English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord O'Donnell Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

The noble Lord’s proposal would remove public open space for the public benefit, with no right of redress—and it will not do. I can guarantee that those who support this amendment—it looks as though the majority in this House will; I will not—will regret it in the future. What we need is evidence and more thought given to a specific remedy for the situation that we are trying, in a rush, to resolve today. Let us not do it.

[Lord O'Donnell (CB)]

My Lords, I will be brief. First, I am a member of the All England Lawn Tennis Club; I am on the committee.

I will correct something that was said about the existing situation. To be absolutely clear, the courts made it clear that there is no statutory trust on that land, so I am afraid that what the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said was not correct. I do not understand her point about parliamentary process, because this Bill will go to the Commons and then come back. I am confused if, after all my decades of dealing with legislation, I have missed something. I do not get that.

On the point about putting it to the Secretary of State, it is very important that that process means that they have to consult the local community and that the community gets its right to speak. I thought I should briefly say those three things.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Banner, for Amendment 248 and his engagement on this matter. It has absolutely not been a last-minute issue. The noble Lord raised this issue first in the debates on the then Planning and Infrastructure Bill. There has been much engagement between me and the noble Lord—and between him and officials—over many months. Officials and I have also dealt with a large volume of correspondence on the issue.

As the noble Lord set out, and as was discussed during debates on the then Planning and Infrastructure Bill, currently there is no way of release statutory trusts where the original statutory advertisement procedure has not been complied with. The consequence is stark: land can remain bound by a statutory trust in perpetuity, even if that outcome serves today’s communities or the wider public interest. I point out—the noble Lord, Lord Grabiner, has already made this point—that, if the local authority follows the procedure and provides the advertisement, it can release the trust in the first place. This is only a backstop in case that procedure has failed.

The current position risks holding up important developments that may be in the public interest: for example, the building of important new amenities and facilities for the local community. The Government do not believe that historic procedural failures should indefinitely frustrate sensible, beneficial outcomes. In practice, this legal lacuna—I did not know that word until I started working on this, but I do now—can prevent the delivery of much needed homes, community facilities, transport infrastructure or environmental improvements, which may command strong local and national public interest support but are currently blocked by an inflexible legal position.

Since taking office, our Government have been clear that we are builders not blockers, but we are equally clear that development must be responsible, transparent and rooted in the public interest. The amendment would strike that balance very carefully. It would create a clear, lawful mechanism to address historic errors, while ensuring that statutory trusts are discharged only where it is right to do so.

Crucially, the amendment would introduce a rigorous, evidence-based process overseen by the Secretary of State, with strict qualifying conditions, robust publicity requirements and a broad public interest test at its heart. Communities would have clear opportunities to make representations. Environmental and heritage considerations must be weighed, and decisions would be taken transparently and published openly.

The Government are firmly of the view that green and open spaces play a vital role in well-being, recreation, nature recovery and local identity. The amendment fully recognises that value and acknowledges that some parcels of land, due to changes over time, no longer serve their original recreational purpose and may deliver greater public benefit if repurposed in a careful and considered way. By providing a structured route to resolve these cases, rather than leaving them in permanent legal uncertainty, the amendment would restore fairness, unlock stalled opportunities and ensure that decisions about public land were made deliberately, transparently and in the public interest.

While the amendment would provide a fail-safe for very specific instances where statutory procedures had not been followed, the failure to adhere to it is symptomatic of a wider issue regarding the protections for public spaces which requires examination. Existing protections for urban green spaces and recreational land are fragmented, complex and very difficult to navigate. There is no clear comprehensive picture of what land is protected, which can leave communities—and local authorities—struggling to safeguard valued spaces. It makes it harder for those local authorities to operate confidently within the planning system.

To address this, my department is undertaking an internal review of the legislative framework governing public recreational green spaces. The review will clarify current statutory protections, assess how effective and usable they are in practice and consider where the system can be simplified. Over the coming months, we will engage with stakeholders across local authorities, the parks and green spaces sector, as well as the development sector to inform this work, which is expected to map existing legislative protections and establish how each piece of legislation operates and interacts in practice, drawing on evidence gathered from stakeholder engagement. For those reasons, the Government strongly support the amendment, while taking forward work to review the wider framework for protecting recreational green spaces.

