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Localism Bill

My Lords, this is the first time that I have spoken on Report, so I repeat my declaration of interest: I am a solicitor in private practice and registered as a foreign lawyer in England and Wales, and some of my practice involves planning. I recollect that in Committee I stood to support amendments in terms very similar to those before the House this evening. I cannot now recollect in whose names the amendments stood, but I was pleased that the Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, offered to discuss that issue. It may be that I and others took our eyes off the ball, as it were, in following up the matter. I do not want to take the time of the House unnecessarily because both my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, have gone through remarkably succinctly the detail of the amendments in the group. The central issue is that the development consent order is expected to be an omnibus order that will encompass a range of other consents and will reduce the number of applications that a developer has to make, thereby making the development procedure that much easier. The amendments address two issues seriously. The first is the range of further consents required beyond the development consent order. My noble friend Lord Berkeley listed the consents that are still needed—another 42 are still required, including 36 in Wales. Of course, there are occasions when you require specialist input that only specialist agencies can give—these are necessary safeguards—but, on the other hand, the policy behind this ought to be to reduce to the minimum the number of other consents that are required. That would be consistent with this Government’s approach to reducing regulation and removing red tape. There are a large number of these further consents that can be effectively removed without reducing the necessary safeguards. At Committee stage, I gave an example of the London Gateway Port Harbour Empowerment Order 2008, which is an order under the Harbours Act which included provisions for the benefit of the Environment Agency, and would be a model for that. The second strand is the further consents and procedures necessary on top of what the IPC grants in a development consent order—in other words, the further consents from the Secretary of State where, for example, land of statutory undertakers is being compulsorily acquired or the special parliamentary procedure applies. This procedure is not one that is used very often, yet we find, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley said, that the first application to be granted by the IPC requires that further consent. Some might say that we need to have a proper check and balance. I accept that when the Infrastructure Planning Commission, which the Government told us was an unelected quango, was making its decisions independently of any outside scrutiny, it might then have been appropriate to keep a number of other procedures and safeguards in process—safeguards which were accountable. Now that we have the Secretary of State giving the final decision, you can incorporate within that the necessary safeguards that some noble Lords may wish to see. There are also, within this group, issues in relation to the discharge of requirements. I do not intend to take up the House’s time on that, but there are important issues in relation to ensuring that the regime that we create works effectively and that the transition from the Infrastructure Planning Commission, which makes the decision at present, to one where the Secretary of State is deciding on the recommendations of the major infrastructure unit of the Planning Inspectorate, is effective too. I hope that the Minister will look at these issues seriously. They are important and they are designed to reduce the amount of bureaucracy and red tape that there is and make this a streamlined process. I make one final point. A European Commission study into the consenting regimes for major infrastructure projects throughout the European Union commended the one-stop shop, which at the moment is encompassed within the Infrastructure Planning Commission, but which, when this Bill goes through, will still be there but with the Secretary of State. My understanding is that the European Commission is likely to make regulations to ensure the acceleration of the deployment of priority energy infrastructure projects by concentrating resources, simplifying and enhancing permission procedures and making use of innovative financial instruments. In order to enhance national permitting and granting processes, each member state will be required to create a competent authority—a one-stop shop—responsible for those tasks. Therefore, it looks as though we will get a seal of approval, if that is required, from the European Commission. We can make things better. I hope that the Minister will take away these matters and look at them seriously.