Monday 24th March 2025
(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberPlanning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
21:56 - The House divided: - Ayes: 330 / Noes: 74 - Question accordingly agreed to.
This text is a record of ministerial contributions to a debate held as part of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 passage through Parliament.
In 1993, the House of Lords Pepper vs. Hart decision provided that statements made by Government Ministers may be taken as illustrative of legislative intent as to the interpretation of law.
This extract highlights statements made by Government Ministers along with contextual remarks by other members. The full debate can be read here
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Angela Rayner)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
It is time to get Britain building again. It is what working people expect of this Government and it is what we will deliver. Our Planning and Infrastructure Bill is critical to achieving economic growth, higher living standards and a more secure future for our country. This is our plan for change in action: action to build 1.5 million homes in this Parliament and a fast track of 150 major infrastructure projects—more than were decided over the 14 years of the previous Government. The Bill is also key to making Britain a clean energy superpower, bringing down bills for working people and securing our energy supply in a more uncertain world.
Make no mistake: the Bill will transform the lives of working people and Britain’s prospects for years to come. It is hugely ambitious, and rightly so. Everywhere I go, I hear the same frustrations: “We just can’t build anything any more,” and, “We desperately need more homes and more development.” For too long, the answer has always been no, which has choked growth, leaving working people worse off and leaving Britain behind, with trains that do not work, roads that are clogged and not enough homes being built.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
I gently say to the Secretary of State that none of my constituents is saying, “In Shropshire, we don’t need any more homes. We don’t want any more homes.” They just want to be consulted. They want the homes in the right place, at the right scale, with the right architecture and in the right numbers. They want their voices listened to through a local plan—not ignored, as the current Government are doing.
Angela Rayner
I gently say to the right hon. Member that it is this Government who have brought forward mandatory local plans, and it was his Government who did not. For too long we have left home ownership to collapse, with homelessness soaring and over 160,000 children in temporary accommodation. This is a country that simply is not working.
The time it takes to secure planning permission for major projects has almost doubled in the last decade, and it now takes more than four years. It is slower and more costly to build big infrastructure in England than in France and Italy. No new reservoir has been built for over 30 years. There are countless other examples, such as the critical new road improvement scheme for Norwich, which would create jobs and speed up journeys yet was held up for two years by unsuccessful legal challenges. We have the ridiculous situation where 139 desperately needed houses were delayed in Bingley because of a row over the speed of balls at the neighbouring cricket club.
The result of such delays has been fewer homes built, higher energy bills, and lower productivity and growth. For 14 years, the country has been crying out for a Government with the will to change that. Successive Tory Prime Ministers promised that change, but when the bold action was demanded they were too afraid to stand up to their Back Benchers.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
Can the Secretary of State outline what powers in the Bill she will use to take on developers and make sure that they build based on the planning permissions they already have?
Angela Rayner
The hon. Member will know as a member of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee that we have already made changes through the national planning policy framework, and we have our new homes accelerator programme, which is already providing thousands of homes. The Bill is about building on those powers to ensure that we get Britain building. It was his Government who did not build the houses and the infrastructure that we desperately need and who were too timid to face down the vested interests. This Labour Government are on the side of the builders, not the blockers, and we are saying, “No more.”
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
There is nobody who does not welcome the 1.5 million houses target, and it is important that we see those homes. Part of infrastructure is electric vehicle charging systems. Many people I ask about electric cars say that they are not getting one because there are not enough charging points. Clause 43 indicates that there will be more EV charge points. Is that something the Secretary of State will share with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland? I also understand that some of the standard accessibility requirements do not meet the standards. Can she confirm that that will be changed?
Angela Rayner
The Bill will streamline the approval of street works needed for the installation of EV charge points, removing the need for licensing where works are able to be authorised by permits, because we recognise that people need that critical infrastructure as part of these reforms.
We have taken more action in eight months than the Opposition managed in 14 years of government. We have reversed the damaging changes made by the Tories to the national planning policy framework and have brought green belt into the 21st century. We have ended the de facto ban on new onshore wind, and we are supporting local authorities with an additional 300 planning officers. Just this month, we set out reforms to put growth at the heart of the statutory consultee system.
Many would have said, “Stop there and allow the reforms to bed in,” but Britain cannot afford to wait. We have been held back for too long by Governments without the will to drive change. This landmark Planning and Infrastructure Bill goes even further and faster.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on championing the expansion of affordable and social housing in particular. I ask her to take account of another excluded group: Gypsies and Travellers. They have been systematically discriminated against by the Conservatives over 14 years. There is no assessment of needs or statutory duty to provide sites any longer, and they are not in the strategic planning provisions. Can we rectify that in the Bill so that we have a level playing field for everybody who is in need of housing?
Angela Rayner
We are working with local authorities, and the Bill includes provision for strategic authorities so that we can look at where we have sites and ensure that people are accommodated. It is for local authorities to be able to do that.
The Bill starts with a quicker and more certain system for big ticket infrastructure projects. It will slice through the bureaucracy and speed up transport projects. It will overhaul how Government decisions on major infrastructure projects can be challenged, so that meritless cases will have one, rather than three, attempts at a legal challenge, stopping cases from being dragged endlessly and needlessly through the courts.
Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)
Somewhere knocking around in the system is a Government press release that says that the National Grid Sea Link project is being obstructed by too many objections. The reason that it is being objected to is that the National Grid wants to build a 90-foot-high converter station the size of five football pitches on the Minster marshes in Kent. We must have the right to object to that kind of project.
Angela Rayner
I gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that there is not a loss of the right to object. In fact, we are strengthening and clarifying those processes as part of the Bill. I will say it again: there will be a quicker and more certain system for big ticket infrastructure projects. The Bill will slice through bureaucracy and speed up transport projects. What it will not do is allow meritless cases to have three attempts at a legal challenge. It will stop cases from being dragged endlessly and needlessly through the courts. It will begin to strip away the unnecessary consultation requirements that do nothing to improve applications and do not meaningfully engage communities, but slow down the delivery of infrastructure that will benefit communities in the future. It will create greater flexibility so that projects can go through a more appropriate and faster planning route.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
The Secretary of State will understand that when a number of nationally strategic infrastructure projects are in one area, that has a huge impact. In my constituency we are looking at a strategic rail interchange, a major solar plant and the East West Rail project. Will she reassure my constituents that their voices will be heard under the Bill? Will she reassure us that when these issues go to the Planning Inspectorate and to the Secretary of State, the cumulative effect of national projects that are not present in local plans will be considered before decisions are taken?
Angela Rayner
As the hon. Gentleman knows, we will consult on the draft we have put forward. We want better and quality engagement as part of the Bill. Our changes will ensure that everyone works together early on, and that we have proportionate and faster decisions. We will make sure that the Government’s infrastructure policies are updated at least every five years, but the measures in the Bill are not the limit of our ambitions.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Ind)
The Secretary of State is outlining the process by which essential infrastructure needs to be built, but she will forgive me for coming back to Heathrow expansion. I would be extremely grateful if she could set out for us—perhaps not today, but later or in writing—the exact process for considering the expansion of Heathrow under the new legislation. In addition, could she explain why those who will be affected by compulsory purchase will now be removed as consultees at the pre-application stage?
Angela Rayner
I will not get into the details of any particular planning process, but I will say that the Bill is about better and quality engagement. Of course, statutory consultees will continue to be engaged, but what we do not want is major infrastructure projects continually being blocked for years and years. People have been speaking about some of these projects for decades, and we still do not have the connectivity that we desperately need.
We are open to strengthening the Bill, and we will give serious consideration to proposals that further our objectives. We will continue to engage with colleagues across the House, as well as with business and communities, on what might be done about existing requirements that are not working as they should. We are clear that where once the answer was always no, to get Britain building, to drive growth and to deliver opportunity, the answer must now be yes.
The Bill is also geared towards another crucial pledge: building the new homes that we need. We will boost house building in England by streamlining planning decisions.
David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
I warmly welcome the steps being taken to streamline the system and get more homes built. That, of course, includes social and affordable housing. Does the Secretary of State agree that that would go some way to helping the 160,000 children who are stuck in temporary accommodation?
Angela Rayner
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing the debate back to why we are all here and why we are in this mess in the first place. Over Christmas, when we all got to see our family and friends, I was thinking about the 160,000 children in temporary accommodation. During the general election campaign, one thing I was clear on was that we have to move forward to build the homes that people desperately need—behind every single one of those statistics is a family or an opportunity that is not being realised—and one of this Government’s missions is to strengthen that.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
If the Government are going to build 1.5 million homes over the course of this Parliament, and we are nine months into the first year of this Parliament, by my calculation they should have built 225,000 by now. Will the Secretary of State confirm how many homes have been built?
Angela Rayner
The hon. Gentleman has just given us an example of the mess the previous Government left us in. House building was going backwards, and they were nowhere near the figures they promised. That is why, within the first few months of us getting into power, we changed the national planning policy framework. We have been consulting, we have been working with industry, we have had a new homes accelerator—thousands more have been put into the system—and £2 billion for the affordable homes programme has been announced today.
We will boost house building in England by streamlining planning decisions, introducing a national scheme of delegation that sets out which types of application should be determined by officers and which by planning committees. Local democratic oversight is crucial to ensuring good development, but the right decisions must be taken at the right level to get Britain building.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Deputy Prime Minister is giving an excellent speech about the importance of building homes. She mentioned the importance of getting young people out of temporary accommodation, which I wholly support. Does she agree that it is not just about temporary accommodation but about families who are suffering from overcrowding, families in unsuitable accommodation and families at risk of homelessness, with the anxiety that brings? My inbox is full of that from residents in Harlow.
Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Not only have the Government inherited a really dire house building situation—we will turn the tide and build 1.5 million homes—but we have seen homelessness levels rise. The previous Government promised to end section 21 no-fault evictions but did not; we are going to do it. We will also bring in Awaab’s law, which will protect people in the rented sector. There is so much wrong with our housing system. The Government are starting to turn the tide on that. This Bill is one crucial step in the overall picture of what we are doing to improve circumstances for people, whether they want to buy a home, whether they are in a home or whether they are in privately rented accommodation.
I turn back to the planning committees. We will bring in new controls over the size of planning committees, increasing the pace and quality of decision making while maintaining robust debate. We are introducing mandatory training for planning committee members to improve their expertise while allowing councils to set their own planning fees to cover their costs, with a promise that that money will be reinvested in the system to help speed it up.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (North Cotswolds) (Con)
I welcome much of what the Bill will do. It will speeding up the planning system, which as a chartered surveyor who has practised in planning is I know desperately needed if we are to get more houses built. However, the one area of the Bill that I have concerns about is what she has just come on to. If local people feel completely overridden by their planning system, they will feel very hard done by. If we are to override local people, we might just as well have a nationally directed planning system rather than a local planning system. Will she think carefully about that balance?
Angela Rayner
I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s expertise in this area, and he is absolutely right to say that there has to be a balance; that is why the Bill sets out that controversial schemes will still go to full planning committees. I am sure he would recognise that there are other areas where local planners could do some of that work. If we set out the rules clearly, we can make the process better, so that where there is more need for that engagement—with the mandatory training for those on planning committees—we will get a better result. I hope the hon. Member will continue to engage with us in that vein.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the £2 billion in extra money for social homes being announced today and the 150 new nationally significant infrastructure projects for which the Bill will pave the way. We are the party of the builders, not the blockers, so more importantly we need more builders. That is why the £600 million announced for a new army of 60,000 more brickies, electricians and engineers is very welcome. Can I suggest that Rochdale’s Hopwood Hall college, which has a brilliant record in training construction workers, is included in this project?
Angela Rayner
As my hon. Friend says, 10 colleges of excellence were announced as part of the £600 million funding and 60,000 new apprenticeships. By giving our young people opportunities, this is part of making work pay. It will be fantastic, and I hope my hon. Friend will be engaged in that process. My colleagues in Government will have heard what he said. As a fellow Greater Manchester MP, I feel that Greater Manchester definitely should be part of that process.
Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
To pick up on the tone of the comments made about blockers, I knock on many doors in my constituency and find the narrative about nimbys blocking housing and people not wanting homes built in their constituency to be untrue. People recognise the need for additional homes for themselves, their children and the growing population, but what they worry about is infrastructure. This Bill does not include mandatory infrastructure targets, and that is why residents are so sceptical. Given their inability to get GP appointments at the moment, with additional homes and additional demand they will struggle even more. How can we reassure them that those needs will be met in the future?
Angela Rayner
Let me be clear: I do not call people of this country the blockers. I do not see that when I am out and about; I never saw it during the general election campaign. People want this development. The hon. Member makes an important point about infrastructure; people often say that the infrastructure is not there. This Bill streamlines infrastructure. I think it goes some way towards doing the work. It is not everything; we have to do a lot of other things, like we have done with section 106, for example. Under the previous Government, we often did not get the benefit of that, because people wriggled out of their obligations. I appreciate the tone of the hon. Member’s remarks. This Government are going to make sure that we build the houses that people want, where they want them, with consultation and with the critical infrastructure that they need.
At the same time, we will unlock land for housing and infrastructure by reforming the compulsory purchase process, ensuring that important projects that deliver public benefits—such as many more social and affordable homes—are given the green light, and that compensation paid to landowners is not excessive.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I warmly welcome the changes to hope value in order to build more affordable homes, but will the Secretary of State clarify whether that will also apply to wider projects for community benefit such as playing fields? Udney Park in Teddington in my constituency has lain derelict for over a decade as successive owners have wanted to develop it but cannot do so. There is a huge demand for community playing fields and the community wants to be able to access that land. Will she assure me that the hope value changes will apply much more broadly than just to affordable housing?
Angela Rayner
I hope that the hon. Member continues to engage, because we want to make sure that we can go as wide as we possibly can so that we get the land that is needed and we can build the houses that we desperately need. We are also doing work within the devolution Bill, which will be coming forward, around compulsory purchase on other assets of public value that are not for building on. That touches on the point that the hon. Member has raised.
We are also strengthening development corporations to make it easier to deliver the housing projects we need. Those corporations delivered previous generations of new towns. This Labour Government are building on our post-war legacy by giving them enhanced powers to help deliver our next generation of new towns. These will be communities built with local people in mind, with the affordable housing, GP surgeries, schools and public transport that working people expect and need.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister and I have a mutual passion: she too is a great fan of His Majesty’s work on the built environment and ensuring the high quality of design. One concern that a lot of people have is seeing the quality of design eroded, so that we see the same design in Kent as we do in Staffordshire. Would she look at what could be done to enhance design codes, because it feels like they have been eroded not enhanced?
Angela Rayner
The right hon. Gentleman reminds me of our time sparring at the Dispatch Box, but I am glad that I am on the Government side now. [Interruption.] I beg to differ.
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about design, and we are covering that in our new towns. He is right that His Majesty is also passionate about this; I think everybody is to be honest—nobody wants to live in an ugly home. Design is important, and it is different in different places: Yorkshire is different from Manchester, which is different from Devon. Ensuring that design is part of the process is crucial, but it must not prevent us from going forward. That is why we have clarified some of the issues around “beautiful” in the NPPF that were holding things up. I want to reassure Members across the House that we expect safe homes, beautiful homes and homes fit for the future in terms of renewables and energy efficiency.
To meet our net zero ambitions and drive growth, the Bill will speed up approvals for clean energy projects. Some projects currently face waits of over 10 years—another legacy of Tory failure. With a first ready, first connected system replacing the flawed first come, first served approach, and with £200 billion of investment unlocking growth through “Clean Power by 2030”, our reforms will protect households from the rollercoaster of foreign fossil fuel markets and usher in a new era of energy independence, in which despots like Putin can no longer have their boot on the nation’s throat.
Britain’s electricity grid needs a 21st century overhaul to connect the right power in the right places, which is why our plans for vital energy projects needed for clean power, including wind and solar projects, will be prioritised for grid connections, with those living within 500 metres of new pylons getting up to £250 a year off their electricity bills. We recognise the service of these communities in hosting the infrastructure that will lower everyone’s energy bills.
Bradley Thomas
The Deputy Prime Minister makes an important point about the access to energy that all our communities require. Particularly prominent in all our minds, at a time when we recognise that food security is national security, is the displacement of high-quality agricultural land and, in effect, energy becoming a new cash crop. Will she assure the House that we are not at risk of falling into that trap and that we will not displace high-quality agricultural land for energy?
Angela Rayner
I can assure the hon. Member—I gave him two chances; I must like him—that we will protect high-quality agricultural land. Farmers have used land in various ways throughout the decades and generations, and we will protect our high-quality agricultural land.
Finally, I want to turn to the measures in the Bill on development and nature recovery. We have some incredibly important habits and species in this country, and the Government could not have been clearer in our manifesto that we are committed to improving outcomes for nature.
Olivia Bailey (Reading West and Mid Berkshire) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on a fantastic speech and a great piece of legislation that will turbocharge our plans to restore nature at scale and build the homes that we need. Will she say a little more about how the Bill could help us to restore our precious chalk streams, such as the River Pang in my constituency?
Angela Rayner
The Bill is about how we can do nature recovery and protect nature. We think that it is a win-win. Under the previous Government, all sorts of problems held us up, and we tried to work with the then Government but they would not work with us. That is why they are now on the Opposition Benches and we are on the Government Benches, building.
I am sure that all Members across the House share the goal of improving outcomes for nature, but I am also confident that no one here thinks that the system is working well. Any set of rules that results in a £100 million bat tunnel is an outrage. I know that Opposition Members agree, but they were determined to take a clumsy approach to fixing nutrient neutrality that risked ripping up environmental protections and would not have worked.
Thanks to a collaborative effort with organisations across the development and environmental sectors, our Bill sets out a better way. That is a win-win for development and for nature. The Bill establishes a nature restoration fund that will allow developers to make a simple payment to discharge their environmental obligations, and to crack on with the building of the homes and infrastructure projects that we desperately need. Natural England will use that money to take the action needed not just to avoid further decline in our natural world, but to bring about improvement.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
It is reassuring to hear that the right hon. Lady is so passionate about restoring nature. How, then, can she explain the fact that planning permission, which the local council had refused, has been granted for a battery energy storage system on the green belt in Walsall?
Angela Rayner
I will not comment on individual projects, but we have been clear about nature recovery and protecting our natural spaces, as set out in the Bill. That is how we will put talk of newts and nutrient neutrality behind us and get Britain building, while stopping the pointless pitting of nature against development.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
The problems caused by the previous Government’s failure to tackle nutrient neutrality mean that north Cumbria faces significant house building issues. I strongly welcome the Bill’s provisions on the nature restoration fund. Will the Department work with the local authority to develop mitigation schemes that will get house building going in north Cumbria in the interim?
Angela Rayner
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that long-standing issue. The Government are already engaging with the local authority in her area. She is absolutely right: for too long the previous Government were not listening. In the other place, and when I was in opposition, we tried to work with them on these issues and they refused.
The Bill is our reform to mark a new era for Britain. We are turning the page on the years of defeatism and decline in which this country of extraordinary talent and capability was held back by a system that was hobbled at every turn. With these landmark reforms, we are not just putting more money into the pockets of working people and strengthening communities; we are taking a major step forward to secure our country’s future for the long term. We are getting Britain building again, getting growth going and paving the way for national renewal. This is real delivery and real change to transform the lives of millions of people for years to come. I commend the Bill to the House.
Kevin Hollinrake
We could talk with the Minister for Housing and Planning, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) about making such amendments to the legislation as it passes through Committee.
I have other questions. Is Natural England sufficiently resourced to carry out its work? How long will it be before these plans are in place? Have the Government taken into account the inevitable delays due to judicial reviews of the environmental delivery plans? Is it not the case that the habitats regulations remain in place beneath this new system, so if a development does not show the overall improvement test for each identified environmental feature, as referenced in clause 55, the system will not apply and the developer will still need to build those bat tunnels and fish discos? Indeed, Sam Richards of Britain Remade states that it might set the bar even higher by requiring a net gain for that species. If an EDP covers one element of environmental impact but not others, the developer might have to pay into the levy and build the bat tunnel.
Have the Government also considered changes to section 20 of the Environment Act 2021, which this legislation is subject to? I am interested to hear the Minister’s reflections. Overall, we believe that it will take at least two to three years from Royal Assent for these EDPs to have meaningful effect. I am very happy to seek assurances from the Minister if that is not the case.
There are also understandable concerns about whether the route chosen will even deliver on its objective to protect the environment. The Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management has stated that the Government’s approach means that our natural capital assets will be destroyed immediately, and it could take decades for any improvement.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
As my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, nature can be effectively compensated for only in certain circumstances, but landscape can never be replaced: once it is gone, it is gone. Does he think there should be scope in this Bill to recognise the special status of protected landscapes—what are now called national landscapes or national parks—to ensure that development in those areas is appropriate and does not permanently damage our precious landscape for future generations?
Kevin Hollinrake
My right hon. Friend raises a very important point. Constituencies such as his and mine that include those protected landscapes do not seem to have that considered or catered for in the housing targets, particularly the new ones that we have before us. Again, I am very keen to discuss with the Minister how we might address that.
On planning, we are very concerned about the national scheme of delegation, which will remove councillors’ right to vote on individual planning applications. If the Secretary of State does not believe that that is the case, I suggest that she reads clause 46 of her own legislation. This is particularly extraordinary considering that when Labour was in opposition, the former shadow Housing Minister said in a debate in this House on 21 June 2021 that the previous Government should
“protect the right of communities to object to individual planning applications.”—[Official Report, 21 June 2021; Vol. 697, c. 620.]
Clearly, the current Housing Minister is not doing that— he is doing the exact opposite through these rules—and he should be clear with the public about that, because sooner or later, that fact will hit home.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
indicated dissent.
Kevin Hollinrake
I am very happy to have a debate with the Housing Minister—he is welcome to intervene on me. I suggest that he reads clause 46 as well. Of course, it is also a fact that 14 Cabinet Ministers, including the Deputy Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Health Secretary, all campaigned to block housing developments in their own constituencies. What hypocrisy!
Greg Smith
I totally agree with my hon. Friend. The point she makes is absolutely right and it applies equally to my constituency as to hers. In my constituency, the backbone of our economy is agriculture and food production. The Labour party used to say in its manifesto that
“food security is national security”
yet this Bill seeks to build all over the very land that our farmers in Buckinghamshire and across the country use to produce the very food that gives us national security.
I want to focus on the infrastructure implications from the energy sector. I entirely approve of transitioning to cleaner forms of energy production, but it is a point I have made in this House time and again, and I will never get bored of saying it, that it takes 2,000 acres of ground-mounted solar panels to produce enough electricity for 50,000 homes on current usage. That is before everyone has two Teslas—which is perhaps not the brand that people would choose now—on the drive. However, a small modular reactor needs just two football pitches to deliver enough electricity on current usage for 1 million homes. Why on earth in this country are we messing around with solar, destroying thousands of acres of food-producing land, when other clean technologies are out there that can clean up our energy and electricity production in a way that is kinder and gentler on our national fabric and rural communities?
When I hear the Secretary of State talk about, as she did in her opening address, protecting high-grade agricultural land, I take that with a large pinch of salt. That is because, in my constituency in Buckinghamshire, we have caught those paid exorbitant amounts of money to come and grade the land prior to a planning application deliberately testing the land in the headland of the field—the bit not used to grow crops or grass or to graze animals. Of course, they will always get a lower land grade by testing the headland. If the Government are serious about wanting to protect high-grade agricultural land, I would urge the Minister to look at measures he could take to ensure that the fertile part of the field is tested, not the headland.
Matthew Pennycook
Does the hon. Member accept that we have to keep the matter in perspective? Even under the most ambitious scenarios, solar farms would occupy less than 1% of the UK’s agricultural land. That is why the National Farmers Union president Tom Bradshaw stated in relation to the impact of solar projects on food security that it is important not to be “sensationalist”.
Greg Smith
The point the Minister makes is one that certainly in Buckinghamshire I would challenge. I do not think any Labour Members were there, but there was a good cross-party meeting a couple of weeks ago on the scale of solar projects coming into this country. That disproportionately affects rural communities, and this Bill seems to take against them in favour of the UK’s towns and cities.
On top of the stats I gave earlier on the efficiency of solar, we have had scientists—not just campaigners—come here to give clear evidence that, of all the countries in the world, only one is less suitable for solar than ours, and that is Iceland. The Government are not even making the case for a technology that is particularly suited to the United Kingdom, yet the Bill would just make it easier, and those who object to or challenge it on any level will just to have to go away, suck it up and take those projects in their backyard.
