Planning Bill

My Lords, throughout the passage of this Bill, I have listened very closely and consistently to arguments that have been made on all parts of it. It has been a long and complex Bill. Noble Lords have been very generous in the tributes that they have paid at previous stages about the extent to which the Bill has been improved because we have listened and responded—not least, for those noble Lords who were not part of our debates earlier, to give a greater role to this House in the scrutiny of national policy statements, for example. We have been pleased to listen and we are absolutely sure that the Bill is better for that. I pay particular tribute, as I have done previously, to the interrogation that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has applied to the Bill. In the short debate that we have had today, we have rehearsed many of the issues that arose in the course of the Bill, particularly the community infrastructure levy. Now we come to the stage of the Bill where we are in conversation with the other House on an issue about which I am constrained in what I can say and on which there are limits to what I can do. Noble Lords who have been in this place far longer than I have will understand that. However, we do not shelter behind privilege. We guard our conventions in this House very jealously and one of those conventions is that Ministers do not comment on reasons from the Commons and we do not anticipate them either. That is quite proper and the House be would be right to challenge me if I did otherwise. I therefore have to walk a careful line in what I can say in reply to the issues raised. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, returned to the argument that he made on Third Reading. He reminded your Lordships that this House rejected and soundly defeated the substantive argument that this House should have a voice in the making of affirmative regulations under the CIL. His argument now—described by my noble friend Lord Howarth as a device—raises very complex issues about the nature of the regulations governing the CIL and proposes the creation of new procedure for dealing with regulations under the Bill. My noble friends and other noble Lords have spoken about the implications for this House of not abiding by the decision of the other place. This amendment sets a very serious precedent. We debated these regulations throughout the Bill’s passage, and the noble Lord has paid tribute to the fact that we worked hard in response to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s recommendations in an attempt to ensure that the House knew the substance of what we were debating. We had many long and detailed discussions. The committee’s recommendations were not specific but gave an indication of what it thought were the issues. We tried extremely hard in every other respect to meet those. We are now at a very late stage in the Bill’s passage. It is a very significant Bill—a strategic Bill that will guarantee that we will have the infrastructure that we need for the future and that is so heavily dependent on energy security and climate security. The House, to its great credit, has supported the Bill and been assiduous in its interrogation. Although I can appreciate the noble Lord's frustration with this element of the Bill, and the frustration voiced by other noble Lords around the House, I can only say, as I said at Report and Third Reading as well, that this is not the time to raise such complex and far-reaching issues of procedure. I think that many noble Lords will agree that these matters are far too substantial to be resolved at the tail end of a complex Bill. They raise issues that go far beyond the Bill’s narrow limits in the precedents they raise. This House is always very careful about its procedure and the creation of precedents. I do not want to weary the House by repeating what I said at Report and Third Reading. However, I hope, noble Lords having made their concerns clear, that the noble Lord will share my urgent desire to ensure that we pass the Bill. I hope he will feel that the issue has been debated. Noble Lords have made various constructive suggestions this afternoon, and I am glad that my noble friend the Leader of the House is beside me on the Bench; she will have listened to what has been said in the House today. However, there is a point at which I can go no further in reply to this argument and the amendment. I hope that the noble Lord feels that he has been properly listened to and that he can withdraw the amendment.