Called-in Planning Decision: West Cumbria

Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I am sorry. There is not a timeframe—

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

We have 20 minutes for Front-Bench questions and answers, it does not affect the Back-Bench time available.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I am sorry; the Minister must respond to each question from the Back Benches.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I knew that this would be a very passionate debate.

The first question from my noble friend was: why did the Secretary of State not turn this down? He did not turn it down because he took his time and read this very large report. Unlike the noble Baroness opposite, I am afraid that I have not had the time since lunchtime today to read it—but I have it and I will read it this weekend. So, why did the Secretary of State not turn this down? He did not turn it down because he read the evidence, he thought that it was sound and he agreed with the inspector’s report. The inspector is independent and this is about a planning application. He did his job and, as I said, the Secretary of State agreed with him.

On the rest of the world not agreeing with what we are doing, I have not seen the rest of the world having net-zero mines for coking coal. We are going to do that. We are showing the rest of the world how it should be producing this commodity, which is still going to be required to produce steel in the near future. That is extremely important.

On the other issues around where the coal will be sold to and how that will be done, this is not a Government-supported project; it is from the private sector. Private sector operators put in the planning application and it was decided on in the normal way. The Secretary of State read all the information and decided that he would support it.