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Planning Bill

My Lords, the group contains government amendments to the schedule which aim to deal with the difficulty that I raised previously about the risk that the chairman of the commission might end the appointment of a member to the council—I shall come to that in a minute—as it were, peremptorily. No doubt the Minister will explain the government amendments later, but, by adding the words ““or ending”” they make it clear that there needs to be proper consultation by the chairman with the other commissioners and the chief executive before a member’s appointment is ended. The Minister has met my point completely, and I am grateful for that. I return to the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, and that spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I have criticised the use of the word ““council””. I can understand that something between a panel, which may be just three people, and the full commission is needed, but ““council”” seems to have an entirely wrong connotation. Apart from anything else, it is not a permanent body, but a group of commissioners who may be appointed ad hoc for a particular inquiry. A completely different body of commissioners may be called the ““council”” at the inquiry dealing with the next application. The noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, has drawn our attention, with huge persistence, to the fact that this is the wrong word. Whether it is left to the commission to decide, as the noble Baroness’s amendment would have it, or whether the Government should recognise in the schedule that there will be something between the single commissioner, the panel and the full commission, it needs to have a name that conveys that it is a group of commissioners appointed ad hoc. That is what one is looking for. That is a sensible suggestion, but to call it ““the Council”” seems to be a contradiction in terms. I serve and have served on a number of bodies where the council is the governing body. Many charities will be run by a chairman and council. There are many others. My noble friend on the Front Bench is familiar with a local authority. Local authorities have an elected council, a body which exists until the whole lot is removed. It is not a peripatetic body, or a peripatetic name for a number of different bodies that may be appointed under the procedure of the Bill. I hope that the Minister might have another look at this between now and Third Reading, because the use of ““council”” in these circumstances is a misnomer. It is not a council as one recognises it any other walk of life.