Lord Jamieson (Con)

My Lords, this is a significant proposed new clause, which the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, spoke to in Committee, where he made broader remarks on the functionality of our planning system, which he has repeated today. I recall the comments about the length of time it was taking to get a bypass round Stonehenge, and my comment that it will take longer to build that bypass than Stone Age man took to build Stonehenge. We agree with the issue that the noble Viscount is seeking to address: that the planning system does not work all the time for these large national infrastructure projects. They take too long, the costs go up and deliverability goes down. So I have immense respect for those who have taken the time to draft this new clause reflecting some of the comments made in Committee—I really appreciate the time that that has taken. The noble Viscount proposes that each order determining an application to be a critical national priority must be presented to Parliament as a full public Bill. Paragraph 3 of the proposed new schedule then sets out a petitioning process, a counter-petitioning process and a reporting process. The remaining parts of this lengthy amendment provide a highly detailed description of how such a Bill would progress through a Joint Committee and then complete its passage. However, we do not consider that presenting a Bill to Parliament with all the associated procedures would be a proportionate proposal. We are somewhat sympathetic to confirmatory Acts in areas such as nuclear, but this is a prescriptive amendment and therefore one that we cannot support, even if we understand the issue.