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We are not attracted to the use of the phrase “suitable storage facilities” in Amendment No. 148, which we feel is not sufficiently defined and moves away from the primary purpose of Clause 25, which is to capture the sort of proposed development that is of national significance. We also believe that warehousing is a key element of any such development. On that basis, we believe that the word “warehouses” in subsection (6) is already adequate.
Finally, government Amendment No. 172, on Crossrail extensions, will ensure that extensions to the Crossrail scheme and alterations to railway facilities for the purpose of or in connection with Crossrail do not necessarily need to be considered under the planning Acts, but can instead be authorised under the Transport and Works Act 1992 in respect of which Section 48 of the Crossrail Act 2008 confers additional enabling powers. Without this proposed amendment, Crossrail extensions and alterations that meet the railway threshold in Clause 24 would be prevented from being authorised
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Lord Berkeley: I hope that my noble friend does not mind if I ask him a question about his amendment. It seems a little odd that a Crossrail extension is again suggested as a special case. I am not sure exactly what he means by that. Crossrail trains will end up—apart from at Heathrow Airport, where there are buffers underground—on the main line. If the trains go beyond the existing extension, that will involve electrification and, possibly, the building of some sidings. Much of that would probably be on permitted development, because it is on the existing railway. Why is it thought important to bring Crossrail in as a special case whereas an extension to a railway line in Manchester or elsewhere would not get this preferential treatment?
Lord Adonis: I shall write to my noble friend setting out the full reasons why. Our reasoning is that, as he said, it would be a development of an existing railway which had already gone through an exhaustive parliamentary process and consent procedure; it is in a different position from a wholly new line of the kind he suggested. But I shall be happy to set out our reasoning in greater detail.
11.45 pm
Lord Woolmer of Leeds: On a previous amendment the Minister’s noble friend Lord Hunt gave some empirical data to support his argument about the offshore wind. I think he said 6 per cent of the applications and so on would fall within this.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: Perhaps I may explain. Looking back over the past 15 years at what has been approved, about 6 per cent would have fallen under the new regime proposed in the Bill.
Lord Woolmer of Leeds: That is helpful. On the amendment of my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the size of rail freight interchanges, the Minister did not supply the Committee with empirical data on the significance of sticking to at least 60 hectares as opposed to 30 hectares. It is an important question as to whether or not historically rail freight interchanges have been 60 hectares or above and what the impact would be of taking 30 hectares. If the Minister does not have the information at the moment, perhaps he will write to the noble Lords who are interested in that point.
By sticking with 60 hectares, there is not a shadow of a doubt that major rail freight interchanges will be out in the green belt and the countryside and further away from the ultimate point of need. That means that many lorries will be back on the road and shifting goods from the green belt sites into the urban areas,
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Lord Adonis: I do not have the empirical data to hand but I shall write to my noble friend on the average size of developments.
Baroness Hamwee: The Minister might not wish to have the data which seem to be flying towards him at this hour of night. When he writes on Crossrail, will he explain what is meant by an extension and, in this instance, what Crossrail is? In lay terms, an extension to Crossrail could mean something very significant and more or less amounting to a new railway line. But that is because we have been talking over the years about extensions to Crossrail in perhaps a looser way than is meant here and it would be helpful to understand the detail.
Lord Berkeley: Perhaps I may help the noble Baroness. In theory, a new line to Scotland to help the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, could be an extension to Crossrail.
Lord Adonis: I am informed that Crossrail extension is a legal term defined in the Crossrail Act 2008. Alas, I do not have the wording of that Act to hand but I will supply it to my noble friend.
The Earl of Caithness: What a horribly disjointed debate we have had. Let us hope the groupings are a bit better in the future. I am grateful to the Minister for what he has said. It seems a little odd that there should be confusion regarding nationally significant infrastructure projects. I question whether Part 3 ought to be entitled “Nationally significant infrastructure projects”—perhaps it should refer to infrastructure projects for England. I am grateful to the Minister for explaining the procedure. The changes to the devolution arrangements will doubtless come in a few years’ time. I have no intention of upsetting them under this Bill—they will arise for different reasons.
I hope that the Government will work very closely with the Scottish Government when it comes to cross-border issues. It was quite clear when we looked at the draft marine Bill that there were considerable problems between the Scottish and Westminster Governments on maritime issues. I hope that the Minister will bear that in mind and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 145 not moved.]
Clause 25 [Rail freight interchanges]:
[Amendments Nos. 146 to 151 not moved.]
Clause 28 [Waste water treatment plants]:
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath moved Amendment No. 152:
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The noble Lord said: I shall speak first to the government amendments and then the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, will speak to his.
