Planning Bill

I suspect that, like other Members of the Committee, I am finding it difficult to fathom the game plan of the opposition Front Bench in general on the Bill and on these clauses in particular. Two weeks ago, the leader of the Conservative Party announced a commitment to a big expansion of the high-speed rail network in this country. Surely he must be thinking that, should he ever come to power, it would be extremely valuable to have this Bill on the statute book, as he will not get those plans through with a tinkered-with version of the status quo. Likewise, I do not understand the objection to these clauses. The amendments were introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, with his customary moderation and courtesy, but the truth is that, if passed, they would be very damaging to the Bill. First and foremost, the purpose of this part of the Bill is to reduce uncertainty and unnecessary delay in the planning system. One of the key causes of such delay arises from location—I use ““location”” rather than ““site”” because I do not think that ““site”” appears anywhere in this legislation, although it appears in the amendment. A developer can spend years and millions of pounds pursuing a particular proposal only to find at a very late stage that the location is deemed unsuitable. Even worse, a developer can find himself caught in what I call the Nirex fork. In developing its so-called Rock Characterisation Facility, Nirex initially canvassed a range of sites throughout the country, including one in the constituency of the Secretary of State for Energy at the time, which was probably a mistake. Quite naturally, there was uproar throughout the land. As only one of the sites would ever be chosen, much of the uproar was entirely unnecessary. Nirex then tried a different tack, which was to choose a suitable site and to make the case for it. It was rebuffed on the grounds that it had failed to establish whether the site was indeed the best location. We also need to avoid the mistake made by British Rail in developing the route for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. It put forward a whole series of options coursing across Kent, none of which was used in the end. The process caused major issues of blight and distress and claims for compensation. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd, pointed out that there was a specific request in the other place that in some cases aviation and nuclear power NPSs should be location specific. But there is a misconception that a location-specific NPS would fix the outcome of the examination. That is not the case, because it would identify sites as unsuitable or potentially suitable for development, but would not go so far as to be site or project specific. These proposals need to be taken away as part of a wider rethink of what the Opposition want to get out of the Bill.