Planning Bill

moved Amendment No. 56: 56: Clause 6, page 3, line 32, at end insert— ““( ) The Secretary of State shall consider continuously whether each national policy statement should be reviewed.”” The noble Lord said: Clause 6(1) states: "““The Secretary of State must review each national policy statement whenever the Secretary of State thinks it appropriate to do so””." One of the things that I regret is that as I have grown older I have become somewhat more cynical, which has led me to think about that provision. What happens if, when a review of the national policy statement is clearly appropriate, the Secretary of State none the less thinks that it is inappropriate? There could be all sorts of reasons for such a decision: the country could be heading towards an election, for example. The only certainty about the future is that we do not know. A policy statement will be made on the basis of the most up-to-date knowledge available at the time that it is promulgated; it will be consulted on and be as good as it can be made to be. I would be the first to acknowledge that. But in many of the fields that we are discussing in relation to national policy statements, things will change. I would not begin to predict the changes in transport, power generation or anything else—that is not the purpose of the amendment. However, we know that there will be change. We also know that that change will probably arise in an inconvenient way and at an inconvenient time. Amendment No. 56, therefore, is devised to make the review of a national policy statement a matter for the Secretary of State to keep under continuous review. I am not sure that I like the wording of my amendment any better than the wording of Clause 6(1). However, we need to think seriously about this, as the wording in the Bill is not wholly unsatisfactory. If my amendment is not wholly satisfactory, I apologise; if somebody can come up with a better form of wording, I should be very happy to see it in the Bill. But I do not think that the subsection should be left as it stands. I beg to move.