Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I am extremely confused about the order we are taking this in, but I understand that the government amendment has to be put. I just want to say one thing: every single time I have a conversation with Ministers or civil servants about the land use framework the Government are preparing, they tell me that local nature recovery strategies are fundamental and central to that. That is why it is important that the government amendment to strengthen the link between local nature recovery strategies and the planning system not only happens but is vigorously pursued and implemented.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

I apologise if the order has been a bit wrong; it is just that we are not very used to saying thank you to the Minister. So, I will just sit down and withdraw the amendment.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, this group is made up of four amendments in my name. They are designed to ensure that climate and other key environmental considerations are included in the new environmental outcomes reports, the details of which will be set out in secondary legislation, as we have heard; and to probe whether the EORs will support the UN’s sustainable development goals. I would be grateful if the Minister could shed some light on these matters in her response.

My Amendment 106 specifically asks that the new system

“does not weaken existing environmental protections”;

in other words, it is an amendment to ensure non-regression. Environmental assessments play an important role in limiting nature and climate harms from planning decisions. Such an extensive series of changes to environmental assessments, delivered largely through regulations, could, we believe, open the door to environmental regression that has limited parliamentary scrutiny. Concerns to this effect have been expressed by the Office for Environmental Protection and a number of environmental NGOs.

Unfortunately, the one safeguard in this part of the Bill fails to address the regression risk. Clause 147 states:

“The Secretary of State may make EOR regulations only if satisfied that”


the

“overall level of environmental protection”

will not be less than before. The stipulation overall undermines the utility of this safeguard as the effect is to allow the Secretary of State to weaken individual existing protections as long as they consider this to be balanced out elsewhere in order to maintain overall levels.

We discussed this issue at some length in Committee, so I will not go into detail on the risks that we believe this approach carries. However, it remains unclear why this low-bar test for new regulations has been chosen over the higher bar provided by the Environment Act, Section 20 of which requires Ministers to state that new legislation will not reduce the level of environmental protection provided for by any existing environmental law. My amendment would apply this recent and relevant non-regression precedent to EOR regulations, thereby ensuring that environmental protection is not weakened through the introduction of the new EOR regime by specifying that the Secretary of State should demonstrate that EOR regulations would not diminish any individual environmental protection applying at the time that the Bill passes. This would have the effect of aligning Clause 147 with the Environment Act and the Government’s own commitment, as stated in Committee, to use the EOR regime as an

“opportunity to protect the environment”.—[Official Report, 18/5/23; col. 444.]

I urge the Minister to consider accepting my amendment as the provision of a robust non-regression clause is the minimum required to ensure that the proposed EOR regime does not harm the environment.

A series of government amendments on Report—including Amendments 133 and 138, which we have debated today—seek to define more closely the environmental protections that would be subject to the new EOR powers. However, this listing exercise provides little to no assurance that environmental regression will not take place. We believe that the threat of environmental regression is significant. In its response just last month, in June, to the Government’s EOR consultation, the Office for Environmental Protection observed that

“there are risks associated with a move from well-established regimes when so much rides on effective delivery over the next few years (and beyond)”.

To address these risks, Clause 147 needs to be strengthened and non-regression assured before the EOR regime is introduced. My amendments would achieve this. I beg to move.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 106 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman.

I have been a great fan of the habitats regulations over the years; I was part of the movement that helped shape them and they have done some pretty sterling work for us, both here in this country as well as across Europe. They have one major feature at the moment: they are understood by both the development community and the environmental movement. There is a shedload of case law that surrounds them, enabling people to understand quite considerably and in detail how they operate. However, I accept that we move on; that is Brexit for you.

The regulations are now being replaced in what I regard as a rather piecemeal fashion but, nevertheless, that is what we have got. So we must make sure that all the building blocks that are being put in place to replace the habitats regulations are going to work properly; and this block, reflected in Amendment 106, is an important one. This is a risky time to be meddling with environmental assessment regimes, when we are at a crisis stage on the climate and biodiversity—but we are where we are, so let us have a look at how we can make this better.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Grand Committee

The point is that this is an easy amendment that would not cost anyone anything and would bring an extraordinary benefit. I see no reason why the Government —especially a Conservative Government who, at the end of the day, like things to do with communities and plants and growing—should not welcome it with open arms.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 483, to which I have put my name. I will not repeat that excellent introduction by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, but simply commend the amendment on the basis that it is probably truer to the title of the Bill and to levelling up—which we have drifted rather away from in many of the recent amendments—than many others. It is about healthy food, environmental improvement and well-being. For me, it is mostly about allowing communities to express self-agency and be the driving force in achieving those benefits.

I pay tribute to Incredible Edible, a group that the noble Baroness mentioned, which is a force of nature. If noble Lords want to see some really uplifting stories about what communities can do, they should go on its website. The point it makes on a regular basis is that, often, the land we are talking about is already in taxpayer ownership—owned by public authorities—but temporarily not doing very much and could be brought into use for a number of months or years, until its permanent use has been agreed and taken forward.

The noble Baroness was very uplifting with her stories of success, but I am a miserable soul. I will tell the Committee why this needs to be in law, rather than simply in admonition. I was involved very tangentially in an attempt to get a community growing scheme going in one of our major cities. It was led by a celebrity gardener, working with a group of local residents. It was exactly that: an acre or two for a shorter or longer period—however long it could be released—for a community in a particularly disadvantaged area to grow their own food and encourage young people to get involved. It was hugely flexible, and we did not much care where or how long for, provided that they could get started.

There were terrific words of support from the top end of the local authority but, three years later, they still had no land, so they gave up. Every plot that was identified had some reason or other why it could not be used. The lawyers got in the way and there were always health and safety and insurance issues, which became a morass that they could not get out of. However, it is great to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, that there are lots of good examples, including from Incredible Edible.

