Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Gideon Amos Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 24th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

The ability to have a home of their own has crept out of reach of a whole generation, while for others, decent emergency accommodation cannot be found; in the last five years, temporary accommodation was named as a contributing factor in the deaths of 58 children under one year old—babies. We urgently need to provide more homes that are genuinely affordable to local people.

That is why the Lib Dem council in Somerset is building hundreds of new council houses in parts of the county for the first time in a generation: 220 new council houses in north Taunton, in my constituency, and 100 additional council houses elsewhere, including zero-carbon council houses. Lib Dem councils in Kingston, Eastleigh, York, Portsmouth, Vale of White Horse, Westmorland and Furness, and Oadby and Wigston are building thousands more new homes.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

As a fellow Somerset MP, my hon. Friend will be aware that Somerset has had 18,000 homes stuck in a planning moratorium for nearly five years. While some of those have been unlocked, many are still in limbo. The Bill is meant to fix that impasse, but does he share my concern that the measures in the Bill may actually fail to unlock that housing, unless Natural England is given the resources it needs to monitor and enforce the nature restoration fund?

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend and neighbour is absolutely right, and that is why the Liberal Democrats were the only party to put in our manifesto the funds needed for Natural England and the Environment Agency to address the challenges she rightly sets out.

Lib Dem councils are also granting planning permissions, thousands of them—in my county of Somerset alone, 13,000 homes have permission but remain unbuilt.

[Luke Murphy]

What impact does the hon. Gentleman think the 68% cut to the affordable housing budget under the coalition Government had on the delivery of affordable housing?

[Gideon Amos]

There was a significant increase in empty homes being brought back into use under the coalition policies promoted by the Liberal Democrat Ministers. If we look at the figures for the cuts the Government made between 2010 and 2024, we see that those cuts were far deeper after 2015, according to all Departments—the record will bear that out.

[Luke Murphy]

There was not a greater cut in the affordable homes budget at any point between 2010 and 2024; the largest cut—nearly 70%—was under the coalition Government.

[Gideon Amos]

I was referring to the departmental cuts. If we look at all Departments across Government, including Housing, Health and Education, the cuts were far deeper after 2015.

[Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)]

I hesitate to try to help the hon. Gentleman with his answer, but might it be that the coalition Government were having difficulty building affordable houses in that period because the former Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury had said there was no money left?

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Gentleman is right to remind us of the letter left by the outgoing Labour Government for the incoming coalition.

We do need to tackle blockages in the system, and if those 13,000 homes in Somerset that have permission and are not being built were being built, we would already have eliminated the 10,000-plus housing waiting list in the county.

[Luke Taylor]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time. He is talking about planning permission being granted, but the homes not being built. In Sutton in 2023, I was a member of the planning committee that gave permission for the Victoria House site, which has lain dormant ever since. Permission was given for 74 homes, but they are not being built. It is a frustration for me every time I cycle past to see that potential not being realised. Does he agree that giving councils the power to take over sites that have permission but are not being built would be a really important part of delivering the homes that we need?

[Gideon Amos]

It is almost as though my hon. Friend had read a further section of my speech. That is exactly what we need to do in this country to unlock some of those sites.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Gideon Amos]

I will make a little progress, but maybe later.

[Paul Holmes]

Oh, come on—I was going to be nice to you!

[Gideon Amos]

We shall put that to the test later.

We welcome the provisions that allow compulsory acquisition—where there is a compelling case in the public interest, such as to build social housing—to go ahead on the basis of existing use value, not what the owner hopes will be the value in the future, to the detriment of the public purse. That could make a big difference. It would allow councils to assemble land more affordably, and to deliver more social homes. However, councils need to be resourced to carry out such projects. To that end, I am delighted that the proposal to abolish the cap on planning application fees that my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) brought forward in her Bill in 2023 is included in this Bill.

