Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

May I thank the Minister for all his hard work? He is an incredibly decent and polite man. He may be misguided at times, but we cannot agree on everything. I thank him and his team for all their work, and I thank my shadow ministerial team who did a fantastic job of subjecting the Bill to line-by-line scrutiny, the other Front-Bench teams, the Committee and the Clerks. I also thank hon. and right hon. Members from across the House for their contributions.

We are told that this Bill is about accelerating house building, unleashing growth and meeting a national target of 1.5 million homes in England alone in this Parliament. On the face of it, those aims are worthy, but what price are we prepared to pay for the Deputy Prime Minister’s ambition? Make no mistake: what is being proposed could fundamentally and irrevocably alter the character of our towns, our villages, and the green and pleasant land that makes Britain what it is.

This is not an attack on new homes—I am unashamedly pro-business and pro-development. Unlike the Secretary of State, the Minister and half the Cabinet, I have never objected to a housing development in my constituency. Let me be clear: we need homes. We need homes for first-time buyers, for young families, for key workers and for the next generation, but we need the right homes in the right places, shaped by the right principles. Instead, we are being offered a top-down model driven by arbitrary targets and central diktat. The result is soulless settlements, identikit developments and rows of uninspiring concrete boxes that bear no relation to the history, the heritage or the hopes of the communities they are built in.

Crucially, in the Government’s “centralising zeal”—as the excellent shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), calls it—local voices are being sidelined. Local councillors, and those who live in, love and understand their communities best, are being cut out of the process, with their role reduced and their judgment overlooked. The individual has been subordinated to being a cog in the machine. The Bill in its current form is not just flawed, but dangerous. It risks eroding trust in the planning system and widening the gulf between the Government and the governed.

The Bill must be considered in conjunction with the changes to the national planning policy framework. The Government’s approach of shifting housing targets from urban areas to rural areas is cynical and economically illiterate. While I welcome the restoration of mandatory targets in principle, raising targets by up to 400% in rural areas while simultaneously reducing them by over 11% in London, 30% in Birmingham and Newcastle, and over 50% in Coventry is unfair and wrong-headed. Their grey belt policy—presented as a few disused garage forecourts and wasteland in green belts—is a con. What they have actually done is remove important protections that prevent villages from merging into nearby villages and towns.

Of course, there is also the matter of the environment. Anyone who cares about our natural world knows that once a habitat is destroyed, a woodland torn up or a biodiverse landscape bulldozed, no cheque can bring it back. There is zero confidence on this side of the House that Natural England can successfully mitigate the significant environmental harms that will ensue through the environmental delivery plans. That is why we propose that they be delivered locally through local or strategic plans.

The truth is that we cannot concrete our way to community, we cannot meet our housing needs by overriding the very people we are building for, and we cannot call it progress if the Bill leaves our countryside degraded and our communities disempowered.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

Residents in Bexley village in my constituency—it is one of London’s outer villages—are particularly concerned about the erosion of their green areas around the village. Does my hon. Friend share my concern and surprise that, when the outer London green belt issue was discussed in the London Assembly last week, Reform backed Mayor Khan in building over the green belt? Reform backed Khan against the interests of Bexley residents.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and the failures of the London Mayor to build more houses are well documented. What is perhaps not a surprise is that Reform would take the further step of supporting the London Mayor in the pursuit of Labour votes.

We have grave concerns about the enhanced compulsory purchase order powers for councils, mayors and even Natural England, without hope value or market value. This undermines one of the most important principles of our economy: property rights. Not only is this unfair, but it will face legal challenge after legal challenge in the courts.

During the passage of the Bill, we attempted to work with the Government to make sensible changes to make it fit for purpose, but to no avail. Let us not be seduced by false choices. We do not have to choose between development and democracy, between homes and heritage, or between ambition and accountability. We can build and we must build, but we must do so in a way that listens, respects and safeguards.

I urge the Government, yes, to be ambitious, but also to think again. They should rethink the Bill, and restore the local voice and reinstate environmental protections. Let us chart a path to progress that honours our need for homes, our obligation to communities and to the environment, and our duty to future generations. In its current form, we cannot support this Bill.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.