Draft Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2026

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 General Committees

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to say a few words. Can we first admit that the Government’s policy of building all these houses is not going terribly well, and that it is not a great success strategically? Nobody in the house building industry or in local government believes that the Government will achieve their target.

I do not hold the Minister himself responsible for this confusion, but the question at the centre of my remarks is: what do we mean by the word “strategy”? I have worked on this subject during my time as a Member of Parliament. I chaired the Public Administration Committee—and then, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee—for nearly 10 years, during which we produced a stream of reports about strategic thinking and strategy in Government.

At the end of the last Parliament, the Liaison Committee, which I chaired at the time, produced a report about how Select Committees could help and enable Government to have more strategic thinking behind their policy and implementation, and we recommended a definition for strategy. In this Government’s response to the report, they said that they would adopt that definition, but I do not see any evidence that they have.

These spatial strategies are, in truth, plans, not strategies. A strategy is an active process—a doing word. When someone creates a strategy, they do lots of planning, and lots of plans will go into it, but a strategy constantly evolves in the light of events and changes in circumstances. One of the reasons why so many things go wrong in Government is that people think that they are being strategic, but actually they are just writing down a plan and forgetting about it, rather than thinking rationally.

The Government response to the Liaison Committee’s report said:

“Strategy in government is the coherent mobilisation of capabilities, levers, resources and partnerships towards successfully achieving public policy outcomes.”

Where is the evidence of that in, for example, the Government’s policy on house building? In my constituency, there is an ambitious project to build 7,500 new homes. I am grateful to the Minister for receiving delegations making representations about that.

[The Chair]

Order. Sorry to interrupt, but we need to stay within the scope of the regulations; talking about individual strategies and individual constituencies goes beyond that. Could we stay within the scope of the regulations, please?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I think I am within the scope of the regulations, Ms Jardine, because the amendments relate to the use of the term “strategy” in the primary legislation. I do not think I am out of order, but I will not dwell on the matter or test your patience. I have made the point.

[The Chair]

Order. If you could wrap up and ask your question, that would be helpful.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am making a speech, which I am entitled to do.

In the case I mentioned, where there is supposedly a strategy, we seem to be planning to build a garden community without the crucial link road being in place before the house building starts. That is a big problem. Will the Minister take back to the Department the question of whether the Government agree about what “strategy” means? Are they integrating the much more agile definition of strategy into the way they operate, so that we get better public policy outcomes? That is what the whole process was intended to achieve.

Incidentally, the Minister might draw on the national strategy playbook drawn up by the Cabinet Office in the first 12 months of this Government, which is apparently being implemented across Government. I do not feel that this type of reform is reaching into the entrails of his Department, which is responsible for so much that requires strategic thinking.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

We have, to the extent that marine plans impact on spatial development strategies; I will outline the relationship when I respond to the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes. To be clear, the regulation power that we are talking about is a simple notification requirement on SDSs to ensure joined-up plan making. The Crown Estate is involved with marine plans, obviously, and I will set out how many there are across the country and how that relates, but this is a simple change in scope.

I touched on brownfield land. I want to make clear where the democratic input comes from and who has to produce spatial development strategies: combined authorities, both mayoral and non-mayoral; combined county authorities, both mayoral and non-mayoral; upper-tier county councils; and unitary authorities. All will have a duty to produce a spatial development strategy. Those authorities, as I said, are known as strategic planning authorities.

The Government, however, will be able to group any of those authorities together to jointly produce a spatial development strategy, through a committee known as a strategic planning board. In those areas where, for example, a mayor is not in place and there is not an obvious geography to take forward an SDS, a combination of authorities will be put together to come up with an SDS through a strategic planning board. Each authority will have a voice on the planning board.

I should touch on the geography of an SDS. As hon. Members will know, in February and March the Government undertook a national consultation seeking views on proposed geographies for which spatial development strategies should be produced. That included proposals about which authorities will be grouped together under a strategic planning board. We intend to publish a response to that consultation in the summer.

Regulations will be needed to establish each strategic planning board. Before the regulations are laid, the affected authorities must be formally consulted. We intend to begin laying regulations to establish those boards after the summer recess, as I said; at that point, we will confirm the geographies. Local people will have a chance to input into the strategies, whether they come through the individual authorities involved or the mayoral link.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes knows, marine planning is the process for managing the use of marine resources in a sustainable and co-ordinated manner. It ensures that the right activities happen in the right place, at the right time and in the right way. To encourage sustainable development, marine plans guide those who use and regulate the marine area, while considering the environment, economy and society.

Marine plans operate alongside land-use planning systems to ensure a holistic approach to managing the coastal and marine environments. The six marine plans in England cover 11 marine plan areas. I come back to the specific change we are making through this amendment: it is just a notification—no veto is involved on the part of the strategic planning authority. It is being made so that we can ensure that, in areas where a marine plan abuts a spatial development strategy area, there is co-ordination and that the marine plan can be taken account of in decision making by the strategic planning authority producing the SDS.

I consider these to be simple, straightforward, minor and consequential amendments. We will have a chance to debate more fully the more substantive amendments that come when we establish the new strategic plan-making system.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Will the Minister give way?

[Matthew Pennycook]

The right hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not take a sideline into a philosophical discourse on the meaning of a strategy or of a report that I do not think he named and I do not think pertains to my Department. We are introducing a system of strategic planning, on which I think there is widespread consensus across the House.

The removal of any effective mechanism for cross-boundary co-operation has caused a variety of issues. The duty to co-operate does not work effectively and we have to put it back in place. The draft regulations allow us to do that. On that basis, we will have a series of SDSs that provide a high-level housing growth and infrastructure framework.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

rose—

[Matthew Pennycook]

If the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention is about the actual regulations that we are debating, I will give way.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

It is about the draft regulations, because they include the word “strategy”. The Minister cannot escape the consequences of that. The report to which I referred was a Liaison Committee report—

[The Chair]

Order. The strategy was debated during the progress of the Bill through Parliament. It is not consequential to the draft regulations.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

It is a whole of Government report.

[Matthew Pennycook]

If the right hon. Gentleman wants to write to me about the whole of Government report that he cites—I do not think that he has mentioned the title—I will happily consider some of the lessons learned from it and how they might apply to my Department. On that basis, I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.