[Chris Curtis]

Would the hon. Member like to take this moment to congratulate the absolute heroes in his party who forced it to change its policy at conference last year in favour of building homes? Many of those who sit on the Benches alongside him were calling out the members of his party for trying to get it to do so, one of whom, a former leader, called them Thatcherite. Does he agree with me that building new homes is not Thatcherite, but is the pro-development future that this country needs and that this Chamber should be supporting?

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[Gideon Amos]

If the hon. Gentleman is so interested in our debates, he should please come and join our next party conference. We would be delighted to debate whether our targets should be 150,000 social rent homes per year or 300,000 general needs homes per year. Of course, we need both, and that was the conclusion of our very thoughtful and timely conference debate.

I congratulate the Minister for Housing and Planning and the Secretary of State—the Deputy Prime Minister—on lifting that cap, on bringing strategic planning into the Bill and on the changes to national policy statements. I also congratulate them on the new nature restoration fund, where it provides support in relation to issues such as nutrient neutrality. As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke), that is holding back thousands of homes in Somerset, and we welcome the change.

Friends of the Earth has welcomed the nature restoration fund, but points out that it is very unclear how the nature restoration levy will work alongside other regimes. In that respect and many others, the Bill is short on the key principles. It is big on powers for the Secretary of State, but short on how those powers will be exercised. The Bill does not just lack details; it lacks some really big and important principles, including how that will work with other regimes. The funding of the nature restoration levy needs to be up front, so that nature restoration work begins straightaway.

We ask the Minister and the Government to enshrine in the Bill the principle that, on each site, development should first no do harm. That principle needs to be guaranteed its place at the top of the hierarchy of mitigation when it comes to protecting our environment.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

On the point about not doing any harm to nature, would the hon. Member’s party support the water companies becoming statutory consultees so that we can ensure that, with any new housing, not a litre of extra sewage goes into our rivers?

[Gideon Amos]

We would support that, as we did in a Westminster Hall debate very recently. We should be hearing such voices in the planning system, not shutting them out of the planning system.

On energy infrastructure, we welcome support for battery storage and improving access to the grid. Transmission connections are a huge source of delay—one of the biggest bottlenecks for renewable energy. But if we are to unblock that infrastructure, we need to go much further. All large-scale infrastructure projects, not just electricity transmission, should give people direct community benefit. Whether wind farm, solar farm, battery array or gas-fired power station, those living nearby should benefit through local investment or lower bills.

We also support the ambition to streamline planning for major projects, with exceptions on taking category 3 people out of compulsory purchase consultations. Let us note again who the real blockers were on these really big projects. They were not the people. It was nothing to do with local communities or the planning profession—I declare an interest as a member of the planning profession—and it was not councils. It was Ministers who left decisions lying on their desks, wrecking the timescales scrupulously followed by other parties in the process, so let us not blame people for politicians’ failures.

There are things to welcome in the Bill, but it hits the wrong target in many important areas, and this is where I must raise some more serious concerns. The detail provided in the changes to national infrastructure projects is good, but it is in real contrast to other areas of the Bill. There are many Henry VIII clauses that give sweeping powers to the Secretary of State and a democratic deficit is becoming a serious concern. For all that we welcome the aim to deliver homes, the Bill takes aim at communities, when we should be encouraging and empowering them to deliver and create the homes and places we want to see. I say again that racking up permissions—we already have a staggering 1.5 million homes without permission—will not ensure a single one gets built. We need to tackle the failure to build out of permissions granted by taking back the land or further limiting the lifetime of permissions. “Use it or lose it” needs to be the message.

Unless we deal with the supply chain issues and the lack of skills, we will have even more blockers on development.

[Dan Tomlinson (Chipping Barnet) (Lab)]

How does the hon. Gentleman square his support for getting more homes built and helping children who are living in temporary accommodation with his opposition to 250 new homes in his constituency, which he announced online just this month?

[Gideon Amos]

I am absolutely delighted to be supporting thousands of new homes across my constituency. The population of my constituency has gone up almost 10% over the past 10 years and I have supported thousands of those new homes, as have my Liberal Democrat colleagues on the planning committee who voted through all those permissions. If occasionally a smaller development in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency is not right, I would expect him to oppose it, just as I would in my constituency. I believe Members across the House have done so.

