Orders of the Day — Town and Country Planning (Minerals)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 4 May 1971.

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Photo of Mr Graham Page Mr Graham Page , Crosby 12:00, 4 May 1971

With the leave of the House, Mr. Sneaker, I will deal with the points which have been raised. After having listened to the speeches of some of my hon. Friends anyone reading the Regulations would be astonished at their moderate tone. All we are dealing with is existing planning permission to carry out mineral workings. We are not destroying the mineral extraction trade. We are not attacking it root and branch, as some of my lion. Friends seem to think. We are dealing merely with planning permissions which may have been granted a considerable time ago and which are not being worked during the next eight years. We are asking that before working them after 1979 the mineral undertakers should first make further application to the local planning authority.

My hon. Friends the Members for The High Peak (Mr. Le Marchant) and Bedford (Mr. Skeet) quoted a booklet previously issued by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. These are the rules which the Ministry hopes the local planning authorities will apply in considering entirely new planning applications and new planning applications which arise out of the termination of an existing application. I would quote these rules again and again as the rules which should be applied when a planning application now existing has not been worked when we get to 1979 and the mineral undertaker has to apply for a further period of time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Mr. Evelyn King), said that every mineral undertaker in Dorset was opposed to these Regulations. That is not so. If his mineral undertakers are represented by the C.B.I., the opposition is merely on this point whether—