This amendment would do a couple of things. First, it asks the local authority to do something very simple: to list the bits of land available on a transient basis that could be used for community cultivation, or even just for simple environmental improvement. Secondly, it could be underpinned by what the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, called a “meanwhile lease”—something like a certificate of lawful use, a simple agreement between the local authority and the community gardeners that is standard across the country, has already been crawled over once by the lawyers and therefore does not need to be crawled over on every occasion and avoids the expense and slowing-down effect of lawyers being involved on both sides and every agreement having to be negotiated afresh. I hope that the Government will have a rush of blood to the head in this run-up to the bank holiday and support this amendment.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, as we enter this record-breaking 15th day in Committee on a Bill, I pay huge tribute to my noble friends on the Front Bench and noble Lords on the Opposition Front Bench for their considerable patience, humour and endurance.

The sadness of this levelling-up Bill, which has not ground us down, is that there has been absolutely no give from the Government. I am not as hopeful as the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for this amendment, because I fear that the top right-hand corner of the Minister’s brief will say, “Reject”. If I may say so, that has not helped the process of this Bill. Perhaps a message could be sent back to the department that, if one wants to get the Bill through this House, there could be a little more understanding that a lot of the amendments, whether from the Opposition or our side, are there to constructively help the Bill, not destroy it. Because we do not divide in Committee, we will have to go through the whole process in a few weeks’ time on Report, which will be longer and more agonising than it might necessarily have been.

I come at this from a different perspective from the noble Baroness, who made an interesting speech from her own experience. When I came here, I was told that you speak on your honour and experience and vote on your conscience. It is wonderful that we have someone like the noble Baroness, with her experience, but I come at this from the point of view of having served on the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Committee of your Lordships’ House. The devastating evidence that we received on food made me reassess what the priorities ought to be. Food in this country will probably kill you more quickly than any disease. We eat an enormous amount of processed food—it is 57% of our diet. Some 80% of the processed food that we eat in this country is not fit to be fed to children. It is not good for us, which is why 60% of us are obese and the number is growing. It is one of the unsung scandals that will one day hit the headlines in a major way. Hopefully, we can take some action before that happens. The cost is astronomical. It is estimated that the bad food that we eat contributes to losses of about £74 billion a year to the British economy.

That is the angle that I come at this from, so let us do anything we can to help to grow and produce our own vegetables freshly. It must be devastatingly sad for farmers to grow top-quality food—because our standards are so high—only to have it macerated into virtual poison and sold in supermarkets. What a waste of time and effort, from their point of view.

I also come at this from the health and recreation angle, picking up the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I do not have my own kitchen garden, but I dig my daughter’s. I have been fascinated by doing that with my grandson because, over the last three years, I have noticed a considerable change: this year, he was fascinated by the difference in the sizes of the seeds of the peas, the salads and the courgettes. He kept asking why each one was different and why they were not all the same. He has now taken charge of his vegetables in the garden. His willingness to eat green vegetables has gone up in proportion to his interest in the garden, because they are his vegetables and they are now on his plate. He has seen them grow—he helped me to plant them and will help me to pick them this autumn.

When I was doing this with him a couple of weekends ago, I thought that this amendment absolutely encapsulates that. I gave your Lordships just one instance, but, if this were done on a much bigger scale, not only would there be recreational and mental health benefits from being outside and digging the garden but the young would be educated. My grandson and I now have a competition about who is the first to see the robin once we start digging, because, sure enough, one will appear on a fence-post, looking for what we have turned over in the hope of getting a free meal. If this can be done for those who have never had the experience of handling food in its natural state, the benefits could be amazing.

Going back to what the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said about the gardens that she helped to create in London, I multiply my experience of this and think, “Yes, we can do something”. That is why I hope that the Government will take on board that this is something where local authorities can give a real benefit. It is not allotments; it has to be on a different scale from that. We have heard about the problem with allotments and how long the waiting lists are, so a different tack has to be taken to try to get the local authorities to move, because the end benefits are so worth while.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

504F: After Clause 214, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty to produce a land use framework(1) The Secretary of State must, no later than one year following the passing of this Act, lay a land use framework for England before Parliament.(2) The framework must—(a) outline government objectives and principles in relation to the multifunctional use of land;(b) be based on the principle of multifunctional land use and take account of the whole range of land uses, including agriculture, climate change, biodiversity, access, development, housing, infrastructure, water, energy, natural capital and ecosystem services;(c) promote collaboration and integration across the statutory organisations impacting on land use;(d) provide guidance on the application of the framework to enable decision making at national, regional and local levels and to assist individual landowner decision;(e) provide accessible data on land use to support decision makers at national, regional and local levels, including the decisions of individual landowners.(3) Before laying the framework before Parliament, the Secretary of State must publish a draft framework and consult with such bodies as have relevant interests in land use and also with the general public.(4) Subsections (2) and (3) apply to a revised framework as they apply to a framework laid under subsection (1).”Member's explanatory statement
The new Clause would require government to publish a land use framework for England to improve the ability of decision makers at all levels, including individual landowners and managers, to reconcile conflicting land use pressures, make better decisions about conflicting land uses and enable scarce land resources to be used to deliver for multiple objectives.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving this amendment I will also speak to my Amendment 504G, both of which are on land use. A number of noble Lords will have heard me bang on about this interminably, so I shall try not to take too long. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, for putting their names to these amendments. Alas, the vagaries of timing have meant that the noble Baroness cannot be with us.

Land is a finite resource and pressure on it is growing. There are needs for land in a whole variety of areas, not just for traditional uses such as agriculture and timber production but for carbon sequestration, green energy generation—solar and wind—housing and development, biodiversity recovery, water protection and flood risk management, infrastructure, transport, energy transmission, recreation, mental health and access to the countryside. Recent research has shown that, if you put all these competing needs together, we will require a third more land than we possess. I do not know whether noble Lords have recognised this, but we are not making any more land at the moment.

These competing demands are already being felt by landowners, farmers, communities and leaders in local authorities and other areas, but we do not have any framework in this country within which those who make that multitude of decisions on land use priorities at a national and local scale can work. This means that decisions on how to make the best use of this scarce, pressurised resource are being made on a piecemeal basis and often in silos.

