Planning Bill

My Lords, I am wondering what is left for me to add in opposition to these amendments. Perhaps I may take up two points that may not have had as much exposure as they could have. The first relates to the views of all those trying to carry out infrastructure who have written to many of us and made their views well known. They include the CBI, the British Chambers of Commerce, the transport industry, the UK Business Council for Sustainable Energy, the British Wind Energy Association and the Renewable Energy Association. The list goes on. These are the organisations that we are expecting to produce energy-saving measures, let alone to maintain supplies of gas and electricity and build the infrastructure to create the new transport links. These are the organisations that are asking us to get on with the job and not proceed with an amendment that they believe would—if the Secretary of State were to take his responsibilities seriously—create delay. It would slow things down, which would mean waits of more months. The Secretary of State could intervene but then be distracted by other matters. Not only would there be delay; there would be the uncertainty that came from not knowing on what basis the Secretary of State was coming in possibly to exercise a different judgment from that of the independent experts. One would expect noble Lords on these Benches to believe that independent expertise had merit in its own right. We on these Benches do not inherently believe that politicians will always exercise superior wisdom over and above the views of the experts in these circumstances. I have been subject to local pressures. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, has cited a parallel example involving local councillors who have to stand up to an awful lot of pressure at the local level. In trying to achieve affordable housing schemes, I have had the letters through the post box, anonymous phone calls made to my wife in the day, the local protests making themselves known in the very unpleasant ways that they do, let alone the formal representations from national lobby groups and the rest. I know how councillors feel. When a project is unpopular it requires great powers of leadership at the local level to stand up to these pressures and say yes. It is very difficult for politicians. If my affordable housing schemes can cause so much hostility and resentment, how much greater will it be if we are considering large-scale national infrastructure projects? A nuclear power station will multiply by 100 the pressure on politicians. I suspect that if we take the Secretary of State and frontline politicians out of the equation and allow the independent, impartial and expert group, the IPC, to take these decisions, we will be blessed not only by those who want to get out there and get on with doing the job, but by any political party that finds itself in power on another day and needs to face up to these difficult decisions.