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Planning Bill

My Lords, I hope that it will not be too tedious if I raise again the question that I raised in Committee. It is about trying to get guidance out as early as possible. I know that departments are currently working on national policy statements. As I understand it, as soon as the Bill becomes law the Secretary of State will be able to issue guidance under new Clause 81. They do not have to wait for the commission to be appointed; the Secretary of State could issue guidance and may well wish to issue draft guidance. However, potential applicants out there are very anxious to get ahead with this. They cannot actually start until they have some guidance on how the pre-application process will work, how they should draw up their applications and in what form they are expected to present them to the various stakeholders in the pre-application process. It has been said in reply that it will be for the commission to produce the guidance, but the Government’s new clause makes it perfectly clear that the Secretary of State can do this and does not have to wait until the commission has been appointed. This process is still at a fairly early stage. One has seen the advertisements for the chair of the commission, and there will be other appointments. I suspect that the process will run for several months before we have a commission in place. In the mean time, I do not see any reason why the Secretary of State should not start to draw up guidance now, or at least as soon as the Bill becomes law, which I hope will be fairly shortly, so that applicants will have a much clearer idea of what will be expected of them in the pre-application process. I wholly welcome the pre-application process; it is a very important stage in the process of an application that will eventually go before the IPC. As I have said, many of those who propose major infrastructure projects want to get ahead with it. I hope that the Minister can provide some assurance and comfort that a start will be made on the guidance process as quickly as possible.