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On the question of keeping thresholds under review, as long as the Secretary of State retains a general power to amend the NSIP thresholds, the provisions of administrative law will mean that he or she will be expected to keep these thresholds under review. It is interesting that in the other place the Lib Dem Front-Bench spokesman said in Committee:
“I am grateful to the Minister for clarifying that the Government are aware of the issues and that they intend to keep a watching eye on the thresholds and any effect that they have on applications”.—[Official Report, Commons, Planning Bill Committee, 22/1/08; col. 334.]
This is really a question of whether we have got the balance right. Is there enough detail in relation to the thresholds that we are proposing in the fields set out? We believe that there is. Is there enough flexibility to allow for changes in developments in technology? We think that there is. Is there sufficient parliamentary safeguard? We think that there is through the affirmative resolution procedure. I hope that noble Lords will accept that this is a genuine effort to get the balance right and ensure that we can deal effectively with future technologies that may have a lot to offer us, but with sufficient parliamentary oversight.
Baroness Hamwee: Of course I accept that this is a genuine effort to get the balance right. But it is difficult to understand that there has to be flexibility with regard to the thresholds—which I have sought to preserve, although perhaps not in an elegant or correct way—but not enough to respond to developments in technology; because thresholds is capacity by another term. Perhaps I am not sufficiently imaginative about what new projects there might be as distinct from capacity. That is very much what I am driving at in these amendments. I do not know whether the Minister has anything more to say.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: We discussed carbon capture storage technology earlier. If it came forward as part of a generating station application, it could expect to be included as an associated work to the power station application. But it might be much more than that. It might be a national carbon capture and storage pipeline network, for example, which would be too extensive to be treated as an associated work to a generating station. It could qualify under Clause 20 as an NSIP in its own right as now defined, but it might not. We need these provisions to allow for that kind of flexibility. I cannot anticipate other projects and technologies, but I hope that they may come down the line in the next few years.
Baroness Hamwee: If developments are as dramatic as the Minister suggests, they are worthy of their own primary legislation.
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: I understand that, but we are talking about pressing strategic matters. We know that primary legislation sometimes takes a long time to deal with. It is a question of balance: a judgment needs to be made about whether you have new primary legislation or whether the flexibility in the Bill serves the purpose. The Government think that the flexibility serves a purpose.
Baroness Hamwee: I was about to beg leave to withdraw the amendment but, in response to the Minister, I refuse to be characterised as attempting to block proper development. That is not what we on these Benches are about. I also refuse to accept that the Government are not in a position, when faced with something important, to ensure that it is dealt with. However, before I provoke the Minister further, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 120 and 121 not moved.]
Clause 14, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 15 [Generating stations]:
[Amendments Nos. 122 to 127 not moved.]
[Amendment No. 128 not moved.]
Baroness Andrews moved Amendment No. 129:
129: Clause 16, page 9, line 12, leave out from “the” to “, or” in line 13 and insert “nominal voltage of the line is expected to be less than 132 kilovolts”
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 16, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 17 [Underground gas storage facilities]:
Baroness Andrews moved Amendment No. 130:
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 17, as amended, agreed to.
Baroness Andrews moved Amendment No. 131:
131: After Clause 19, insert the following new Clause—
(1) The construction of a pipe-line by a gas transporter is within section 14(1)(ea) only if (when constructed) each of the conditions in subsections (2) to (5) is expected to be met in relation to the pipe-line.
(2) The pipe-line must be wholly or partly in England.
(a) the pipe-line must be more than 800 millimetres in diameter and more than 40 kilometres in length, or
(b) the construction of the pipe-line must be likely to have a significant effect on the environment.
(4) The pipe-line must have a design operating pressure of more than 7 bar gauge.
(5) The pipe-line must convey gas for supply (directly or indirectly) to at least 50,000 customers, or potential customers, of one or more gas suppliers.
(6) In the case of a pipe-line that (when constructed) will be only partly in England, the construction of the pipe-line is within section 14(1)(ea) only to the extent that the pipe-line will (when constructed) be in England.
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(7) “Gas supplier” has the same meaning as in Part 1 of the Gas Act 1986 (c. 44) (see section 7A(11) of that Act).”
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Andrews moved Amendment No. 132:
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 133 not moved.]
Baroness Andrews moved Amendment No. 134:
134: Clause 20, page 12, line 3, leave out “, and has been granted, for its construction,” and insert “for its construction by virtue of section 14(1)(f), and has been granted,”
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 20, as amended, agreed to.
