The recommittal of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill to the House of Commons Standing Committee is now complete and we await the remaining stages.
It was originally introduced to the House on 4 December 2002 and the House treated it with - to use the Minister's words - great despatch: it had had its Second Reading and had passed through Committee by the end of January. The remaining stages were awaited keenly yet nothing was heard until June when it was announced that it was to be recommitted.
As mentioned in previous briefings from HBF the decision on recommittal was taken to enable Government to bring forward provisions which will end the Crowns immunity from planning control, subject to certain safeguards and introduce other new or amended clauses. Given the substantive nature of the proposed amendments Government wanted the House of Commons to have the opportunity to debate these new provisions fully before the Bill resumes its remaining stages.
However, we should bear in mind that of the original Bill, the Committee discussed only 30 of its 90 clauses, and one of the six schedules. A large proportion of the Bill was therefore never discussed in Committee at all. Now we have more than 120 pages of highly complex proposed provisions, many of which are Government amendments. In other words, this Bill is far longer that the original Bill, which took up 74 pages and there have been only eight sessions allocated for debate in the Standing Committee this time round.
HBF has lobbied all members of the new Standing Committee plus other interested MP's from the Opposition front bench teams in order to try and secure members interests. A copy of our updated position paper is attached.
Given the comparatively short time allocated to the Bill in the current Standing Committee sessions, there may be limited opportunities for HBF's concerns on the Bill to be raised at this stage. We shall therefore be planning a forward lobbying campaign and requesting meetings with the Opposition Spokesmen to explore the best opportunities for seeking changes to the legislation. It may be that these will in practice be during the Bill's passage through the House of Lords and we will be organising activity, possibly including another briefing seminar in the House of Lords once the Bill passes through the remaining stages in the Commons.