Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

146: Clause 52, page 73, line 24, at end insert—
“(6A) A spatial development strategy must—(a) list any rivers or streams identified in the strategy area,(b) identify the measures to be taken to protect any identified rivers or streams from pollution, abstraction, encroachment and other forms of environmental damage, and(c) impose responsibilities on strategic planning authorities in relation to the protection and enhancement of chalk stream habitats.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require a special development strategy to list any rivers and streams in the strategy area, outline measures to protect them from environmental harm, and impose responsibility on strategic planning authorities to protect and enhance chalk stream environments.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 146 and speak to Amendment 354 on behalf of my noble friend Lord Roborough. Amendment 146 would require spatial development strategies to list any rivers and streams within their areas, to outline specific measures to protect them from environmental harm, and to impose a clear responsibility on strategic planning authorities to protect and enhance chalk stream environments. Amendment 354 would designate a river or stream as a protected site. Amendment 147, in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, similarly requires spatial development strategies to specifically identify chalk streams within their areas.

Amendment 152ZA, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger, seeks to ensure that animal welfare is explicitly considered when spatial development strategies are produced. This amendment responds directly to the concerns raised by the Government’s Animal Sentience Committee in its June letter to Ministers, which highlighted that the Bill as drafted does not pay due regard to the welfare of sentient animals. It is crucial that our planning framework acknowledge and integrate animal welfare as a key consideration alongside environmental protections.

These amendments are vital. They recognise the urgent need for bespoke protections for our rivers and chalk streams, which are not only key environmental assets but are deeply woven into our national heritage. I am grateful to see many noble Lords across the Committee expressing the same concerns and recognising the unique value of these precious water courses.

I will also speak briefly to Amendments 148 and 150, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and Amendment 178, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. Amendments 148 and 150 seek to ensure that spatial development strategies include explicit policies to protect chalk streams and take proper account of local wildlife sites. Amendment 178 would ensure that local plans align with the land use framework and local nature recovery strategies. Chalk streams are not merely beautiful and iconic features of our landscape; they are symbols of our natural and cultural heritage. Often described as England’s rainforests, they are globally rare, ecologically rich and uniquely vulnerable, yet they face increasing threats from development pressures, pollution, over-abstraction and the escalating impacts of climate change.

Tragically, none of England’s rivers, including our chalk streams, currently meets the standard of good overall ecological health. This Bill offers a significant opportunity to embed the bespoke protections identified by the CaBA Chalk Stream Restoration Strategy directly into our planning system—protections that these rare waterways so desperately need. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill should ensure that growth is paired with stringent protections for these vital habitats, especially given that, across the south and east of England, chalk streams are already heavily impacted by over-abstraction and wastewater outflows.

In conclusion, can the Minister say what assessment has been made of the Environment Agency’s 2024 event duration monitoring dataset, particularly regarding the role of chalk streams in achieving the Environment Act’s targets to restore our precious waterbodies? I look forward to her response, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 147 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich and Amendment 148 in the name of my noble friend Lady Grender, both of which deal with the issue of chalk streams, which has been well touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I give the apologies of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, who is unavoidably in Papua New Guinea on a diocesan link meeting. If he were here, I know that he would wish to thank the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, for their support for his amendment.

There are many noble Lords in this Committee who know a lot about chalk streams. It was interesting to hear the Minister last week say that she knows about them because she has a chalk stream in Stevenage. They are globally significant, and their pristine water conditions and stable temperature are home to some of our most endangered species, including water voles, the long-clawed crayfish and kingfishers, so they really need our protection. I will not go into the issue of where the protections come from, because that was covered so well by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.

When this issue was raised in the Commons, the Minister said that these additional protections were unnecessary. I contend that that is the wrong approach. The reasons the Minister gave in the Commons for it being unnecessary to have these additional protections in spatial development strategies were, first, that protection was provided in local nature recovery strategies. For those of us who are familiar with chalk streams, we know that they cross counties, and local nature recovery strategies are specific to individual areas. LNRSs therefore cannot deliver the protection that chalk streams need to cover that cross-county boundary.

--- Later in debate ---

On Amendment 152ZA, it is unnecessary to add a requirement that strategic planning authorities have regard to the effect of their proposed spatial development strategy on animal welfare. Animal welfare is not generally considered a strategic planning issue. Further, if a strategic planning authority felt that animal welfare issues were of strategic importance because of its area, it could consider policies relating to the use and development of land as it affects animal welfare under the terms of Clause 52, which will insert new Section 12D(4) into the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004—although I think such a conclusion seems unlikely. However, I will be happy to look at the non-legislative options the noble Baroness suggested, and I am sure my noble friend the Minister for Defra and I will be happy to meet with her to discuss those. Therefore, I kindly ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken today with such clarity, conviction and genuine concern for the future of our environment. All their speeches were thoughtful, constructive and rooted in a shared desire to see our planning system deliver not only growth but lasting stewardship of our natural heritage. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Roborough for bringing forward Amendment 146, and to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich for Amendment 147. Both amendments highlight the special importance of our rivers and in particular our chalk streams—an issue that has clearly resonated across all Benches.

If the Minister and the Government do not wish to take on board all the excellent contributions from this side, perhaps she will take on board the contributions from her noble friends. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, spoke about the importance of chalk streams. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, may deny being a world expert but we all know that she, possibly followed only by my noble friend Lord Goldsmith, are the two top experts in this House on all aspects of biodiversity. The noble Baroness has signed Amendment 178 from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, which calls for local development plans to pay attention to local nature recovery strategies—that is absolutely right; they are key. Local nature recovery strategies would inevitably include chalk streams, so I suggest that, by implication, the noble Baroness is entirely in support of what we are saying about protecting chalk streams, just as I completely support her in protecting ancient woodlands.

I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that there are 48 local nature recovery strategies. I think only four have been announced at the moment, maybe five, Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s being the last one. So there are about 44 still to go, but Defra hopes that they will all be concluded by the end of this year.

--- Later in debate ---

This is a very important issue in terms of the planning procedures. I am trying to find out from the Government, in this probing amendment, how they intend to make sure that transparency is maintained, that there is a consistency and that councils once again are confident to be as transparent as possible. Clearly, it is important that certain personal details are redacted in terms of GDPR and how the Information Commissioner wishes this system to work. It should not get in the way in terms of procedures, understanding where individual cases have got to, particularly in enforcement, and in ensuring that we have consistency and less concern that there will be a liability on local authorities and council tax payers if this very extreme position is kept. I would like to hear from the Minister how this can be reconciled, so that we get that transparency and confidence back into the planning system, particularly in the enforcement space.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 185, tabled by my noble friend Lady Coffey.

