Planning Bill

I hesitate to intervene as I do not have an amendment in this group, but I am prompted to inquire about one or two things. The noble Lord, Lord Woolmer, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, have raised some fundamental issues about the charging scheme. The ability of authorities to change the level of the charge is fundamental. If they have the right to charge it and the right not to charge it, they must also have the right to vary it, and presumably to vary it at will. That gives rise to other questions. One could have a situation in a region—we still have them—where the RDA was doing its best to encourage development and providing all sorts of incentives and a planning authority decided to levy CIL which would be seen as a disincentive or as a recycling of the RDA’s money—using it in a different way. The relationship there needs to be explored. The second issue, which we do not appear to have thought about at all, is if there is some sort of expectation that CIL will be charged anyway, can CIL be charged where there is no demonstrable demand for additional infrastructure? We are assuming that it will go through the planning process and, of course, the planning process will throw up demand. From long observation, I am bound to say that if you ask people what they would like, they will always think of something on which to spend money. Is there some sort of standard by which we will judge areas which have a sufficiency of social infrastructure—let us call it that as that is really what we are talking about—against areas where there is a crying need for social infrastructure? That is a separate issue but if there is a clear expectation from the Government that there should be a charge and it should be paid and collected, are we raising false expectations? I really do not know. I have one final, slightly facetious, but none the less important, point. If an authority can charge CIL, can it have a negative CIL? That is a perfectly legitimate proposition. There is nothing in the papers which would prevent an authority from declaring a negative CIL and providing an incentive for development in its area. This is the kind of sector we are dealing with here. In dealing with her amendments, I ask the noble Baroness whether she could clear that hurdle for us as well.