Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Earl Russell

Committee stage
Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, said, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed a number of amendments in this group, so while noble Lords will know that I do not normally speak on transport, I am speaking on my noble friend’s behalf this afternoon.

I begin with the very interesting comment of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas: the efficient use of a charger would mean it being used by more than one person. I would go rather further than that and say that what we want is an efficient use of cars: them being used by more than one person. The practical reality, of course, is that most cars spend the vast amount of their time stationary, occupying public space when they are parked on the road. Coming to an arrangement is where Amendment 66, tabled by the noble Lady Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, comes in, requiring

“local planning authorities in England to publish and regularly update a three-year electric vehicle charging infrastructure plan”.

That charging infrastructure plan would ideally very much look at that car club kind of model, which could potentially free up large amounts of space in our cities to be put to much better use than simply being occupied by a stationary vehicle 96% of the time—that is the last figure I saw of the amount of time that cars are stationary.

It should be noted that my noble friend did not sign any of the cross-pavement charging solutions. I know that Caroline Russell, the Green London Assembly member, would not forgive me if I did not make the point that, whatever we say about charging across the pavement, the first priority has to be pedestrians, particularly vulnerable pedestrians. We must make sure that anything that is installed or allowed does not create even greater difficulties, on what is already a very difficult streetscape on many occasions, for pedestrians, particularly vulnerable pedestrians, with wheelchairs, buggies et cetera. I note, perhaps declaring an interest, that when I was in Camden I would regularly try not to trip over the electric cable that my boss at the time trailed out of his house and across the pavement out to his car on the street. Because he was my boss, I was not quite allowed to do anything about it.

I want to focus mostly on Amendments 64 and 67, which are about heavy goods vehicles. This is a crucial issue for the environment and for public health. At the moment, fewer than 1% of new HGVs sold are electric, and there are 500,000 HGVs in the British fleet. At the moment, they are emitting the equivalent of 20 megatonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year—the same as 2 million homes. They are also particularly bad in terms of emissions of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, which have very significant impacts on public health. That tends to particularly strike in poorer, more disadvantaged areas—think about the homes along busy main roads, which tend to be where people who already have poorer health live. There is also the point that EVs are much quieter, which has significant public health impacts, and they are also better to drive. One of the things we have in terms of HGVs is an ageing driving population, and something that is easier to drive is a significant issue there.

I also note that the Government currently have a plug-in truck grant, with a discount for those who purchase them of up to £25,000. There is a push there, and the Government are spending money on it, but what is lacking at the moment is the general charging infrastructure, and these two amendments seek to have a programme and to make sure that when new depots and other infrastructure is being built, they are covered. I note that at the moment there is still an issue about the speed of charging, but megawatt charging is on the way. When we come to later amendments that my noble friend also signed, we also have to think about the infrastructure of distribution of electricity, to make sure that it is able to cater to that very heavy demand. I think there are very strong arguments here for a concerted, planned and organised approach. What we have now is extremely ad hoc, and in far too many cases we are seeing people literally trailing a cord across the pavement, which is a really bad idea for all kinds of reasons.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, the fact that there are so many amendments on the issue of electric vehicles and electric HGVs shows, to my mind, that the Government have slightly missed a trick in not using the Bill as an opportunity to do more to roll out EVs and EV lorries and small vans, and on door-to-door delivery mechanisms, particularly as the targets and the timelines are coming up so quickly.

I hope the amendment will cause the Government to reflect on that and that more progress can be made in this Bill, because it is a real opportunity. It would be remiss of the Government not to seize it, because it lies at the heart of what they are trying to do in the stated purposes of the Bill. I very much welcome the amendments put forward by my noble friend Lady Pidgeon. I will speak particularly to Amendments 57 and 58, but I generally support all the amendments in this group.

Private cars are responsible for some 13% of the UK’s total CO₂ emissions—some 60.2 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in 2023. They are the largest single source within the transport sector, which as a whole is responsible for around 30% of our emissions. Road vehicles, including cars, make up the vast majority of them. Emissions from cars have been declining since 2005, but we still have a long way to go if we are to hit our climate targets, and the time we have to make these changes is fast running out.

The take-up of electric cars is, thankfully, growing. As of mid-2025, around 4% of the approximately 34 million registered cars on UK roads are EVs, totalling about 1.3 million. This goes up to about 7% if we include hybrid vehicles. The Climate Change Committee has been clear that we have further to go and need to do more. Rolling out EVs and making them affordable and practical is a key part of our pathway to net zero. We need to work together as politicians to make sure that we can overcome all the practical obstacles we have heard about, including the cost of affording the car in the first place. We need to make sure that, when people own these electric cars, they can afford to charge them and get the benefits that come only from being able to do so via their home charging points—at night and on a proper tariff that saves them money. If we do not do those things, people will just not make that transition away from petrol and diesel cars in time. We need to make those pull factors work for people. It is really important.

