Planning Bill

moved Amendment No. 6: 6: Schedule 1, page 141, line 8, leave out ““at least”” and insert ““no more than”” The noble Lord said: The first three amendments in the group concern details of the Infrastructure Planning Commission’s structure, as set out in Schedule 1. Amendment No. 6 limits the number of vice-chairmen to two only. I always thought that a vice-chairman was a number two and that you needed only one. For some reason it appears to be agreed that you might have two vice-chairmen. To go beyond that is pushing matters—shall we say?—beyond the limits of what is reasonable, particularly bearing in mind the overall number of commissioners. Amendment No. 8 limits the number of commissioners to 12. The noble Baroness has said that she expects there will be about 30 commissioners. Therefore, I probably will not press that amendment. Amendment No. 9 introduces the concept of fairness to the work of the commission. The Bill talks about efficiency and so on. In the end the commission’s reputation will depend also on its decisions being seen to be fair. That goes back to the heart of the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, at the end of the previous debate. If somebody feels that there is better site, or, worse still, if a decision is taken and permission is granted for a site and subsequently there is another application on what proves in the event to have been a better site than the one that has already been approved and you can make a case for only one of them, there will be a feeling of injustice. Amendment No. 22 returns us to page one of the Bill. It removes the composing of a code of conduct from the commissioners and gives it to the Secretary of State. The question of codes of conduct is always difficult. Certainly in other walks of life, and particularly in local government, codes of conduct tend to come from the government department concerned. If the commission is to write its own code of conduct, it becomes judge and jury in its own case. We would prefer to see the code of conduct coming from the Secretary of State. That is not to belittle the people who will be commissioners, in whom I have the greatest of faith. Amendment No. 23 is really to try to find out what such other matters might be. Clause 2 states that the code must include certain things, and then, at paragraph (b), "““such other provision as the Secretary of State may direct””." I see those words and wonder what the Secretary of State has in mind. They usually have something in mind and it would be interesting to know what that might be. Or is this simply again another saving clause in case somebody has an idea somewhere in the future? We really do not know. Amendment No. 24 removes the responsibility to review the code of conduct again from the commission to the Secretary of State. This repeats the reasoning behind the amendment setting up the code of conduct so that the code is derived from the Secretary of State. That would make matters consistent. Amendment No. 25 makes the point that the requirement to publish the register of interests should be a part of the code of conduct. These are probing amendments. I beg to move.