Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. I declare my interest as honorary president of National Energy Action, vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities, and as an officer of the water and flooding all-party parliamentary groups.

I have to ask where the interests of rural England lie in this Bill. The Bill envisages virtually no benefits for rural areas—quite the reverse. Rural communities are seen as the vehicle through which to deliver the Government’s infrastructure and energy policies. Combined with the fact that compulsory purchase compensation is dramatically reduced and curtailed, and that the power to object to a planning application is severely limited, it represents a full assault on rural communities.

The Government’s clean energy policies specifically disadvantage rural dwellers. The standing charge on energy bills is used to pay for future energy structures in a way not allowed by other utilities. The standing charge is the part of the energy bill that the householder cannot control. It is already high, and no doubt it will go higher.

The Government’s clean energy policy will also take 10% of farmland and 10% of fisheries out of production, which will inevitably have an impact on food security. The compulsory compensation provisions in the Bill need to be revisited. I urge the Government to proceed wherever possible by agreement with the landowner, and not to remove the requirement to carry out pre-application consultation on a proposed project with landowners and occupiers of the land, and not to remove the hope value. Villages and rural communities are in need of small, affordable one or two-bedroomed homes, not the three, four or five-bedroomed homes currently being offered. New build is attractive to developers as it is free of VAT. One possibility is for the Government to consider switching how VAT is charged: to put 20% VAT on new build and take the VAT off renovations and repairs of older buildings. That alone would revolutionise communities, with housing stock being refurbished, with better insulation and energy provision.

The issue of building on functional flood plains must be addressed, along with the end to the automatic right to connect, so easily achieved with the implementation of Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. When we considered the levelling-up Bill, we were told that that was not the appropriate Bill for the measure. When we considered the Water (Special Measures) Bill, we were told that that was not appropriate, and that the Bill before us was the appropriate home for it. So I hope that the Government will consider supporting that.

On improvements to the Bill, I seek government support in a number of areas: implementing, as mentioned, Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010; ending the automatic right to connect to inadequate pipes; ending building on functional flood plains, particularly in zone 3b areas; implementing property flood resilience measures where buildings are built on functional flood plains; creating transparent conditions for planning approvals and consents; and envisaging a role for internal drainage boards in the planning process and in the prevention of floods. I will also seek to amend the Reservoirs Act, particularly the de minimis rules in that Act permitting the building of small reservoirs on farms and golf courses.

The Government have not published statistics on the number of houses built on functional flood plains since 2022. The statistics for 2021-22 show that in England, 7% of new residential addresses were in flood zone b, described by the Environment Agency as its best estimate of areas of land at risk of flooding. I put it to Ministers that any development in zone 3b should be resisted. When in opposition, they supported an amendment to the levelling-up Bill on not building on flood plains. I am hoping that that support will be repeated in this Bill, or perhaps the Government might even bring forward their own amendment to achieve the same end.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

In Committee, we will we raise several vital issues to protect our environment, to unlock housebuilding and to enhance infrastructure. I look forward to hearing the contributions of noble Lords as we work our way through the Bill and consider ways to improve it. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted that we have reached Committee, and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on having tabled the first amendment for debate. I echo many of her comments and those of my noble friend Lady Scott. I greatly enjoyed the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt; it is great to see him in his new position. We very much enjoyed working with him when he was on the Front Bench, and we look forward to working with him in his new place.

My concern is not that I do not want to see the critical infrastructure and housing that we need—particularly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, in rural areas. In fact, I would propose to add a little “subsection (e)” to her existing Amendment 1, to protect the countryside from overdevelopment, as well as to protect and promote food security; those issues should be at the heart of the Bill.

I was delighted to hear on “Farming Today” this morning—I obviously had an early start—the CPRE mention the protection it would like to see for affordable homes. It mentioned in its briefing that the current definition of affordable homes is not accurate and should be revisited. Can the Minister—with whom I look forward to collaborating through the passage of the Bill—say whether the Government are minded to do that? The plea from the CPRE—which I believe is appropriate to Amendment 1, and particularly to a hypothetical “subsection (e)”, which I may bring forward on Report if the amendment is brought back—is that, to protect the countryside, it would like a commitment from the Government to use brownfield land first. I wonder whether the Minister would agree to that. In the CPRE’s view:

“England has space for 1.2 million homes on previously developed land”.


The benefit of building in this type of area is:

“These homes would: be close to jobs, schools, and transport connections; regenerate town centres and urban communities; protect green spaces and farmland from development”.


My concern is that, without an amendment such as a hypothetical little “subsection (e)” to protect the countryside and food security, we risk trampling over the countryside and greenfield in a mad dash to build houses at pace.

