Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendments 152ZA and 261A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger. She and the Animal Sentience Committee raise the important point that the lives of individual animals seem to have been overlooked in the Bill.

When we work in policy-making, we always have to weigh up whole-population decisions—potential benefits to one group against potential harms to another. Of course, we have to do that, but we never forget that those policy decisions involve individuals. We do not forget it when they are individual people, and anyone who has been close to an animal, such as a pet, knows that individual animals have their own emotions—they can experience fear, joy and pain. It is important that we bear this is mind. We discuss animal welfare matters when it comes to pets—we discussed the docking of tails in pet animals just last Friday. Whether it is a pet rabbit or a wild rabbit, they have the same experiences, so it is very important for us to consider whether there are ways in which we can acknowledge that in the Bill.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 147 on chalk streams. I was brought up in the Chilterns and I have been studying some of the streams there for a very long time. As other noble Lords have said, they are the most wonderful bits of the countryside, with clear water—which comes and goes, but it is usually there.

I became involved in this when I opposed some of the work that HS2 was doing in trying to drill a tunnel underneath the chalk stream near Amersham. The Chiltern Society, which led the opposition, was very keen that HS2 put some boreholes down to check what the ground was like and make sure that drilling a tunnel close to underneath a chalk stream would not have any adverse effect on it. Of course, HS2, being the rather arrogant organisation it often was, said, “It is not necessary. We know everything that is going to happen there and it is all planned for. We won’t have any special protection apart from the normal tunnel construction”.

Of course, HS2 was wrong and when the tunnel got to underneath the stream just west of Amersham, contamination started, water levels dropped and there was a lack of water supply in some places. It said, “Oh dear”, and did nothing about it. It is all right now—I think it has all been solved—but my point is that if this amendment had been on the statute book 10 years ago, the local people and the experts would have had much more credibility in attacking a government organisation trying to build a tunnel than has happened so far.

There are probably many other examples and noble Lords have mentioned some, but it is important that we map these chalk streams and make sure that they are looked after, because they are very special.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in favour of Amendment 146, on which I am a co-signatory, and Amendments 147 and 148. I will be brief because we have already heard from three noble Lords who have made very powerful contributions—the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Berkeley, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard. We heard also from the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, whom I know worked very closely on this agenda when she was chief executive of the CPRE 20 years or so ago.

As the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, pointed out, 85% of chalk streams are in the UK and they face multiple threats, including the good example we just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Very few meet good ecological standards, and we are seeing a series of irreplaceable habitats being put at grave risk.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friends Lady McIntosh, Lord Parkinson and Lord Banner have made powerful cases for their amendments. I will briefly take survivors of LURB back two years to Amendment 235, which I had proposed in Committee, and which was proposed on Report by my noble friend Lady Pinnock, and which effectively did what is now in Clause 48. Crucially, it enabled or authorised local authorities to recoup the costs of their planning department, but it did not require them so to do. I take the point that my noble friend Lady Scott made in her speech as to why the words “and require” were not in the original request by the local authorities. On Report, the Government resisted the amendment. They were defeated, and I confess that I played a modest role in that defeat. To the Government’s credit, they then accepted it in the other place and it came through.

The crucial question—one touched on by my noble friend Lord Banner—is whether this is going to be enough to solve the crisis in our planning departments. Reforms to the national planning policy introduced by the last Government are still working their way through the system. Earlier this year, only a third of local authorities had adopted a plan in the last five years, while 291 had plans of more than five years old, and they have to get those plans up to date. The moment they have done so, they are then confronted by local government reorganisation, with smaller units turning into larger, unitary ones. The Government have then said that, where reorganisation occurs, new unitary authorities are expected to promptly prepare a local plan covering the whole of their area. So they basically have to start again.

At the same time, the Government want to reduce all the current delays in processing planning applications so that we can get on with infrastructure, and a large majority of applications are not processed within the statutory timescale. Shortly, we will come to Chapter 2 of this part of the Bill, which introduces spatial development strategies. Again, under the Bill, the planners in these new strategic authorities must produce spatial development strategies providing strategic policies for the use of land in their area.