Only about half a dozen noble Lords in the Committee at the moment have previously served as Members of Parliament. From my own experience, there is nothing more annoying as an MP than to find constituents writing to you about some planning development that you know nothing about when other stakeholders have been notified. The Member of Parliament must then ask the council, the Government or the agency what the issues are about before forming a view on it and either supporting the constituents’ concerns or not. Constituents simply do not understand why MPs are not already in the loop. That diminishes their status when it seems that every other Tom, Dick and Harry has been on the stakeholder consultation list.

I appreciate that this amendment is narrowly focused, with a much smaller range of stakeholders. However, the issue here, as my noble friend has said, concerns nationally significant infrastructure projects, where the Secretary of State is the decider. Therefore, while MPs might not be on the general planning consultation list, it would be reasonable for them to be on the list for these nationally significant infrastructure projects. The principle is the same. That is why I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey.

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, before I speak to my Amendment 185SG, can I thank colleagues from all parties across the Committee who have supported me, including the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who is in Birmingham today?

I declare my interests relating to this amendment. I am the chairman of the 360 Degree Society. This is a national social business that is applying the lessons learned from over 40 years of practical work in east London to community developments across the UK. Today, my colleagues and I are focusing on integrated development and placemaking, with business, public and social sector partners. The relevant business partners for this amendment include Barratt Redrow, Kier Group, Morgan Sindall Group, HLM Architects, the NHS and various local authorities.

This amendment is aimed at preparing the ground for and supporting the Secretary State for Health Wes Streeting’s 10-year plan for the future of the health service as he seeks to move services out of hospitals and into the community. It is my view, and that of my colleagues with many years of experience, that the health service needs to get upstream into the prevention agenda and move services out of expensive hospitals and into the community. This Planning and Infrastructure Bill is about not just housing but building truly joined-up places and cultures, where families want to live and where communities can thrive. It is my experience that the built environment and culture are profoundly connected. We really are the places that we live, work and play within.

Many of our inner cities and their fractured communities show the social costs of getting this wrong. This Bill and this amendment provide us with an opportunity to nudge the right direction of travel in a practical way, and it comes at a crucial time. So many previous attempts by government departments to encourage a more joined-up approach to development at a macro level have failed. I suggest that the opportunities to join the dots that make a real-world difference are in the micro, at place.

This amendment seeks both to support the Government’s desire to build 1.5 million homes and to ensure that we learn from the mistakes of the past. We need to create more joined-up services and communities and move beyond rhetoric into practice.

I could take noble Lords to so many places across the country where services are literally hiding behind their own fences and are not joined up, either physically at place or structurally in a co-ordinated operating culture. The main players barely know each other on the same street, yet they all work with the same families. This is an expensive disaster that continues to replicate. It needs to stop.

In new developments, we are still witnessing on the ground a fragmented health and community infrastructure. Not only are they not creating a sense of place but they are in danger of unintentionally repeating many of the same mistakes of large-scale housing developments of the past. We could be in the 1960s or 1970s: soulless housing estates, created by both the private and public sectors, that generate well-documented social and economic problems over time. Local communities need a soul and beating heart at their centre.

In the modern world, health is everybody’s business. It is no longer a matter for just the medical profession. The focus now rightly needs to be on the social determinants of health. We urgently need to build more joined-up social and health developments in local communities and neighbourhoods. In front of us is a real opportunity, as this Government commit themselves to building 1.5 million homes, to rethink the social, health and welfare infrastructure in these communities, and to bring together housing, health, education, welfare, and jobs and skills, truly encouraging innovation and more joined-up approaches.

Lots of research out there gives endless data on why all this makes sense; we just need to start doing it. One housing association’s social prescribing programme supported 277 people and reported a 90.8% change in their well-being. Mixed-use developments that blend residential, commercial, health and recreational spaces stimulate local economies by attracting businesses, creating jobs and prosperity. This research shows that the proximity of services encourages residents to shop and dine locally, creating a self-sustaining economic ecosystem. Siloed housing schemes are not only less effective but more expensive in the long run.

This amendment seeks to encourage closer working relationships between the public, private and social sectors so that, in this next major building phase, we actively encourage innovations, best practice and greater co-operation between these sectors. We cannot force people to work together, but we can actively encourage them to do so. We need to create learning-by-doing cultures across the country, which share best practice, as we set out on this new, exciting journey of housebuilding and infrastructure.

This amendment is a first attempt to find a form of words that encourages greater co-operation at place between the place-makers. The wording is not perfect and I am sure we can improve it, but it allows us to have a cross-party debate about the siloed machinery of the state that is not delivering the change that people want to see and experience. Very good people from different political parties have attempted, over the years, to mend these disconnects at departmental level. I have worked with many of them and this has proved really difficult to do. This amendment offers a simple, practical solution that encourages a direction of travel and a clear steer to practitioners and people of good will on the ground.

In my experience, what really counts when it comes to innovation and change is not diktats from government or more process and strategy, but transparent, joined-up, working relationships between partners involved on the ground. The siloed world of government is increasingly not fit for purpose and is daily hindering the very relationships we now need to bring together and help flourish.

The 360 Degree Society, which I help run, has a proven methodology that is enabling co-operation between major parties involved in place-making from the public, business and social sectors, and residents. There seems to be a consensus around what Wes Streeting is proposing for the future of the health service. We are at a moment where the players in local authorities, the NHS, the social and private sectors and housebuilders want to build a more joined-up world. We have all talked about joining up services and cultures; this amendment provides a practical next step on this journey.

Some of this is about ensuring that community infrastructure is an integrated part of large-scale developments and is created early on, rather than the last element to be built, but also that a much wider range of partners are involved in creating high-quality new places where people are healthy and can thrive and prosper. The 360 Degree Society, which I lead, has created a social value toolkit to explore the practicalities of how to do this. To take just one example, we suggest getting beyond the often confrontational, usually purely transactional approach between developers and local authorities and special interest groups to get to a place where there is a genuine commitment and endeavour to agree a shared vision for the place.

Our experience suggests that this is partly achieved by surprisingly straightforward changes, such as developing human relationships between key players and focusing on them. When we get to know someone, rather than just reading their papers and emails, it is surprising how often a way forward can be found. Relationships with the key players, rather than consulting and engaging absolutely everyone, are part of a way forward we suggest. The purpose of this amendment is to help create the appetite and desire to encourage colleagues to take this approach and encourage innovation in this space.

