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Local Government and Planning (Parkland and Windfall Development) Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes another important point. What else might happen? If the Secretary of State had to issue guidance on back gardens, I suspect, knowing the wheels of Whitehall, that it would take rather more than two months to draft guidance on such an important issue affecting so many people. I have highlighted several of the issues and problems that would have to be addressed in such guidance. There would have to be consultation among interested parties as to how it should be drafted, as is always the case, rightly, when PPGs are issued. Local authorities, developers and community groups would have to be consulted to ensure that the guidance to the local planning authority is correct. That consultation period would have to take more than two months. There is nothing in the commencement date provisions for different commencement dates for different clauses, as might have been appropriate. If there were to be appeals against grants for planning consultation, the planning inspectorate would have to gear up for them. The Bill would require it to do something that it has never been asked to do before. It would have to hire and train additional staff to cope with an inevitable increase in appeals, as well as undertaking a degree of retraining for existing staff as to what criteria they should take into account when judging such appeals, and developing the basic ground rules for the process that would need to be established. The cost regime would also have to be worked out and consulted on. The hon. Lady needs to think about some of the implications. Clause 5 refers to a period of two years or three years. Where did the three-year period come from? I suspect that it was plucked out of the air. The Department would need to consult people more widely about the practicalities as regards the appropriate period to determine whether it should be two years, three years, or possibly longer. It would have been better for clause 5 to give the Secretary of State a regulation-making power to vary the two or three-year period after appropriate consultations, with an affirmative resolution placed before the House. Clause 6 deals with guidance to local planning authorities on the protection of trees. The Secretary of State would be required to issue guidance under section 197 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. We have canvassed several different ways in which that could be achieved, and whether it is necessary to extend the provision to rural as well as urban and suburban areas. There may be a need to have different guidance in different parts of the country. Rural development may require different guidance from urban development and, again, from suburban development. Each aspect would require wide consultation with amenity groups and, I suspect, arboricultural experts as well as local authorities. The idea that one can achieve such consultation and produce the guidance in two months is wishful thinking. When considering cost, we must not forget the Treasury—the elephant in every room when we discuss private Members’ Bills—and the provision that it would need to set aside for the Department for Communities and Local Government to enable it to meet the additional costs involved. Budgets are always under pressure and we would need additional resources to meet the planning inspectorate’s costs. Local authorities will not have factored the cost of holding referendums into their budgets and perhaps we should be more sympathetic about allowing them to budget for such matters. There are several alternatives to clause 10(2). I agree with the hon. Member for Ribble Valley that the period should not be too long. However, what constitutes too long a period? Allowing for the consultations, drafting and budgeting processes, it would be difficult to bring the Bill into force in a shorter time than 12 months. An alternative would be to provide that some clauses were effected at a time that the Secretary of State ““may or shall prescribe.”” That commonly happens with such Bills.