National Networks National Policy Statement

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to introduce this short Motion tonight. I think the text of the Motion is pretty clear to noble Lords: in simple terms, I believe that the Government have introduced the latest national networks national policy statement without proper consultation and I fear that it will end in tears.

These NNNPSs have been around since they were set up with the Planning Act 2008 and are supposed to be produced every five years or so. They can be debated in both Houses. The present one was debated in the other place. I think there were 10 Members of Parliament present, and everybody had the feeling that it was being pushed through by the Government. The same legislation basically requires any debate in the Lords to take place within what they call a “relevant period”, otherwise you do not get the benefit of a response from the Minister. I was only told about this particular need for a debate quite recently by the Transport Action Network, for which I am very grateful, but we are actually out of time already.

The Government have not actually designated this NNNPS yet, and I hope to get comments from the Minister in this debate to explore what they are going to do next. Last week, the Government lost a case in the High Court on climate change issues. The case was led by Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth and the Good Law Project. They took legal action over the targets that the Government had put in the NNNPSs, having successfully challenged the previous budgets. The High Court ruled that Britain had breached legislation designed to help reach the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of keeping temperatures within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels, which required a new plan. The court effectively ruled that the NNNPS was illegal.

So my question to the Minister is: what next? Given that surface transport caused over 29% of UK emissions last year, it would be pretty foolish if the Government were to designate—in other words continue with—the NNNPS now. A lawful climate plan will inevitably require a fundamental and radical shift in transport policy, and we have not seen it yet. There is no sign of it. There are many examples that I could go through, but I will not, because a number of colleagues wish to speak. I have noted examples from organisations such as the Institution of Civil Engineers, the House of Commons Transport Committee and a lot of the other organisations that have submitted evidence. They are name-checked in the NNNPS, but just mentioning their names does not actually mean that the Government will do what the particular organisation says that they should do.

The Climate Change Committee’s report to Parliament stressed the importance of a

“systematic review of all current and proposed road schemes”.

That was in 2023. I am wondering where they are; maybe the Minister will be able to tell us. Many things in the Environment Act 2021 have not been translated into the NNNPS. Policy issues on cycling, wheeling, walking et cetera—particular interests of mine—are totally missing.

I have come to the conclusion, as I expect other noble Lords may have, that the Government have got a rather unsavoury record of ignoring any climate change documents or reports—even their own report—if they conflict with other policies. The two that I have come across govern oil production and building more roads. A couple of weeks ago, we had a debate in your Lordships’ House in Committee on the offshore oil and gas Bill. The Minister completely ignored the strong recommendations from the Environment Agency’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee—a statutory maritime advisory committee—not to drill oil in marine protected areas. The Minister totally ignored it, and the Government are going to go ahead. The same comment applies to the Department for Transport and the Climate Change Committee.

So I ask the Minister: what next? I could have divided the House on a Motion to Regret, but I am afraid that that does not solve the problem. If the Minister does nothing and the Government eventually designate this NNNPS, they will end up with multiple court cases and judicial reviews, which will likely stop them in their tracks because they have been defeated in the courts and they have to accept that. The presumption in favour of road building will also have to be looked at and obviously there will need to be changes to some of the planning laws.

The most important thing is for there to be an in-depth review of how the NNNPSs are actually created, and the role of other organisations who have an input, within government and outside. Some debate on them is a necessary part of NNNPSs being produced and they should be debated in both Houses in a proper, structured way.

I shall stop there. I beg to move and look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to support the regret Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, even though I think that regret Motions are pathetic, frankly. At least it means a debate.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

It is better than nothing.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It is better than nothing. As somebody who has watched this Government for a long time now, I cannot believe that they have backtracked on so many of their plans. Actually, they had very few plans to start with, but they seem to have backtracked on all of them about delivering net zero. They seem to not even understand what net zero means.

