Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Baroness Taylor of Stevenage and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Committee stage
Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness, and I understand her expertise in these matters. If she still has concerns, I am happy to have another conversation with her.

Amendment 16 would require the environmental principles policy statement to be considered in the development of national policy statements. The environmental principles policy statement is a statutory document that aids policymakers in how to interpret and proportionately apply the five environmental principles. Policymakers are assisted in assessing the environmental impact of policy, but this is not a replication of the environmental impact assessment process. The principles are not rules and do not dictate policy outcomes. Ministers are under a statutory duty to have due regard to the environmental principles policy statement when developing policy, including NPSs. This is a matter of legal compliance and is embedded in the policy-making process.

Furthermore, national policy statements are also required by statute to be accompanied by an appraisal of sustainability which incorporates the sustainability appraisal as well as the strategic environmental assessment and ensures that environmental considerations are fully integrated. A habitat regulation assessment must be undertaken for a national policy statement to comply with the requirements of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017. The preparation of an assessment of sustainability is a comprehensive process and includes an examination of the likely environmental effects of designating a national policy statement and the reasonable alternatives to a national policy statement. It also requires the Government to set out measures to mitigate any significant negative effects identified and any enhancement measures.

The assessment of sustainability is an iterative process done in conjunction with the updating of a national policy statement. For example, I encourage Members to read the assessment of sustainability that was published alongside the National Networks National Policy Statement, which I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, will already have done. It sets out a clear methodology of all the above and the environmental principles considered when developing the policy and potential alternatives.

I know that has been quite a long explanation, but I felt that the detailed nature of the amendments warranted going into some detail. For those reasons, I do not believe that a separate written assessment within each national policy statement is necessary.

I turn to some of the points raised by other noble Lords. My noble friend Lord Hunt referred to the capability and capacity of Natural England. That issue has been raised many times—it was raised in the other place and has been raised again here—and we will come to it when we start to debate Part 3 of the Bill.

I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, meant the building safety regulator. I was not quite sure which regulator he was talking about but am happy to answer any questions about that. We have done significant work with the building safety regulator to try to speed up the process. We have increased its resources and changed the chief executive. Things are moving much more quickly already, and the development industry is already seeing a change.

The noble Lord, Lord Banner, spoke about the precautionary principle. We have already had discussions about that today. We have to look out for the proportionate use of precautionary principles without going over the top and gold-plating everything, which I am afraid has been too much of a feature of the planning system in the past.

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Ravensdale and Lord Jamieson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for their contribution to the debate. With all that said, I kindly ask noble Lords not to press their amendments at this stage.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. I thought she gave a very comprehensive and helpful response, and obviously I will withdraw my amendment.

It seemed to me that there were a number of threads, but a particular one is the relationship between what the legislation is seeking to achieve, the role of regulators and planners and the interface with the democratic process. The noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Pinnock, had some important points to raise here. In the end, we have collectively created—and Parliament is guilty of this—a whole panoply of quangos and regulators, and I suspect that those who have been Ministers are all guilty of that. Some of that seems to be entirely justified; for instance, you want the Office for Nuclear Regulation to be robust and independent. As a Health Minister, far too many years ago, I was part of the team that created independent reconfiguration panels because Ministers were not able to take decisions on the closure of hospitals as it was all too difficult, so sometimes there is a justification for offshoring. But I agree that we have gone too far and that we need to draw a distinction between the independence of regulators in making judgments and our role as parliamentarians and as Ministers in being tough about their performance, which is what lies behind my amendment.

I understand what the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, means about the issue, particularly in her patch, where a number of different NCOs go through under different NSIP regimes—the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, could talk about cumulative impacts, which I understand—where regulators seem unable to work together, and the box ticking and the judgments they make mean that a collaborative enterprise becomes very difficult. I suspect that is what the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, was talking about in the East End. He, with a fantastic track record in doing this, has a scheme that is partly about improved NHS primary care provision, with housing attached and maybe even commercial development. We are dealing with a host of different bodies, all of which deal with these things in a compartmentalised way, and somehow we have to get through it.

This is partly about the work that the noble Lord, Lord Banner, is doing on the relationship between the proportionate and precautionary principles, and it is also partly about making sure—as the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, said—that the new system we introduce asks whether EDPs fit with major infrastructure projects.

Parliamentary oversight, in one way or another, is one way we can overcome some of the barriers, and I have later amendments that put forward some ideas about that. If the democratic process can legitimise the speed-up of what we seek to do, that would be a very helpful move forward. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Baroness Taylor of Stevenage and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak next as I have an amendment in this group. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for his excellent speech on his amendments and for meeting with me and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to discuss the Bill. I was pleased that he mentioned Peers for the Planet; I am not yet a member of that group but I will be a very enthusiastic joiner. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has greatly encouraged me in that respect.

The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, spoke about giving local authorities the tools that they need. That is also an important part of my Amendment 179A in this group, which I will speak to. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, referred to the Skidmore review and the Climate Change Committee’s work—which are both crucial to his and my amendments in this group—and to having a net-zero test running through the planning system. That is absolutely crucial, and now is the opportunity to do just that.