We have seen price reductions in the vehicles, increased government support and the continuing rollout of national charging infrastructure. Taken together, all these measures are helping to change consumers’ choices. We welcome the other efforts that the Government are making: the UK now has 73,000 public charging points—that is welcome—and the charging network rollout is helping to overcome some of the real fears with these things. The projection is that we could have 25 million EVs on UK roads by 2040. The biggest barriers to the take-up of EVs commonly cited are a lack of charging infrastructure, range anxiety—although that technology is improving—and the higher costs of running the cars. This is what we have talked about—making sure that people can plug them in at home.

We really welcome these amendments. It is not good enough that people are facing £3,000 of costs to get this planning stuff done and are waiting 12 to 15 months simply to run a cable across the pavement. As my noble friend said, 40% of people do not have a driveway at home, so cannot do this. This really needs to happen.

I also welcome all the amendments on HGV charging. This is particularly important for last-mile delivery and smaller-scale vans so that we can continue to tackle the scourge of air pollution, which is so damaging to our young people in particular and is such a radical cause of asthma. Luckily, we are beginning to see changes in that space.

We welcome these amendments and we think this really needs to happen. We encourage the Government to go away and think about how they can do more to bring about a joined-up policy on these issues through this Bill. There is more that can be done through the proposed legislation to help bring about the changes that we all want.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the evident enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and I thank him for moving this amendment.

With an amendment with the headline of planting trees next to new roads, I have to begin by pointing out that, if you are talking about highways and so on, we should not be building new roads. All too often, we are destroying wonderful pieces of nature. I am thinking of standing beside a wonderful oak tree, which would have been a sapling when Elizabeth I was on the Throne, that was threatened by the Norwich link road, Western Link. Luckily, it appears to have been saved by barbastelle bats. Sometimes the bats do win.

Nonetheless, I very much support this amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, has made the case for it strongly. I declare an interest, as we are talking about old times, as one of those campaigning to save Sheffield’s trees, which helped to highlight to the nation the benefits of street trees and how important they are to human health and well-being. That is what we are talking about here, as well as biodiversity and nature.

Given the time, I will say just one other thing. I think the noble Lord alluded to this, but it is worth stressing that when we think about trees and other plantings, we think that it is good for the trees, but it is absolutely crucial for other wildlife. We should be ensuring that roads are, as much as they can possibly be, wildlife corridors. Birds are the obvious thing to think about here, but many noble Lords will be aware of the phrase “insectageddon”. The populations at the base of our food web have been collapsing, and plantings beside roads and in urban areas should provide some sort of refuge and restoration here.

I referred previously to the fact that we are not meeting the legal target to reverse the decline in nature by 2030, which of course is in the Environment Act. I will just say one final thing. Noble Lords might be thinking that I am getting fairly small with insects, but I also want to focus on the importance of a rich microbial and fungal world. Just yesterday, the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks produced some really important work pointing out that very few fungal biodiversity hotspots are in protected areas, and we need to have a healthy environment. We need to think about all elements of life in the web in which all our bodies actually live. This is just a small step, but I think it is a very sensible and practical one.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I really appreciate this amendment being tabled and the manner and the style in which it was presented. I welcome the noble Lord’s comments and speeches in this space.

Amendment 60 requires guidance around the planting of trees on highways to be issued within six months of the Act coming into force. As the noble Lord said, this does not require great expense. We feel that it is a helpful, useful measure. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord that this is not about development versus nature. Actually, we need both, and both need to be conjoined and considered together, because we, as people who live in the new developments, who need to thrive and not just survive, need these things to work. They are better for all of us. They reduce health inequalities, they make us happier and healthier, and they make our lives more pleasant.

One example came to my mind on this: the work that was done on the upgrade to the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon, which opened in 2020. As part of the upgrade programme, 850,000 saplings were planted by the Highways Agency. Unfortunately, it was done in extreme heat and in poor soils, as a result of which three-quarters of the trees—roughly half a million—that the Highways Agency planted died. They are being replanted, at a cost of £2.9 million, which raises an issue about how we replant nature. Again, I do not want to go into Part 3, but there are obviously issues with trying to replicate nature or move nature from one place to another, and this is a very stark example of that.

Going beyond that, local communities really got involved in this area and I want to thank them, because people went out and planted trees themselves, cared for and nurtured them, and did a great job in trying to put right some of the mess. Some of the trees that were planted were the wrong types of trees; they did not have enough soil around them, so they dried out; the soil they were planted in was bad; the saplings were too young—generally it was not very well done and the trees that were planted were not cared for and nurtured. What tends to happen is that there is a concentration on numbers—it is a numbers game. Every party had a tree-planting commitment in its manifesto—“My tree-planting commitment is bigger than yours”—and that is not what we need. We need trees to be cared for and nurtured.

