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Planning and Energy Bill

My Lords, I have the privilege of congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Mogg, on behalf of the whole House, and I do so warmly. His toiling in the vineyards culminated in 10 years as director-general of DGXV, later DG Internal Market. Retirement, although it does not look like retirement to me, brings him chairmanship of Ofgem and membership of the High Level Group on Competitiveness, Energy and the Environment at the European Commission. I wrote down that the Bill was tailor-made for him; probably he is tailor-made for the Bill. I hope that he feel happier now. Woody Allen is never happy, but I hope that the noble Lord feels happier about being here, because we are very glad that he is here. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, and welcome the Bill, which we on these Benches support. It is, as he said, a short Bill on a fast-moving subject—fast-moving agenda is probably the jargon. I very much enjoyed, as well as the maiden speech, that of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, with his thoughtful comments on infrastructure and resources, including water, among many other interesting aspects. The Merton rule that is permitted by the Bill will not necessarily follow the Merton percentage of 10 per cent. I checked with my own authority of Richmond upon Thames, which is already on 10 per cent but moving soon to 20 per cent and reducing the threshold of the number and size of developments at which the rule will bite. I discovered yesterday that planning consent for the expansion of a supermarket in my local shopping centre has been conditioned to make those concerned, as the council says, "““think about renewables a little harder””." This is a Private Members’ Bill and the noble Lord referred to ““may””. A private Member’s ““may”” may not be the same as a government ““may””, which we often discover means ““shall””, although there is some dependency on central Government towards the end of the Bill. We believe that there should be discretion and room for local decision-making. I was at a conference addressed by the Minister for Local Government, John Healey, on Wednesday when he called on local authorities to be ambitious; to use all the powers and mechanisms available. Cambridge City Council was ambitious but was tripped up by the inspectorate. It would not have been had this Bill and its regulations been in place. The Bill and what follows from it will contribute to pushing forward microgeneration as part of a necessarily much wider programme. Currently this is a lifestyle choice—not a cheap choice either. The Energy Saving Trust’s recent report, Generating the Future, commented on the costs and lifestyle aspects and suggested that overcoming them would require hard decisions by the Government to overcome vested interest groups. I liked its comment that that would be a harder decision than permitting some nuclear power stations or other new sources of energy. It also commented on the lack of incentives in the long term, the lack of information and an inadequate skills base, and said that installation costs were higher than the costs of the equipment itself. All of that rings very true with me. I had a look at the department’s website because, in the Commons, there was much discussion about the Planning Policy Statement: Planning and Climate Change. The guidance on it was described on the website as ““work in progress”” with the suggestions from the public coincidentally having been requested by today. Is the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, in a position to give us a preview of what might come out of that and to share the Government’s thinking on the regulations, policies and guidance that are essential elements of this Bill? The Bill depends on those. There is much more to do but, despite today’s date, we on these Benches hope that this is an auspicious day for the Bill.