In a masterly understatement, the Government said:

“We are aware that areas undergoing local government reorganisation and devolution will experience a transition period where responsibility for spatial development strategy might transfer between authorities”.


The crucial question that the Government must answer is whether planning departments will, even with these reforms, be able to respond to the Government’s requests. If planning departments were fully staffed with the necessary skills, they might rise to the challenge. However, there is an additional problem in that many planning officers will have to reapply for their jobs. Some may well take redundancy as a consequence of the merger of local authorities. The LGA workforce survey found that 62% of councils have difficulties recruiting planning officers and 45% have difficulties retaining planning officers, many being tempted by higher salaries elsewhere—a point mentioned by my noble friend Lord Banner.

Finally, we are going to have new town development corporations. They will need planning departments. When the Minister replies, I hope that she can reassure the Committee that there will be the capacity within the planning system to respond to the Government’s ambitious agenda.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not a planner, but I do have the joy of owning a small property in Cornwall, which is part-listed. I took a lot of advice when I wanted a new kitchen at the back of the building on whether I needed listed building consent. The answer was, “If it’s in Cornwall, yes, but if it’s in London, no”. There are many differences between areas of this country, which we have not talked about this morning but will come into the assessment of how the criteria are done.

In Cornwall, they are trying to keep the villages and towns looking good and beautiful, which is fine. However, you then hear comments from people like a friend of mine who wants to put a summer house at the far end of the garden, away from the listed house, and must get listed building consent. Everybody is moaning about that and the cost. On the other hand, if you do not have some criteria like that, you will have a mess. On Amendment 97, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, it is a great idea to say that these charges should be waived, but an awful lot more needs to go into it. Frankly, the amount of money needed to pay for listed building consent for the average small house is not that great. Therefore, I do not support Amendment 97. I hope that we can accept that there will be pros and cons but that the need to have listed building consent in a reasonable way overturns everything.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 95. Nobody likes to see fees going up, and I totally support the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in her concern about calculation and control. I also support the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, in her very well-reasoned cry for support for the SME builders.

I want to put my weight behind Amendment 95, because quite often in this House I have said how much we like to make legislation and how little we then resource the enforcement of it. This Bill seems specifically to exclude money for enforcement. I cannot let it pass without asking the Minister to explain why and to lend my support to Amendment 95.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 82A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, seeks to require long-duration electricity storage—LDES—operators to consult local fire authorities to assess the project’s fire risk before installation. I want to assure the noble Lord that this Government take fire safety extremely seriously, but we do not feel this amendment is necessary or proportionate, and it risks unintended consequences. I personally want to say to the noble Lord that, since fire has come from the Home Office into MHCLG, I have the ministerial responsibility for fire, and the noble Lord is welcome at any time to drop me a line to discuss anything related to this point or any concerns around fire safety.

The Health and Safety Executive regulates battery-energy storage system—BESS—sites within a robust framework that mandates battery designers, installers, and operators to uphold high safety standards. Our planning practice guidance encourages developers of BESS sites to engage with local fire and rescue services prior to the submission of their planning application and to consider the National Fire Chiefs Council’s guidance, so that matters relating to fire safety can be considered at the outset. However, we are going to go further than this. The Government are considering additional measures to enhance the regulation of the environmental and safety risks of BESS. Defra recently published a consultation on proposed reforms to environmental permitting for industry, including the principle of including BESS in scope of the environmental permitting regulations. This would give further safeguards for both people and the environment.

This amendment would add burdens to local fire and rescue services. Further changes to the long-duration electricity storage cap and floor scheme would add complexity to the system, which would lead to increased cost and time for the applicant. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, is satisfied with my response, and I kindly request he withdraws his amendment.

