Planning Bill

The hon. Gentleman must have been the bane of the Whip's life in Committee, because I seem to remember that he attended every single sitting. We went through this matter in great detail in Committee, but, because we have only 55 minutes left for this debate under the programme motion, I recommend that he goes back and reads the record of those proceedings. He will then be able to see how we proposed to improve the delivery of infrastructure development; it is all set out in the record. The other thing that the hon. Gentleman has kindly achieved is the introduction of location-specific national policy statements for nuclear power stations and airports. The Secretary of State said that those were the two most controversial points, but I look forward to her introducing the national policy statement on hazardous waste very soon. However, we now have location-specific NPSs for nuclear power stations and airports, which, by definition, will effectively give outline planning permission to those developments. The hon. Gentleman will remember that we discussed that matter in detail in Committee. The problem with the Government's proposals, and the lack of democracy involved in the proposed system, is that they lay the system open to the possibility of judicial review. Many people sincerely believe that the new system will deliver infrastructure more speedily, but I am afraid that they are likely to get an awful wake-up call. Many of the well-funded organisations who can afford to take court cases to judicial review have advised us that they will do so. So I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his achievements, and I hope that he thinks that it was all worth while. However, we will push forward with amendment No. 5. I apologise for all the consequential amendments involved. Their presence just shows that we have very diligent people working on the Bill with us. I would also point out that if the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) wishes to stick to his principles, I will have no problem with that. I could not place a cigarette paper—do we still talk about cigarette papers?—between his amendment and ours, and we would be happy to support his. We have been talking about the principles behind the IPC, and the difficulties that we foresee for it. However, we have always supported speedier infrastructure planning. We also believe wholeheartedly in the single consent regime; we just wish that it would go a bit further. We had that discussion in Committee, however, and it is not worth re-opening it here, although I am sure that the Lords will do so. I hope that the Secretary of State understands the point behind amendment No. 292. If she does not, I apologise for not making myself clear enough. The amendment seeks to remove the right of the IPC to take into consideration everything that is ““relevant and interesting””. The original Town and Country Planning Act 1947 stated that ““material considerations”” had to be borne in mind when reaching decisions. I have been told by my legal friends that the definition of ““material consideration”” was not agreed until 1970, some 23 years later. Given that the term ““relevant and interesting”” is possibly even looser than ““material consideration””, it is not difficult to envisage yet more legal cases to define ““relevant and interesting””. I urge the Secretary of State to bear in mind that if the whole issue of ““material consideration”” is opened up, her wish, and our wish, for a speedier system of delivering infrastructure will almost certainly be challenged in the courts for years to come. I hope that the Secretary of State will table amendments when the Bill reaches the Lords. I make that point in the best interests of planning—I hope that she does not believe that we are playing a party political role—because ““relevant and interesting”” may be mired in the courts for many more years than she envisages.