Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 91. My noble friend Lady Liddell is not able to be with us today, so I have taken on the mantle of championing carbon capture, usage and storage. Seeing the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, in his place, I hasten to add that I equally would champion the benefits of hydrogen in the future; he has spent the last year telling the House why it is so important.

CCUS, as it is known, is a technology aimed at capturing carbon dioxide emissions from industrial processes, power plants and other sources. It prevents them entering the atmosphere. The captured CO₂ can be reused in various industrial applications or stored permanently in geological formations deep underground. The CO₂ can then be monitored to make sure it is stored securely.

This is a great opportunity for the UK to lead on technology development, and our resource of the North Sea offers huge potential opportunities to store carbon from other countries in Europe. I am convinced that CCUS is safe. It clearly contributes to a low-carbon society and offers great opportunities for growth in our country.

The UK is home to seven major industrial clusters, which produce 50% of all UK industry emissions. The Government, quite rightly, are supporting development of CCUS in those clusters. Deployment in the first two of those clusters is called track 1. The first two clusters were chosen by a process called phase 1, launched in 2021. They are HyNet, in the north-west of England and north Wales, and the East Coast Cluster in Teesside. In October last year, this Government announced that they had made available £21.7 billion in funding for the first CCUS projects in the UK. Looking at the timescale, I recognise that the last Government were very supportive of CCUS as well.

We are at a pivotal moment. The first carbon capture projects in the UK have reached financial close, and the Government are clearly making strong commitments to support deployment across the industrial heartlands, but progress is at risk from outdated or inconsistent planning rules. At present, the treatment of certain CO₂ infrastructure, especially short spur pipelines and capture plants, is ambiguous under the current system. As an example, projects under 10 miles in length do not fall within the nationally significant infrastructure project regime, despite being essential components of major decarbonisation efforts. There are also legacy legal barriers, such as the requirement for special parliamentary procedures under the Pipe-Lines Act 1962 for compulsory purchase of land related to CO₂ pipelines. This process is not required for other comparable infrastructure and risks introducing unnecessary delay.

My two focused amendments seek to ensure that CO₂ capture plants and shorter spur pipelines are designated as nationally significant infrastructure projects under the 2008 Act, and to remove the need for special parliamentary procedure under the Pipe-Lines Act where it applies to CCUS infrastructure. These are very limited but important changes. As the spirit of this legislation—despite much of the debate we have seen so far—is about growing our economy and making it easy to develop infrastructure, I very much hope that my noble friend will agree to have a look at this. I beg to move.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the principle of what the noble Lord is suggesting, but with a “but”, which I hope the Minister will give some careful thought to across the summer before we come back to debates in the autumn. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is absolutely right that CCUS is extremely important to this country, needs to be progressed expeditiously and provides an important part of how we deal with carbon emissions in the atmosphere, so he is right to bring forward this proposal. My “but” is more broadly related to the range of types of project covered by NSIP. I declare my interests as an adviser to Hutchison Ports and to AtkinsRéalis.

My concern is more about the implications of more and more categories of project being covered by these processes. The issue I want the Minister to address across the summer, before we come to it in Part 3, is that this legislation, when it comes to major projects of this kind, allows developers to simply move ahead, provide compensation to the fund that the Government are setting up and, in effect, clear a site. I strongly believe that the balance of presumption should be that a developer has a duty to examine what is on a site and to take precautionary measures around the biodiversity on that site before they come to take action away from that site. The more we grant permission to those seeking to pursue major projects simply to move away from any environmental responsibilities, the more damage will be done to biodiversity and our environment.

It is not that we do not need change. I was involved very clearly as Secretary of State in the process of taking the expansion of Heathrow Airport through Parliament six years ago, and there were some issues we faced that were nonsensical around the way the habitats directive was applied and which I think defied all realistic common sense. Change is clearly needed, and I accept the principle of what the Government are doing, but I want to see the precautionary principle left in or put back into the legislation, requiring a developer, whether for CCUS or another kind of major project, to look carefully at what is on a site and at how they ameliorate the impacts before they can simply pay money into a fund and wash their hands of what is on the site. My request to the Minister, as he thinks this through across the summer, is to look at what could be done with the legislation to stop the slash-and-burn approach and to leave us with proper safeguards for nature but also to allow us to move ahead with precisely the kind of thing that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is rightly saying we need to do.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to both amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. On these Benches, we broadly support Amendment 51 and we support Amendment 91. Amendment 51 seeks to amend the Planning Act 2008 to clarify that carbon dioxide spur pipelines and carbon capture equipment are eligible for nationally significant infrastructure project designation. Amendment 91 seeks to directly amend the Pipe-Lines Act 1962 to remove the requirement for special parliamentary procedure in cases where a compulsory purchase order is made for a CO₂ pipeline used for carbon capture and storage. Both amendments, in their different ways, seek to make practical changes to help speed up the building and development of carbon capture and storage projects.

