My Lords, there is a lot there to look at, read and think about. In the last argument there was some confusion between compulsory outsourcing and being forced to be subject to competition. Those are different things. I think the Government are saying that some authorities may have a designated person or persons forced on them in their area, but some clarification would be very helpful. The Bill certainly says that that is possible.
I thank everybody who took part in the discussion. Some were more entertaining than others. The noble Lord, Lord True, took us into the details of planning committees, which some of us have spent far too much time in our lives chairing, being members of or whatever. On the point about the relationship between the committee and its planning officer regarding applications where the committee may overturn the recommendation of the officer, there are applications where it is obvious which way they will go: that they will be rejected, or passed. While people may argue one way or the other, there are no sensible reasons and it is a fairly cut-and-dried case. But in most cases where recommendations are overturned, they are arguable both ways. If the planning
committee overturns cases where it is not arguable both ways, it is not a very good committee. It is behaving pretty irresponsibly, really.
Under those circumstances, the reports written by planning officers are balanced. They will put forward the reasons an application has been made and the arguments for it; they will put forward the objections to it and the reasons it might be turned down; then they will come down on one side or the other. If the committee takes a different view and it then goes to appeal, a sensible inspector will look at all the original reports and everything else and he will come to the view that it was a perfectly reasonable decision by the committee.
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The danger is that if we get private providers who are not plugged in to that particular local authority, who do not have relationships with the councillors, they will simply make a recommendation without the balanced nuances and that will render an authority much more liable to costs than it would be on a sensible report. There is a real danger there. If there is going to be a designated person, that designated organisation, in effect—a commercial company—needs the time and the experience to build the relationships with that local authority to get sensible reports and sensible decisions. I doubt that that will happen in the pilots.
I do not want to go through all the amendments. I am grateful to the Minister for her detailed responses. I think she misunderstood some of the amendments, particularly those where I wanted to find out how things were working, and she was telling me I was just throwing it all away. I understand that.
The noble Lord, Lord Deben, introduced an ideological component to the Committee which has not always been present. I understand why he is not a Liberal Democrat now more than I did before, which is helpful. I would love to spend the rest of this evening discussing these matters with him but I think we would be on our own. All I will say is that I agree that private property owning is fundamental to personal autonomy and to democracy. The problem is that if too few people own too much of the property, it leaves most people owning none, and that is not a liberal society and it is not a good society.
When it comes to the balance between the community—society as a whole—and individuals, it is easy to think of planning departments as being a group of bureaucrats who increasingly just look at the rules and try to apply them, because there are so many of them being poured down from on high, in a fairly arid system. I think the planning system is bust, I must say. Nevertheless, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, is famous, justifiably, as an environmentalist and an environmental campaigner, and environmentalism is all about the community and the environment in which the community lives.
That is why the planning system is not just an arid bureaucracy or a necessary evil, but a very good thing. It is fundamental to maintaining the balance between the interests of the wider community and the environment in which that community lives, and the selfish wishes
of individuals. I use the word “selfish” without denouncing it, particularly. We are all selfish in what we do and we all have our personal autonomy. That is fundamental and it is why I am a Liberal. As for the land, I remind the noble Lord of the old, famous Liberal hymn, which we still sing: “God made the land for the people”. People who own the land look after it on behalf of everybody. That may be where we have an ideological difference.
If I go on any more like this, I shall be shot down by everybody else in here.