Amendment 248D, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and moved by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, would make the exercise of the statutory trust discharge order power conditional on the completion and publication of a UK-wide review of open space availability. While I recognise the importance of protecting public recreational land, the Government cannot support this approach.

The power created by Amendment 248 is a targeted, balanced and proportionate response to a specific legal problem: historic procedural failures under the Local Government Act 1972. These failures have left some land subject to statutory trust in legal uncertainty. The amendment before us would risk delaying or even preventing entirely the use of that narrowly defined power, regardless of the circumstances of the land in question.

The difficulty of the amendment lies in the breadth and uncertainty of what is proposed. “Open space” is defined very widely in existing legislation and policy, covering a broad range of land types and engaging interests across multiple government departments. The amendment does not define the scope, methodology or frequency of the proposed review, leaving it unclear whether such a review would need to be undertaken once or repeatedly before the power could be exercised.

The UK-wide requirement of the amendment would provide a further difficulty. Land, planning and open space policy are largely devolved matters, and a review covering the whole of the United Kingdom would require the agreement and active co-operation of the devolved Administrations, over which the Secretary of State has no direct control. It would therefore be open to factors wholly outside the scope of the Bill to delay or frustrate the use of the power, even where all relevant conditions in England had been met. In practice, the provisions of the amendment would be highly complex, time-consuming and likely to stall the statutory trust discharge regime altogether. For those reasons, while the Government remain committed to the protection of public recreational green space, we cannot accept an amendment that would undermine the effectiveness and legal certainty of this targeted mechanism.

Amendment 249, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, would require the Secretary of State to obtain an express written consent of the relevant local authority before making a statutory trust discharge order following a separate local consultation and reporting process. While I recognise the importance of local engagement and protecting land held for public enjoyment, the Government cannot support this amendment. Amendment 248 is designed to address a very narrow but significant legal problem: historic cases where land remains subject to a statutory trust because correct procedures were not followed when it was sold or appropriated to a different purpose by a local authority. The purpose of Amendment 248 is to close a gap in existing law and allow such trusts to be released where specific conditions are met, including that it is in the public interest to do so. It provides a pragmatic route to resolve those difficulties where existing mechanisms have proved insufficient.

By making local authority consent a legal precondition, Amendment 249 could prevent the new power from being used in precisely the cases it is intended to address. It would turn a backstop statutory remedy into a process that could simply be blocked, even where it would be in the public interest for it to be exercised. Amendment 249 would give local authorities an effective veto over statutory trust discharge orders, even in cases where they no longer own or control the land. The land may have been lawfully sold or transferred decades ago, yet under this amendment a former owner could block discharge regardless of its lack of property interest or liability. Amendment 248 already provides that the Secretary of State must take into account any representations, including those from local authorities, about whether or not the order should be made. Amendment 249 would also duplicate advertisement requirements that are already built into Amendment 248, adding delay and complexity without improving outcomes.

I now turn to the amendments to Amendment 248 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, excluding Amendment 251A, which I will address separately. I am grateful to the noble Lord for the attention he has given to Amendment 248 and for his meeting at very short notice with officials in the department, which I hope he found helpful. Taken together, his amendments would significantly undermine the purpose of Amendment 248 and make the new statutory trust discharge order process extremely difficult to operate in practice. Amendment 248 is intended to provide a pragmatic and proportionate solution to the specific legal problem. The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, would recast that targeted remedy into a much more onerous regime, introducing new substantive tests and requirements that would go significantly beyond addressing the historic defects. In particular, the amendments would require applicants and the Secretary of State to satisfy additional conditions that are not part of the existing statutory trust framework, and which are not necessary to fix the lacuna that Amendment 248 is designed to close. The additional conditions proposed by the noble Lord would extend significantly beyond the provisions of the Local Government Act 1972.