I was in east London recently, in a multi-million pound development. I was met by an African mother with two rather beautiful children. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent; the health centre is at one end of the estate, the community building at another, the nursery somewhere else and the school somewhere else. She described how her child was already picking up needles in the play area and she showed me a small video of two youths outside the housing association office jumping into a van and stealing the contents. The culture was already starting and I can imagine this mother already wondering—these estates need strong families —whether she was going to stay.

Let me briefly share with you a practical example of what success looks like in practice. My colleagues and I do not like papers; we tend to build practical examples with partners. In 2007, I was asked by Christine Gilbert, then CEO of Tower Hamlets Council, who went on to run Ofsted, to lead what became a multi-million pound development in Tower Hamlets, following a murder and considerable violence between two warring white and Bengali housing estates. The details of this development are in Hansard, because we debated it in the levelling-up Bill, but the basic points are: you had a failing school with a fence; next door, a failing health centre with a fence; attempts to build 600 homes that had spent £3 million on schemes, with not a flat built; and two warring communities, one Bengali and one white.

My colleagues and I spent time building relationships with local residents and with the local authority, the NHS and the housing association—top, middle and front line. We started with no investment and we have rebuilt a £40 million school; a £16 million health centre; 600 homes, with 200 for sale; and now a new primary school. In June, Professor Brian Cox and I did our 13th science summer school, and he led a masterclass at the end of the day; this school had involved 695 children and, at the end of the day, a group of them in a masterclass debated quantum physics—an extraordinary experience.

What were the lessons learned? First, it was not about structure but about people and relationships—

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

I am just about to finish. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, told us on Tuesday that there is a rising tide in this space. My suggestion is that we all need to grasp the moment or we will lose it yet again. The foundation stones need to be laid now. Let us take the first step together. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, and the Committee for jumping ahead of him in speaking to my noble friend’s amendment. I had not clocked that he was due to speak and that it was his amendment. I apologise for my discourtesy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I am very supportive of the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and co-signed by my noble friend Lord Roborough. I would actually encourage the noble Baroness to retable Amendment 242A, if she is allowed to, because I do not think we will have deliberated on it—I am sure the Public Bill Office can advise—and it will work well, as she says, next week.

On Amendments 185F and 185G, the noble Baroness made a very good point. This is one of my wider frustrations with aspects of people using certain things, certain regulations or “the nature” as an excuse. As the noble Baroness has well laid out, quite often it can be a factor: there are things that can change—rulings and decisions about licensing. The abstraction of water is one example I have used before when talking about the impact—that happened at Sizewell C. Nevertheless, one of my wider points would be that, if you really want to accelerate a lot of infrastructure, do not start planning to build stuff in a place that has already been designated as the most important for nature in this country; find somewhere else, and think it through. One reason why quite a lot of people move to certain places in the country is that they are beautiful, environmental places. I do not want to go over Sizewell C, and I will keep to the point of the regulation, but this is really a way to future-proof and to get a lot of this infrastructure flowing.

There are things that we could get into about which species are the right ones to consider in habitat regulations; there are other debates forming about whether we should look after only things that are really at risk. That does not necessarily work. We have already heard today about the importance of global biodiversity and chalk streams, but I think this is a very useful amendment.

I am glad that we are doing at least part of the debate today, because it will give the Government time over the weekend to think about whether their modest proposals in revising Part 3, which are welcome, really go far enough to help local communities, local developers and local councillors so that we can move forward. By getting rid of some of these unnecessary arguments, we would have the homes and the development that are much desired, and we would still have places, right around our country, that are special for nature and special for our planet.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to support the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, on Amendment 185F, tabled by her and supported by my noble friend Lord Roborough. I do not need to talk at length, because the noble Baroness has set out excellent arguments for progressing this and other amendments. She said that this is one of the most important amendments in the Bill, and she is right. We are touching on it today in advance of next week, when we will discuss this and similar improvements.

The noble Baroness has set out a simpler solution than the massive bureaucracy created in Part 3. Part 3 and the EDPs are a massive sledgehammer to crack the nut of nutrient neutrality. With the amendments that we will discuss next week in addition to this one, we can offer the Government a simpler solution than the EDP monolith. We need to tackle the problems of nutrient neutrality and will address some of the amendments next week.

Amendment 185F would require local planning authorities to consider compliance with the habitats regulations and to conduct full environmental impact assessments on sites that are proposed as suitable for development. As my noble friend Lady Coffey said, let us plan this in advance—do not wait until developers come along to put in a planning application and then discover that they are trying to do it in the wrong place. This is not about adding a new layer of bureaucracy; on the contrary, it is about moving necessary assessment upstream to where it can do the most good.

Too often, local plans identify sites for housing or infrastructure which turn out to be wholly unsuitable when subjected to proper ecological scrutiny. By then, the damage is done: developers are frustrated, communities are confused and valuable habitats are placed at risk. This amendment from the noble Baroness would support local authorities to screen out inappropriate sites early, giving greater certainty to developers and the public. It would also help to ensure that sites allocated in the plan were truly deliverable. It is, in short, a sensible and proportionate proposal, reflecting long-standing principles that plan-making is a stage at which big environmental choices should be made and that doing so reduces conflict and costs later on. I hope the Minister will take the advice of our friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. As I said earlier, she is an expert on this matter, no matter how much she may deny being a world expert.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 212, to which I was delighted to add my name. I am conscious that this may seem like a single-minded approach, but it matters in a particular way. I say that because it is widely known that swifts are now on the conservation red list. They moved from green to amber in 2009 and to red in 2015. Between 1995 and 2021 there was a 62% decline. My noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge set out eloquently that some of this is about habitat and food but also about places for the birds to rest.

When I was in the Commons, I tried to press the case with other Ministers, but also as a Member of Parliament. I used to represent the parts of the east coast of the country that have a very natural stopping point for many migratory birds. In fact, Felixstowe port, in the words of Coldplay, has lights to guide them home. It is a very prominent place for many migratory birds, leading to the excellent and well-known Landguard reserve, as well as the RSPB’s world-famous Minsmere reserve up the coast.

On the subject of light, I am conscious of the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman of Steventon. I would not necessarily want us to turn everywhere into a dark space when such lights may well be needed for safety in other commercial activities. But that does not mean we have them just for the sake of it.

On swift bricks, councils can already put in their plan that buildings are supposed to have swift bricks. I know that East Suffolk council has that in its plan, but it does not enforce it. We come back to the age-old arguments, “It’s going to add cost to development”, “It’s not convenient” and all these other things. We need to take action to stop the decline not only of this species but of many others. I am conscious that there is another amendment in this group which refers to a wider element.

The estimated cost of this brick is between £20 and £35. I genuinely do not believe that puts it beyond profitability. Frankly, that would be hard to swallow in terms of consideration of the cost of a particular house. But, as has been said, the Minister, when in opposition, thought this would be a slam dunk. It has already been yet another easy decision for Steve Reed, the new Secretary of State at MHCLG, to make—in the past it was actually MHCLG and probably the Treasury that held these things up.

There is another bird which often nests and is often thought to be similar to a swift. It is the house martin, and all I will say is, give us a happy hour and make sure we can have the swifts going for the future for evermore.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulated the noble Baroness in Grand Committee last week and I am delighted to be able to repeat my congratulations today. It is lovely to see her in her place.

I have considerable sympathy for Amendment 212, moved by my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge. I saw in the press last week that my noble friend Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park had been married, and I assume he is on honeymoon. My noble friend said he was being detained in another place, which makes it sound like a rather interesting honeymoon.

However, moving swiftly on, the swifts are magnificent birds, but swifts in the UK have experienced a severe population decline, with numbers falling by over 60% between 1995 and 2022. That has now placed them on the red list of birds of conservation concern. This alarming drop is primarily due to the loss of suitable nesting sites and buildings, as my noble friend said, and a reduction in their insect food supply. Modern buildings lack the crevices and cavities swifts need, while building renovations and demolitions destroy their existing nests. A widespread lack of insects further threatens their survival, impacting their ability to raise young.

I have the privilege of serving on the Council of Europe, and I go to Strasbourg four times a year. It is amazing the number of swifts one sees there. That is because, in the old part of Strasbourg, near the cathedral in Place Gutenberg, there are thousands of these old-fashioned buildings with cavities, crevices and little garrets, and what I consider to be holes all over the roof, which are perfect for swifts. Last year, for some reason, there were hardly any and we were infested with midges and mosquitoes. This year, one could sit outside with a little glass of wine and watch hundreds of them at dusk, swooping and diving, with no midges or mosquitoes. They had the right facilities for them to nest and they had them there.

The cost of swift bricks is roughly £30. One can get more expensive ones, of course, but they are not necessary. The Government might say that, if they make it compulsory for all buildings to have swift bricks, that will drive up the cost of housing. But not all housing is suitable for these bricks and buildings need to be higher than five metres above ground. Even if all the 300,000 houses were suitable, and if the ideal three boxes per house were installed, we are looking at £90 per house or £18 million for the whole 300,000 homes. The Government’s green levy for their fanatical drive for net zero will add 20% to all heating bills. Last year, it was an extra £30 per household. As from 1 April this year, the average household has had an increase of £9.25 to its monthly bill. That £111 is far in excess of the cost of swift bricks.

The Government are splashing out about £7,500 per household on subsidising heat pumps, and they have paid out more than £148 million for heat pump installations through the boiler upgrade scheme as of May 2024, with additional funding planned to bring the total up to £1.5 billion until March 2028. That is £1.5 billion for inadequate heat pumps, so do not tell us that a £30 brick would drive up housing costs to unacceptable levels. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answers to that.

As far as the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, is concerned, I am not fully up to speed on the cost of safety glass, but I can comment on the comments by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. Up at our house in Penrith, we plant an awful lot of trees near the window. The trees are full of nesting birds, but we found that the reflection from the glass was causing bird strikes. The problem was quickly solved, because one can get packets of little decals at three for £5 to put on the windows. Since then, it has not been a 90% drop: it has been a 100% drop—no deaths. I am not sure that is a solution for commercial buildings or high-rise ones, but one can stop all these bird deaths in ordinary houses by simple, cheap decals that you can get from the RSPB, and the decals can say anything they like.

On Amendment 338, I can only make a personal comment. If colleagues wish to go to the new government building in Peterborough, a building which houses the Passport Office, Natural England, the Environment Agency, Defra and the JNCC, in the foyer they will find something called the Blencathra—a green wall. This came about when I served on the JNCC a few years ago. The new government building was designed, and late on in the day they shared the design with all the organisations that were to occupy it. They boasted that the windows were 100% net zero, the air conditioning was net zero, and everything else was net zero. I said, “But have you got any greenery in the place?” Ah, no, they had not thought of that. We could not put anything on the roof—it was full of air conditioning and other things—so after a considerable battle we got a green wall inside.

I appreciate that that might not be a full answer to the amendments moved by the noble Baroness. I do not suggest that we should have a compulsory law on this—that would drive up enormous costs—but, if organisations are willing to do it, the solution is quite simple.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this interesting debate on the planning features around birds and other wildlife. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Teverson and Lord Blencathra, for their kind welcome of the fact I am still here in front of noble Lords today.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, for tabling this amendment, and to the noble Lord, Lord Randall, for introducing it so swiftly and beautifully. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Freeman, Lady Grender and Lady Bennett, for their amendments; I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for introducing the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, on her behalf. These amendments seek to use building regulations to mandate the use of swift bricks; seek to require buildings to include measures to prevent bird fatality; and seek to require developers to use a range of elements to support wildlife.

The protection of species is crucial to ensuring the health of our ecosystems and the growth of our natural capital. I fully support the objective of increasing biodiversity and ensuring that new development contributes positively to nature. The Government acknowledge the dramatic decline of swifts, which we have heard about during this debate, alongside much of our other most precious wildlife. We are committed to driving nature’s recovery while building the homes that we desperately need.

The noble Lord, Lord Randall, mentioned being converted to swift bricks. I assure him that I have already been converted to them and other building materials that can be used to increase wildlife. What we are looking at here, though, is how we can go about achieving that, not whether we support it in principle; in principle, we do. We do not believe that building regulations are the best route to achieving the objective of protecting species and providing habitats alongside new homes.

This is because building regulations in the UK are focused primarily on safeguarding the health, safety and well-being of individuals in and around buildings. They have not, historically, been applied to the protection of wildlife or biodiversity. Expanding their scope to include measures aimed at conserving species would represent a significant shift in regulatory intent. Such an expansion would also place considerable additional pressure on a system that is already adapting to the enhanced requirements introduced by the Building Safety Act.

The planning system is, we believe, the more appropriate route to secure these outcomes. Existing protections in planning policy support the use of wildlife-friendly features in and around new buildings to improve biodiversity. The national design guidance also promotes biodiversity enhancement through site-specific measures to support biodiversity net gains at the neighbourhood, street and household levels, as well as encouraging the protection and improvement of existing areas of valuable biodiversity—including through wildlife-friendly features.

Many animals in England are already protected by law. How development proposals need to consider these animals varies from species to species. We expect local planning authorities to use the standing advice published by Natural England to assess whether a planning application would harm or disturb a protected species. In particular, under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, it is an offence to kill, injure or disturb wild birds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I address Amendments 227C and 227E in the names of my noble friends Lady Hodgson of Abinger and Lord Banner respectively. I thank both my noble friends for bringing these thoughtful and important proposals to the attention of the Committee.