Amendment 82B, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Offord of Garvel and Lord Roborough, requires the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the impact of the Planning and Infrastructure Act on the UK’s long-duration electricity storage capacity within five years of it being passed. I want to assure the noble Lords that this Government are committed to monitoring the development of the UK’s long-duration electricity storage capacity, as well as our wider clean power 2030 ambitions. Ofgem is proceeding at pace with the delivery of the first window of the cap and floor regime, and expects to announce final decisions on successful projects, in both the 2030 and 2033 delivery tracks, in the second quarter of next year. Ofgem will remain closely involved in monitoring delivery of those projects, and information on their features and progress will of course be made public at the appropriate stage, as they would be for any other major generation projects.

The Government publish statistics on the UK’s electricity storage capacity annually in the Digest of UK Energy Statistics—DUKES. This currently includes pumped storage hydro and grid-scale batteries. Other types of LDES will be added to the publication when they become operational. The Government also have a statutory duty to report on their carbon budget progress under the Climate Change Act 2008. For instance, the Act requires the Climate Change Committee to provide an annual report to Parliament on the UK Government’s progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and we would expect future reports to include all relevant and significant developments in this regard, including those on delivery of the LDES cap and floor. The Government have a statutory duty to lay their response to the Climate Change Committee’s progress report before Parliament.

Given these existing monitoring and reporting commitments, this amendment to create additional reporting requirements is not necessary. I trust that the noble Lords, Lord Offord and Lord Roborough, are satisfied with our responses and I therefore kindly ask them not to press their amendments.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, the news that my noble friend has given us about the further checks and balances and reports on fire safety are very encouraging. However, the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, raised the question of the fire on top of the multi-storey carpark in Luton. There was a similar incident—just as bad, if I may say so—on a ship, somewhere between the Netherlands and the UK, which was carrying several hundred cars with these batteries. Apparently, the ship set itself on fire and the cars set each other on fire, and it was very lucky that nobody was hurt, because there was no way to put out the fires. I think the ship sank in the end.

My concern, to which I am sure my noble friend can respond, is that all these new reports are very useful, but what is missing is some transparency as to what actually happened. What happened on the roof of Luton airport carpark? We do not really know. Everybody denies that it was anything to do with lithium ion, but most people think that it probably was and that the then Government said nothing because they did not want to upset people. I hope my noble friend will agree that transparency is a very important part of the ongoing work.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

Let me reassure my noble friend that transparency is absolutely important in this situation. Both my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, provided examples; of course, it would be remiss of me to comment on them, but I am sure there will be some investigation and learning from them. If the point is to go away and find out what lessons have been learned, and look at them as part of our transparency, it is a good one and I accept it.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will chiefly offer support to Amendment 46A from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey.

In response to the challenge from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who said that of course the Government would not do this, I am afraid that we hear that very often in your Lordships’ House. The noble Lord may be speaking for his own Government, but we are making law for potential future Governments, and we cannot know how they will behave. That is a reason to put Amendment 46A in the Bill.

I respond to the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Ravensdale and Lord Hunt, with a little reminder that we are one of the most nature-depleted corners of this battered planet. If our regulators have not succeeded in doing the job they should have done in protecting nature, the answer is not to take away more power from the regulators. By all means, make them work better. As the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, said, we will undoubtedly discuss this at great length in relation to Part 3, but the Bill currently takes away an enormous amount of protection for nature, which is a huge problem.

In talking about Amendments 46 and 46A, I will refer to Defra’s own words from a blog post in 2025 that, we can assume, represents the Government’s view. It starts with a statement with which I can only agree:

“Nature is the bedrock of our entire way of life”.


As I often put it, the economy is a complete subset of the environment; none of the economy exists without a healthy environment. That blog seeks to defend the nature restoration fund, the environment delivery plans and all the other steps that this Government are introducing. You might say that the blog post is a little too vehement for its own good and that its tone sounds extremely defensive. None the less, we can all think of examples of where the Government have, on the one hand, done something for nature, but, on the other, done enormous damage with other policies.