The amendments would also place significant practical barriers in the way of using the new power, introducing mandatory compensatory benefit requirements and expanded and prescriptive publicity obligations. These amendments would bar cases already before the courts, introduce a five year ban on repeat applications and expand the public interest test to require assessment of local open space need and the benefits of refusing an order. This would mean that many legitimate cases could never be resolved through the new route. Rather than reducing legal uncertainty, this would entrench it and encourage further litigation.

Finally, the amendments tabled by the noble Lord would make statutory trust discharge orders rigid and high risk for decision makers, including by preventing orders from ever being amended or revoked once made. Taken together with highly prescriptive procedural requirements, this would deter use of the power altogether. The result would be that Amendment 248 would exist in legislation but would be too rigid and difficult to use, leaving the underlying legal problem unresolved.

Amendment 251A seeks to preserve statutory trust protections where land subject to these protections is transferred between public bodies which intend that the statutory trust will continue. While I thank the noble Lord for raising this issue, the Government do not support this amendment. This particular issue is complex, and the Government need more time to consider it and work through the consequences of changing the law, including the implications for local authorities, national park authorities and wider government priorities. I will ask officials to investigate this issue, and I would welcome any evidence from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that demonstrates when this has been a problem in practice. That will help us work out what the best solution is. If appropriate, we will consider this issue in our review of legislative protections for public recreational green spaces. For all the reasons I have given, while I fully acknowledge the noble Lord’s intentions, I ask him, and the other noble Lords who have submitted amendments, not to press their amendments, except for Amendment 248.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord O'Donnell Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

All that said, I am very keen to continue working with the Minister and her officials, and with Minister Pennycook, and I am genuinely grateful for the engagement on this issue so as to ensure as swift and effective a resolution of this issue as possible. With that in mind, and depending on what the Minister says in winding up this debate, it may be that the reassurances she provides mean that I do not need to press the amendment now, although I really encourage as much pace as possible in dealing with this issue.

[Lord O'Donnell (CB)]

My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 250 because I believe that it is a necessary and proportionate measure to remove a legal blockage to sustainable growth—a blockage that is holding back both our national well-being and our economic prosperity. I declare my relevant interests. On the well-being side, I am a member, unpaid, of the board of the World Wellbeing Movement and co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics. On the economics side, I am a professional economist with decades of experience at the Treasury, and unpaid president of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, I naturally view this issue through the twin lenses of economic growth and fiscal sustainability. Of course, I am a member of the committee of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, which is obviously where I have experience that others can, I hope, learn from.

Regrettably, the decision that this House made in April, that we must exclude our non-financial interests from the register, has led to a degree of misunderstanding and, in some quarters, to unwarranted personal attacks on me—hence my need to put these matters on the record at my first opportunity. This is the first time I have spoken on this issue. I note that I asked the registrar’s office about this on 6 March: I wanted to carry on including my non-financial interests in the register, because they are really important, and I was told that this was not possible. It is ridiculous, so I am stuck with this.

I go back to the point of the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Banner, mentioned all the KCs and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the rest of them have all the legal arguments; I will not even try to rival their expertise. I am an economist—that is what drives me—and I care about well-being. As was said, this amendment responds to the unintended consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Day case. In essence, that judgment created a new and retrospective uncertainty over land ownership, affecting potentially innumerable development sites across the country. This is the important thing to get across. This is important for the economic growth of the country. The Wimbledon example is an important one, but it is only one among a number. The Minister is very aware of the long list of projects—because I sent it to her—that are now held back by this legal shadow. Because the problem is itself retrospective, the remedy must necessarily also be retrospective if we are to restore the legal clarity that the market and our communities so badly need.

I will go to my area of expertise: the real-world effects are best illustrated, to me, by the experience of that much-loved British institution, Wimbledon. I declare again that I have been a long-standing member of its main committee and put this in the register for many years, until that April change. The Day judgment has created significant delay and uncertainty for Wimbledon’s ability to transform the land that has, for more than a century, been a private members’ golf club.