Clause 28 defines the types of waste water treatment plant development that will be classed as nationally significant under the Bill and so require consent from the IPC. There has been considerable consultation on the planning White Paper and, more recently, extensive discussions with industry. Several stakeholders have raised concerns with the Government that the threshold for waste water treatment plants is too low and may capture projects that are not of national significance. We have listened to those concerns and have been persuaded by the arguments that industry and stakeholders have made. As a result, we have tabled our Amendments Nos. 152 and 153, which increase the threshold so as only to capture the biggest projects in England where the additional treatment capacity exceeds a population equivalent of 500,000. The challenge, as ever, is to bring the empirical evidence. My understanding is that this threshold will be consistent with the project caseload anticipated in the Bill impact assessment of one project every 10 years. I beg to move.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Amendments Nos. 154 and 155 are grouped with the government amendment. I was fascinated by what the Minister said about the reasons for changing the figures with regard to Amendments Nos. 152 and 153. Although he said that arguments had been produced, he did not actually tell us what the arguments were, except to mention the possibility of one case every 10 years. I suppose that that is an argument, but whether it justifies national significance I have no means of judging, if he will forgive my putting it that way. When he responds to my amendments, perhaps he will deal with the matter in more detail.
My amendments relate to Clause 29 on hazardous waste facilities. There are two sorts of hazardous waste. The Minister has to some degree answered the question of my noble friend Lord Jenkin, who is no longer present, about nuclear waste. I looked at these figures and wondered whether hazardous waste facilities included nuclear waste. I could not see nuclear waste producing anything like these figures annually, so I wondered what we were talking about. I accept that there are other forms of hazardous waste. We used to have a very large hazardous waste disposal facility in my part of the world many years ago. The trouble was that it was so effective and efficient that it drew waste from about half the country, which caused immense angst among local people who knew about it, because the hazardous wastes were being transported on ordinary roads in ordinary transport. It would arrive at a particular point in Essex, and local people would ask, “Why should we have to dispose of other people’s hazardous waste?”. It was a question which was very difficult to resolve, but the fact was that a facility was there that could deal with large quantities of such waste, and did so very efficiently and effectively. Of not least interest about the establishment in question was that the biggest part of the waste disposal operation consisted of taking somebody’s waste and finding that it was somebody else’s raw material. It transferred an immense amount
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My amendments probe the figures in the clause. One hundred thousand tonnes per year of deep storage is roughly 100,000 cubic yards. If one is disposing of material in solid rock in permeable foundation, it amounts to a fairly heavy mining commitment each year. Exactly what does one finish up with after 10, 15 or 20 years of that kind of establishment? Will the Minister explain that? Thirty thousand tonnes per year in any other case is understandable, because people become very concerned about the materials if they are disposed of on the surface and there is some merit in limiting the scale. Even so, after 10 years, you are talking about 300,000 tonnes of such material being disposed of and the heat would keep growing. Will the Minister explain why he has lifted the figures and what lies behind the change that the Government are proposing?
Lord Berkeley: Perhaps the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith and I could explore the numbers a little more. In Clause 28, the Government propose to increase the threshold to 500,000 people, which is roughly one-100th spread over England and Wales, if I have got the mathematics right.
I cannot see what is strategic about these plants. They are water treatment plants or sewage plants, or whatever we want to call them. Every town has to have one—London has lots of them and will have a great big tunnel down the Thames, which might be strategic—but they are not interconnected, so I wonder what is strategic about them. Is it just a convenient way of getting planning permission for something which is not very popular? If so, I could understand that as well. I compare them with a dozen rail freight terminals around the country which have to be connected by rail to work, but they are not apparently strategic—we will probably come back to that another day.
I would understand the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, to Clause 29 if I knew how many tonnes of hazardous waste were disposed of in the country as a whole. If it is the same figure as he has given, it is clear that there will be a lot of road or rail transport; if it is 10 or 100 times that, it might be more strategic. If my noble friend does not have the figures now, I am sure that he can write to us.
Midnight
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: This has been an extremely interesting debate. I shall deal with the waste-water amendment first, and the question of thresholds. I failed to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, in moving my amendments, as to why it was appropriate to change the threshold, although I should have thought from his general stance that he would have welcomed the fact that we have raised the threshold.
During the White Paper consultation we asked questions about whether the 150,000 population threshold was about right. We consulted with stakeholders and a pretty strong view came back that we did not get the threshold right in the Bill and that the 150,000 threshold would catch too many numerous schemes that are not genuinely nationally significant.
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My noble friend Lord Berkeley challenged me to make comparisons between the previous debate with my noble friend on what is nationally significant in relation to waste water. It is a good question, but it is difficult to answer in strict comparisons. If we are frank, common-sense judgments have to be made here, and I take him back to the original impact assessment on the Bill of an anticipated application approval of about one in 10 years. He may say that that is not a proper definition of “nationally significant”, but our view is that that kind of scale and threshold is of national significance. He mentioned the Thames Tideway, which is an interesting point that embraces major developments through an existing sewerage treatment works. My understanding is that the planning application for the 32 kilometre Thames tunnel is part of the project and would, under the threshold, go to the IPC, which is one illustration of what we mean by nationally significant.
