Planning Bill

No doubt we will come back to some of the very interesting points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, when we discuss the national policy statements. His linking of the two seems fundamental to how the debate proceeds. However, referring to the earlier debate on whether the Infrastructure Planning Commission should be a decision-making or an advisory body, perhaps I may inject one or two additional thoughts to those that have already been aired. The first is a small sense of urgency about the whole debate. We are in for an enormous amount of infrastructure projects over the years to come. We will be closing down 17 existing power stations between now and 2016 and will have to take very unpopular decisions about where the successors to those power stations will be, 11 of them coal-fired and six of them nuclear power stations. Where will the replacements for them go? We know how difficult it is to get planning consent for a wind farm. I have the honour of serving on the Economic Affairs Committee, which is currently considering the future of renewable energy. I learnt from that that we are trying to increase the amount of energy produced from renewables from our current 1.5 per cent to 15 per cent by 2016. It will require an enormous number of infrastructure projects to achieve that kind of sustainability. Climate change may require that we do. Big decisions are ahead for us on transport. I was very interested in the proposals of the leader of the Conservative Party for a new national railway network—interesting to those of us who live in the north of England; it sounds like a very exciting proposition. That would require major infrastructure work and, I suggest, an awful lot of difficult appeals along the way between conflicting interests. A lot of projects are backing up. Our dependency on imported sources of energy from overseas will make energy security a significant national issue. By 2016, we will be importing 80 per cent of the gas that we use in this country—we are very dependent on gas for energy purposes. We must get on top of the energy and transport issues, where there are loads of major infrastructure projects. The current system is already more than creaking. The CBI report mentioned earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, tells us just how bad it looks from the perspective of business. I remind the Committee that in order to carry out all that infrastructure work we will need to draw in, mostly from overseas, immense amounts of capital—billions of pounds of private sector investment. We heard earlier when considering the credit crunch about the international flow of capital around the world. It is that capital that we will need to draw in for our infrastructure projects. Nothing puts off the good capitalist more than a system in which he has little understanding or idea of where the rules are and what will happen at the end of the day—the uncertainties, the inconsistencies and the delays. Why do Germany and Holland, with which I have some familiarity, do so well in terms of their infrastructure? The answer is that they have a much more streamlined system, which is much more attractive for investors. If those billions of pounds are to come our way for our infrastructure projects, we must get a system that is more fit for purpose. I am absolutely sure that the national policy statements, with all the parliamentary input to them—perhaps there may be more of that, as we will discuss later—are the way to sort out policy. When it comes to the difficult decisions to be taken on the ground, the Bill proposes that the Infrastructure Planning Commission, a group of about 35 commissioners, independent experts, people who will know who else to call before them as witnesses, will, after all the due processes—there are an awful lot of those, an awful lot of public involvement—take the decision. Would it be better if all they did was advise and this went back to Ministers and to the Secretary of State for the final judgment? I have been on the receiving end of awaiting the outcome of planning inquiries and been called in by Ministers when applications have gone to the Secretary of State for a decision. I have waited many months for the outcome, and have wondered what the Ministers—the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, suggests that they may not consider the matter at all—were doing with my planning application when it had already gone through an inquiry. When things have gone through the IPC, they will have gone through extensive inquiry and reached the point of decision, so what are the Ministers adding? The only thing I can think of was that they are thinking about the political consequences of their decision. What else do they add to the party? If Ministers have to ponder the political consequences at the end before the final decision is taken, that is not the best basis on which to arbitrate in disputes between two different groups of citizens, which is very often what these planning decisions are about. There will be the objectors and the protesters; indeed, there will be dozens of them. Someone needs to arbitrate, and if the only ingredient brought in by Ministers at the end is politics, I should point out that politics are subject to all kinds of hazards and dangers: ““Is an election coming?””, ““Can we delay this for a few more months, or possibly longer, until it is no longer our job to take this very unpopular decision about a nuclear power station or a railway track that is going through some area of scientific importance?””. Who will take this difficult decision? It is rather noble of the Government to propose to stand back and relinquish power, giving it to others who will, very nobly I hope, come forward as commissioners. I will feel safer if that process is in the hands of an independent group of individuals, the policy having been firmly established by Parliament beforehand. The point about a judicial review makes few odds, because at the moment the Secretary of State and other Ministers could face judicial review of their decision, so putting in the IPC has made nothing worse and that opportunity would remain in either case. I come down on the side of there being a new body that is decision-making, and I look forward to considering more of the aspects of the national policy statements that were so importantly raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin.