22:38 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr. David Kidney)

A well-functioning planning system is one of the key factors underpinning our quality of life. The 2008 Act reflects the Government’s commitment to sustainable development and to tackling climate change. The current system for providing nationally significant infrastructure—electric lines of 132 kV and above have been defined as such in the 2008 Act—is still too complex and bureaucratic. There are overlapping multiple consent regimes, long and variable inquiry times, and two-stage decisions, and there can be several decision makers for a single project. The 2008 Act addresses these problems and creates a fairer and faster system. The IPC works at arm’s length from Government and will consider applications for development consent for all major infrastructure projects, such as this proposal from National Grid. In addition to all the other benefits that a fairer and faster system brings, the Government estimate that the economic benefit of improving the system could be up to £5 billion by 2030.

[Source]