Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I first congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Deben, on getting a permission within a year—perhaps he could give us all a few tips on how to achieve that. I really want to support Amendment 119, but I am concerned that it is so general. It does not specify what the barriers are—we may know what they are from personal experience—or how to overcome them. I have a question about what its practical impact would be. If I can be persuaded that putting in the Bill that they must “have regard to” and “consider” the barriers will not simply be a tick-box exercise and one more thing for the planners to get over, I would be happy to support it. At the moment, however, while I entirely agree that there are issues for SMEs in this sector, it is difficult to see what real impact this amendment would have.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and, by extension, the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I was for six years the chairman of a local enterprise partnership. It is often overlooked that the prosperity of the parts of this country that are having greatest difficulties can be majorly improved by enabling SMEs to take forward their projects. As has been said, the rules are the rules for everyone. It is much easier for big enterprises, which have large head offices and all the rest of it, to deal with the very considerable amount of administrative and other paperwork that is increasingly a part of the planning process. That in turn makes it discriminatory. We should not allow that discrimination. The kind of impact that major projects have on a place is very often qualitatively different from the impact that smaller, much more minor and modest proposals will have.

The underlying point behind the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, is a very good one, because we are favouring the big boys over the small boys. I come from a part of England that is a long way from many centres of population; there is a very real concern that, increasingly, with the way the local economy is going—thanks to the activities of venture capital and large companies, for example—the profits that may be made from activities in these areas are being expatriated to other parts of the globe, or certainly to more prosperous parts of our country. It is an essential component of balancing the interests of the various parties engaged in these things that we look very carefully at the way in which the administration of the system is carried out, to make sure that the small man gets a fair crack of the whip. It is as simple as that.

As I have been listening to the debate on this and other parts of this Bill, I have remembered the words of Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy, a now almost unread book from the 17th century. He said: “Are not men mad to write such stuff who intend to make others so?”

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, in Committee we were sympathetic to the intentions of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath. The Government should consider this carefully. We have heard some powerful speeches on it that I will not repeat. I will go back on just one point that the noble Lord raised. A few weeks ago, the Government reassured the House from the Dispatch Box that cumulative impact assessments for gambling licensing would be considered when parliamentary time allows. We will hold them to account on this promise. Will the Minister give the House a timescale for it?

I support my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe’s amendments to support small and medium-sized businesses. As we have raised elsewhere, the planning process is overly bureaucratic and time consuming, and I share the sentiments of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, that 12 months is frequently a very short time. This places a significant financial and resource burden on applicants, which falls particularly hard on smaller businesses that do not have the resources and expertise of larger enterprises.

As we debated previously on Report, the cost per property of the planning process can be significantly higher for smaller developments. It is right that planning authorities should have regard to this, and I ask the Minister what the Government will do to ensure that this burden is lowered, particularly for SMEs. Supporting SMEs is one of the most effective ways to inject greater competition and diversity into the sector and, ultimately, to strengthen the wider economy. Therefore, we will support my noble friend’s amendments should she choose to test the opinion of the House.