Planning Bill

I have one of the amendments grouped with this, Amendment No. 21. Noble Lords will be aware that there are four paragraphs at the end of the schedule that refer to other legislation and apply them to the IPC. Paragraph 24 refers to the Parliamentary Commissioner, paragraph 25 to the disqualification of Members of the House of Commons, and so on, while paragraph 26 refers to public records. I propose to add a new paragraph which refers to the Disability Discrimination Act. The amendment intends that the Disability Discrimination Act should be amended to include the commission as a public authority for the purposes of subsection (1). As the amendment points out, Section 49D of the Disability Discrimination Act refers to the power to impose specific duties. We intend not only that the IPC should be subject to the normal laws against discrimination but that there should be specific duties on the IPC to promote disability equality and establish when it will happen. The background to this, although I will not go into it at great length at this hour of the night, is that there is widespread evidence that disabled people—I refer particularly to blind people, as this was suggested to me by the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association; I served for some years on its council—feel uniquely disadvantaged under the planning system. On the whole, the system does not listen to their representations. I have a number of quotes here, with which I shall not weary the Committee; but they are enough to convince me that there needs to be a continuing change of culture on this. Great strides have been made in recent years to promote access for the disabled, which is very important when one is dealing with buildings, as well as a greater sense of equality for the disabled, to persuade them that they are listened to as much as anybody else. Yet there is still quite a strong feeling in the disabled community that, in the case of planning inquiries and investigations, they are not listened to. It will be important for the commission to lead on a positive promotion of listening to the disabled. We come later to amendments on consultation and on how it should be done in such a way that disabled people have as much access to it as anybody else. We will come to those amendments later. At this point, the amendment that we seek to put into the Disability Discrimination Act simply says: "““A public authority for the purposes of subsection (1) includes the Infrastructure Planning Commission””." I hope that the Minister will be able to give us a reassuring reply on that.