Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Greaves and Baroness Young of Old Scone

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

All the points that I made earlier were taken in the Minister’s letter. Having read it very carefully, I think that he confirmed that the local plan was just one weight in the scales and not pre-eminent and that the Secretary of State would take a whole range of other things that into account. That means that the local plan has been sidelined. I was therefore unconvinced.

[Lord Greaves]

If there are letters floating around which are being debated here, I wonder whether we might all have sight of them.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Greaves and Baroness Young of Old Scone

Monday 28th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

Okay, it is a ball-point pen.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

While the noble Lords opposite are rummaging under the Benches, I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, might like to comment on the worry of the Law Society that I raised. He seems to be weakening in his resolve about this clause being unnecessary. I would like him to ponder on the fact that the Law Society is worried a bit about it becoming new judicial review territory which, as we know, is a great source of delay in planning applications.

[Lord Greaves]

I do take that seriously. If I am weakening, it is as to whether this clause will have any significant effect in practice and therefore whether it is worth while making the effort to remove it. There is lots of legislation which has no real effect in practice; we just accept that it goes through, I am afraid. However, with regard to judicial review, the ordinary applicants, about whom the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, spoke, who might be having a modest expansion to their farm, business or whatever, are not going to go to judicial review. If there is a problem about too much information being required, I suspect it will concern those people. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, is probably right that it is that sort of level of applicant. I do not think the householder applicant who wants an extension will be asked for lots of environmental information, and so on.

The big applications will have to provide the information anyway. If you are building a sizeable new housing estate, you are not going to get away without providing information on all the things that will be on the council’s list because they will include things such as drainage, the impact on the local roads and access into the site. They will want traffic counts and all the rest of it. You are not going to get away without that, whatever this legislation says. I suspect that they are providing all the information anyway and will continue to have to do so, while on the question of judicial review—for the people who would have the resources to go to judicial review—that is not going to happen in practice.

Having said that, I said at the beginning that one of my questions was whether discussing this clause at all is a waste of all our time. I suspect that it is but, nevertheless, I am grateful to everybody who has debated and to the Minister. These are important issues. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.