By giving more powers to communities, a community-led approach could actually increase supply. It is time, for example, to give councils the power to end Right to Buy in their areas. They cannot fill the bath, in terms of providing council houses and social homes, if the plug is taken out and they are forced to sell them off as they have done over the preceding decades. Through proper planning, we also want communities in control of how many holiday lets are allowed in their area, so that homes are not swallowed up that could otherwise increase the supply of affordable housing. That is not in the Bill and should be.

Mandating renewable energy such as solar panels on roofs, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) articulately argued for, would put people and local communities in control of the bills coming from their pockets.

Growing our economy, sustaining nature and building new homes are not mutually exclusive. They can work together. There are so many examples of how they can work together. For example, decent gardens have more biodiversity than many rural areas. Community-led decisions very often bring the best results, with residents’ infrastructure needs addressed and development shaped around green spaces and sustainability. To unblock homes, the Government need to do two key things instead of taking aim at ordinary people: first, unlock the infrastructure we need, including GPs, transport, green spaces, green infrastructure and water connections; and, secondly, fund the social homes that have been so sorely lacking. Since social housing disappeared as a meaningful proportion of housing supply and social housing targets fell away, this country has never been able to keep pace with demand. Our target is 150,000 per year. I hope the Government will provide a target of their own for social homes; so far, nothing has been said on that either. Invest in those two things, as history has taught us, and the number of homes we could provide would be almost unlimited.

Meanwhile, in communities like my own—where the 2,000-home Orchard Grove development in the west of Taunton, which I support, is taking shape—the reality is that while many people want to see new GP surgeries, developments are held back by the fact that we often cannot get GPs to staff the surgeries where they are being built.

We want to see a Bill about communities leading in planning and development. Instead, the Bill is part of a growing trend that is taking powers away from local communities. It takes a big step in that direction by allowing the Secretary of State to override planning committees and enabling national schemes of delegation that allow Whitehall to dictate who makes decisions on a local council—another Henry VIII clause, giving Whitehall unlimited power to rewrite the standing orders and constitutions of councils up and down the country. That cannot possibly sit right with anybody who values our proud tradition of local government that is independent of central Government. Consultation is sidelined elsewhere, too. Sport England will no longer have a voice to protect playing fields, and people subject to compulsory purchase orders will no longer have the voice they had before.

If the Government believe that local is the problem and that planning committees are the blocker, let us take a quick look at the actual figures. Councils approve more than 85% of planning applications, with some studies putting that figure even higher—closer to 90%. Councillors of all parties are not blocking development; they are enabling 90% of permissions to go through.

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the emphasis in the Bill on removing the powers of planning committees will, by default, lead the public to believe that planning committees throughout the years have actually been the problem? In reality, many planning committees have done their mandatory training and made the right decisions, and those decisions have been upheld by the Planning Inspectorate time and again. It should be put on the record for the public that planning committees, as a whole, are not the problem. There is a huge range of issues that we might need to deal with, but that is not one.

[Gideon Amos]

I come back to what the LGA said: the role councillors play in the planning system is the backbone of that system. That is the way it should remain. Taking decisions out of councillors’ hands is taking decisions out of the hands of local people.

Developing and shaping towns or neighbourhoods without the input of the councillors who have that level of trust and local knowledge will make those neighbourhoods and developments poorer and even more likely to fail. Frankly, removing people and their councillors from the system does not mean faster planning, but less democratic planning. It will mean that people are shut out and make them lose faith in the system even more; it will mean more legal challenges and more people who feel shut out from the system. The Bill risks making development not only slower, but worse.

