Planning Bill

My Lords, I do not want to repeat all that I said at the Committee stage, but I will repeat what for us is at the heart of the issue, and that is not only who takes the decisions, but who the public believe does so and who they believe should do so. We have made it clear that we strongly support the model which puts the construction of policy ahead of individual decisions, and that will be a matter for scrutiny and possibly a vote when we come to it later today. But on the second and third questions, the answer is unequivocally that it is for the Government to do so. The public think that the Government take these major decisions, and that they should lie with the Government. My amendments are more modest than those of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, but if he chooses to divide the House, we will support him. I propose a system of ratification by the Secretary of State of a decision taken by the Infrastructure Planning Commission. I am prepared to acknowledge that the work that goes into considering representations, the local impact statement, the testing of evidence and so on is a matter for the IPC. In Committee the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, said that individual decisions are, "““more properly and better done by the body charged with assessing the evidence””.—[Official Report, 6/10/08; col. 18.]" It did not occur to me at the time whether that might demonstrate a lack of faith in the robustness of decisions taken by Secretary of States hitherto—many decisions over a long period—or indeed in decisions that in the future will be taken by the Secretary of State when they do not go through the IPC. We are not proposing the abolition of the call-in procedure whereby something that would remain a local decision is called in by the Secretary of State. It goes through an inquiry process, but the final decision is taken by the Secretary of State. The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, said that what we proposed—the Secretary of State at the last stage—was, "““increasingly suspect and anachronistic, as a Minister is subject to political pressure””.—[Official Report, 6/10/08; col. 20." But we believe that these big decisions are political in nature. It was also said that it would be wrong for the Secretary of State to be both judge and jury in the case of a government-sponsored project. As the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, pointed out, those of us who have experience of local decision-making are used to being confronted with a council-sponsored project that has to go through the planning process and where proper planning criteria are applied as well as all the propriety matters. My amendment would not, I believe, amount to reopening these matters. There is a distinction between bringing out the issues going through the whole detail of the process and drawing a conclusion. I believe that it would be both right and possible for the Secretary of State to consider the issues brought out but perhaps come to a different conclusion. We have heard a great deal about the need to avoid delay—I do not depart from that—but I do not think that requiring the Secretary of State to look at the evidence, consider it with her or his advisers and so on, would amount to the catastrophic delay that is being presented to us. If there is a problem with the Secretary of State being required to take the final decision, how did it come about that the new Secretary of State for Transport was able to publish a decision on the expansion of Stansted Airport six days after his appointment? Perhaps he spent the whole of the six days working on this—I do not know—but it seems unlikely. I asked a Question about this, framed in less direct language, on 13 October, and I referred to comments made by the Minister. Despite that, the Government did not realise until quite recently that there might be some connection with the Planning Bill and the Question went to the Department for Transport rather than it being connected with CLG. In any event, the Question has not yet been answered. I will be interested if the Minister is able to give an answer today. Amendments Nos. 4 and 106 would provide for the Secretary of State to require the commission to take back and reconsider the whole or any part of its decision. To us, that is less desirable than the more radical approach but the Secretary of State may well think that the IPC should reconsider, for instance, conditions attached to a decision. But, overall, big projects are political matters and we feel that the Secretary of State should be seen to have responsibility for them.