National Policy Statement for Ports

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

We have had a pretty devastating critique of all sides of this document in this debate. The revisions were initiated by the previous Government with a view to promoting a thriving, modern port sector, but it has emerged under this Government as something of a damp squib. Even the Minister does not seem to think that it has much content. I listened to his speech carefully, and he delivered the preamble very well, telling us all about the procedural history of the document—including even the dates on which the Select Committee in the other place had taken evidence. I expected him to go on to tell us about what the document actually said, the main changes that it was going to make and how it was going to achieve the Government’s growth agenda—but he just sat down at that point. That is because the document is wholly inadequate to the challenges and opportunities.

My noble friend Lord Moynihan spoke about the grid connections and the need to increase them, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, spoke about rail and road connectivity and other matters of that sort. I am not summarising the whole debate—but my noble friends Lord Mountevans and Lord Fuller added devastatingly to her critique, on the basis of very considerable knowledge. My noble friend Lady Maclean of Redditch pointed out that the NPSP lives in a sort of parallel universe, with no connection to the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which we are debating in a different forum at this very moment—from day to day, in the course of this week. It does not seem to do the job.

Ports are central to the economy of this country; they handle the overwhelming majority of our trade and act as gateways for energy and manufacturing, providing employment and opportunities in coastal communities. They are strategic national infrastructure without which growth, resilience and security cannot be delivered. What marks out the United Kingdom port sector is the environment in which it operates. It is unsubsidised, competitive and dynamic—well, reasonably dynamic if one believes what my noble friend Lord Fuller said; perhaps some parts of it need a little shaking up.

When a port expands, develops a new terminal or invests in green technology, it does so with private capital and at its own risk, which means that the framework set by the Government must not disincentivise investment. We support that approach to the provision of ports in this country; we do not want to go back to the disaster of nationalised ports—and the mention of the dock labour scheme by the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, reminds one of the horrors that existed on those occasions. But to be successful and invest, the ports need some sort of certainty.

The current planning system is, frankly, far too complex. Ports have to navigate local planning authorities, marine licensing regimes, environmental regulators and in some cases the national infrastructure planning process; the result is fragmentation, duplication and delay. We could look to a document like this to start removing those problems, but it does nothing—it changes nothing of any real significance at all. Time and again, applicants face the uncertainty of competing judgments from different authorities.

This is no small matter—every delay in planning ties up capital, weakens competitiveness and deters future proposals. In a sector where operators already carry full commercial risk, that uncertainty is corrosive. If an operator is prepared to risk its own capital within the bounds of environmental and safety law, that willingness should be taken as compelling evidence of need. That principle is acknowledged in the draft statement, but it must be made stronger and clearer. Forecasts have a role in setting context, but they must never be allowed to become shackled or allow the planning system to be used to constrain investment.

The draft statement includes national freight forecasts. As background, they are useful, but they are no more useful than if anybody else commissioned a national freight forecast from a reputable body. There is nothing particularly insightful about them simply because they are published by the Government, but they must not be allowed to become constraints. To treat them as in some ways binding would be to undermine the very responsiveness that has been a defining feature of the port sector in this country.

Somebody a moment ago—forgive me if I forget which noble Lord—said that to have competition you need some surplus capacity. Tying the system to forecasts would be fatal in that regard. Ports operate in fast-moving competitive markets; they must be able to respond to emerging opportunities, such as hydrogen, carbon shipping and storage, offshore renewables and international redistribution. But they must continue simply to feed us and provide us with the goods that we depend on day to day. All these wonderful, environmental, green things are very important, but we fundamentally depend on this: 40% of our food is imported into this country and a lot of it comes on ships. A lot of other heavy goods also come here. This cannot be captured adequately on backward-looking models by this sort of forecast. If every scheme is required to prove its case against centrally produced forecasts, we will miss opportunities that are vital to the future of the economy.

The draft statement acknowledges that it is for each port to take its own commercial view of demand and to bear its own risks. That is the correct principle, and it must be reinforced clearly throughout the final document. Building capacity and resilience ahead of demand is not speculative extravagance; it is a strategic necessity if the UK is to withstand shocks to supply chains and maintain competitiveness. I was horrified by the figures quoted by my noble friend Lord Fuller on the costs of landing goods at different ports in this country compared with a serious network of major ports facing us across the North Sea.

We come then to energy. Ports stand ready to enable cleaner growth from shore power, electrification and new fuels, but cannot do this while electricity prices in the United Kingdom remain among the highest in Europe. They are not among the highest actually; they are the highest—driven in part by layers of environmental regulations. Nor can they deliver if grid connections are delayed year after year. The outcome is perverse: a policy environment that speaks of net zero with urgency but in practice deters the very investment needed to achieve it.

I put three questions to the Minister. First, will he confirm that the forecasts in the final statement will be contextual only and not determinative nor taken by the planning system as being determinative, and that promoters will be free to take their own view of need? Secondly, what steps will the Government take to bring down electricity costs and accelerate grid connections so that ports can invest in green infrastructure rather than being held back by policy-driven costs? Thirdly, how does this document fit in with the Chancellor’s ambition, which she stated in a Written Statement on 17 March this year? I quote:

“To reset the UK’s regulatory landscape and achieve this vision, the government will implement a package of reforms over the Parliament that focus on … tackling complexity and reducing the burden of regulation, including that the government will commit to reducing the administrative costs of regulation for businesses by 25% by the end of this Parliament”.


Is the port sector going to benefit from that pledge and why does it not appear in this document as a driving consideration?

The port sector needs a framework that provides clarity, consistency and proportion. If the national policy statement delivers these qualities, ports will invest boldly, they will innovate and they will support the growth and resilience that this country needs. But if the statement leaves ambiguity, lacks ambition, constrains investments or piles systemic obligations onto individual schemes, we will deter the very capital on which future prosperity depends.

Looked at as a narrow planning document, this might just work—but as a vision of the ports system that we want to see in this country, it fails systematically and comprehensively. I do not think I am going too far in saying that the tenor of this debate is that the Government should take this away, start again and come back with something that sets a real vision for ports that will serve us well into the future.