1 Parliamentary Scrutiny
of National Policy Statements
1. The Planning Bill proposes radical reform
to the planning system. Decisions on nationally significant infrastructure
projects will be made by a new independent body, the Infrastructure
Planning Commission. In taking these decisions the Commission
will be informed by national policy statements, which will be
designated as such by the responsible Secretary of State. When
the Bill was introduced into this House on 27 November 2007, the
Secretary of State for Local Government and the Regions made it
clear that the Government wanted parliamentary scrutiny of the
national policy statements on planning. While this was generally
welcomed, there was concern about the mechanism the Government
proposed, which was to be a new committee drawn from the membership
of the Business and Enterprise Committee, the Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs Committee and the Transport Committee. This
immediately raised concerns that the Communities and Local Government
Committee had been omitted, and that the work of the committees
concerned could be severely disrupted.
2. The Chairmen of the Committees concerned have
spent some time discussing with Ministers how scrutiny could best
be handled. They have kept us informed about their discussions,
most recently in a letter from Mr Peter Luff, the Chairman of
the Business and Enterprise Committee to the Chairman of the Liaison
Committee. Any scrutiny mechanism will depend on the final form
of the Bill on enactment, and on the detailed proposals the Government
puts forward in motions for Standing Orders. The House will have
the opportunity to consider the scrutiny mechanism more thoroughly
at that stage. However, we thought it would assist further Parliamentary
proceedings on the Bill itself, and on any Standing Orders proposed
by the Government, if we published the summary of the discussions
sent to our Chairman by Mr Luff. This, and related correspondence,
is accordingly appended to this report.
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