Clause 27
Planning Bill
4:00 pm
Jim Fitzpatrick (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Poplar and Canning Town, Labour)
It is a pleasure to see you back in the Chair this afternoon, Sir John. Allow me to add my welcome to your return. I have not had the opportunity to welcome you to presiding at all so far in Committee, and it is nice to see you back.
I also welcome the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst to his place. A West Ham double act means that perhaps we can get back on to some football anecdotes, and get away from some of the Scottish questions, although I am not sure that that will be wholly achievable.
I would ask the Committee, with the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, to reject the amendments. They remove an obligation on promoters of nationally significant infrastructure projects to seek developing consent under the new single consent regime. Instead, promoters would be given the opportunity to seek consent for their project, either under the single consent regime or under any of the existing regimes. That would have the effect of substantially reducing the benefits of the new single consent regime, as well as potentially confusing both promoters and the wider public as to the steps that must be gone through in order to proceed with an application.
Were the amendments accepted, the result would be that promoters of nationally significant infrastructure projects could continue to apply under the current multiplicity of consent regimes, thereby providing none of the benefits of the single consent regime to promoters and the public. Such applications would not go through the procedure set out in the Bill, which is a substantial improvement on the current planning system, particularly, as we have discussed on a number of occasions, at the pre-application and examination stages. The legal test for deciding such applications would be that set out in the consent regime chosen. As a result, the primary consideration for such applications would not necessarily be Government policy in relation to the particular infrastructure, as set out in the form of a policy statement that had been subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
The approach adopted in the Bill is better. Infrastructure projects of national significance should be determined through a national planning body, and through a single application for order-granting development consent, rather than through a handful of applications to different bodies for different partial consents. Decisions on nationally significant infrastructure projects should be made in accordance with appropriate national policy statements that have been subject to thorough consultation, unless there are very good reasons not to do so. Similarly, we believe that applications for NSIPs would benefit from the pre-application requirements that we have set out in the single consent regime. The benefits of those will be lost if promoters can choose to avoid them by going down an alternative route.
To conclude, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst asked whether the Government should rule out NSIPs from existing regimes; that is exactly what the Bill does. Clause 29 prevents any existing regime requirements from being required for NSIPs. No order on a nationally significant infrastructure project can be made under existing regimes either, with the exception of Welsh offshore wind farms, which we discussed this morning. If a project is an NSIP, it must go through the single consent regime. On that basis, I recommend that the Committee reject the amendment, if the hon. Gentleman insists on pressing it to a vote.