Amendment 227C from my noble friend Lady Hodgson seeks to ensure greater transparency for landowners when they are approached for the sale or lease of the land. Specifically, it would require that the landowner is informed whether their land is being approached in isolation or as part of a wider acquisition, one that may ultimately support an application for designation as a nationally significant infrastructure project—NSIP.

This strikes me as a considered and sensible safeguard. Landowners should be able to make fully informed decisions, particularly where the accumulation of multiple parcels of land could lead to significant legal and planning implications under the NSIP regime. Transparency in the early stages of land negotiation can foster greater trust between parties and avoid unnecessary disputes or confusion further down the line.

Amendment 227E tabled by my noble friend Lord Banner responds to the recent Supreme Court judgment in Day v Shropshire, as we have heard from other noble Lords. The amendment seeks to clarify and reinforce the protections available to purchasers acquiring land from local authorities under the Local Government Act 1972. I can be reasonably brief, since it has been well set out by the three noble Lords.

Given the uncertainty created by that judgment, it is entirely appropriate that we consider how best to provide reassurance to bona fide purchasers acting in good faith. Legal certainty in these transactions is vital, not just for the public sector but for developers and communities which rely on these deals to proceed smoothly.

My noble friend Lord Banner made a strong case that Amendment 227E would deal with the issue by providing that bona fide purchasers of former open-space land and their successors in title are free from the burden of a statutory trust. He also had the strong support of the noble Lords, Lord Grabiner and Lord Pannick. The noble Lord, Lord Grabiner, made the very good point that this is the only vehicle in due sight in order to change it. I hope the Minister will address that point. Are the Government willing to use a small amendment to the Bill to address a problem, which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said was a mess?

I have been in this House for a few years, and I think if any Conservative criticised the godlike qualities of the Supreme Court, we would end up in severe trouble. It was interesting to hear that some noble KCs have discovered that the Supreme Court sometimes may get things slightly wrong.

These are very thoughtful amendments. Again, I thank my noble friends for tabling them. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reflections on these points in due course, and particularly on the points raised by my noble friend Lord Banner and what the Government plan to do to sort out the mess, as the noble Lord has described it.

--- Later in debate ---

The Government believe that this issue needs to be given wider consideration to identify a balanced solution that takes into account legal safeguards and addresses the practical challenges faced by developers. It will also require engagement with the sector, which the noble Lord will be very welcome to join, as will other noble Lords who have indicated their interest in this issue. I look forward to further engagement. I think we probably can sort out the mess working together but, for the moment, for the reasons—

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

The Minister is suggesting that the Government are going to change the law on this. Can she give us any indication of the timescale when we might see legislation—an amendment to some primary Act of Parliament?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I would be very loath to do that because, whenever you start looking into legal matters, in particular, it is always more complex than you anticipated. With the will to help make this make sense, I hope that we will be able to bring our combined forces together and get some resolution to the issue. But, for the reasons I set out, I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

Three and a half years down, with at least three and a half years to go—at best seven years of not building—these enemies of growth have no regard for the wider economy and the plasterers, plumbers, carpenters and tilers. I totally support my noble friend Lady Coffey with all her amendments and my noble friend Lady McIntosh in saying that we need a different approach to this. Supporting a single organisation to do all those multifarious things cannot be right, especially when its track record is one of ignorance of the science and the mendacity to misinterpret it—not just to the public but to Ministers, the industry and everybody else.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments concerning Part 3 has a particular focus on the role and powers of Natural England. Due to the constraints on time this evening, I will not address each amendment in detail. Many of them are rightly probing in nature. They seek clarification, reassurance and, in some cases, correction. Others go further by proposing the removal of references to Natural England entirely, placing the powers instead with the Secretary of State, who is ultimately accountable to this Parliament. The Secretary of State should in this instance be that of Defra rather than MCHLG, as is suggested in other amendments. I seek clarification from the Minister on this point when she replies. I understand that, as far as EDPs are concerned, Natural England might report to MCHLG rather than Defra. If that were the case I would be appalled because, while Natural England has a lot of scientists who are experts on flora and fauna and Defra has some who understand this, the good thing about Defra civil servants is that they know what they do not know and they go back to Natural England for answers. I would be very worried if EDPs were being driven by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, much of which cannot tell the difference between a bat and a butterfly. We must have a firm answer to that, because it would be very worrying.

I should say at the outset that, later in my speech, I will come on to some of the criticisms of Natural England in terms of this Bill and where its powers should be restricted. However, I will not join in the attacks on Natural England as an institution. I admire greatly my noble friend Lord Caithness’s expertise on biodiversity—he participates in every Bill and adds considerable knowledge to it—but I do not recognise some of the most trenchant criticisms of Natural England in his speeches, both on the previous group and on this one. I have come across its scientific expertise and technical contributions, and I believe that it is widely respected.

My noble friend made a point about staff losses in Natural England. The difficulty is that Natural England is required to recruit highly professional biodiversity students—people with expertise in flora and fauna, and there ain’t many of those about. When they are employed, it is on reasonably low pay; then, as soon as they have got their feet under the table and are highly qualified, they get snapped up by other organisations and Natural England cannot afford to pay at the level required to keep them. Nevertheless, I am confident that it still has sufficient expertise to do its job.

My noble friend Lord Caithness also said that Natural England manages only one national nature reserve. It manages two-thirds of 224 national nature reserves. Criticism was also made of how it runs SSSIs. I was on the board down at Dartmoor when the decision was made. The problem is that Natural England is not allowed to consider any socioeconomic matters, such as the effect on farming. The 2006 Act states simply that, if the scientific evidence is there—that the bugs, beasties, flora and fauna are special and need to be protected—we have no option but to make that decision on scientific grounds. I reject any suggestion that Natural England’s board or others were making perverse decisions on SSSIs and not taking the economy into account.

I say to my noble friend Lady Coffey that it was my understanding that nearly the whole of the coastal path had been signed off and submitted to Ministers for approval. I think that it has nearly all been approved; there may be 20 or 30 miles that have not been. Of course it is not all open yet, because there are construction problems. How do you put a footpath across a mud estuary? There are obstructions from some landowners. I hope that, if not tonight then at some other point, the Minister can answer the question by explaining just how much of the coastal path has been completed by Natural England and the Government.

Those things were slightly not in my brief, but I thought that I would try to deal with some of the points because I was personally involved.

