Planning Bill

When we published the White Paper on the planning system and our proposals for reform last year, we recognised that certain planning matters are devolved. The devolution settlement was generally working well, and we did not set out to change it in the Bill. That is why, under new clause 9 and the amendments in the group, where there are matters for the Secretary of State relating to England and English roads, they can be passed to the IPC for determination. Decisions of that sort in Scotland or in Wales might be variously devolved and therefore will not be matters that we put to the IPC. That is the reason for the difference. I turn to the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for North Cornwall. As we said in Committee—the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), dealt with these parts of the Bill in Committee—most motorways and some A roads are indeed strategic roads that are essential to the economic functioning and prosperity of the country, allowing people and goods to move quickly and efficiently. In all cases, if a road is a trunk road, the Secretary of State will be the highway authority: the new clause and related amendments will have no impact on local decision making. Those roads will remain defined under the provisions as nationally significant infrastructure and therefore a matter for the IPC. In Committee, the hon. Gentleman also raised Committee cycle tracks and footpaths, to which the old definition applied. The Secretary of State can currently include provisions about cycle tracks and footpaths in a Highways Act order, where such paths are created or diverted in connection with a wider development to a main carriageway on a strategic road. But as my hon. Friend the Minister said in Committee, there are instances where cycle tracks and footpaths closely connected to developments on the strategic road network can be considered in isolation. There are examples, such as work going on alongside the A38 at present. We believe, however—this explains why we have set it out—that it is appropriate that where works are proposed to parts of the strategic road network, they should go to the IPC in the normal way as part of the package of proposals for the development. New clause 10 and amendments Nos. 78 and 85 replace the current railways threshold with a more detailed definition of the types of railway development that should go to the IPC for consideration and respond to the points made in Committee by the hon. Members for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) and for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait). Their concern was that the railways clause as drafted was too broad and that it would appear, for instance, to capture heritage railways and some tramway systems, which are classed as railways under the Transport and Works Act 1992, but it is not our intention that they should be determined by the IPC. As promised in Committee, having looked at these concerns, I am happy to confirm that new clause 10 will achieve the effect that the hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman were seeking. The intention is that under the new threshold the IPC will consider only applications relating to the rail network operated by Network Rail or a subsidiary of it, including the Heathrow spur rail link and the channel tunnel rail link—in other words, those routes commonly known as the national rail network. On the intensification of use of airports and the airports threshold, amendments Nos. 77, 80 to 84, 86 and 87 ensure that the airports threshold is wide enough to capture any airport development that creates additional capacity at that airport by at least 10 million passengers a year or 10,000 air transport movements per year in relation to freight. In particular, it covers situations other than the physical development of a new or extended runway or the development of terminal buildings or an air traffic control mast, which would mean that more passengers could use an airport. It seemed to us an anomaly that the new planning system should deal with a significant increase in capacity at airports only when that was the result of physical development, not by the lifting of a planning condition that may currently restrict the number of flights or movements. The thresholds for what constitutes a nationally significant infrastructure project should capture a change of that magnitude in the use of an airport, even if no physical development were needed to bring that change about. Our amendments will ensure that such changes are considered in the framework of the new national policy statement and that they are given the same independent expert scrutiny as other major airport developments.