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Procedure Committee: Second Report of Session 2008–09

My Lords, I support every word said by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. This is an important matter and it is important that this House gets it right. I want to add two points. On a simple matter, there will be many Members around the House who have not taken a detailed interest in the national policy statements that have been issued, mainly about energy, but also one on ports. I emphasise the points made by the noble Lord: the statements are at least four inches thick and are important and serious documents, which cannot possibly be scrutinised properly by this House in one debate in the Moses Room. I do not believe that having a further debate on a report back from the Moses Room in this Chamber would be satisfactory either. There has to be a process of scrutiny that allows noble Lords to get to grips with the content of these important statements. During the debates that we had on the Planning Bill as it was going through the House, first there was the question of whether there should be parliamentary involvement in these statements at all. Some people said that they should be subject to a vote of approval, but the view that many of us took was that proper, detailed and expert scrutiny is more important than a symbolic vote of approval on the whole document. That is the argument that we put forward. I think that we now have to be true to what we said then and put into place a proper process of scrutiny by a Select Committee or some other means. Secondly, the scrutiny was originally going to be only by the House of Commons. Led by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, who was supported by these Benches and Members from all round the House, this House insisted that its expertise—not just on the planning process but on the issues that will be discussed about energy, major transport schemes et cetera—has to be brought to bear on these documents in the national interest. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is absolutely right. I think that the Leader of the House, the Chairman of Committees and the usual channels have to think more about this very quickly so that we set in place the kind of process that the noble Lord and many of us want.