English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I will introduce Amendment 141B in my name. This amendment is designed to help address perceptions that economic growth and environmental growth are in competition with each other. Tony Juniper of Natural England said it as eloquently as anyone could:

“we need to ensure that Nature and the economy are partners rather than seen as choices. That means weaving Nature recovery into the growth planning up front—the cheapest point at which to invest in Nature, and the one that also yields the biggest returns”.

In essence, this amendment calls for the Secretary of State to publish a local authority guide to constructing a win-win: best practice in growing the natural economy as part of the growth plans, and how nature-based solutions and easy mitigations to protect wildlife can help local economics.

The amendment covers a range starting with responsibilities to individual wild animals and birds under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, which was picked up by the Animal Sentience Committee as something that was slightly missing when we discussed the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. I cannot help mentioning my beloved bird-safe design of buildings as a specific example of something that might be covered. Just as a reminder to those who might have missed the fun and games on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, buildings that are poorly designed in their use of glass and light can pose a serious threat to birds and are thought to kill around 30 million a year in the UK. Simple tweaks to the design of buildings in the planning stages can make them much safer to birds at no cost at all. But not many people know this, so guidance is necessary. Local authorities can use that guidance as they wish.

The amendment goes on to cover broader responsibilities to the environment and natural world. It would carry best practice advice on all the environmental services that can be harnessed to reduce flooding and pollution and to provide green spaces—all opportunities that can help local authorities to reach environmental as well as economic targets. So many developments that have gone badly wrong at the interface between economic and environmental growth could have been entirely turned around if, at the very outset of planning, the right expertise had been applied. It could make all the difference if a guide to best practice was a necessary part of the pack given to support local authorities. Without it, more avoidable issues might arise to the detriment of both the economics and the environment.

I completely recognise that I am not a drafter of legislation and that this amendment is very roughly worded. I anticipate that the Minister will say that the schedule already allows the Secretary of State to publish any guidance that they want, but I hope that the Government grasp this opportunity to put forward their own amendment to the Bill that commits to publishing a best practice guide that shows that they do not believe that protecting wildlife and helping nature is an opposing aim to wanting economic growth and that helps local authorities to see how both can be done together in a virtuous circle.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I will be very brief. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman of Steventon, and to recollect with great fondness the debate on bird-safe buildings. The Committee will probably be pleased to hear that I will not go further, but please, if noble Lords were not there, they should read it—is really important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak to Amendment 159 and a number of other amendments in this group. I begin by reassuring the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that he is not ploughing a lonely furrow. I would have signed his amendment if I could have caught up with myself, among many other things. Last night—or this morning; I have lost track—we were talking about these issues in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. As was evident there, I am sure we can get a similar head of steam for this Bill, and I am we can build up a head of steam when we get to Report, if it is necessary.

In the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, I was pushing very hard for England to have a play sufficiency strategy at the national level, focused not so much on the formal team sports arrangement, like the noble Lord, but on the places where young people can simply go out, run around, climb a tree and all those sorts of things. That is something I am certainly very keen to pursue.

However, I am now going to make the Whip very happy. It is not something I say very often, so I hope the Whip has noticed. Although this is a very large list of amendments, many of them have the same intention as Amendment 159, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman of Steventon, has kindly attached her name. As the explanatory statement says, this

“broadens the list of health determinants and health outcomes”.

There is a large number of amendments here, and I will leave it to the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, to explain the technicalities, rather than us going through all this twice—because she is definitely the expert in this space.

I tabled this amendment because health experts came to me and said that the Government’s wording is not right, and that they are not up to date with the latest ways of approaching and talking about these issues to make sure that they are not missing anything out. I very much hope the Minister will be prepared to work with interested people to make sure that the Bill is up to date with the latest thinking about public health, because it is surely important to ensure that mayors and strategic authorities start from the right place on public health.

I will devote most of my time to Amendment 168 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and to which I have attached my name, giving mayors the ability to carry out their functions regarding the display of advertising, transferring the powers under Section 220 of the Town and Country Planning Act to mayors and local authorities so they consider the impact of advertising on public health, and enabling them to regulate the content of advertisements deemed to have an adverse impact on local health and likely to exacerbate inequalities in health outcomes. This is an underconsidered area in which so much of the rest of the world is progressing, while we are not.

I have spoken before about how Sheffield, for example, with a visionary public health leader, has taken real steps to control the advertising occurring on council-owned billboards, et cetera. But, as I said, we are way behind. The excellent campaign group, Adfree Cities, charts how there are now 1,300 towns and cities around the world that have banned billboard advertising. Most recently, Amsterdam banned adverts for fossil fuels, flights, meat, and other harmful and high-carbon products.