For example, good agricultural land can be used inappropriately for solar arrays and land important for biodiversity recovery can be threatened by inappropriately routed infrastructure development. Everybody says that we need to plant more trees, but they need to be planted in the right place, which is not always the case as a result of the current dash for carbon; we see investors with very deep pockets buying up good agricultural land to plant it with trees that will attract for them carbon payments. Land that could deliver for biodiversity and carbon is being planted just for carbon, which is not the most efficient way of using land in a multifunctional way. All these pressures are adding to the price of land. If you are looking at buying land in any way, for whatever use, it is a bit like the wild west out there.

There is a real and growing pressure on land, and therefore a real and growing need for a land use framework which would consider how increasingly scarce land resources can deliver for multiple objectives at the same time and deliver a range of outcomes across several policy areas in a co-ordinated and optimised way which makes the best use of that scarce resource. A framework would harness the rapidly accruing wealth of data on land use and use modern mapping techniques to provide principles and tools about land use for decision-makers, ranging from national government to individual, small-scale landowners and farmers to enable them to make the best decisions on the competing priorities that they face day in, day out. It was good to see the national Geospatial Commission release a report on this issue yesterday, demonstrating the power of modern, accessible open-access data.

There is also growing support for a land use framework. Two House of Lords Select Committees have commented on it; the Rural Economy Committee, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and the Land Use in England Committee, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, both called for a land use framework—as have the Climate Change Committee in its report Land Use: Policies for a Net Zero UK and Henry Dimbleby in the national food strategy.

Other organisations are recommending such an approach. They include such august bodies as the Royal Society. I should declare several interests, having sat on both the Select Committees I mentioned and having helped to produce the Royal Society’s recent report on multifunctional land use. Others that I have not laid a hand on are the Royal Town Planning Institute, Green Alliance, the RSPB, CPRE, the County Councils Network, Chatham House and the Government’s Geospatial Commission. The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, which I also sit on, is piloting a couple of multifunctional land use frameworks in two counties, Cambridgeshire and Devon. So a lot of folk out there are saying that a land use framework is the right way forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 504F in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, would introduce a legal duty for the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to lay a land use framework for England before Parliament no later than one year following the passage of the Bill and would also define content and scope.

The Government agree with the principle and recognise the need for the land use framework, which is why we committed in the food strategy to publish one this year, earlier than this amendment would require. The Secretary of State for Defra reiterated this commitment in the environmental improvement plan in January this year. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, has been unduly pessimistic: there is progress on the work on the land use framework. It is under way and will build on the insights presented by the Land Use in England Committee in its recent report. The noble Baroness and others are right to focus on multifunctional land use. That will be critical in delivering on this Government’s ambitious plans.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, also asked for clarity on the progress of government work. I can reassure her and the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, that several government departments have targets with land use implications. We are working with them all to understand and take account of their land use expectations. As well as Defra, this includes the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Department for Levelling Up and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. I hope that provides some reassurance.

Amendment 504G introduces a legal duty on the Secretary of State to establish a land use commission as an independent arm’s-length body reporting to the Cabinet Office. The amendment builds on the work of the House of Lords Land Use in England Committee, as has been said, which recommended this in its final report. The Government accept some of the reasoning behind the proposals for a land use commission, including there being significant opportunities for government departments to collaborate on research, analysis and policy development on land use.

In the Government’s response to this recommendation in the committee’s report, they do not agree that a separate commission is necessary. This is because many of the potential benefits of a commission are achievable with improvements in collaboration on land use between the different departments. This improvement is already under way through the preparation of the land use framework.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, mentioned the different experience of Scotland. While the department agrees that there are strong similarities, there are differences between the biophysical, cultural and ownership characteristics of land in England and Scotland and a number of important matters for land use, such as planning, are devolved. While we want to learn from the experience of the devolved Governments in land use, we do not think that we will share all the same issues and solutions.

As I think my noble friend Lord Benyon mentioned at the Dispatch Box this week, the cost of a land use commission would be somewhere between the Scottish Land Commission’s £1.5 million and the Climate Change Committee’s £4.5 million. I hope this provides sufficient reassurance.

The noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, asked about planning system additions. The Government’s response to the House of Lords Land Use in England Committee report stated:

“We agree with the suggestion that the framework should not replace the planning system, which is the main mechanism through which development is considered strategically”.


With those few comments, I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, will feel able to withdraw this amendment and not move the other.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I thank noble Lords for their contributions and support. I very much value and endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, said about it not replacing or being in conflict with the planning system. It was good to hear that reinforced by the Minister, because it is an important reassurance that we need to give to local landowners, who might otherwise see this as a bit of a bogeyman.

The response on progress is encouraging, but it would be good to know what that progress is. It is all very well getting assurances of progress, but this is such an important issue, impacting so many people, that there ought to be a much more public element to the process to demonstrate how that progress develops over time.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I can offer to write to the noble Baroness and Members of the Committee on the progress being made.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

That would be extremely helpful; I thank the Minister. I also very much approve of the assurances we have got that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, DLUHC and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology will be an integral part of the process. We just need reassurance that there will not just be consultation with these departments on Defra land use issues but that this will cover the policy areas of these departments that have land use implications.

I accept that Scotland is different—I kind of know that, because I am Scottish—but I have been very encouraged recently by work beginning on a land use strategy in all-Ireland. I spent some time with civil servants in Northern Ireland and representatives of the south on the importance of a land use strategy there. It was heartening to see that it was being accepted on the island of Ireland.

On the cost of a commission, task force, expert group or whatever body might carry the flag to help the Government on land use, I think that £1.5 million to £4.5 million is a drop in the ocean these days. I do not know about other noble Lords, but I have been really taken by the fact that, during Covid, we got used to dealing with billions rather than millions—£1 million or £4 million is kind of just the fluff out of the Chancellor’s back pocket rather than a substantial element of national investment for such an important issue.

To finish, history is always a good teacher and, although I cannot remember because I was just a twinkle in my daddy’s eye at that stage, the post-war settlement very much stressed the fact that there were three important pillars of the national resource. The first was capital investment, the second was labour and skills, and the third, strangely enough, was land. Over the years, we have forgotten about land being an important national pillar of resource. We need to get back to giving it that degree of priority.

