---

As amended in the Standing Committee, further considered.

We have had an excellent debate in which almost a record number of right hon. and hon. Members have taken part. I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you were not in the Chair to hear the beginning of the debate, because you may find it more difficult to follow the stage that we have reached. We have made a lot of progress since the outset. The Minister started off with the view that there was no need to worry about something that was just a lot of hot air being blown from this side of the Chamber, but he, as well as the promoter of the Bill, the hon. Members for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) and for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) have all joined in and said, in effect, that it is a genuine issue and therefore an important debate. An interesting backdrop to the debate is that if we had had before us the report that the Minister was going to produce before the end of this month giving his strategy for the promotion of microgeneration, we would have been able to see to what extent the difficulty of getting planning permission, or the need to get it, is a constraint upon the development of microgeneration and one that he would wish to overcome. It is disappointing that we have been unable to see that, because we do not know what the Minister’s strategy is or what he has in mind. We do know, however, that under existing planning law the Minister could bring forward proposals to change the general development order and increase the categories of permitted development without the need for this clause. Indeed, he could have taken that course any time in the past 18 months or two years. Why has not he done so? If, as has been suggested, it is such a burning issue, why have the Government not presented proposals to change the existing general development order and what is permitted under it? The Minister has not allayed my concern that the clause is highly prescriptive. If he is happy to provide for consultation, he does not need the clause. When my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle is the Minister responsible—I hope that that will happen sooner rather than later—I am sure he will not be so slow in making the relevant amendments to the general development order. He will not need the Bill to do that. There is agreement between Front-Bench Members of all three parties that microgeneration is a good thing and that it should be facilitated. If that can be done through relaxing the provisions of the general development order and allowing permitted development, there is nothing to prevent it from happening now. Indeed, the Minister could get on with it this weekend. He could put a note in his Red Box for Monday morning—so that his private secretary would see it—saying, ““Get on with this.”” Perhaps he would have to consult the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or even the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. However, I am sure that he could present such proposals. The mandatory nature of the current formulation and the way in which the clause appears to exclude proper debate and consultation worry me. I shall not repeat my detailed argument that the way in which the subsections are linked results in an unnecessarily oppressive measure. We have heard much about the amount of electricity generation that could be facilitated without the need for planning permission under the permitted development order. The Minister has assured us that he does not intend to go beyond what he and other contributors to the debate call ““small-scale microgeneration””. That is a good expression but it does not appear in the Bill. If it had been incorporated, I am sure the measure would have received less detailed scrutiny because there would not have been so much concern about its intentions. People are worried about what the Bill describes as microgeneration but is, in common parlance, large-scale microgeneration, and its being carried out without planning permission. I have considered whether we should accept the Minister’s good intentions and not press the matter to a vote. I have also taken into account the assurances of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) that he has only television aerials and satellite dishes in mind. If that is all he has in mind, it can be done at the moment, pretty uncontroversially, through the Minister’s current powers. The hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) made the point that the Minister already has the power and that the clause simply makes it use mandatory. Why do we need to make it mandatory when the Minister is such an enthusiast? What is holding him back? Surely he is being encouraged. [Interruption.] Unfortunately, I cannot respond to hand gestures. If anyone wishes to intervene, they are free to do so. On a serious note, if we are just talking about television aerials or satellite dishes then fine, but we need to be alert to the possibility that someone might want the equivalent of 50 satellite dishes or TV aerials because they want to have 50 1kW generators.