Localism Bill

I stand reprimanded by the noble Lord. All this excitement obviously took place in a period when I could not be in the House. I still think what I thought at the time—that the best way to scrutinise detailed documents such as this is to have a Select Committee-type scrutiny process. If that could be combined with the exciting dénouement debate in the House that the noble Lord spoke about, that would perhaps be the best solution. This will be a very important, overriding and high-level document. I am starting to use American management jargon: next I shall start talking about deep-diving into the detail and that sort of rubbish, but never mind. One of the great things about these Committees is that we veer from talking about high-level things to debating how they will affect a particular group of allotments or whatever. My second point is a question to the Government. What is the timetable—perhaps I have missed this—for the phasing out of planning policy statements and the phasing in of the NPPF? Local authorities are in some sort of limbo as regards planning policy statements and planning policy guidance. They still employ people to make sure that their local development documents are in accord with them, but they are not sure to what extent they are wasting their time, or whether it is useful work as guidance for what they are doing. At what stage will there be a changeover? Will the planning policy statement suddenly cease to have any validity when the new system comes in? When that happens, what will local planning authorities do with the work they are doing? Will they have to start again from scratch if they are half way through developing their core strategy in order to make sure that it accords with the new national policy planning framework, as opposed to all the documents that they have been working on until now? Many local planning authorities are in limbo. They are not sure what is going to happen and could do with advice on what to do.