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Planning Bill

My Lords, I agree with the first part of what the noble Lord said: the House of Commons has the ability to waive its privilege. I shall proceed with my argument and address some of the issues that he raised. The DPRRC noted examples of where the other place has waived its privilege over financial matters. It listed regulations relating to national insurance, council tax and business rates that involved this House. However, the precedents are mixed. The other place asserted its privilege over amendments from this House to the community charge provisions in the Local Government Finance Act 1988. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said that it was a matter of custom and practice; and that custom and practice have been variable. Part of my case is that, no matter whether or not we consider it to be a local charge, it is about raising revenue. We have set out why the CIL clauses in Part 11 are broad and enabling. We are building on experience of standard charging; but this is a new departure for the planning system, and it will evolve as people become more familiar and comfortable with it, as happened with Section 106. One problem with getting this right is that we do not have the luxury of an annual finance Bill that we can use to tidy up planning legislation. These are much rarer animals and we need to have flexibility over time to reflect on the lessons learnt from the application of CIL in practice, and from the different arrangements in different areas. The industry agrees with that. We responded to the DPRRC’s concerns that we should add more detail to the Bill. The most recent report, which the committee did wonderfully well to produce this morning, says that it no longer considers CIL to be skeletal. I will argue concerning future amendments that it is not even anorexic, but a fully grown and rather flourishing infant. The CIL regulations will contain more elements than regulations for other regimes, and those elements could have a character of a sort that the other place normally reserves to itself. I listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said about the fact that there were distinctions to be made between the sorts of regulations that might come forward. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, would provide for all CIL regulations to be subject to the affirmative resolution of that House. However, in its 13th report the DPRRC said, "““except in so far as the House considers that provision in Part 11 of the Bill is related to matters over which the Commons will claim financial privilege””," which seems to acknowledge implicitly that the other House might well do so for at least some of Part 11. Noble Lords have already made it clear that I cannot speak for the other place: I cannot determine what the other place does. If the noble Lord’s amendment is accepted by this House, the other place will take a view on whether its financial privilege has been infringed, and whether it wishes to waive it. It will only do so once the Bill is again before it. I have listened hard, both in Committee and today. I have taken full note of the comments made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. We are still of the view that it is a financial matter and that it is appropriate that the regulation-making procedure should remain with the House of Commons.