This Bill takes away local control, and for me, local control will always be the most important part of the planning process. Unlike those doing the desktop exercise from afar, the community know the fields that flood every single year, know the local factors that would impact a planning application, understand the local roads that would have to take the construction traffic and that get churned up every time a development comes along, and know how unsuitable they are. Local control is critical, and I urge the Minister, even at this late hour, to go back and think about whether what he wants to do is simply ride roughshod over local opinion.
Robbie Moore
I absolutely agree. It is why the Government should be honest with the public that, far from strengthening environmental protections, the Bill creates a direct avenue for developers to pay to do environmental damage and get around otherwise more stringent protection laws.
Matthew Pennycook
The hon. Gentleman was here in the last Parliament. Does he remember that, in their attempt to undo the problem of nutrient neutrality, the previous Government sought to disapply the habitats regulations entirely? Is that the approach that he would prefer we take?
Robbie Moore
The Minister gets to the nub of the issue in that the nutrient neutrality issue caused an absolute stagnation in housing development. Indeed, the Government want to give Natural England even more powers, which will lead not only to increased stagnation in development but to frustration for those who want development to take place. Many Members from across the House have referred to the £100 million bat tunnel and the development of HS2. Natural England raised that issue, yet the Government want to give that very organisation even more powers, which will lead to increased stagnation in development.
The Government may bring forward a Bill to create an avenue for more development, but this Bill will not achieve that given the environmental protection measures. In the light of the Government’s removal of the moratorium on onshore wind farm development, coupled with the provisions in the Bill, I fear for our protected peatlands, not only in the beautiful uplands of West Yorkshire but right across the county.
Secondly, I fear that the Bill will not create the speedy planning system that the Government hope it will. By placing the design and formulation of environmental development plans in the hands of Natural England, the Government have ceded much of their control over them. As a single-issue public body, Natural England operates with a very different interpretation of “reasonable mitigations” than the rest of the public when it comes to preserving nature—I have already referred to the £100 million HS2bat tunnel.
As developers, Natural England and environmental campaigners barter over the details of environmental development plans and lodge legal challenges against them, how will the Secretary of State speed up our planning system, as she is forced to sit on the sidelines of those negotiations and watch Natural England take a lead? She has created a Bill that hands more power to Natural England, not less, and removes her ability to ensure that infrastructure can be delivered at speed. The Government must be honest and up front about what they value.
Finally, I would like to raise another issue in the Bill which, in my view, moves from naivety to the realm of malice. Compulsory purchase orders are highly controversial at the best of times, but in another blow to our rural communities the Government have decided that landowners should not be paid the value of their land in full.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
It is a real pleasure to close this Second Reading debate for the Government, and I thank all hon. and right hon. Members who have participated in it. Not unexpectedly, it has been a debate of contrasts. On the one hand, we have had the privilege of listening to a large number of well-informed and thoughtful contributions from hon. Members who agree with the main principles of the Bill. In a crowded field, I commend in particular the excellent speeches made by my hon. Friends the Members for Barking (Nesil Caliskan), for Northampton South (Mike Reader), for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy), for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin), for Erewash (Adam Thompson), for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) and for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis). Set against those, we were subjected to a series of contributions from hon. and right hon. Members who, while professing support in principle for the intentions of the Bill, nevertheless alighted on a range of flawed and in some cases spurious reasons why they oppose it.
I am saddened to say that among the most glaring examples of that approach was the speech made by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), whose party’s reasoned amendment was not selected. While I appreciate fully his need to manage the discordant voices on his own Benches when it comes to housing and major infrastructure, the arguments he made were both confused and disingenuous. This Government wholly reject his claim that the Bill will not result in the ambitious delivery of the infrastructure and housing the country needs. I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that a party that declared in its manifesto only last year that it was committed to
“Increasing building of new homes to 380,000 a year”
should be getting behind this legislation, not seeking to block it. I sincerely hope that, even at this late stage, the Liberal Democrats will reconsider their position.
Gideon Amos
Does the Minister accept that it would be easier to support this Bill if it did not include clauses that provide the Secretary of State with the power not just to take some decisions away from planning committees, but to take all decisions away from planning committees, because that provision is completely unlimited in its scope?
Matthew Pennycook
That is not the case, and there has been a huge amount of scaremongering when it comes to the provisions in the Bill that relate to planning committees. I will deal with that particular point in due course.
Among hon. Members who do support the main principles of the Bill, there were of course understandable differences of opinion. Some expressed their unequivocal support for each and every one of its provisions, others conveyed their broad support while arguing for specific changes to be made or further measures to be added, but all were in agreement that this legislation must progress if we are to streamline the delivery of new homes and critical infrastructure, as the House as a whole ostensibly asserts that we must. Therein lies the crux of the issue and the reason, I must say candidly, for the cant at the heart of some of the speeches that we have heard.
We can all profess in principle our support for the ends—doing so is, after all, risk free—but what matters is whether we are prepared in practice to also will the means. When it came to housing and infrastructure, the previous Government were not willing to do so, hence the dissonance in their final years between their stated commitment to building more homes and their decision in practice to recklessly abolish mandatory housing targets and thereby torpedo housing supply in a forlorn attempt to appease a disgruntled group of their anti-housing Back Benchers. Thankfully, this Labour Government are prepared to do what it takes to deliver the homes and the infrastructure our country needs. The Bill is transformative. It will fundamentally change how we build things in this country. In so doing, it will help us to tackle the housing crisis, raise living standards in every part of the country and deliver on our plan for change.
During the five hours we have debated the Bill, an extremely wide range of issues has been raised. I have heard all of them and I will seek to respond to as many in the time available to me, but I will not be able to cover all of them. I will therefore deal with the main themes and issues that have been raised in the course of the debate. I will begin, if I may, with the various points made in relation to nationally significant infrastructure.
Members made a variety of points covering issues such as national policy statements and judicial review, but most of the contributions focused in on the changes the Bill will make to consultation requirements for nationally significant infrastructure projects. As the House will be aware, the NSIP planning regime was established through the Planning Act 2008 to provide more certainty on the need for nationally significant projects. In its early years, the system worked well. However, its performance has sharply deteriorated in recent years, at a time when the need for it has increased dramatically.
In 2021, it took, on average, 4.2 years for a project to secure development consent, compared with 2.6 years in 2012. The documentation, as has been referred to by a number of hon. Members, underpinning consents has been getting longer and in too many instances now runs to tens of thousands of pages. Alongside an increase in legal challenges, uncertainty about meeting statutory requirements has led to greater risk aversion and gold plating throughout the whole process. The costs of delays obviously increase the costs of projects, and those costs are ultimately passed on to taxpayers for public infrastructure and bill payers or customers for private infrastructure.
The measures in the Bill will provide for a faster and more certain consenting process, stripping away unnecessary consultation requirements that do nothing to improve applications or meaningfully engage communities. They will, to use the phrase used by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty), ensure that the NSIP regime is firing on all cylinders. I want to make it clear that the measures in the Bill are not the limit of our ambitions on streamlining the NSIP regime. In particular, I noted the calls from several hon. Members to consider addressing the significant elongation of pre-application periods resulting from the way in which statutory procedures are now being applied. This is an issue to which the Deputy Prime Minister and I have already given a significant amount of thought, and I commit to giving further consideration to the case for using the Bill to address statutory requirements that would appear to be no longer driving good outcomes. I can assure those hon. Members that the Government will not hesitate to act boldly if there is a compelling case for reform in this area.
Many hon. Members touched on the nature restoration fund. We are fully committed to making sure development contributes to nature’s recovery, delivering a win-win for nature and the economy. We will be taking three steps to deliver on our new approach. First, responsibility for identifying actions to address environmental impacts will be moved away from multiple project-specific assessments in an area to a single strategic assessment and delivery plan. Secondly, more responsibility for planning and implementing strategic actions will be moved on to the state, delivered through organisations with the right expertise and the necessary flexibility to take actions that most effectively deliver positive outcomes for nature. Thirdly, we will allow impacts to be dealt with strategically in exchange for a financial payment, so development can proceed more quickly. Project-level assessments are then limited only to those harms not dealt with strategically.
To those hon. Members who raised concerns that the provisions will have the effect of reducing the level of environmental protection of existing environmental law, I assure them that that is not the case, something attested to by the section 20 statement on the face of the Bill in the name of the Deputy Prime Minister. Our reforms are built around delivering overall positive outcomes for protected sites and species, and are the result of significant engagement across the development sector, environmental groups and nature service providers. That is why, at the Bill’s introduction, we saw a range of voices welcoming the new approach it brings to unlocking a win-win for development and nature.
The shadow Secretary of State raised concerns about how quickly we will be able to implement environmental delivery plans. We are confident we can get EDPs in place fast. That is why we have been clear that we want to see the first EDPs prepared alongside the Bill and operational for developers to use shortly after Royal Assent. We are also looking for opportunities to provide up-front funding so that we can kick off action in advance of need, with costs recovered as development comes forward, which will allow us to get shovels in the ground and unlock homes and infrastructure more quickly.
Lastly, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) raised concerns about the CPO powers given to Natural England. If we are going to be successful in delivering a win-win for nature and the economy through the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, it is vital that Natural England has sufficient powers to deliver the conservation measures required. Compulsory purchase is just one tool, and we would expect Natural England to consider using such powers as a last resort, subject to appropriate scrutiny and oversight, including ultimate authorisation by the Secretary of State.
More broadly, the nature restoration fund will provide opportunities for landowners to work with Natural England to drive nature recovery, improving our green spaces for generations to come. I say to the right hon. Gentleman that this is not a radical change. Many public bodies with statutory powers have compulsory purchase powers, including local authorities and—as he of all people should be aware—health service bodies, as well as some executive agencies, such as Homes England.
I want to touch on planning committees before concluding. Several hon. Members raised concerns over our plan to modernise them; indeed, some suggested that our reforms are tantamount to removing democratic control from local people. That is simply not the case. The shadow Secretary of State asserted that residents would lose the opportunity to object to a planning application, which is incorrect. People will still be able to object to individual applications in the way they can now.
Kevin Hollinrake
How is what the Minister is saying consistent with what he said on the Floor of the House on 9 December, when he said:
“the changes are designed to… focus the time of elected councillors on the most significant or controversial applications”—[Official Report, 9 December 2024; Vol. 758, c. 673.]—
which he is going to dictate? Will he, at the very least, publish his draft regulations on what he intends through clause 46 alongside the passage of the Bill?
Matthew Pennycook
I will address that specific point in due course. The proposals are entirely consistent; we do want to make changes to where planning committees can determine decisions, but local residents will be able to object to applications in every instance, as they can now.
Planning is principally a local activity, and this Government have made clear at every available opportunity that the plan-led approach is and must remain the cornerstone of the planning system. Local plans are the best ways for communities to shape decisions about how to deliver the housing and wider development their areas need.
Matthew Pennycook
I am going to make some progress, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.
We want more people involved in the development of local plans. The measures on planning decisions will simply ensure that the process of determining applications at a local level is more streamlined and efficient.
I have been a local councillor, and I have sat on planning committees, as I know many hon. Members have. We all know that there is significant room for improvement in how such committees operate. It is, therefore, disappointing to hear hon. Members portray what are sensible proposals for modernising the local planning system as a fundamental attack on local democracy when they are anything but.
Decisions about what to build and where should be shaped by local communities and reflect the views of local residents. Local democratic oversight of planning decisions is essential, but it is also vital that planning committees operate as effectively as possible. Planning committees need to be focused on key applications for larger developments, not small-scale projects or niche technical details. The Bill will ensure they can play a proper role in scrutinising development without obstructing it, while maximising the use of experienced professional planners.
Wendy Morton
I would like to seek some clarity from the Minister on that: he says that local councillors will be able to scrutinise, but not actually stop—this is the point I want to probe—a large-scale planning application.
Matthew Pennycook
No; the right hon. Lady has misunderstood me. Planning committees will be able to scrutinise and make decisions on a series of applications. On a point raised by the shadow Secretary of State, the House should also be aware that we intend to formally consult on these measures in the coming weeks. Hon. Members will therefore be able to engage with the detail and precisely the type of question that the right hon. Lady raises, rightly, alongside consideration of the Bill.
Matthew Pennycook
I am not going to give way; I am going to make some progress.
I will briefly address CPO powers before I conclude, as a number of hon. Members raised concerns about our changes to the process. Let me be clear: these reforms are not about targeting farmers or any specific types of land or landowners. We want to reform the compulsory purchase process and land compensation rules to speed up and lower the costs of the delivery of housing and infrastructure in the public interest.
We have already taken action, fully implementing direction powers that provide for the removal of hope value from the assessment of compensation for certain types of CPOs, such as those facilitating affordable housing —provisions, I might say, introduced by the previous Government in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. We have published updated and more detailed guidance on the process to help local authorities.
This Bill will now go further, ensuring that the process for acquiring land with a direction is more efficient and that administrative costs are reduced, and we are expanding the power to remove hope value by directions to parish and town councils. We want to see these powers used and will work closely with local authorities to ensure that they have the support to take advantage of the reforms.
To conclude, I thank all hon. and right hon. Members who contributed to the debate. I look forward to engaging with hon. Members across the House as the Bill progresses. A wide range of views have been expressed over the course of the debate, but there is clearly a broad consensus that when it comes to delivering new homes and critical infrastructure—[Interruption.] The shadow Minister says no, so perhaps he does not agree, but the status quo is failing the country and more importantly those who last year sent us to this place to do better.
The process of securing consent for nationally significant infrastructure projects is demonstrably too slow and uncertain and is constraining economic growth and undermining our energy security. The current approach to development and the environment too often sees both sustainable house building and nature recovery stall. In exercising essential local democratic oversight, planning committees clearly do not operate as effectively as they could, and local planning authorities do not have adequate funding to deliver their services.
The compulsory purchase order process is patently too slow and cumbersome, and development corporations are not equipped to operate in the way we will need them to in the years ahead. It is abundantly clear that the lack of effective mechanisms for cross-boundary strategic planning mean that we cannot address development and infrastructure needs across sub-regions as well as we otherwise might.
We can and must do things differently. That means being prepared to will the means as well as the ends. Fourteen years of failure have left the country with a belief that nothing works, that nothing gets built, and that Britain can no longer do big things. This Government refuse to accept the stagnation and decline we were bequeathed. We were elected on the promise of change, and we are determined to deliver it. Through the measures introduced by this landmark Bill, we will get Britain building again, unleash economic growth and deliver on the promise of national renewal. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Planning and Infrastructure Bill (First sitting)
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
Read Full debateThursday 24th April 2025
(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
Public Bill CommitteesPlanning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 24 April 2025 - (24 Apr 2025)
This text is a record of ministerial contributions to a debate held as part of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 passage through Parliament.
In 1993, the House of Lords Pepper vs. Hart decision provided that statements made by Government Ministers may be taken as illustrative of legislative intent as to the interpretation of law.
This extract highlights statements made by Government Ministers along with contextual remarks by other members. The full debate can be read here
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
Q
We remain consistent in our concern about democratic accountability and processes, and about the balance between speeding up planning delivery and retaining the power of local people to make differences and have their say on nationally important critical infrastructure. First, do you think that these proposals strike the right balance between speeding up the delivery of national infrastructure projects and public accountability? Do you think that democratic and public accountability will remain at the heart of the delivery of that national infrastructure under the Bill’s proposals?
Sir John Armitt: Yes. I think this is a reasonable attempt to address the fundamental question of getting the balance right between taking forward the critical national infrastructure that the country needs and local interest. Consultation has always been an essential part of that, and the ability of people to express their views is important. Having said that, it is and will continue to be a very complex area. People on the receiving end of new infrastructure will naturally seek every mechanism in their legal right to challenge where they feel that they will be adversely affected. The Bill seeks to set out a number of remedies for that, and I think one could reasonably expect to see some acceleration, but just how much acceleration there will be in the process only time will tell.
Robbie Owen: I broadly agree with that; I think the Bill largely strikes the right balance. Let us not forget that even in the light of the amendments tabled by the Minister yesterday in relation to consultation, there will still be an extensive amount of consultation required—justifiably so—in relation to these projects, involving, among others, the local community. The examination of applications for consent takes place over a maximum of six months, which is a very long time, within which the local community can express their views. The Government are retaining the ability for local impact reports to be produced, which I think is important. I have no fundamental concern that democratic and public accountability will be lost by these changes. I actually think they do not quite go far enough in some respects, but we may come on to that later.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
Q
Sir John Armitt: The Bill seeks, to a large extent, to provide a regime of compensation to offset where people are going to be affected. That, in a sense, is no different from what we have seen in the housing sector in section 106, for example, for a very long time. The real challenge here is the ability of the process to actually slow things down. We know that judicial review is one of the big difficulties in this area. You could argue that the recent recommendations made for judicial review do not go that far. The only way in which it can be held back is where the court decides that the issue being raised is, perhaps not frivolous, but immaterial. But I would imagine that the nature of the legal system is such that people will find ways around that.
Judicial review constantly acts as a brake, and influences those who are developing projects to try to cross that bridge before they get there: you put in more mitigation than ideally you would wish, which raises the cost, and you potentially finish up with a more expensive project than ideally you would have had. That is the nature of people trying to second-guess what is going to be raised and how the judicial review will be handled.
I am not sure that the recommendations will go far enough to have a serious impact on that aspect, which is one of the central aspects of what has been holding up these schemes quite significantly. Each year of judicial review is likely to potentially add a year to the process, and that is why it is difficult to see that these changes will benefit the overall process by more than six to 12 months, at the end of the day. Robbie and I were talking about this before we came in; he is more of an expert in it, so I will turn to him for any other observations.
Robbie Owen: Minister, I absolutely support what is already in the Bill. I think that every provision on national infrastructure planning is appropriate, including what I hope will be added to the Bill through the amendments that you tabled yesterday, in relation to pre-application consultation and some other measures. As you say, those are all good measures that have followed extensive consultation and engagement.
There are two areas where I believe the Bill needs to go further, be bolder and be strengthened. The first relates to the further streamlining of the development consent order process. That should focus on allowing the standard process to be varied, on a case-by-case basis, where there is justification for doing so. That was trailed in your planning working paper in January; I encourage you and your officials to have another look at that, because there is a justification for giving some degree of flexibility to reflect the nature and requirements of individual projects and how the standard process might need to be adapted to them.
Secondly, we need to look again at the ability of the DCO process to be a one-stop shop for all the consents you need for construction of these big projects—that was the original intention back in 2008. All the discussions around that have yet to fully come to a conclusion. I note the review by Dan Corry, published a couple of weeks ago, but I do not think that it provides a full answer to allowing development consent orders to do more than they have been doing in practice, in terms of all these subsidiary consents, which, beyond the development consent order itself, are quite important for some of these big projects.
The other area where the Bill should and could go further relates to the whole area of judicial review. The changes that were announced in January, following the call for evidence off the back of the Banner review, are not particularly significant. They are really quite modest, and relate largely to the permission stage of judicial review. Approximately 70% of judicial review applications get permission and go forward, therefore we need to focus beyond the permission stage.
There are two other areas where the Bill could make some worthwhile changes. The first relates to the interaction between judicial review and national policy statements. As you will know, national policy statements are approved by Parliament, and the Bill contains some proposals to change that process. It has always struck me as strange that national policy statements can nevertheless still be, and are, judicially reviewed.
The final point on judicial review is that Parliament should be able, if it wishes, to use a simple one-clause Bill to confirm decisions to give development consent for projects of a critical national priority. This used to be the case: we used to have lots of provisional order confirmation Bills. I think that is a very good way for Parliament, where it wishes, to express its support for a big, critical project. That could easily be done through some amendments to the Bill.
The Chair
I remind everybody that we only have another 15 minutes for this panel, so please be as succinct as possible.
Paul Holmes
Just for the record, that is not my view. There are some concerns. I was not castigating you.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
Q
Beatrice Filkin: As you said yourself, Minister, we have not seen any large scale, long-duration energy storage built in this country for decades now. We know that the market is not willing to take on those risks at the moment and it is absolutely right that the Government are instructing us through this Bill to expand the regimes and protections.
We support the proposed introduction of a cap and floor regime for long-duration storage. We have seen NESO’s advice to you as part of the development of the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan—that increasing the amount of flexible storage on the system is critical to getting through your clean power targets. We are very keen to be part of supporting that. We think the cap and floor regime has proved its worth over the last decade or so through interconnectors, and obviously, we are adjusting it now with input from a wide range of stakeholders to make it appropriate for the long-duration storage schemes.
Michael Shanks
Q
Christianna Logan: We really welcome the powers in the Bill that create that framework to increase the timeliness and effectiveness of consenting in Scotland, particularly around introducing timescales for determinations and replacing automatic trigger of public local inquiries with a reporter-led process.
Public inquiries are one of the main causes of delay to consent decisions in Scotland, with the impact and cost of that borne ultimately by bill payers and local communities through local authority investment. We believe that to make the powers in this Bill effective in practice, the secondary legislation will be critical. We ask that the secondary legislation providing the details of implementation is delivered in parallel with the Bill, so that it can be laid as soon as decisions are made, and that within determination, timelines are set at 12 months to make sure that we can get timely delivery.
We welcome all the joint working between this Government and the Scottish Government, and we would like to see that continue for that secondary legislation. We welcome the Scottish Government's commitment to a 12-month determination for projects, but we are not yet seeing that in practice. For example, our Sky project, which is both an energy security and decarbonisation project, is still awaiting determination more than two and a half years on. That is why the ask is so important.
Michael Shanks
Finally, Dhara, picking up on the questions on connections reform and the wider push in the Bill on how we build network infrastructure more quickly and the ambition of that, how critical is it to the broader energy space—particularly on the questions of energy security, bringing down bills and the wider space on our energy mix going forward—that we build more network infrastructure and get the grid working? How critical is that aspect to delivering in the 2020s, and in the 2030s in particular, to meet the demand that we are going to see, and the Government’s other objective of bringing down bills?
Dhara Vyas: That is absolutely the right question to be asking, because we will not achieve any of it unless we unblock the issues we are seeing within the infrastructure space. The reality is that with these so-called zombie projects, at least half of them are ready to move on to the next stage. In large part, that is down to the work that has been happening as part of the connections reform project. It is really important that we keep on moving with the momentum we have right now, because gaining planning permission and making progress through the new milestones that the National Energy System Operator has set out is the next big challenge for us.
We are in a really difficult position right now. Bills and debt owed by customers to energy suppliers are at a record high. We are still really feeling and living in the long shadow of the cost of living crisis, which was partly down to the energy security crisis following the illegal invasion of Ukraine. Investing in an abundance of clean power will be completely pointless unless we have the infrastructure to move it around the country, and unless we invest in clean power, we will not ultimately bring down bills to the extent that we need to. The other part of that is demand. We will see demand increase by at least sixfold. We are going to have electrification of our homes and our transport, which brings us back full circle to the need to be able to move the electricity around.
John Grady
Q
Christianna Logan: Our programme of projects to deliver for 2030 is a £22 billion investment. It is the biggest investment that we have seen in the north of Scotland probably since the second world war, so it is really significantyou’re your constituents. Our colleagues in ScottishPower have their investments in your area as well. Alongside that, there is a significant number of jobs—we expect around 6,000 jobs enabled through our investments in Scotland specifically. Just this year, we will be recruiting another 600 people into SSEN transmission to help with this transformation of our grid network.
All of that, as you say, is dependent on us getting consent to progress all these projects and the necessary regulatory approvals for the investments. We have been working very closely with Government and Ofgem on the reforms, and we believe that the proposals put forward in the Bill will take us forward in that regard. As I said earlier, the secondary legislation and the work with the Scottish Government will be critical to capturing those benefits.
Paul Holmes
Q
Marian Spain: Work is under way now. As I mentioned earlier, we are doing two main things. We are thinking about the first two environmental delivery plans. This is an opportunity to mention that they are almost certain to be improving the existing nutrient mitigation scheme and turning that into a full-blown EDP and NRF system, and also consolidating the district level licensing scheme—the scheme for great crested newts that we set up five or six years ago. Those can be relatively quick wins, done within this calendar year we believe.
We are then looking at what the next EDPs are likely to be. That conversation is live at the moment with our colleagues. We are looking at three issues. We are looking at where development will most need it. Where are the development pressures? That might be major infrastructure or the new towns. Where are the places that are going to most need it? Where is it going to be most feasible—where do we believe we have sufficient evidence to have robust plans that will work and where is the meeting of those two points? That thinking about the EDPs is under way.
