Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 127, which I have put my name to, ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and to support the other amendments in this group.

I was glad to hear both the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, referring to the work of the Climate Change Committee. It is so important that we understand what the expert advice is from our statutory body, and so I will quote a few sentences from the April report on climate adaptation:

“The UK’s preparations for climate change are inadequate… In terms of adaptation delivery, we do not find evidence to score a single outcome as ‘good’”.


About buildings, it says that

“6.3 million properties in England are in areas at risk of flooding from rivers, the sea, and surface water. This is predicted to rise to around 8 million (25% of all properties) by 2050 … Towns and cities will become increasingly hot, with a large fraction of current buildings at risk of reaching uncomfortable and potentially dangerous temperatures in summer heatwaves”—

a point made so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

In table 1 of the summary of the adaptation committee’s report, there is a score card for delivery and implementation on the one hand and policies and plans on the other. Under “Planning system prioritises climate resilience”, for delivery and implementation it says, “Unable to evaluate”—there is no evidence—and for policies and plans it says, “Insufficient”. For “Buildings do not overheat”, on delivery it says, “Unable to evaluate”, and under policies it says, “Limited”. For “Buildings are prepared for flooding”, it says “Partial”—that is a good score—for both delivery and for policies and plans. For “Buildings are resilient to other climate risks”, it says “Unable to evaluate” for both delivery and for policies and plans. Here we have it, from the statutory expert advisers to the Government, that we are not doing enough to prepare our houses, public buildings and commercial buildings for the impact of climate change.

For me, the remarkable thing is that none of this is new. I chaired the adaptation committee between 2009 and 2017, and we were saying exactly the same things 15 years ago. Nobody is listening. It would be nice to hear from the Minister that this Government are listening and understand that this is not just some pie-in-the-sky thing for the future but urgent and needs to be addressed now.

Another important point was made in the introduction from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, when he said that things may be written in the NPPF but what we need is to strengthen the commitments by putting them firmly into the statute book. I listened to some of the debate earlier about green spaces, sport and recreation, and all these wonderful facilities in new developments, and we heard reassuring words from the Government. However, when I look at the new housing estates around Oxford, where I live, they are nothing like that. They are simply identikit houses, jammed in as close together as possible, with no green space, no recreation facilities, no climate resilience and no plans to deal with overheating—as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said.

There are very simple things that could be done. If you go, as I sometimes do, to the south of France and rent a house, the house will have shutters. In the middle of the day, when it is hot, you close the shutters and they keep the heat out. Why are we not building new houses with shutters as a mandatory requirement? It would not cost much money and it would be a simple, effective tool to reduce the chance of overheating.

I hope the Minister will confirm that the Government have listened to the report of the adaptation committee of the Climate Change Committee and will do something about where it scored “Inadequate” or nul points under the various assessments, and that the Government are minded to firm up what is guidance and make it statutorily an obligation.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 127 and 216.

Amendment 216, to which I have put my name, was led by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and concerns the zero-carbon standard for new homes. If the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, feels that the adaptation committee reports are cyclical and the same and getting nowhere then the zero-carbon standard discussion feels like Groundhog Day, to be frank. We got so close to having a zero-carbon home commitment in 2015. We were within two weeks of the commitment coming into effect, at a time when the housebuilders, in spite of some initial grumping, had tooled up to deliver it, when all of a sudden the Chancellor, George Osborne, stepped in at the last minute and summarily cancelled it. It was the biggest letdown for everybody. That meant that, for 10 years, we built houses which could have been zero carbon, significantly contributed to reducing our carbon footprint, helped people have warmer homes and helped the communities have lower bills—but we did not. We have lost 10 years of delivery. We have to now grip that and make sure that we do not lose any more years.

The current policy under the future homes standard requires new homes only to be zero-carbon ready by 2025. That does not go far enough. It also does not require anything on solar panels, which this amendment addresses. I know that there has been a bit of a shift in thinking within government over the last few months on the question of distributed solar. I press the Minister to tell us what improvements we are expecting to see on the future homes standard to reverse the harm that was done by Mr Osborne.

Before I sit down, I commend Amendment 127, in the name of the noble Lord, Ravensdale, which would give clear mitigation and adaptation climate change duties to planning authorities. I very much endorse everything that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said. I was honoured to serve, at least for a brief period, on the adaptation committee. I helped get the legislation through this House to create it and then promptly did a runner after I had been appointed to it—as they say, it was a good idea at the time.

