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Planning Bill

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment. The amendment would provide for a 60-day period during which either House may debate or pass a resolution on the draft community infrastructure levy regulations or refer the draft regulations to any Committee for a report. The Secretary of State must then respond to any debate, resolution or report, including by the other place, before this House may give approval to the regulations. The amendment followed an earlier Opposition Back-Bench amendment tabled in the other place that proposed that all CIL regulations should be subject to affirmative resolution of both Houses of Parliament. That amendment was rightly defeated and fell. The House will be aware that clause 207(2) provides that CIL regulations are made subject to the affirmative resolution of this House only. It is the Government's view that that is appropriate since CIL is a financial matter. The House might like to note that the Bill has been in this form since it was published. It is also worth noting that this House did not at any stage seek to change that to give the other place a role. Not a single amendment was tabled in Committee in this House on this issue. This is a financial matter. It is a matter for this elected House of Commons. For those reasons, I ask it to reject the amendment.