My Lords, I also come to this without a full appreciation of the implications. In particular, I wonder whether schemes would be able to depart from what might become requirements elsewhere;
for example, in relation to energy efficiency or other aspects that one would expect to be part of planning consent for new schemes.
I do not quite understand what the decision-making mechanism would be. Once the scheme had been floated, would it still involve applications having to be approved within the new framework by something equivalent to a development control committee or sub-committee of the kind that most councils now have, or is it to be a sort of executive process without member involvement at the level of individual local authorities or perhaps a combination of authorities when one is looking at a wider area? It is not quite clear how the practical side would be handled.
I share the doubts of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—if not doubts, then questions—about the nature of public involvement and how that would be fed into the process. Can the noble Lord identify any experience in another jurisdiction—one which is somewhat analogous to ours—of this kind of approach? Is there experience of this way of dealing with applications that we might learn from in terms of how it might develop here? I would certainly be interested in seeing the matter progressed, but I do not think that we have enough information positively to affirm that it should go forward as part of the Bill—it is a bit early for that without knowing a good deal more about how it might work. It may be that some further indications can be given and the Minister wants to take the matter back, although not necessarily with a view to dealing with it in a week’s time at Third Reading—we are pretty late in the process to bring something as potentially radical as this into the Bill. Even if it does not go very far on this occasion, it is certainly a concept that is worth exploring, but if I were the Minister, I do not think that I would be jumping at incorporation into the Bill quite at this stage. However, she may have a different view.