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Planning Bill

moved Amendment No. 3: 3: Clause 1, page 1, line 7, at end insert— ““( ) There is to be a body of Commissioners to be known as the Commission’s Council (““the Council””).”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, we do not have quite the audience that we had before lunch, but it is my job to speak to Amendments Nos. 3 and 5 in my name. Since first reading the Bill, I have been doubtful about the concept of ““the Council””. Its role is explained in Schedule 1 but there is no reference to it in the text of the Bill until Clause 60. In the Bill it is always described as ““the”” council, whereas in practice a new council is formed for each case. It seemed to me that the council was a superfluous concept, fulfilling a role that should be performed by the commission. Accordingly, I introduced a series of amendments in Committee removing ““the Council”” from the text of the Bill. Those amendments were not accepted, and we are stuck with this wording. The question now is how best to introduce the concept of the council into the Bill. The council has a very important role; for example, it is the council, rather than the commission, which has the decisive role in assessing applications that are initially examined by a single commissioner. Given this importance, I think that its existence should be acknowledged in the opening clause of the Bill, as proposed in Amendment No. 3. The amendments are proposed as a simple improvement to the text of the Bill and I hope that they will be acceptable to the Minister. I beg to move.