There is, of course, another way. Instead of a Bill that shuts people out and shuts them up, silencing voices and failing people on the basic services and infrastructure their communities need, we should look to the great community-led developments of the past, and more recently, from Letchworth and Welwyn Garden Cities and Hampstead Garden Suburb, to local authority-led new towns such as Milton Keynes, right up to the award-winning schemes often built in partnership with the public and private sector up and down the country right now—developments where nature, people and the economy grow together, not in opposition to each other, as we see in the best places that we all know and enjoy visiting.

If we build with the economy and with those who want growth, and for nature by developing with nature and for people by developing with people, we will build the homes, jobs and services that our communities want to see, that our country deserves and that our environment and our planet so desperately need.

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[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

The Bill is about speeding up planning processes, judicial reviews and the development of critical infrastructure. Although some elements of the Bill are positive, others risk undermining the long-term success of any development. The Bill gives the Secretary of State power to decide the consenting route for individual projects, bypassing local input and oversight. That is combined with the overall reduction in local democratic control by transferring significant powers from local councillors to planning officers.

Currently, planning committees are the place where elected officials can reflect local concerns and represent their communities in decision making. By shifting more power to unelected officers, we risk alienating the public and further eroding trust in local democracy. That is especially important given the shift towards creating larger unitary authorities. We see that already in Somerset, where my constituents have seen Sedgemoor district council, a small but effective planning authority, replaced by a larger but less effective unitary council. That may be connected with the fact that Somerset is run by the Liberal Democrats. If local decision making becomes more detached, how can we be sure that developments will reflect the needs and desires of the people who will live with them?

[Gideon Amos]

Does the hon. Gentleman recall that when the Conservative leaders of the district council endorsed the unitary council, a poll was taken of the people of Somerset and they voted against it, but the Conservatives pushed it through?

[Sir Ashley Fox]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but the Liberal Democrats have been responsible since 2022 for the mess that has become Somerset. I am in favour in principle of building more houses, but it must be done in a way that brings local communities with us. We must ensure that new developments are accompanied by the right infrastructure —schools, health centres, roads, and a proper number of green spaces in between. When the Government announced their new housing targets, it became immediately apparent that the bulk of the increase would be in rural areas, so while Somerset as a whole has seen an increase of 41% in its housing target, the City of Bristol has seen its target reduced by 11%. Why is that? If it is related to the high number of Labour councillors in Bristol, and the very small number of Labour councillors in Somerset, we should be told.

The Bill also proposes a new nature restoration fund, which developers can pay into to offset environmental impacts, rather than conduct individual environmental assessments. Although I can see the logic of that move in some cases, I have concerns about the impact in Somerset. Given the network of waterways across the Somerset levels, the environmental impact of any individual site has the potential to spread to a much wider area than in much of the rest of the country. It is for such reasons that local accountability is so important, and by shifting the planning system to make it too top heavy, the Government risk unintended local consequences.

On compulsory purchase powers, the Government argue that streamlining the process will allow housing and infrastructure projects to progress more quickly. I am concerned about the abuse of power, particularly in relation to agricultural land and green spaces. By simplifying land acquisitions and reducing protections for affected landowners, the Bill could pave the way for large-scale developments that displace communities, damage the environment and undermine agricultural interests. The Government have already done great damage to the farming community in Somerset with their family farm tax and the closure, without notice, of the sustainable farming incentive. The proposal seems like another Government scheme to impoverish our farmers.

Although the Government’s aim to address the housing crisis and accelerate infrastructure development is important, the Bill raises significant concerns. It risks undermining local democracy, environmental protections and citizens’ ability to hold developers and the Government to account.

If we are to build a sustainable future that is responsive to the needs of our communities, we must approach this Bill with caution. That is why I shall seek to improve it before we give it a Third Reading.

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[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

It is a real pleasure to close this Second Reading debate for the Government, and I thank all hon. and right hon. Members who have participated in it. Not unexpectedly, it has been a debate of contrasts. On the one hand, we have had the privilege of listening to a large number of well-informed and thoughtful contributions from hon. Members who agree with the main principles of the Bill. In a crowded field, I commend in particular the excellent speeches made by my hon. Friends the Members for Barking (Nesil Caliskan), for Northampton South (Mike Reader), for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy), for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin), for Erewash (Adam Thompson), for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) and for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis). Set against those, we were subjected to a series of contributions from hon. and right hon. Members who, while professing support in principle for the intentions of the Bill, nevertheless alighted on a range of flawed and in some cases spurious reasons why they oppose it.

