Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Al Pinkerton Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to draw attention to the thousands of homes that have planning permission and have not been built, including the 11,000 we have in Somerset. While I welcome what the Government have said about bringing those forward, a real “use it or lose it” power is missing from the Bill. The Liberal Democrats have tabled new clause 3 so that, unless those homes are built, the local authority would have powers to take over the land and to build the houses. That would ensure a real “use it or lose it” penalty for those that do not build out the permissions that they have.

Pitting communities and nature as the enemies of progress and development would be a massive mistake. Taking power away from councillors is taking it away from local people, and taking power away from Members of Parliament is taking it from the hands of the people who elect us to this place. Both are examples of centralisation and “Whitehall knows best” thinking, in which local views count for little and nature for even less. There is another way to build the hundreds of thousands of homes we need. It is to invest in 150,000 social homes per year to pump-prime our industry, give communities the funding for the jobs, transport, green space and energy infrastructure that our constituents want, build the new GP and healthcare facilities before building the houses and homes our communities will need, and build them in ways that will support rather than harm those communities.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, particularly as it sounds as though he is coming to his conclusion, but I want to give him the best possible chance to talk about new clause 115. My constituency of Surrey Heath is made up of small villages divided by green-belt land and Ministry of Defence property. Without the protections afforded by new clause 115, I fear that the distinctiveness and sense of place of those villages will be gradually lost. Can he comment on how new clause 115 would protect the distinctiveness of place?

[Gideon Amos]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the point he makes. It is vital to protect the character of existing places and communities that are so valued, which is why we want a more locally driven approach to assessing housing numbers and local plan making.

Finally, if we build the GP surgeries, the healthcare and the other infrastructure before the homes, we will be building in the interests of our communities, not against them. That is the kind of community-led development that Liberal Democrats want and that our amendments would help to bring about, and I humbly urge Members to support them.