Planning Bill

My Lords, following discussions last week and in Committee, I formed the impression that the Government had not really understood the extent to which these national policy statements are a departure from where we are now. The statements will rule the decisions of the IPC and give those decisions the authority needed to expedite these essential, but nevertheless locally unpopular, infrastructure projects. During our debate on Clause 12 in Committee, the Minister said that there was no intention to avoid the high standards of consultation and sustainability implicit in the Bill and that Clause 12 would ensure that a Minister would have to take into account consultation carried out before the commencement of the Bill. She even said how thorough the consultation on the air transport White Paper had been. To me, however, that misses the whole point of the national policy statements. As I said, I do not think that the Government quite realise what a departure NPSs are from what we have now. They will authorise, empower and arm the IPC with the authority to carry out the will of Parliament without challenge. The Government appear to miss the point that, unless the previous consultation on these previous White Papers or planning guidelines expressly stipulated that they were going to dictate the decisions of the IPC, that consultation is invalid as far as the new process is concerned. To be honest, I am not so concerned about the people or the NGOs that might have taken part in the process of consultation. It is more a question of the ordinary people, or their representatives, who would not normally have involved themselves in national policy guidelines, which are usually drafted within departments, behind closed doors. This is not something that normally features on people’s radar but suddenly they will find the rules being changed at half-time. These national policy statements will dictate the decisions of the IPC which could dramatically affect ordinary people throughout the country. No one expects the Government to start with a blank sheet of paper, as the Minister said. I do not mind if they cut and paste whole chunks of previous statements, guidelines or White Papers, or maybe even all of them, as a starting point. That would probably make sense. They should also look again at all the previous consultation to see what really appeared to matter to people. That, again, would make sense. However, the national policy statements are different: they will focus people’s minds as they have never been focused before. To my way of thinking, it would be underhand to assume that any previous consultation in what were completely different circumstances amounted to more than a row of beans when it came to controlling the decisions of and giving authority to the IPC. As many of us have said before, national policy statements are what make the Bill work. They are new, they are different and, in my view, therefore, this clause is redundant. Even if the Government do not agree, I hope that they will accept that whatever past policy is used in this way, it will at least ensure that a new consultation process is implemented.