The whole role of planning authorities in climate change is absolutely crucial, not just for mitigation but for adaptation to the impacts of climate change. I draw the attention of the Minister and the Committee to a recent Local Government Association report which went out extensively to wide consultation. As a result of that consultation with a whole range of consultees, not only local government authorities, it came back with the proposition that there should be statutory powers and duties for local authorities on action for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

There was a bit of schadenfreude for me in that. When we originally got the climate Act through, it prescribed roles for local authorities. In fact, it had a reporting arrangement for local authorities that meant that they had a statutory requirement to report. That was cancelled very rapidly when the Conservative Government came in in 2010. We are now in a position where, although many local authorities are very committed to the idea of their place in mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, they are under no duress to report on that. The only thing they have to do is that, if they are asked by government to report, they are required to do so—but only if asked. That strikes me as a very strange way of keeping track of delivery on this.

As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, the most recent report by the adaptation committee assessing the nation’s level of preparedness to adapt to the impacts of climate change was very gloomy about the lack of progress, and quite rightly so. Adaptation is the Cinderella, the poor relation of the whole climate change effort. It is not going to get any better; it is going to get worse, with heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods—it is being so cheerful at this time of night that keeps me going. Amendment 127, to clarify the climate change mitigation and adaptation duties of planning authorities, or something like it, is very important. I hope that the Minister will consider it seriously.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, very briefly, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale; I think it is very important. I want to pick up what my noble friend said: many local authorities are very keen to develop policies in relation to climate change, particularly on this very important issue of adaptation. My noble friend will have seen recently that some local authorities have put into reverse any commitment towards net zero and climate change policies. My question to the House is: what do we do about this? It is not fashionable at the moment to mention climate change, for some remarkable reason, but I think it is the most important and biggest issue we face. What are we to do if local authorities are saying, “No, we’ll turn our backs on this. We’ll commit ourselves to fossil fuels. We will develop policies that are very distinct—in opposition almost—to issues around climate change”? My advice to the Government is that this is not acceptable. If we are really serious about net zero and if we are serious about climate change adaptation as well as mitigation, we have to have a much greater concerted effort, in which local government clearly has to play an important part. That is why I think the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, is so important.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

My Lords, I support most warmly all of the amendments in this group; I believe that they are very important indeed. Approaching it as they do from slightly different points of view, they all make the same fundamental point about the importance of building in arrangements so that, from the start, we look at the importance of green space for people’s health and well-being, and for nature.

As others have most eloquently explained all the virtues, I will not rehearse them at this point, but I will make one little point through a personal anecdote, which may add to this. Some years ago, I was very seriously ill. When I was moved from intensive care finally into a ward, I was lucky enough to be beside a window where I could see the tops of green trees and birds coming to and fro. Underneath the window, there was a small pool where ducks were quacking. I love ducks and every time I heard them quack, I smiled. I am absolutely convinced that it was a real help in getting better. I believe there is strong medical evidence that those in hospital who have access to green spaces recover far better. That said, I have been in politics a long time. I am somewhat cynical and do not believe in good intentions unless they are backed by law to make things happen, so that is why I am so strongly in support of this.

I have some worries occasioned by Amendment 121, which was so ably brought forward. It says that new housing developments should have a built-in requirement for green spaces. In practice, what might happen? The Government are devoted to building more and more houses because they are needed but are the green spaces, which are so important with those housing developments, going to get equal weight? I believe that there could be conflicts in practice as this policy is developed. What I do not want to see is that, by excluding the new housing developments from having proper green spaces, we are starting to build the slums of the future. I do not suppose I shall live long enough for that; indeed, if all the over-80s are thrown out, I shall not even be here much longer. But while I am here, I shall fight.

The other points that arise come from the need to make sure that we have proper regulations—there is no substitute for that. Even then, of course, implementation is equally important. The law on the statute book or regulation that is in place but not implemented is in danger of being as though it did not exist. I believe that that is another point which it is very important to consider.

In the past, both the noble Baroness and I served on the Horticultural Sector Select Committee. I would advise Ministers, if they have time, to take a look at its report because many of the points we are discussing today were brought forward very strongly and were backed by some excellent and expert people. I have a copy here. Noble Lords will be relieved to know that I am not going to quote extensively from it, but it merits consideration because, as I say, it is a backing for everything we are talking about this afternoon.

In view of the time, I will not detain the Committee further, save to say let us go for it and make the Government change their mind.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I am really privileged to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, who I admire greatly from afar—and she is absolutely spot on on this occasion as well. Several noble Lords have laid out the benefits and value of nature-rich green spaces close to where people live, so I will not go through those.

