Planning Bill

I had assumed, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we would follow the order in which Members' amendments were so charmingly read out by your predecessor in the Chair, but I rise with great interest after an hour and a minute. I shall try to be brief, because I know that many Members wish to be heard and that we are very short of time because of the programme motion. I shall address the amendments in roughly the same order as the Secretary of State and will consider the Government amendments first. She will be delighted to know that I do not have much objection to the amendments on national defence and security. I was pleased to learn that the suggestions of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) on the commencement of development have been taken up, and I commend the Government for listening to us on at least one matter. If my memory serves me right, he also brought up the issue of changes in the details of an application during the Committee stage, so we can achieve something. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) on the acceptance of new clause 39, and I hope that he thinks that it is worth it in the long run. On special parliamentary procedures, the right hon. Lady is absolutely correct that we are most concerned about the lack of democracy in the infrastructure planning commission. I will speak to amendment No. 5 and various consequential amendments, which would bolster the special parliamentary procedure. I will also speak briefly to amendments Nos. 55 and 292. There has been quite a lot of discussion about the role of national policy statements. I do not wish to be ruled out of order, given that, as the right hon. Lady rightly reminded us, there has been a vote on that in the House. However, I hope that she notes that we stick to the view that national policy statements should be subject to a substantive vote in Parliament to ensure that the British people know that Parliament has spoken and the view given is not just that of the Government. Of course, that process would allow Ministers to retain the right of decision making. I assume that everyone in the House has been taking an interest in planning, so they will know that delays in the planning system are not entirely down to Ministers being unable to make up their minds. One of the reasons why there has not been much progress on infrastructure over the past 10 years could be laid at that door. We are replacing a tortuous and cumbersome system. However, I hope that I have made it clear on Second Reading, in Committee and on Report how we could deliver decisions on infrastructure more quickly and effectively without quite such a dramatic change—without completely pulling up the plants and chucking them away. If a national policy statement is passed by the House, Ministers will be quite capable of making decisions on infrastructure developments, even though those decisions can be difficult and Ministers might not wish to stand up to defend them. We do not need an unelected and unaccountable quango to do that for us. The right hon. Lady did not repeat the argument that the Secretary of State's role is quasi-judicial, which the Minister for Local Government cited regularly in Committee. We accept that, but the British public's perception regards the Secretary of State as the backstop of democratic accountability. One of the reasons why Ministers are in post is so that they can take tough decisions, and if the British public do not like those decisions, they can readily make a decision about them at the next election. I was glad that the right hon. Lady put it on record that Parliament will not have a substantive vote on the national policy statement because there is a misapprehension outside the Chamber that it will have such a vote. We are sad that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe, who fought a good fight in Committee for retaining democracy in the planning system, has done a deal. When the concessions that he has received are analysed, they do not amount to—