Part 3 hands unprecedented CPO powers to Natural England. These powers will allow Natural England to take land away from owners, not because of public interest infrastructure but to fulfil EDPs. Landowners will be forced to apply for subsidy-style payments from Natural England, yet we are given no detail on how these payments will be set, distributed or enforced; nor are landowners granted the right to refuse. Such a model will fundamentally alter the relationship between the landowner and the state—and do so without adequate consultation, accountability or clear regulatory safeguards.

Under the proposed EDP system, developers will contribute to a centralised fund rather than meeting site-specific environmental obligations. That fund will then be spent by Natural England on generalised environmental improvements elsewhere. This raises serious concerns. We will be not only replacing local mitigation with a remote offsetting scheme but creating a system in which Natural England becomes the operational body, the financial manager and the regulator all in one; in that regard, I agree with my noble friend Lord Fuller. This is a recipe for conflict of interest, lack of oversight and delivery risk. Natural England will be responsible for monitoring and governing the very schemes that it has designed and funded. Worryingly, there is no separation of powers, no mechanism for appeal and no guarantee of delivery.

The consequences of that will be profound. Planning authorities, which bear the ultimate responsibility for approving development, will rightly be cautious about relying on untested, underfunded and centrally managed EDPs. The result may well be an increase in planning refusals, not fewer. We must look seriously at Natural England’s capacity to carry out this enormous new responsibility. So I ask the Minister: how many EDPs will Natural England be expected to prepare, over what timescale, and with what funding and staffing?

Despite huge increases in funding by the last Government, we know that Natural England is still underresourced and understaffed to do all the new work that it will have to do. As it stands, it does not have the capacity to deliver what Part 3 is asking of it. Beyond funding, it will have the problem of finding the skilled ecologists required to make this work—hundreds of them on top of the thousands of new planners, builders and tradespeople needed for our broader planning ambitions. As I said earlier, as Natural England is competing to get those experts, you can bet that outside bodies and developers will also be grabbing them so that they can have answers and challenge the EDP decisions. The issues of funding certainty and operational capacity are not theoretical; they are central. The funding pipeline through the nature restoration fund is inherently unpredictable. How can Natural England plan and deliver on this basis?

Lastly, I turn to the proportionality of the powers that we are considering. Under Part 3, Natural England will be granted forcible entry powers, compulsory purchase order powers and the ability to set its own fees, all without direct parliamentary accountability. These powers could extend even to gardens and allotments—a proposition that should give all noble Lords some pause.

I know the Minister will listen carefully to the concerns raised in this group and that we can engage constructively with her on this issue moving forward. I end as I began by saying, yes, these are the criticisms I have of the proposed powers in the Bill, but I do not accept some of the more trenchant criticisms of the success of Natural England to date. Yes, mistakes have been made and there are difficulties, but nevertheless there are a lot of good people trying to do a good job for biodiversity in this country, and I was one of them.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, there are a number of amendments in this group by the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seeking to amend Clauses 53 to 55, 57 to 59, 86 and 88 of the Bill. I will consider the amendments together as they relate to the role of Natural England and who can undertake the role of developing and implementing an EDP.

I turn to the amendments that seek to remove Natural England as the body that can undertake the role of developing and implementing an EDP named in the Bill, as well as adding Natural England to the list of consultees for an EDP. We believe that Natural England is the most suitable delivery body, given its expertise in relation to protected sites and species, existing statutory functions and powers and ability to work right across England. Removing Natural England as the body that can undertake the role of developing and implementing an EDP would also remove the intentional checks and balances between the role of Natural England and the Secretary of State. I confirm that, as it stands in the Bill, the Secretary of State referred to is that for MHCLG, but clearly Defra and MHCLG work very closely together during this process.

Natural England is responsible for developing an EDP for submission to the Secretary of State and the implementation of that EDP after it has been made. In answer to the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, the Secretary of State is accountable for determining that a draft EDP meets the overall improvement test, making the EDP and taking remedial action if delivery falls short.

Were the amendments to pass and all legal responsibilities passed to the Secretary of State, Natural England, as the Government’s adviser on the natural environment, would still need to support the Secretary of State in preparing and delivering conservation measures. However, without being named in the Bill, it would not have the necessary powers and functions to enable efficient delivery or to provide assurance of the rigour of an EDP independently of the Secretary of State.

The Bill contains many safeguards to ensure that the body, which is charged with developing and implementing an EDP, performs its role to enable development and deliver improved environmental outcomes. With these safeguards, and recognising the relevant expertise held in Natural England, we feel it is right to reflect in the Bill the central role that Natural England will play.

More broadly, I highlight that the Government are taking concerns about the efficacy of the regulatory landscape incredibly seriously and are already taking action off the back of the Corry review—I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for recognising that—to ensure that the regulatory landscape and all the relevant actors in the system are performing as effectively as possible, because we need to give greater confidence. We are already expediting several of the recommendations made by Dan Corry, and I will mention a few of those.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

233: Clause 54, page 91, line 25, at end insert—
“(6A) When specifying the maximum amount of development in reference to the metrics in subsection (6), Natural England must consult qualified surveyors from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.”

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 233, I shall also speak to Amendment 283A in my name. I speak on behalf of my noble friend Lord Roborough, who has Amendments 281A to 282 in his name, all of which sit within this important group concerning consultation on environmental delivery plans.

As ever, the detail matters, and in this case the missing detail is the voice of those most directly affected—the landowners and farmers who will be expected not only to comply with, but often to deliver the outcomes envisaged in EDPs.

As my noble friend Lord Roborough mentioned at Second Reading, the Secretary of State in the other place remarked that,

“we expect farmers and land managers to benefit, with the nature restoration fund providing opportunities to diversify their business income”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/5/25; col. 427.]

That is a generous sentiment. Nowhere in the Bill, however, do we see any requirement for Natural England to consult land managers and farmers or, indeed, to work with them at all in delivering environmental improvement within EDPs.

At a time when the Government impose the family death tax on farms, slash delinked payments and slam shut the door on SFI applications with minimal notice, I am surprised that Ministers have not seized this opportunity to allow farmers and landowners to be part of the solution, commercially and practically, by providing environmental services to developers or to Natural England itself.

That brings me to the amendments in my name. Amendment 233 ensures that when Natural England is specifying the maximum amount of development permissible under an EDP, it must consult qualified surveyors from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. This is not a bureaucratic embellishment. Instead, it is about ensuring that land value, local economic conditions and development viability are properly understood by professionals who work in this space every day. Without their input, we risk setting thresholds that are arbitrary, potentially unworkable and, in some cases, detrimental to both development and conservation goals. Let me take a moment to explain why this is not merely desirable but essential.