We are also using this year’s Government investment to set up the systems and the digital systems we will need. The systems developers will need to test their impact and decide if they want to participate. That is the systems we will use to handle the money and to do the essential transparency reporting and monitoring. That will be in place this financial year.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Can I get you on the record in terms of the objectives of part 3 of the Bill? Is Natural England confident that the nature restoration fund will deliver better outcomes for the environment than the status quo? Specifically on the powers that will be available to Natural England in bringing forth EDPs, do you think the Bill gives you enough flexibility to consider a wide enough range of conservation measures to deliver those plans?
Marian Spain: We are confident that this will be an improvement on the current system. We have already run versions of the nature recovery fund for recreational impact, for great crested newts and for nutrient mitigation, so we have seen enough that these schemes can work. We are confident that they will work.
We are also clear that it is an improvement because at the moment the current arrangements are sub-optimal for developers and for nature. We see that developers are investing disproportionate amounts of time on data gathering that could be better done once and centrally. We see that investment in mitigation and compensation in the sequential scheme slows things down and does not always create the biggest impact. We also see that there is less transparency than the public and indeed developers themselves sometimes want about how the money is being spent. We are confident this will be an improvement.
The other important point to note is that many of the pressures nature is facing now, particularly water quality, air quality and recreation, are diffuse. They are not specific. They are widespread. They are cumulative. It is impossible for an individual developer to adequately consider, mitigate and compensate. We need to do that at much more of a scale. We think the measures in the Bill and the associated measures of having more robust spatial development strategies that look at nature and development together, and of having the plan up front that tells us what the impact will be and how to mitigate it, and then the fund to allow that discharge, is a major step forward.
It is unknown—well, it is not unknown, forgive me. It is a risk, of course, and people will be concerned that it will not be regressive and that it will not be a step back, but we think there are enough measures in the Bill that are clear that this is about improvements to nature—maintaining the current protections, but also allowing development to make its adequate contribution to restoration of nature.
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
Q
Marian Spain: I cannot yet give you specifics. This is thinking that is happening now. We have not yet made any decisions. I have mentioned that we are looking at feasibility, demand, and ability to deliver. I think that where we will look next, the areas that are at the top of our minds in our conversations with fellow officials, will be air quality; the impact of nitrogen deposition on nature, which we see as a major risk; water quality; water quantity —the availability of water for both nature and development is high on the list; and a certain number of protected species. The commoner species of bats are likely to be able to benefit from the measures—similar measures as for newts. It is not yet all protected species, and we do not yet know which, so I cannot give you a definitive answer. I think it will be the next financial year when we start to roll out those further plans.
It is also quite hard for me to give you any certainty about exactly how long the plans will take, because they will vary, of course. Some of them will be geographically defined; some will be subject defined; and some might be species defined. They will be varied and mixed. But we are conscious that we need to move quickly on this, because we need to give developers a better solution than they currently have.
Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting)
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
Read Full debateThursday 24th April 2025
(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
Public Bill CommitteesPlanning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 24 April 2025 - (24 Apr 2025)
This text is a record of ministerial contributions to a debate held as part of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 passage through Parliament.
In 1993, the House of Lords Pepper vs. Hart decision provided that statements made by Government Ministers may be taken as illustrative of legislative intent as to the interpretation of law.
This extract highlights statements made by Government Ministers along with contextual remarks by other members. The full debate can be read here
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Ellie Chowns
Q
Faraz Baber: Planning is there to help, for want of a better phrase, with the placemaking and the delivery, and to ensure that there are guidelines for how plan making should take place. It is there to ensure that the various levers associated with the plan-making process and the development process are understood. Planning is the guardian that ensures that sustainable development can come forward.
Victoria Hills: One of the most important questions that anybody—elected leaders or executive leaders—can ask is “Why?” Why are we doing it? What is it all about? What is the purpose of this Bill? What is the purpose of planning? That is why we think it is essential, within the realms of this Bill, that a public purpose of planning is stated up front. You do not have to take our word for it. Our research published yesterday shows that the vast majority of the public do not have a clue what planning is. They do not know what it is for, and if you are going to drive through a major reform programme for planning, the likes of which we have not seen for 15 years, it might be a good idea if we are very clear on what the purpose of planning is.
For us, the purpose is really clear; at a strategic level, it is about the long-term public interest, the common good and the future wellbeing of communities. You need to be open and honest with the public up front that all this change that is coming in planning and infrastructure is actually for the long-term common good. Some of it people may not like in the short term, but we are talking about the long-term common good— delivering on climate, delivering on sustainable development goals and delivering for communities. We think it is really important that the opportunity is not missed, not only to help inform the public and everybody else who needs to know what the purpose of planning is but to provide that north star, that guiding star, as to the why. Why are we doing this? What purpose does it have?
Thank you for your question. We are absolutely clear that having a public purpose of planning is really important for this legislation, and we will continue to make that case.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
Q
Hugh—the Bill provides a clearer, more flexible and more robust framework for the operation of development corporations. You know that it is clearly our view that they have to do a lot of work in the coming years to drive the kind of delivery we need and the types of development we want to see come forward. What is your assessment of how effective those development corporation powers are to support development and regeneration?
Victoria Hills: One thing we know about from our members, but also from those people who are actually in the business of building things—of course, that is really what is important if you want to see some growth coming—is consistency. You asked about the variation. Some councils have fantastic schemes of delegation and it is very clear what is and is not going to committee, but other councils have a slightly more grey scheme of delegation—let’s call it that—whereby things can pop up in committee on the basis of an individual issue or individual councillor.
The opportunity afforded to us by the Bill is for some consistency through a national scheme of delegation. We have in place some very robust processes that look at the business of development, through the local plan process. It goes to not one but two public inquiries, through the Government’s inspectorate, and then back to the community. What we recognise is that if you have had some very robust considerations of the principles of development and you have good development prescribed by, for example, a design code that says, “This is what good development looks like here”—so we have worked out what we want, where it is going and what it looks like—it is perfectly possible that suitably qualified chief planning officers can work out whether something is in conformity with a plan. We therefore welcome the opportunity to clarify that through a national scheme of delegation.
This is not to take away anybody’s democratic mandate to have their say. Of course, there are all sorts of opportunities to have that say in the local plan process, but if we are to move to a national scheme of delegation, we would want a statutory chief planning officer who has that statutory wraparound and has the appropriate level of competency and gravitas to be able to drive forward that change, because it will be a change for some authorities. For some, it will not be a change at all, but taking forward that innovation via a national scheme of delegation will require that statutory post, so that those decisions cannot be challenged, because they will be made in a professionally competent way.
Hugh Ellis: I think development corporations are essential if we are going to achieve this mission. You would expect the TCPA to say that, because we are inheritors of the new towns programme. The interesting thing about them is that, for the first time, they bolt together strategy and delivery. The existing town and country planning system is often blamed for not delivering homes, but it has no power to build them.
The development corporation solves that problem by creating a delivery arm that can effectively deliver homes, as we saw with the new towns programme, which housed 2.8 million people in 32 places in less than 20 years of designation, and it also paid for itself—it is an extraordinary model. The measures in the Bill to modernise overall duties on development corporations are really welcome. I assume you do not want me to talk about compulsory purchase orders right now, but hope value and CPOs are critical accompanying ideas in the reform package that go with that. In the long run, I think that they will become critical.
Obviously, the new towns taskforce has to decide what it wants on policy. The challenge that we face with them is legitimacy, and there is still work to do in making sure that there is a Rolls-Royce process of getting public consent for this new generation of places. However, the outcome is such an opportunity to generate places that genuinely enhance people’s health, deal with the climate crisis and provide high levels of affordability. What a contrast that is with what we have delivered through town and country planning at local plan level, which is a lot of the bolt-on, car-dependent development. Frankly, as a planner, I find that shameful. The opportunity with development corporations is there and I hope that the Government seize it.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
Q
Hugh Ellis: I will be honest: as a planner, I am really worried about it. The one difficult thing is that you cannot build without consent, and I think governance in planning is really important. Environmental governance in general is important. I am sceptical about the degree to which this is a really big problem. I can see evidence coming through to suggest that delegation rates for normal applications that you can decide locally are very high already.
I made this point earlier on, but what worries me more than anything else is that if you sideline the opportunity that the public currently have to be represented at committee, the appearance—if not the intent—is that you are excluding people. In periods of change, you have to lean into consultation, participation and democratic accountability. You must accept that while it is not a veto, because you as parliamentarians may wish to decide that the development proceeds, it is either democracy or it is not.
For us, the idea of democratic planning is so central, and it was so important in 1947. That Government had a choice: it had proposed a Land Board, which could have made all the planning decisions centrally, but it gave those decisions to local government on the basis that people locally understand decision making best. My own experience is that people are a solution, not a problem. Wherever I go, I find people who know detail about development and can improve it, particularly on flood risk, and they want to contribute.
I do not accept that there is an anti-development lobby everywhere, and there certainly is not in my community. Instead, there are people concerned about quality, affordability and service provision, and their voice should be heard. The Bill could create the impression, even if it is not the intent, that there is a non-respectful conversation going on. Finally, as a planner, I would never want to be in the firing line for taking a decision on a major housing scheme that is ultimately a matter of politics, and should always be so.
David Simmonds
Q
I am interested in your view on whether the Bill sufficiently addresses the balance between green belt and agricultural use. What improvements would you want to see on compulsory purchase processes to ensure that landowners in those locations have appropriate recourse? Also, where it is clear that the land in question provides a broader public benefit, as opposed to simply being a business standing on its own, how can we ensure that the broader public benefit can be accounted for in the reckoning up of the value of that land?
Rachel Hallos: It is almost like having ransom strips next to urban conurbations. That green belt gets sucked into that urban conurbation and, all of a sudden, it becomes a brown belt—I think “grey belt” was also considered at one stage. The reality is, when you are in that situation—I can completely understand, although some of my members would not; that is the leadership role that we have to take—that that land is of national benefit through development. That is because it increases the size of the town, the infrastructure—the whole thing. On what the Bill needs to do, again it goes back to doing the number crunching. What is the long-term benefit of this?
We also have to remember that when we compulsorily purchase land from a farmer who is running their business and living there, they have every right to make a decision to restart their business elsewhere. What if the land value goes up and they are being paid just the flat agricultural rate? Everybody wants that land, because guess what? Everybody wants land right now. Everybody wants land for everything, so land prices are creeping up anyway. There is then artificial inflation of the land price in that area because everybody is after it.
That bit also needs to be taken into consideration when it comes to recompensing anybody who has land taken away from them. It is a complicated formula, but the Bill really does need to look at that if we are to go anywhere near rebuilding confidence and trust between the agricultural community and Government. Especially if we put it in the package of everything else that is going on, we are very much in danger of having it go “bang” again. This has to stop. We all have to get on with life. We all have to get on with what we do—produce food, infrastructure or growth for the country.
Paul Miner: Green belt is a planning policy, but as you have rightly pointed out, green-belt land often has a wide range of public benefits and meanings for people who live in the towns and cities that the green belts surround. We strongly support the Bill’s provision for spatial development strategies, because you need effective strategic planning in order for green-belt policy to work effectively.
Also, from our perspective, we should not just be looking at how the planning policy should work. If we accept that the vast majority of green-belt land will not become grey belt in the future but will remain designated green belts, we need to think about how we can better manage that land. That is why it is really important that in spatial development strategies and in the Government’s land use framework, we have policies for improving the management of green-belt land. Until now, green-belt land has been relatively poorly served by successive Governments’ environmental land management schemes. There is relatively low take-up in green-belt areas. We urge the Government, as part of the land use framework but also with spatial development strategies, to seek to improve the quality of green belts for nature and for climate.
Rachel Hallos: May I add one last thing to that? Sorry to be rude. When it comes to the spatial development strategies, LNRSs and all the different things that are going on and are being consulted on at the moment, there is no legal requirement to consult the land manager. That worries me. It is just wrong.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Rachel Hallos: It is bigger than just this Bill on CPOs. There is a mistrust. There is a concern that people are not taking food production or agriculture seriously. This is what it is encapsulated in, but the CPO element for me is that people have felt the pain of badly delivered CPOs, through High Speed 2 in particular; other things have gone on in this country. That has lingered really heavily, so when you start mentioning compulsory purchase to any land manager or landowner, it sends shivers down their spine.
We are concerned that disregarding a hope value puts landowners and farmers in that tailspin again, so where do we go from here? How do we deal with this? We have found that especially with our members and HS2—I will keep referring to HS2 because it has been an absolute nightmare, and it is still a nightmare. They are still waiting for the final, agreed payment in many cases, so that they can start getting on with their life. That is the concern when it comes to the hope value.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Rachel Hallos: It is the fact that there is potential they will not get paid the true value of that land or that farm—that is the concern.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Rachel Hallos: Ultimately, it is a person’s life and livelihood. They are going to get paid only the basic agricultural value, out of no fault of their own, and they have to start up elsewhere. This is not going to happen just once or twice; if we follow the huge infrastructure plans that we all know the country needs—we accept as a union that we need to grow—this will inflate land prices elsewhere, as people choose to continue their livelihoods elsewhere and go looking for that land. That is the difference.
Paul Holmes
I will come back again, although I know you are under the cosh at the moment.
Rachel Hallos: It’s fine; that is why I am here.
Matthew Pennycook
Nationally significant infrastructure projects, which I do not think you have chosen to talk about.
Councillor Hug: No—they are coming through very quickly. From a local authority perspective, I think the point is making sure that, if they are not formal consultees, there is some other mechanism for local authorities and others to feed into the process in a structured way to make sure that their voices are heard, even if formal statutory consultees are being reformed.
Paul Holmes
We are removing statutory consultees.
Councillor Hug: There is significant concern about that removal. That process is how you identify some of the specific issues on the ground that need significant further investigation. I do not think you will save any time by removing that, because the investigation will turn up at the planning stage. You will just delay planning, because these will be areas around statutory consultees. What it will do is give the public the impression that things are just being rubber stamped and railroaded through. That will be catastrophic. NSIPs are such contested spaces already. We have to give people the chance to raise concerns to identify issues on the ground at local level that need further work and further attention. If we do not do that, people will lose all faith in that process, and they are already sceptical enough.
Councillor Clewer: I have the same concerns. NSIPs are decided by the Secretary of State. I have five in my district at the moment, including battery farms, solar farms and a reservoir. It is not about objection—consultation can bring forth some really good ideas, some solutions and some changes. It is massively important. For instance, even if there will be an impact on your community, the community benefit could be discussed right at the start. All sorts of improvements could be put in place through consultation before it gets to the formal stage. It is also about the appearance of removing that consultation. At a time when LGR devolution is meant to be bringing decentralisation, to just say that this is all going to be decided centrally is not a good picture.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Councillor Wright: For a start, the vast majority of planning permissions or planning applications are already decided by officers anyway in many councils—something like 97% in my authority were decided—so what exactly do you think we are now going to pass when under more pressure?
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Councillor Wright: With regard to a national scheme, if it was advisory not mandatory—if there was some general advice out there that could be given as guidance —that would be better than mandating. What could be mandated for one area, when you look at super-urban areas compared with rural areas, might not be exactly the same sort of decision making that you are looking for.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Councillor Hug: I think there should be a common core. I am not quite sure how the mayoralties and others will feed into responding to particular issues around the urban and rural geographies. I think there should be a basic common core to this. Looking at how it might operate, again, I am coming from an authority that has only 3% going to committees—all told, it is about 1.4%, if you include all the advertising and listed building concerns that get through. A very small amount go through, so there is a lot of good practice happening already.
In terms of how that works, one of the things that we want to ensure that we do not lose is the ability, for example if a scheme is likely to be rejected by officers, to put that to a committee that might come to a more pragmatic decision than just a rigid response based on policy. There are some other things, such as we want to ensure that there are opportunities for councils to go beyond the scheme of delegations; if there was a nationally set thing, you want to make sure that it is not just a cap on what is delegated.
I think that some flexibility around urban and rural, and working with local authorities about the design of the specific scheme, would be good. It is clear that they will want as much guidance as possible about the types of things that the Government are wanting to see happen. Obviously, from our perspective we understand the point about the centrality of getting the local plans and making them as robust as possible to give people clarity about what goes on in future.
The challenge comes when quite a lot of schemes come forward that are not in full compliance with policy, because the real world is messy and things have to be traded off against each other. The question is basically to what extent can those trade-offs be dealt with at office level versus at committee. That is why we want to get into the details of that with you, to make it work effectively.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Councillor Clewer: I have a couple of points to add. There are elements in what you are proposing that I would welcome. On mandatory training, goodness knows why we do not have that already—it is desperately needed. I am not sure that Richard would entirely agree, but when it comes to local plan allocated sites, I struggle with the idea that they could come to committee to then be refused. I think there is a benefit in committees or someone looking at elements of design and whether 106s are being carried out appropriately, but once something has gone through a local plan, I think we have to be careful about where committees step in.
To give an example of where I think you have to be incredibly careful with this, I took a planning application to committee last week for a listed building where someone wanted to cut and raise a beam by 10 inches. They had had a stroke, and they were in a position where they were literally having to live in a conservatory. Officers had said no. I got that application to a committee so that the beam could be raised to allow a stairlift to go in—when the person leaves the beam could be lowered—and the committee almost unanimously approved it.
We had the ability at an incredibly basic level to give someone the dignity of being able to get to their bathroom through a planning system where the harm was conceived by everyone as minimal. We cannot lose that ability to resolve those local and micro issues in a really local way. Finding the balance there is going to be challenging. Too much permitted development, too many automatics, will prevent us from being able to do that. I am sure we could all give further examples of where we have needed to use that ability to deal with things, very often with refusals, to enable them to be granted.
On the flipside, sometimes it is fair to say that members will get something that is recommended for approval and call to committee because they do not like it. I think we have to be able to justify on good planning grounds why on earth we are calling something to committee. If we do not have them I have no problem with officers turning round and saying, “I am sorry; you haven’t got planning grounds,” but it is about finding the right balance.
Councillor Wright: With regard to local plans and to what Richard has just referred to there, we have already instigated that in our authority you have to give planning reasons for bringing something to the planning committee. You might consider that you could just delegate a decision on a local plan allocated piece of land, but some of those could be of considerable size; they could be for a sustainable urban extension, for instance, so you cannot just act on the principle that because it is in the plan it does not need to be at committee.
We are makers of place: we build homes, not houses. We do not want to see officers suddenly having to make a delegated decision on how many houses go on a piece of land based on how the developer wants to bring it forward. The master planning, the design coding and all those issues need to be taken into consideration. It should not be left to officers who will end up getting the same grief that members get, but as unelected officers.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Councillor Clewer: No.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Councillor Hug: No. We had a thing where someone in a public report was saying we had only built x number of houses, but the reality was that far more homes had gone through under delegated authority than had actually gone to committee, so we were being wronged by the fact we had done that process.
Councillor Clewer: But there may be some specific circumstance that creates a nuanced judgment where it absolutely should go to committee. And please do not just talk about the big projects; it is those small ones that are deeply personal to people where national policy says no, but circumstance actually says that you can get round national policy.
Matthew Pennycook
I take the point about the nuance. That is helpful—thank you.
Gideon Amos
Q
Councillor Hug: As the Minister pointed out, the consultation is going on in parallel with the Bill. Hopefully we can make this national scheme of delegation work, provided that there is a degree of flexibility built into it. I hope that working between local government and national Government can help to resolve some of those issues at pace. Obviously some things may need to be specified, but we are hopeful that that kind of engagement can help to resolve some of the issues.
Councillor Clewer: If in the scheme of delegation we see guidelines around how a scheme of delegation should work, I am not sure that that would concern me hugely. If they are prescriptive rather than guidelines, we will fall into the problem that you will create cases where you need to get round them but you cannot.
This is a simplistic example—I will get into trouble now with the New Forest national park authority—but we allow parish councils there to call things into committee. I think that that is crazy. It ends up with all sorts of things coming to committee that should never go near them. I would love a delegation that said that they cannot do that, on a personal level. There are elements where I think Government guidance would be really helpful.
Paul Holmes
Q
Could you also outline how you think the proposal could help the speediness of planning applications, but also have a greater impact on local government’s workforce challenges in recruiting and holding on to planning experts? Do you think the legislation will allow local authorities to have enough funding to keep town planners in local authority town halls and not going off to private companies?
Catherine Howard: The way the legislation is drafted, it looks to me like it is highly prescriptive and will be very effective at ringfencing. It talks about the need to secure that the income from the fees or charges is applied towards the carrying out of the functions that are listed. Those are functions such as dealing with planning applications, certificates of lawfulness, tree applications and listed buildings. There are things it does not deal with—that is presumably deliberate—such as general enforcement and plan making. It seems to me that, the way it is drafted, you could not use the money from all of those developer application fees and just apply it to plan making and those kind of functions. If that is the intention, that is what it appears to achieve.
Regarding recruitment, I know that fee recovery has been put into law in a number of different planning regimes. I am more of a specialist in the national infrastructure regime, where those provisions have been added quite liberally. It will be interesting to see how effective a pay-as-you-go system is. My concern still, in terms of how effective that will be at recruitment and retention, is that I do not know how much flexibility statutory authorities will have to set public pay scales. I would have thought—I am not an expert in this area—that if you want to attract and keep people who are otherwise tempted to go off to the private sector where pay seems to be higher, particularly with supply and demand the way that it is, you will need to make the applicable pay scales higher.
I am not sure that the fees that are attracted by a developer can just be used to give people bonuses or higher salaries within the private sector. That is my concern. If the fees can somehow be used to recruit and retain more people within planning authorities, that must be a good thing. It seems to me that there has been more of a drain of talent out of the local authorities and all of the public sector authorities and regulators post Covid in particular, now that people can work from home. Some of the benefits of working with slightly more flexibility, which the public sector was always better at than the private sector, have slightly gone. I imagine there is more of an inducement for people to move across if they are being offered more money, so I recognise the problem.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Secondly, on the broad ambition to provide for a faster and more certain consenting NSIP process, do you think there is anything that we are missing here that we should still look at?
Catherine Howard: I hugely welcome the change that was made yesterday, in terms of speeding up and cutting out unnecessary bureaucracy that helped no one, except for helping professionals like me to spend more time and gain more fees out of our clients. There is, as we just talked about, a lack of enough professionals in the whole industry to staff the system. The Government’s ambition is to triple the rate of DCO consenting to get 150 DCOs through in this Parliament. We cannot magic up more comms consultants, lawyers, environmental impact assessment consultants and planning consultants in that period, so we desperately need a way to apply those professionals most efficiently in a really focused way across all the projects we need.
I have seen it in my career, having consented a number of projects since 2008, when the regime came in. Without the law changing at all, custom and practice has built up gold plating and precedent to slow the system down hugely. That is particularly true for the pre-app process, which I think the Government’s stats say has gone from an average of 14 months in 2008 to 27 months a few years ago—I suspect it is even longer now. I have seen more and more rounds of consultation on small changes. I have seen developers not putting through other changes that would be really beneficial and that communities or statutory consultees want, because they would have to have a three, four or six-month delay to do more consultation on the change.
I think the cart is before the horse. It has become a very clunky and bureaucratic legalistic process, rather than what planning should be and is in all other regimes—town and country planning, and even hybrid bills—where you have more latitude to change your mind, do some lighter-touch consultation if appropriate and do some focused consultation with the key statutory consultees on the key issues, rather than producing these huge preliminary environmental information reports, which are incredibly daunting and time-consuming for everyone to read. The public sector, local authorities, regulators and the public are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information that is put out there, which is ultimately just a form of legal box-ticking without the laser focus that you really need on key issues, so I hugely welcome the change.
I was with an international investor yesterday who is interested in investing in a big portfolio of solar projects in the UK that have not yet been consented, and I was asked to explain the regime. The pre-app is always something I feel I have to apologise for and explain, and give the best story about how quick it might be, but it was great yesterday. They really welcome this change. I can see it being highly beneficial for investors who can shop around Europe and elsewhere, in terms of bringing development here.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Catherine Howard: Perhaps some guidance to the Planning Inspectorate about how to run the examinations with slightly more focus than we have seen. There has been a drift towards more questions and more rabbit holes, and we do not have time for this or enough professionals in the industry. That does not seem to benefit the consenting system, which has also slowed down, become a bit less focused and become more bureaucratic. I would welcome anything that we can do to encourage the examination process to be more focused—possibly shorter, but certainly less labour-intensive, unless there is a purpose to it.
