Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

I have a final thought for the Government. I always want to help Governments—it is part of my job. If we cannot agree, particularly on Amendment 140, a nice idea would be that on a new build developers and builders had to offer potential customers the choice of having these things, with a price on. If they said, “Have a bat box for £20 and a swift box”, a lot of people would go for it. But the best thing to do is in these amendments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall, and indeed everyone who has spoken in this group.

I will be very brief, starting with Amendment 246, to which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, said, I have attached my name. I heard some expressions of shock around me when the noble Baroness said that there were 30 million bird strikes a year. That is 30 million deaths. This is from the British Trust for Ornithology. The estimate is 100 million bird strikes—the 30 million is the immediate deaths. Some of the strikes are where the birds suffer the fate the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, set out, where they get trapped and who knows what happens to them in the longer term. Flying at full speed into a window is not good for you, even if it does not kill you.

Around the world the figures on this are in the billions. We are as a species “care-less”—and yes, Hansard, I am putting a hyphen in there. We are not taking care. Yet, as the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, said, lots of countries are at least doing much better than us. We often hear Britain talked about as a nation of animal lovers and bird lovers. We have the twitchers out there chasing some rare species that has turned up. Surely we can take this modest measure of Amendment 246. The noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, has listened to what the Government have said and adapted it accordingly. This is what we are supposed to do.

My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecomb has attached her name to Amendment 140. I had a much stronger amendment in Committee which I did not bring back because I was leaving all the small, modest ones that the Government could agree to for Report. I suggested that we should be building the entire fabric of buildings to care for nature. I spoke about a museum exhibit that is working in that direction. I have no doubt that we will have to get to that, but how bad will the state of nature be before we get to that point, and how hard will the recovery be?

I very much support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, but pick up on what she said about new ponds. We are seeing in some parts of the country, in a limited way, the restoration of “ghost ponds”, which can be up to 1,000 years old. If you carefully excavate them, knowing what you are doing and having done the lidar survey, you can get seeds that are 1,000 years old germinating in the original pond conditions when it has been restored. In East Anglia, there are 22 ponds where this has been done, and 136 species, all thought to be from historic seeds, have come up in those ponds. Making this a way in which we can let these ponds free is a win-win.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this group. On this side, we share the passion that has been expressed across the House for a biodiverse and environmentally rich country. The proposals brought forward here are all rightly focused on boosting habitats for species and promoting nature. We agree wholeheartedly with that objective, which is shared among noble Lords on all Benches. The Government will resist these amendments at this stage, but we hope that these constructive proposals will be considered carefully by Ministers and their officials ahead of the planned nature Bill, which we are told to expect later in the Parliament.

I will make a few short personal comments which are relevant to the Bill. In our little, deliberately overgrown garden up north, we have five hedgehogs—because we have five hedgehog houses. I spend a fortune on five-litre drums of mealworms. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, if he was in his place, “Provide the habitat and the food and you will get nature back”.

As far as bird strikes are concerned, on Amendment 246, some of the proposals there might seem expensive. However, I found that spending £5 on some stickers to put on the window glass stopped overnight 100% of bird strikes where birds were flying into the glass because of the reflection from the trees in the garden.

My final observation is that I despair every week, going back up north and finding yet another little garden being dug up and paved over. That removes the chance for the hedgehogs to get their slugs from the flowerbed and there is no grass for the blackbirds to dig up the worms from. These are personal observations, but they are relevant to the important amendments before us today.

I mentioned the nature Bill. Can the Minister give a timetable for the Government’s plans to introduce a nature Bill? When can we expect it to be introduced? Will there be an opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny on the planned Bill? I hope that the Minister can give us a little clarity on that.