One of the obvious examples that comes to mind here is peat. Peatland is terribly important for nature and for climate. Large amounts of money are spent on restoring peatlands. We also have continued use of the land for driven grouse shooting and the burning of large amounts of peat causing great damage—and continual horticultural use of peat. So we have the Government trying to expensively restore something while continuing to allow the destruction of it. That is why this needs to be in the Bill. I could give many more examples, but given the hour I will not, of where the Government are, in essence, facing in two directions at once and nature is torn down the middle as a result.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, is a very good amendment, but it refers only to low-carbon energy infrastructure. Of course, he is an expert in that, and that is fine. The comments made by him, my noble friend Lord Hunt and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, referred to a much wider subject: are regulators a good thing or not and are we controlling them? To say that we want to make changes to the regulations on low-carbon energy infrastructure without looking at others means we are missing something. We have big problems with many regulators, but it should be a consistent policy. It needs to be done on a much more scientific and level playing field rather than it being just something which relates to whether we think what they are doing is a good thing or a bad thing. I do not think that is the right way to look forward. Maybe when the noble Lord comes to wind up, he can explain why the amendment refers just to low-carbon energy infrastructure.

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

Perhaps I may answer the noble Lord now. I thank him for his comments. He is absolutely right that there is a broader point here, but the amendment took into account the scope limitations of the Bill, which is why we raised it in that way. He is right that there is a broader point on regulators, but that would take it outside the scope of this legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

Amendment 52 would give development consent orders that concern nationally significant infrastructure projects the force of Acts of Parliament. It is intended that, after due consultation and consideration, and if enacted by Parliament, they would become essentially incontestable. The amendment would insert an extensive proposed new Schedule 3A that would declare how the system of parliamentary confirmation would operate in practice. It would provide for a process of consultation and petitioning against the Bill that would preserve the rights of the affected parties. However, once this process had been undergone, and once the DCO had been confirmed by an Act of Parliament, the possibilities of wilful obstruction would be minimised. Neither the Act nor the DCO could be questioned in any court or tribunal. Nevertheless, if circumstances changed, such as would require a modification of the DCO, the amendment would make full allowance for this in accordance with Schedule 6 to the Planning Act 2008. I earnestly hope that the Government will pay some attention to this amendment and perhaps adopt it in some form or other.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend spent a lot of time complaining about the A303. The simple solution is to go by train.

My noble friend is quite right that the planning process takes a very long time. I spent many years trying to do it in relation to building the Channel Tunnel. It is a long time ago now, but we still had to go through the hybrid Bill process, which took quite a long time. My French opposite number kept asking me, “Why the hell are you taking so long to get permission?” I said that we had to go through Parliament and have several debates, Select Committees and things like that. I asked him how they did it so quickly in France, where they were taking six weeks and we were taking three years. He said, “Well, it’s quite simple. It’s a bit like Canada. If you want to go quickly, you don’t consult the frogs if you are draining the pond”. That sums it up.

My worry about these amendments is that the hybrid Bill process needs reviewing. There is a lot of work to be done to make sure that, whatever goes in its place, including my noble friend’s excellent amendments, achieves what it is trying to do, which is to balance the needs of not just the Government and industry but the public who they serve. We need much more information about how that would work before we can form a view.

Something that has not been mentioned much so far in this debate is the question of a business case and viability. It is fine pushing ahead with all these things, such as Sizewell B—or is it C?—because the Government have said they are a good idea, but they have not actually said they are going to fund them. The same could have applied to HS2, but that has gone further and got into a bigger mess. A proper business case needs to be produced for any of these projects, alongside the planning regime, so that we can all form a view about whether it is likely that these projects will go ahead or whether they will fall flat on their face, which would be the worst of all worlds.

I will be interested to hear what my noble friend the Minister says. Maybe there is something in these amendments that is worth looking at, but we have to accept that there are many people in this country who do not like change and who want to do JRs or some other way of opposing what is planned, and we have to respect them as well. I look forward to my noble friend’s comments.

[Lord Banner (Con)]

My Lords, it will probably already be apparent that in many respects the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and I are in agreement about how the Bill can be made more effective, but on this group we are not yet quite aligned. I have a lot of sympathy with the intention behind Amendments 52 and 65 in particular, and I have immense respect for those behind the drafting. I myself wanted to go further when I was undertaking the review of legal challenges to M6, and I think it is important that I explain why I felt I could not, while I still need some convincing that it would be possible or sensible to go further.

