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Planning Bill

It may be appropriate if I make a few remarks following our debate before the Statement. I remind the Committee that we are considering an amendment moved by my noble friend on the Front Bench that would transfer the decision-making function of the Infrastructure Planning Commission to the Secretary of State. One difficulty with that is that the Bill is drawn up in reverse order. The first stage of the process for dealing with these major infrastructure investments will be the creation of the national planning statements, whereas the first part of the Bill deals with the second stage—the creation of the commission. Those who took part in the Second Reading debate, many of whom are present, will recollect that a number of us made the point that the crucial stage at which Parliament will have to make decisions is the planning statements stage. I said that if we could pass amendments—a number of such amendments are on the Marshalled List—that made those statements subject to affirmative resolutions in both Houses of Parliament, the role of the commission at the later stage might become more readily acceptable. In her winding up speech, at a very late hour in July, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, kindly said that she recognised that point. She talked about this being a seamless process, and I made exactly that point: that it is two stages of a single process. If we can make sure that the national planning statements are subject not just to parliamentary scrutiny, which the Bill provides in considerable detail, but to parliamentary decisions, so that the main framework of the work that the commission will have to do has actually been approved by Parliament, then it becomes possible to look at the commission in a rather different light. I would be hesitant, on the basis of the arguments that we have heard so far, to say that nevertheless the decisions should be taken by the Secretary of State. There must be others, in addition to me, who found themselves having to make such decisions. When I was Secretary of State for the Environment, I dealt with a number of major planning decisions to which I may have occasion to refer later in this Committee stage. However, it is a bit of a fiction to believe that other than in very few cases are the decisions taken by Ministers or that the cases even reach Ministers’ desks. In the vast majority of cases which are not necessarily wildly controversial or of great national interest and which have gone to appeal to Ministers, decisions are taken by civil servants. A Minister may be alerted but the difficulty there is that Ministers always act in a quasi-judicial capacity and it is not open to the public or anyone else to seek to intervene in the decision. It is quite a difficult process. The other point about Ministers making the decision is as follows. If the commission does its work properly, it will cover a huge range of issues—not least those of public and local consultation and so on—and it will therefore be able to make an extremely thorough recommendation. My anxiety is that such is the culture of departments—for example, the noble Baroness’s department and there may be others—that it would be extremely difficult to stop civil servants or officials crawling all over the case again, and that could give rise to substantial delays in the process. At the same time, I am well aware that there is much anxiety about an unelected, appointed body making these major decisions. The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, gave a number of examples in other fields of principles being laid down by Parliament and then decisions being taken by departments. He gave the Inland Revenue as one example. If I have misunderstood him, I shall gladly give way.