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Planning Bill

The noble Lord has pleaded pressure of time for his manuscript amendment and I shall plead pressure of time for my response. In the context of the grouping on the function of the council, it makes perfect sense for me to say that the power to which he has drawn our attention is another of those powers which simply allow the chair or the deputy chair to be as flexible as possible with the resources available to them in the shape and competence of commissioners. To withdraw that flexibility would make it very difficult for the council to function, so clearly we have a problem with the amendment. Whether it would be used to remove awkward people or people with vested interests or whatever, the problem which has been identified would come under the nature of abuse. In the light of everything that we have said—the noble Lord cited me—the choice of commissioners would be undertaken very carefully. Anything approaching a vested interest or a track record of opposing particular sorts of infrastructure would be precisely the kind of thing that we would take care to avoid. The code of conduct and the register of interests, which would flush out conflicts of interest, would take care of the potential for abuse which is possible. Given that we have not had time to think about what the noble Lord has said—it is an important point—I hope he will allow me to write to him and to take the point in the context of some of the other things that we have discussed this evening.