have an IPC, limiting the number of its members may hamper its effectiveness. We have heard that the number of schemes may approach some 40 a year. My concern is that if groups of commissioners are considering that many applications, limiting the number of commission members that severely might well cause a huge number of problems, even given the facility to have single commissioners, about which I have grave doubts, although we will come to that later. However, I am tempted by her argument that we want to avoid the commission’s growing in scope by drawing in further work through the provisions that we have already discussed—further Bills coming forward and adding to the work of the commission later on. I am sympathetic to what she has to say, although I have a caveat. I am concerned that, if we are to have a commission, we need to make sure that it can carry out the job set for it.
Amendment No. 216 is on adding fairness, and it would be a brave Member of Parliament who stood here and said that they did not want to see fairness in any legislation. However, I will have to wait and see what the Minister says in response. In summary, this is a useful debate, although I have concerns about amendments Nos. 214 and 215, were they to be accepted.