Paul Holmes
Q
Given your previous role within the Department, working with a Secretary of State, and given your expertise from your current role, do you think that in its current guise Natural England is capable of undertaking the responsibilities outlined in the legislation? Are you worried about the resourcing of that organisation going forward, considering that it will have quite new, detailed and complicated responsibilities?
Richard Benwell: There is no doubt that Natural England will need a significant uplift in resourcing to enable it to do this job properly. Natural England was subject to some pretty serious cuts over the last decade, and the last settlement was not very positive for Natural England either, with more job losses coming. When you look into the statistics of Natural England’s funding, some of the increases in recent years have been on capital fund rather than day-to-day spend on the kind of experts we need to do this work out on the ground. Part of the problem sometimes, with the risk aversion surrounding the current incarnation of the habitats regulations, is the lack of expertise from advisers, to give it the confidence to go out and suggest where strategic solutions can happen and to implement the law well.
Natural England will definitely need a boost. It is worth noting that it is not even able to fulfil all its current duties to the standard that we would expect. Only half of sites of special scientific interest have been visited in something like the last decade, and Natural England is already having to focus its work on statutory advice for planning applications. It will need more of that expertise, but we have confidence in the organisation and its leadership. We hope that the Government will properly resource Natural England and other agencies to help to make this work if it goes ahead, as amended.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Richard, you will know that we do not accept that development has to come at the expense of nature. We are very much targeting a win-win solution when it comes to development and the environment. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and I have had a huge amount of engagement with you and others in the sector to try to develop a solution that achieves that. I therefore want to drill into some of the concerns you have outlined, in two ways.
First, on the introduction, you welcomed the
“legal guarantee that the Nature Restoration Fund must not only compensate for damage but actually benefit protected wildlife.”
But the claim today is that the Bill leaves us open to regression. Could you elaborate on how those two square together?
Secondly, you have just said that you have confidence in Natural England and its leadership. Marian Spain, the chief executive officer, gave evidence earlier today. She said that the Bill effectively maintains the mitigation hierarchy, but you have just said that the Bill undermines the mitigation hierarchy. Can you clarify why you have a difference of opinion with Marian on that particular issue?
Richard Benwell: Of course. On the first question, we were grateful for engagement ahead of the Bill’s publication, and we were really pleased to hear your aspirations to achieve a win-win. The question is whether the overall improvement test in clause 55(4) does what it is meant to do.
The legal drafting suggests that a Secretary of State can agree an environmental delivery plan only if he is satisfied that the benefits for a protected feature “are likely” to outweigh the harm to that protected feature. That comes some way short of the high bar of legal certainty that is expected in the current habitats regulations.
If you dig further into the Bill, you find that once an environmental delivery plan is in place, if there is evidence that it is not meeting the standards expected, it is up to the Secretary of State whether to withdraw the EDP and then only to take measures that he considers appropriate to remediate for any shortfall in environmental benefits that are supposed to be derived from the measures in the Bill.
Both of those points leave far more leeway for a Secretary of State to undercut nature restoration compared with the current situation, especially when it can happen up to 10 years after the initial harm to nature. We have all heard of circumstances where promised offsets for supposed harm to nature never materialise or die a couple of years down the line.
We think this can be fixed. We think that if you were to strengthen that requirement so that it matches the kind of legal certainty that we see in the habitats regulations, you would be in a much better position. On the positive side of the scale, if that promise to outweigh harm were a more substantive requirement to go beyond just about offsetting into real nature restoration, you start to get to the territory where this really could be a win-win.
We know you will be advised by Government lawyers to minimise risk. That is what always happens, which is why Governments like to have these subjective tests. But as it stands, the level of certainty of environmental benefit that is required of an EDP up front, and that is then required of proof of delivery along the way, is less than under the current law.
Matthew Pennycook
That is a very clear elaboration. On the Natural England point—on the mitigation hierarchy?
Richard Benwell: As it stands, before a development that would have adverse effects on a protected site can go ahead, it is necessary, first, to try to avoid those harms, then to reduce those harms and only then, once all those steps have been gone through, if a project is of overriding public interest, can it go ahead with compensation in place. The Bill essentially short-circuits that process.
In clause 50, there is a provision that makes it explicit that the compensatory measures set out in an EDP do not need to apply to the particular features and the particular site that is affected by a development. Once a developer has paid their levy, they can essentially disregard the provisions that are in the habitats regulations at the moment, and go straight to development. Of course, that is something we could also fix in the Bill by requiring Natural England to have confidence that development applications have sought to avoid harm before they go ahead. I think there would still be substantial and material benefits for developers from the simplicity of the process and their legal confidence, even if that requirement to avoid harm were put back in.
We know there would need to be flexibility, such as on the phasing of benefits versus time, but you could still have this important principle that you should not go straight to squishing the ancient woodland, or make it easy to splat the species. You need to make sure that you try to avoid that harm first, before the development goes ahead.
Matthew Pennycook
Q
Richard Benwell: Yes, certainly at the project level. There is more of a requirement for Natural England to consider some of those circumstances at the EDP level. When it comes to specific projects, where it is all-important for the particular site or species, we think it is short-circuited. We will check in with Marian on that afterwards.
The Chair
We can possibly get two more colleagues in, so let’s be succinct with our questions and answers.
Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Third sitting)
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
Read Full debateTuesday 29th April 2025
(1 week, 4 days ago)
Public Bill CommitteesPlanning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 29 April 2025 - (29 Apr 2025)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
This text is a record of ministerial contributions to a debate held as part of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 passage through Parliament.
In 1993, the House of Lords Pepper vs. Hart decision provided that statements made by Government Ministers may be taken as illustrative of legislative intent as to the interpretation of law.
This extract highlights statements made by Government Ministers along with contextual remarks by other members. The full debate can be read here
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Gideon Amos
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Hobhouse. I rise to move amendment 32, which stands in my name.
We are pleased that the Government have kept their manifesto commitment to publish the long-awaited consultation on the land use framework—something the Liberal Democrats had long called for. The consultation states:
“Optimising how we use England’s land will be essential to delivering the Government’s Growth mission and the Clean Energy Superpower mission”.
It rightly recognises that a
“strategic approach to land use strategy and planning”
is needed if we are
“to avoid siloed…decision-making and…unintended consequences or unanticipated costs.”
It says that that will also inform decisions
“to guarantee our long-term food security...support development...achieve our targets on nature and climate…and support economic growth.”
Those are good objectives. However, the Secretary of State has repeatedly emphasised that the land use framework is not about telling anyone how to use land; instead, it is about providing the principles, data and tools to empower decision makers. It is right that the land use framework should not become prescriptive, but there is a real chance that it will become an expensive waste of time if it is not bolted into the planning system. To succeed, we need an efficient legal link to planning and spending decisions; otherwise, the land use framework will likely only sit on a shelf.
Part 1 of the Bill rightly recognises the need for more efficient ways to keep national policy statements up to date. In the past, NPSs have fallen behind Government policy, which has led to delay. For example, as Justice Holgate noted in the Drax development consent order challenge, the energy NPS designated in 2011 left important questions about greenhouse gas emissions unanswered because it did not reflect Parliament’s net zero decisions.
To avoid that kind of disconnect and delay, NPSs should have a direct link to the land use framework, as proposed in the amendment. The amendment would help to ensure that the land use framework has a dynamic link to major infrastructure decisions, without becoming too prescriptive. That would help to protect the environment and agriculture by guiding projects away from the most damaging options early in the process. It would also help development by improving certainty up front, reducing the challenge of judicial review were the relationship between NPSs and the land use framework left to the courts to determine.
The land use framework must be aligned with national policy objectives to inform the policies needed to deliver those objectives. Failing to consider the land use framework when reviewing national policy statements would also perpetuate siloed decision making. It would leave the land use framework as toothless and without the necessary weight, undermining public confidence in land use decisions. The amendment would not bind decision makers or prescribe specific land uses but would meet the Government’s stated objective of better informing decisions and supporting the delivery of a shared vision for English land use that balances the need for housing, energy, infrastructure and food security with our statutory climate and nature targets.
In his remarks when he launched the land use framework, the Environment Secretary said that the framework
“will work hand in hand with”
the Government’s
“housing and energy plans…creating a coherent set of policies that work together, rather than against each other.”
Ensuring that national policy statements in these areas consider the land use framework is therefore essential to realising the Government’s objectives of joined-up decision making.
The House of Lords Land Use in England Committee highlighted the issue in its report, which found that the “overarching theme” from witnesses to the Committee was the “lack of integration” between nationally significant infrastructure projects, both
“with other NSIPs (including other projects within same policy area), and with the wider planning system.”
It recommended:
“Energy and other large-scale infrastructure projects should be incorporated into a land use framework.”
An obvious and effective way to do that would be to ensure that any review of the national policy statement complied with the land use framework. Without that, and without the amendment and the institutional and legal levers to create change on the ground, a land use framework would likely just be another strategy on the shelf.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. Before I speak to clause 1 stand part and respond to the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, I put on the record my thanks to the large number of witnesses who gave up their time last week to give evidence to the Committee and inform our deliberations.
Sustained economic growth is the only route to delivering the improved prosperity that our country needs and the high living standards that working people deserve; that is why it is this Government’s No. 1 mission. The failure to build enough critical infrastructure, from electricity networks and clean energy sources to public transport links and water supplies, has constrained economic growth and undermined our energy security. That is why the Government’s plan for change commits us to fast-tracking 150 planning decisions on major infrastructure projects by the end of this Parliament.
While nationally significant infrastructure project applications are already being processed 50 days quicker on average than in the last Parliament, achieving that milestone will require the planning regime for NSIPs to fire on all cylinders—yet we know that the system as it stands is too slow and that its performance has deteriorated sharply in recent years. The Government are determined to improve it and to deliver a faster and more consenting process for critical infrastructure that will drive down costs for industry, bill payers and taxpayers.
Key to an effective NSIP regime is ensuring that national policy statements are fit for purpose. To be clear, those statements are the primary policy framework within which the examining authority makes its recommendations to Ministers on individual development consent order applications and against which the relevant Secretary of State is required to determine an application. However, as the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington just noted, despite their importance many national policy statements are outdated, with some having not been refreshed for over a decade.
Clause 1 addresses that problem by establishing, on enactment, a new requirement for every national policy statement to be subjected to a full review and updated at least every five years. NPSs can be reviewed at any point within that five-year timeframe, at the discretion of the Secretary of State. Additionally, any statement that has currently not been updated for over five years must be brought up to date within two years of the clause’s enactment.
Having taken on board the views of consenting Departments, a wide range of industry stakeholders and the recommendations of the National Infrastructure Commission, we believe that a five-year timeframe strikes the right balance between ensuring that statements are kept up to date, while avoiding rapid change and the consequential uncertainty for the infrastructure sectors that would be caused by a more rapid review timeframe.
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
The Minister may come to this later, but he will also be aware that clause 1 will make provisions for the Secretary of State to update an NPS later than required when there are exceptional circumstances, including laying a statement to Parliament. We will discuss in relation to later clauses our concern about transparency and engagement with the House. Will he outline how the Secretary of State will be able to consult the House, once she has laid that statement, to help to form her view and the Government’s view going forward?
Matthew Pennycook
I thank the shadow Minister for his question, and I look forward to what I know will be constructive debates over the days and weeks to come. He makes a fair point, which I am just coming to, in relation to the clause also providing for the ability to delay a mandatory update when there are exceptional circumstances that the relevant Secretary of State considers make the delay unavoidable.
I stress to the hon. Gentleman that those circumstances must be exceptional. We have in mind an extremely high bar: for example, if Parliament was suspended and could not sit. He will know that in instances where a national policy statement, for example, does not need to undergo a material change, a rapid update can take place on that basis. It does not have to go through consultation or the necessary parliamentary scrutiny requirements. The vision is that this particular part of the clause will be used with an exceptionally high bar, in very limited circumstances. If he wishes, I am happy to provide the Committee with further examples, but I think they will be extremely limited.
In such circumstances, as the shadow Minister said, the Secretary of State must, before the five-year deadline expires, lay a statement before Parliament explaining the reasons for the sought-after extension and when they expect to update the national policy statement, with the delay lasting only as long as the exceptional circumstances exist.
In summary, the changes give Ministers the power to ensure that national policy statements are kept up to date so that they can effectively support the delivery of the critical infrastructure that our country needs and the economic growth that its provision will deliver. I commend the clause to the Committee.
I turn to amendment 32, which, as the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington set out, seeks to insert a requirement for the land use framework—on which the Government consulted between January and April this year—to be complied with whenever a national policy statement is reviewed. We believe that the amendment is unnecessary because the Secretary of State is already obliged to take into account all relevant material considerations when reviewing national policy statements as a matter of law, under sections 104 and 105 of the Planning Act 2008.
If a future Secretary of State considers the final land use framework to be relevant in the circumstances of the specific national policy statement being reviewed, it must therefore be taken into account. The Secretary of State will, in those circumstances, give the land use framework the weight that they consider appropriate in their planning judgment, but their assessment of relevance cannot and should not be prejudged by writing such a requirement on to the face of the Bill.
The majority of national policy statements are not site or project-specific. For national policy statements that do identify locations as suitable or potentially suitable for a particular development, those locations will already have been the subject of strategic level environmental assessments and appraisals for inclusion in the national policy statement.
When deciding whether to grant development consent for a nationally significant infrastructure project, sections 104 and 105 of the 2008 Act require the Secretary of State to have regard to any matter that they think “both important and relevant” to the decision of whether to grant consent. Once published, the land use framework could be given such weight as the Secretary of State considers appropriate, where they consider it “both important and relevant” to the particular consenting decision that is in front of them.
For those reasons, the Government cannot accept amendment 32, which seeks to introduce an unnecessary layer of regulatory complexity, undermining our ambitions to streamline the NSIP planning system.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I agree very much with the Minister’s point about not introducing excessive complexity. A key issue, though, that this element of the Bill highlights is where there are complex interactions—with legal obligations that are placed on local authorities, for example. I think of my experience with Heathrow airport, where air quality duties are an absolute obligation on the local authority. Parliament can decide to derogate from that, but that does not remove the possibility of the local authority being judicially reviewed, having failed to oppose the Government’s position on a national planning policy statement.
When there are such obligations on other affected public bodies but the decision has been taken from them and is being made instead by Parliament, how will the Government ensure that those public bodies will not find themselves held liable and find that the whole process is effectively derailed—because although parliamentary decisions cannot be judicially reviewed, the involvement of that public body in decisions can be?
Matthew Pennycook
The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point but, if I have understood him, it is a slightly different issue from the one we are considering. I will give him some extra clarity about the land use framework and any other material consideration that would need to be assessed. When looking at a national policy statement, the Secretary of State will have to have regard to such material considerations, be they the land use framework or any others, for the decision to be legally sound.
The reason we cannot accept the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington is that it is not necessary to specifically require that, as it would effectively repeat public law decision-making principles on the face of the Bill that would have to be taken into account anyway. For that reason, we cannot accept the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, so I hope he will withdraw it. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Gideon Amos
I am grateful to the Minister for his response. In our view, the land use framework is a really important document about the sustainability of the development of land in the UK, and simply referring to it as one of a number of documents that must be taken into account does not guarantee that it will be delivered on in the really important national policy statement framework. Our intention is that it should be a requirement that national policy statements are in accordance with the land use framework for those reasons; it should not simply be a background document.
I am bleary-eyed this morning, but I have spotted that there are more Members on the Government side than on the Opposition side, so we will not press the amendment to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
National policy statements: parliamentary requirements
Paul Holmes
I will adhere to your guidance and orders on this Committee, Mrs Hobhouse. I intend to speak to clause 2 first, and then I will address amendment 8, tabled by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington. We welcome the premise of parliamentary scrutiny of the national policy statements, but we understand that although the usual steps for publishing and consulting on material changes—21 days under the legislation—still apply, the Secretary of State is no longer required to respond to feedback from Parliament or its Committees during that process.
That is a step back on the democratic checks and balances that the House has under current legislation. We are concerned about whether the Secretary of State will have increased power to make decisions without that scrutiny. All Ministers, including the two sitting opposite me, try to make good decisions and do their best by the country, but it is unacceptable that the legislation includes a retrograde step whereby Parliament is unable to feed back on changes proposed by the Secretary of State. We see that as a retrograde step for scrutiny.
We have seen in legislation for other Departments a centralising move into the hands of officials and Ministers. What is the benefit of this provision in the Bill? What is the benefit of taking away a very simple and usual step of Parliament being able to give its views on the Secretary of State’s movements and proposals? It does not make a tangible difference to the process. It just seems to be a power grab—that may be unfair on the Minister—or at least a movement of power away from the ability of Parliament to have traditional checks and balances.
Matthew Pennycook
In the interest of focusing the debate on the actual changes that we are making in the clause, when a national policy statement has been reviewed and is to be updated, and involves material changes, all the assessments and consultation that need to take place, including laying the NPS before the House of Commons, will remain in place. We are talking about a specific set of categories of reflective, small changes that, as I will make clear in my remarks later, have already been debated by Parliament in their own terms.
Paul Holmes
I understand that, but the fact of the matter is that the Secretary of State will no longer be required, under the Bill, to respond to feedback from Parliament. That is what the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington is trying to sort out with his amendment. We very much support that amendment, because it would require the Secretary of State to provide a response to the House on amendments to national policy statements.
I have no disagreement on the provision of NPSs and what we discussed in the debate on the last clause. What tangible difference does it make to the Bill if Parliament is taken note of by being able to respond, and the Secretary of State is required to respond to that feedback? The Select Committee has a right to issue its views. Why is the Secretary of State no longer required to respond to that feedback from Parliament? To us, it seems slightly undemocratic to remove transparency and the ability of elected Members of this House, of all parties, to be able to scrutinise the movements of the Secretary of State and Ministers in national policy statements. Perhaps the Minister can explain in his comments what tangible difference it makes to his life or that of his Department that the Secretary of State no longer has to respond to feedback from elected Members of this House.
As I said, we agree with the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington. It would encourage greater accountability as part of the process outlined in the Bill and would enhance parliamentary scrutiny over crucial development policies that the Secretary of State has oversight of.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. I draw your attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I concur with my colleagues. I have concerns about removing the response from Ministers to Parliament. We are told that constituents and residents will be kept at the heart of such decisions—they will have some say in the national planning policy framework through consultation on national infrastructure projects when they are in their area. Indeed, I asked the Prime Minister a question on the topic at PMQs. I was not convinced by his answer.
How can the Government, on the one hand, say that we will keep local people at the heart of those decisions and allow local people to have a say on them, while on the other, in this part of the Bill, remove parliamentary scrutiny? That will fill the British people with dread, that they will not have such a say in some of those infrastructure projects in their area.
Matthew Pennycook
May I correct the hon. Gentleman? Local people in any part of the country affected by a development consent order will still be able to have their say on it. Nothing in the clause affects that arrangement.
Lewis Cocking
My point is, if we remove parliamentary scrutiny, the British people out there watching this will think, “Well, hang on a minute, the Government are saying on the one hand that we will still have a say and feed into that process, but on the other they are removing parliamentary scrutiny from the process, so how do we weigh that up?” When the Bill has been through the full process to Third Reading, how can we and the British people trust that they will still have a say over national infrastructure projects in their area if parliamentary scrutiny is being removed? That is taking with one hand and giving with the other, and it could be perceived that people will not have a say; they might not believe the Government saying that they will have a say. I hope that the Minister will comment on that.
Matthew Pennycook
Let me be clear. I appreciate the concerns that hon. Members have expressed. I hope that I can provide some reassurance, but I am more than happy to have further exchanges on this point, which is an important one.
The clause introduces a new streamlined procedure for making material policy amendments to national policy statements, where the proposed amendments fall into four categories of changes to be made since the NPPS was last reviewed: reflecting legislative changes or revocations that have already come into force; relevant court decisions that have already been issued; Government policy that has already been published; and changes to other documents referred to in the NPPS.
A good example is our recent changes to the national planning policy framework—consulted on publicly and subject to a significant amount of scrutiny in the House. If a relevant NPPS had to be updated to reflect some of those policy changes, which have already been subject to consultation and scrutiny on their own terms, as I said, that would be a good example of where this reflective procedure might be useful.
The primary aim of the clause is to expedite the Parliamentary process for updating national policy statements. By doing so, it ensures that amendments that have already undergone public and parliamentary scrutiny can be integrated more swiftly into the relevant NPPS. In enabling reflective amendments to be made, the new procedure will support the Government’s growth mission by ensuring that NPPSs are current and relevant, increasing certainty for developers and investors, and streamlining decision making for nationally significant infrastructure projects.
Hon. Members should be assured that, where applicable, the statutory and regulatory prerequisites of an appraisal of sustainability and habitats regulation assessment will continue to apply to amendments that fall within this definition, as will the existing publication and consultation requirements for material changes to a national policy statement. The clause does, however—this is the point of debate that we have just had—disapply the requirements for the Secretary of State to respond to resolutions made by Parliament or its Committees. We believe that change is necessary to enable reflective changes to be made to NPSs in a more timely and proportionate manner.
Matthew Pennycook
I will give way in one second, if the hon. Member will allow me, because I think this is some useful context for some of the discussions that have taken place over recent months.
The Government are grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) and the relevant Select Committee Clerks for engaging with me and my officials on the implications of the new procedure. We have agreed on certain guarantees to ensure that there will still be adequate parliamentary scrutiny when the procedure is used.
As such, I am happy to restate today that, when the Government intend to use the reflective amendment route to update a national policy statement, we will write to the relevant Select Committee at the start of the consultation period. We would hope in all instances that the Select Committee responds in a prompt and timely manner, allowing us to take on board its comments. Ministers will make themselves available to speak at the Committee during that period, in so far as that is practical.
The process retains scope for Parliament to raise matters with the Government in the usual fashion. Should a Select Committee publish a report within the relevant timeframes of the public consultation period—in a sense, that is one of the challenges we are trying to get at here: not all select Committees will respond in the relevant period, therefore elongating the process by which the reflective amendment needs to take place—the Government will obviously take those views into account before the updated statement is laid before the House in the usual manner.
Ellie Chowns
I thank the Minister for reminding us that we are talking about a specific amendment to a specific clause about a specific thing. But the issue that is at stake here was communicated by his complaint that parliamentary process might slow things down. Surely, the whole point of Parliament is to make our laws. I am worried by the implication that Government see Parliament as a hindrance to getting things done, rather than as a crucial part of scrutiny and checks and balances. If the Minister has concerns about timescales, it is perfectly achievable to address those by setting timeframes. But the removal of the clause that requires the Government to pay attention to the views of cross-party Committees scrutinising particular statements is concerning.
Matthew Pennycook
I say gently to the hon. Lady that she has ignored everything I have said. Every one of the changes that will be able to be made through this process will have already been subject to relevant consultation and parliamentary scrutiny. There is the example of changes to the national planning policy framework, which underwent a huge amount of parliamentary scrutiny through a Select Committee and a statement on the Floor of the House. It is not particularly problematic that we should be able to quickly, in a timely manner—with Select Committee input if it is able to respond in the necessary timeframe—make that change to a national policy statement to ensure that it is up to date and effective.
It is worth considering what the current arrangements require. Currently, the consultation, publicity and parliamentary scrutiny appeal that the Government must follow when updating an NPS, even for a minor change of the kind I have spoken about, is exactly the same as designating an entirely new NPS. There is no ability at the moment for timely and often minor reflective updates that will only reflect policy changes that have already been made subject to scrutiny, and court decisions that have been issued—there is not process for that. We think the system would work far better in most cases if there were.
Although it is a matter for the House, we would hope that in nearly every instance the relevant Select Committee would be able to respond in time, and that those views would be taken into account to help the NPS be updated in a more proportionate and effective manner.
Paul Holmes
I apologise for interrupting the Minister mid-flow, but if the utopian vision that he has outlined is the case—if a Select Committee comes to them within the right amount of time they will listen to its views, but the timescales are currently too long—and the Minister genuinely wanted to allow parliamentary scrutiny and responses to be taken into account by his Department, he would have come to the Committee today outlining a number of steps contained in the legislation setting standard response times for Select Committees and the processes of this House, as the hon. Member for North Herefordshire said.