Although I beg leave to withdraw the amendment at this point, I am afraid that I cannot promise not to keep banging on about it. I may well come back with one or other amendment in some form at a later stage.

Amendment 504F withdrawn.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am beginning to think that eight days is not enough for Committee. I am sorry about that, but it is such an exciting Bill and we all have so much to say. The point about which data to collect is interesting, because, of course, there is data that is extremely negative and it would be difficult, perhaps, to find a category for it. For example, so far, a huge amount of money has been wasted by the levelling-up funds, because local authorities have often used a lot of time and energy putting together bids that have failed. Are the Government going to collect the data on that waste of money, which obviously —in these days of 13 years of underinvestment in councils and the loss of EU structural funds—means a lot to councils and will affect the service that they can give to their residents? There has been a failure of levelling up already and perhaps we are not measuring everything we should be measuring.

There are a couple of dozen local authorities run by Greens as part of the administration. Many Green councillors have expressed their dismay to me at the level of waste in the levelling-up fund, and it very much concerns me. Instead of taking a long-term view of what is needed, the Government sought quick wins, quite understandably; I can entirely support that idea. However, they demanded submission of “shovel-ready projects”, combined with tight deadlines for submissions, so local authorities had to quickly piece together bids, rather than taking the time to develop what they might have thought were the most impactful and valuable project proposals for their areas. Personally, I see this as a continuation of Boris Johnson’s natural urge—which I saw quite a lot of when he was Mayor of London—to splash money around on grand ideas that grabbed headlines but often failed to come to any sort of fruition.

So far, I do not think the levelling-up fund has been value for money, and it has not been targeted at areas that need it most. There has been a lot of political decision-making about where the funds go, and it is alleged that they have disproportionately benefited Conservative-voting areas. The Government now need to give local authorities a long-term view of what is needed and let them put together long-term proposals. They need capital funds that will be made available over a period of years and support them to dig deep into what would benefit their own areas, because they will know best. I can see a lot of late nights in my future with this Bill, and I do hope that the Government will listen to what we are saying.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 10 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Foster of Bath, and Amendment 58 in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock. The work on this Bill needs to take a very careful approach to geographic disparities. It can be typified as a north/south issue or even as an inter-authority issue, but disparities do not just exist at regional or local authority level but operate in small, distinct areas of multiple deprivation that are embedded in even the most affluent areas of this country. This is so in rural areas and in urban areas as well.

For eight years, I ran health services for Kensington and Chelsea, where areas of tremendous wealth and privilege sit cheek by jowl with pockets of the most extreme poverty in England. I remember taking a new Conservative Minister of Health around the patch, and he expressed extreme doubt about the value of health visitors visiting newborn children and their mothers to check on their progress. He said, “I don’t think my daughter needed that. That’s what the nanny was for”. I took him around an area about 200 yards north of where his daughter and said nanny lived in Ladbroke Grove, to a squat with a single-parent 16 year- old new mum living in a single room with no electricity, with the loos purposely blocked with concrete by the landlord, who wanted them out. There was slime running down the walls. I think at that point he did see the value of health visitors, but that degree of poverty was within a 200-yard strip of pretty wealthy—certainly comfortable—living. It is also the case in rural areas. Rural poverty is often hidden in small pockets in dispersed communities, and in small communities where everybody knows about it but it is not very visible to anybody in authority.

I am afraid that I was not here on Monday, but the Minister must have said then that the tools do exist for looking at data on levelling-up issues at a very fine-grain level. That has been enhanced in the last few years by modern mapping and big-data analysis techniques, which is the shortform for the thing that got the noble Lord, Lord Foster’s, towel around his head. I am proud of the fact that it was the Labour Government who set up the Neighbourhood Statistics Unit in the early 2000s. As a result, we have a long history of fine-grain, small-area statistics based on what is snappily known as “lower-layer super-output areas”. There are almost 33,000 of those that are mapped on a continuous basis for a whole range of parameters across the country. It is that kind of level of statistics that we need to use to track levelling up within and between neighbourhoods.

If you read the White Paper, you see that it talks about that sort of issue. It talks about being able to differentiate and to have data as one of its five pillars. However, that really does not reflect in other measures in the Bill. We may have the data, we may have the commitment to small-area identification and levelling up on that basis, but I am not sure that we have anything in the Bill that then takes that forward.

I very much welcome the expansion proposed by these amendments to what is basically the index of multiple deprivation, which is the current most-used official measure of relative deprivation in England. I would have liked to have seen environmental poverty and quality of environment added. People in poorer areas tend to be landed with a poor-quality environment. In Victorian days, as you got richer, you moved up the hill to get further away from the smog. That is still the case now in terms of people’s aspirations to get out of the crap environments they often live in as soon as they have got the money to be able to do so. We simply cannot continue with that. Will the Minister say how the Government intend to ensure that levelling up focuses on this fine grain of geography in both rural and urban areas, in order to be effective and to ensure that they do not miss out in higher-level aggregate monitoring of the levelling-up process?

There is, rightly, much focus on the role of local authorities and local institutions in this. However, the Government need to show how we will monitor that that work is happening within local authorities in an effective way if levelling up is to become a reality for many of these people, who spend their lives in pretty poor circumstances, watching their rich neighbours nearby.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my environmental interests in the register.

When I was a kid, every Christmas I knew by the shape of the parcel under the tree that my present was going to be a book, but I could not stop hoping that it just might be a pony. This is how I feel about the Bill. I desperately want it to be a pony. Let us see what we can do perhaps to make it so.

This is a big Bill at 408 pages, yet most of its elements make no mention of climate change or biodiversity declines, two of the major threats to future prosperity. People in areas of greatest economic disadvantage experience further disadvantage from poor-quality environments. For example, they have lousy air quality and lack access to green spaces and the benefits they provide to physical and mental health, yet there is no mention in the Government’s levelling-up missions of climate change and biodiversity and ecosystem decline. We must look on these not as missions but as omissions.

