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Planning Bill

Despite the safeguards to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Boyd, referred, which are to some extent contained in other clauses, I confess that the whole of Clause 12 fills me with alarm. I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart. It is rather extraordinary that the Government, at all stages of the Bill in both Houses, have said that this is a new, improved and greatly enhanced system that we are going to engage in in future. Yet we could treat previous examples as though they had gone through this process. I shall take an extreme example. Reference has been made, not least by the noble Earl and my noble friend Lady Hamwee, to airport location. I date right back to the Roskill commission on the third London airport, when I was planning adviser to the Royal Institute of British Architects. Everyone in the country felt that the commission had got it wrong because it was not location-specific; it looked at a whole range of locations. Thirty years ago, the commission produced a minority report by the eminent Professor Colin Buchanan that there should be a third London airport, sited at Maplin Sands. Thirty years later, the Mayor of London is suggesting that again.