Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Joe Morris Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 24th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bradley Thomas]

I will make a little progress, and then I will give way. Linked to urban densification is a pertinent importance to focus on the quality and aesthetic of the development that is taking place. I have long been a fervent advocate for design codes and the role that locally led placemaking principles can play in determining the quality of an area and its attractiveness for future inward investment.

I believe instinctively that residents across the country are not nimby, but I fear that successive Governments, including the previous Conservative one and the Labour one before that, have allowed mediocrity to reign. There is a lack of local distinctiveness in development, which causes an entrenched perception of nimbyism running throughout the country. I implore the Government to consider reinstating the Office for Place, which was disbanded back in July, and to think about the importance of those aesthetically-based placemaking principles and the role they can play in promoting the positive impacts of development. Linked to that, we have an acute need and opportunity to promote smaller, more artisanal developers, particularly those focused on developing the vocational skills needed to generate the incoming pipeline of talent to support the house building industry.

I will make a couple of points that relate to my constituency, but they probably apply to many others across the country. One is on the protection of the green belt. Green belt is a technical designation, but to the public at large, it is often considered to be lush open fields and meadows. My constituency has this large buffer between Bromsgrove and Birmingham. It is not the case that residents of Bromsgrove are nimby—I do not believe they are—but they do not want the identity of Bromsgrove to be eroded and, by virtue of that, it to become some kind of extension of Birmingham.

For me, and for many of my constituents, that word “identity” underpins the fundamentals we should be talking about. It is about sense of place and a lifestyle that people identify with. When I think about constituents from my area, they have probably grown up in Birmingham and moved into north Worcestershire. In many cases, they have done that because there is an aspirational element to moving into the countryside, and they want to benefit from the countryside that Worcestershire offers, while being in close proximity to Birmingham and all the services it offers.

I will wrap up my comments with four quick points that I would like the Government to focus on. They should consider intensive urban densification and the positive role that can play in delivering housing where it is needed and where young people live, and in regenerating town centres undergoing a lot of change.

[Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)]

It strikes me that the hon. Member is speaking a lot about building where young people live. One thing that concerns me as a fellow rural MP is that young people are increasingly forced out of our rural communities. Does he not recognise that we need to look at intelligent, targeted, moderate house building within those communities to preserve them for the future and preserve their demographic future?

[Bradley Thomas]

The hon. Member makes a very good point, with which I do not disagree. We have to strike a better balance—that is the point I am making. That leads me to my second point, which is around infrastructure. Bromsgrove has suffered from a lot of development in recent years, and it has not had the infrastructure to go with it. If we want to strike the right balance and enable young people to stay in the communities where they grew up, particularly rural ones, we need to have the housing there, but we also need to recognise that rural areas cannot do all the heavy lifting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

There have been many eloquent and thoughtful contributions to the debate today, and I would like to build on and respond to some of the comments that have been made. Great speeches have been made by hon. Friends and Members from all parts of the House. In particular, may I mention my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay)? Like me, he has some concerns about the Bill, despite knowing the Government’s genuine intentions. It comes with some serious questions, particularly about giving power to Natural England—a quango—while removing and cutting other quangos; and about the future resourcing of Natural England, with those extra responsibilities. I hope the Minister for Housing and Planning will be able to answer some of those concerns in his wind-up.

The Deputy Prime Minister has maintained that democracy will still be there for local people who want to have their say over planning applications, but the simple fact is that the Bill will cut the rights of planning committees and local authorities to make decisions for their local areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) mentioned that house building was up in rural areas versus urban areas, and I will come on to that point later. He was absolutely right to outline the challenges he has in Mid Buckinghamshire and in the wider county. He was also right to focus on the infrastructure and how it is wrong just to focus on renewables. Thousands of acres will be used up for solar power across the country, and the Conservatives believe that we should be looking at alternative options for energy.

The hon. Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb) says that he is a planning bore, and that he became one during his time listening to various members of the Labour party. When we were both in opposing student political parties at the University of Southampton in 2000—not so long ago, I will say—he was not a bore then, and I do not expect that he will be in the speeches he makes during his career in the House.

