Clause 13
Planning Bill
10:30 am
Jacqui Lait (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Beckenham, Conservative)
I must apologise because we have come to the techie bit of the Bill. If I do not understand it, I am sure that the Minister will take great delight in ensuring that I do by the end of my remarks. I apologise if I sound less than expert.
The Minister, quite rightly, set the range of the Government amendments in context. I would be grateful if he answered a number of points, either as we go through or in general because many of them bring up the same issues. A key element that I am most interested in is the functioning of the IPC. As we go through each point, perhaps the Minister could give an estimate of how many proposals he expects the IPC to have to deal with. I know that the answer to that could be, “As long as a piece of string, depending on changes in technology.” I accept that, but on the basis of current technology and what is known at the moment, it would be useful to have some indication of the number of proposals that he expects the IPC to consider. He said that the changes under this group of amendments would bring forward a range of proposals. Approximately how many will that be?
I am also concerned about the development of better regulation, a cause that the Government maintain that they are committed to. I apologise for returning to an issue that I have raised before, but it is to this group of amendments that it is most apposite. There have been many complaints that in any planning application for an infrastructure project, the applicant has to ask for a range of different consents. That has happened because as technology has developed over the years, separate legislation has been created to encourage the industry, such as the Electricity Act 1989 and the Gas Act 1995. God help me, I can even remember the historical Pipelines Act 1962 being passed. The Department of Trade and Industry and successive Departments have, in essence, been responsible for the planning.
Under the amendments, the Government are moving quite rightly towards legislating for all those national-infrastructure-sized projects to come under a single regime, and we support that. I am interested, however, in why the Government have not taken the opportunity at the same time to repeal the legislation as it affects national infrastructure projects because we will potentially have parallel consent regimes. Questions could be raised about the capacity of a scheme and whether it is a national infrastructure project or not. I can see potential challenges in that area. Still having the legislation in place will allow people to challenge which consent regime a development should be operating under. For the benefit of better regulation, why have the Government not taken this opportunity to move the remaining powers that the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has under the various Town and Country Planning Acts, as these industries are now mature?
Parallel regimes for national infrastructure and smaller projects could lead to challenges, delays, confusion and expense, which the Government do not want. If they are committed to better regulation, as they maintain, I suggest that they amend the Bill to abolish the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform’s control over planning under the current regime, and move it to the appropriate Department.