I stress that there are lots of other examples but, in the Wimbledon example, the expansion already has planning permission from the Greater London Authority; it has been upheld by the High Court, yet progress is now halted because of the uncertainty surrounding the Day case. But this is about far more than economics. Wimbledon is a jewel in the crown of British sport. The other Grand Slams are investing heavily in their facilities and the fan experience. For Wimbledon to maintain its place at the pinnacle of world tennis, it must be allowed to evolve as they are. This expansion is crucial to that future. It is not only about elite sport; it is also about national well-being. The proposed development would turn qualifying week into a festival in its own right, offering three weeks of world-class tennis and community celebration rather than two. It would enhance the experience for the thousands who camp out each year in the queue. Let us remember that Wimbledon is not a profit-maximising organisation: 90% of our surplus goes back into the LTA and the other 10% goes into improving Wimbledon every year. So it would allow fans to have a better experience and capitalise on one of the country’s finest examples of soft power by extending the celebration of Britishness that the nation holds so dear.

Yet, perhaps most importantly of all—I stress this to my colleagues to my right—the benefits extend to the environment and local community. This is not an act of overdevelopment but of restoration, environmental enhancement and the opening up of new green space. Let me be specific: the project will convert 27 acres of private land into publicly accessible park land—a 50% increase in green space for local residents. It would restore the historic Capability Brown Wimbledon Park lake, which is terribly silted up at the moment, creating a circular boardwalk and reviving a landscape feature of national heritage. It would help to deliver a substantial biodiversity net gain, with the planting of at least 1,500 new trees and the creation of rich habitats for wildlife. These arguments were made at the GLA planning stage, and the environmental case won the day. As someone who massively believes in green spaces and in well-being, I am afraid that I have to disagree with those who think that somehow this development will do the opposite of that. It is not—it will make things better.

I urge the Government to swiftly find a way to support the amendment, which is a modest and necessary measure to restore certainty, enable sustainable growth, strengthen our national well-being and help to deliver the kind of forward-looking development that future generations will thank us for. I honestly do not understand why the Government, who accept that the current situation needs to be changed via legislation, cannot bring forward at Third Reading in their own wording, taking account of any issues that they may have, something that can solve these problems.

I have experience of these matters; there are more there are more than 50 brilliant and excellent draftsmen in the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. Every department has additional drafters. It is not beyond the wit of man to do this reasonably quickly. When I am told that we might do this in some future legislation, I remember the words of my successor as Cabinet Secretary, alas, the late Jeremy Heywood. When faced with issues like this, he would say to me, “Gus, we need to get a grip”. He was right. Can we please get a grip, get on with it and solve this problem, which will enhance national well-being, improve the environment and stimulate economic growth?

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I do not want to take up the time of the House at this stage of the evening, but I want to speak against Amendment 250 in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Banner, Lord Pannick, Lord Grabiner and Lord O’Donnell. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, in one respect, that it is a backwards step for what the register of interests now represents, in that non-financial interests absolutely ought to continue to be highlighted. We have just had a prime example of that tonight, if I may say so.

I was slightly nervous about saying anything against such an illustrious line-up as the noble Lord, Lord Banner, has lined up, but my understanding of the situation is not that, as the noble Lord, Lord Banner, tried to persuade me, we are all misunderstanding the position. I do not think we are; there is a real need for this to be gripped, but this is not the way to do it. This amendment has caused substantial concern that it erodes the protection of green space and removes long-standing public rights to green spaces, where the land is sold by local authority, with or without consultation. For the noble Lord, Lord Banner, to say that a judicial review is the way forward, frankly, misrepresents the position of many local communities, which are absolutely incapable of bringing a judicial review, either by degree of organisation or financially.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord O'Donnell Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I will add three completely new points from a health perspective, and one that may I think have been covered.

The first point is that we are going through a major transition in thinking about health and in the way to create health and prevent diseases. People may well be aware that the links between nature and health and activity have been known for years, going back to the Greeks—and one could quote them. The key difference today, which I think has not yet come out yet, is the quality of the evidence that we have about that impact. It is due to researchers, including my noble friend Lady Willis, that we now understand the physiological evidence about the impact—how being in nature actually affects the body, and the biological mechanism behind this. Importantly, as the noble Baroness has shown herself and as she quoted earlier, there is evidence that green space in urban areas is even more important than in rural areas. That is the first really significant point—that the quality of evidence is now there.

