My Lords, first, I refer noble Lords to my declaration of interests and declare that I am a locally elected councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham.
We have discussed the neighbourhood right of appeal on a number of occasions in your Lordships’ House, and I was convinced that the limited right of appeal, which the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, has put forward on a number of occasions, was the right approach. However, despite that and numerous discussions, the Government have not been persuaded that this is the correct way forward. That is disappointing.
The government amendment agreed in the Commons makes some moves in the right direction but, as the noble Baroness told the House on 4 May, what is proposed here, set out on page 5 of the Marshalled List before us today, is what you would expect any good local planning authority or planning officer to do anyway. Therefore, I am under no illusion that what is before us from the Government is a particularly significant concession. As I said earlier, that is disappointing, and we should go a bit further.
When I look at this Bill, I often reflect back on the Localism Act. It appears that the government Benches are less keen on localism than they may have been a few years ago. In general, they talk about localism when they like what is going on, and when they do not like it, we have to do what they say. As I said, there is a bit of a hokey-cokey on localism from the government Benches. That is not the way to go, and it is disappointing. The noble Baroness has given us another possibility, and maybe we will have some good news from the Minister.