The CPRE also says, quite rightly, that there is a role for planning. As a one-time Member of the other place, if there were a development in my constituency that looked as though it was going to be wildly unpopular with a village or rural community, I would always urge the developers to meet at the earliest opportunity with parish councils before the development got into the public domain. I believe that there should be—this view is also shared by the CPRE—a clear role for local planning committees in the context of the Bill and that the role of parish councils should be cherished and strengthened. Without that, we would remove grass-roots democracy.

I very much enjoyed the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on the environmental recovery programme, which is often at some distance from the damage being done. If Part 3 is to remain, I hope that it will cover the issues that were addressed successfully in the pilot project in rural North Yorkshire—the Slowing the Flow at Pickering flood scheme—where we have effectively protected the development downstream by having not a major reservoir but a small reservoir. The construction of bunds, alongside other projects such as chopping down trees and growing trees in appropriate places, has allowed us to slow the flow. It is that type of imaginative nature solution—working with nature by, for example, planting trees in appropriate places—that can achieve flood resilience and flood defences, while also not contributing to flooding going forward. I hope that the Government might be mindful of protecting the countryside and farmland for the food security that is urgently needed, while also strengthening grass-roots democracy in the way I have suggested.

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I am sympathetic to these amendments, but I am also very sympathetic to what the Government are trying to achieve in getting things built.

My colleagues and I have been at the other end of this telescope in communities trying to build things and get things done. We are now at year 41 and probably nearly a thousand projects in—some have been very small; others, such as the Olympics, became quite big. You get a perspective from practice on all that, which might be helpful to this discussion. Many years ago, we came across the challenge of what we call the two Ds: democracy and delivery. What I discovered many years ago with an East End group of people, on a failing group of housing estates where everything was failing constantly, was that local people were fed up to the back teeth with endless chatter and endless promises by councillors, when nothing seemed to happen. We only really became credible in Bromley-by-Bow, and trust began to emerge, when we delivered our first nursery with local parents and their children, which made a difference to their lives, and began to take over a derelict park where people were injecting every day in a completely dysfunctional situation.

It might be just worth me sharing the reasons why we made certain long-term choices. When I arrived in Tower Hamlets in the early 1980s, it was profoundly dysfunctional. The schools did not succeed, and the roads did not get swept. Some 97% of everything was run by the state, and it was a terrible mess. I was a local clergyman arriving in a rundown church; 12 old people sat where they had always sat in a 200-seater church, and it looked as though the dead had been carried out and no one had noticed. I had £400 in the bank. The little problem for me was to ask myself: what on earth can I do about this? The answer was: I do not have the faintest idea. As a Yorkshireman, my initial instinct was to do a runner; it is all too much for me. Phillip, the Jewish headteacher across the road at the primary school, was retiring early because it had become too much for him, so I thought, “This is me in a few years’ time, falling off my trolley”—I was 29 then.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

26: Leave out Clause 4 and insert the following new Clause—
“Applications for development consent: consultation with Category 3 persons(1) In the Planning Act 2008—(a) in section 44 (categories of persons to be consulted), omit subsections (4) to (6);(b) in section 56 of the Planning Act 2008 (notifying persons of accepted application), after subsection (9) insert—“(10) The Secretary of State must issue guidance to applicants about how to identify persons within Category 3 (within the meaning of section 57) for the purposes of complying with their duty under subsection (2)(d) so far as relating to such persons.(11) The guidance must be published in such manner as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.”;(c) in Schedule 12 (application of Act to Scotland: modifications), omit 30 paragraph 5(c).(2) In the Localism Act 2011, omit section 135(8).”Member’s explanatory statement
This reinstates the requirement to consult with category 1 and 2 persons.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak to the amendments in this group, and I thank my noble friend Lady Coffey for signing a number of them. The reason I asked for this group to stand alone is to have an opportunity for a short debate relating to the changes in Clauses 4 and 5 that the Government have brought in at quite a late stage and to understand the background to those changes.

In summing up on the previous group, the Minister referred to the guidance and perhaps she might be able to elaborate on that, subject to what I am going to say. The Bill removes the requirement on a developer under the Planning Act 2008 to carry out pre-application consultation on a proposed project. That will, I understand, remove category 1 and 2 persons—that is, the owners and occupiers of the land. While I understand the Government’s need and desire to speed up the delivery of infrastructure, removing the duty to consult raises major concerns among the agricultural community. As we have established in previous debates on earlier groups, the consultation process is essential and can speed up the process. It is essential for both landowners and occupiers directly impacted by any project and for the developer. This process enables the developer to gain essential feedback from landowners and occupiers who will be directly impacted.