When I did the review, I concluded that the evidence demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of judicial reviews of the M6 failed. It follows from this that the problem is not with the law, nor is it about “activist judges”, the term often used by some people about judges. It is about the time it takes for bad JRs to meet their doom. That is the problem, and to my mind the remedy for it is to shorten the judicial review process as much as possible. That is what my recommendations focused on, and I am told that Clause 12 in conjunction with the CPR changes—I have not been checking my emails so I still have not seen them—gives effect to those recommendations. That is what the changes would do.

To my mind, therefore, removing judicial review altogether, as things currently stand, would not achieve much more than a truncated JR process. For the really big stuff, the Heathrows and HS2s of this world, the system already allows for the JR process to be fast-tracked. The HS2 and Heathrow cases, both of which I was involved in, went from ground zero to the Supreme Court far quicker than normal cases—not much more than a year, in the HS2 case in particular.

The question then is: what are the downsides of going further, and does the relatively marginal benefit outweigh those downsides? In my view, the answer is no. There is a difficulty with ousters, whether done expressly through an ouster clause, which hardly ever works, or done in a more intelligent fashion than an express ouster, as the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, does, essentially asking Parliament to endorse a DCO and thus giving it the benefit of parliamentary sovereignty. Most DCOs involve the compulsory purchase of land and/or the acquisition of individual rights. There is a real danger, if that approach is undertaken, that there will come a point—whether because someone was denied a hearing because there was a mistake or because someone involved in the decision-making process inadvertently failed to disclose an interest—where something goes wrong in a CPO context. A person whose land, maybe their home, is to be acquired—or there is to be some other fundamental interference with their rights—is, it is said, denied any possibility of correcting an obvious legal error.

In that scenario, there is a real danger that the untested working assumption that Parliament is sovereign—for there is no written tablet of stone saying that the Supreme Court cannot quash legislation—will be tested, and we will not get the right answer. Pandora’s box would be opened and the Supreme Court would quash the legislation in question, and once opened you would never be able to put it back in the box. The lessons from the USA Supreme Court tell us that it would not stop there. This building would no longer be the most important on Parliament Square; it would be the Supreme Court building. That would clearly be a fundamental constitutional change, and most people would regard it as unwelcome to our democracy.

I also have a degree of discomfort about what is fundamentally an executive process being essentially laundered by Parliament, as opposed to it being a legislative process from start to finish, as the HS2 and Crossrail hybrid Bill processes were. I do not want to rain on the noble Lord’s parade, and that of those behind this. As I said, I see a lot of merit in trying to go further, but once you realise that the adverse delaying effects of JR can be cut down very substantially, the question is: does going further risk the constitutional crisis that it may very well facilitate, bearing in mind the very severe consequences and implications of that?

On Amendment 47, I recommended that the single shot for cases totally without merit be an oral hearing—as opposed to a written procedure, which is what Amendment 47 covers—because we are dealing with something that interferes with people’s property rights and can take away someone’s home. To my mind, given that degree of interference in fundamental rights, the individuals in question ought to have the right to at least one hearing, even if it is a 30-minute JR permission hearing that declares a case to be totally without merit. There ought to be at least one day in court—otherwise, fundamental constitutional principles and the legitimacy of the process could be undermined. There is no doubt that we need to sharpen up planning and infrastructure, but, if at all humanly possible, we need to do it in a way that carries people with us as opposed to alienating people; that is the way to make the system work.

I am yet to be convinced, but I am willing to be convinced. Ultimately, it is not me that the noble Lord needs to convince but the Minister and her colleagues. For the reasons I have given, I have a degree of nervousness about these amendments.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to say a few words about something that has not been talked about very much. Let me turn this damn phone off first—this happened in my Select Committee yesterday and it was not very good.

