OFFENCES (Hansard, 19 November 1976)

§ Mr. Moyle

I beg to move, That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said amendment.

This amendment appears to justify the thesis of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Mr. Pavitt) that the House of Lords is not a suitable revising Chamber and that it makes a dog's dinner of much legislation.

Clause 14 provides that any applicant for planning permission for any notifiable works under the Bill must notify the Board of the proposed application by giving a notice in the prescribed form. Their Lordships did not disagree with that proposition. However, by this amendment, what they then proposed to do was remove from the Bill the necessity for the provision of the sort of information which the Board would require in order to consider the notification properly.

Although retaining the desire for notice in the prescribed form, their Lordships would also want us to remove the sanction which would be applied if the appropriate notice were not made. In the circumstances, I advise the House to reject the amendment.

§ Mrs. Lynda Chalker (Wallasey)

I am at a loss to understand the Minister's argument. It appears that the Government have had a sudden change of heart. I looked up what was said in another place on the third day of the Committee stage and found that when the noble Baroness, Baroness Young moved the amendment which the Government now seek to reject, not one word was said on the Government side. I do not know 1789 about the other place having a dog's dinner: there was no dinner at all on this amendment.

The reason for the amendment was the question of the penalty. No one seeks to omit the detail from the scrutiny of the Board, but surely the penalty is quite inappropriate when the notice must have been served. If the notice has been served properly, as provided by other clauses, it is the question of the penalty applying to provision of the detail which concerns us.

If there is to be a question of subsequent planning detail the lawyers would have a dog's dinner in deciding which of the planning procedures prescribed would be covered by the penalty clause, Clause 18, as it relates to Clause 14(1) and (2). It would be a mess to throw out a sensible amendment from another place.