Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Snape Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

Finally, there is the question of waivers. There should be a procedure whereby the Secretary of State may recognise that some of the processes or requirements are irrelevant to a particular application by an applicant, and can be waived. The applicant would then not have to go through the process of submitting documents and evidence for matters which are really quite irrelevant. It is perhaps strange that such a procedure does not exist already, but this amendment includes such a requirement. People have to put all sorts of things into application documents: a land plan, a works plan, an access plan, an ecological plan, a heritage plan and a Crown land plan, separately or in combination. However, the fact is that an application may already contain a full environmental statement covering all these matters; does this really have to be duplicated? It seems to me that in this case the system could again be improved. It has been a good system, and it has been widely admired and taken up. When I looked at the website over the weekend there were 101 applications currently under consideration by PINS using the new procedure, and there will be many more. However, it needs to be improved and speeded up, and this is an opportunity for us to do that. I hope Ministers will respond positively to some of these issues.

[Lord Snape]

I support the amendments so ably spoken to by my noble friend Lord Berkeley and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. When the previous Government introduced what they said was a national planning agreement in 2008, many of us said, “About time, too”. The problem with major projects in this country is the length of time that they take. Any way of shortening that time taken, without withdrawing people’s democratic right to make proper objections, is to be welcomed. When the 2008 Act was passed, one of my perhaps more cynical colleagues said, “It’ll never happen”. Once you try to shorten the procedures, you immediately deprive the legal profession, to name but one group, of the opportunity—how does one put this as kindly as possible?—to spin out the process for as long as possible. It was said to me at the time that that profession would ensure that.

We have only to look at the inordinate time that all major projects in this country take. In my time as a transport spokesperson in the other place, I spent some time attending the Terminal 5 inquiry. The amount of time wasted, where lawyer after lawyer and group after group restated virtually the same matters day after day, month after month and, in the case of that project, year after year, was, to say the least, expensive and inordinate. Anything that can be done within the democratic process to shorten that period is to be welcomed.

The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, mentioned housing problems. I am sure that both sides of your Lordships’ House agree that it is very difficult to build anywhere in this country. All parties accept that there is a housing shortage, but circumventing that shortage is difficult under existing planning law.

On Amendment 75ZA, my noble friend Lord Berkeley spoke of the necessity of ensuring that construction materials for major projects are able to be transported using water and rail. Those of us who served four or five years ago on the Crossrail Bill were anxious to see proposals of this kind enacted for that project. We were anxious to see as much of the material for that enormous project taken in and out by rail and water. My noble friend mentioned various other projects; he did not mention Crossrail during his speech on the amendment. I am sure that he would agree with me that that is an area where the scope for restricting the number of heavy goods vehicles, particularly coming in and out of London, would be covered if the amendment was adopted.

I do not wish to sound any sort of controversial note in concluding my comments in support of the amendments, but I am always struck by how quickly former Secretaries of State are converted to the idea that perhaps a little urgency should be injected into these matters once they have left office. That is not a criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, who served as Secretary of State for the Environment, if my memory serves me right, for some years, but I suspect that it was that experience that leads him so enthusiastically to support the amendments standing in his name and that of my noble friend Lord Berkeley. I shall join him in that enthusiasm and refrain from any comment about wishing that he had behaved in the way envisaged in the amendments when he had had the opportunity to do so during his own distinguished career.

I hope that the Minister will look kindly on these amendments and agree with me and the other two speakers who were in favour of them that they have a great deal to commend them.