I want to talk about planning, because planning comes up a great deal in this Bill—quite rightly, and it is a great Bill. There is a lot about the different ways of obtaining planning, such as through the Transport and Works Act or through the Planning Inspectorate. What I cannot find is anything about planning when it comes to railways or canals. Historically, planning permission for them has been obtained through a hybrid Bill. I have been involved in a number of hybrid Bill projects: the Channel Tunnel was the first one; then there was HS1; and, more recently, HS2. I also chaired a Select Committee on a river project in east London—no, in the north-east somewhere.

There is one common thing that worries me; with greater pressure on people’s time, I have a serious worry. Who you would call a judge in any court, or an inspector in planning, becomes a group of a dozen or half a dozen Members of Parliament or Members of your Lordships’ House. They are expected to act as a judge with full transparency and full fairness; to listen to all the evidence, both from the promoter and from the people who are petitioning; and then to make a decision.

This all sounds very easy until you look at things and ask, “First of all, how is the Select Committee selected?” It is not like a Select Committee that we have here. It is a special Select Committee to act as judge and jury, so to speak, for the particular project—usually one promoted by the Government. I have to say, when you start looking at who is selected, a lot of the time the selection is based on: “Have you behaved in the House? Have you voted with your party, or have you not been there?” If you are speaking against the party too often, you are going on that committee. I could give several examples, which I will not do now, but it has got to a stage where you can look at the committee and say, “Well, I’ve got to open my correspondence in the morning meeting. Maybe I’ll be asleep after lunch, but nobody will notice”. That happens quite often.

The poor petitioners, who are not helped by the very expensive lawyers whom the promoter is employing, often have to speak on their own. They are told throughout the process, “It’s all very difficult. You’re probably not going to win, but I suppose you could try”. They then have to accept, more or less, the decision of this so-called court, which is under a lot of pressure from Ministers and everyone else to come out in favour of the promoter. I would like to ask my noble friend the Minister—I do not necessarily need an answer tonight, but I think that this deserves a petition when we get to Committee stage—do we need to use the hybrid Bill process for railways and canals anymore? The planning process that we have through the Planning Inspectorate and the Transport and Works Act seems to work very well and people have confidence in it. Certainly on the basis of HS1, I could go on to compensation and things like that, but I will not do so; I shall just say that people are very upset about it. They think that they have been treated badly, and then they do not get paid their compensation—whether or not that is related, I do not know.

We ought to have a debate about this because I suspect the reason for not having a change is because Parliament sees itself as supreme. We are very good at being supreme here, and they are very good at being even more supreme down at the other end of the Corridor. However, I think that, for something like this, which is basically a court, we should give it to the professionals. So I shall try to come up with a petition, which may at least enable some debate to take place; I may be told why that will not work, but let us hope that it will.

English Devolution and Local Government

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am sorry, but I think the noble Baroness has misunderstood the wording that she just read out. The point is that the Government will set the growth agenda and say that we want every area of the country to grow, and it will be for mayors to determine how that works in their local area. She is shaking her head, but that is the idea behind the policy. The whole drive of it is that each local area will be driven by people who know it and its economy, people and communities well, and they will take forward the right proposals for growth for their area. If, for example, we look at what has happened in Manchester in terms of its transport schemes and at some of the other mayoral authorities which have developed skills programmes that are relevant to the needs of the local area, I think it is clear that those people acting at local level will best drive forward the growth of this country.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

In Cornwall, we joined Durham about 15 years ago and became unitary. It was very popular because Cornwall is long and thin, and it needs a lot of different organisations and centres of districts to make it work. It has worked because there are local people in local offices as well as in the county council, but the most important thing is that, even for that to work, the Tory Administration last year decided that the leader of the council should become a mayor. We could not really work out why it was a good thing for her to become a mayor, apart from the fact that she would earn a great deal more money, but, of course, that was not very popular with the people of Cornwall. It is important that the criteria for electing mayors and the members of these new organisations are clear and concise. We can make it work, but we just have to have a few tweaks.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for being the champion of Cornwall and the south-west, which we are used to him doing. Cornwall does indeed have a unitary authority. It has not come forward in this round for any changes, but I know that, right across the south-west, active discussions are going on about what should happen there, and I look forward to working with them to deliver it.

