Planning Bill

It is a great pleasure to reply to the noble Lord, whose career I have followed with great interest over many years since we debated the health service a very long time ago, when he was Secretary of State for Health. That is an understandable question, though I am slightly surprised—although I have not taken part in previous debates—since I understand that there has been some concern about whether the remit of the IPC will be too large and it would deal with too many projects. There has been concern about whether the workload would be so great that in fact it might be swamped by applications, which would mean that it would not be able to focus on what must be considered nationally significant projects.