I am saddened to say that among the most glaring examples of that approach was the speech made by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), whose party’s reasoned amendment was not selected. While I appreciate fully his need to manage the discordant voices on his own Benches when it comes to housing and major infrastructure, the arguments he made were both confused and disingenuous. This Government wholly reject his claim that the Bill will not result in the ambitious delivery of the infrastructure and housing the country needs. I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that a party that declared in its manifesto only last year that it was committed to

“Increasing building of new homes to 380,000 a year”

should be getting behind this legislation, not seeking to block it. I sincerely hope that, even at this late stage, the Liberal Democrats will reconsider their position.

[Gideon Amos]

Does the Minister accept that it would be easier to support this Bill if it did not include clauses that provide the Secretary of State with the power not just to take some decisions away from planning committees, but to take all decisions away from planning committees, because that provision is completely unlimited in its scope?

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[Matthew Pennycook]

No; the right hon. Lady has misunderstood me. Planning committees will be able to scrutinise and make decisions on a series of applications. On a point raised by the shadow Secretary of State, the House should also be aware that we intend to formally consult on these measures in the coming weeks. Hon. Members will therefore be able to engage with the detail and precisely the type of question that the right hon. Lady raises, rightly, alongside consideration of the Bill.

[Gideon Amos]

Will the Minister give way?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I am not going to give way; I am going to make some progress.

I will briefly address CPO powers before I conclude, as a number of hon. Members raised concerns about our changes to the process. Let me be clear: these reforms are not about targeting farmers or any specific types of land or landowners. We want to reform the compulsory purchase process and land compensation rules to speed up and lower the costs of the delivery of housing and infrastructure in the public interest.

We have already taken action, fully implementing direction powers that provide for the removal of hope value from the assessment of compensation for certain types of CPOs, such as those facilitating affordable housing —provisions, I might say, introduced by the previous Government in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. We have published updated and more detailed guidance on the process to help local authorities.

This Bill will now go further, ensuring that the process for acquiring land with a direction is more efficient and that administrative costs are reduced, and we are expanding the power to remove hope value by directions to parish and town councils. We want to see these powers used and will work closely with local authorities to ensure that they have the support to take advantage of the reforms.

To conclude, I thank all hon. and right hon. Members who contributed to the debate. I look forward to engaging with hon. Members across the House as the Bill progresses. A wide range of views have been expressed over the course of the debate, but there is clearly a broad consensus that when it comes to delivering new homes and critical infrastructure—[Interruption.] The shadow Minister says no, so perhaps he does not agree, but the status quo is failing the country and more importantly those who last year sent us to this place to do better.

The process of securing consent for nationally significant infrastructure projects is demonstrably too slow and uncertain and is constraining economic growth and undermining our energy security. The current approach to development and the environment too often sees both sustainable house building and nature recovery stall. In exercising essential local democratic oversight, planning committees clearly do not operate as effectively as they could, and local planning authorities do not have adequate funding to deliver their services.

The compulsory purchase order process is patently too slow and cumbersome, and development corporations are not equipped to operate in the way we will need them to in the years ahead. It is abundantly clear that the lack of effective mechanisms for cross-boundary strategic planning mean that we cannot address development and infrastructure needs across sub-regions as well as we otherwise might.

We can and must do things differently. That means being prepared to will the means as well as the ends. Fourteen years of failure have left the country with a belief that nothing works, that nothing gets built, and that Britain can no longer do big things. This Government refuse to accept the stagnation and decline we were bequeathed. We were elected on the promise of change, and we are determined to deliver it. Through the measures introduced by this landmark Bill, we will get Britain building again, unleash economic growth and deliver on the promise of national renewal. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.