On the built environment, we have heard concerns from many noble Lords about proposed changes to the Section 106 arrangements and the impact on social rented housing, which is so important to levelling up. The lack of attention to climate change in the Bill makes this worse. Poorer communities in substandard, damp houses with poor insulation pay through the nose for fuel and the privilege of being colder and sicker, choosing between heating and eating, yet there is hardly any mention at all of climate change in this Bill. I do not know why I am surprised by that, since the Prime Minister signally omitted any prioritisation of the climate change and environmental challenges in his recent vision.

Levelling up must be environmental as well as economic. Apart from anything else, green jobs are going to be growth jobs. In Part 6, one of the few places where the environment gets a look-in, the Bill sweeps away strategic environmental assessment and impact assessment mechanisms for environmental appraisal, which the UK played a huge role in developing. We do not know what the Bill puts in their place, as it merely gives Ministers powers to design environmental outcomes reporting. This is one of the first examples of the Jacob Rees-Mogg assault on retained EU legislation —of which much, much more when that Bill comes to your Lordships’ House.

The Bill’s provisions for environmental outcome reporting leave it to Ministers to make sweeping changes to environmental impact assessment without any parliamentary scrutiny. Will the Minister remedy that and ensure widespread consultation on these initial and any future changes? Will she assure us that existing EU case law on strategic environmental assessment and EIA will have some status in the future arrangements? We have learned much over the past 30 years that is too valuable to lose.

The Government say that the Bill is about devolving power, but national development management policies seem to go in the opposite direction; they appear to be top-down and centralising, overriding local and neighbourhood plans, ignoring local differences and lacking consultation. Can the Minister assure us that the Government will amend the legislation to ensure that those policies will be subject to consultation, along the same lines as consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework and the national significant infrastructure proposals?

This Bill is such a lucky dip—or, as my noble friend said from the Front Bench, a jamboree bag—that I doubt whether noble Lords will be able to resist lobbing stuff into the mix, particularly as we have been firmly told that we are not going to get a planning Bill. This may be the only opportunity under this Government to raise further environmental issues, so I personally feel the urge to lob coming on.

Let me outline some of the things we ought to see in the Bill that are currently not in it. Noble Lords have already talked about implementation of the Glover report recommendations for enhanced environmental and climate change powers for national park authorities. Secondly, there should also be a statutory status within planning law for local nature recovery strategies, joining up across Defra and DLUHC policy. There is a novel thought: joining up across government. Thirdly, there should be strengthening of protection for ancient woodland—I wonder whether I have said that before. It was promised in the sidelines on the Environment Bill but has been slow in materialising from DLUHC, so pressing for statutory arrangements would be worth while. I hope also to table some amendments on improved arrangements for tree protection orders.

Fourthly, a new environment and climate change purpose for the green belt is long overdue. The green belt needs to work harder for its living—for people, for local communities and for levelling up. Fifthly, we need a statutory status for land use framework proposals, outlined in the recent Select Committee report on land use to your Lordships’ House. Lastly, we need a simple and elegant amendment that would allow disadvantaged communities across the land all the health, environment and social benefits to be gained from having access to local land and a right to grow their own food. So watch this space when we get into the jamboree bag.

I finish by simply stressing that we really have to help this Bill to ensure that levelling up is about environmental, just as much as social and economic, levelling up. I congratulate the two maiden speakers and my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage, who gave a great speech at the beginning—but the speech I really want to hear is that of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, who invented levelling up. I look forward to it very much.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords, in supporting the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, on Amendment 262, I have to tell the House that when RoSPA campaigned for the introduction of car seat belts, it said that would save lives—and it did, spectacularly. Now we are campaigning for safer stairs in new-build houses and saying again that it will save lives, which it will. More than that, it will significantly reduce the appalling number of serious, life-damaging injuries that result in needless pain and suffering. It will in turn lift some of the colossal burden on the NHS, a burden that absorbs so much of its money and resources in doctors’, technicians’ and nurses’ time.

The Minister has shown in his dialogue with RoSPA’s chief executive, and in the things he said in this Chamber, that he truly understands the enormous benefit that enshrining BS 5395-1 in building regulations will bring. I hope he is equally convinced of the urgency of this vital reform and that, today, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, said, he assures your Lordships that he will not let it be bogged down in the labyrinthine legislative process and that he gives us a timescale and a plan by which this reform will become a reality.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, briefly, I too support Amendment 262 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, to which I have put my name. I will not go through all the reasons why it makes common sense but we have had the British Standard for well over 10 years and it is more observed in the omission than the commission. We really must make progress at this stage.

The Minister gave valuable assurances in Committee; the reason that we need to press him today is to get some clarity about the timetable for this. I feel that, if we cannot get a guarantee that it will be not only consulted upon but implemented within a 12-month period, we will have to regard that as unsatisfactory and press this amendment. Can he tell us whether he can meet that 12-month deadline for consultation and implementation and, if not, what the problem is and what the timetable will be? The standard has been around for a decade and it seems that this is a “just get the finger out” moment. I am sure that he is a “just get the finger out” sort of Minister.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for meeting me and the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, yesterday, and for sharing the correspondence that he had had over the Building Regulations Advisory Committee. He explained why it would be easier to update a statutory approved document than primary legislation, and the need for such statutory regulation to be reviewed rapidly and changed as things go on.

I endorse what has been said by others who have spoken, in that there is an urgency to this. Around many parts of the UK at the moment, we see what is almost an explosion of housebuilding and of other building sites. It would be really tragic if the Bill went through but those buildings do not have staircases in them which are fit for the population who are going to use them, and if we do not see a real drop in accidents in these new buildings. The old housing stock is obviously really difficult and much of it has inappropriate staircases, but we are talking here about new build. Because of that, there is an urgency and I hope that, when the Minister responds, he gives us a really good and tight timetable.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Grand Committee

We are all aware and appreciate that the Minister is overseeing the enormous job of putting together measures that will prevent the reoccurrence of another Grenfell. Although he has to deal with an extraordinary tragedy, I ask him not to walk past commonplace tragedies. They, too, cause people injuries and death and, on the issue of this amendment, 10 times more. Minister, we know you believe in this amendment. Accept it in the Bill now and advance the life-saving legacy that the Building Safety Bill can be for generations of house occupiers to come.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak in support of Amendment 120— I will call it the safer-stairs amendment, as I know the Minister likes short names for amendments—to which I have added my name. I will not repeat the excellent evidence and support that has been given by several speakers already.

