Hybrid Bill Procedure

Cheryl Gillan Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

The right hon. Gentleman raises a sensible point. For most people with access to electronic equipment, navigating large documents is perfectly straightforward. In fact, it is probably easier to navigate documents of this length and complexity electronically than in hard copy. Not least, of course, it affords people the opportunity to focus on a local area or to do things such as word searches. I can confirm, however, that reasonable requests for hard copies of maps and section drawings will be met. These could be requested either from local authorities, which will be provided with hard copies for inspection, or directly from HS2 Ltd, which will provide A3 copies. It should further be noted that copies of all maps and sections will be available for inspection in both Houses. I hope that gives the right hon. Gentleman the assurance he was looking for.

If a deposit location would like documents in electronic format, but does not have the equipment to make them available to the community, HS2 Ltd has committed to providing that equipment at its own expense. This is a wholly sensible modernisation of Standing Order requirements, which were originally conceived in the 19th century, and is about making it easier for people to engage with the hybrid Bill process and therefore ensuring the most effective decision making by Parliament.

The second motion also relates to the environmental statement. It is vital that members of the public be made aware of these environmental effects and have an opportunity to comment. It is also important that the public’s views be shared with Parliament before it makes a decision on the principle of the Bill. That is why our proposed changes to Standing Orders will incorporate a formal consultation period for the environmental statement between introduction and Second Reading of the hybrid Bill. Although this follows the precedent of the Crossrail Act 2008, by enshrining this consultation in Standing Orders, we will improve the transparency and certainty of the hybrid Bill procedure.

It should also be noted that the lack of a guaranteed consultation process has been raised in the courts. It is important that we are clear that the proceedings of the House should not be subject, as a consequence of that lack of clarity, to interference from the European Courts.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

I certainly approve of the electronic tabling, because it strikes horror into my heart to think that there are at least 50,000 pages to the environmental statement, and we will need some way of navigating it, but what assurances can my right hon. Friend give me that HS2 Ltd will comply exactly with the Standing Orders? Surely, he needs to examine the time scale he has put into these amended Standing Orders, because 56 days is not enough time to examine 50,000 pages, minimum, of an environmental statement. It is only eight weeks.

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[Mr Lansley]

As far as I understand it, that is true. The examiner will appoint the assessor, and the assessor will report directly to Parliament. That appointment is not in the gift of the Government. The independence of the assessor is intrinsic to the process, and the role of the assessor is to summarise the views presented during the consultation. The assessor will use their technical expertise to present the environmental assessment issues in a form that Parliament can readily engage with. This is a parliamentary process; the assessor will be appointed by Parliament, not by the Government.

[Mrs Gillan]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way again. This is an opportunity for us to probe and to find out exactly what this measure means. What remuneration will be paid to the assessor? Will they be remunerated by the House? Will there be any opportunity for Members to query, adjust, amend or request a revision of the report that the assessor puts forward to enable MPs better to understand the complexity of the environmental statement?

[Mr Lansley]

On my right hon. Friend’s first point, I simply do not know what the remuneration arrangements are, but I will gladly write to her with that information. It is possible that the assessor will be paid by the Government, but as their appointment is not in the gift of the Government, I do not think that will impinge on their independence at all. As far as I am aware—I will certainly correct this if I am wrong—it will not be possible for anyone to have an impact on the assessor’s report. It will be the job of the appointed assessor to use their technical expertise to deliver the best possible representation of the public’s views, as reported to the consultation, in order to enable the House and the hybrid Bill Committee to engage fully with the process. The report will be made available before Second Reading.

I was talking about the length of time being made available for the consultation period. It is worth noting that the consultation to which the new Standing Order relates will follow the consultation on the draft environmental statement that is currently taking place—it is running from 16 May to 11 July. So there will be two opportunities for the public to make their views on the environmental statement known. Taken together, that supports the view that 56 days is an appropriate period of consultation.

[Mrs Gillan]

I think there is a misunderstanding about the consultation on the draft environmental statement. That consultation did not have to be carried out, but it is being carried out by HS2 Ltd. The consultation on the environmental statement that will appear at the same time as the hybrid Bill has to be carried out by the Government, and not by HS2 Ltd. I do not know what weight will be given to the previous consultation; indeed, it does not actually have to be considered at all.