I am sure the Minister would agree that the earliest possible consultation and dialogue would allow a landowner or occupier to understand how they might be impacted by a project and to seek changes at the earliest opportunity to mitigate that impact, such as changing the location of a pylon. As my noble friend Lady Coffey stated, pylons and other major critical infrastructure impacted by this Bill will have a big impact on the farming community. Once you are at the stage of a statutory consultation, when the application for the scheme goes to PINS, it is too late to get any change to the scheme.

The Government have included an amendment, I understand, to replace pre-application consultation with guidance to developers around consultation, and the Minister referred to it in summing up the previous debate. Among others, the National Farmers’ Union is deeply concerned that if the guidance is not detailed and prescriptive enough, landowners and occupiers will not be provided with details about schemes and their intended location, and it will not, therefore, be possible to seek changes with the developer to reduce the impact of a scheme on a farm business. Pre-application consultation should be mandatory, not just guidance. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, remarked in the previous group, if you give a developer an inch, they will take more than a mile.

I understand that Clause 4 was added at a late stage in the proceedings in the other place by the Government in Committee. I am trying to understand why the Government and the department brought in these changes, particularly as farming organisations, such as the National Farmers’ Union, would have supported the original drafting of the Bill in respect of pre-application requirements. In their view, it would have struck a better balance between speeding up infrastructure and adequately consulting impacted parties.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendments 26, 27, 32, 35, 39 and 42 were tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I am grateful to her for her amendments, and I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Pinnock, for their comments. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I am afraid that, in this instance, the baby has become so fat that it cannot even get out of the bath, never mind be thrown out.

As I have outlined over the course of this debate, these amendments seek to undo a number of amendments tabled by the Government in the other place to remove the statutory requirement for applicants to consult in the preparation of an application. Given that this significant change was introduced during the Bill’s passage—a point I accept from all noble Lords who have mentioned it—I will outline again the Government’s motivations for making the change.

A particular aspect of concern has been the increasing length of time spent at the pre-application stage, resulting from the way that statutory requirements are being complied with. As outlined, consultation has become a tick-box exercise—the very one I was referring to earlier—that encourages risk aversion and gold-plating. We have therefore concluded that these requirements are now serving to slow schemes down rather than speed them up, and that the consultation taking place is not meaningful to the people involved. It just becomes that tick-box exercise.

In bringing in these changes, we want to speed up the typical period taken to submit applications and further save money in this Parliament’s pipeline of projects. We are committed to sustaining a planning system that encourages high-quality applications and delivers benefits to the nation and local communities. We all know that high-quality applications are those that have been developed through early and meaningful engagement with those impacted, including local authorities, statutory consultees, communities and landowners. Affected individuals will, of course, still be able to object to applications, provide evidence of impacts on them and participate in the process through which applications are examined.

As I have explained, in making this change the Government are clear that this signifies not that consultation and engagement are no longer important but just that the current system is not working well for either developers or communities. Guidance will be forthcoming on how engagement can be undertaken so that applicants can produce high-quality applications. We look forward to engagement on this matter. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, about consultation on consultation—he is right—but, in this case, it is necessary.

The Planning Inspectorate will continue to consider whether an application is suitable to proceed to examination and be examined under statutory timeframes. The guidance will outline best practice—to answer the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I cannot give her any absolute detail yet because, as we said, we are consulting on it, but it will outline the best practice, which will involve pre-application engagement. The Planning Inspectorate, on behalf of the Secretary of State, will continue to issue advice to applicants under Section 51 of the Act and have regard to the extent to which applicants have had regard to the advice. These changes will provide flexibility so that applicants can undertake engagement in the way they consider best for their proposed development in accordance with that guidance. I therefore kindly ask the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for her remarks, and to all who spoke. I meant to give a big shout-out to the clerks in the Public Bill Office. I know how hard our Front Bench and the Government Front Bench are working, but I understand that there are only four clerks in the Public Bill Office, who are assisting us with all our amendments, so I am deeply grateful to them for their assistance in this regard.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and my noble friends Lady Coffey and Lord Jamieson for their support. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made a good point about reforming, not removing. Together with the loss of hope value and the new provisions on the compulsory purchase of land that we will come to later, I find it staggering how shabbily treated farmers and landowners are by this Government. I am sure there will be plenty more opportunities to elaborate on those arguments.

I understand that the Government are consulting on the guidance at the moment, but it is regrettable that we are not in possession of the guidance before we are asked to remove Clause 4, or at least to reintroduce the consultation at pre-application stage of category 1 and category 2 persons. It seems profoundly undemocratic—profoundly rude, in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock—and I will consider whether or not to bring this back at a later stage. But, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 26 withdrawn.