My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) is a strong advocate for his constituency. He is right to say that the introduction of EDPs is a good idea, but as cases show—I will develop some of the thinking behind this later on—there is a mercenary approach that does not provide local habitat protection, and just tries to move the issues somewhere else.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) mentioned local planning and removing powers. He said that the use of the compulsory purchase order is anti-democratic when it comes to agricultural land, and he is absolutely correct. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) recognises, as we do, the Government’s mandate to try to build the 1.5 million homes required under their legislation. However, I have to say to the House that nobody believes they will be able to achieve it, including the Minister for Housing and Planning—[Interruption.] It is on the record.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) mentioned the “rural versus urban” competition that the Government have created, and the 80% uplift in his constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) said that targets had doubled in his constituency while they were down in London. I failed to persuade a single Labour Member to admit that the Mayor of London is not capable of delivering the numbers, although the Government have reduced them by a record amount. My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) said that there were no details of community improvement funds, and that the threshold for solar developments was still too low and needed to be raised. We look forward to discussing that in Committee.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) mentioned the green belt and nature being at the heart of planning, and the top-down application in the Bill. I completely agree with her. Last but by no means least, my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) said that development consent orders should be accountable and better suited for local people, and we entirely agree.

We on this side of the House have always had concerns about the Government’s centralising zeal when it comes to planning. When they first introduced the Bill to the House, it cemented many of our fears about the traditional centralising mission that Ministers in this Administration have shown a taste for in various areas of government since taking office. Let us face it: that is the Labour party’s way. While we all recognise that there is a need for tangible changes to deliver suitable and relevant infrastructure, they should not be to the detriment of the rights and responsibilities of locally elected representatives and planning committees or those who now face having their land taken away by this Government’s unfair compulsory purchase order changes; but that is what the Bill does. The Deputy Prime Minister said that she wanted to streamline decision making, but we all know that the Bill takes those local powers away.

I once said during a Westminster Hall debate that it was fundamentally not good practice or good governance to deliver substantial changes to the national planning policy framework before legislating for an overarching change in planning infrastructure policy. It leads to confusion on the ground and delays in good planning, and rushed enforced devolution and local government reorganisation will further delay and complicate the intended consequences of the Bill. Let us also not forget that the Government have now introduced new housing targets that will reclassify land from grey belt, and will see areas green-lighted for development over the objections of local people and local authorities. This Bill will do that on a strategic scale that we have never seen before. Instead of delivering an algorithm that would fairly distribute building targets, the Government have introduced a politically motivated, unfair housing target regime that has opposition councils in its crosshairs, tripling the building burden in some cases, while rewarding Labour councils for their failure to deliver in their own authorities. This reeks of political gerrymandering, and the Government must think again.

The Deputy Prime Minister said that she wanted the homes that she will be delivering to be affordable. May I remind Labour Members that it was her Government, when she came in, who scrapped Help to Buy, scrapped shared ownership, and scrapped mechanisms that allowed the people in this country to get on to the housing ladder?

There are three areas of concern in the Bill. First, it threatens to remove local councillors’ ability to have their say by setting up a national scheme of delegation that will specify which types of application will be determined by council officers and which should go to planning committees—rules all made from the desks of Ministers in Whitehall—but not planning applications that can be decided in the committee rooms of town halls across the United Kingdom. The Local Government Association agrees, and has commented:

“there remain concerns around how it will ensure that councils—who know their areas best and what they need—remain at the heart of the planning process. The democratic role of councillors in decision-making is the backbone of the English”

—and British—

“planning system, and this should not be diminished.”

We agree; the Government do not.

These changes will require rural county areas to develop 56% more housing than the last Government’s standard method. That is more than any other local authority type and equates to over 180,000 homes needing to be delivered in counties per year, compared with just over 115,000 under the previous method. On average, that is a rural uplift of 115%, while urban areas with major conurbations—mostly Labour authorities—are only up by 17%.

[Joe Morris]

The hon. Gentleman and I both represent rural constituencies, and we both know there is a demographic crisis in those areas. Does he agree that young people in rural areas need homes to live in and homes to work from? What do he and his party have against young people in rural areas?

[Paul Holmes]

I do not have anything against young people in rural areas at all, but surely the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will not see it as fair that his Government have reduced targets on their own authorities in urban centres, where there is already the infrastructure, where generally housing supply is better and where it is easier to get that infrastructure through, but are punishing rural areas across the country.

It is not a sensible or feasible solution to a very clear problem; it will drastically increase pressure on existing rural infrastructure and override the democratically elected local leaders who have a stake in, and should have a say in, the development of their local areas. It also raises the question of how this legislation is deliverable when local government reorganisation will change the spatial development strategies of local authorities. It is further concerning that the chief executive of Homes England has cast doubt on whether the Government can realistically meet their goal of 1.5 million homes, and so did the Housing Minister, in a Select Committee hearing last year. Council leaders, developers and even the Government’s own experts are warning that these targets are unachievable.