[Amendment No. 134A not moved.]
Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 135:
The noble Baroness said: I also speak to Amendments Nos. 136, 137, 139 and 158. I declared an interest earlier, in that I am affected by development at Heathrow, but the amendments to this clause are about all airports.
In the Commons on Report, the Minister, Mr Healey, commenting on the intensification of the use of airports, said that it seemed,
- “an anomaly that the new planning system should deal with a significant increase in capacity at airports only when that was the result of physical development”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/6/08; col. 515.]
I agree but I am scarred by experiences around the inquiries regarding Heathrow. I do not mean the length of the last inquiry, but conditions imposed appear to melt away, undertakings given appear not to be undertaken and so on. I want to probe some of the Bill’s provisions, and distinguish between what an airport is capable of supporting and what it is permitted to provide. The terminal 4 permission permitted an increase in the number of passengers. There was little confidence in that locally, and I think that lack of confidence has been borne out. The Bill should give as many assurances as possible by referring to the airport being capable of providing or what it is permitted to provide by way of air passenger transport services.
I shall not repeat the long discussion in the Commons about, among other things, the Cranford agreement and runway alternation at Heathrow. The Minister said that he would clarify the position to the extent that he could. These issues were raised in particular by John McDonnell. I have checked with him and he believes that he did not receive any follow-up correspondence from the Minister.
Are my amendments relating to what is permitted in this context covered by Clause 31(2)(c), which refers to,
- “an increase in the permitted use of an airport is treated as a material change in the use of the airport”?
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I was interested to note that a significant increase is described in terms of air passenger services as an increase in the number of passengers. I believe that the number of air movements, or possibly the number of passengers and air movements, are normally referred to in this context. The figure of 50,000 more air movements a year to which I have referred in my amendment may not be correct; I was advised that it was equivalent to 10 million passengers. However, this is a probing amendment and I hope that the Minister will not go into the detail of the numbers. There is a point of principle here rather than of numbers.
The Stansted decision, to which I think my noble friend Lady Tonge will refer, was announced last week, and dealt with movements as well as passenger numbers. For many purposes the numbers of flights are most relevant. Flights use fuel and disturb people—I use a mild term—on the ground, however many or however few passengers are on any given flight. I hope that the Minister will respond favourably to these probing amendments. I am genuinely puzzled as to why the relevant clause deals with the matter in the way that it does. I beg to move.
11 pm
Baroness Tonge: Resisting the expansion of Heathrow Airport is an article of my political faith, and the Committee ought to know that. I declare an interest as the president of HACAN ClearSkies, which is the main campaigning group against the expansion of our airports.
I want particularly to look in detail—I did the maths before I had a very good dinner tonight, so I am pretty sure that it is accurate—at Amendment No. 136, which questions the use of the number of passengers to assess the expansion of an airport. It is not really so relevant when you are thinking about the noise pollution and air pollution in an area. That is much more related to the number of air traffic movements. If you do the sums, 10 million passengers could be contained in 50,000 aeroplanes, if one assumes that the average—I am told—of 200 passengers per plane applied. If you had an average of 200 passengers per plane, an increase of 10 million passengers would mean 50,000 extra air traffic movements. That is not stated in the Bill.
In fact, we know that does not happen, because planes do not have an average number of passengers. Sometimes they are quite small, and sometimes they fly with very few passengers at all. We have seen examples in the press recently of aeroplanes flying with no passengers, but they must do so to keep that slot in that airport open for that airline. We are causing air pollution and noise pollution just for the sake of keeping a slot open, with no passengers transported at all. Many more flights than 50,000 might be used to carry those 10 million passengers.
As my noble friend said, the amendment is to probe the Government’s thinking on the issue and to attempt to more accurately quantify the nuisance to an area from noise and pollution, should the expansion go ahead. If the Government will not use just air traffic movements as the criteria, they should use both either/or; either 10 million passengers or a limit of 50,000 air
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My noble friend Lady Hamwee said that the conditions imposed melted away after the terminal 4 inquiry and the terminal 5 inquiry. In fact, we were told after terminal 4 that there would be no more expansion at Heathrow, and we were told during the terminal 5 inquiry—of which I attended a great deal—that there was no need for a third runway and that the rumours that were being put about were ridiculous. In those inquiries and just after, we were actually told lies. When I saw the figures for Stansted, I thought, “Here we go again, misleading the public and trying to bamboozle people into thinking that there will be less disturbance than there really will be”. I urge the Government, on the side of honesty and decency, to specify carefully in the Bill just what we are expecting in terms of passenger numbers and air traffic movements.