I suggest politely to the Government that they should focus not on numbers planted but the numbers in five years’ time. How many trees, five years after the planting, actually survive and are counted? If there are not enough, more planting should be done. Trees are really important. This is a valuable opportunity for the Government to look at the strategies and for us to have a broader look at how we do this. So I really welcome this amendment.

Great British Energy Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Earl Russell

Report stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for whom I have the greatest respect. I know that the whole of your Lordships’ House applauds her and Peers for the Planet for their enormous amount of work, but I am afraid that, on this occasion, I disagree with her. I speak to Amendment 40, to which I have attached my name, and government Amendment 38, to which the noble Baroness has offered her support. I am afraid that

“must keep under review … sustainable development”

is a very weak form of words.

I understand that the noble Baroness seeks compromise and is taking what she can get. It would be lovely to be in a situation where we can start with a government Bill that says these things and then look to improve it. None the less, in speaking to Amendment 40, I am in the curious position of agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, about the amendment and totally disagreeing with lots of the things she said. If offshore wind farms are spaces from which fishers are barred, they can become wonderful marine refuges, and if we are talking about damage to the seafloor, then deep sea trawling is the issue we should be talking about, and, most of all, damage to marine life. Indeed, if we are talking about biodiversity, solar farms managed in the appropriate way can be vastly better for biodiversity than arable farmland, in which the soil and the whole environment are totally trashed.

I am aware of the time, so I will not take long, but I want to point to what this amendment says and contrast “take all reasonable steps” to achieve the legally binding targets versus “keep under review”. This is much stronger wording, it is the right wording for a country that has a state of nature that is in a state of collapse, where there is so much that needs to be protected and improved, and for which we have the legally binding targets to which this amendment refers.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to say that I too have put my name to this amendment and I am delighted that the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, have been able to negotiate this compromise. It is important that this is in the Bill; it will make a difference and I am very pleased to see it here. It also reflects the language that was used in the Crown Estate Bill and that is particularly useful for GB Energy because of the strong connection they have with one another. I welcome the words that the Minister used at the Dispatch Box, mentioning the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Environment Act 2021. I welcome the monitoring that is taking place on this.

I have some sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. These are obviously all very difficult conversations, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, put that quite well. Actually, the way we talk about it, the spirit in which we put these things into place and how we make them work in practice are the big challenges that we all have, going ahead, but I am very pleased to see this here.

Great British Energy Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Earl Russell

Report stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for Amendment 18 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and a range of other distinguished Members of your Lordships’ House. I will also speak to my Amendment 19, which goes further than the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, but which demonstrates just how moderate and reasonable his amendment is. Your Lordships’ House, the British Government and many parts of British society have long expressed their absolute horror at modern slavery, so surely we can put this into this important Bill, where it is such a crucial issue, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, identified.

The noble Lord mentioned the Democratic Republic of the Congo and how the issues of modern slavery there, as well as child labour amounting to modern slavery, are very much an issue in terms of the energy supply chain. My amendment refers to

“credible evidence of deforestation or human rights abuses”.

I will take human rights abuses first. Much of what is happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo might not fit the definition of modern slavery, but it absolutely fits the definition of human rights abuses. I note that I was at a briefing today with the DRC Foreign Minister, Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, who gave us the news, which has since been more widely reported, that, sadly, the ceasefire that had been called in the eastern Congo had been broken by M23, backed by the Rwandan Government. We have already seen nearly 3,000 people killed and some 3,000 people injured, and we heard from the Foreign Minister that, sadly, they expect those figures to rise very significantly. These are violent human rights abuses—there is simply no other term.

To tie this to the Great British Energy Bill, it is worth noting that the DRC produces 70% of the world’s cobalt, yet it somehow disappears without trace and reappears out the other side as legal, apparently appropriately sourced material, without any traceable chain to account for that. Of course, the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo do not benefit financially from that. It is others—damaging, dangerous, aggressive forces—who benefit from it.

I wrote the amendment in this particular way because it goes back to the passage of what became the Environment Act, during which a number of noble Lords here today had much the same debate, with the tying together of deforestation and human rights abuses. One of the issues here is that indigenous people are responsible for protecting huge amounts of the world’s forests, and abuse of their rights is very much tied to the destruction of deforestation. I will note just one stat: if deforestation was a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of carbon behind China and the US. Much of that deforestation is of course linked in particular to agriculture. But in the DRC and parts of Latin America in particular, mining and deforestation are intimately linked.

So, your Lordships’ House has before it two amendments. I do not plan to push mine to a vote, but I offer the Green Party’s strongest support to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his amendment. How could we not vote to ensure that there is action on modern slavery?

