Planning, the Green Belt and Rural Affairs

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

My constituency has vast swathes of high-risk flood area—zones 2 and 3—and we see flooding every year; we saw it most notably in 2014, but also in January. Will the right hon. Lady’s planning reforms protect areas at high risk of flooding, so that they are not built on, making our flooding worse?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Edward Leigh)]

Order. We have a lot of speakers to get through, including some maiden speakers, so I urge Front Benchers to make shorter speeches and take fewer interventions. Otherwise, we are not going to get through these maiden speakers.

[Angela Rayner]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will take your advice, and I apologise to Members for the fact that I will not take more interventions.

We have to grapple with these issues and work with those in these areas. Obviously, flooding has been a major issue, and the Government will look at it. It is devastating to people when their homes are flooded, and we have to look at these things in the round when looking at planning.

We will unveil the next generation of new towns, and we will learn the lessons of the past to create safe and beautiful homes and the sustainable green communities of the future. This Government are fully committed to the 13 targets set under the Environment Act 2021, and we will work closely with my right hon. Friend the Environment Secretary to ensure that we protect the environment and nature. We will work with local leaders to ensure that these towns meet our gold standard of having 40% genuinely affordable housing, with homes for social rent a priority. In some places, we will extend urban areas and regenerate them so that everyone benefits from better public transport and extra public services. We are building not just homes but communities.

Our first port of call will be brownfield land. Previously used land will be developed first wherever possible and those sites will be fast-tracked, but brownfield development alone will not meet the country’s increasing urgent need. The green belt was designed for England in the middle of the 20th century. It is right to keep that principle but make it relevant for today. That is why we will release lower-quality grey-belt sites, disused car parks and garages, and ugly wasteland to meet the needs of 2024. Our golden rules will require developers to enhance local nature and public access to green spaces and provide the local services for communities’ everyday needs, such as schools and GP surgeries.

We will also reverse the damaging changes that the previous Government made last December. While they backtracked in the face of vested interests and scrapped mandatory housing targets, Labour will govern in the national interest and take the tough choices to get Britain building. We will do so under an updated national planning policy framework, which we will have by the end of this month, because the current system just is not working, either for housing at a local level or for projects at a national level. These are projects such as data centres, labs and research sites, which should unleash a modern economy, not to mention large-scale projects that help improve the environment.

Onshore wind is the cheapest form of electricity going, but planning policy has effectively banned it for nearly a decade. We are starting it up again, and we will go further. As part of our plan for cheaper household bills and achieving net zero, we are taking the brakes off the planning system. In the first three months of this year, just a fifth of major applications were determined within the 13-week period. As for nationally significant infrastructure, the average time for consent is now more than four years, compared to two and a half years as recently as 2021.

Our Bill will speed up and streamline the process from start to finish. It will modernise planning committees and increase the capacity of our local planning authorities. By reforming compulsory purchase, it will support land assembly for development in the public interest. We will unblock new grid connections, roads, railways and reservoirs—game-changing reforms for national renewal.

The leaders of our communities are best placed to take forward that mission, and I was delighted to invite our mayors to Downing Street with the Prime Minister, days into a Labour Government. They represent our biggest cities and our most beautiful countryside, and I know only too well the diverse challenges that our people need to overcome. There are now so many Labour mayors that I have lost count of how many we have. I also noted the positive words from Ben Houchen about the constructive engagement that local leaders have already experienced under this new Government. Along with their local citizens, we will give them a bigger say on how to transform their neighbourhoods and high streets. We will hand them the powers to transform their regions, so that they become the best places for people to live, work and enjoy.

We are under no illusion about the hard yards needed to repair the economic and social damage that the last Government left behind. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has said, we have the worst inheritance since the second world war. Back then, it was Labour that rebuilt Britain from the rubble of war, creating the NHS, the welfare state and council homes for our returning heroes. It will be a Labour Government who now rebuild Britain once again.

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Several hon. Members rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Edward Leigh)]

Order. Because we are trying to get in as many Members as possible, I shall have to impose a seven-minute time limit on all Back-Bench speakers. I urge maiden speakers, who will not have a formal time limit imposed on them, to stick to that sort of limit. Obviously, the time limit will not apply to the Liberal Democrat spokesman, but I know that she will try to be brief.