Clause 54(5) and (6) require Natural England to determine and

“specify the maximum amount of development”

that an EDP may apply to, and this may be defined, according to the Bill, by area, on floor space, the number of buildings or units, the values or expected values, or the scale, in the case of nationally significant infrastructure projects. These are not ecological metrics, they are economic, planning and valuation judgments, yet quite simply, Natural England does not have, in my opinion, a single person who knows how to do these metrics.

Some of my noble friends may profoundly disagree with me on this, but when Natural England considers scientific criteria for SSSIs, it produces experts of the highest calibre, world-renowned specialists in species and habitat conservation. That is the strength of Natural England, but valuing property is not. We do not need to speculate on this. I am not revealing any board confidences here, because Natural England’s own 2023-24 annual accounts make this crystal clear. On heritage assets, it states:

“There is valuation uncertainty affecting Natural England’s heritage assets because there is limited market evidence of comparable assets being bought and sold”.


That line stems from a change in international accounting standards that required Natural England to revalue its national nature reserves from an historical rating to a current one. For three years, not one auditor, not one surveyor, not a single person in Natural England could arrive at an agreed valuation. Why? Because Natural England does not do this work; it was never designed to. So I ask: if Natural England cannot put a value on a nature reserve, which, depending on your view, is either absolutely priceless or worthless because you cannot build on it, how on earth can it make informed decisions on the scale or value of commercial development? How can biodiversity experts determine whether, say, five acres of housing is better or worse than five acres of an Amazon distribution shed or an AI data centre drawing on vast quantities of water?

These are not theoretical questions, they are real-world decisions with significant implications, and Natural England is asked to pronounce on them in Clause 54. How can Natural England assess the number of units within buildings or predict how those units might be used, particularly in commercial or mixed-use developments, when such usage can change frequently depending on the occupancy of the tenants? Lastly, how can Natural England pronounce on values or expected values, which lie firmly in the realm of chartered surveyors, when even they would preface their valuation with caveats or “depending on local markets”, planning conditions, service access, environmental strengths, and so on.

This clause as it stands is unworkable. At best, it asks Natural England to make judgments it is unqualified to make. At worst, it risks undermining both development viability and environmental outcomes through guesswork or error. Amendment 233, therefore, is not only a safeguard, it is an enabler. It would ensure that decisions are made with the right expertise at the table. Without it, we are, in effect, asking marine biologists to assess logistic parts and entomologists to forecast land values.

Amendment 283A is a practical one. It would change the consultation period on draft EDPs from 28 to 40 working days. For many, 28 days is simply not long enough to engage meaningfully with what can be highly technical and significant documents. Forty working days is not excessive. It aligns with best practice elsewhere in the planning system and gives consultees a fair chance to respond constructively.

On behalf of my noble friend Lord Roborough, I also commend his Amendments 281A and 281B, which would require Natural England to consult with both farmers and landowners after an EDP has been prepared. It is crucial that consultation is not limited to the early stages but continues throughout the process, particularly once the practical implications for those on the ground become clear. Successful environmental management depends on partnership.

These amendments are not hostile to the principle of EDPs. On the contrary, they would help to make them work. They would build trust. They would increase buy-in. They would make the outcomes more deliverable. If we treat farmers and landowners as partners, not passive recipients of policy handed down from above, we are far more likely to achieve the landscape restoration that we all want. Indeed, when I joined the Natural England board in 2018, it had just launched a policy called “working in partnership”, or something like that. I cannot remember the exact name, but it was moving the whole strategy from one of merely trying to enforce things into working in partnership with landowners.

To that end, we also support the sentiment of Amendment 280 in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey, which rightly seeks to ensure that neighbouring authorities with a local nature reserve strategy must be consulted.

The noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, is not in his place at the moment, but when we were talking about EDPs, he said that a senior Natural England official said it was the most exciting thing in his lifetime. Maybe that is the same senior official who told us three years ago when looking at the Environment Act 2021 of the noble Lord, Lord Gove, that local nature recovery strategies were the greatest step forward in nature recovery in British history and he was really excited about them. I presume he has now switched his loyalty to EDPs instead. Local nature recovery strategies are absolutely vital to delivering nature recovery in every inch of England. Amendment 285 makes it clear that all the bodies listed under Clause 59 should be consulted by Natural England. That is good governance.

We are asking for something very modest here: that those who will be most affected by EDPs have a seat at the table and the time to consider what has been asked of them. These are constructive, proportionate and necessary amendments, and I hope the Government will consider them carefully. I beg to move.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 280 is in my name, and I thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra for explaining it so succinctly. It is exactly that; in this part of the Bill, there is a whole list of local authorities mentioned as being required to be consulted. I agree with that official from three years ago that local nature recovery strategies are going to be the thing that makes a lot of this happen. My amendment is self-explanatory, and I hope that Ministers will include it on Report.

--- Later in debate ---

Amendment 283A put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, proposes to increase the minimum period for public consultation on an EDP from 28 to 40 working days. The Bill already includes provision for the Secretary of State to specify a longer period of public consultation on a draft EDP in regulations. The 28-working day period specified in the Bill is therefore the minimum period that can be allowed. With that assurance that the consultation period in the Bill is a floor, not a ceiling, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, will agree not to press his amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response. I need to stress the importance of involving farmers and landowners as partners working with the Government on this if we are to be successful in restoring our environment and getting proper nature recovery.

The Minister has just said that 28 days is a minimum. The normal planning rule is 40, so why not put in the Bill that it should be 40 days, rather than the minimum, which the Secretary of State might extend? I would be sceptical that the Secretary of State would extend those dates—I suspect they will want the minimum possible for any consultation.

The points we have raised today reinforce that, without proper engagement, we risk implementing policies that may be impractical or detrimental both economically and environmentally. The Minister said that of course Natural England would consult various experts on the size of units and the cost evaluations. That is an awful lot of different people to consult. I am not convinced that the answer she gave will be practical. The idea of involving the chartered surveyors is probably the only way to go, but I will read again very carefully what she said.

The amendments before us are modest and crucial. They seek to embed meaningful consultation throughout the life cycle of environmental delivery plans, ensuring that those who must deliver these outcomes have a real voice at the table. This is not about opposition but collaboration. It is building trust and getting buy-in. If you have them sitting around the table and being consulted, they are more likely to buy in, deliver better and have more sustainable outcomes for the environment and rural communities alike. Having said that, and having listened to the Minister, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 233 withdrawn.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 294 would prohibit any changes to an environmental delivery plan that would reduce the amount, extent or impact of conservation measures designed to protect identified environmental features. In effect, the Secretary of State would be unable to alter an EDP if such an amendment would weaken established environmental protections.