I want to focus particularly on Amendments 138B and 206 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis. I commend her erudite book on green spaces and health, which is an excellent evidence-based exposition of the whole case for green spaces and health—including mental health—improvement. In the interests of transparency, I particularly commend it since she sent me a free copy.

Apart from all the evidence the noble Baroness’s work provides on health and mental health benefits, I will also give an example from the work of the Woodland Trust, which I was privileged to chair until very recently, on what it is calling “tree equity”. The trust has mapped the prevalence of woods and trees and discovered, in line with other relationships between green open space and deprivation, that the poorest communities have the least wood and tree cover. That means that deprived populations are deprived in not only a socioeconomic but an environmental sense. The Woodland Trust is now engaging with local authorities, developers and others in those most tree-deprived areas to focus on the creation of green wooded spaces to enhance health, mental health and well-being and improve the environment for these deprived communities.

The model comes from an American example that covers the whole of the United States and was developed by the Woodland Trust’s equivalent in the States—good things do come out of the United States. Chicago, an early example of where this was promoted with some vengeance, showed unexpected benefits beyond mental health and well-being. There were reduced crime rates and enhanced community engagement, and the whole project of creating more green open spaces also created community leaders of the future, who learned their skills as community leaders in tree-planting schemes and community green space and then, strangely enough, went on to champion other community action on a whole range of issues. This is about community cohesion and the development of leadership, as well creating these very important green open spaces. I commend to noble Lords the Woodland Trust’s website on “tree equity”—although I hate the term as it is very clinical for something that is very important.

Although it is a bit better than it was, at the moment the creation of green spaces associated with developments depends wholly on the commitment of local authorities and developers. Some developers and local authorities are good at doing this and some are not. Guidance and the NPPF only encourage this, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, pointed out, the NPPF is very vague in defining what standards are to be achieved, both on proximity to where people live and the quality of the green open spaces. I have seen development proposals where planting a few trees along avenues is the best they can muster.

As has already been pointed out, we need a much more fundamental approach. Master planning needs to be the space in which it happens, but encouragement and requirement needs to be built into spatial strategies, local plans and the responsibility of development corporations through statute, not simply by exhortation, as happens in the NPPF. The Minister will probably tell me—she told me this morning she was going to say this—that the NPPF is a requirement laid on local authorities and developers, but if you look at the terms of the NPPF, the reality is that it is an exhortation rather than anything that can be measured in performance.

I hope the Minister can tell us whether the Government are satisfied with developer and local authority performance on green space delivery, and, if they are not, whether she will seriously consider accepting these amendments so that a statutory requirement is included in the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to join this rich debate, in which the House is blooming with eloquence as we focus on the value of green and blue to all our futures, to our health and well-being and of course to the planet. I particularly commend the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, for adding blue spaces, which are what we need to focus on. I want to cross-reference Amendment 115, which we started with. We are used to the 20th-century approach: “There’s some water: we’ve got to flush it away, get rid of it, manage it”, as though water is a problem. Of course, water is crucial to our life and well-being, and we need to treasure it, value it and hold it around us, rather than treat it as a waste product, as far too often happens.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st September 2025 Lords Chamber

Sustainable biomass is going to become harder to get, not easier, so what does the Minister envisage will happen? Will we see an uptick in Forestry Commission resources being used for biomass energy? While I hope that this will not be the case—I am very dubious about the basis on which you accept that biomass power generation is ever low carbon, since wood, coal and oil are, in essence, made of the same things—if that is something that we are going to see, I hope the Government will accept that protections need to be put in place and that any resources used comply completely with all the sustainability criteria and support what is in this amendment.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 93 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who, alas, cannot be with us today. I declare my interest as chair the Labour Climate and Environment Forum. The noble Lord’s amendment would insert into the Bill a new duty for the Forestry Commission to take all reasonable steps to contribute to the Government’s statutory climate and nature targets under the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Environment Act 2021 in exercising its functions related to planning, development and infrastructure.

The Forestry Commission is a really important player in the delivery of these statutory targets and, for that reason, was listed as one of the public authorities in the original Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. His Private Member’s Bill sought to apply these duties to a whole range of public authorities. During the debate on that Bill, the Government said that they were sympathetic to its aims. This would be a real opportunity for the Government to put that sympathy into legislation.

The Forestry Commission is really important to the achievement of the Government’s targets for three reasons. First, it is the single largest landowner and manager of land in the country, with 750,000 hectares under its control. Secondly, it impacts, to a much bigger extent, on other woodland and associated land in its permitting and regulatory role for other landowners. That covers in excess of 3 million hectares of land. So we are talking about an organisation that, if it does the right thing, can have a huge impact and, if it does the wrong thing, can have a huge impact. Thirdly, this amendment would simply be a natural evolution of the development of the Forestry Commission’s role.