The Minister could have clearly outlined in the legislation an aspiration for the amount of time that he would want the changes to be worked through with Parliament. I understand that there are Standing Orders of the House, but I remind the Minister that the Leader of the House is currently a Minister under his Government, and he could have got a workaround instead of taking out the scrutiny powers of the House of Commons.
Matthew Pennycook
I simply disagree with the hon. Gentleman. It is a matter for the House rather than the Government. On their own terms, we think the changes made through the clause are proportionate and will ensure that the system is more effective. Again, I make it clear that we are talking about reflective amendments to national policy statements in the four specific categories I have given.
Matthew Pennycook
I will give way one last time, and then I will make some progress.
Lewis Cocking
If we are talking about small, minor changes, surely the consultation period does not need to be that long—it will not take Select Committees long to produce a report to feed into the process if these are only minor changes. I do not see the need for change that the Minister is setting out.
Matthew Pennycook
All I would say is that if the hon. Gentleman looked at the history of the response times on some of these matters he would see that in not every instance is there a timely response. It can delay the process quite significantly. We appreciate the concerns, but the procedure cannot and will not be used to bypass due parliamentary scrutiny.
Any court decision change being reflected in the NPS will have been scrutinised by the public and Parliament on its own terms. We are adjusting the parliamentary scrutiny requirements to update an NPS, so that it is more proportionate and enables those documents to be updated more quickly. The process retains scope for Parliament to raise matters with the Government. The Secretary of State is required to lay a statement in Parliament announcing that a review of the NPS is taking place. The Government will write to the relevant Select Committee at the start of the consultation period, and Ministers will make themselves available to speak at the relevant Select Committee during the consultation period, so far as is practical. Finally, the NPS as amended will still be laid in Parliament for 21 days and can be prayed against.
I turn to amendment 8, tabled by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington; we have covered many of the issues it raises. In seeking to remove clause 2(3)(a), it is a wrecking amendment, in our view. It would fatally and fundamentally undermine the introduction of a new streamlined procedure for updating national policy statements by requiring the Government to respond to a Select Committee inquiry before being able to lay a national policy statement before Parliament. We will therefore resist it. As I have set out, the new procedure introduced by clause 2 will help to unlock growth in our country by enabling policy to be updated more easily, providing certainty for applicants using the NSIP regime and for decision makers. On that basis, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment, and I commend clause 2 to the Committee.
Gideon Amos
I thank the hon. Members who have spoken. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner for reminding me of the discussion about Hinkley, which is 13 miles from my home and is where a lot of my constituents work. In the evidence sessions, much was made of the fish disco. If memory serves, it is an AFD—not a political party in Germany, but an acoustic fish deterrent—which would cost a fair amount, but would stop about 3 million fish being killed every year in the 7-metre diameter cooling tunnels that suck seawater into Hinkley. Many of my constituents are concerned about species loss, habitat loss and the effect on the natural environment.
Matthew Pennycook
I am struggling to follow what the hon. Gentleman’s specific concern is. He keeps throwing out the after-dinner speech example; that would not meet the threshold for a reflective amendment through this route. If the Government have made a policy change that has been subject to consultation and scrutiny in this House—
Matthew Pennycook
Well, it would have to have been subject to consultation and scrutiny in this House in order to meet the criteria. We think that it is therefore reasonable to take it through in this manner. The hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington is suggesting that there will be a complete absence of parliamentary scrutiny, and in that way is misleading the Committee regarding the effect of the clause.
Gideon Amos
I am grateful to be able to get back to the clause. Clause 2(3)(d) of the Bill is clear that any published Government policy can be the basis for a change through this expedited route, which does not involve parliamentary scrutiny. As I explained earlier, court cases have held that a speech can be admitted as Government policy. There is another danger with this approach. It may be said that there will be only occasional changes. Were the clause restricted to where there have been legal judgments or thorough parliamentary debate, those of us on this side of the Committee would be more relaxed about the changes, but it is not; it covers all published Government policy.
One of the other dangers, besides quick changes in Government policy that would help particular projects, is a potential cumulative danger. There could be numerous changes to national policy statements through this minor amendments route, and anyone who thinks that that is unrealistic needs only to look at the cavernous website of the national planning practice guidance, which is voluminous, ever expanding and always changing. One of my concerns is that this process, through gradual attrition and minor changes, will degrade the importance of a national policy statement as a single statement that has been voted on in Parliament, rather than a mass of amendments over many years, on an ever expanding website of guidance.
If the Minister suggests that there is a very high test, clause 2(3)(d) says that the only test is that it is “published Government policy”. That is not a very high test for what can go through this expedited process.
Matthew Pennycook
The hon. Gentleman has already made it clear that he will press the amendment, but let me take one last opportunity to reassure Members on this point. We have to be clear what the current requirements entail: they do not require the Government to agree with a Select Committee report, if it is issued in a timely manner; they just require the Secretary of State to respond to resolutions made by Parliament or its Committees. Those resolutions can ultimately be set aside if the Government disagree.
As I said, we are not trying to remove wholesale parliamentary scrutiny or the ability of the public to engage and consult. All the changes that will come down this route, when it is appropriate and necessary to use, will have been scrutinised by Parliament and, in many cases, by public consultation on their own terms. However, we think that the removal of an aspect of parliamentary scrutiny is justified by the nature of changes that can be better reflected in policy within a national policy statement. We have had extensive engagement with the Chair of the Treasury Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), and the relevant Select Committee Clerks on what guarantees we can provide, while removing this requirement, to ensure that there is still adequate parliamentary scrutiny when the procedure is used.
Finally, I want to bring home to Members what we think the change will allow. We estimate that, in many cases, the requirement to respond to resolutions, particularly in cases where a Select Committee’s response is not timely, adds at least three to six months to the process of updating a national policy statement. Given that we are talking about minor changes that are already policy and court decisions, we think that this is a necessary and proportionate means of ensuring that policy statements are up to date and that investors have confidence in the policy framework being applied. We therefore think that we can streamline the process, and will resist the amendment.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Matthew Pennycook
The Planning Act 2008 provides a uniform approach to consenting, covering a wide range of sectors and types of development. However, this may not always be proportionate for specific developments. Clause 3 provides a new power for the Secretary of State to issue a direction to disapply the requirement for development consent for specified developments that would otherwise fall under the NSIP regime. The clause contains several conditions governing when a direction may or may not be given by the Secretary of State, such as when a request for direction is needed, who may submit such a request, and what such a request may contain.
The Secretary of State may give a direction only if they consider it appropriate for an alternative consenting regime to apply to a specific development. This would mean that a development consent order is no longer required and that the development in question could instead be considered by an alternative appropriate consenting authority, bringing greater flexibility to the system of planning consent by ensuring that the appropriate regime is used, based on the specific circumstances at hand rather than on strict statutory definitions and thresholds. This will help to reduce burdens on applicants that may otherwise be disproportionate, and to develop a more streamlined and responsive decision-making process.
Let me make it clear to hon. Members what the current arrangements provide for. Section 35 of the Planning Act allows the Secretary of State to bring into the NSIP regime specified developments that do not come within the statutory meaning of a nationally significant infrastructure project. Clause 3 will provide similar flexibility but in the other direction, enabling more proportionate and efficient consenting processes. I can provide several examples of where such flexibility may be beneficial. A railway development may be within the scope of the Planning Act, but its impacts and benefits may be more local, and it may not require the compulsory acquisition of land. It might be more appropriate for such cases to be considered under the Transport and Works Act 1992 regime.
Similarly, other large developments often include multiple elements that need to be considered under different consenting regimes, leading to disproportionate work and costs in preparing multiple applications. For example, an access road that is secondary to the main development may require consent under the NSIP regime, while other elements of the development, such as housing, may fall under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 regime. Clause 3 will allow for a direction to be provided by the Secretary of State to enable the applicant to include the access road in the planning application under the Town and Country Planning Act route.
There have also been cases where it has been argued that a development close to exiting statutory thresholds could be more appropriately considered through other, more proportionate regimes. We have all heard the examples—I have heard them in many debates secured by hon. Members—and they were highlighted again in our planning reform working paper. There are many examples of solar developments that have been deliberately kept just below the Planning Act threshold of 50 MW to avoid coming within the NSIP regime. We committed to increasing the statutory threshold for solar developments to 100 MW in December 2024, but as the technology continues to improve, similar issues may occur in the future, and other examples could emerge in other fields.
The current arrangement has resulted in the clustering of developments just below the NSIP threshold and less energy being generated overall, undermining our work to strengthen this country’s energy security. The clause provides far more flexibility at local level so that, even under the new arrangements, an applicant who wants to bring forward a 120 MW solar application need not be deterred by the nature of the present NSIP system being slow and uncertain, which we are taking steps to address. They will be able to divide their application into, say, four different applications within the TCPA regime if they have a constructive and pro-development council that they feel they can work with. That would be a faster route to getting a decision on their application, as the clause allows them to apply to the Secretary of State to make a redirection into an alternative consenting regime.
David Simmonds
How does the Minister propose that this measure will address boundary issues? It is not uncommon for a significant construction project to be located in one local authority while the access road, as he described, is in another local authority. Particularly where a section 106 benefit is derived from a development that is taking place, the consenting authority will undertake those negotiations, so clearly it will be necessary to have taken that into account. Can he indicate how such an approach will be built in, so that everyone has an assurance that that will be fully dealt with?
Matthew Pennycook
It will be for the Secretary of State to consider applicants’ requests when they are made. They will issue their policy on redirection decisions, and issue guidance for clarity about precisely how the process will operate in certain circumstances. The access road example that I gave the hon. Gentleman is a good one. In that type of scenario, there is a very strong case for an access road application not to go through the full NSIP regime, particularly if the applicant in question is dealing with a local authority that is well skilled and well resourced, and that they feel is able to better deal with the application in a more timely fashion. They can apply to the Secretary of State to make such a redirection, but we will issue guidance on specifically how the power could be used.
David Simmonds
May I press the Minister a little further on that? I am thinking of the Southall gasworks site, a very large housing development on a former gasworks site in London. The only possible access route to facilitate the development involved constructing a bridge from the London borough of Hillingdon, where none of that development took place, into the borough of Ealing.
Clearly, one of the issues there is that the large scale of housing being delivered is of benefit to Ealing, since it goes against its housing target. The section 106 yield also goes to Ealing as it is the consenting planning authority. However, the loss is that an access road has to be driven through a nature reserve and leisure facility in the neighbouring local authority.
I am just keen to understand how the clause will be used. When the decisions sit with two separate local authorities in normal due process, one of which has a lot more at stake and the other a lot more to lose, how will the Secretary of State be able to balance them so that local residents—constituents—can be assured that their concerns are taken into account?
Matthew Pennycook
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. I want to be very clear about the circumstances in which this measure can be used. As he will appreciate, I will not comment on a specific application, for reasons he will well understand, but, in such a scenario, I struggle to see how that application could feasibly come within the NSIP regime process at all. It sounds like a straight-down-the-line application that would be made by the applicant, across two local authorities, through the Town and Country Planning Act regime.
What the clause seeks to do is ensure that, in cases where, due to the nature of the development, the only route to go down is the NSIP regime via a development consent order, an applicant can apply to have that application determined in a different consenting order if it will lead to a faster, more proportionate and more effective decision-making process. As I say, it will therefore be for the Secretary of State to consider the unique circumstances and impacts of any specific development so that the consenting of certain developments can be undertaken by whatever body the applicant appealing to the Secretary of State says is the more appropriate route. In most instances, I would assume that that would be the local planning authority, but I gave the example of the Transport and Works Acts regime for roads.
We are trying to get at the type of examples where developments need limited consents or may not need compulsory acquisition—in a sense, when the one-stop-shop nature of the NSIP regime may not be the most proportionate means to take that through. The redirection under the clause will not be appropriate for all developments, and, for a direction to be given, the Secretary of State must consider that it is appropriate for an alternative consenting regime to apply rather than the Planning Act.
Lewis Cocking
I thank the Minister for giving way. Has his Department done any analysis of how many requests the Government are likely to get under the clause, and how many applications will want to change how they are determined?
Matthew Pennycook
I think the thrust of the hon. Member’s question was about a numerical analysis. No, we cannot account for the behavioural change that would come if this clause is enacted. What we do know, from significant engagement with stakeholders in the infrastructure sector, is that lots of applicants would make use of the redirection route and are eager to do so.
The examples I have heard from particular major economic infrastructure providers are where, as I say, they have a constructive and healthy working relationship with a local authority that they are confident is resourced and able to take the decision to approve or reject an application in a timely manner and they do not want to have to take it through the NSIP regime, which is currently their only route.
As I said, section 35 already allows the Secretary of State to pull applications from other regimes into the NSIP regime. This will work the other way, and just provides a necessary flexibility. The point of clause 3, though, is to ensure that any given applicant can make a case to the Secretary of State to go into the regime that they feel is the most appropriate and proportionate for the application in question.
Lewis Cocking
I thank the Minister for giving way again. I just want to press him a little more. He is saying that people can choose to go through the Town and Country Planning Act regime, but we were always told by this Government that that is a long, arduous process that developments take a really long time to go through. Why are they suggesting that they might want to put more development through that process if, as they are saying, it is not working?
Matthew Pennycook
The Government are agnostic on which route a developer will wish to go down. As I say, developers will have to apply to the Secretary of State and make a case that, in the specific circumstances in which they are operating, there should be an alternative consenting route. The hon. Gentleman will know that we are making significant efforts to speed up and streamline the town and country planning regime. From previous debates, I know that he takes issue with some of that, but if he has had a conversion, I would very much welcome it.
Gideon Amos
Without wanting to shock the Minister too much, I rise to support the clause. The Liberal Democrats want measures that will help to facilitate net zero and other developments, and the clause will provide an opportunity for many decisions to go into the Town and Country Planning Act regime, which is local, is accountable and involves local planning committees. That shows that this does not necessarily need to be a slower process; it could at times be a quicker process with more local involvement. I have been involved in NSIP projects that could have gone through that process but in fact came through the Planning Act 2008 regime. Direction under the proposed new section could be very helpful in ensuring more local processing of planning applications.
Matthew Pennycook
I am slightly taken aback by the supportive comment from the hon. Gentleman, but I very much welcome it.
Before I make my main point, it may be helpful if I give hon. Members another example of the types of alternative consenting routes that may be considered more appropriate. We spoke about the Town and Country Planning Act and the Transport and Works Act regimes. Offshore generating stations are another good example. If they are wholly offshore, responsibility for electricity consent functions under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989 may be more appropriately transferred to the Marine Management Organisation under section 12 of the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009—again, rather than the NSIP regime. We will provide further detail, through guidance, about all the regimes that it will be considered appropriate to use in relation to this power.
I gave hon. Members assurances on the fact that we will work across Government to prepare and publish policy that will provide clarity about the Secretary of State’s considerations when determining requests for redirection of a project. As I said, we will also issue guidance that makes the process clear. However, I am more than happy, in response to the shadow Minister’s point, to write to the Committee to set out in more detail how we think this process will work. That will include responding to his specific point on proposed new section 35D—
David Simmonds
It would be helpful if, when the Minister produces that response, he could also set out for the Committee how the processes in place will ensure consistency of decision making. As he described, some local authorities may be more pro in a particular area, or less so. There is a need to ensure transparency that a given nature of development and a given scale will be dealt with in a consistent manner.
Can the Minister tell us whether any consideration has been given to any time constraints? I am just mindful of the fact that one issue that certainly occurs in local authorities and potentially in central Government is that if the end of a Parliament, a general election, is coming up, there is a risk of developers thinking, “At this point, I’m more likely to get the Minister to sign things off if I go down this route or that route,” regardless of the merits, on a planning basis, of the individual projects that are being put forward. Can we be assured that that will be properly addressed so that we do not see development being constrained by an imminent election or, indeed, advanced without due process because of an imminent election?
Matthew Pennycook
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that entirely reasonable question. It would certainly be our intention, in preparing and publishing policy, to provide clarity. As I said on the Secretary of State’s considerations when determining requests for redirection of a project, we would hope that guidance absolutely provides certainty and clarity. It will not help the Government’s objectives through the Bill if applicants and investors are not clear about how this process works.
In response to the hon. Gentleman’s other point, about clarification of the timelines for how the process could be used, I recognise the concern, but I again remind him that it will be for the Secretary of State to make a decision only on whether an alternative consenting regime can be used. It will be through the normal processes of whatever consenting regime is used, if such a redirection is allowed, that a decision will be made on the material considerations at play in any given application; it will not be for the Secretary of State to decide. This is merely a power to allow, as I said, an applicant to redirect an application into an alternative consenting regime from the NSIP planning process through the Planning Act 2008. On that basis—
David Simmonds
May I press the Minister a little more on that point? I understand and thank him for the clarity that he has brought. As he set out, one purpose of the change is to ensure greater certainty for investors and applicants about the process. We are all very aware that planning issues can often become quite significant local political issues as well.
How will the regime avoid a situation where, with an election in the not-too-distant future, there is a political trade-off that involves a Government, a Minister or a candidate saying, “If we win the election, we are going to push it down this route” in order to try to produce outcome A, versus “We think we should push it down an alternative route” in order to produce a different outcome through the planning process? How can we make sure that it is sufficiently insulated from that political turmoil to ensure certainty?
The Chair
Order. I remind the Committee that we need to get through quite a lot of stuff. The Minister has already said that he will write to the Committee, so I urge Members to press on. I know that these are very important matters, but the Minister has already said that he is going to write.
Matthew Pennycook
Thank you, Mrs Hobhouse. Those of us on the Government Benches will certainly take that stricture into account and limit the length of our contributions. On the specific point, I must say, in all candour, that I struggle to foresee how the dynamics that the hon. Gentleman has just outlined will operate. It is not for the Government to make a judgment on any particular application that a developer may wish to make. It is not the Government’s position to take a view on which consenting regime would be most appropriate, other than on which will produce the most timely and proportionate determination of an application. It will be for the applicant to decide in writing to the Secretary of State, and to make a request to use an alternative consenting regime.
All the Secretary of State will do is decide whether the circumstances at play are such that there is a good case for an alternative to the NSIP regime to be used in a given scenario. As I say, we will set out in policy and guidance more detail about the regimes to which we think this alternative can apply and how we foresee the redirection power being used. On that basis, I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 3 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Applications for development consent: consultation
Matthew Pennycook
I beg to move amendment 57, in clause 4, page 8, line 21, leave out subsection (2).
This amendment is consequential on NC44.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendment 58.
Clause stand part.
Government motion to transfer clause 4.
Clause 5 stand part.
Government amendments 60 to 67.
Clauses 6 and 7 stand part.
Government new clause 44—Applications for development consent: removal of certain pre-application requirements.
Government new clause 45—Applications for development consent: changes related to section (Applications for development consent: removal of certain pre-application requirements).
Matthew Pennycook
As hon. Members will be aware, last week the Government announced that we will reform the pre-application stage for nationally significant infrastructure projects to remove the statutory requirement for applicants to consult. Although the Government are committed to consultation and the value that early and constructive engagement plays in developing high-quality infrastructure schemes, feedback on Second Reading and since the Bill’s introduction has shown that the status quo is not working. Evidence indicates that the statutory requirements, which are unique to the NSIP regime and not found in any other planning consenting regime, are now creating perverse incentives.
Rather than driving better outcomes and improving infrastructure applications, statutory pre-application procedures have become a tick-box exercise that encourages risk aversion and gold plating. The result is that communities suffer from consultation fatigue and confusion, with them having to cope with longer, ever-more technical and less accessible documentation. The arrangement also actively disincentivises improvements to applications, even if they are in the local community’s interests, because applicants worry that any change will require further repeat consultation and added delay to the process.
As the Deputy Prime Minister and I set out on Second Reading, we would not hesitate to act boldly if a compelling case for change was made, to ensure that the NSIP regime is firing on all cylinders to deliver on our ambition for building the homes and infrastructure needed to grow our economy.
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
Does the Minister, like me, recall the evidence we heard last week from the chair of the National Infrastructure Commission? A report written by the organisation in 2023 said that one of the reasons for the extravagant delays to nationally significant infrastructure projects was “disproportionate consultation”. My constituents are acutely aware of that issue because they have had to wait more than 15 years for the lower Thames crossing to be consented, partly as a result of the very disproportionate consultation that Sir John Armitt referred to. Does the Minister agree that the clauses and amendments he is proposing will provide a significant change to the speed at which NSIPs take place, which will benefit those who are currently suffering as a result of the lack of infrastructure in their area?
Matthew Pennycook
I thank my hon. Friend for that point, and I completely agree with him. The system was set up with very specific objectives in mind. It was created initially without a role for Ministers. That was addressed by the Localism Act 2011, but the statutory pre-consultation requirements were kept in place on the basis that they were helping to improve applications prior to submission. However, according to lots of the evidence we have received in response to our working paper on the subject, the feedback from external stakeholders and the calls on Second Reading for us to look again at this specific area, the statutory requirements are now driving perverse and often bad outcomes, including for the communities affected by them.
Last week, I made a written ministerial statement explaining the changes that the Government intend to make. We are tabling a clean package of amendments to implement these reforms through the Bill. The amendments fall into three broad categories.
First, new clause 44 will remove the relevant sections of the Planning Act to give this change effect. That includes removing the sections that require applicants to consult local authorities, landowners, statutory consultees and local communities before submitting applications for development consent. It will also remove from the Act definitions for those groups.
David Simmonds
My hon. Friend puts it probably more bluntly than I have, but he is absolutely spot on. I know he has an enormous amount of experience in local government negotiating around exactly these kinds of points.
Matthew Pennycook
I want to tease out a point here, because one of the reasons the Government are confident that the change will lead to beneficial outcomes is that high-quality engagement and consultation routinely takes place in other planning regimes that do not have statutory pre-application requirements. Why do Opposition Members think that their removal, which will equalise all planning consent regimes so that statutory pre-application requirements are not at play, is damaging in this instance? In the TCPA and the types of residential application they are talking about, bad engagement happens, but high-quality consultation and engagement happen too, and residents and other stakeholders get their say post-submission.
David Simmonds
I think that most of us who have been on a planning committee, as the Minister has, probably recognise that, if anything, to satisfy the concerns of our constituents we should be going further with the consultation on small applications, rather than reducing it in larger ways. We are debating developments that will have an enormous community impact, and there are often important points of detail that influence the level of consent.
We have had multiple debates in this and the previous Parliament about the loss of high-quality agricultural land to solar farms, for example. It is quite likely that a community, if it fully understands exactly how a developer will mitigate that impact, will come around to supporting such a development; but if the community is simply faced with, “Here is the planning application. We have made it already. Take it or leave it,” there is a risk from not allowing the opportunity for the level of consent to be built up. That will in turn encourage, and in the case of local authorities’ statutory obligations, force, the exploration of other legal routes of objection to prevent the application proceeding.
While I understand what the Minister is saying, like the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, we will use the opportunity given by the provisions being tabled relatively late in the day to explore alternative methods by which concerns can be addressed. It seems to us fundamental that if a major application is made, those who are affected by it should have the opportunity in advance to learn what it means for them, their community and their home, and should not simply be told that the planning application has been made.
There is a world of difference between a planning application that means, “Your house is going to be demolished in order for something to proceed,” and a planning application that indicates a much less significant impact. It is those kinds of issues that need to be teased out; that is what the pre-application discussions and consultations are there for. We encourage the Government to think about a different, more nuanced way to address fully the concerns that have been expressed cross-party, although in slightly different ways.
Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Fourth sitting)
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
Read Full debateTuesday 29th April 2025
(1 week, 4 days ago)
Public Bill CommitteesPlanning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 29 April 2025 - (29 Apr 2025)
This text is a record of ministerial contributions to a debate held as part of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 passage through Parliament.
In 1993, the House of Lords Pepper vs. Hart decision provided that statements made by Government Ministers may be taken as illustrative of legislative intent as to the interpretation of law.
This extract highlights statements made by Government Ministers along with contextual remarks by other members. The full debate can be read here
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:
Government amendment 58.
Clause stand part.
Government motion to transfer clause 4.
Clause 5 stand part.
Government amendments 60 to 67.
Clauses 6 and 7 stand part.
Government new clause 44—Applications for development consent: removal of certain pre-application requirements.
Government new clause 45—Applications for development consent: changes related to section (Applications for development consent: removal of certain pre-application requirements).
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. In the last sitting, we discussed the various clauses and Government amendments in this group, and I thank hon. Members on both sides of the Committee for their considered engagement with them. The proposed changes we are considering are, without question, a significant evolution of the nationally significant infrastructure projects regime, and it is entirely right and proper that they are subject to intensive scrutiny.