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak also in favour of Amendment 18 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and the noble Lords, Lord Offord and Lord Teverson. I will speak briefly and will not repeat the arguments that I made in Committee.

We believe in people and planet, and we should never have to choose one or the other. The two are intertwined and co-dependent. Our goal of reaching net zero must not come at the expense of supporting repressive regimes that do not support the human rights of their own citizens, or on the back of slave labour.

In brief, we are very supportive of the intentions behind this amendment, but we feel that the ultimate solutions lie above and beyond GB Energy. The real solutions in the UK are about working with our allies and partners to develop our own manufacturing capacity for solar panels in particular, so that we are free of those from China. California has made progress on this; it can be done, particularly working with our European allies. This is really important stuff that the Government need to get to grips with.

We do not want to see GB Energy put at an unfair disadvantage vis-à-vis every other private contractor or engineering company doing solar panels in the UK. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has already spoken about this, but I know that noble Lords will be very grateful to Jürgen Maier for having come and spoken to us. Unfortunately, I was off at the time, but my understanding is that it was a very good and productive meeting, and that he gave very strong and powerful arguments and responses to questions that were put to him on these issues. GB Energy, as we know, also has lots of stringent reporting requirements in place, including under the Modern Slavery Act.

Great British Energy Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Earl Russell

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, very briefly, I offer Green group support for Amendment 56 and, in particular, Amendment 116, which has broad support, as we see from the signatures. I declare my interest as a member of the advisory committee, as I think it is now called, Peers for the Planet. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has already said many of the things I was going to say. I just add that I can go back even further than she did, to the Pension Schemes Act 2021. That was an historic moment, with climate being written into a finance Bill for the first time ever.

I have been in your Lordships’ House for five years, and we have had win after win, as the noble Baroness just outlined. It really is time for us to stop having to bring this to the House to be inserted, taking up so many hours of your Lordships’ time to get us to the point at which clearly the Government should have started.

I will add an additional point to what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said. In the recent election, Labour explicitly said that it was aiming to take a joint nature and climate approach to its way of operating the Government. This surely has to be written into the Bill.

To set the context, a nature recovery duty was discussed in the other place. My honourable friends Siân Berry and Adrian Ramsay were prominent in that, along with people from other parties. We are one of the most nature-depleted corners of this battered planet, but our statutory duty is at the moment only to stop the decline, not even to make things better. We surely cannot be creating such an important new institution as this without building nature into its statutory obligations. The Government regularly remind us that the economy and GDP growth is their number one priority, but the economy is a complete subset of the environment. The parlous state of our environment is an important factor in the parlous state of our economy.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendment 116, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to which I have added my name. I am sorry the noble Baroness is unable to be here today, and I wish her well. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, for speaking to this amendment.

The amendment would give Great British Energy

“a climate and nature duty requiring it to take all reasonable steps to contribute to the achievement of the Climate Change Act 2008 and Environment Act 2021 targets in exercising its functions and delivering on the objects in clauses 3 and 5”.

We face a climate change issue and a nature issue; they are interlinked and co-dependent. The actions that we take on climate change cannot be at the expense of biodiversity and nature, particularly in our seabed, which locks up so much blue carbon. We are still developing our understanding of just how important that is, and how susceptible the seabed is to disturbance. The two are interlinked and interdependent, and they have to be seen together. The more that we can do this across all our public bodies, the better we will be.

A nature recovery element to the proposed duty would give GB Energy statutory direction to invest in clean energy projects that meet the highest of environmental standards. It is really important to make sure that the work GB Energy does on climate change also supports nature. That would give it a key concentration in its broad decision-making and investment decision-making, as well as in projects, project management and delivery. A nature recovery duty would give GB Energy the power to use nature-based solutions and to review what it does and hold itself to account, and for us in Parliament to do the same.

The Crown Estate Bill and the Water (Special Measures) Bill have been mentioned already. Both those Bills have had the addition of a general climate change and nature target. This was a welcome development, which I was very pleased to see. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for the work she has done, and to Peers for the Planet and other Members of this House who were involved in those processes. That target is an important part of our transition.

I was pleased to see the same amendment proposed to the GB Energy Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, worked constructively with the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, to get that done, and they found a wording that worked for both of them in the context of this Bill. The context exists: GB Energy’s primary partner is the Crown Estate, so half of this partnership has a reporting requirement already. At a very minimum, if this amendment is not accepted or amended to make it acceptable, the amendment in the Crown Estate Bill has to be mirrored in this Bill. I have tabled an amendment in a later group which picks up on that work and seeks to make sure that that happens.

These are important matters. I hope that this amendment can be carried forward. Labour made a commitment in its manifesto not only to fight climate change but to protect nature. It is important that the institutions that this Government set up to fight climate change also implement Labour’s other manifesto commitments.