Earl Cathcart: I accept that these amendments are probing in nature, and I listened with interest to the questions of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I will be equally interested in the Minister’s reply. I am sure that Amendments Nos. 135 and 137 are entirely probing and I await the Minister’s response. It is odd that there is a discrepancy between the phrasing of subsections (5) and (8). One uses the words “capable” and “permitted”. At face value, those amendments would explicitly place a limit on the capacity of all airports’ passenger capacity, which could be altered only if permission were granted.
I understand why the noble Baroness tabled Amendments Nos. 136 and 139 as probing amendments. Why have the Government used different measurements of airport activity? I agree entirely with the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Tonge, that the relevance to the public and the communities affected is surely the number of aircraft movements. That is especially the case in relation to climate change. I was interested in the description given by the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, of slots being kept open when no passengers were being flown. We are interested not in the number of passengers but in aircraft movements.
Amendment No. 138 in the group refers to the hours of operation of an airport. This can be a highly emotive topic for the communities that surround airports and fall under their flight paths. We know from repeated complaints about airport expansion that people feel strongly about the detrimental effects on their lives that aircraft noise can cause. I should not repeat my earlier comments when I spoke to Amendment No. 42 of my noble friend Lord Jenkin, but this issue is tied closely to the points that I raised.
The use of airports and their expansion are exactly the sort of issues that must be laid open to proper consultation and public debate. Any major development
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Lord Adonis: I say, first, to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that my information is that a letter was sent on the points she raised about the Cranford agreement and permitted development to John McDonnell MP after the first day of the Report stage in another place. However, I will look at the issue and if the letter was not sent, I will write to the noble Baroness and to Mr McDonnell.
Baroness Hamwee: I apologise if I unfairly described what did not happen. I asked Mr McDonnell and his response was, “If I got the letter, it was so uninteresting that I did not notice”.
Lord Adonis: I cannot conceive that any letter from my department could be uninteresting, but the fact that a letter has been sent may not mean that it was received, whether it was interesting or not. I shall look at this issue and if there has been a slip-up in my department, I shall ensure that we immediately write to the noble Baroness and copy the letter to John McDonnell.
Clause 22 sets out the thresholds for which airport-related development is classed as a nationally significant infrastructure project. Amendments Nos. 135 and 137 seek to probe the sections of the Bill that deal with alterations to airports. Perhaps I may explain the position. Airport developments are already given maximum permitted uses by virtue of their planning permissions and, in the future, development consent orders will also specify maximum permitted uses. I know that the amendments are probing, but perhaps I may explore them more fully.
They could inadvertently create a distinction between the permitted number of services and the services that an airport is capable of providing. This could mean that a developer might try to seek planning permission under the Town and Country Planning Act for a permitted use of fewer than 10 million passengers a year, even though the alterations themselves would make the airport capable of serving more than 10 million passengers a year. We do not believe that such a position would be justifiable.
Clause 31(2)(c) states that an increase in the permitted use of an airport counts as a material change in the use of the airport. This means that an increase in the permitted use of the airport counts as “development” within the meaning of the Bill, and therefore development consent would be required if the increase in the permitted use exceeded the thresholds in Clause 22. I believe that that is the assurance that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was seeking from me.
Amendment No. 158 seeks to delete that subsection, with the effect that an airport operator seeking to increase the capacity of its airport above 10 million passengers a year—or 10,000 air transport movements
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The noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Tonge, also raised in Amendments Nos. 136 and 139 the issue of why the airports threshold is expressed in terms of numbers of passengers rather than the number of air transport movements. I can tell the noble Baronesses that the Government took this approach following consultation, as we do not want the definition of a nationally significant infrastructure project airport development to be in effect a definition related to the construction of a new runway. Airport-related development may well include runway developments, as described by the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, but it could also include work to terminals which would not necessarily have an impact on the number of aeroplanes using a runway—for example, if the terminal and not the runway were the limiting factor on capacity. We believe that most reasonable people would agree that if an airport wanted to cater for an additional 10 million passengers or more per annum, the development would be of national significance irrespective of whether it needed to do development work on the runway.
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