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Planning Bill

My Lords, I promise the Minister that I will be brief, particularly at this stage and hour. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding for helping me to resolve my dilemma. I happened to have a personal leper’s squint at the Sizewell B inquiry. On 1 January 1983, the Treasury Solicitor rang my brother, shortly after he became a Silk, to say that the Secretary of State for Energy, my noble friend Lord Lawson of Blaby, had decided to brief counsel to the inquiry and to ask my brother if he would undertake that role. Two-and-a-half years later, I was in the British Embassy in Tokyo and coincided with the late, great Walter Marshall, whose accent a number of noble Lords will have in their minds’ ear. He kindly said that although the quality and quantity of the questions which my brother had asked had greatly prolonged the inquiry, which at that stage had been running for two-and-a-half years, he was satisfied that those on the technology and the hazards absolutely needed to be asked. He said that provided the questions were asked only rarely and there was confidence that they would not have to be repeated, he, at the receiving end, was happy for them to be asked. I understand the pressure of the questions that have been brought to us and I can understand them more readily, because of the Sizewell B case. At about the same time, I attended a public seminar conducted by the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, on the transportation of irradiated fuel. That was not strictly a planning matter but it was an analogous situation. He said that he was totally satisfied with the safety of the urban transportation of irradiated fuel. I was the only Member of Parliament to attend, but I was an urban MP. However, he realised that there would be very grave public apprehension about that process and that, therefore, it was important that by one means or another, the public should be satisfied that the right decisions were being taken. What we are contemplating in the Bill would confer a major responsibility on the IPC to explain and justify its decisions on a host of matters to the general public and to the specific public, in the context of specific applications. It would be welcome if the Minister said a little about the discharge of that responsibility on the part of the IPC. In the mean time, I am minded to follow my noble friend.