The Forestry Commission was invented in 1919, originally with a sole focus on producing timber and encouraging the replanting of Britain’s depleted timber-producing land. This depletion had become incredibly apparent during the First World War. In 1968—we do not move very quickly when it comes to dealing with forestry—the Countryside Act extended its role to include the provision of public amenities, such as footpaths and open spaces. In 1985, the Wildlife and Countryside (Amendment) Act extended the Forestry Commission’s role to include conservation. This amendment is simply another step on that road. It would complete the extension and modernising of the Forestry Commission’s duties to include the delivery of the climate and nature targets that have been invented over the last 15 years.

I am sure the Minister will say that the Forestry Commission has already got conservation duties and is already asked to deliver for climate change. Indeed, the biomass issue that has just been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, raises some considerable questions about the way in which that extension is happening. It is messy and piecemeal. The amendment would provide an unambiguous and up-to-date duty, without which the Government will very likely not deliver their statutory nature and climate targets. We cannot simply depend on some very piecemeal roles for the Forestry Commission to deliver the right thing on that extent of land.

Noble Lords will understand from this introduction that I do not support Amendments 87A and 87B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. The spirit of the land use framework, which is under preparation by government at the moment, is that our scarce land supply has to work in a multifunctional way, delivering multiple benefits. Timber production is important because we are a massive net importer of timber, but so are climate change, biodiversity, flood risk management and access for health and well-being. They are also things that the Forestry Commission needs to deliver in the way it manages land and encourages other landowners to deal with their land. The Forestry Commission is absolutely fundamental in that as the biggest landowner in the country.

To revert to the primary purpose of the Forestry Commission being timber production risks going back to the bad old days of regular ranks of subsidised Sitka spruce—I caricature—marching across the countryside on inappropriate sites with poor outcomes for biodiversity and much subsidised by taxpayers. We simply cannot go back there. We need a modern Forestry Commission that delivers those multiple outcomes that the land use framework requires.

I also express agreement with some of Amendment 88 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Russell. I am not sure if the percentage ceilings that he gives for land to be used for energy infrastructure are the right ones in percentage terms, but there certainly needs to be an appropriate balance between the requirements of timber production, biodiversity, access, recreation and energy infrastructure. His proposed new paragraphs (c) and (d), which would protect against the adverse effects on sites protected for nature conservation and irreplaceable habitats such as ancient woodland, are absolutely spot on.

I also look forward to the Minister’s response to the very real and important inquiry from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, into what is intended in the Government’s mind for the Forestry Commission and its role in biomass. I am concerned already at some of the species that the Forestry Commission is permitting at the moment—novel species, very fast growing, with as yet untested uses. I would be concerned if we lost sight of the fact that the vast majority of Forestry Commission land, particularly in England, is in fact moving towards being a mixed woodland mix that can do all these other duties like biodiversity, access and public health, rather than simply being species that are aimed at commercial return.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow all the noble Lords who have spoken in this group, and as has already been said, I attach my name to Amendment 87 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and to Amendment 93.

I will seek to add to, rather than repeat, what has already been said, but I just follow the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, in addressing Amendment 88 and agree that I am also not sure about the percentages. I would particularly highlight the ancient woodland, how terribly important and terribly rare that is, and so, as per paragraph (d) in that amendment, there is no way we should be doing anything to damage ancient woodland for energy—it is such a precious resource. Noble Lords have heard me go on before about looking at the trees, but let us also see how incredibly precious the biodiversity in soil in ancient woodland is.

On Amendment 87, I think biomass is now a very dirty word, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, rhetorically asked, “What could possibly go wrong?”. Of course, that has already been answered with the single word, “Drax”. The energy think tank Ember said Drax is “the UK’s largest emitter” and that the power

“is more expensive than … gas, it’s more polluting than coal, and more dependent on imports than oil”.

There should be no future biomass at Drax; that is my position and the Green Party’s position. It really is a tragedy that we did not get to that point when we recently had the opportunity.

The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, picked this point up. I signed this amendment, but I am almost tempted towards saying simply that there should be no biomass from forests, because as the noble Baroness asked, what does “waste material” really mean? We are thinking about biodiversity and about organic material that is a resource. If you leave it on the forest floor, it contributes to the generation of soil and provides habitat for a huge variety of organisms. Is that really waste at all? Is there any such thing in a forest? That really is the question. We need to be thinking about having a war on tidiness and the idea that for any sort of planting, we want these nice, neat rows with clean bare soil in between—we need to think about what kind of damage that does.

