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Planning Bill

My Lords, if it is convenient for the Minister, I have some comments to make about one of the government amendments. I have some questions for the Minister, for which I hope she received adequate notice, arising out of Government Amendment No. 136A, which introduces a new clause on liability and the interpretation of key terms. In Committee on 23 October, the Minister said, at col. 1252 of Hansard, that, wind-power stations would not be liable for CIL because they were not buildings. In the latest of the Minister’s helpful series of explanatory loose sheets, however, which were sent to noble Lords, the following sentences appear on page 8: "““A new railway line connecting major cities would not be liable for CIL since the development would not comprise a building. A new power station, on the other hand, could therefore be liable because of the building containing the energy supply””." My first question is: how confident are the Government that a wind turbine is not a building? The first definition of a building in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is ““a thing which is built””. One of the definitions given of ““build”” is, "““construct (a ship, vehicle, fire, road or other structure) by putting parts or materials together””." It could certainly be argued that that covers a wind turbine. It could also be argued that a wind turbine is a building which contains the energy supply which, in the Government’s view, is what makes other forms of power station liable to CIL and distinguishes them from railway lines. My second question is: why have they chosen the word ““building”” instead of, say, the word ““structure””? What were they trying to exclude and why? My third question is: did they deliberately seek to discriminate between different types of power station? Did they want to favour wind power-generating stations at the expense of generating stations fuelled by other means? In that case, is this an example of the Government inventing yet another form of discreet subsidy, this time at the expense of local communities, to try to push forward their wasteful and inefficient wind power programme?