As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, the Government were taken to court because it is obvious that the UK is going to fail to do its bit to save the planet—and they lost in court because they no longer believe in doing the right thing. They are now fighting another court case because they cut £200 million from the promotion of walking and cycling, a key part of delivering net zero.

I almost think that I—or someone else, possibly on this Bench—ought to write the Ladybird Book of Transport Policy for Climate Change Deniers, because, really, you do need to understand what we are going to see in the future. As has been said, transport accounts for nearly a third of emissions and, despite a million electric vehicles on our roads, those emissions have hardly changed in a decade. All the road building has led to extra cars and longer traffic jams. Instead of switching people away from their cars by creating places to live that are within easy, 15-minute walks of shops and services, this Government have run down bus services and built sprawling suburbs that actually increase the use of cars.

One big reason for the Government doing the wrong thing, rather than the right thing, is the millions that the Conservatives have received in donations from the oil and gas industry. Gas and oil people want drivers to spend longer driving to the shops and to fill up at petrol stations, because that means more money for them. Gas and oil do not really like people cycling or walking—all those cheap, easy things—because those people are not making them money. The big polluters finance Tufton Street think tanks and social media bots, because they want to squeeze as much money out of their planet-killing business as they possibly can.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said that the Government have an unsavoury reputation on climate change. I do not think that it is unsavoury; it is ignorant. I do not understand how you can go through the last few years of hearing what is happening on climate change and still be so ignorant about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

For a few years.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

How many years in Government does the noble Lord want? Maybe a couple of terms. As such, I will focus my next few remarks to those in the next Government, because these national policy statements were Labour’s idea—and they are a really good idea. To make them work, we have to make sure that the Treasury listens and that the next Government get the funding to deliver real change.

When I was the Deputy Mayor of London to Ken Livingstone, I told him that, if we were to be serious about creating more cycling routes, we were going to need hundreds of millions a year. There was a huge shudder of shock around his whole office. It was eventually accepted that, if you want to change things and to get people more safely walking and cycling, you need the sort of money that we might spend on a new road. The truth is, if you build those opportunities, people will take them. We need to imagine a future that is better than what we have now and spend the money building that future.

[Lord Banner (Con)]

My Lords, I have two interests to declare. First, I am a practising Silk. At the planning and environment Bar, I act for a range of parties affected by national policy statements. Secondly, in February this year, I was appointed by the Prime Minister to undertake a review of the processes relating to legal challenges to development consent orders for nationally significant infrastructure projects.

In the course of that review, which is still to report, I have engaged on NSIPs with various stakeholders from all sides of the spectrum, including environmental NGOs, the public sector and the private sector. Obviously, I will not comment on matters within the remit of the review, but I want to draw the House’s attention to one point on which there is broad consensus among the stakeholders. It is not directly relevant to my remit, but it has some relevance to this debate. There is broad consensus that national policy statements need to be kept up to date, and that there have been shortcomings in that respect in recent years. The NPS that we are debating tonight replaces one from 2014. That is the status quo; it is 10 years old. The disbenefits of a national policy statement being out of date include, first, that the function of an NPS—to set the framework for development consent and streamline the consenting process—is undermined if it has been overtaken by events. Secondly, the propensity for and risk of legal challenges is greater if people can point to a mismatch between current circumstances and an out-of-date NPS.

Voltaire probably did not have in mind nationally significant infrastructure projects when he said that the perfect is the enemy of the good, but he might very well have done, because the adage is no less applicable, and possibly more so, in this context than it is in any other. Even if the national networks NPS could be improved with further reviews of the nature the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, suggests, the status quo during the time when it was subject to that review would be the 10 year-old and even further ageing 2014 NPS. I suggest that it may well be better to have a 2024 NPS—which on any view is more up to date than its decade-old predecessor—complete with a commitment to be reviewed within five years or earlier, as the new NPS commits that it should be. That review would be in light of any further environmental policy developments that took place in that five-year period. Is that not better than maintaining the status quo of 2014 while we conduct further reviews in the meantime?