Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Joe Powell and Chris Curtis

2nd reading
Monday 24th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Curtis (Milton Keynes North) (Lab)]

I thank the people across Government and from the Department who have worked so hard to pull this Bill together quite quickly. I also thank the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for the first shout out to Milton Keynes in the debate. Hon. Members may be about to hear many more.

In politics we all like to talk about our own stories and how they have impacted us. I have sat on these Benches and heard the Education Secretary talk about how her education has helped her in life, and the Health Secretary talk about how his interactions with the NHS during his cancer diagnosis drive him to fix our health service. What is important to my life—I believe this is true of most young people’s lives—is having a decent home surrounded by a decent community.

Milton Keynes, my home town, was founded the last time an Act of Parliament was passed to make this country build 300,000 homes a year. Its pioneers pushed hard to get the place built, which meant that my parents were able to bring up my brother and me in a spacious home with our own back garden, giving us the security and stability needed for the best start in life. It meant that I could play safely in green spaces, I had access to excellent local amenities and my family could live affordably with a good quality of life. That is the kind of opportunity that every child in Britain deserves, so it is great to see legislation that will finally begin to remove the barriers to building the new homes that this country so desperately needs.

With the changes to development corporations and CPOs, we may also see the new towns that this country so desperately needs. The proposals for planning committees will play a key role in ensuring that much-needed developments do not get stuck in unnecessary bureaucracy and political gridlock.

[Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that local people will still have a role in developing local plans and in many of the more complicated planning applications? Some of what we have heard today around local input has been scaremongering.

[Chris Curtis]

That is true. Certainty is incredibly important to enable the housing sector to invest in the skills, development and modern methods of construction that will enable us to alleviate the country’s housing crisis.

Beyond housing, we must recognise that our failure to build vital infrastructure in Britain is leaving our country vulnerable. Our energy security—the foundation of our national security—depends on having infrastructure to support a modern, productive economy. We have failed to build the transport links that are needed to get goods and people moving efficiently. We have failed to build the energy infrastructure that is needed to reduce our dependence on volatile foreign oil and gas, and we have not built a single reservoir in decades, meaning that we lack the water security that is required in the face of climate change.