Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord O'Donnell and Baroness Sheehan

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.