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[Helen Morgan]

I do not know the details of that individual case, but we need to ensure that planning departments are properly funded so that the decisions made by planning officers are appropriate. Without knowing the details, I do now know whether it is a good development or a poor one, but those departments need to be empowered to make decisions correctly.

Some proposals for development are inappropriate and some are downright dangerous—we mentioned the building of houses on floodplains earlier. The only insurer to re-insure houses on floodplains is due to close its operations in 15 years’ time. We cannot build houses on floodplains. It will not be possible for them to be insured or sold; homeowners will be trapped.

We should also not be building housing developments without additional schools or GP surgeries. Most importantly, we should not be building housing developments where the developers do not prepare the roads and green spaces to an acceptable standard and do not allow them to be adopted by the local authority, but set up a shared management company and leave the homeowners fleeced for the rest of their home ownership experience. I encourage the Deputy Prime Minister to consider that in the forthcoming legislation.

Good councillors approve planning for good developments. That is why, on the days when the Conservatives are not accusing us of being nimbys, they are telling people that we are going to concrete over their countryside.

Planning is not just about housing. We have many demands on our countryside: housing, renewable energy, nature restoration and, importantly, the growing of food. We need to simplify planning so that all those things can happen. Housing, renewable energy and job creation are incredibly important, but I urge the Government to ensure that when they go ahead, it is not at the expense of food production. The Liberal Democrats have called for the development of a land use strategy so that these important and competing demands can be balanced, and so that we use land in the optimal way, protecting the highest grade arable land for food production and putting the infrastructure of renewable energy and housing in less prime places. I therefore hope that the Government will consider a land use strategy as part of their planning reform.

That brings me to another important area of the countryside: our waterways and our beaches. It is a scandal that raw sewage has been allowed to be dumped into our rivers and on to our beaches, while water company executives have taken home huge bonuses and their—often overseas—shareholders have taken huge dividends. The Liberal Democrats are proud to have led the campaign to end the sewage crisis. We welcome the water (special measures) Bill and will be watching closely to ensure that the water regulator is given the powers it needs to finally end this sewage outrage.

I will move on to rural affairs. There was no mention in the King’s Speech of rural communities or priorities for the countryside, which I hope means that the new Government will be ensuring that every policy is rural-proofed and that the demands of delivering public services in rural areas, where the population is spread over a large area, are being considered.

I also want to mention the English devolution bill. The Liberal Democrats are the proud voices of local communities and community-led politics, and we absolutely welcome steps to devolve power away from Westminster, but I ask the Secretary of State to confirm what that will look like for those councils without a devo deal, a metro mayor or a combined authority mayor. It is important that all local councils have the powers and funding to deliver for their communities. That funding must reflect the cost of delivering services in rural areas. Rural councils have been taken for granted for far too long. We need to ensure that people who live in rural areas, who also see increases in their council tax, are getting the public services that they deserve.

Rurality affects the delivery of all types of services, but I want to touch on just a few key areas. Health is an important issue in my North Shropshire constituency, where we have seen huge problems with GP and dentistry access and a crisis in our A&E service. While I welcome the Government’s plans to tackle the crisis in mental health service provision, which is also a big problem in rural areas, we really want to see rural-focused policy to deal with the recruitment crisis in rural areas and the cost of delivering health services over large distances, and to ensure that people who live a long way from a hospital or diagnostic centre can travel to it more easily.

That brings me to public transport, which is quite problematic in Shropshire. We have lost 63% of our bus miles since 2015, which makes it difficult for anybody to access work opportunities, social opportunities, educational opportunities and, indeed, health services. I am really pleased that the Government will allow local authorities to franchise their own bus services—the Liberal Democrats have long called for that—but I would like to see the detail of how that will work and how we will get the funding to kick-start those routes and get labour moving properly around our countryside.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Edward Leigh)]

Order. Can the hon. Lady bring her remarks to a close, please?

[Helen Morgan]

Of course.

I was briefly going to mention mobile signal, but I will rush over that because I have talked about it a reasonable amount in the House. I want to talk about farming and the rural economy, because that is the backbone of our economy and food production is extremely important. Farmers have faced a crisis over the last few years, with the botched introduction of the environmental land management scheme, the input costs they face and the fact that vast tracts of farmland are underwater and have been for the last 18 months. I must encourage the Government to look at trade deals to ensure that farmers are working on a level playing field, and to ensure that the sustainable farming incentive deals with the consistent problem of flooding following prolonged rainfall, given how our farmers are storing an enormous amount of water upstream.

