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Planning Bill

I rise to speak to amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 8, which stands in my name and that of various hon. Members across the House. One of the reasons why my Back-Bench colleagues and I tabled the amendment was to give my right hon. Friend the Minister the opportunity to join the pantheon of our Front-Bench heroes, to which many of his colleagues have recently been elevated. [Laughter.] No, no, laugh you not—the roll-call is impressive. It includes our right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), who made significant and welcome changes to the Local Transport Bill; and our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and the Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, our hon. Friend the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock), who accepted amendments to the Climate Change Bill and the Energy Bill. Indeed, I think that our hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) is still recovering from the shock. My right hon. Friend the Minister has a reputation for being somewhat austere, which his earlier comments reinforced. He seems to believe that it is his solemn duty to prevent Back Benchers from becoming over-intoxicated by too much of a good thing and that he therefore cannot accede to our amendment (a). However, all the changes to the Bills that I have listed demonstrate a willingness to listen, reflect and then act. All those changes reflect a degree of joined-up thinking in the crusade, as it were, to tackle climate change. The signatories to my amendment (a) believe that it is necessary for the Bill to do exactly the same thing. It is particularly vital in the context of the 80 per cent. emissions target that we achieve a radical change in new infrastructure, in order to move to a low-carbon economy. In that context, we welcome certain provisions in the Bill, such as the climate change duty on local and regional plans. However, the Government have placed no duty on the IPC to consider climate change, because they argue that national policy statements will deal with climate issues. However, that argument is compromised by the fact that the IPC can depart from NPSs in defined circumstances. Even if we take the argument about national policy statements at face value, however, we still need to place a strong duty on the Secretary of State to consider climate change when drawing up NPSs. However, Lords amendment No. 8 to clause 10, which relates to sustainable development, is so weak as to make little difference to the actions of the Secretary of State when it comes to the crunch. As my right hon. Friend the Minister has said, Lords amendment No. 8 says that"““the Secretary of State must (in particular) have regard to the desirability of…mitigating, and adapting to, climate change””." Despite my right hon. Friend's protestations, that feels very weak indeed. ““Desirability”” smacks of the language of aspiration—merely an objective to have in mind, but not necessarily to be achieved. The obligation on the Secretary of State is couched in language that would make it difficult for a court or anyone else to put a strong construction on the provisions. Even if that were not the case, there is an inherent problem with almost any conceivable clause relating to sustainable development, precisely because the language of sustainable development is imprecise. The phrase is not defined in the Bill—as far as I am aware, it is not defined in any legislation—and even non-statutory definitions are couched in open and vague terms. Amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 8 seeks to replace the word ““desirability”” with a stronger construction, which places a duty on the Secretary of State to have"““due regard to the need to…mitigate and adapt to climate change””." I should add at this juncture that we took the liberty of lifting those words from other Government legislation, so one would hope that that legislation was subject to the sort of scrutiny that—