Planning Bill

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I did not think that I had become wholly invisible. That is a more relaxed note for me to start on than if I had started by attacking the Minister for his rather unpleasant summing up. Although we had our differences, we behaved very reasonably in Committee and exchanged a lot of views, although we may not have agreed. We had a very pleasant atmosphere, and it is a great shame that there is this rather bitter and twisted approach on Third Reading. It is lovely to see the Minister back, by the way. He has worked so hard, and then he was pushed aside for the two really difficult groups of amendments that we debated this afternoon. I think he needs to keep his women under control. We need to agree where we agree, and make it absolutely clear where we disagree and why. Nobody disagrees that we need to speed up infrastructure planning. In fact, one of the most shocking things that happened in the past 10 years was that when Tony Blair became Prime Minister, he instantly ducked decisions on nuclear power, and did so for 10 years. Now, suddenly, the Government are wedded to nuclear power. For 10 years they have deliberately not made decisions, and we are now facing the hangover from that. The deputy director of the CBI asked earlier this week what we would do when the lights went out in 2015. Even with the changes in the Bill, there is no way that we will get new nuclear power stations up and running by then. Let us work together to try to ensure that we speed up infrastructure planning applications.