Planning Bill

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to everyone who has spoken in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Williamson of Horton, started by saying that this is the fundamental clause, and indeed it expresses the fundamental purpose of the Bill. Therefore, I am grateful that we have had such a serious, thoughtful and expert debate on this group of amendments. I do not want to repeat the arguments that I set out at length in Committee; they have been well rehearsed this morning. However, I believe that the weight of the argument has been with the Government. Despite my best efforts—and I shall continue to try to persuade the opposition Front Bench—the amendments still seem to suggest that an independent body making final planning decisions is a step too far because Ministers should be seen to be, and indeed be, politically accountable, and that the Secretary of State can and should continue to have a residual role at the end of the planning process. I find it slightly odd that noble Lords opposite accept the scale of the challenges that we face, together with the logic of the NPS and what it is designed to achieve, but that they are still reluctant to follow that logic when it comes to the role of an independent Infrastructure Planning Commission, which will bring greater certainty, transparency, expertise and efficiency to the final planning processes. The question before us—it was posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in Committee, and I shall return to it because it is the right question—is: where does accountability more properly and effectively lie in the new system set up in the Bill? What are we trying to achieve through the changes in the Bill, and how can that best be secured in the new processes that we have put forward and amended since Committee? The case that I want to reinforce this morning—it has already been made by many of my noble friends and by noble Lords across the House—is not simply that the Bill provides for a stronger and more certain response to the formidable challenges that we face in terms of energy and climate security, but that the process that we have put in place brings greater accountability and divisibility within the political process and in terms of ministerial responsibility. It also provides a process which will allow for the community to exert greater influence—I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on this—at different key stages, and, as my noble friend Lord Howarth said, for decisions to be taken by those who have heard and weighed up the evidence and are able to balance national need and local impact, and are as free to reject an application for development consent as they are to accept it. A great deal unites us across the House, despite our different conclusions on the place and role of Ministers. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, agrees that we need to change the system, and few would dispute that or dispute the definition of failure—which is where he started his argument today—or the scale of failure. It has been documented by the Eddington and Barker reports, and by the weight of evidence that has been brought to your Lordships’ attention and attested to this morning. In simple terms, that evidence means that, when it comes to major infrastructure projects, our planning system is so slow, so uncertain and so unclear that most applications are begun ““at risk”” by promoters. The deterrent effect is the default mechanism. We have heard evidence of the costs of failure. The ports industry has put a price tag of £45 million on the Dibden Bay application process. The wider costs are borne by the community, which lives with uncertainty and blight for many years. Ultimately, if we fail to build the power stations, reservoirs and roads—the things that we need for our survival—we will all pay a far higher cost. The problems are becoming more urgent. There is no exaggeration in the statement that the great challenge to our generation is to provide energy and climate security together in a way that promotes and guarantees economic and social sustainability. Those are common challenges for every country, which is one reason why this is such a competitive situation when we are looking for investment. However, we have specific problems in this country. We are the first industrial nation; we have a growing and ageing population, which we need to house; we need to provide transport; and we need to meet energy needs. Much of our infrastructure requires urgent replacement now, and it needs to be done sustainably. At the same time, we need to grow a competitive, knowledge-led and energy-dependent economy. That would be a big enough challenge but doing so in the face of a need to move towards an 80 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050 to avert catastrophic climate change means a tenfold increase in renewable generation over the next 12 years. To secure a new supply, the best modelling that we have suggests that between 10 and 20 new power stations and around a dozen major gas storage facilities will be needed by 2020. The point about competitiveness comes in when you look at the scale of all this. Let us take Shellhaven Port as an example. It is phenomenally expensive, involving a £1.5 billion investment, and it will bring with it the largest logistics centre in Europe. It will generate 12,000 jobs and bring huge regeneration benefits for the Thames Gateway. That is the sort of investment that we need. To achieve that, we need a predictable, clear planning system, which we do not have but other countries do. It is to other countries that the investment and skills will go unless we get this right in the Bill now. They will attract the skills to modernise their infrastructure because their planning systems are more certain—whether you are talking about Australia, Germany or North America—more welcoming and more liable to manage risk. Why should anyone commit to building our new power stations or ports when what we offer is a process where nothing—timetables, processes, outcomes or decisions—is certain, where national policy is debated and disputed on the floor of the planning inquiry at the final stage, where local interests and impacts are often overlooked, and when countless separate consents are needed. Therefore, we are putting forward a planning regime for major energy, transport, waste and water infrastructure that addresses those things. Thresholds are set out in the Bill for each sector to capture only those projects which can genuinely be described as nationally significant—about 45 each year. That is why I do not take the parallel with the local planning decision that noble Lords have been making. The Bill replaces the eight current consent regimes for major infrastructure with a single consent regime. There are three stages in this regime and they are all interdependent. The first stage in an entirely new process is indeed the national policy statements, which will set out the Government’s overall objectives for infrastructure development, including in relation to need. In some cases, as we have debated, these may specify locations as being potentially suitable for development; in others, they will need to specify criteria against which the suitability of locations can be assessed. In all cases, national policy statements will be subject to mandatory consultation, appraisal of sustainability and an entirely new form of parliamentary scrutiny. The noble Lord, Lord Burnett, referred to the failure of the process in relation to Heathrow—not least because we had no national policy statement.