I know the devolution journey is not always comfortable for politicians in Whitehall; it is not supposed to be. We are undergoing a generational power shift from Whitehall to our town halls. We have seen a huge amount of good will from Secretaries of State willing to give up newly won powers for the sake of our towns and cities. We are taking a step closer to taking back control and rebuilding our country from the ground up. I look forward to working on it.

English Devolution

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on a really interesting document. I wish her well, because the pressure has come from the mayors for devolution—rightly, in my opinion—and what they have come up with is a laudable solution to this. My noble friend’s challenge is how to deal with the other parts of England that are not subject to the current mayors. A variety of solutions are in the White Paper, which we all have to look at, but she is still trying to get more devolution to the other parts of the UK, which they all want. I have one question. The smallest area with a council currently is probably the City of London. How will she fit that into this new structure? Clearly, it does a good job, but it needs some kind of structure within this overall requirement. I congratulate my noble friend.

Housing Supply and Homelessness

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to take part in this debate and I congratulate my noble friend on securing it. There have been so many really interesting proposals and ideas to come out of this long debate.

I come to this from a building and engineering background. I am stuck on that figure, which the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, also told us, that one in 20 houses in this country are empty. Where are they, who owns them, and should they be empty? Of course, the reasons are very varied. Spending a lot of time in Cornwall, I see all of the second homes and wonder, well, people like second homes, and some of them may be unsuitable for owner-occupiers, some of them may be totally unsuitable for being what we like to call affordable, but on the other hand, they could be rented out for half the year when the owners are not there, so people who live in these villages—of whom I know many—would have somewhere to live. There needs to be some financial incentive to achieve that.

There is another issue that worries me. My next-door neighbour when I live in London had a flat but, sadly, died two or three years ago. The flat is owned by the council and has been empty ever since. It is damp and it could do with a refurb, but it is a flat, and it could be made affordable but is not because the council is doing nothing about it.

My worst example is from spending a lot of time in the Isles of Scilly, where I see a number of people who do not have proper accommodation. They are there because they are working; they have jobs to keep the economy going. They quite often try and rent their accommodation from the Duchy of Cornwall, and I pay tribute to Prince William—or the Duke of Cornwall—for what he is trying to do to improve housing, particularly in Cornwall. However, he is not doing so well in Scilly, because there are, I think, seven empty houses on one island which are waiting for builders to come in. Unsurprisingly, you cannot get builders on islands. You can get a few of them on the mainland, but you have to accommodate them, because they cannot commute by sea every day. The obvious thing is for some of these empty houses to be allocated for builders to come there, certainly in winter. But it is not done, so these houses remain empty, and you cannot even get builders in there to do whatever has to be done. I do not know what the answer to that is. The Duchy of Cornwall makes a profit of £22 million every year, and you would think that they could invest some of that into the houses that the workers there need.

The other problem which one comes across is the lack of tradespeople to do this work. It is very easy to say that we have not got any carpenters, bricklayers or anything else, but unless we train them—through our education system, particularly in the countryside, as mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans—we cannot use them. It is really important that we have a good stock of tradespeople in all parts of the country, so they can do this work and hopefully improve the stock of housing.

To conclude, I congratulate my noble friend on her wonderful introduction to this debate. With all the ideas we have heard, let us hope that the Government, in the next year or two, can develop some of them, so that we can deliver affordable housing to those who want it. You meet many of them and they are all on the council list, but we need to do something for them.