It is simply to say that this will potentially become more of a problem, because we are all getting older—and we in this House should know that more than anybody else. Also, because of the wonderful feeding and other benefits we have given our children, their feet are bigger. With bigger feet and advanced old age, they will become a complete and utter liability, if we continue to build the poxy little stairs, with inadequate surfaces and terrible handrails, that we see all too often in both public and private buildings. This is something that not only would the Minister welcome, but housebuilders are saying they are keen to get ahead with, but they are not willing to do it unilaterally. Housing providers, both public and social, are keen on it, as are fire chiefs and local authorities. It would not cost any more, is absolutely needed and will be needed even more.

One of the endearing things about Governments—although as a staunch Labour supporter, I find it difficult to think of a Conservative Government as endearing—is when they say, “Yes, that is a very good idea. Let’s just do it”. This is an opportunity for the Government to say that of this Bill now, to avoid deaths, injuries and life-changing circumstances, particularly for older people, which are happening as we speak. There is probably somebody falling down stairs in the House of Lords right now. Minister, if you want us to be fulsome in our praise, put this in the Bill.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, safety has a cost, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans reminded us. We have to decide where we should require money to be spent. I will talk a bit about the electrical safety and standards provisions and then come back to staircases.

I know there is a shortage of electrical experts able to carry out these assessments. Our own electrician, who is very expert, cannot do the assessments we are being asked to provide for social housing and other blocks of flats—for example, my son has a let flat, because he is an academic. The electrician says that he needs to go on a week’s course and, as a busy self-employed person, he does not have time. The lobbying organisation Electrical Safety First, which tried to get me to support Amendments 122 to 124, because I am keen on safety and looking after the consumer, seemed relatively unconcerned about this. Moreover, the amendments are wide-ranging and uncosted. As noble Lords will know, I worry a lot about the shortage of skills in the industry.

These amendments would further jeopardise housing supply, this time including social housing, and leave flats empty. Social housing landlords will be doing this sort of thing anyway post Grenfell, I think. For similar reasons, I am against the wide-ranging Amendment 121.

I am much more relaxed about Amendment 120, especially as it includes a consultation provision. The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, and I did the Consumer Rights Act together; she is right to think forward to the needs of an increasingly ageing population, which is exactly what this amendment does. We also heard from the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young. The huge potential cost to the NHS of accidents in an ageing population is also a very strong argument for action, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff.

This is Committee, so I am sure the Minister will reflect further, but if one can find a way—without imposing significant costs—of making staircases safer, that could be extremely useful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

Social homes are already safer than homes of other tenures in respect of electrical safety. In 2019, 71% of social homes had all five electrical safety features compared to 60% of owner occupied and 65% of private rented homes. Under obligations in the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, social landlords are required to keep electrical installations in repair, and the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 requires social landlords to keep homes free of electrical hazards.

With that explanation, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

Perhaps I am the only person in the room who does not know what updating the approved document actually delivers, so perhaps the Minister could give us some information.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

Effectively, the Building Act 1984 has various approved documents, and Approved Document K would be the relevant document to update, which would then set that standard in building regulations. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has pointed out, when you build new-build homes, you have to build to those regulations. Does that help the noble Baroness understand what I said? I am sorry I am so unclear; I will do better next time.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

Dates?

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I live in Cornwall, and we do things dreckly. For the moment, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 120 withdrawn.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, Grenfell was, and still is, a safety scandal and a tragedy. The subsequent wrangling as to who should be responsible for remedying fire safety in unsafe buildings is an even bigger tragedy and scandal. I commend the account of the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, who really brought home just how tragic the incident was. It is important that this Bill passes your Lordships’ House, though with improvements, and I hope that Grenfell can be a watershed moment for wider safety in homes. Apart from high-profile tragedies, there are daily, small and quiet tragedies taking place in terms of building safety that could, through the simple amendment already suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, be remedied in this Bill to save lives.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, said, there are clear statistics about the profile of falls on stairs which bear repetition. They claim the lives of more than 700 people in England every year and are the cause of 43,000 hospital admissions. It is estimated that the most up-to-date British standard on stair design, if adopted, would reduce falls in new homes by 60%. Even though this standard has been in place since 2010, it is only guidance and not a legal requirement. In most new homes, it is simply not happening. Housebuilders go in packs. Unless they are all mandated, none of them will stick their head above the parapet—I hope we are not talking about the parapet that the right reverend Prelate the mentioned.

This Bill could make implementation of the standard statutory and save not only lives but misery for many people. As the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, said, there are precedents for making such standards statutory. The standard is tried and tested and was subject to extensive consultation at the time of its introduction more than 10 years ago. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents—which I thank for its briefing—has now taken views extensively on making the standard statutory in new homes. It has spoken to homebuilders, private and social housing providers, local government and fire chiefs, and no one seems to be against such a move.

The risk from falls on stairs is increasing as the proportion of older people in the population grows—I am sure that this phenomenon is of interest to Members in your Lordships’ House. In addition, it is a fascinating fact that, in all age groups, feet are getting bigger. Overstepping traditional stair tread sizes causes falls. Falls on stairs are problematic for fire evacuations, yet modest increases in the size of stair treads, the provision of handrails and slip-resistant measures have a disproportionately beneficial effect. The standard can be implemented in new homes at minimal or no cost. I hope that the Minister will grasp the opportunity to incorporate this affordable, simple and effective measure into the Bill to save lives and reduce life-changing injuries.

