Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)

My Lords, I am delighted to speak to the amendments in this group, and I thank my noble friend Lady Coffey for signing a number of them. The reason I asked for this group to stand alone is to have an opportunity for a short debate relating to the changes in Clauses 4 and 5 that the Government have brought in at quite a late stage and to understand the background to those changes. In summing up on the previous group, the Minister referred to the guidance and perhaps she might be able to elaborate on that, subject to what I am going to say. The Bill removes the requirement on a developer under the Planning Act 2008 to carry out pre-application consultation on a proposed project. That will, I understand, remove category 1 and 2 persons—that is, the owners and occupiers of the land. While I understand the Government’s need and desire to speed up the delivery of infrastructure, removing the duty to consult raises major concerns among the agricultural community. As we have established in previous debates on earlier groups, the consultation process is essential and can speed up the process. It is essential for both landowners and occupiers directly impacted by any project and for the developer. This process enables the developer to gain essential feedback from landowners and occupiers who will be directly impacted. I am sure the Minister would agree that the earliest possible consultation and dialogue would allow a landowner or occupier to understand how they might be impacted by a project and to seek changes at the earliest opportunity to mitigate that impact, such as changing the location of a pylon. As my noble friend Lady Coffey stated, pylons and other major critical infrastructure impacted by this Bill will have a big impact on the farming community. Once you are at the stage of a statutory consultation, when the application for the scheme goes to PINS, it is too late to get any change to the scheme. The Government have included an amendment, I understand, to replace pre-application consultation with guidance to developers around consultation, and the Minister referred to it in summing up the previous debate. Among others, the National Farmers’ Union is deeply concerned that if the guidance is not detailed and prescriptive enough, landowners and occupiers will not be provided with details about schemes and their intended location, and it will not, therefore, be possible to seek changes with the developer to reduce the impact of a scheme on a farm business. Pre-application consultation should be mandatory, not just guidance. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, remarked in the previous group, if you give a developer an inch, they will take more than a mile. I understand that Clause 4 was added at a late stage in the proceedings in the other place by the Government in Committee. I am trying to understand why the Government and the department brought in these changes, particularly as farming organisations, such as the National Farmers’ Union, would have supported the original drafting of the Bill in respect of pre-application requirements. In their view, it would have struck a better balance between speeding up infrastructure and adequately consulting impacted parties.