Lease Extension Policies for Residential Properties

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask His Majesty’s Government, further to the remarks by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 24 May (HL Deb col 1368) where she relayed undertakings of the Crown, when they expect the Crown to publish their new lease extension policies for residential properties.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his Question. The Crown has agreed to act by analogy with the new Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, subject to the specific condition set out in the undertaking. This will improve home ownership for most Crown leaseholders, but it is a matter for the Crown to determine when it will publish its new lease extension policies. The Government anticipate that the Crown policies of the relevant Crown bodies will be published no later than when the relevant provisions in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act come into effect.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that Answer. This was a Crown undertaking, given by the then Minister over two months ago. Hundreds of leaseholders on the Isles of Scilly and elsewhere are dying to know whether their 40-year leases can be extended in the way that the rest of the country achieved with the leasehold reform Act. Could my noble friend go back to the Crown and maybe instruct the Duke of Cornwall to publish this document, which will give comfort to these tenants? Could she also provide an opportunity for the House to debate that document, if and when we ever see it?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his championing of Crown leaseholders and the Scilly Isles, and for this offer to visit. You do not have to be a Foreign Office Minister to go to beautiful and exotic places. The undertaking confirms that the Crown will act by analogy, but it is well established that Acts of Parliament for England and Wales do not bind the Crown unless the Act expressly states that this is the case or does so by necessary implication. Instructing the Duke of Cornwall is probably a bit beyond my ministerial powers. The undertaking for the Act delivers similar improvements to those that leaseholders would have if the Leasehold and Reform Act 2024 were to bind the Crown directly. The difference is therefore largely a matter of delivery. Binding the Crown to the Act’s provisions is therefore felt to be unnecessary.

King’s Speech

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to congratulate my noble and learned friend Lord Hermer on his maiden speech, and to welcome him and my noble friend Lord Khan and his colleagues to the Front Bench. It is wonderful to see them there; long may it continue.

I will speak briefly about devolution, which has not been so much discussed in this debate. For me, devolution is vital and it must have the criteria of delivering something that is level, equal across the UK and balanced. For me, probably the worst example of that is where I live, the Isles of Scilly, so I will concentrate my remarks there.

It is a very independent community, 28 miles off the English coast and remote from the rest of the UK. It is a very strong and loyal community, which will tell you that it does not want to be linked with Cornwall. Some noble Lords may have read that the six former Conservative MPs who lost their seats in Cornwall at the last election—in favour of four Labour and two Lib Dem—think that the answer is to have a Minister for Cornwall. If we had a Minister for every county, ministerial boxes might get a bit full, so I do not think that that will work.

Scilly does not want to be part of Cornwall. I have had many discussions with the council on the Isles of Scilly and it has problems. It wants to preserve the community spirit and be a sustainable place to live, but there needs to be a financial settlement, which would probably be different from that of most local authorities.

The single biggest challenge on the islands is transport. Noble Lords may have read about the Harland & Wolff issues, which I am not going to talk about, but the reality is that these transport links are fragile, unreliable and expensive. You can travel on a bus for many miles in Cornwall for £2 a journey, when residents travelling between the islands of Scilly sometimes have to pay as much as £110 for a single fare in the winter, for just a couple of miles. It is the same if you want to go to the mainland, to hospital or for anything else. It is 28 miles, which would probably cost £10 or so on a train. Last week, I paid £110 for a three-hour journey on a ferry. It is a lot more to go by air and it is an unreliable service. Basic services are awful there.

The cost of living on Scilly is seriously high. Housing is a problem. Noble Lords may know that, in the last stages of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, before the end of the last Government, the Duchy of Cornwall promised new tender or leasing documents for people leasing their buildings on the Isles of Scilly. No leases extend for more than 40 years at the moment so, if you spend several hundred thousand pounds doing up your house, you will still have only a 40-year lease. I am looking for Ministers to tell us when the Duchy is going to publish its guidelines.

Similarly, it is difficult to get local authority building now because the costs of freight are so high, so something needs to be done and it is not easy. The Council of the Isles of Scilly is good at trying to sort out what should happen there. There must be a devolution deal that will take Scilly outside the normal local authority funding rules. I do not know when that will happen, but the transport needs to become a public transport system rather than one with the costs I have just quoted. Otherwise, the residents will give up and the community will get lost.

The community does not want to be linked with Cornwall and I hope that my noble friends, when they come to look at the devolution of the south-west, Cornwall and Scilly, will come to discuss and consult—as they have said they will—and have a special, bespoke arrangement ready for the Isles of Scilly to talk about.