In the other place, the Minister deferred the issue to the building safety regulator. We should not have to wait for the regulator to be established, to gather evidence to identify emerging issues in the safety and performance of buildings, including staircases, and to make recommendations to Ministers, who will consider whether change to standards or guidance is needed. That seems to me a rather long and tortuous process, when the evidence of the effectiveness of the measures and the severity of the risk is already available. The standard has existed for 11 years. The guidance has not worked. This Bill provides the opportunity to tackle these hundreds of small, quiet tragedies that happen every year. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Land Use Framework

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Young of Old Scone]

That this House takes note of the case for integrating the planning system with other infrastructure, landscape and agricultural land processes, under an overarching land use framework for all land uses.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to be able to introduce this important topic today. I do not often win things, but I did win the ballot. I am grateful to all noble Lords who signed up to speak, including the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, whose maiden speech I much look forward to. Alas, some of the usual suspects—the usual contributors to debates and questions on land use issues—cannot be with us today. We are without the noble Lords, Lord Krebs, Lord Cameron of Dillington and Lord Teverson, and the noble Earls, Lord Caithness and Lord Devon, all of whom have sent their support for the debate. Several noble Lords are unable to be here because it is, as we speak, the memorial service for the late Earl of Selborne, who is much missed in this House as a man of huge expertise and commitment to land-based issues. I hope we can honour his memory here in the Chamber through the quality of our debate.

I am delighted the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, will be replying from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. I hope he does not mind if I hereafter refer to it as the Department for LUHC, since that is the way the initials pan out. It is refreshing, because we have heard a lot from Defra Ministers during the passage of the Environment Bill about their perspective on land use; it will be good to get the Department for LUHC’s perspective, which I hope will be different.

The UK is a small island—its land is finite—and the pressures on it are increasing. Everybody appears to want more land. In this time of focus on climate change, for example, we need more land to restore peatlands, to plant many more woodlands—I should declare an interest as chair of the Woodland Trust—possibly to grow biofuels and to develop solar and other low-carbon energy generation. We also need to respond to the other half of the climate change-biodiversity twin challenge: biodiversity recovery. The Prime Minister has urged world leaders to pledge 30% of land and seas to be protected by 2030, and says that that will happen in the UK. That would be quite a major shift in land use.

Agriculture currently accounts for 72% of our land use, and we need to feed a growing population; we are going to have 5 million more people in this country by 2040. We may want to decide whether we want to become more self-sufficient in food production and, likewise, in timber production; we currently import the vast majority of the timber we use. Both these questions for agriculture and timber would mean substantial land use changes.

The built environment also needs more land to provide for the Government’s new homes and jobs targets, which is also enhanced by population increase. The ambitious programmes of infrastructure investment that have been promised will need land. A University of Cambridge sustainability initiative study showed that predicted land use pressures mean we will need a third more land than Britain currently has—and we are not making any more. Indeed, with climate change, we may lose some.

The issue is not just growth in needs for land use. We are standing on the brink of some major shifts in policy affecting land use. The tectonic plates are on the move, and a substantial shift in the way we use land is going to happen. These tectonic shifts will increase the tensions that are already being felt by people, communities and government—both local and national—as typified by the result of the Amersham by-election, as competing policies and needs jostled for land. These tensions will be heightened, as pretty well every relevant policy area is on the move. Let me just outline some of those.

Major carbon incentives are driving tree planting and land use for energy generation, including bio crops, and the decarbonisation of agriculture will mean major shifts in land use patterns. Carbon will drive change, as the Climate Change Committee has outlined. A total change to the farming subsidy system is also under way post Brexit, and the national food strategy should change the way that we eat, the way that farmers farm and the use of land.

The Government’s commitments in the 25-year environment plan and the Environment Bill to such policies as net biodiversity gain, the “30x30” announcement by the Prime Minister and nature recovery strategies will mean major changes in the pattern of land use. We also anticipate major planning system reform once the new Secretary of State at the department gets his head around the unpopularity and impracticability of the original proposals. However, I suspect that they will still focus on a major increase in housing, with the unpopular land-take that that represents. The major investments in infrastructure that we have seen announced need to be climate-positive and biodiversity-positive in the way that they use land.

So, the tectonic plates of land-use policy are on the move but for the most part, in the past and right now, these policies are developed and operated in silos with modest or no overview of the whole picture and of how the best decisions can be made to optimise decisions on competing land-use pressures. The biggest flaw is that the rural and urban land-use processes have little connection with each other. The planning system is called the “town and country planning system” but it does not actually do much for the country.

Several of the current policy changes are establishing quasi-alternatives to the formal planning system, and in my view that is quite dangerous. For example, we were told by the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, during the passage of the Environment Bill that nature recovery strategies will map and cover the whole of England, proposing what land uses will be best for nature and where. How will that relate to the planning for land for housing use and development, and indeed to all the other economic uses that the formal planning system covers? Conversely, decisions on agricultural land use will be made by 100,000 individual farmers. How will that fit in with these nature recovery strategies and with the formal planning system?

I can say from personal experience that the whole issue of tree planting right now is like the Wild West out there. I declare my interest as chairman of the Woodland Trust, which is trying hard to create more woods in the interests of biodiversity and climate change. However, major commercial operations are buying up bare land at very silly prices to plant trees and exploit carbon subsidies. The big question arises: would some of that land be better for food production, forestry, housing or solar arrays?

My thesis for today—indeed, for the years that I have banged on about this, which have been many—is that we need two principles. One is integration: an integration of decision-making and processes that sees the big picture of competing pressures and helps to encourage the best land use in the right place. That does not just mean chat between departments about whether they can live with each other’s policies; nor, at the other end of the spectrum, a top-down masterplan; but a set of principles to guide thinking and decision processes at the right scale nationally, locally, at community level and for landowners. The Government’s foresight study on land use, which was published in 2010, called for an integrated approach, and we now need to deliver that.

The second principle that I want to promote is multifunctionality. How do we get our scarce land to work more than once for its living—for example, with wildlife and carbon on agricultural land—and how do we get that integrated in development proposals? That is where the planning system reform proposals particularly jarred with me. Zoning is too broad-brush. What we need in order to accommodate all the pressures is multifunctional land use, not land zoned for one particular purpose.

The time has come for change to achieve an integrated way forward, to relieve the pressures, to reduce the tensions in decision-making—particularly public tensions—and to ensure that land is developed multifunctionally. Otherwise, we will have a collision in land uses, some unhappy communities, some grumpy developers and stressed-out local and national government.

