Planning Bill

I was not in the Chamber when, no doubt, plaudits were given to various Members of the House with regard to various positions, but perhaps I may start the Committee stage of the Bill by saying how relieved and pleased I am that the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, remains in her position. It is such a pleasure working with her and she would have been so frustrated had the effort that she had put into the Bill gone to waste at the very last minute. I should also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith. It takes a great deal to stand still and silent for as long as he did while Members of the House left the Chamber. That performance is quite an art. Like him, I spent some years on a planning committee. It did not drive me to insanity or, if it did, I have not noticed. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I do not start quite from where he does. I was not proposing to say anything about the costs of the new planning commission, although clearly they are an issue. The substantial issue—there are a lot of amendments—is a short point and a political point: who is to take the big decisions about big infrastructure projects, who will the public believe takes them, and who do they believe should take them? The public will regard the Government as responsible and liable to have the buck stop at their door, with the accountability that goes with it. It is not simply counterintuitive, but literally incredible that these big decisions may not be decisions of government. The argument is twofold. Who should take the decisions and carry the can, and who will be thought to have taken the decisions? On the latter question, the Government argue that the new national policy statements will set the policy framework, but will not pre-empt the IPC’s decisions. We have said that we support the national policy statements and the sorting out of policy away from a tribunal, although we will be debating how much scope the NPSs will leave for the IPC to exercise discretion, but having set the policy context the Government must live with the consequences. The projects are the consequences. When I was preparing yesterday for this debate, I realised that giving the IPC the right of final decision might not even be doing it any favours, given the context that the Government will set for it. The IPC will certainly struggle to establish a reputation for independence. Given that the national policy statements will, by definition, require a project to be permitted, the IPC will have to clock up a string of refusals for the Government to perceive it as independent. Who should take the decision? On the part of these Benches, there is no question but that it should be the Secretary of State. The policies will be political; the projects will be political; the decisions will be political. If we assume that the IPC has a role, that could stop short of the final decision at two points. One is that the IPC could make recommendations to the Secretary of State—a point that is, in effect, covered by my string of later amendments. I apologise to the Committee that this is more of a Second Reading speech than one going into the detail of the amendments but I do not imagine that your Lordships would want me to go through every clause that essentially is amended in the same way. Alternatively, the IPC could make a decision that was subject to confirmation or, if the Government are more comfortable with the term, ““ratification”” by the Secretary of State, and that essentially is my Amendment No. 3. It has been argued that there is no real distinction between those two but I believe that there is. Surely, confirmation or ratification requires less process—proper process, obviously, but less process. From what I have heard, I am not convinced that either of the models would amount to duplicating the work of the IPC. As I understand it, the IPC would be left with the important, time-consuming and difficult job of testing the evidence. That should comprise a very large part of the tribunal’s work, whether adversarial or inquisitorial. If the matter is left for final decision by the Secretary of State, that will avoid time being taken by oral and aural proceedings, which always take longer than something confined to paper. Above all, the decisions will require judgment. They will require a balancing of policies and interests, and we do not believe that it would be right to give that responsibility to an unaccountable quango. Of course, there is the issue of whether there should be an IPC at all. Why not make use of the planning inspectorate and adapt the procedure—I do not see that there is any inherent reason why the inspectorate cannot use an inquisitorial approach—if it is considered that a different procedure will be better or more economic? It would be inappropriate not to question the establishment of the IPC with whatever powers it may have. However, I am pretty clear that the Government’s position is so entrenched that there is not an awful lot of future in that, which is why I am focusing more on the relationship between the IPC and the Secretary of State. The point of principle at issue in the establishment of the IPC is: whose is the final decision? We are not talking about technical matters; the decisions will be of enormous significance to enormous numbers of people. They will include decisions between conflicting—even clashing—interests, and they will require judgment and political choice. Therefore, we say that accountability must not be denied: the decisions must be taken by the Secretary of State.