The Climate Change Committee was clear that there is no route to net zero without carbon capture and storage. Going forward, we need this technology, particularly for the hard-to-abate industries such as cement and glass, where we have to capture CO₂.

On these Benches, we support carbon capture and storage. It is a key part of our strategy on climate change and to achieve net zero, and we are committed to accelerating the development of such technologies to help further reduce and control our emissions. Indeed, the UK is in a good place for doing this: we have an estimated 78 billion tonnes of CO₂ storage capacity under the seabed in the North Sea from our old oil wells and as part of that declining basin.

I spent a bit of time last night trying to understand the NSIP system around carbon capture and storage. I must admit that I ended up scratching my head a little, because it is not the clearest thing I have ever read, so the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has definitely picked up on an important issue. Trying to understand which bits of carbon capture and storage are NSIP and which are not is easier said than done, so we recognise the need for clarity around these points.

My only real worry with the amendment is that the landscape, as it exists now for planning, is complicated. I took particular note of the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said that it was a spur of pipelines of less than 10 miles in length, but “less than 10 miles in length” is not in the wording of his amendment. I worry a little bit about whether the definitions the noble Lord has put forward will fit with the existing regulations and that complicated landscape.

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One definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Launching a major programme of infrastructure and expecting people to speak out when things go wrong while the current whistleblowing framework remains unchanged, or just a bit tweaked here or there, is, frankly, insanity indeed. So I ask the Government to listen and either accept my amendment or find other ways to come properly to grips with the need for safe whistleblowing. I beg to move.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I listened carefully to the noble Baroness’s comments. I was not planning to speak but, given that I was the Secretary of State alongside the Mayor of London when we had the bad news about Crossrail, I thought I would contribute a thought to this discussion.

First, the noble Baroness is right about many of the issues. What happened in 2019 was a combination of head in sand and a lack of understanding of the complexity of the Crossrail project. It was outrageous that the mayor and I discovered only as late as we did that the project was as far off track as it was. That is the reason I set up the Allan Cook review into HS2 that identified the following spring that the project could not be delivered for the budget that was there. I said clearly, “That’s your budget. You have to deliver it for that amount of money—otherwise, there’s a real question over whether it can happen at all”.

Although the noble Baroness makes an important point, equally we have to remember the problem of disaffected employees. How do you deal with a whistleblower who has a separate agenda—somebody who has been dismissed, somebody who is unhappy at work and so forth? I am not convinced that setting up a separate agency is the right way to deal with what she is suggesting, but she is making a salient point. There probably needs to be a much earlier mechanism to raise a danger flag about a project that is not going the way it should, because there is a reluctance to tell truth to power. In these projects there is an optimism bias and always a feeling that, “Well, something will come along to bring it in okay after all”. I suggest to the noble Baroness and to Ministers a possible route for NISTA, the new infrastructure body, to have some form of investigatory role. If somebody says, “This project appears to be going badly wrong” early on, that might be a better way of doing it than setting up a separate body altogether.

The reality is that the mayor and I should never have been in the position we were in of discovering so late in the day about a project that we had been told clearly was on track and was going to open, with the first trains running the following December. The noble Baroness makes a valid point in saying that there should be safeguard mechanisms in the system, but the mechanisms that should exist are probably best handled through the national infrastructure bodies than through a separate organisation in its own right.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very sympathetic to what the noble Baroness said but, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, I am not sure that another statutory body is the right way to deal with this. Thinking back to my experience in the NHS, I cannot think of the number because there have been so many whistleblowing initiatives. There have been edicts and circulars, and I think we have some legislation as well. But I think we would find it hard to say that we think the NHS has a culture in which whistleblowers feel confident to come forward; they do not.

The noble Baroness has raised an important question, which I hope the Government will consider. We need to start talking to the leaders of organisations to understand what the issue is in relation to whistleblowers. It is, of course, partly the point that the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, raised; sometimes whistleblowers can be awkward people and therefore have already built up a feeling against them. Sometimes they could be making trouble, but very often they are raising legitimate points.

Part of the problem is the punitive culture for senior managers in much of the public sector. Why do NHS chief execs discourage whistleblowing? It is because we have a punitive culture. The turnover rate of CEOs in the health service is frightening; it is so rapid. Somehow, to deal with whistleblowing, you have to look at a much wider issue of whether we set conditions in which leaders have greater freedom to develop and grow their organisations from the current micromanagement they often come under. We also need a culture in which, if CEOs really do encourage their staff to raise concerns, the system then does not come down.

