Clause 27
Planning Bill
4:00 pm
Bob Neill (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Bromley and Chislehurst, Conservative)
It is a pleasure to see you back in the Chair, Sir John. We thought that we would change the shift on our Front Bench for the afternoon as well.
The amendment looks at the means by which applications for development consent can be dealt with. We are moving on to part 4, which deals with the question of the requirement for development consent. This group of amendments addresses an issue that the Government have still not got right: the existence of parallel regimes. We discussed the matter earlier today, but we are still not convinced that the Government understand the potential difficulty.
The amendment would change the wording from saying that consent “is required” under the infrastructure planning commission procedure, to saying that it “may be applied for”. The reason for tabling it is to tease out from the Government further comment on how they see the two regimes sitting together. Amendments Nos. 257 to 259 are consequential amendments and I need not go into too much detail. Essentially, they follow on from those changes in subsequent parts of the Bill.
If there are going to be two regimes, the Government should either rule national infrastructure projects out completely or there should be a measure of flexibility for the applicant. Which is it to be? If we take the route that we have suggested and use the Bill to separate policy statements from site-specific elements, the logic suggests that everything should go through a single consent regime. The reasons for that have already been rehearsed and I will not repeat them. We are in favour of that, but we seem to be in the position that duplicate regimes will exist. Do I take it that anything that falls within the category of nationally significant infrastructure projects will automatically be dealt with under the single consent regime and also by the IPC? Clarity on that is important for people. Some of the evidence that we heard expressed concern about the two regimes. We would like the Government to spell it out. The amendment is not intended to wreck, but to find a more constructive way forward.
I hope that without trespassing too much, Sir John, I may mention amendment No. 9, which is in the next group, because it is part of the overall picture. I will try to keep in order by saying that we will find that a subsequent amendment also relates to our alternative approach. First, the scheme will work best if there is a clear separation between national policy and site-specific elements. Secondly, that could be achieved without the need for the large and cumbersome bureaucracy of the IPC. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham has already rehearsed the reasons for that. It could be done by adapting the Planning Inspectorate and the role of the High Court in dealing with issues of fact and the construction of statutory matters. Those are well-established routes and that separation of areas could be used to cut down repetition and the lengthy cross-examination of inquiries. We will return to that matter in more detail later.
The amendments are not complex, but I would like to hear exactly where the Ministers are going with regard to single consent or otherwise. If two regimes are to be in existence, the temptation will be for someone to argue the toss as to whether they are caught by the national infrastructure regime, or whether they should make an application under the existing rules.
I see the point that it will, generally, be in the applicant’s interest, if he has multiple applications, to go under the national infrastructure regime. But one can think of circumstances in which the project—we will return to the definition of that later— might simply be one discrete piece of development that would require only one application. In that regard, looking at some of the other elements of fees and other matters that we will come on to later, there may be circumstances in which there is a temptation for the applicant to say, “Actually, I would rather go under the old route”. That may seem unlikely, but it is possible. We would like what is in and what is out of the regime to be clear, and I hope that the Minister can help us on that.