The second point is that the health system is starting to act on that quality of evidence. If I say that the evidence for this is now as good as for many medicines, based on the same sort of considerations and published in the same sort of journals, there is no reason why we should not be thinking, as many people are, about how we go beyond pills. I need just to state a very simple point —that last year alone 8 million people were prescribed anti-depressants. That is an astonishing number, and this is one area where one might well think that being in nature and the activities involved would have an impact.

The third area I want to point to is government policy. It is very clear, is it not, that the new NHS plan, with its transitions from hospital to community and treatment to prevention, describes that it needs to create the sort of healthy environments that this amendment and others in this group envisage. I should have said at the beginning that I have put my name to Amendment 206 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, which I am particularly speaking to. There are some very strong health considerations here that are different from those that have been around before. There is policy, there is evidence and there is action actually starting to happen within our health systems. It seems to me that, if this Government have the ambition to leave the country in a better place than they found it—beyond simply numbers of housing units—then they need to catch this tide and make sure that there is implementation and that we are creating healthy homes and neighbourhoods.

I shall add one final point, which has already been mentioned, about the importance of allotments and of growing—the importance not just of being engaged with nature and physical activity but of being engaged in social networks and in the activity that surrounds that. These things come together to create healthy neighbourhoods and at the heart of it are the sorts of measures that have been set forward in all these amendments.

[Lord O’Donnell (CB)]

My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, my former colleague, as someone who has championed the idea that well-being should be the goal of government, and also as a former Permanent Secretary to the Treasury—I think I will take a slightly different slant on a number of these things. First, the evidence that green spaces make a big impact on well-being and mental health is huge, far beyond what has been said here. If one looks at the book by our own noble Lord, Lord Layard, one will find, on pages 237 to 239, a good analysis of this. There is a lot of economic evidence that looks at the difference between house prices where you have green spaces and where you do not, and looks at what we call hedonic price indices. The interesting part of that is that the price differences underestimate the impact of the green space on the well-being of the occupants—it is even bigger than those economic numbers would suggest, so I am a massive fan of taking account of the well- being effects in planning of what we do.

The Permanent Secretary to the Treasury says to me, “Yes, but let’s be very careful about unintended consequences here”. If we end up with lovely inner city green spaces with allotments and all the rest of it that no one can afford, all the poor will end up in the only places they can afford and they will end up with more commuting time, which is extremely bad for their well-being and their mental health—and then we will have problems. There is a solution to this, which I hope the Minister will take on board. The Treasury has a wonderful thing called the Green Book supplementary guidance on well-being, which can actually analyse all those things. I am prepared to bet that doing more on green spaces would give us a big net benefit. However, I do not know, and without that analysis of the unintended consequences on housing supply—where it is and the distributional impact—who knows? All I would stress is: please get the Treasury guys to do some work on this, using the latest estimates, because I think it will strongly back up your case.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I start by apologising for not being able to take part at Second Reading; I just plead other parliamentary responsibilities. I find myself in a position where everything that needs to be said has already been said but not yet by everyone, so I will take that little proviso and carry on anyway. I strongly support Amendment 206 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, to which I have added my name. I very strongly support all the other amendments in this group for the reasons that have already so eloquently been outlined by others in the Committee.

Amendment 206 is a little different, in that it would require every development corporation to prioritise green and blue spaces for all communities. We have heard about the benefits of green spaces but not so much about the benefits of blue spaces, although there are many. The difference blue spaces make to all communities has been highlighted by several noble Lords, with strong evidence to back up their claims. These spaces are parks, woodlands, riversides, lakes and ponds—they are not luxuries but essential infrastructure for biodiversity and climate resilience, with proven benefits for public health, air quality and, importantly, community cohesion, all leading to healthier, happier lives, especially for those on the poorest rungs of society.