As for the hazardous waste facility threshold, in comparison to existing facilities I do not have the figures that my noble friend asked for. I shall try to find out and let him know. On how the threshold now in the Bill would impact, my understanding is that currently there are only nine hazardous waste landfills and one deep storage facility, each with a permitted throughput of 100 kilotonnes or more per annum. These all serve a national need, which is why we think that we have the threshold figures about right.
Clearly, as I think we are beginning to understand, these are judgments. For each project area listed in the Bill there are different considerations in relation to the threshold. Overall we believe that we have the balance right; overall we believe that in its work the IPC will deal with projects of national significance, but that the IPC should not be swamped with applications that would impact on its ability to come to appropriate decisions on projects of national importance. In the end it is a judgment, but we think that we have the judgment about right.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath moved Amendment No. 153:
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 28, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 29 [Hazardous waste facilities]:
[Amendments Nos. 154 and 155 not moved.]
Clause 30 [When development consent is required]:
Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 156:
The noble Baroness said: This amendment is repeated in my Amendment No. 162 in a later clause. Clause 30 provides for when development consent is required,
- “to the extent that the development is or forms part of a nationally significant infrastructure project”.
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Both amendments would remove “or forms part of”, to probe what that means. Are there some de minimis arrangements? How will they work? Is the provision designed to sweep up after the bulk of the project has been determined? There is nothing sinister in this: I am unclear what the limits are. It seems odd that development consent and all the paraphernalia that that entails would apply if the part is very small. I beg to move.
Lord Dixon-Smith: We added our name to this amendment which originally came from the Law Society.
Baroness Hamwee: It came out of my head.
Lord Dixon-Smith: I apologise to the noble Baroness, but my advice was that the Law Society suggested the amendment. Anyway, it is neither here nor there. I am grateful to the noble Baroness and quite happy if she had responsibility for it. It does not make any difference because I am happy to have my name added to it. The amendment is designed to clarify, as the noble Baroness said, whether additional minor development works might require development consent and the process by which that would be dealt with.
Amendment No. 157, which we also have in this group, deals with the question of changing the fuel source for a generating station. As drafted, the clause deals with only one type of fuel conversion. One can conceive of other types of fuel conversion perhaps happening. I can easily conceive of a coal station converting to gas, particularly if carbon sequestration were found to be uneconomic and not to work. You would then immediately halve the emissions for the same amount of power generated. Doing that on an existing site with connections to the grid and everything else might make extremely good sense in those circumstances. We thought that the Bill was too narrowly drafted and the definition ought to include a change of fuel used without referring to one particular type of fuel or another, which subsection (2) does at the moment. I hope that the Government will agree that that is a more sensible way of approaching the issue.
Amendment No. 159 goes back to what a nationally significant infrastructure project is. If work relates to a minor national infrastructure project which is none the less important and must still be done, how does one deal with the consent for that? It does not appear to be clear in the Bill how these matters will be treated. If one has a major national power station and some enhancement suddenly becomes either desirable or necessary, and that has to go through the local planning system, there might be some interesting consequences as a result of the time spent getting such matters dealt with. We must think about that.
I admit that I find it odd that Amendment No. 395 was added to this group but, since it has been, we may as well get it out of the way. The measuring and marking out of land is an offence under the Bill if it is done without consent. We thought that we ought to find out precisely why that is so. The measuring and marking out of land does not do a great deal of damage to land. I entirely agree that it ought only to
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The perpetrator of this disaster, from the point of view of the recipient, usually has no knowledge that that is the situation. We must think about that. Somebody may well give somebody notice in writing that he intends, because of the terms of his consent, to go on to and start marking it out on a particular date. That notice may well not arrive at the other end, such is the reliability of the modern postal service. Of course there are other means of communication—telephones, e-mail and all the rest—but the accepted method of communication for this sort of thing is a written notice. Sadly, they do not always arrive. We ought to have a little discussion of that topic. It would be an offence in that instance, but once through inadvertence not of one’s own creation.
Lord Adonis: I shall first deal with Amendments Nos. 156 and 162 of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, which probe why development consent will be required for development where the development only forms part of a nationally significant infrastructure project rather than being one in its own right. I reassure the noble Baroness that her amendment is not necessary. Clause 30 of the Bill is designed to regulate nationally significant infrastructure projects. To the extent that development is proposed as part of such a project, that development will require consent under the terms of the Bill. However, development that could be carried out separately, and which is not clearly part of a development NSIP, will continue to enjoy existing permitted development rights.
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