Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

In CIWEM’s view, SUDS address all those challenges, many of them simultaneously if they are designed well. It says that the Government’s recently introduced national standards for sustainable drainage systems set out good practice design requirements for such multifunctional SUDS, but that until there is a mandatory approach, as recommended by the Pitt Review following the floods of summer 2007, it believes that there will be no change. It argues forcefully for a mandatory approach to SUDS for major developments and an end to the automatic right to connect. With those few remarks, I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb attached her name to this amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, who waited with such patience to present this terribly important group of amendments. It is disappointing that the length of the day and the hour mean that this group will not get the kind of attention it deserves, but it is worth highlighting the breadth of political and non-political support for this amendment. It is also signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, one of our acknowledged experts in this general space, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone.

I will make two additional remarks. We have already had a comprehensive introduction to the background, the very long history and the arguments for this. I am sure some noble Lords here were at the Lord Speaker’s Lecture this week, given by the noble Baroness, Lady May, who is not currently in her place. One of the MPs there asked: “Isn’t it really a problem that constituents today expect the Government to fix things in an hour or a day, just like they get something delivered from the internet?” Maybe it is, but I think 16 years is quite long enough for people to wait for the implementation of Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act.

There is a real issue here. The public often think that once the Government have announced something it is going to happen—and that is something we need more political education on and awareness of—but surely they have the right to believe that, once a law has been passed, having been through all the scrutiny and effort such as we are putting in now, it will be implemented. It has been carefully examined and is understood to be a good idea, and the people expect it to be delivered, and it brings politics into disrepute when it is not—that is the small “p” political argument for this amendment.

On the broader argument for SUDS generally, I have visited many such schemes, but the one I point noble Lords to—it is well worth visiting for those who have not seen it—is at the LILAC co-housing scheme in Leeds, which is essentially built around a central pond that all the water on the site drains into. We have spent many hours talking about how important green spaces are and how important supporting biodiversity is. We unfortunately did not get to vote, but we spent a lot of time talking about how important play space for children is. This is a way you can use SUDS. Well-designed SUDS can deliver so many other things that the Government say they want and that the House has said it wants. This is simple, practical common sense on how we should be designing the kind of communities—not just housing—that we desperately need.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have a particular attachment to this amendment. I think it is fair to say that, when I went back into Defra, I was pretty surprised that we had not made any progress in getting Schedule 3 sorted. Yet again, it was the part for housing that had put a block on it, on the basis that apparently it was going to cost more money. But all that does, in a different way, is transfer the costs, both societal and financial, from a developer trying to put together a community to the billpayer, and those costs are potentially higher. I know that we managed to secure, and the Government have continued with it, over £96 billion from the water companies to address certain things to do with sewerage. This is one of those ridiculous situations where there is an obvious answer. As my noble friend Lady McIntosh has already mentioned, Sir Jon Cunliffe has said this should be done. Why has it not been done?

Actually, not just the committee from the Commons but also the committee in this place were very supportive and delighted that, when I was in post briefly for that year, we were going to get things done. We did the review, managed to get DLUHC over the line, and then managed to put out confirmation of a policy we were going to do. We were going to do a consultation. That got going as well, and then the election happened. Do not get me wrong: I understand why this might not be a top priority for a Government coming in, despite this whole issue being one of their key campaigning messages in the 2024 election. Here is the solution, ready-made, that they could just do at the stroke of a pen. That is why it a concern that we are not at this point yet.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, it would be exceptional if I did not support this amendment, in that it takes the provisions of my Private Member’s Bill and puts them into the amendment—so it would be a bit two-faced of me if I did not support it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, has laid out clearly what the issue is. It is a very important issue in the public domain. We saw the outpourings that happened at the Sycamore Gap, and we see every year in the Tree of the Year competition just how many people exert themselves to vote for their favourite heritage tree. We have the beginnings of a register of these trees already in existence. I believe that my optimism, which was raised when the Government commissioned the Tree Council to put forward a report on what should happen, deserves a bit of encouragement, because, as yet, we have not had a very satisfactory response to the Tree Council’s research.

In Committee, I summarised the Government’s position as being that they felt that by saying that these trees were irreplaceable habitats was simply sufficient—but it is clearly not, as they are increasingly being damaged either by demolition or by poor management, so being called an irreplaceable habitat is not having any impact whatever. The second worry that I had in Committee was that, although the Tree Council had come forward with recommendations, it was clear that the Government were not planning to do very much as a result of them. It would be good to hear from the Minister tonight that, with this having been reflected on, there has been a change of heart, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, having also attached my name to this amendment, for reasons I shall get to in a second, let me say that it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Grender —and the noble Baroness, Lady Young, in particular, as she has been our champion in this space.

I am going to speak about two groups of trees in Sheffield. Members of your Lordships’ House may remember the great Sheffield tree controversy and the struggles that the whole city went to to defend its street trees. Two groups of those would, I think, have been covered by a heritage tree preservation order. One was about 40 trees on Western Road that had been planted in 1919 as a living memorial for the soldiers killed in the First World War from that community. The council planned to cut them down. There were paintings by artists underneath the trees and a huge march in World War I-style uniforms from the trees down to the town hall, and a huge campaign that demonstrated just how important those trees were to the community, and nearly all of them were saved.

On the other side of the city, in a much more deprived area, there were two cherry trees that were planted to commemorate two brothers killed in the Second World War. They were just cut down and people were deeply shocked. We have talked a lot in your Lordships’ House, throughout the passage of this Bill, about how nature is terribly important to people’s health and well-being, but here we are talking about individual trees that communities have an individual relationship with and that desperately need protection. They are part of their history, part of their future. At the moment, we do not have ways of protecting them, except for communities going to the kind of extraordinary efforts that the people in Sheffield had to go through to save those trees that they did manage to save.

I will make one other point. Poland has a green monument system that marks tens of thousands of trees across Poland, and Romania has a similar scheme. Britain is supposed to be really keen on nature and really keen on heritage, and look how far behind we are.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 199 because I think it is important that we protect and recognise our historic trees. I am thinking not just of the highway and byway trees; there are some really special champion oaks in South Norfolk, where I was the leader of the council. We took steps to recognise them, bring them into the local plan and give them special designations. They form the basis of the strategic gaps between settlements, which is not just a good thing for the landscape; it also maintains that spirit of community.

I am thinking in particular of Kett’s oak, which is a champion oak said to be over 500 years old—it might be more—sat there on the B1172 between Norwich and Wymondham. It was the site of Kett’s rebellion, where Robert Kett marched 16,000 people to Mousehold Hill in Norwich, having had a petition of 29 demands. I expect the Government to want to knock this one back, but I note the context of that historical nature, as well as the landscape importance. Some of Kett’s demands were to limit the power of the gentry and to prevent the overuse of communal resources. It did not do him any good—Kett was executed on 7 December 1549 —but it is part of the lexicon. I am conscious that my noble friend Lady McIntosh is going to take me outside and duff me up afterwards. I hope I do not suffer the same fate as befell Robert Kett.

My serious point is that having a national register of important trees is not just important for biodiversity and all that sort of thing; they are part of our history and culture, and these are things to be celebrated. I warmly endorse and support Amendment 199, with my personal knowledge of Kett’s oak, and other noble Lords will have similar stories from their own areas. I suppose the salutary lesson is that when that Sycamore Gap tree was felled, quite terribly, in Northumberland last year, there was a national outpouring. Amendment 199 attempts to capture that sense of pride and purpose, and it has my full support.