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Planning Bill

moved Amendment No. 15: 15: Clause 208, page 120, line 35, after ““building”” insert ““excluding buildings housing infrastructure”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, the fact that the amendment has survived to be discussed at Third Reading seems to indicate that this has been, and proves still to be, a very complex subject: whether infrastructure should be eligible or liable to pay the infrastructure planning levy. Like others, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for the work that she has done to clarify matters, and the detail that she has gone into. Her last missive to me was sent at 10.50 pm yesterday, which indicates how hard she and her team have been working. I am not sure that we are much further down the road of defining the limits and liabilities of CIL. I apologise to the noble Baroness for this, but we now have in the Bill, as a result of an amendment that we slipped in at the end of Report stage, when we were all suffering from exhaustion and perhaps not thinking as clearly as we might have been, a provision under Clause 208(2) that CIL regulations may provide for, "““works or changes in use of a specified kind not to be treated as development””," and, "““the creation of, or anything done to or in respect of, a structure of a specified kind to be treated as development””." The interpretation of those phrases is wide open and I ask the noble Baroness if she could explain how that would work in practice. I apologise to her and the House for this, but one does not realise until one starts to work on what one is going to say what the points are that should be made. There is a difference in principle between the noble Baroness and myself. She has argued consistently that infrastructure generates employment and employment generates infrastructure liabilities. It is a chicken-and-egg argument and I put it the other way round: it is the fact that people in communities require services that generates the need for infrastructure. In her missive last night, the Minister gave two examples, one of a power station and the other of an airport extension. I acknowledge that both have clear infrastructure implications. However, the chicken-and-egg argument applies. Are those developments the cause of the population, or the result of the population? I argue that, if they are the result of the population, the payment of CIL is not appropriate. That said, I acknowledge that, in life, we all spend a great deal of money paying tax that goes to do things that help us: the money goes round, and this is another part of the roundabout. The question on which I would like clarification concerns projects of that nature that are subject also to Section 106 agreements, which at the moment are the only way of getting infrastructure projects into a development. Developers, and indeed local authorities undertaking negotiations prior to granting planning permission, both have in mind a sum of money. With the introduction of the infrastructure levy, we are pre-empting a part of that negotiation—we have to realise that—and to the extent that that is so, the flexibility of those negotiations will be diminished. It really was to try and determine, or get some increase clarity on, what that relationship is that I felt moved one last time to table an amendment to see whether I could persuade the Minister to explain exactly how they will work together. My feeling is clear; these clauses were designed in a different age, and now it seems to me that their purpose, for a few years at any rate, is seriously redundant. I urge the noble Baroness not to be in a great hurry to introduce this, although we normally plead for regulations of this sort in a Bill. All that will do is transfer the responsibility for deciding whether to introduce the infrastructure levy from the Government to the local authorities. It would be better if the whole thing were in abeyance until the country’s construction industry is sufficiently robust and active again, when we could begin to consider the charges in a sensible light. Even Section 106, to which it is entirely accustomed, is going to be very difficult to negotiate at present on any major development. I beg to move.