I was amazed to discover that the Community Planning Alliance, which was launched in March this year, already has 525 local community campaign groups across the UK, all concerned about land-use conflicts. That in itself is a stark indicator of the concern about pressures on land. It is a bit like a pressure cooker, frankly, and the lid will blow at some point if it has not already done so.

There are good examples of integrated approaches for us to learn from on both the national and local scale. Wales and Scotland have developed land-use frameworks. Both are very different, as their local land uses and politics determine. Scotland stresses the need for people to have opportunities to participate in debates and decisions about land use that affect their lives and futures. Wales is shaped by its future generations legislation. I discovered from the Chinese Ambassador that even China has a land-use framework, although possibly not a great one since it appears to involve the forcible moving of a quarter of a million people off the land from time to time. That is not the sort of top-down masterplan, integrated approach that I am advocating. Perhaps we should look instead at the southern Ireland version, which is much more sensitive.

At the local level, there are many experiments in the Oxford-Cambridge arc. There is an integrated land use pilot in Devon, supported by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, and I declare an interest as a commissioner for that commission. Various local authorities are trying natural capital approaches. The spatial scale at which such initiatives are appropriate will vary but they all need some sort of strategic framework from government. If areas next door to each other are using different systems and approaches, it will be difficult to get the higher-level spatial scale that is needed for some of these issues to be resolved in a way that is understood by local people.

Many organisations far more reputable than me have called in the past for an integrated and multifunctional approach. I have already mentioned the foresight study in 2010. I was trying to remember last night how long in advance of that study I had been lobbying for one, and it is now probably 20 years since I started banging on about this. But I feel that we are on the way, and I hope many more speakers today will say that too. So, the foresight study was the first formal emanation, in 2010. The Select Committee on the Rural Economy in your Lordships’ House also proposed an integrated and multifunctional approach, as did the Climate Change Committee; I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, is contributing today. The Royal Society’s Living Landscapes programme has long promoted such an approach, as has the commission on food and farming and many others.

In view of the rising pressures and the lack of join-up, what current mechanisms are there for integration across these issues for all land uses? In view of the huge changes in policy that are on the move right across land-use issues, what proposals will the Government make to produce a national framework and a more integrated prioritisation and decision process for all land use? We cannot continue in these silos. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate today for the near unanimity around the Chamber on the need for a joined-up set of principles and a framework. I will come on to talk briefly about my reaction to what the Minister said, but I thank him for his response.

The very personal maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, was quite heart-breaking, really; I felt moved. I am sure that, with his range of backgrounds, he will be an adornment to our House. I particularly liked his identification of the potential for a variety of roles for land managers in future; this is indeed an opportunity for land managers to think about what they can do to deliver some of these pressing national priorities.

I turn to the Minister’s remarks. I feel that to quote the NPPF as the overarching set of principles that guide all of this is probably giving a role to the NPPF that it cannot really bear. There is no doubt that it has to be supplemented with a whole range of other regimes, some of them already existing and others non-existent. The Minister quoted the bus strategy, the transport plan and the nationally significant infrastructure project regimes; all of these are prepared by different parts of government, and I do not believe the NPPF brings those together. It does not bring together the particularly pressing issues of carbon and biodiversity, nor does it do much to try to bring some shape and direction to the changes that are going to happen in land use as a result of the changes in agriculture.

As far as ELMS are concerned, I think we are now piloting the pilots; it has been piloted again and again, and it is getting to a stage where farmers are beginning to despair and are looking for leadership. If we are not careful, we will stumble into a set of solutions for agricultural land, with no national or indeed local oversight, that is driven entirely by the perceptions of 100,000 farmers and what they think ELMS mean. That is quite a dangerous place to be.

Another dangerous place to be is illustrated by that heart-breaking statistic about the number of local groups that are springing up all over the place because they are very unhappy about what is happening with land-use decisions. I personally worry about being cast as a nimby, because I am campaigning in north Bedfordshire where—just to show the lack of valency in the local nature recovery strategy process—the recovery strategy has identified an area in need of protection as being a high-quality area for nature recovery, but it is in the local authority’s planning system as somewhere to put 6,500 new housing units, in an area badly served by transport and other infrastructure. So local nature recovery strategies are not proving to be the answer either.

It was a bit of a giveaway at the very end when the Minister, in his account of the objectives of the new planning system, talked about houses, infrastructure, development and economic benefit but did not once manage to mention climate change or biodiversity. I believe we are seeing a huge divide between the formal planning system and these many quasi-planning systems that are growing up around other bits of government policy, and that is not the way forward.

Still, having campaigned to get greater clarity in this area, I am not going to give up. What I heard around the House was that people agreed that there need to be some overarching principles that are not directive but enabling, and not prescriptive but releasing—they are the words that I heard—because the right outcomes will not happen by chance. So I urge all noble Lords who have been convinced of the value of the debate today to lobby their Liaison Committee representative. On 15 November, the Liaison Committee will make a decision on the next series of ad hoc Select Committees, and a land use Select Committee is on the shortlist. If noble Lords feel that that would be a good idea, I ask them to go and lobby their representative. That is probably against the rules of this House, but what ho.

I thank all involved today. I have now completely forgotten what form of words I am supposed to use, but I have already moved my Motion.

Motion agreed.

Housing: New Developments

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My noble friend is right that it is important not just to have volume as the driver but to think about the quality of the housing. Indeed, our reforms enable there to be model design codes. We have a draft national model design code that shows how to engage the community in creating places that reflect local views and allow people to shape the places they live in.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, what local people object to is large numbers of houses being dumped in their back yard to fulfil the Government’s flawed housing targets, because they know that they are based on out-of-date 2014 assumptions and dodgy algorithms that focus housing in areas where houses are least affordable. The Minister has already had a biffing on this from his Home Counties colleagues. Will the Government revisit the housing target calculation and will the Minister comment on why annual planning permissions for houses have more than doubled in the last 10 years, yet house prices have not come down and, indeed, houses have not been built?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we have already looked at the approach to assessing local housing need to ensure that we see greater focus on the renewal of our cities and towns rather than urban sprawl. So we have already taken that point on board.