There is clearly a tension. I am sure that many CEOs know that, in their hospital trusts at some point, there are unsafe services. They know they do not have enough clinical staff. The penalty for admitting it, however, is to have regulatory intervention and managerial intervention from above which basically says, “You get on with it. We are much more concerned about finance and throughput”. Unless we are realistic about why senior management does not encourage whistleblowers, the reality is that any of these kinds of initiatives will not be effective in the end.

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[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, we come to a series of amendments that relate to transport and the Department for Transport. If I may, I shall begin with a few preliminary remarks. The first is to apologise to noble Lords that I did not speak at Second Reading on the Bill—I was not able to. The second is to thank the Minister and his officials for the engagement and the helpful meetings and briefings that I had in preparation for today. Thirdly, as a class, the amendments relating to the transport section of the Bill are generally very trivial and minor indeed. If this is the Government’s engine for growth, there is not a great deal of puff in it. One of the amendments—I doubt we will discuss it—is so bold as to repeal a redundant clause in the Transport and Works Act. For those of us with a tidy mind, that is not a bad thing to do, but it will hardly shake up the economy. None the less, the Government’s amendments deserve a degree of scrutiny and we shall attempt to do that in the course of the next few hours.

I turn first to amendments relating to Clause 29. As well as moving Amendment 53C standing in my name, I will speak to Amendments 53D, 53E and 53F. I shall also speak to Amendment 53M, which relates to a later clause in the Bill. What these amendments have in common is that they relate to charges. Clause 29 creates a category of legal person known as “prescribed authorities”, which are not named. These prescribed authorities will be able to charge highways authorities for their services, but the services that they will be charging for are not specified either. All this is to follow in regulation. One can hazard a guess that the sort of body that might be a prescribed authority for this purpose might be Natural England or the Environment Agency, or whatever.

My first question, and the purpose of the first few amendments, is to elicit from the noble Lord what these bodies are. The second is to try to establish what range of services they are going to be able to charge for, and whether services that are currently regarded as routine and freely available will now become a charge on highways authorities. I would also like to know whether, in setting the charges, they will be limited by the very common principle among public authorities that charges should be set only so as to cover costs, and that taking one year together with another they do not generate a surplus. Will that be the case in relation to these charges or not, and if not, what limit will be placed on their ability to set those charges?

My final question is a slightly detailed one for those who are involved with local authorities that are also highways authorities. Could the payment of these charges by highways authorities fall upon a parking revenue account and be drawn from a parking revenue account, or would it fall on the general fund? It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us that as well.

Briefly on Amendment 53M, this relates to a clause which allows highways authorities to charge applicants—this is, if you like, a mirror image, or may be to some extent a pass-through clause. It is not objectionable in itself, but there is again the question of whether these charges will be set so as to cover costs and so that a surplus is not generated, taking one year with another. I think it would be very helpful to all noble Lords if the Minister could answer those questions. I beg to move.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, very briefly, I support my noble friend in this probing effort to establish what the intention of the Government is. He is right to highlight the risk that this becomes a revenue-raising mechanism as opposed to a cost-offsetting mechanism. There have been many examples over the years where different public bodies have sought to do that, and he is right to seek clarification.

The one caveat I would add is that there may be some cases where it is right to levy a punitive charge, where there has been a failure on the part of the third-party body that is being charged, but that should be under only very limited circumstances and where there has been a palpable and measurable failure in what that organisation has done; for example, a lane rental that has been put in place to carry out works that have been done inadequately, leading to disruption afterwards. My noble friend is absolutely right to ensure that the Government are clear about whether these measures will allow profits to be made or whether they are simply to offset costs. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answer.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak briefly to make an apology. I have Amendment 71 in a later group, but I have to catch an Avanti train to Carlisle—and that, as my noble friend Lord Hendy will know, is a bit of a hazardous process these days. So I probably will not be here for the amendment that I have tabled, but it is relevant to the point about charges, because it is an amendment about trying to liberalise the regime, to enable people who cannot park their electric car off the road to charge from their home across the pavement. That will cut bills for people by a considerable amount. Lots of profit is being made somewhere in the provision of on-street charging systems, and enabling people to charge their car from their own home would be a pro-environment measure in increasing the attractiveness of electric car ownership but also a cost of living measure, to which I hope the department will give consideration. I apologise again if I am not around when this matter is discussed.

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[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, the first three amendments in this group seek to ensure that the fees charged by the prescribed bodies to highways authorities under the Highways Act 1980 are not excessive, that the level of fees charged does not cause highways authorities financial hardship, and that the regulations detail financial mechanisms and arrangements to support highways authorities in meeting any charges that may be forthcoming under Clause 29. I welcome the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Grayling, raising points related to the public purse. The ability of organisations to plan and fund resources accordingly is important to the successful implementation of these reform measures.

