UK Infrastructure: 10-year Strategy

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for the question and for bringing that to my attention—I did not know about that decision. I will very happily go away and look at that. We have tried to engage extensively with the devolved Governments to ensure that there is strong alignment between the strategy and what they are doing. We will continue to do that as we move into implementation, for example through the Council of the Nations and Regions. I am happy to go and talk to my colleague the Chief Secretary about how NISTA can play a role to secure that. We have put substantial amounts of capital investment into Northern Ireland as a result of the spending review. Clearly, we want to make sure that that is spent in the right way and achieves the right objectives, so I will very happily take that back for him.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement from the Minister about a much more joined-up and rational approach to infrastructure. It has been long called for and is very much welcomed. I also welcome NISTA’s commitment to ensuring that infrastructure developers are going to take account of biodiversity protection and delivery. I was delighted when NISTA’s predecessor discovered climate change, and the fact that it has now discovered biodiversity is even more welcome.

I also am very pleased to see that the Government are committed to the land use framework approach to spatial issues. But a fair number of existing infrastructure schemes are already in progress and decisions are being made on a day-by-day basis, and government departments across the piece are now preparing spatial strategies of all sorts. We have housing spatial strategies, transport spatial strategies, energy spatial strategies—everybody has a spatial strategy, but we have not yet got the land use framework in place that gives them join-up and integration. So when do the Government intend to make their hand clear on the land use framework approach? I am concerned, as I said, that by the time it arrives and is then implemented at national, regional and local level, it will be too late for many of the decisions on infrastructure that are currently being made.

Secondly—and more of this anon, tomorrow—in my view, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill does not take a sufficiently clear approach to a land use framework approach. In fact, any concept of land use framework is singularly absent in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which seems not to be as joined up as this admirable strategy is. Perhaps the Minister would care to respond on that.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for her support for NISTA and the spatial planning elements of that. I do think that the spatial side of that is really important, as she says, to make sure that infrastructure is not just built in isolation but focuses on building communities and looks across the piece and integrates national, regional and sector-level planning. I do not have any news for her today on the land use framework, and I certainly hear what she says about the Planning Bill. I do not have anything to add today to what is already known, but I will make sure that, when we do, she is one of the first people to know.