---

Planning Bill

My Lords, at one point in this argument I thought there was a difference in understanding about the issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has outlined. In her letter to me, the Minister suggested that the appellant could insist on an inquiry and an oral hearing. In fact, as she has made clear in her reply to the noble Baroness, the lawyer who has been involved in this says that at present parties can insist on the right to appear and be heard but the inspectorate decides whether it is to be a hearing or an inquiry. So, on that issue, there is now nothing between us. The difference comes down to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was making about whether there should be an opportunity for a face-to-face discussion so that there could be oral questioning of the inspector. That is a fairly evenly balanced question. The amendment that has been tabled would take out the whole of Clause 191. I am not sure that that would be right; it would be back to the drawing board. But in these small inquiries there ought to be a right for the appellant to have the opportunity to be, as the noble Baroness put it, eyeball to eyeball with the inspector. This is a small matter. We are discussing, inevitably, individual householder applications; we are not talking here about big planning inquiries. It is a simply a question of a difference of view. The impression I have been left with by the correspondence and what was said in the earlier debate is that the Government are overpersuaded about the amount of time that inspectors are involved in this—the number of days they allocate, and that sort of thing. Clearly anyone who is running the inspectorate has to take account of that, but in the end the planning system has to have the confidence of those who are going to use it. To tell an appellant that the whole thing has to be done by written representations and that they will not have an opportunity to see the inspector will undermine confidence in the system. On the whole, I agree with the point the noble Baroness has put forward. It is admirable that we have eliminated what appeared to be a difference of understanding over procedure. Having done so, though, we then have to recognise the difference, and I come down on the side of the noble Baroness.