My Lords, I am so glad that we are taking this amendment, after having sat here these many hours. This amendment takes us clearly to the part of the Bill that is planning, rather than housing. This is the first time I have spoken on the planning aspect of it. The amendment is self-explanatory and does not need me to talk too much about it, particularly at this time of night. But I emphasise that the case was made by my noble friend Lord True when he spoke on Amendments 101A and 101B. He made the point then that local authorities really do not have control of their own finances.
My view on planning is that it is very wrong that people doing multimillion-pound developments should be charged the same planning fee as the people who are doing one small additional room on their house. I think it right that there should be a proportionate right to charge according to the value of the work. This again would cover the aspect that my noble friend Lord True brought up about offices being converted to residences; it was all being done for a quick profit. If councils had been able to charge a more realistic amount, either they might have had more funds to replace whatever they were losing in terms of the office accommodation, or the incentive to do all that changeover might not have happened.
It is very important that councils have the right not only to set varying planning fees but to retain the funds. In some cases, all fees collected by the local authority are handed over to the Treasury; that would not help the councils at all. All local authorities are very strapped for cash at the moment, and it is very important that something of this type should be considered. I know that we are only in Committee, the wording on this might not be 100% and we might need to go into it in other ways, but the principle is the important thing that we should be thinking of. I consider that the two other amendments in this group follow the same line that I am taking. I beg to move.