My Lords, I put this in a separate amendment because I wanted it set out and because it is the fundamental thing that people outside the system are going to complain about with regard to private provision of the processing of planning applications. The potential for conflicts of interest is high. The Government say they will produce regulations to stop that and make sure it does not happen. We will see how they do that.
There is a perception of conflicts of interest in a system that, as was said earlier, is already believed by many people to be utterly biased towards large developers and against ordinary people—rightly or wrongly, there is a widespread belief that that is the case. If, instead of being processed by local government officials, planning applications are processed by private companies, people will look for the links between those private companies and developers putting in applications and, whatever safeguards the Government put in, they will find them. They will find family relationships, school relationships, board memberships and so on—all manner of relationships. It is a huge can of worms.
If the Government are going ahead with these pilots, this is a fundamental issue that they have to tackle and do their very best to get right. I doubt they can get it right but it is at the heart of this proposal. I beg to move.