Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Teverson and Baroness Coffey

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra for signing my Amendment 185. This amendment was originally in a separate group but, for the benefit of the Committee, I put it into what I would call the odds and sods group—I am not suggesting that any of the amendments are odd or, indeed, that any noble Lords are sods. Nevertheless, this is about addressing a particular situation where it is right that Members of Parliament should be calm, considered, important consultees on any nationally significant infrastructure projects that are proposed in their constituency. Many constituents fully expect Members of Parliament to have opinions on such matters. I appreciate that, at times, many Members of Parliament will say that they have no say on planning because it is a matter for the council. Well, of course, with NSIPs, it is different: it is a matter for the Secretary of State, who may delegate. It is therefore important that Members of Parliament have, in effect, an automatic right to participate in the examination.

The other thing—this came up for me when I used to be an MP—is that it is not always straightforward when modifications to NSIPs are made once consent has already been granted. That part of the process tends to just fly by with very little awareness but can be hugely significant. There is limited resource for MPs compared to, say, councillors, who can access their council officers in local authorities. For me, this would be a helpful check in both ways: first, being guaranteed not only to be notified of the original application and being able to speak at the various examinations but also to be made fully made of subsequent changes. I am very conscious that noble Lords may suggest that this is a barrier; it is not. It is about empowering the rights of local communities through the inclusion of their Member of Parliament.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 185J, which is on the GDPR, the general data protection regulation, which I am sure we all have to deal with on the internet every day when we make an inquiry on anything. It is around the issue of transparency versus data regulation. As we have talked about before, one of the key things about the planning system is that it has to have public confidence. One of the key ways that it has public confidence is through transparency. When that transparency disappears, it becomes a real issue. This is one of the conflicts that has come out between planning and GDPR.

It really came about in 2017, when Basildon Council—which I do not know well, I have to admit—received a £150,000 fine for disclosures that it made of personal information during a planning application. It was a major case, clearly, as reflected in the fine, but it was due to the failure of the council to redact certain personal information in that planning decision and procedure. The reaction to that from local authorities generally was to go into panic mode and decide that—quite rightly, as far as council tax payers were concerned—they did not want to be seen to be risking public money by making mistakes on procedural issues on planning and by contraventions of the GDPR.

Having done some research on this, as far as I can see, I think that this is the only example or incidence ever of a significant GDPR fine for planning on a local authority. However, I have come across in my local community people who have suffered from local authorities, in terms of planning, particularly in the area of enforcement, going through a process of overredaction or restricted disclosure—in fact, blanket non-disclosure on a number of occasions. This means that transparency is disappearing. People are often unable to find out what is happening in terms of enforcement cases, meaning that community confidence in that procedure and its outcomes is lost. There is also a definite inconsistency between local authorities in how this is applied.