Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Effingham—I almost agreed with some of the things he said. It was quite charming.

For a passionate Green like me, who spent the first 18 years of her life living in a council house, this planning Bill does nothing to make me happy. It trashes the environment, squashes newts and builds houses for the well-off. I want the Government to focus on social housing, and I want a country where people can live in those secure, warm and cheap to rent properties, paddle on clean beaches and swim in clean rivers, and explore water meadows and ancient woodland. Instead, the Government are determined to put a smile on the face of the big developers who funded the Conservatives for decades and are probably lining up to pay for Labour’s next election campaign.

The “trash for cash” approach outlined in Part 3 will be a disaster for nature and for human health, and has to be thrown out. Developers must not be allowed to pay money to destroy natural wealth to boost their private profits. Green councillors up and down the country argue that we want the right house in the right place at the right price, but the Government are giving us the wrong type of house in any old place that the developers want at whatever price the developers feel they can charge to boost their private profits.

I find Part 3 absolutely shocking. The Chancellor has declared that developers will not have to worry about bats, newts and frogs anymore. That is a straightforward betrayal of all the promises made about the target of protecting 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030. Those improvements to habitats and biodiversity simply will not happen under this Government if they pass these measures. I do not understand why they object to good ideas and reject good amendments. Swift bricks, for example, are a brilliantly simple idea, adding only a few pennies on to any new build, so why do the Government object? Why do they not stop objecting to any amendment that is not theirs, make it theirs and just do it?

The Prime Minister has declared war on the blockers and zealots. Who are these people? There are tree-huggers like me, but I am one voice in my local planning system. I do not live in Devon, Shropshire, Northumberland or Norfolk, or the thousands of local areas around the country which are full of these apparent zealots who the Prime Minister does not like. They truth is that they are just ordinary local people who stand up and object when a local woodland is threatened or a river is polluted by an intensive chicken farm. Those ordinary local people use the existing planning system to fight big developers. They try to compete with the builders, who have expensive lawyers and political access.

The Government promise us affordable housing, but that is a very misleading term. I remember the very long debates we had for 16 years in the London Assembly about what it meant—how affordable was “affordable” for a house. When the Government talk about millions for affordable housing, it is mostly a subsidy for developers to build the same houses but sell them at a reduced rate. It gives a lucky few the chance to get on the housing ladder, but it is often at the expense of the taxpayer.

We need to enable councils to build social housing again. Safe, secure, well-insulated housing would solve a lot of social and economic problems. For example, we would have schools where the parents could afford to feed pupils because their energy bills were low. The NHS would have fewer patients sick from malnutrition or from freezing in badly insulated flats, and the jobs market would have well-educated, healthy people to employ.

This is the bit where I try to be nice, so listen carefully: if the Government want Greens and the majority of noble Lords to support the Bill, they should give us guarantees that the current projections for irreplaceable habitats will not be up for negotiation, and that the environmental development plans will include an implementation schedule, enforced by Natural England—if we have to have it as a player—that is subject to judicial review. They should give us a Bill that makes social housing a priority, and give us affordable rents. They should give us a Bill that reduces pollution by removing the automatic right of developers to connect new housing with the sewerage system. Now that really would be worth voting for.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I speak in place of my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She is unable to be here today as she is hosting something that was set up months ago. As a former archaeologist, I am so annoyed by the Government’s attempt to do this. In fact, I have to warn noble Lords that I am going to be annoyed all day, because some of this Bill is absolutely appalling. I therefore very much support Amendment 48. I do not know whether we will vote on it, but I will certainly be there in the Content Lobby if we do.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I tabled my Amendment 50 before the Government tabled their own Amendment 49 in this group. Both seek, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, to leave out Clause 41. It is fair to say that that was the part of the Bill that caused the most concern among heritage groups. We heard in Committee about the concerns raised by bodies including the National Trust, the Heritage Alliance and the Government’s own heritage adviser, Historic England. I am pleased to say that the noble Lord, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, who responded to the debate in Committee and is a man who cares about both our heritage and innovation, very sensibly listened to that chorus of disapproval and undertook to look at this matter again in discussion with other Ministers.

I was therefore very pleased when I saw the government amendment that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, has tabled in this group, which responds to the concerns raised in Committee, both in this House and in another place, and in the representations made by heritage bodies. I also welcome the fact that she and the Heritage Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, have met heritage groups directly to discuss this and other aspects of the Bill. That is very welcome, and I understand that it is the first of a number of round tables that they will hold on this issue.

Heritage and the construction of new infrastructure are sometimes held up to be in competition, which of course they are not. As the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, knows, for instance, from his time as chairman of the Heritage Railway Association, a proper celebration of our past can help to inspire and drive the innovation of the future. As we heard in Committee, if development is done in a way that respects the past and the vernacular of local communities, it then has greater support from those communities and is a much speedier and more welcome thing.

Having seen the government amendment, I will not press my Amendment 50 here on Report. I am glad that the Government have listened to the concerns raised in these debates.