Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Ellie Chowns and Mike Reader

Consideration of Lords amendments
Thursday 13th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Chowns]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that there are many hundreds of thousands of homes sitting empty around the country and that this Bill will not do anything to address that issue, which could go a very long way to addressing the problems of homelessness that he claims to worry about?

[Mike Reader]

The hon. Lady is completely right that there are lots of empty homes. I am sure that there must have been some amendments tabled by the Greens that I have missed, and that they have been constructive and worked with Government to address that issue through the Bill.

Working cross-party is what I have always tried to do in this place. I am proud to chair the all-party parliamentary group for excellence in the built environment and the all-party parliamentary group on infrastructure and, even though the Minister and I do not always agree with the membership of the group—I have to say, some of the members do take unwarranted and quite grotty shots at the Minister—I am proud to chair the Representative Planning Group with Simon Dudley, the treasurer of the Conservatives.

I am pleased that the Government have recognised a point that I raised on Second Reading that solving the housing crisis will take action from the whole Government. The Bill is part of it, but there are many other things that we need to do to fix the mess that we inherited. I am also reassured that concerns that I and others raised on Second Reading around how EDPs will work have been recognised, particularly in some of the latest amendments, as well as by the Minister’s comments on how brownfield will be dealt with, which is so critical.