Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Grayling and Earl Russell

Committee stage
Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.