My Lords, Amendment 311 in the name of my noble friend Lord Northbrook would require the Government to make all standards that relate to all planning Acts, or local authority planning policy, online and free of charge.
Our national standards body, the British Standards Institution or BSI, publishes around 3,000 standards annually, and these standards are the product of more than 1,000 expert committees. The BSI is independent of government and governed by the rights and duties included in its royal charter. This includes the obligation to set up, sell and distribute standards of quality for goods, services and management systems. About 20% of the standards produced are to support the regulatory framework. This will include a minority of standards made to support planning legislation and local authority planning policy.
To ensure the integrity of the system and support the effective running of the standards-making process, the funding model relies on the BSI charging customers for access to its standards. As a non-profit-distributing body, the BSI reinvests its income from sales in the standards development programme. In some circumstances, the Government will fund BSI standards to make them available. For example, last year the then Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy made available 100,000 copies of one of the energy management systems standards to UK SMEs.
I hope that this provides sufficient reasoning for my noble friend Lord Northbrook to withdraw his amendment. I am very happy to discuss this further with noble Lords and the BSI.
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