Planning Bill

My Lords, the course now proposed by Her Majesty’s Government in this amendment is, to use Latin for once, a via media, which should be welcomed in this context. The problem with the new structure proposed in Clauses 1 to 8 is that one has to avoid one or two extreme and unwholesome situations. One extreme would be a total republication of all the relevant policy statements, from the year dot. That, of course, would be utterly impossible. On the other hand, if one were to say that none of them had any effect at all, the situation might be even more drastic. One must find some sort of compromise, with criteria being applied as to whether a particular policy statement is current and relevant for present-day needs and, of course, whether it conforms to the criteria set out in the Bill. The amendment proposed by Her Majesty’s Government does the job as well as one could reasonably expect. However, I have one question. It is many years since I did any planning as a barrister, but there may well be great dubiety as to exactly what the situation is. Will there be a general publication with regard to all the previous policies—I suspect not—or will it come by dribs and drabs? The difficult situation of a petitioner then will be that he or she will not know exactly what the validity is of a matter that has been dealt with in the past. In other words, how soon can that dubiety be removed, how comprehensive will the statements be and what machinery will have operated in each case before such a statement is made?