We have spoken before about the fact that there are some key strategic omissions from the Bill. Ensuring that climate change is fundamentally enshrined in law in the planning process is one of the most critical. My amendment is designed to address this too, by including it as one of the key purposes of the planning process. Over 80% of councils have now declared a climate emergency, with a pledge to net zero sitting alongside that, so surely it is time that the Government and legislation caught up and helped provide the tools to do that. The amendments in this group are designed to set out: first, an overall purpose for the planning process; secondly, to make absolutely sure that that includes the sustainability of all development; and, thirdly, to ensure that every individual development proposal is assessed to ensure that it is part of the solution to climate change, not adding to the problem.

As far back as November 2021, the Local Government Association commissioned a wide-ranging report to show how critical the local contribution to climate change could be. There are many important contributions recorded in that report, including one from Richard Blyth, head of policy at the Royal Town Planning Institute, who said:

“Collectively local activity and investment (for example on housing, infrastructure, water management) will only contribute positively to the ambition to leave the environment in a better state if there is a shared spatial framework for improving local environments”.


He pointed out that the Environment Act could take this only so far, but some of the measures it contained risked adding to the piecemeal landscape of environmental plans without clear directions for economic decision-making. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, referred to the piecemeal approach that results from some of the provisions in the Environment Act. The only way of ensuring that a holistic approach is taken to environmental issues is to ensure that all the relevant issues are built into local plans and considered for each development, whether that is water, flooding, soil, air quality, transport, access to open spaces, biodiversity, energy, waste or the whole-life carbon impact of buildings. These should all be part of the consideration of planning.

Net zero can be achieved only if decarbonisation happens in every place, everywhere across the country. These amendments would incorporate in the Bill plans for an overarching clause that would do just that. At the moment, if the overarching framework of the national management development plan, whatever it contains in relation to net zero—I am probably not the only one in this Committee who fears that this will be nowhere near ambitious enough in response to the climate emergency—does not have a corresponding network of local plans setting out clearly how development will take a radically new and ambitious approach to this, we will, I fear, continue to move at the current snail’s pace.

Local plans also need to reflect the needs of mitigation of climate change. In a paper from the University of Strathclyde by Dr Hawker and Dr Wade, they say:

“In particular, local planning decisions around land use and infrastructure must be made with acknowledgement of their implications for living with climate change. For example, increasing green spaces can support drainage in urban areas, helping to alleviate future flood risks”.


We have seen some magnificent examples in recent years—for example, pocket parks in high streets, which help with flooding issues—but they are by no means common enough yet. Local authorities often hold large building portfolios, including social housing. If they can be supported with long-term future funding, they can take action now to ensure that properties are energy efficient and much more cost effective for residents.

At Second Reading in the other place, the Secretary of State’s contention was that proposals in the Bill would strengthen environmental protection. He explained that a National Planning Policy Framework document would be published in July—that is July last year—setting out how environmental outcomes were to be driven. As far as I know, that document has not yet been published by the department. So, while we await specific policies on specific aspects of tackling environmental outcomes, fundamentally writing climate change into both development planning and mitigation measures for the planning system of the future is the only way of ensuring that they reach every part of the UK. If we do not do so in this Bill, we will have missed a huge opportunity to align the planning system with the climate change goals that should be right at its heart.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 179 and 271 from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. I thank him very much for bringing them to your Lordships’ Committee. I will make three quick points.

First, I do not understand why the Government are not using this Bill as a vehicle to embed the approaches that they have signed up to on net zero and climate change targets more generally. Surely this is the ideal legislation to ensure that our planning system supports what the Government say they wish to do.

Secondly, the noble Lord quite rightly mentioned the Skidmore review, which is very telling, and we have also heard from the Climate Change Committee. However, the National Audit Office’s report should not be ignored. It said that

“there are serious weaknesses in central government’s approach to working with local authorities on decarbonisation, stemming from a lack of clarity over local authorities’ overall roles, piecemeal funding, and diffuse accountabilities”.

The Government need to listen to the National Audit Office, because that is based on its expertise in monitoring and evaluating what local authorities are doing and the confrontations they are having on some of these issues due to flaws in the current local planning system and arrangements.

Thirdly, my background is mainly in health, and there is no doubt that unlocking economic growth through planning reform, as was highlighted in the net zero review, could achieve real health benefits by fully aligning our planning system with climate change and nature targets. The point has been made by the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, which says that a healthy neighbourhood can also be a powerful levelling-up tool, leading to better mental and physical health and well-being outcomes through active travel, social connectivity and access to green spaces. Statistics published by the UN only a few days ago show that life expectancy in this country has deteriorated dramatically in comparison with many other countries since the 1950s. We were then one of the top countries for life expectancy; now we are in danger of dropping out of the top 30.

There is such a persuasive argument for tying in strong public preventive health with what must be done on climate change and net zero. Surely the planning system is one of the most powerful levers that we can use to make it happen. I hope we will come back to this very important matter on Report.