As the Committee is aware, I set out the Government’s position on this matter in considerable detail in my written ministerial statement from 23 April. I therefore intend to focus my remarks on providing useful further points of clarification about the rationale for the proposed reforms and how we see the system operating once they have been made.
In her remarks, the hon. Member for North Herefordshire conceded that the NSIP process can take a long time, but she implied that the problem was merely confined to individual applications. The Government disagree. From our perspective, the problem that these and other changes in this chapter are intended to remedy are systemic. The status quo is not working, and all too often it is burdensome to applicants and consultees alike.
We know that the performance of the NSIP regime as a whole has deteriorated sharply over recent years. We know that pre-application periods have, on average, nearly doubled since 2013, increasing from over 14 months to nearly 28 months in 2021. As much as Labour Members welcome any and every reminder of the chaos unleashed under recent Conservative Administrations, I do not believe that the deterioration we are discussing can be attributed to the uncertainty that the post-2016 period engendered.
The evidence clearly points to the fact that inefficiencies in the NSIP system, both structural and cultural, are driving delays and high costs. We heard examples this morning of the fact that the documentation underpinning consents has been getting longer, and in too many instances now runs to tens of thousands of pages. Part of the reason is that the statutory and prescriptive nature of the pre-application requirements—I again remind the Committee that they are absent from other planning regimes, including those used for applications for new housing—are driving perverse outcomes.
It is precisely because the requirements are statutory that applicants fear that falling short of them will see their project rejected further down the line, or leave them exposed to judicial review. As we have discussed, the result is that projects are slowed down as developers undertake ever more rounds of consultation and produce greater amounts of documentation to ensure that the requirements are met. Sensible improvements are deterred because applicants worry that they will require further rounds of consultation to insulate them from challenge.
In short, as I argued in the previous sitting, the dynamics of the system are actively encouraging risk aversion and gold-plating and are compelling applicants to go above and beyond what may be required in law, rather than merely ensuring that an application is acceptable in planning terms. Because the root of the problem is the statutory nature of the requirements, it is worth noting that the same behavioural incentives would be in play if we reinserted into the Bill precise statutory criteria for what constitutes effective consultation, as the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington suggested we should.
In his contribution, the shadow Minister argued that we should focus on improving rather than removing the statutory requirements in question. However, he overlooked the fact that the NSIP action plan, published by the previous Government in February 2023, contained a range of reforms designed to drive more effective and proportionate approaches to consultation and engagement, including new cost-recoverable pre-application services for applicants at the Planning Inspectorate, and revised and strengthened pre-application guidance.
While those steps were welcome, and this Government are seeking to embed new services and cost-recovery mechanisms, the feedback we have received from a wide range of stakeholders suggests that they will not deliver the necessary step change needed to tackle risk aversion and gold-plating. It is the dynamic that has arisen as a result of the very existence of the statutory pre-application requirements in question that is hampering their nominal purpose of producing better outcomes, and the present arrangements are driving up costs not only for developers, but for the bill payers and taxpayers we all represent.
The Government are in complete agreement with the hon. Member for North Herefordshire that early, meaningful and constructive engagement with those affected, including local authorities, statutory consultees, landowners and local communities, often leads to better schemes, greater local benefits and improved mitigation. We still want and expect the NSIP regime to function on the basis of a front-loaded approach in which development proposals are thoroughly scoped and refined prior to being submitted to the Planning Inspectorate. As part of that process, we still want and expect high-quality, early, meaningful and constructive engagement to take place and for positive changes to be made to applications. However, we want and expect it to take place without the downsides that the current statutory requirements are causing.
Removing the statutory requirements in question does not signify that pre-submission consultation and high-quality engagement is no longer important. Statutory guidance that the Government will be required to produce will encourage such pre-application engagement and consultation, but with applicants given the flexibility to carry it out in the way that they consider best for their proposed development, in accordance with that guidance.
Equally as importantly, the system will still reward high-quality engagement and consultation. The Planning Inspectorate will continue to assess whether applications are suitable to proceed to examination. We expect guidance to emphasise that without adequate engagement and consultation, applications are unlikely to be able to do so. Guidance and advice from the Planning Inspectorate will be aimed at helping applicants demonstrate that they are of a satisfactory standard in terms of meeting that process.
Ultimately, all communities will still be able to have their voices heard, whether that is through objecting outright to applications or providing evidence of adverse impacts through the post-submission examination process, which all applications obviously still need to go through.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
I do not demur from much of what the Minister says about the provisions. To go back to his remarks about the delays not being caused solely by the chaos under the previous Government, is it not a fact that during the last few years of the Conservative Government, the delays at the decision stage, which is meant to be three months, rocketed?
The regime, which began as one in which every section of it respected the deadlines, became one in which every section respected the deadlines with the exception of the Secretary of State. The intention of those drafting the Planning Act 2008 was that, in such circumstances, a report to Parliament by the Secretary of State when delaying the decision would serve as a disincentive on the Secretary of State for doing so. That clearly has not happened. Will the Minister reflect on whether any other measures could be taken to eliminate the delays caused by Secretaries of State making decisions on NSIPs in future?
Matthew Pennycook
It is certainly the case that it is not only in the pre-submission phase where slippages in timeframes have occurred. The hon. Member makes a valid point about the fact that we have seen a pattern in some Departments of Secretaries of State not making timely decisions. This Government have sought to improve upon the past performance. We are already doing so, but I am open to ideas on how we might tighten the process. The Government are giving further thought to the general matter of how consents are taken through Departments.
To conclude, the changes proposed will make a significant contribution to speeding up and streamlining the consenting process for critical infrastructure, and we are convinced that in many cases they will produce better outcomes than the status quo. I therefore urge the Committee to support them.
Amendment 57 agreed to.
Amendment made: 58, in clause 4, page 8, line 32, leave out subsection (3).—(Matthew Pennycook.)
This amendment is consequential on NC44.
Clause 4, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered,
That clause 4 be transferred to the end of line 32 on page 12. —(Matthew Pennycook.)
Clause 5 disagreed to.
Clause 6
Applications for development consent: acceptance stage
Amendments made: 60, in clause 6, page 10, line 4, leave out “follows” and insert
“set out in subsections (2) to (13)”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 68.
Amendment 61, in clause 6, page 10, line 25, after “Secretary of State” insert “and others”.
This amendment is consequential on subsection (5)(d) of NC45.
Amendment 62, in clause 6, page 11, line 4, leave out from “satisfying” to “and” in line 6 and insert
“section 48 (duty to publicise),”.
This amendment is consequential on NC44.
Amendment 63, in clause 6, page 11, leave out lines 12 to 14.
This amendment is consequential on NC44.
Amendment 64, in clause 6, page 11, line 16, leave out “50” and insert “50(1)”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 63.
Amendment 65, in clause 6, page 11, leave out lines 17 to 20.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 63.
Amendment 66, in clause 6, page 11, line 21, leave out subsection (9) and insert—
“(9) Omit subsection (5).”
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 64.
Amendment 67, in clause 6, page 12, line 32, at end insert—
“(14) In consequence of the amendments in subsections (7)(c) and (10), omit section 137(3) and (4) of the Localism Act 2011.”—(Matthew Pennycook.)
This technical amendment omits provisions of the Localism Act 2011 that are no longer required (because of changes made by clause 6 of the Bill).
Clause 6, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Planning Act 2008: legal challenges
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Matthew Pennycook
Clause 8 streamlines the judicial review process for nationally significant infrastructure projects. The changes apply to legal challenges against decisions on development consent orders and national policy statements. At the moment, individuals wanting to bring challenges against nationally significant infrastructure projects, such as nuclear plants, railway lines, wind farms and other projects, have up to three attempts to try to obtain permission from the courts. As noted by Lord Banner’s independent review last year into the delays caused by these legal challenges, each attempt extends the duration of a claim by several weeks, and in some cases, by several months.
The clause will remove the paper permission stage, meaning that applications for judicial review will go straight to an oral hearing in the High Court. The clause will also remove the right to appeal for cases that are deemed totally without merit at the oral hearing, which becomes the only attempt for these cases. The Government are committed to maintaining access to justice, which is why the right of appeal will remain for cases that are refused permission at the oral hearing, but that are not deemed totally without merit. The changes are a necessary means of preventing meritless claims from holding up development by exhausting the appeals process and of ensuring that legitimate legal challenges are heard promptly. I commend the clause to the Committee.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Twigg. We touched on the issue of remedy earlier today. A local authority, for example, may have a statutory obligation placed on it by a piece of legislation, which means that it has an obligation to take an interest in a particular development, including potentially judicially reviewing that application, if the impact runs contrary to its other statutory obligations.
We are well aware of issues relating to air quality, but there are also organisations such as ClientEarth, which many of us will have heard of. Essentially, their stock in trade is to look for opportunities to address broader issues around, for example, climate change and environmental impact by using what, in some cases, are arguably loopholes, but in many cases, are essentially contradictions in legislation.
The Minister talked earlier about a shift from having statutory pre-application processes to having guidance that would need to be followed. Clearly, one of the issues is that guidance can be challenged, and bodies that have a responsibility to follow the guidance can be challenged as to whether they have fulfilled their obligation to the letter.
Opposition Members certainly have concerns about the implications of removing the right to judicial review. We share the view that we need to ensure that those processes—those applications—are not frivolous and that they are not being used simply because the cost of responding to judicial review, and the delay that is involved, is a tool to create delay, impose costs and therefore deter development, which we all agree should take place. Conversely, however, we do not wish to see a situation where a public body or a local resident—a constituent—who has a genuine right to be heard and a genuine concern arising out of law is constrained from bringing the matter forward and seeking a remedy.
We also do not want a situation where, for example, a decision by Government, which is then taken through this process and restricted from judicial review, results in a third party, such as a local authority or NHS body, being judicially reviewed for its failure to stop that from proceeding—for its failure to bring a judicial review under other responsibilities that it has. I would be grateful if the Minister could address that.
Statutory consultees already have many legal obligations and duties relating to issues such as water quality, air quality and nature. They are obliged to go to the utmost of their powers to fulfil those obligations. Clearly, they may well be held in default if a development proceeds by virtue of the fact that they have not had the opportunity to appropriately challenge it in law. It would be helpful if the Minister set out how that will be fully addressed.
Matthew Pennycook
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his reasonable questions. If I have understood him, he makes a separate point about the statutory consultee system. As he will know—I refer him to my relevant written ministerial statement—we are seeking to reform that system in a number of ways.
On clause 8 specifically, the changes will not affect the ability to challenge the lawfulness of Government decisions in court. They are simply designed to reduce delays. We are not preventing anyone from challenging our planning decisions. Obviously, Government do not control how many of those challenges are made. We are tightening up the process so that if a challenge is judged to be meritless by the court—not by Government—it cannot be dragged on for years through numerous further appeals.
Only cases deemed totally without merit in the oral permission hearing in the High Court will be prevented from appealing to the Court of Appeal. Other cases will continue to be able to appeal the refusal of permission to the Court of Appeal. That will ensure that there is no possibility of meritless claims holding up nationally significant infrastructure projects, while maintaining access to justice in line with our domestic and international obligations.
I hope that the hon. Member is reassured that we are not removing wholesale the ability to mount judicial review challenges. Some have called for us to go further, but we think the proposals strike the right balance between addressing the removal of the paper permission stage and dealing with the issue of meritless claims. On that basis, I hope that he is reassured and may even feel inclined to support the measure.
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. Notwith-standing the comments from my fellow shadow Minister, who made an excellent contribution, can I press the Minister on one question? My hon. Friend outlined the Opposition’s concern over removing wholesale—we are not saying that the Minister is doing this—the checks and balances relating to somebody being able to challenge a decision that they deem has not been taken in the right way.
However, it would be remiss of us as a party not to acknowledge that there are cases where JR is used vexatiously. To use an example from my constituency, I waited for 12 years to get a 300-foot extension to Southampton airport’s runway. It took three judicial reviews before we finally got that through. There was unmitigated support from the local authority and me as the Member of Parliament at the time, and it was taken to JR for what I would say were very dubious reasons, just to try to delay the project.
I understand why the Minister is bringing in the measures, notwithstanding some of the concerns that my hon. Friend mentioned about the balance. However, I am reassured by what the Minister said about not removing the ability to challenge and tightening the process around what can be accepted as being without merit.
I have one question for the Minister, which he may not be able to answer today—I would not necessarily expect him to—but perhaps he could write to me about it. Following Lord Banner’s work, which was a thoughtful examination of how legal challenges could be streamlined, has the Minister made any assessments, through officials or the Department, of how much time or cost on average the changes to clause 8 might mean for the system overall? I am not expecting him to get his abacus out and look at that now, but I wonder whether he could outline to the Committee, through an impact assessment, the effect of some of the changes.
We will not push this clause to a Division. We understand the principled reason why the Minister is bringing it forward, even if we have some concern about the detail of the measure.
John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. This clause and the other clauses in this chapter are good news for Scotland, because we in Scotland depend on projects in England to proceed. Many projects are cross-border and need consent in both countries. That is important for jobs, particularly jobs for young people.
I have had the misfortune to be involved in infrastructure projects for many years. From time to time judicial reviews without any merit are brought solely to delay and frustrate projects. It is right and proper that the law is changed to make it clear that, once the High Court has made a decision, following argument—because the right to an oral hearing is retained—further appeals are prevented. Such appeals can lead to significant delays, depending on the business of the Court of the Appeal, which has many pressing priorities.
Some mention was made of costs. I will briefly describe the cost to developers, because the Labour party is a pro-business, pro-environment party. If someone has a development that is subject to a judicial review, they have planned their contracting strategy, and what it will cost to build the development, and their financing. If there is an indeterminate delay, and a series of additional delays of unpredictable length—as a lawyer, I could never tell people how long litigation would take—they are then exposed to significant fluctuations in the financial and commodities markets. There are therefore real costs, so I naturally support clause 8. The clause, along with the rest of the package of reforms to the development consent order regime, will create the opportunity for significant additional employment in Scotland, jobs for our young people, and great net zero and housing projects.
Matthew Pennycook
I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley, for his constructive tone on this clause—and others; I do not mean to confine his constructive attitude to just this clause. I welcome his praise for Lord Banner’s review, which I agree was thoughtful and insightful. As part of that review Lord Banner made it clear that although the duration differs between different applications, each attempt to apply for a judicial review currently extends the duration of a claim by, on average, several weeks, and in some cases by several months. In large numbers of cases, time is added by legal challenges that are unsuccessful. The changes made by the Bill aim to strike the right balance between improving efficiency and ensuring access to justice.
To be clear, this clause does remove the paper permission stage, but only makes changes by removing the right to appeal for cases that are deemed “totally without merit”. Other cases will retain that right of appeal if they are deemed to be with merit and able to be considered. We think these changes will make a difference to the time that projects take to work their way through the system, and we will work with the judiciary to advance a number of other changes to the process for NSIP judicial reviews, such as introducing target timescales for cases that we think will have a beneficial impact. On that basis, I commend the clause to the Committee.
Clause 9
Connections to electricity network: licence and other modifications
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
I beg to move amendment 36, in clause 9, page 14, line 6, after “distribution system” insert
“(and such an improvement may include changing the order in which connections are made)”.
This amendment clarifies that the purpose for which the power under clause 9(1) may be exercised may include the making of changes to the order of the queue for connections to a transmission or distribution system.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendments 37 to 40.
Clause stand part.
Clauses 10 and 11 stand part.
New clause 19—Increasing grid capacity—
The Secretary of State must, within three months of the passing of this Act, lay before Parliament a plan to—
(a) reduce the cost of, and time taken to make, connections to the transmission or distribution system;
(b) permit local energy grids.
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to produce a plan to reduce the time and financial cost of connections to the electricity grid and to allow local energy grids.
Michael Shanks
It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Twigg. We thought a change in the tone of the Committee for a few clauses would be helpful, before we return to the other Minister.
Amendment 36 clarifies that a modification made under clause 9 may include changes to the order of the queue for connections, which works towards the broader aim of improving the management of connections to the transmission and distribution systems. The purpose of all this work is to reorder the connections queue. That is essential to deal with the extreme level of oversubscription in the queue, and enable a move from the “first come, first served” proposition that we have at the moment to a “first ready and needed, first connected” approach. The amendment is essential to fulfil the intent of the clauses, which is to provide the means to implement connections reform should the current Ofgem and industry-led process face delays or be unable to realise its benefits in full.
Amendment 37 clarifies that the power of the Secretary of State to direct Ofgem to modify a licence or agreement may be exercised only for the purpose of improving the management of connections to the transmission or distribution system, which places an additional safeguard on the use of that power. Amendment 38 clarifies that the Secretary of State or Ofgem may modify an agreement under the powers in clause 9 even where the effect of the modification might amount to a repudiation of the agreement, which provides consistency with the existing wording in clause 12. It is also essential to fulfil the intent of the clauses. Finally, amendments 39 and 40, which are purely consequential on amendment 38, move the definition of “qualifying distribution agreement” within clause 9.
I turn to clause 9 more broadly. As many Members will know, the current first come, first served electricity grid connections regime is causing considerable and unacceptable delays. It is blocking clean power projects from connecting to the grid, and blocking demand projects that are critical to our economic growth as a country. The National Energy System Operator—NESO—and Ofgem are reforming the electricity grid connections process to a strategically aligned first ready, first connected system. The reformed process will require projects to meet readiness, technological and locational criteria to progress.
The reform requires complex amendments to codes and licences. Clause 9 therefore enables the Secretary of State or Ofgem to support the existing connections reforms by directly amending electricity licences, and associated documents or agreements, should that prove necessary. It is intended to be used should the existing processes enacting connections reforms face significant delays, including alignment with strategic energy plans. The Government or Ofgem will then be able to expedite a set of changes outside the standard process to ensure that our clean power mission is delivered at pace. The clause is focused on improving the management of connections to the transmission or distribution system, and follows precedent in being time-limited to three years after commencement of the power on Royal Assent. Similar powers have been taken in the past, including in section 84 of the Energy Act 2008, but they were also time-limited and are therefore no longer in force.
Clause 10 details the scope of the power in clause 9, which enables the Secretary of State or Ofgem to make amendments to electricity licences and associated documents or agreements. The clause first defines the power to modify in clause 9, which includes the ability to amend, add to or remove provisions, and to add or release parties from agreements. It will enable the Secretary of State or Ofgem to support Ofgem and NESO’s existing connections reforms by directly amending electricity licences, and associated documents or agreements, should that prove necessary.
The clause further details how the Secretary of State or Ofgem can exercise the power, which includes allowing for general or specific modifications, incidental changes and provisions that do not necessarily relate to the activities authorised by the licence. It ensures that modifications to standard licence conditions are reflected in future licences, and specifies the conditions under which licences can be revoked. Finally, it allows agreements to include conditions that must be met before the taking of specific steps, or provision about the procedure for varying the agreement. Similar scope and procedure have been outlined previously in legislation, including in the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Act 2022.
Clause 11 details the procedure around the provision in clause 9 to enable the Secretary of State or Ofgem to make amendments to electricity licences and associated documents. It aligns with the precedent established in section 8 of the 2022 Act, which detailed the procedure to modify a generation licence of a relevant licensee nuclear company. The clause obligates the Secretary of State or Ofgem—I am not sure how many more times I will say that in this speech—to consult a list of specified persons, such as the holder of any relevant licences, NESO and any other appropriate individuals, before making modifications. Details of those modifications must be made public as soon as reasonably practicable to ensure transparency with wider stakeholders. However, the Secretary of State or Ofgem can exclude from the publication any information that could harm commercial interests.
I will respond on new clause 19 after it has been spoken to.
Paul Holmes
What I have to say about these clauses will not be arduous, partly because I am not a shadow Energy Minister—as many Members will be pleased to note, including me—and my focus will be on the planning amendments. This is, however, a very important part of the Bill.
The Minister said he keeps mentioning “Ofgem and the Secretary of State”, but if he would like us to helpfully have a word with the Prime Minister to recommend that he becomes the Secretary of State, we are more than happy to do so. The Opposition believe that even he, as the Under-Secretary, could not do as much damage to our energy system networks and future growth as the Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband). [Interruption.] It is a policy disagreement.
This is a policy disagreement because, looking at the proposals in these clauses, we are very concerned. We obviously agree that the grid needs to be ready to connect to, because of the demands being placed on the system, and that is the policy of this Government and of the last. However, the focus of the current Secretary of State in really going down the route of the net zero agenda at what we would describe as a very fast speed, sometimes cutting off his nose to spite his face such as by cutting back on some of the energy systems we currently have, has put overwhelming demand on the energy grid.
The Government’s proposed decarbonising of the grid by 2030 will add at least £25 billion per year to the cost of the electricity system. The brunt of this increase will be felt by the people out there, who will see their household energy bill shoot up by over £900. Professor Gordon Hughes, the leading energy system expert, has found that these plans will increase power generation costs, grid balancing and capacity levels, thereby passing on those costs to our constituents.
The costs of balancing the grid alone are set to rise by £4 billion. Despite that, the Government have scrapped the full system cost review commissioned by the last Government. The current Administration are steaming ahead without a clear understanding of the impact on the energy bills of hard-working people—the energy bills they promised to freeze—on their families and on the industry’s competitiveness. Decarbonising the grid requires transparency on costs, not just soundbites about renewables, which I believe is what we have seen.
The Government have also watered down the proposed community benefits of new energy infrastructure, which they lauded before the press a couple of weeks ago, to just £750 per person.
Paul Holmes
From a sedentary position, the Minister says, “Just”, under his breath. It was not me who went to the BBC and leaked a report saying that the Government were going to give more money than they are now proposing; that has been reduced by his amendment, so, yes—“just”.
Furthermore, the Government have abandoned a number of reforms, including a review of the presumption in favour of overhead lines, stronger protection for prime agricultural land against large solar developments, and enhanced safety measures for battery storage facilities. Expanding and improving the electricity system is necessary, but it must be done in a way that balances affordability, reliability and community concerns. We are concerned that the clauses in the Bill remove this transparency and add costs, but will not deliver the streamlined or more rapid benefits to the system that the Minister outlined.
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I rise to speak to new clause 19. First, the Liberal Democrat members of this Committee support a lot of what the Government are proposing in this part of the Bill. Creating electricity grids of the future is a critical route to decarbonising and has the potential to reduce consumer bills.
It is much to the UK’s credit that we are making good progress in efforts to decarbonise our electricity generation. Wind and solar in particular account for a growing share of our power generation. However, the transition from one-way transmission of electricity from a small number of very large power stations to a more distributed and multi-directional movement of power creates some challenges. We are going to need major upgrades of our electricity grid to accommodate the growing number of solar installations, as an example, more of which my hon. Friends and I would like to see on new and existing buildings. Making further progress will help our national energy security and reduce consumer bills at a time when energy inflation and the cost of living are still significant problems.
There are examples where cost and/or process have acted as barriers to the ability to feed surplus solar energy into the grid, or to the commissioning of new clean and renewable electricity production. Local energy grids have the potential to benefit communities and use the energy much closer to its source of generation. Therefore our proposed new clause would go further than the Government in the current Bill. It requires the Secretary of State to, within three months of the passing of this Bill, lay before Parliament a plan for how the Government will facilitate the creation of local energy grids and deal with the cost and time of grid connections. I hope the Minister and hon. Members on the Government Benches will embrace this amendment as a way to help continue our country’s journey towards becoming a clean, renewable energy superpower.
Michael Shanks
I will first respond to a few points in the debate generally. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East—across the Clyde from my constituency—made the absolutely right point that sums up what this connections reform process is all about: the absence of reforming the queue is driving away investment. Reform is critical for investment in our generation capacity and for how we connect demand projects that will be so important for unlocking economic growth. With more than 750 gigawatts currently in the queue to connect in the UK, the truth is there is no scope for that to happen without some radical reform of the queue. The Conservative party, when in government, recognised that that was a challenge and had already set about some reforms to make that happen.
We think we need to go even further. The shadow Minister, in a ray of honesty, said he was glad he was not the shadow Energy Minister. Based on the script on net zero, I think we are all fortunate that he is not the shadow Energy Minister, frankly, but it is the same script we are hearing from everyone at the moment.
Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. Might it not be that the hon. Member for Hamble Valley is embarrassed by his party on net zero? After all, on 17 January he said:
“I will conclude—many will be pleased to hear—by reaffirming the Conservative party’s strong commitment to the UK’s target of reaching net zero by 2050”—[Official Report, 17 January 2025; Vol. 760, c. 650.]—
only for that to be scrapped by his leader exactly two months later.
Michael Shanks
There is always a quote, as they say, and my hon. Friend is always there with the quotes at his fingertips, which is helpful. The truth is that the only way we are going to bring down bills and deliver energy security is the sprint to clean power. This is a crucial element of that, and of how we unlock investment—predominantly private investment—over the next few years as we build that clean power system. Even if we were not doing that, the grid is essential. It is an essential part of how we deliver electricity to homes, businesses and industry and it is critical that we upgrade it anyway.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
The Minister talks about energy security and bringing down bills, and of course we need to have more renewables online to do that, but we also need to issue new oil and gas licences so that we can produce more energy at home. That would help with what he is suggesting.
Michael Shanks
We are straying far from new clause 19, which I am keen to return to, but the hon. Gentleman is simply wrong on that point. Gas traded on the international market is exactly why all our constituents pay more on their energy bills. The answer is to get off gas as the marginal price setter, not to have even more of it.
The hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington made a helpful speech, although I will resist his new clause. We are in agreement about the issue of connection delays and the first come, first served process not working, and it is important that we reform that. We are of the view that our proposals do that, and the National Energy System Operator has worked with Ofgem and is of the view they are sufficient to do that.
The question of local power and local grids is an interesting approach that we are looking at. We take seriously the role of community-owned power—it is in the Great British Energy Bill, recognising our commitment to it—but we do not see it in itself as a barrier to what we are trying to do here. The infrastructure, including for local networks, that incorporates generation and demand is already permitted under the existing system. It can be constructed and operated by distribution network operators, by independent network operators or by a private wire under a statutory licence exemption provision.
We agree about the importance of community energy and are looking at a range of things, in particular at how communities might to sell power locally. They are all important points, and all this is how we will unlock the social and economic benefits of the clean power transition. For the reasons I have outlined, and because we think it is already entirely possible, we will resist new clause 19.
Gideon Amos
People in Taunton and Wellington are four-square behind new clause 19, but it was my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage who spoke to it.
Michael Shanks
I betray my lack of English geography. I am sorry, but I assume that the hon. Members for Taunton and Wellington and for Didcot and Wantage are both in complete agreement with new clause 19. In any event, I thank them, but disagree with them both, instead of just one of them. I commend Government amendments 36 to 40 and clauses 9 to 11 to the Committee.
Amendment 36 agreed to.
Amendments made: 37, in clause 9, page 14, line 8, at end insert—
“(3A) The Secretary of State may exercise the power under subsection (3) only for the purpose mentioned in subsection (2).”
The amendment makes it clear that the power of the Secretary of State to direct the GEMA to modify a licence or agreement may only be exercised for the purpose of improving the purpose of managing connections to the transmission or distribution system.
Amendment 38, in clause 9, page 14, line 15, at end insert—
“(5A) A relevant authority may under subsection (1) modify an agreement mentioned in subsection (1)(e) or a qualifying distribution agreement even if the effect of the modification might amount to a repudiation of the agreement.”
This amendment ensures consistency with clause 12(8) in clarifying that modifications made to a particular connection or distribution agreement under clause 9(1) may be made even if the effect of the modification might amount to the repudiation of that agreement.
Amendment 39, in clause 9, page 14, line 16, leave out subsection (6).
This amendment, together with amendment 40 moves the definition of “qualifying distribution agreement” into subsection (7); this change is consequential on amendment 38.
Amendment 40, in clause 9, page 14, line 27, at end insert—
“‘qualifying distribution agreement’ means—
(a) the terms subject to which a connection is made by an electricity distributor in pursuance of section 16(1) of the Electricity Act 1989, or
(b) a special connection agreement as defined by section 22(1) of that Act;”.—(Michael Shanks.)
See the explanatory statement for amendment 39.
Clause 9, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 10 and 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 12
Directions to modify connection agreements
Michael Shanks
I beg to move amendment 41, in clause 12, page 16, line 8, leave out subsection (1).
The effect of this amendment is that a relevant authority may give a direction under clause 12 without first having exercised its powers under clause 9(1) to modify an electricity licence or an electricity industry code.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendments 42 to 47.
Clause stand part.
Michael Shanks
Government amendment 41 will allow the Secretary of State or Ofgem to direct the NESO or a distribution network operator to amend an agreement under the clause without the need to have previously modified licences, codes and associated documents under clause 9. Without the amendment, the Secretary of State would not be able to use the power to direct the National Energy System Operator or a DNO had not the modification powers in clause 9 —to make changes to licences, codes and associated documents—also been exercised. The amendment will mean that the directive power in clause 12 is no longer contingent on the use of the powers in clause 9.
An example of where the amendment would be needed is if an Ofgem and NESO-led process to amend licences and codes under the framework is successful, meaning that the powers in clause 9 do not need to be used, but the NESO or DNO has not accordingly amended its agreements with customers connecting to the electricity network. The directive powers could be used to ensure that the implementation of connections reform is successful.
David Simmonds
I have a couple of questions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley has set out, we are broadly supportive of the direction of travel around energy in the Bill.
One of the things we are all conscious of with the move to renewables being the main source of power in the grid—something that the UK has achieved faster than most other countries, with a bigger drop compared with the 1990 baseline than any other developed economy —is that it makes the grid more complex. Unlike oil, gas and nuclear, which can be delivered in an entirely predictable manner, renewables are generally much less predictable. There are times when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, and we cannot therefore put that element into the grid. We need to find alternative methods so we need to be able to shift greater amounts of power around to meet the growing energy needs.
As the Minister has outlined, the regime that is envisaged will, for a limited period of time, give greater powers to the Government to determine who gets connected and in which order. First, will the Minister set out how he and the Government intend to feed back to Parliament what we learn from that process, to inform the future shape of our energy grid?
Secondly, what recourse will there be for those at a certain point in the queue who anticipate that their development, whatever it may be, will be served by a particular project and connected at a particular point, if the Government decide otherwise because the reordering of the queue is, in the Minister’s view, necessary? We all understand why that may happen, but if someone is about to invest in a major new carbon capture and storage facility—the sort of major infrastructure project that the Bill is designed to support—and they expect it to be powered by a wind farm but are then told they have been moved much further down the queue than they expected, that will affect the delivery of that project. It would be helpful to understand the process whereby those affected by the reordering of the queue are able to challenge the decision, if necessary, and certainly to engage with the Government, or with constituency MPs, who may seek to advocate for them, so that the reordering can be revisited if necessary.
Michael Shanks
I thank the hon. Gentleman for those helpful questions. He rightly set out the fact that the grid is already considerably more complex than it was 20 or 30 years ago, and it will become more complex, which is partly why the reform of connections is so important.
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the process of prioritising projects will mean that some will be deprioritised. We have looked at the projects that already have a connection date, and in many cases they will proceed. Viable generation projects above the capacity ranges outlined in the clean power action plan—the first strategic document that will be used to guide projects—might still be able to connect if there is capacity in that particular bit of the DNO after the prioritised projects have been assessed. If there is no space in the pre-2030 queue, they will be offered dates in the 2031-35 process.
We have been clear throughout that the process has not been arbitrary or theoretical. Ofgem and NESO have gone through individual applications that are currently in the process to make sure not only that they fit with the requirements of the clean power action plan but that projects are not unnecessarily disadvantaged. Some projects will go ahead even though they are not in the strategic plan, because where they already are in the grid will make it possible for them to go ahead.
The question of transparency is really important. I will come back to the Committee with details on how we might make the information public, but throughout the process Ofgem and NESO have made public as much information as possible about how they have gone about things, and there was a full public consultation as well. The point about how individual MPs can see whether projects in their constituency are affected is well made and I will take that away and reflect on it.
The critical fact, as the previous Government rightly recognised, is that 750-plus GW is simply unmanageable. Really good projects are sitting with dates long into the future but cannot connect because of what are often phantom projects that are never going to come to fruition and are holding up spaces in the queue. For all the reasons that the hon. Gentleman outlined in terms of the importance of energy security, and the importance of prioritising the queue, we think that the Government amendments and the clause are essential.
Amendment 41 agreed to.
Amendments made: 42, in clause 12, page 16, line 17, leave out
“as mentioned in subsection (1)(c)”
and insert
“in accordance with the conditions of an electricity licence”.
This amendment is consequential on amendment 41.
Amendment 43, in clause 12, page 16, line 22, after “distribution system” insert
“(and such an improvement may include changing the order in which connections are made)”.
This amendment clarifies that the purpose for which a direction may be given under clause 12 may include the making of changes to the order of the queue for connections to a transmission or distribution system.
Amendment 44, in clause 12, page 16, line 23, leave out subsections (4) and (5) and insert—
“( ) A direction under subsection (2) must describe the kinds of modification to be made by the person to whom it is given.”
This amendment inserts a new subsection which would mean that a direction made by the Secretary of State or the GEMA to the ISOP or an electricity distributor to modify an agreement must describe the kinds of modification required.
Amendment 45, in clause 12, page 16, line 38, at end insert—
“(7A) Before giving a direction under subsection (2), the relevant authority must consult—
(a) the person to whom it proposes to give the direction, and
(b) such other persons as the relevant authority considers appropriate.
(7B) Subsection (7A) may be satisfied by consultation carried out before the passing of this Act (as well as by consultation carried out after that time).
(7C) A relevant authority must publish details of any direction it gives under subsection (2) as soon as reasonably practicable after the direction is given.
(7D) A relevant authority may exclude from publication under subsection (7C) any information the publication of which would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of any person.”
This amendment requires a relevant authority to carry out consultation before giving a direction under clause 12. It also requires a relevant authority to publish any direction it gives under the clause.
Amendment 46, in clause 12, page 16, line 41, at end insert—
“(8A) The power to give a direction under subsection (2) may not be exercised after the end of the period of three years beginning with the day on which this section comes into force.”
This amendment ensures that the power to give a direction under clause 12 is time-limited in the same way as the power to make modifications to licences and other documents under clause 9.
Amendment 47, in clause 12, page 17, line 10, at end insert—
“(11) In Schedule 6A to the Electricity Act 1989 (provisions imposing obligations enforceable as relevant requirements)—
(a) in paragraph 4A (electricity system operator), after sub-paragraph (c) insert—
‘(d) section 12(8) of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 (duty to comply with direction under section 12 of that Act).’;
(b) in paragraph 5 (distribution licence holders), after sub-paragraph (g) insert—
‘(h) section 12(8) of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 (duty to comply with direction under section 12 of that Act).’”—(Michael Shanks.)
This amendment amends Schedule 6A to the Electricity Act 1989 in order to provide for enforcement of the duty to comply with a direction given under clause 12.
Clause 12, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 13
Managing connections to the network: strategic plans etc
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Michael Shanks
Clause 13 will require NESO and the DNOs to have regard to strategic plans designated by the Secretary of State when they carry out functions related to connections. The Secretary of State will designate one or more strategic plans, with the current intention that this will include the clean power 2030 action plan in the first instance and the strategic spatial energy plan going forward. There is precedent in imposing a duty on a body to have regard to a strategic document—for example, the designated strategy and policy statement under section 165 of the Energy Act 2023, which outlines the Government’s strategic priorities, policy outcomes, and the roles and responsibilities of those involved in implementing energy policy.
Let me turn to the detail of the objects set out in the clause. It amends part 5 of the Energy Act 2023 to include a duty for NESO to have regard to designated strategic plans. It also amends the Electricity Act 1989 to place a duty on DNOs to have regard to any designated strategic plan, and adds a further exception to the duty on DNOs to connect in cases where it would not be in accordance with the designated strategic plans. The clause will support the implementation of ongoing connections reforms led by NESO and Ofgem, and will provide guidance and support for NESO and DNOs in making decisions on issuing new connection offers. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Paul Holmes
The Minister has been clear in outlining how the clause relates to the previous clauses, and how he wants to overwhelmingly reform the electricity system. I do not see the clause as particularly controversial; it moves on from what he has previously described. Despite my previous speech—I have nothing against the Minister—the Opposition obviously want to be constructive where we possibly can be. The clause is simple and enables the process to carry on, and we will not contest it.
Michael Shanks
Normally, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine is my sparring partner in both the Scotland and energy spaces, so it is nice that he has made an appearance in this debate, but I disagree with his amendment. The main reason is that it concerns a devolved competence. This is a UK Government Bill and it is right, given that the resource of local planning decisions and planning authorities is devolved to Scottish Ministers, that they make the decision on how they resource statutory consultees and local planning authorities.
On the point about community benefits, the Scottish Government already have an established process. The 10-year onshore wind ban in England was not in place in Scotland, and the process of good practice for community benefits for onshore wind, for example, is already quite well developed. Processes are in place. Over the past 12 months, developers have offered more than £30 million in community benefits.
We are, of course, exploring all options and the Bill includes bill discounts for network infrastructure—we will come to that shortly—but we are open to much more on community benefits generally, because we agree that if communities are hosting nationally important infrastructure, they should benefit, as the hon. Member for Hamble Valley rightly said. However, for the reasons I have outlined—this is a devolved competence and not a matter for me as a UK Government Minister—we hope the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment.
Paul Holmes
I completely understand where the Minister is coming from. He does not want to tread on the toes of devolved Administrations. I thought he might be more encouraged to do so, considering that the Scottish Government are run by the Scottish National party, which is not doing a very good job at the moment. However, I also understand that he may not want to give them any more money to screw up the job that they are doing.
Paul Holmes
Good—we have some consensus across the Committee. However, the Minister should not be fearful about giving those Ministers greater powers in this respect. We are trying to enable a greater amount of money to be devolved to the local authorities that are going to be directly responsible for ensuring community benefits from community infrastructure for the people who elect them. The Minister has said throughout our discussions that it is important to be transparent and to be able to resource some of the radical reform he is making. He should not be fearful—
Michael Shanks
I do not disagree with a single thing that the hon. Gentleman has just said, but it is not for me to dictate to the Scottish Government. They are democratically elected, and as much as I may disagree with much of what they do, they are none the less the Government of Scotland, and if they want to ringfence funding for a particular part of the process, they should be able to do so. In particular, diverting any funding away from the more speedy processing of planning applications would not be in the interests of the projects we want taken forwards. It is not that I disagree with him, but this is a devolved competence.
Paul Holmes
I thank the Minister for that, and I agree with him that it is a devolved competence—that is a fact—but he could be giving Scottish Ministers and constituents in Scotland a present by allowing the Government to make those decisions.
It is not just that the Government could be taking money from Scottish Ministers and giving it to local authorities under proposed new subsection (4)(a), but there is scope in the amendment for Scottish Ministers—the devolved Ministers—to be given the power to allocate consumer benefits packages where they think fit. That is strengthening the hand of devolved Ministers, not taking anything away from them. [Interruption.] The Minister says, “It doesn’t stop them.” No, but this would strengthen their hand. I think that giving devolved Ministers the power to give consumer benefits packages to Scottish people who are affected by infrastructure is a good thing.
I am not the intellectual powerhouse of the House of Commons, but even I can calculate that we would not win if we pushed this to a vote, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Paul Holmes
I beg to move amendment 84, in clause 14, page 18, line 36, at end insert—
“Consultation requirements (Scotland)
1B (1) Where an application is made to the Scottish Ministers for consent under section 36 or 37, the Scottish Ministers must provide for the holding of a public consultation.
(2) The Scottish Ministers may by regulations make provision about the holding of consultations.
(3) Regulations may include—
(a) the length of consultation periods in urban and rural areas;
(b) requirements on applicants to publish the projected local economic benefits and other specified information in advance of a consultation;
(c) requirements on applicants to respond to or demonstrate consideration of submissions to consultations.”
The amendment stands in the name of my hon. Friend for—
Paul Holmes
The amendment stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross). Just as the Minister is not an expert on the south coast, I am not an expert on Scottish constituencies, particularly as they all changed their names at the last boundary review.
This simple amendment would introduce additional consultation requirements. It is in a similar vein to amendment 81, which, with your permission, Mr Twigg, I intend to move later. It would enable community and public consultations when an application goes forward. As I said in the last debate, I do not think it is unreasonable that, when an application is put forward, members of the public should have a public consultation to hear about the perceived benefits and to challenge the organisations trying to bring forward infrastructure projects. We must also accept that consultations can take effect in a number of ways, based on whether the infrastructure is being built in rural or urban areas.
This is a simple amendment that seeks to make sure that, when an application goes forward, Scottish Ministers have the powers that the Minister has outlined to ensure there is a public consultation, so that the people on the ground who are genuinely affected by such infrastructure projects have a say and see the transparency that we hope the Bill will put in place.
Michael Shanks
Amendment 84, tabled by the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross), concerns public consultations under sections 36 and 37 of the Electricity Act 1989. It is worth making it clear that the planning systems of Scotland and of England and Wales are very different, and the starting points are very different.
The 1989 Act—which we will come to shortly, in relation to the necessary updates to consents more widely—provides for the process of notification and objection at the application stage. This is very different from aspects of the planning regulations in England and Wales, in that there are already opportunities for consultations, but clause 14 creates a further power to make regulations to set out such matters relating to applications for consent, including a pre-application consultation requirement. That requirement will be set out in regulations rather than in primary legislation, but its purpose is to ensure that the application is proportionate, adaptable and future-proofed.
As much as I politically disagree with the incumbent Scottish Government, we have been working together incredibly effectively, since we came into government, on some key aspects. The reforms of the 1989 Act are a good example. To take the earlier point about the changing energy system, that Act was legislation for a different time, and the planning system in Scotland has not kept pace with the reforms in the rest of the United Kingdom. The reforms that we are proposing give Scottish Ministers a framework to introduce regulations to allow for a pre-application consultation process, and to give both communities and statutory consultees meaningful opportunities to influence applications and have a voice early in the process. For that reason, I see much of amendment 84 as replicating provisions already in the Bills, so I hope the hon. Member for Hamble Valley will withdraw it.
Paul Holmes
I thought the Minister would recommend that I withdraw the amendment. I will put on the record that I am delighted that the Minister believes in pre-application consultation, because in one breath this morning—
Paul Holmes
The Minister has had his say. All I am saying, politely, is that in a different provision of the Bill, the Government have completely removed pre-application consultation for nationally significant projects, yet the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero believes in them. He does not want to accept our amendment to ensure transparent public consultation because pre-application consultation is strong enough already, and the public will be able to have their concerns looked at. The Minister says that they are different systems, but the principles are exactly the same. Ministers cannot rely on that argument for this amendment but not accept the same argument for amendments considered by the Committee earlier. However, as a realist, I know that this will not go very far. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Paul Holmes
I beg to move amendment 81, in clause 14, page 19, line 9, leave out from “application,” to end of line 12 and insert—
“(b) consider the objection and the reporter’s final report,
(c) hold a public hearing, and
(d) allow a period of one month to elapse
before determining whether to give their consent.”
This amendment would require the Scottish Ministers to hold a public hearing and allow one month to elapse before determining whether to give consent to an application for new generating stations or overhead lines under sections 36 or 37 of the Electricity Act 1989.
The amendment is in the name of the shadow Scottish Secretary and acting shadow Energy Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, who I know the Minister would be delighted to hear from—[Interruption.] I heard the “boo”. Amendment 81 is similar to amendment 84 but more specific. I suspect that the Minister will come back with the same argument, so I will take only a short time on this. The amendment would require Scottish Ministers to hold a public hearing, and allow one month to elapse before determining whether to give consent to an application for new generating stations or overhead lines under sections 36 or 37 of the Electricity Act 1989.
Put simply, that would allow local residents the right to provide feedback on proposed infrastructure. I am sure that hon. Members from both sides of the House will agree that it is right that people can have their voices listened to by Scottish Ministers and the Scottish Government. The amendment would create one mechanism to ensure fairness in the planning system, by allowing not only the pre-application consultation but people to generally give feedback and a say, as they currently can in the English planning system. If the Minister is not minded to accept the amendment, I would be grateful if he wrote to me and the shadow Scottish Secretary, or acting shadow Energy Secretary.
Paul Holmes
Both—that is the world we are in, unfortunately. I would be grateful if the Minister could see if there is an opportunity for a meeting between himself and that shadow Minister on how we can strengthen the grassroots-level consultation that is important to the system. I look forward to the Minister’s response. If we could secure some unofficial channels on how we can strengthen this clause when we get to further stages, I would be grateful. I will not push the amendment, but I would like the Minister to respond to those concerns.
Michael Shanks
I thank the shadow Minister for the way he is discussing these topics. I appreciate that they are from a planning system alien to the one with which he is, I am sure, very familiar—I am tempted to say that the shadow Energy Secretary could join him on the Bench, but he is not here.
I understand the point that the shadow Minister is making. For hon. Members who are not familiar with the Scottish system, a public inquiry can be triggered with one objection into the planning system. The public inquiry can take years to conclude and often is not reflective of actual community sentiment on a particular project. This system does not exist in any form anywhere else in the UK. The purpose of these consenting reforms is to deliver significant efficiencies in the consenting process, and to make decisions faster—not necessarily to make positive decisions faster, just to make decisions faster. Introducing another element that feels like the element that we are removing takes away from that.
As I have said previously, there are still significant opportunities for communities to participate in the process. One of the key aspects that we are introducing is the right of a reporter, who is an experienced specialist in planning and consenting, to consider representations about whether there should be a public hearing on a particular process. That reporter will then make the decision about whether it should go forward into a hearing session or a public inquiry. That is rather than what we have at the moment, which is an automatic trigger that holds up projects for a significant length of time.
I am always happy to meet with the shadow Scottish Secretary on a range of things. I am happy to engage with him, because I appreciate that his part of Scotland has a significant amount of network infrastructure being built; but for the reasons I have outlined, this amendment goes counter to our objectives, and does not sit with the reforms we are making to the Scottish planning system, as distinct from the planning system in England and Wales.
John Grady
I will make a couple of brief remarks as a resident Scottish MP. The Minister has referenced co-operation between the Scottish and UK Governments. That is to be welcomed; it reflects this Government’s determination to do right by Scotland and to work productively with the SNP Government in Holyrood.
These provisions will help to unlock significant investment in Scotland. We heard last week how SSE’s programme of projects, which these provisions help to unlock, will lead to £22 billion of investment by 2030. That is the biggest investment we have seen in the north of Scotland since the second world war. Just think what we could achieve if we had a Labour Government in Scotland as well as in England.
The Minister is right to have worked closely with the Scottish Government on reforming the provisions, which in many cases predate 1989, because the 1989 Act was a consolidation. He is right to have worked productively with the Scottish Government, putting Scotland first, because that will give rise to significant investment and jobs—jobs for our young people and high-quality jobs—as well as access for the people of Great Britain to greater volumes of fixed-price electricity that is not subject to fluctuations in wholesale markets, as we have seen over the last few years.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause 15 stand part.
New clause 53—Reforms to consenting process for electricity infrastructure in Scotland—
“Where any reforms to the consenting process for electricity infrastructure in Scotland are proposed, the Secretary of State must ensure that such reforms—
(a) do not reduce requirements for community engagement or public consultation;
(b) include measures to address local concerns, environmental impacts, and impacts on all key sectors including but not limited to agriculture and tourism.”
New clause 54—Annual report on consents for electricity infrastructure in Scotland—
“(1) The Secretary of State must annually lay before Parliament a report on applications for consent for electricity infrastructure in Scotland.
(2) A report under this section must include—
(a) the outcomes of each application for consent relating to an energy infrastructure project in Scotland;
(b) evidence of community consultation undertaken in relation to each application and, where applicable, how consultation has influenced the design of the infrastructure to which the application relates; and
(c) estimates of economic benefits to local communities from the relevant project.”
Michael Shanks
I will begin with a brief explanation as to why clause 14 should stand part of the Bill. I return to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East made a moment ago, and one that I have made before, which is that these reforms were in the pipeline under the previous Government. They are reforms to a long-standing piece of legislation that is long due for updating.
I thank officials in my Department and in the Scottish Government for working closely and at speed, with a similar set of objectives and an open-book approach to making this work, to draft the measures in a way that works for all of us. It is a reset of the tone of how we work as two Governments.