Particularly in addressing Amendment 93, I want to draw the Minister’s attention to a study that was out last year funded by the Forestry Commission. It was entitled Rapid review of evidence on biodiversity in Great Britain’s commercial forests. It found that there is in fact a huge shortage of data and information about what is happening in the biodiversity, specifically in commercial high forests. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, raised the issue of the land use strategy. How can we be making the plans within this Bill, or indeed for the land use strategy, if we do not have the data about the biodiversity, which this study, funded by the Forestry Commission, identified? I also point to another Forestry Commission study from late 2023, which warned of the risk of catastrophic ecosystem collapse in our forests. This was signed—the work of 42 experts—and pointed out all the risks that our forests face from wind, fire, pests and diseases, and it said there are already forests in continental Europe and North America where we have seen this kind of biological collapse. We need to be thinking about making sure that the Forestry Commission is given the statutory duty, which Amendment 93 would give it, to ensure that it looks after biodiversity as well as, of course, the crucial issue of the climate emergency.

It is worth repeating again that we are incredibly forest and woodland-deprived in the UK by international comparisons. We have to look after what is there for human health, for well-being, for the climate and for nature.

--- Later in debate ---

I will reflect further on the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, about the development of new forests and on the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and my noble friend Lady Young on the measurement of BNG for forests. I will come back to them on those points.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

The Minister gave a very impressive list of different pieces of statute, guidance and legislation from right across the spectrum that guides the Forestry Commission in its work. I just want to plant the idea in her head that perhaps the time has come for some legislation that consolidates all of those requirements. It is now nearly 60 years since we last had a forestry Bill.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I will pass my noble friend’s comments on to the Defra Minister.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my environmental interests in the register.

I think we all recognise the need for changes in the planning system to deliver really important infrastructure and housing, but we need to recall that the planning system is there to do more than “Dig, baby, dig”. It is a system whereby a balance is struck between economic, social and environmental outcomes for the good of citizens and communities.

The narrative in this country on this has become too polarised over recent months: you are either a builder or a blocker. It is either development or the environment. We are smarter than that; we can deliver both. Part 3 will need considerable change if we are going to do that. That view is shared by the Office for Environmental Protection, which regards this part of the Bill as regressing from our environmental standards.

The provisions in Part 3 on environmental delivery plans and the nature restoration fund are fine to deal with the delays in the planning system caused by environmental issues best solved on a wider-than-site basis—on a catchment basis. There are issues such as nutrient neutrality, which has already been mentioned, recreational pressures and other water quality and quantity issues. But the proposed system is not right for resolving many protected species issues or for dealing with irreplaceable habitats. For the latter, the clue is on the tin: these habitats cannot be replaced, and indeed both the revised NPPF and the biodiversity net gain guidelines make provision for their protection. I ask the Minister to tell the House how irreplaceable habitats will be protected under Part 3.

Part 3 also removes the snappily named mitigation hierarchy, which encourages developers and planners, as a first step, to think hard about avoiding protected sites—first do no harm. If the Government are going to meet their statutory nature conservation targets, they must both protect what is already there by way of important nature and create more strategic habitat.

The delivery of Part 3 relies on Natural England, which is already creaking for a lack of resources and staff. I ask my noble friend the Minister what assessment has been made of the capacity of Natural England. How many environment delivery plans do the Government expect Natural England to prepare, and how long will that take?

There are other issues in Part 3, which, in the interests of time, I will pass over. I could go on, but I would begin to sound like the polarised narrative I said we should avoid. I do not believe that is where I stand, because we are smarter and there is a win-win solution. Many of the elements of that system are already in place or are being put in place by the Government: the land use framework approach, regional spatial strategies and revised local plans linked with local nature recovery strategies, all of which can enable developers to steer their applications to places where they can be sure of an easy run through the planning system.

The ecological surveys and environmental impact assessments will have been done in advance at strategy and plan level, and not be a delay factor at planning application stage. There are other simple changes that will streamline the system, and I look forward to working with the Minister on alternative proposals. In the meantime, can the Minister advise us when we will see the government amendments, signalled by Minister Pennycook in the other place, to address these concerns?

One last point is that several of the larger developers, both in infrastructure and in housing, are increasingly anxious about Part 3. Sweeping away important nature protections is not a good look for a housebuilder or an infrastructure developer that has pledged to deliver a national or international environmental accreditation. They are concerned that this will be done in their name. There are also concerns that they will incur costs and complications from having one system inside EDP areas and another outside, as the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, highlighted. Are the Government listening to those concerns from developers? I look forward to the Minister’s responses.

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.