Clause 29 is an enabling power that allows the Secretary of State in England and Welsh Ministers in Wales to make provision for, through regulations, the charging of fees for services provided to support Highways Act 1980 applications. I underscore that Clause 29 is intended only to allow prescribed bodies to charge fees on a cost-recovery basis. Its implementation, through supporting regulations, will not allow them to make a profit. The ability to recover reasonable costs will support the capacity and capability of specified public bodies. This in turn will encourage timely and high-quality inputs into the process.

As in other infrastructure consenting regimes where cost-recovery principles have been introduced, the regulations will be used to set out that fees may not exceed the costs reasonably incurred in providing the relevant services. The clause states that the regulations may make provision in respect of

“what may, and may not, be taken into account in calculating the amount charged”.

This provides a satisfactory basis on which to achieve the intention of the amendment. As part of stakeholder engagement, the Government will rightly continue to engage to understand the potential financial implications for highways authorities, prior to introducing regulations. The Government believe that, taken together, our commitments to produce statutory guidance alongside the regulations will ensure that the fees charged by prescribed bodies are done only on a cost-recovery basis and will provide appropriate flexibility in the light of changing circumstances to review and adjust fees where necessary and justified.

In respect of transparency, local authorities are already under a duty to maintain a system of internal audit and to appoint external auditors to audit their accounts annually. Government departments and their non-departmental public bodies in England are audited by the National Audit Office on behalf of the Comptroller and Auditor-General. The Welsh Government and their non-departmental public bodies in Wales are audited by Audit Wales on behalf of the Auditor-General for Wales. The department allocates capital funding to local highways authorities so that they can most effectively spend this funding on maintaining and improving their respective networks based upon their local knowledge, circumstances and priorities. It is therefore for the respective highways authorities to determine how best to spend this funding to fulfil their statutory duty under Section 41 of the Highways Act 1980.

Precedent from other regimes with cost-recovery principles directs that the matters identified in the proposed amendments can be satisfactorily addressed through secondary legislation and guidance. In so doing, that will provide suitable flexibility for the operation of a cost-recovery regime in the event of changing circumstances.

The points proposed in the noble Lord’s Amendment 53F are important. It is the intention, as in other transport-consenting regimes with cost recovery, that they will be addressed through secondary legislation. The regulations will, among other things, explain how fees should be calculated and when fees can and cannot be charged, as well as specify which bodies can charge fees.

I turn finally to Amendment 53M. Clause 40 is an enabling power that allows the Secretary of State in England and Welsh Ministers in Wales to make provision through regulations to charge fees for services provided to support Transport and Works Act applications. As in other infrastructure-consenting regimes, where cost-recovery principles have been introduced, the regulations will be used to set out that fees must not exceed the costs reasonably incurred in providing the relevant services. These regulations will detail not only the bodies that will be able to recover fees but the basis on which fees should be calculated. The regulations will also consider circumstances in which fees may or may not be charged and when these fees may be waived or reduced.

Taken together, the Government believe that our commitments to produce statutory guidance alongside regulations will ensure that fees charged by prescribed bodies are done only on a cost-recovery basis and provide appropriate flexibility in the light of changing circumstances to review and adjust fees where necessary and justified.

The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, asked what the prescribed bodies are. I am happy to write to him to set out which bodies the Government have in mind. The sorts of services that might be included are, for example, providing advice on significant adverse effects on the environment and mitigating those effects. The Environment Agency might, for example, provide advice on surface water flood risk from a new highway and how to mitigate it.

The noble Lord, Lord Grayling, referred to punitive charges in certain circumstances. While I sympathise greatly with the idea that all public bodies should behave in a timely and proper manner, I am not entirely sure that punitive charges ought to be set out in an arrangement that seeks just to make the system work better.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

It may be that this is not the right vehicle for this, but most local authorities do not have the resource to inspect works carried out by utility companies, for example. As a result, the works tend to deteriorate faster than they should do. Putting in place a punitive regime to enable a local authority to apply fines would provide additional resource for extra inspections. That is something that, in hindsight, I wish I had been able to do and which the current Government could do.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention and I am very sympathetic to his point. He is quite right. He and I both know that, on many occasions, reinstatement works are done badly and do not last long. The recovery of inspection charges to find that out is reasonable; punitive charges beyond those levied for work reasonably incurred are probably not reasonable. This may not quite be the vehicle to do it, but I have every sympathy with what the noble Lord is saying. As he probably does, I inspect pavements and roads almost daily and despair at their condition.

I will deal with my noble friend Lord Liddle’s point on Amendment 71 when we get there, even though he will probably be in transit to somewhere else. I will take away the points about run-off water, which were debated by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and reflect on the extent to which they are covered by these amendments.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for tabling these amendments and appreciate his interest in these clauses. However, I ask that he withdraws Amendment 53C.