On enabling the introduction of pre-application requirements, as the hon. Member for Hamble Valley referenced, in the Scottish legislation there are currently no steps to give the public an opportunity to engage as there are in the NSIP regime in England and Wales. This is about improving the quality and readiness of applications at the submission stage. It is important to say that this was driven by the views of Scottish Ministers, who said that they thought it was a useful process, but it will be directed in detail in regulations so that it can be updated and adapted to situations, unlike the process that we have in England and Wales at the moment, which has been held back and has added time and complexity to projects and not delivered what it was intended to do. It will give Scottish Ministers the powers to charge fees for pre-application services, enabling them to better support applicants in developing good-quality applications.
Secondly, the clause establishes a power to set time limits through regulations for key stages of the consenting process, which will support the timely determination of applications and bring down overall processing times. Thirdly, it will establish a proportionate process for responding to objections by relevant planning authorities through a reporter-led examination process. The reporter will choose the most appropriate procedure for gathering any further information they need to provide recommendations in a final report to Scottish Ministers. That may include inquiry sessions, where the reporter considers that that is the best approach to take to address particular issues. Such an approach is similar to the well-established process in which appeals in the town and country planning decisions are currently addressed.
Clause 15 enables regulations to be made that prescribe new processes to vary electricity infrastructure consents in Scotland after they have been granted. The clause addresses the current anomaly that there is no prescribed procedure for holders of overhead line consents to apply to Scottish Ministers for a variation to their consents. The current position forces consent holders to make full consent applications in order to authorise often very modest variations. The clause also allows Scottish Ministers to vary an existing generating station or overhead lines consent due to changes in environmental circumstances or technological changes. Such variations will be made with the agreement of the consent holder. Finally, the clause allows Scottish Ministers to correct any errors or omissions made in consents for generating stations or overhead lines.
I will come back to the new clauses later, but I want first to underline the importance of the consenting process. In Scotland, we generate a significant amount of electricity, and there are further projects in the pipeline, including both floating offshore wind and onshore wind. It is critical that there is an off-taker for that power in the rest of the UK, and that requires us to build significantly more network infrastructure to bring that clean power to where it is required. Although these changes to consenting relate to Scotland, they are of critical importance for the energy security of the whole United Kingdom.
Paul Holmes
I would like to move new clauses 53 and 54, but I would like to hear what the Minister has to say about them first.
Michael Shanks
The shadow Minister wants to hear more! New clause 54 is in the name of the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross)—I want the shadow Minister to say, “Gordon and Buchan”, just so I can hear his pronunciation. The clause would require the Secretary of State to produce an annual report providing detail of electricity infrastructure consenting decisions made in Scotland in previous years.
As hon. Members will be aware, responsibility for the consenting process for electricity infrastructure in Scotland is devolved to Scottish Government Ministers. The Scottish Government are accountable to the Scottish Parliament—not the UK Parliament—for the decisions that they make, for the rationale behind them and for what information they choose to provide on consenting decisions. I am aware that the Scottish Government publish all their decisions, which includes information about what public consultations have taken place and consultations with community councils, for example.
It would be inappropriate and potentially duplicative for the Secretary of State to have such an obligation, but fundamentally, to come back to the point I made earlier, there is a particular concern about putting a statutory obligation on what is a devolved power when there is a democratic link between Scottish Ministers and their democratically accountable Parliament, which is the Scottish Parliament and not this Parliament.
Paul Holmes
Thank you. I must apologise, Mr Twigg; this is the first time I have been a shadow Minister on a Bill Committee and I am a bit rusty, but I am learning very quickly.
I thank the Minister for Energy for being very gentle with me as well when discussing Scottish energy connectivity and Scottish planning. He will understand that beggars cannot be choosers on the number of MPs that we have, but being a Member for what is possibly the most southern part of the south coast that one can get bar the Isle of Wight, I am doing my best to discuss the Scottish planning system. I am grateful for the spirit in which he is responding to our new clauses and amendments. I am also grateful to his officials for their work, too.
I understand what the Minister is saying, and I know his reasons for refusing to accept previous amendments under clause 14, but these new clauses create a parallel system. He is absolutely right that Scottish Ministers are accountable to Scottish people and the Scottish Parliament, but Scottish Members of Parliament here are accountable to their constituents. The Secretary of State also has a role within this Parliament and within this UK Government. On new clause 54, the Minister is quite right to say that the Scottish Parliament already has that reporting mechanism, but I do not think that it is unreasonable that the Secretary of State should be able to do that for Scottish MPs here too; when we have questions to the Secretary of State for Scotland, we discuss UK legislation relating to Scotland.
Paul Holmes
The Minister keeps saying “reserved”. That is fine, but we have a Secretary of State for Scotland, accountable to a UK Parliament, who represents Scottish constituencies. There is a role for this Parliament to report and to scrutinise the successes of the Scottish Executive and the UK Government, with the Secretary of State having an overarching position as Secretary of State representing Scotland. Scottish Members of Parliament are entitled to the same rights and benefits as Scottish MSPs when scrutinising the Scotland Government north of the border. The Minister wanted me to pronounce “Gordon and Buchan”. I think that is right—I am not sure, but I did my best. Honestly, there are worse ones to pronounce.
Clearly, we are going to disagree on our approach to these two new clauses, but the reason for new clause 53 is exactly the same. I am surprised by the Minister’s reticence in allowing his Scottish colleagues to be able to have the same rights of scrutiny as Scottish MSPs. It is not an arduous new clause. It would not be arduous on the Government or the Scotland Office to produce those outcomes or statistics. It would not be arduous on the Scotland Office or the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to provide evidence of community consultation, particularly when we have just discussed some of the amendments that the Opposition have tabled on community consultation.
It would also not be arduous for the Scotland Office—or whatever Department would be answering—to provide estimates of economic benefits to local communities. That is exactly why many members of this Committee who represent Scottish constituencies are here in this UK Parliament: to develop policy that brings economic benefits to local communities. The Minister needs to think outside the box and allow Scottish MPs from all parties in this House to have those rights to scrutinise, to develop the economic benefits to local communities. He should not feel so constrained by the Scottish devolved Administration; he should branch out, improve and increase the power of the Scotland Office or his Department, and allow Scottish MPs to have their say in this area of legislation.
Michael Shanks
I am in danger of going into British constitutional politics 101, but the hon. Gentleman is introducing the West Lothian question.
The Chair
We have to be very careful given the subject of the amendment. I gave the shadow Minister a bit of leeway.
Michael Shanks
The shadow Minister is introducing the best example I have heard in a long time of the West Lothian question. The fundamental thing is that this is not a political question about the Scottish Government or the UK Government. There are reserved matters for which this Parliament is responsible for holding UK Government Ministers to account, and there are devolved matters that Scottish Ministers have responsibility for delivering and the Scottish Parliament is responsible for holding them to account for.
It would ride roughshod over this Parliament’s fairly consistent support of devolution in the UK for us to now suddenly say that those Scottish Ministers are also accountable to another Parliament. I think that we agree on the nature of devolution in this country, although we may strongly disagree on the actions that devolved Governments take, but we cannot support the new clauses, for the reasons I have outlined. This is not about thinking outside the box; it is about recognising the role that the devolved system plays in our constitution. For those reasons, I will resist the new clauses.
Michael Shanks
Clause 16 amends section 36D of the Electricity Act 1989, which provides for a statutory appeal to be brought by any person who is aggrieved by a decision made by Scottish Ministers—perhaps the shadow Minister. A challenge to an offshore electricity infrastructure consenting decision made under section 36 is by statutory appeal. The clause extends this, so that statutory appeal also applies to onshore electricity infrastructure consenting decisions made under section 36, decisions made under section 37 and all variation decisions.
The clause will create consistency in Scotland by making the challenge process the same for both onshore and offshore consents, and ensuring they are brought in a timely manner. A challenge will have to be brought within six weeks for onshore consents, as is already the case for offshore consents. This will bring the timescale for challenging large electricity infrastructure decisions into alignment right across Great Britain.
Clause 16 also amends the Electricity Act so that the six-week timescale for bringing a challenge commences from the publication of the decision by the Scottish Minister, instead of the date on which the decision was taken. This is a new requirement for both onshore and offshore, and is compliant with the Aarhus convention compliance committee’s recommendations relating to the timescale for challenging planning decisions. There is also a consequential amendment to the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 in respect of directions relating to deemed planning permission. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Paul Holmes
My contribution will be very short, because the Opposition agree with what the Minister said. It seems perfectly reasonable to amend section 36D of the Electricity Act 1989, which allows anybody aggrieved by the process to appeal. That is a welcome step that meets some of our challenges in other areas of the Bill—not those for which this Minister is responsible—in relation to people being intimately involved in some of these decisions. If people are not happy with what is happening in their local communities, they should be able to challenge it. I welcome the clause, and we will not press it to a vote.
Gideon Amos
We do not object to the clause either. The date of the judicial review challenge being six weeks from the issue of the decision in writing is consistent with the approach under the Town and Country Planning Act, and therefore does not reduce or change people’s right to judicial review. We are content to support the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 16 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 17
Applications for necessary wayleaves: fees
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Michael Shanks
Clause 17 will confer a power on Scottish Ministers to make regulations to set and charge fees to electricity network operators for processing necessary wayleave applications that they should make in Scotland. Necessary wayleaves are statutory rights that allow electricity licence holders to install and access their overhead electricity lines and associated infrastructure on land owned by others, and in Scotland they are processed and granted by Scottish Ministers.
The objective of the change is to better resource the processing of necessary wayleave applications by the Scottish Government. It is important to act now.
Lewis Cocking
Will the Minister elaborate on why he did not support amendment 80, which we have just discussed, on planning fees going to local councils to resource planning departments? What is the difference between that and him saying to Scottish Ministers under this clause that they can charge a fee, but that it has to go to the resourcing of dealing with these applications?
Michael Shanks
Perhaps I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I think that amendment 80 was about forcing Scottish Government Ministers to spend funds on community benefits and other things. This clause is saying that the Government will have the power to raise application fees if they choose to do so. Of course, they could choose not to, but under this clause they will have the power to raise them.
Lewis Cocking
It says that the Minister expects that money to be put into the system to make the system better. Why has he done that in this case when he did not support the amendment doing it?
Michael Shanks
As I think I have just outlined, that amendment did not just call for the money to make the system more efficient; it called for it to be spent in communities on community benefits. That is quite different. My argument to the shadow Minister in resisting that amendment was that we did not want to tie the hands of the Scottish Government, because we see that investing that money in making the planning system more efficient is probably the best use for it, but it is not for me to tell them that. This clause is about giving them the power to set and charge fees to electricity network operators. I suggest that the point he is making is a slightly different one, but if I have misunderstood him, perhaps he can explain.
David Simmonds
A general point arises here, which we also debated on the Renters’ Rights Bill Committee. The different systems in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England—most of the legislation we are dealing with here is for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—give rise to a risk of inconsistency. The shadow Minister spoke of the importance of community benefit. That is designed to secure community support. If there is a view that Ministers in Scotland might choose to spend such revenue on other things to the detriment of community benefit, that may also undermine consent.
I completely agree with what the Minister is saying about creating the necessary power, but will he commit to further discussions with his colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government so that we can ensure—not just in this Bill, but in future legislation—that where we expect a community benefit to derive from something that we decide on, it will be a consistent benefit across the UK?
Michael Shanks
In general, I agree and disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s point. I understand the point he is making about consistency, but I take the view that the whole purpose of having different devolved Administrations in England, Wales and Scotland is to make different decisions. Northern Ireland is separate in the energy discussion, because it has a separate grid.
I am not sure that I would say that consistency at all costs is the right approach. We created the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly so that they could make decisions locally that affected them in a different way. We have worked with the Scottish Government on these changes to make sure that there is a package of reforms to the consent arrangements under the Energy Act that relates to the planning system in Scotland as it currently is. It is not the same starting point as the system in England and Wales, so it is important to look at them separately. Nevertheless, I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point.
I return to clause 17. Fees are already charged in England and Wales for processing wayleave applications. I reiterate—this comes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Broxbourne—that the Scottish Government do not have the power in legislation to raise those fees. That power is reserved. The clause will give them that power.
Paul Holmes
Has the Minister identified or outlined any potential total income that will come out of this measure? I know that it is not a certain process and that it is not certain how many will come forward.
Michael Shanks
No, we have not. A series of work will be necessary to come up with that figure, because the fees will be charged on a cost recovery basis. It is not a money-making exercise for the Government. That is in line with approaches in the rest of Great Britain. There will clearly be a significant number of such applications in the coming years—more than in previous years, probably—but the detail will be worked out with the Scottish Government. We do not know in advance exactly how many wayleave applications there might be, so we cannot give an exact figure.
Paul Holmes
I thank the Minister for his answer. He will forgive me for intervening again; it will mean that I speak less later. In outline, has he started any engagement with Scottish Ministers to find out whether the intention of the clause will be borne out in reality? If the costs are being recovered on a cost recovery basis, has he secured the necessary assurances from Ministers that the money collected will be used to process the decisions more rapidly, and that it will not be spent in other devolved Scottish areas?
Michael Shanks
I am sorry to come back to this point, but the Government do not bind the hands of devolved Governments in any spending area. When this Parliament—[Interruption.] No, I did not say that. I said that the Bill gives them the power to do that, which they do not currently have.
Michael Shanks
No, I will carry on answering this point, if that is okay.
We are very enthusiastic about clause 17—who would have thought it? To be clear about this point—I feel as if I am the only Scottish MP on this Committee, but I am not—when this Government increase spending in a particular area, that results in a budget transfer to the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Irish Executive, which they can spend on whatever they see as their local priorities. An increase in NHS spending in England does not lead to the exact same in Scotland. We will not bind the hands of every single decision that is made in this case. This is about conferring a power on Scottish Government Ministers to set and charge fees to electricity network operators for necessary wayleave applications in Scotland.
John Grady
I thank the Minister, although he must feel awfully lonely as the Front-Bench Scotsman. As the Member for Rutherglen just on the other side of the Clyde from me, does he agree that the charging of fees for necessary wayleaves is a rather odd way to relitigate the referendum that took place in 1999, and a rather odd way to relitigate the questions of devolution? I know that the Conservative party has some trouble, from time to time, in accepting the devolution settlement. We seem to have moved from the West Lothian question to the Hamble Valley question. It is remarkably confusing.
Michael Shanks
No, I will respond to that point, if I may. I respect the view of the Conservative party and the argument that Conservative Members are making. I completely understand it, but I am trying to make the point gently that this is not about our directing specific decisions that will be made by Scottish Ministers. It is about how—in this case, as it is across wayleave applications in England and Wales as well—fees will be charged on a cost recovery basis in line with UK and Scottish Government policy on managing public money.
Lewis Cocking
Let me try a third time. According to the explanatory notes laid out by the Government:
“The objective of this change is to better resource the processing of necessary wayleaves applications by the Scottish government.”
The Minister is therefore directing the Scottish Government to spend the money that they get in through this process on that planning process. How is that different from amendment 80 which we discussed earlier and the Government said they will not accept?
Michael Shanks
I am trying to find the exact wording. I will come back to the hon. Gentleman. I think I have outlined to him three times now why it is different. I do not have amendment 80 in front of me at this precise moment, but it had two parts to it, one of which was about community benefits. It was directing the Scottish Government to take funds and direct them to a specific purpose. This Parliament does not do that in any other aspects of devolved policy, because it is devolved to the Scottish Parliament to make those decisions. I think that I have made that point clear, but if not, I will write to the Committee and make it even clearer. [Interruption.] I am grateful. I now have amendment 80 in front of me. It mentions
“consumer benefits packages, or…local planning authorities”.
Neither of those things is in the gift of the UK Government to direct the Scottish Government to do. Consumer benefits packages are ill-defined, if nothing else, but local planning authorities are democratically elected in their own right, and the Scottish Government make budget decisions to local government, separate from any budget decisions that the UK Government make to the Scottish Government. The two are not comparable in any way. In any event, the Committee has already voted down that amendment.
Paul Holmes
I will confine myself to clause 17. The Minister has often said that he does not want to direct Scottish Government Ministers on a devolved issue. That is perfectly reasonable. When I last intervened on him, I did not ask him to dictate to Scottish Government Ministers; I asked whether he had sought an assurance from them—
Paul Holmes
It is not the same thing. I asked him, in his role as a UK Government Minister, to seek an assurance from Scottish Government Ministers that the retrospective collection of funds under the new power would be used to increase capacity and improve the processing of this proposal. He was not rude to me, but he said, “That’s not my job as a UK Government Minister. It’s up to them as Scottish Government Ministers.” His own explanatory notes say:
“The objective of this change is to better resource the processing of necessary wayleaves applications by the Scottish government.”
When I asked the Minister whether he had sought an assurance from Scottish Government Ministers, I was not asking him to instruct them. I asked him whether he had any information on the total amount of money that would be brought in, which I accept could vary. I perfectly understood and respected that answer, but in his second answer he said that he could not seek such an assurance because he does not want to direct Scottish Government Ministers or take power away from them. Given the objective set out in the explanatory notes, how can we have confidence—
Michael Shanks
There is no contradiction here at all. We are confusing two different things. My ability to say that the Scottish Government could raise x amount of money and must spend it on y is different from what we have clearly outlined—the hon. Gentleman has just repeated it—which is that at the moment Scottish Government Ministers do not have the power to raise fees for wayleaves, as is the case in England and Wales. Those are two very different things.
I have said clearly, I think six or seven times now, that at the moment Scottish Government Ministers have no power to charge for the processing of wayleave applications. The clause will give them the power to do so. Of course, I would hope that those funds will be spent on the planning system, or whatever it might be, but I am not going to bind their hands and evaluate the success or otherwise of that in this Committee. The two issues are quite separate.
Paul Holmes
We are dancing on the head of a pin here. I know that the Minister has no power to do that and does not want to have such a power, but how can he, as a UK Government Minister, commend a clause whose objective the explanatory notes explicitly say
“is to better resource the processing of necessary wayleaves applications by the Scottish government”
while claiming that he does not have the power to ensure that it happens?
I am not trying to be difficult. The Minister is doing a very good job of outlining the clauses, but he has said several times in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne—not just in relation to amendment 81, which was not accepted, but in relation to the clause—that he does not have the power to direct Scottish Government Ministers. All I am asking is why he set out the objective of the change in his approved explanatory notes if he cannot make it happen.
I am not asking the Minister to strengthen the legislation; I asked whether he has sought reassurances from Scottish Government Ministers that that is what they will do with the extra income from the measures. He answered that he did not want to force them. That was not the question. All I am asking—he is welcome to intervene on me—is whether he has had a conversation with Scottish Government Ministers about whether they will use this income for the purposes that his legislation has set out.
Michael Shanks
I have not had the conversation. I am happy to have it, but the tone will not be, “Here are my expectations of you as a democratically elected Member of the Scottish Parliament accountable to a Parliament I do not sit in.”
I do not know how familiar the shadow Minister is with the devolution legislation in the United Kingdom, but I gently say that this Parliament gives the devolved Administrations power to raise a whole series of taxes, charges, levies, fines and various other things. We give that power to those devolved assemblies; we do not then tell them exactly how to spend every single penny of that money. This is another example of that. It is a perfectly common thing in the devolution settlement.
Paul Holmes
I am not trying to be difficult with the Minister at all—I know it seems that I am, but I am not. He said that he has not had those conversations but he now will, and that is welcome. This clause is procedural and process-driven, but within the grand scheme of the Bill it is stated clearly in black and white that the UK Government have an objective for the extra income to be generated, yet the Minister has not had that conversation with Scottish Ministers. I do not blame him for that, but he will now have those conversations going forward.
I hope that when it comes to other clauses, UK Government documents will be very clear about the aims, ambitions and outcomes of what they will do because what we have seen this afternoon has been questionable. The UK Government are setting an objective, with no way to actually achieve it.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause 19 stand part.
Schedule 1.
Michael Shanks
Clause 18 is technical, amending section 106 of the Electricity Act 1989 to make provision for procedural requirements that apply to the new powers conferred by the provision in clauses 14, 15 and 17. All new regulation-making powers, except for the power to amend primary legislation in clause 14(4), are subject to the negative procedure. Scottish Ministers or the Secretary of State must consult each other before making regulations relating to clauses 14 and 15. The power in clause 17 is to be exercised by Scottish Ministers, and it does not require the Secretary of State to be consulted.
Clause 19 introduces schedule 1, which makes amendments to the Electricity Act 1989 consequential to the amendments made by clauses 14 to 18. It also makes some minor amendments relating to consents for electricity infrastructure in Scotland. These amendments are made to sections 36, 36B, 36C and 37 of and schedule 8 to the 1989 Act. Schedule 1 is needed to ensure the Bill’s consistency and clarity in relation to the 1989 Act. Some changes are needed to ensure that the new Scottish consenting reforms can function as intended. Some of the clarifications are needed because the 1989 Act was originally drafted prior to the Scotland Act 1998, which created the Scottish Parliament. Given the number of changes made to the 1989 Act in relation to Scotland, it is necessary to update outdated references in legislation to ensure that such references are clear and consistent.
The consequential amendments cover three main aspects. First, as clause 14 amends schedule 8 to the 1989 Act to allow the Secretary of State or Scottish Ministers to make regulations about time limits for various parts of the consenting process, the amendments clarify how this relates to Scottish Ministers obtaining advice from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. Secondly, as clause 14 amends schedule 8 to 1989 Act to allow the Secretary of State or Scottish Ministers to make regulations about applications made to Scottish Ministers, amendments have been made so that proposed new section 1A will apply only to applications made to the Secretary of State, not to those made to Scottish Ministers.
Thirdly, there are clarifications to reflect the new processes for variations of consents and the new procedure following objection by the relevant planning authorities for consents under sections 36 and 37 of the 1989 Act. In addition, the minor amendments include those to reflect previous transfers of functions to Scottish Ministers, and some references to the water environment regulations are updated to refer to the most recent version.
As I have said, this is a very technical clause. I look forward to having slightly less debate on it, unless there are any questions.
Paul Holmes
Clauses 18 and 19 are consequential to the previous clauses, and consist of simple process amendments. The Minister will be delighted that we welcome the fact that clause 19 amends the Electricity Act 1989 to reflect earlier transfers of functions to Scottish Ministers. That is exactly as it should be, and we will not be scrutinising the various words. These amendments should go ahead, and I have no further comments.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 18 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 19 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Clause 20
Environmental impact assessments for electricity works
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Michael Shanks
Clause 20 creates a power for the Secretary of State or Scottish Ministers to make limited procedural amendments to the Electricity Works (Environmental Impact Assessment) (Scotland) Regulations 2017, which for ease of reference I will refer to as the EIA regulations.
As part of the consenting process for electricity infrastructure in Scotland, Scottish Ministers are required to assess the likely significant environmental effects arising from a proposed EIA development. Before the UK left the European Union, Scottish Ministers and UK Government Ministers had concurrent powers, under the European Communities Act 1972, to make regulations for electricity works EIAs. However, although the EIA regulations remained in force as assimilated law after the European Communities Act was repealed, the result is that neither Government have the power to amend them.
David Simmonds
We broadly support the content of clause 20, but I have one question for the Minister. I am mindful of his comments about the process of EU retained law, and it is absolutely right that we are looking to update that. However, a lot of the new powers set out for Scottish Ministers are the kind of thing that, in England, we would expect to be the subject of a pre-application consultation. One might ask the promoter of a project to come in and discuss those exact things with the local authority, the strategic planning authority if there is one, or the mayoral authority or the combined authority, so that the application process can be streamlined as much as possible.
Earlier on, we said that we would amend legislation through the Bill to remove that process in England. Given the intention to effectively introduce a top-quality process for applications to be considered in Scotland, does the Minister agree that there is an element of contradiction in that, in the same piece of legislation, we are seeking to remove many of the equivalent processes in England?
Michael Shanks
I understand the argument, but it appears as a contradiction only if we assume that both planning systems are the same, which they are not. And they are not slightly different—they are fundamentally different. The processes are different. The timescales are different. The opportunities for public consultation are different throughout, so we are starting from a different starting point. Although I understand the hon. Member’s point, I do not think that the two are comparable.
This particular clause is even more narrow than the hon. Member recognised. It is simply about the assimilated regulations. I have been in a number of Delegated Legislation Committees where we have discussed some of the unintended consequences, as we obviously assimilated thousands of different pieces of legislation into UK law. As I say, the result was that neither the UK nor the Scottish Government currently have the power to amend these regulations, which is a ludicrous position for us to be in. This clause is narrow in scope, and I do not think it has quite the reach that the hon. Member is suggesting.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 20 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Gen Kitchen.)