Planning Bill

With the greatest of respect to my noble friend on the Front Bench, to limit the commission to 12 members would be extremely difficult. The White Paper made it clear that it could be between 20 and 30; 30 seems rather a lot, but I would not quarrel if the Government decided that there must be 20 to 25 commissioners. On major infrastructure projects, to remit a major inquiry to one commissioner seems not very wise. Having a panel is probably the best way of splitting the work. What sort of things might be remitted to a single commissioner? I recognise that a single commissioner will not be able to make decisions, but must refer the case to a council. I am never sure of the difference between a council and a panel; I think that a panel may be appointed for a particular inquiry and a council may be appointed generally—the Minister is nodding. How will one commissioner act? I find that a difficult concept, bearing in mind all that the Minister said at Second Reading about the IPC’s need to gain the widest measure of public confidence. Secondly, my noble friend quite properly made a point about the code of conduct. If the Bill provides that the commission is to draw up its own code of conduct, I am sure that it would consult with the department before doing so. If a dispute arose between the department and the commission in doing so, it would be unfortunate if the commission could say to the department, ““The Act makes us responsible for this, so we are not going to listen to you””. No doubt that would be unlikely, given the distinction of those to be appointed, but I would have thought that Parliament would want to ensure that the department would have a role in this. Whether the department draws up the code of conduct, or the commission does so in consultation with it, we might want to return to this matter and I hope that the Minister can say something about it. Thirdly, I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that department has already embarked on the process of selecting a chairman and chief executive, which I applaud. The Bill has had its Second Reading in another place, and the normal procedures can therefore be overridden in special cases. In his Written Statement on 17 September, the right honourable John Healey—I congratulate him on his elevation to the Privy Council—said that, "““the Government will shortly commence the early recruitment and appointment of a chair and chief executive””.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/09/08; col. 139WS.]" He goes on to describe what the IPC will do, how provision will be made for the financing of this process—which would no doubt involve employing head-hunters—and how authority will eventually be sought in a supplementary estimate. I applaud that. I have now talked to a number of the bodies which will want to submit major applications to the commission. They recognise that there will be time before the commission is up and running, but they need to know at the earliest possible opportunity what the guidance issued by the commission, provided for in the Bill, will be. It is extremely difficult for a company, or consortium, to determine how it will frame its application before it has that guidance. I have therefore heard words of delight that recruitment is already starting. This is evidence of the urgency it all needs. In the last debate, the Minister stressed the huge urgency for us to get ahead with some of our infrastructure investment, notably in energy. I certainly agree with that, and hope that nothing will hold it up. The major things must obviously wait until Parliament has approved the Bill. In the mean time, a large number of people outside would welcome things being done to get ahead with this.