Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Deben

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Young, and to thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for supporting this amendment. It is something of the usual crew, and “Green Member gets up to support climate and biodiversity action” is, I know, not terribly original, but I just want to make a couple of specific points. One is that there was a climate reporting duty on local authorities until 2010, brought in by a previous Labour Government. This amendment is seeking to reinstate something that Labour Governments brought in.

Repeated calls have come from the Climate Change Committee, businesses and the independent net zero review for a statutory local duty on climate, which is what this amendment aims to introduce. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, referred memorably to the “NERC Act”, a phrase I had not heard before; I think I will call it the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act, because it is perhaps a bit clearer. It links with the Environment Act 2021, and research on the implementation of it is clear—it exists but it is all terribly obscure, and people are not catching up with it. This amendment introduces something very clear and simple.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said, this is a debate that we keep having, so let us bring in a climate duty. Your Lordships’ House has had some real success over the years in having impact on Bills. I can go back to the pensions dashboards Bill, which will predate quite a number of people sitting in this Chamber. It was the first Committee stage I ever worked on, and we were trying to get climate measurements into the pensions dashboard. We really need to get to the point where your Lordships’ House does not have to keep doing this Bill after Bill. I know the noble Lord is concerned about the rate of progress, but if the Government put this in at the start, we would save a lot of time in your Lordships’ House.

I want to make one other crucial point. Local authorities have clear statutory duties, including a growth duty under the Deregulation Act 2015. There is a real imbalance between the fact that they have this growth duty but not a duty to look after the environment, climate and nature. Whatever I may think about growth, if you do not have a healthy environment, if communities are being battered by heatwaves, floods and droughts and you are not doing the climate mitigation you need to do, then you are not going to get the growth. These two things have to fit together.

We are all well aware that different parties with different views are coming into local authorities now, but this is a communal responsibility. Loss of biodiversity does not stop at county or district boundaries; climate change does not stop there either. All local authorities must have the duty, so that everyone is looked after. We cannot allow some people a free ride.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, this is a crucial amendment, not least for the reasons the noble Baroness, Lady Young, put forward. We are going to go on about this until we have an overall demand that this is how we think about matters. We have to recognise that unless we make all our decisions in the context of recovering our biodiversity and protecting our nation and the world against climate change, we are going to make a mess of the decisions we make. That is absolutely central.

I know the Government will be inclined to say it is already there—it is in the guidance, and it is all very proper—but I am afraid that there are many in local authorities who do not see this as the priority it ought to be. I really must ask the Minister to think seriously about the fact that every local authority at least must know that it has to think about things through this lens, because it is the most important lens for all of us.

I live in, and used to represent, a very agricultural constituency, and anyone who has seen the effect of the drought on all our farms at the moment will realise just how desperate the effect of climate change is, particularly for farmers who, only 18 months ago, could not get their crops out because of the water and could not plant because it was still too wet to do so.

People do not understand the impact of climate change today—it is amazing. I am upset and concerned that the good common view of all major political parties is beginning to be eroded. Only by working together are we going to solve these problems. It is no good just saying, “Oh well, we can put it off. We can’t do it by this or that time”. I congratulate the Government on sticking to the fact that we have to do this very quickly indeed. The trouble is that the timetable is not in our hands. We have allowed the timetable to be led by the fact that nature is now reacting to what we have done, and doing so in an increasingly extreme way.

I hope that the Government will take these amendments seriously and consider an overall view of this in a whole lot of other areas, so that we do not have to have this discussion on a permanent basis. Frankly, it ought to be the given for everything we do that we look at in the light of the fact of climate change. If there are Members of the Committee who have still not seen this, I remind them that it is necessary for growth. If we do not do this, we will not be a country in which people will invest, and we will not have new jobs or the kind of society, nature and climate that will be suitable not only for our children and grandchildren but for us. At my age, I can still say that we have to do this, otherwise the climate in which I will go on living will be increasingly unhappy for me, and for my children and grandchildren. Please accept this amendment.