Lord Shipley (LD)

My Lords, this is a very interesting group of amendments. I look forward to the responses of the Minister to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, who made quite a number of important points, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman of Steventon. I just want to say something in relation to Amendment 131 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and others, including myself. I do not want to repeat what he has said—indeed, in debates on previous Bills we have had long discussions on the issue of chief planning officers—but I hope that the Minister will take this very seriously. Let me explain a further reason why I think Ministers need to do that. There are several areas of competence in the Bill for mayors. Four of them require planning advice. One is transport and local infrastructure, a second is housing and strategic planning, a third is economic development and regeneration and a fourth is environment and climate change. Each of those will have either an elected member or a commissioner leading, as it were—I will not say “in charge”, because commissioners have to report to the mayor, and the strategic authority would be making the relevant decisions. The point is that in any one person, to have the professional capacity in each of those four areas of competence that I have identified, you have to have professional expertise. I do not see in either the Bill or the Explanatory Notes exactly how that is going to be provided. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made an unanswerable case for there being a chief planning officer who brings all these things together within a local planning authority and within the strategic authority. No doubt we will come back to this on Report, but I hope that the Government understand its importance. If you are trying to drive growth, you have to have professional expertise in place to do it and I suggest that chief planning officers are one of those positions.