Planning Bill

I am grateful to the Opposition for tabling a comet’s tail of amendments which has picked up many subsequent issues. The debate has therefore been able to range over the wide but central issues of what the Government are attempting to do with the Bill. I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part, particularly to those who think that the Government are doing something which is absolutely right, radical and sufficient for the great needs of our country. It has been an excellent and thoughtful debate. It is tempting to try to answer everything but I am afraid that that would lead me into a kind of Second Reading debate. However, I have to take up issues which range slightly wider than the amendments because they touch on many aspects of the Bill. We had some excellent speeches. I mention, in particular, the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, who spoke with authority after overseeing government processes for so long. I was extremely grateful for his perspective on that. Let me deal with the debate in the context of the opposition to Clause 1 stand part, pick up on the amendments and answer the questions that noble Lords have raised. I found it interesting that at the heart of the debate are the questions—which were pertinently put by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—““What is it? Who should take the decision? Who do people think takes the decision at the moment?””. The debate around the Committee has revealed many different responses to those questions. That is reflected in an obscurity for the general public about who takes the decision, on what grounds they take it, how they can be challenged and what we mean by ministerial accountability. It helps enormously to have the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, available. He, like me, has been in a position where we have to take complex decisions. He is therefore very familiar with the processes involved. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, and my noble and learned friend Lord Boyd for demonstrating the scale and the urgency of the situation we face. We had a Statement today on the instability in the world economic system, the implications of which have never been more acute. If one considers the energy markets, one sees that wholesale gas prices have risen by more than 70 per cent in a little over six months and there have been similar increases in the price of electricity. There is an enormous need for greater certainty, clarity and security in both environmental and economic sustainability. Frankly, the Bill has never been more salient. It is being brought forward now at absolutely the right time. One of the first things the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said was about the burden on the taxpayer of creating the IPC. I will come back to the costs in a moment, but the burden on the taxpayer if the lights go out will be something we simply will not be able to cost. I hope that, as we go through this scrupulous process in this House, I will be able to persuade noble Lords opposite to support our independent Infrastructure Planning Commission. I want to address their concerns in the context of the amendment. I understand that these are real concerns about what they see as a loss of accountability. That must be balanced, but what I see, and what many noble Lords have spoken about today, is a gain in both accountability and transparency in the full context of what we are proposing. It is a wholly new strategy, one that brings sustainability and energy security together. The noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Jenkin, are quite right: we will be talking about national policy statements as the first part of the new process. That cannot be divorced from the IPC; they are fundamental to each other. As the Bill has progressed this far, it has become clear that the present system has very few friends, but the price we pay for not stepping up and understanding that we need to be radical now is not really grasped. We have had statistics across the House today about what we have to do—we have to replace one-third of our electricity generating capacity, for example—but the scale of investment needed is huge. Barker and the Eddington report went into this in great detail and illustrated the sheer competitiveness of the global markets as they are at the moment. The CBI has pointed out that we need 40 to 45 new large offshore wind farms in the next eight to 10 years, and seven nuclear power stations. We need to invest in our gas storage facilities. Last year 27 per cent of our gas was imported; it is now 40 per cent. These issues are urgent, and they face us at a difficult time for investors around the world. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, there is a huge demand for national infrastructure. Whether you look at Australia, Canada or China, people want these large projects now because of the energy security situation we all face. Why should any investor come to Britain in an environment where we can guarantee only indefinite delays, circular processes, general obscurity about where the debate will be held and an inability to take the decision without going back to the Minister, who is sometimes the slowest part of the process? I say that not because I am dilatory or, I am certain, because the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, was. In all integrity, one has to revisit the evidence and look again at the issues. We are trying to create a safe environment for the investment that we need, both to address the challenge of climate change in terms of moving to a low-carbon economy and to create the infrastructure that we need to keep the lights on. My noble friend referred to the Yorkshire upgrade. It took six and a half years, I should say, not just six. The figures show that delays to what we are trying to do with wind farms are equally serious. On average it takes 20 months to secure development consents for a large onshore wind farm. By November 2007 there were 23 onshore wind projects in England and Wales, with a combined capacity of over 500 megawatts, that had already been under consideration for more than two years. We cannot afford these delays. Delay brings uncertainty, not simply for the promoter but for the blighted community that is living with the cost of not knowing what is going to happen. More than anything else, given the pressures on resources and the timeframes we are working in, we need greater certainty and clarity throughout the planning system so that it provides a fair, transparent, credible and robust independent framework. I do not want to rehearse the reasons for delay—I did that at Second Reading—but, critically, there are the following four things. First, we have delays, difficulties and uncertainties because we have a body of national planning policy that is too voluminous, complex and unwieldy for those who use it, compounded by as many as eight separate consent regimes. That is precisely why the Bill simplifies the consent process. Secondly, the confusion between policy and planning means that each public inquiry becomes highly congested and contested by debate on the policy of the national infrastructure, often at the expense of detailed consideration of local impacts and implications. If you were to look at the process for the Heathrow application, for example, you would find that in relation to the days that were spent debating national policy, the local impacts were barely debated. That is often typical of the balance of effort that goes into a public inquiry. That is why the Bill separates the policy, which will be set out in the national policy statements, from the planning process framed by the IPC, and why we have now provided not one but three stages for people to have their say. Thirdly, there is a lack of incentives and opportunities for developers to bring forward good, thoughtful applications early so that the implications can be explained and be challenged by local communities. That is why we have created a new, transparent, fairer application process. Fourthly, we have two stages of decision where an inspector’s report is followed by a ministerial decision, and more than one Minister is often involved. As I have said, major delays can occur at that stage. It is interesting, for instance, that the inquiry regarding Bathside Bay took 26 weeks while the ministerial decision took 52 weeks. All the changes in the Bill will mean that the process will be more transparent, fairer and faster. The process will be made better and, I could say, more trustworthy—although that does not reflect at all on the extraordinary expertise and integrity of the present planning inspectors, who are extraordinary people and do an excellent job. We need to have a more transparent system, and we need to have a clear relationship between policy-making and planning. That goes to the heart of the debate, because so much of the Opposition’s argument is about retaining that in some form as it offers a form of ministerial accountability, which is seen to be indispensable. I believe, and a lot of noble Lords around the House who have spoken agree, that this concern is misplaced. It is a misreading of ministerial accountability; Ministers are not accountable for their decisions to Parliament as they are in other areas of decision-making. However, my case for an independent IPC rests not simply on that point. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, spoke about it being a fiction. I am not sure I entirely agree with him—““fiction”” is a strong word—but I believe the Minister is conflicted by the present system in such a way that it obscures and hampers a proper national debate. The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, referred to this when he talked about the judge and jury. With regard to what the public think the Minister is doing if they think the Minister is involved, confusion arises in particular when Ministers take decisions on schemes where the Government have a specific policy interest. Ministers must be independent—they cannot be prey to political lobbying—and, because the role is quasi-judicial, when deciding planning applications they have to base decisions on the evidence presented and published policy. They have to avoid any real or perceived conflict of interest. If they are likely to be involved in taking decisions, they are sometimes heavily circumscribed in their ability to promote the national interest—to promote or encourage projects even if they consider them to be vital in the national interest. They cannot discuss projects with representatives of communities. They cannot engage with stakeholders or get involved with resolving problems or brokering compromises. When noble Lords consider that we are talking here about nationally significant projects that help to meet national objectives, they will understand how Ministers feel about being constrained and not being able to promote them. We therefore have a situation at the moment that is the worst of all worlds. Ministers occupy a role that is inhibited by the fact that they are at the same the policy-setters, the promoters and the decision-makers.