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Planning Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Duke for moving the amendment, which gives us a further opportunity to explore the issue of cross-border rail infrastructure. We need to make a distinction between two separate issues here. The first is the issue of services. As my noble and learned friend has just said, where those services are cross-border, my department through the franchising arrangement takes the lead role. The issue at stake in the Planning Bill is not services but infrastructure. The Infrastructure Planning Commission will not have vires in respect of the Scottish part of rail infrastructure proposals which cross the border. That does not mean, however, that the United Kingdom Parliament could not play a role in consenting to such schemes. It would be open to the promoters to seek authorisation by means of a private or possibly hybrid Bill presented to the Westminster Parliament, which would be likely to require a Sewel motion. In seeking consent for such a rail infrastructure scheme across the border, that would be one of two possible ways forward. The other would be for the IPC to consider the English part and for Scottish Ministers to consider the Scottish part. Discussion on which of those options would be best would take place at the appropriate time, taking full account of the circumstances of the case. I am certainly not closing the door to the possibility of the United Kingdom Parliament deciding the planning issues relating to those infrastructure projects, but that would be by means of a private or hybrid Bill, requiring a Sewel motion; it would not be done through the IPC which, under the Bill, would not have powers in respect of the rail infrastructure required for cross-border projects. The issue of services is distinctly different. It relates to the contracting process with train operating companies for services which, as the noble Duke said, run from Glasgow, Edinburgh and other Scottish cities to south of the border.