I will draw my remarks to a close because I am keen to hear the maiden speeches of all these new Members, who I welcome to this place. To reinforce the points I have made, community-led planning is so important, and we would love to see a land use strategy. We need to ensure that the cost of delivering public services in rural areas is properly considered and funded, and the infrastructure needs to be there. Finally, please do not forget about food security, which is so important to national renewal.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I call Sam Rushworth to make his maiden speech.

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[Martin Vickers (Brigg and Immingham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) on his maiden speech. We are all much more knowledgeable about his constituency now than we were a few minutes ago, so well done for that.

I acknowledge that the planning system is in need of reform. We cannot have a process that takes months—in many cases, years—for major projects, crucial to economic growth and associated jobs, to grind through an endless system. In my constituency, most such projects are located in an area that is, and has been for many years, mainly industrial. Although we should not trample on local opinion, we have to get those projects through the system more quickly than we do at the moment.

The Gracious Speech included this:

“My Government believes that greater devolution of decision making is at the heart of a modern dynamic economy and is a key driver of economic growth and my Ministers will introduce an English Devolution Bill. Legislation will be introduced to give new powers to metro mayors and combined authorities. This will support local growth plans that bring economic benefit to communities.”—[Official Report, 17 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 39.]

Of course we need to increase the supply of housing, but how do Ministers square devolving decision making with strengthening central direction of the planning process and tying the hands of planning authorities? The Labour manifesto said that the Government would

“make full use of intervention powers”.

That does not sound like good news for local democracy.

Experience from my constituency shows that local communities will, in most cases, accept more housing developments, but they make the justifiable complaint that recent developments in all parts of my constituency, from Humberston, through New Waltham, Waltham, Scartho, Laceby, Wootton and Barton, to name just a few, mean that the already stretched highway infrastructure and public services, such as school places, GPs and the like, are now stretched beyond what is acceptable. What assurances can Ministers give that they will ensure new build will run in parallel to the provision of infrastructure and public services?

Another aspect of the planning process that angers people is that many appeals are determined by planning inspectors who frequently overrule council decisions that have been made after careful consideration of local circumstances. In some cases, such decisions have even overturned the local plan. That is not acceptable. Local plans go through various stages of consultation, including public hearings, all of which passes by the overwhelming majority of the public, until an application is lodged that could change the whole character of the neighbourhood. Clearly, the process needs to be reviewed, as I have previously argued, including in a ten-minute rule Bill I introduced some years ago.

If devolution and local decision making is to mean anything, planning issues should be determined at a local level, wherever possible. The shadow Secretary of State mentioned that there are current Ministers who lodged objections to planning applications for developments in their own areas. That went under the radar to some extent while they were in opposition, but now there is no hiding place for them. Every Labour Member who votes for proposed planning changes to some village or some part of the town will have to justify not supporting their constituents when they are up in arms about the application.

As someone who spent their childhood and early adulthood in a council house on a Grimsby estate, I have always supported the ability of local authorities to build council houses where that is appropriate. The ones that I lived in were built in the early 1950s when a Conservative Government were in power. They were of high quality and have stood the test of time. Sadly, that is not the case for much of the social housing that is imposed on new developments. I certainly would support the Government if they had a programme to encourage and support councils in house building, but I would be interested to know how they would finance it.

One proposal that is causing considerable concern, not just in my Brigg and Immingham constituency, but in many other constituencies along the east coast of Lincolnshire and through into East Anglia, is the National Grid upgrade on the Grimsby to Walpole route. These proposals could result in a network of 50-metre-high pylons running through some of the country’s most beautiful countryside, including impacting on the Lincolnshire Wolds area of outstanding natural beauty. I secured the final Adjournment debate on this matter before the election and the then Minister said that he was minded to order a review of the scheme. I urge the Government to honour that commitment and follow through with that review.

Finally, let me return to devolution and the policy to create more combined authorities. The proposals for the Greater Lincolnshire Authority have already passed through all stages of consultation, and a statutory instrument has been prepared, but, unfortunately, the election intervened. I say to the Deputy Prime Minister that this is an opportunity for an early win in her wish to create combined authorities. If she were to put forward that SI, I think most of the Lincolnshire MPs would give her some support.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Edward Leigh)]

I call Dr Scott Arthur for his maiden speech.