[Mr Lansley]

I think it is true to say that the draft consultation taking place now is not part of the formal processes, but that does not mean that the public will not have a significant opportunity to make their views known. Having the draft environmental statement as the subject of consultation now directly relates to my right hon. Friend’s point—that 56 days, the eight-week consultation period, does not come in, as it were, in relation to an environmental statement that has not been prefigured by the consultation on the draft. In any case, if those responding to the draft consultation feel strongly about those issues, they should make their views known in the consultation required under the Standing Order.

For the sake of clarity, I was right that the Government are responsible for the remuneration of the assessor, but the amount of remuneration will be the product of a procurement process for the necessary expertise. I hope that is accurate and completes that thought. I hope that, notwithstanding the relative obscurity of these matters, the House will—[Interruption.] Does the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) want to intervene again?

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[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

I would like answers to all the questions the shadow Leader of the House has so rightly asked about these standing orders and the alterations. This is a particularly tortuous and complex process, and because it so tortuous and complex, it is neither accessible nor transparent to the stakeholders and the people who are affected by it. They must be able to understand what is required of them. I therefore ask the Leader of the House to consider how he is going to produce explanatory notes on this hybrid Bill process and these changes to standing orders, and make them available, particularly to those people who have been part of the consultations and the community forums up and down the line, but also to the environmental organisations, many of whom contain volunteers and others who are not familiar with our practices and procedures here, and who certainly have no idea of how to navigate their way around the hybrid Bill process.

I would like to know the date when the hybrid Bill and the environmental statement will be deposited, because it now appears that we are going to have 50,000-plus pages in this environmental statement, which amounts not so much to 17 large trees, but more to 17 large white elephants, to refer to the symbol that has been adopted by many of the anti-HS2 groups up and down the line. Making that date known will enable organisations throughout the country—many of which have very scarce resources or rely on voluntary contributions—to plan how to deal with this better. I am worried that moving to electronic tabling for something as large as this may cause technical problems. What checks will be made on the IT systems of local authorities up and down the line where these documents will be deposited, to establish that those systems can take these documents and people can navigate them with ease? It is all very well talking about making documents available electronically; when I was looking at the Department for Transport’s business statement today on the No. 10 website, it was almost impossible to navigate or download it in a timely fashion. That business plan was not very long, but if that is the standard the Government set for the ease of navigating documents, it does not reflect well on their IT systems. We need to know that full checks have been made of those systems, and that they can take the documents in question.

I do not want to prolong the debate and I will not seek to divide the House on this issue—these are Standing Orders—but I would like two reassurances. First, if a significant number of the environmental organisations that will need to engage in this process ask for an extension to the 56-day deadline, I want the Leader of the House to undertake at least to listen to them and to consider an extension.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The shadow Leader of the House told us that the environmental statement for Crossrail extended to some 2,500 pages. This statement will extend to some 50,000 pages. Does my right hon. Friend really think that 56 days is a practical amount of time in which to examine that amount of material?

[Mrs Gillan]

No, and that is why I am asking the Leader of the House whether, after taking advice from organisations that need to examine the document in detail, he will consider extending the deadline, or whether it would be possible to change the Standing Orders to that end. A standard consultation period, as under the last Government, was deemed to be 12 weeks. The Government have concertina’d it and seem to be adopting an eight-week standard, which is not satisfactory when we are dealing with something as precious as an area of outstanding natural beauty such as the Chiltern hills. Many details will need to be examined once the statement is forthcoming, and I would like to know what the various possibilities are.

At a time when we are cutting budgets and expecting local authorities and other organisations to cut back in the interests of paying down the debt left to us by the last Labour Government, what funds will be available to our local authorities to maintain and make available these documents through electronic means? There may have to be extra IT maintenance and people on duty. I need to be able to reassure my own local authorities that they will not be out of pocket as a result of something imposed on them by central Government.

I shall leave it there and look forward to hearing the Leader of the House’s response.