Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Greg Smith Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Commons Chamber

Under this Bill, the rights of that community are being removed or harmed further. We have tried to put that right through our amendments, some of which my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) will speak to in his role as shadow Minister for farming. He has done an admirable job in this role of raising the plight of our farming community across the whole of the United Kingdom in the face of what I would say are detrimental impacts from this Bill and other actions of Government.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that where CPO powers already exist, there is a massive lack of trust between landowners and the acquiring authority? All too often a proposal will be put on the table, and an agreement will be reached, but then the legal agreement that actually comes along is totally different. Does he agree that there needs to be a CPO code of practice that gives landowners much greater protection?

[Paul Holmes]

My hon. Friend is right. I would also say that there needs to be a code of practice for our tenant farmers. Two of our amendments, which I will speak to shortly, seek to meet the challenges that our farming and agricultural communities face with CPO. I will elaborate on that later, and my hon. Friend is welcome to intervene on me then if he does not find my explanation satisfactory.

--- Later in debate ---

Under new clause 107, basic and occupiers’ loss payments, which are made to recognise inconvenience, would be increased to the market value of the property, with the result that landowners would be paid the market value twice over for their property, under provisions intended only to recompense inconvenience. We cannot support the new clause because it would result in a reduction in the number of new social homes that it would be possible to provide, as hard-pressed councils, including town and parish councils, would have to pay so much money for these over-the-odds compulsory purchases, and taxpayers would effectively be clobbered to make sky-high extra payments to those with landed interests.

[Greg Smith]

The hon. Gentleman just said that CPO powers are, to the landlord, an inconvenience. I would say that having a home, farm or business taken is absolute devastation, not an inconvenience.

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Gentleman knows he is talking absolute rubbish because those are not the words I said at all. What I said was that the occupiers’ loss payments “are made to recognise inconvenience”. He may have misheard me. I did not say that farmers were an inconvenience or anything of the kind, and Hansard will reflect that. As the proposed payments would clobber the taxpayer by making them pay double the land’s value, we cannot support the new clause.

On the contrary, we say that people are fed up with money going to private developers, leaving local people with little to show for the sacrifices that they are making for new construction projects. There are further areas where the maximum commercial value of land should not have to be paid by public and community bodies. Under amendments 88 and 89, proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), hope value would not have to be paid in CPO cases where land is being acquired for sport or recreation. Her new clause 107, relating to disposals of land by public bodies, would ensure that top dollar did not have to be paid where the Secretary of State certified that the disposal was for “public good”; in those cases, a discounted price could be paid.

As we have heard, another Liberal Democrat amendment, new clause 22 proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo), would provide a “compelling case” justification for compulsorily purchasing land for new footpaths and cycle paths. Knowing the location of Haddenham and Thame parkway station as I do, I congratulate him on this key proposal, which would really help his constituents.