The aim here is to safeguard against the watering down of environmental commitments once they have been set out in an EDP. Years and years of planning history have too often shown that protections established at the outset erode over time, whether under pressure in the name of economic growth, or because of shifts in ministerial priorities or as new developments are proposed nearby. For example, more than a third of England’s rivers remain classified as in poor ecological health, frequently because enforcement and standards around protections weaken as circumstances change. It is therefore vital that commitments to mitigate the negative impacts of development are not easily reversed or diminished.

This amendment is rooted in the environmental non-regression principle. This asserts that environmental law and standards should not go backwards but instead serve as a stable and reliable foundation for ongoing improvement. Once conservation measures are agreed and an EDP is made, the protections and enhancements should be seen as a baseline from which further progress can be made, not as a temporary line which can be negotiated away. Local communities, environment groups and stakeholders need assurance that commitments to, for instance, river restoration or species recovery will not be diluted at a later date. The amendment aligns with the Government’s own Environmental Principles Policy Statement, under which all departments are obliged to prevent, reduce and rectify environmental harm, not simply react to it after the fact.

This amendment enhances long-term investment in environmental improvement. Developers and landowners will know that measures agreed at the outset must be maintained, promoting higher standards of stewardship and accountability. Policymakers will be able to set conservation targets with assurance that they are durable, not fleeting or subject to administrative whim.

This amendment is the chance to break the never-ending cycle of much-promised and not delivered. I note that it is in the same group as several other amendments, which I suspect will have a very fair wind behind them, and I just hope it slips in along with them. It would be excellent if this joined them or if there was any possibility of that. I hope the Minister will consider the merits of this amendment, I look forward to hearing her response and I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 294, submitted by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. I apologise that I was not in the Chamber this morning to participate: I had to attend my Select Committee, especially as it was on a subject that I demanded that we investigate. Way back last June, we fixed the meeting for this morning at my convenience, so I had to be there.

The amendment from the noble Baroness would prohibit the Secretary of State from having the power to amend an EDP in a way that would reduce the measures taken to mitigate the negative environmental impact of development. This amendment touches on important points of principle, including environmental conservation and the remit of the Minister’s power. I would be interested in hearing the Government’s response.

I will also address the government amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, which would require Natural England to consult on the EDP when certain amendments to it are proposed. The circumstances in which the consultation will be necessary are when the proposed amendment would increase the maximum amount of development covered by the EDP, include new places in the development area or add new types of conservation measures not currently included in the EDP. It seems an important principle that amendments which would change an EDP in this way are subject to consultation. I agree entirely. Such consultations should aim to allow for relevant expertise and the voices of a variety of stake- holders to be heard. I look forward to hearing the noble Minister’s response to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Grender.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, this grouping includes further amendments that the Government have tabled to address matters raised in advance of Committee. As part of this package, the Government’s Amendment 295B clarifies the consultation requirements when amending an EDP, where the intent had always been to ensure that consultation was taken forward where it was proportionate to do so. This will ensure that, where an EDP makes a significant amendment, measured by its meeting certain criteria, there will now always be a requirement to consult on that amendment, so that the public and expert stakeholders are able to contribute to and comment on the proposals.

Government Amendments 295C, 295D and 295E contain minor legislative fixes and a consequential amendment necessary for the correct operation of the legislation following the substantive government amendments. I hope that the Committee agrees to accept these amendments, and I commend them.

I turn briefly to the non-government amendment, Amendment 294, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, which would make it impossible to amend an EDP when that amendment would in any way reduce or weaken the conservation measures it contains. While I absolutely appreciate the concerns that she has rightly raised, the amendment would substantially restrict Natural England’s flexibility to make crucial amendments to EDPs, which may include reducing both the amount of development and the conservation measures contained in an EDP. For example, we would want to ensure that, if an expected development was not actually going to come forward, an EDP could be amended to reflect this and reduce the scale of conservation measures, in line with the reduction of impact from the development.

I also note that all significant amendments will now need to be consulted on. All EDPs will continue to need to pass the overall improvement test following any amendment. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness agrees to withdraw her amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I have every sympathy with these amendments, which reflect wider concerns expressed about the capabilities of Natural England and those whom they will deploy, but I do wonder how they will work in practice. In that regard, I have three quick questions for the Minister.

First, will Natural England reveal to levy payers which organisations—and, equally importantly, which qualified individuals—will be given responsibility for using that levy payers’ money to deliver relevant EDPs, so that levy payers can, as stakeholders, have confidence in delivery? Secondly, will such levy payers be able to communicate with these individuals or organisations to learn of and discuss progress? Thirdly, how, and by whom, will these individuals or organisations be held to account for the work that they do?

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to address Amendments 319 and 320, as introduced by my noble friend Lord Caithness—I thank him for that. These important amendments seek to ensure that future environmental delivery plans are delivered by people or bodies that have the appropriate capabilities necessary for conservation projects.

Environmental delivery plans are centralised schemes that will thus pull together more resources than have previously been designated to environmental initiatives. That means an increase in both scale and responsibility. Delivering plans at an increased scale necessitates that those responsible have the required expertise—not only industry knowledge, but larger-scale management capabilities. Amendment 320 particularly speaks to that, as it expands the potential providers to include bodies, allowing delivery to be overseen by a wider and more diversified group of people.

Responsibility is higher with EDPs, as the use of pooled resources—necessarily greater than case-by-case funds—increases the risk of wasteful externalities. This means that providers must be prudent and resourceful. It is therefore important that those entrusted with delivering EDPs have the relevant experience and qualifications to mitigate waste and mismanagement and maximise the effectiveness of those schemes. These amendments seek to ensure that those paid by Natural England have the requisite skills. I look forward to the Minister’s answer to that and to the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, we now turn to the very important question of the powers to enter for Britain’s new Rostekhnadzor, the dominant state operator. I find it rather terrifying that a Bill can be put before your Lordships’ House by people who seem to be so out of touch with the real world. In Clause 77(3), a statutory undertaker—most likely in this case to be Natural England—gets 21 days’ notice, whereas in any other case the notice is 24 hours.

I understand that Natural England does not visit its trees very often, if at all. They probably do not need much management once they get going. Perhaps there is a bit of thinning to do or a felling exercise, but the people can go home at a set time to their families. Natural England will get 21 days’ notice for the benefit of that position.

On the other hand, the farmer will be working on their farm outside probably from 6 am to 9 pm. Then they come home, start to do their emails and suddenly find that they have Natural England coming the next day and that there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. Why is there this prejudice against non-statutory undertakers? Why are they given such a short time?

While on this part of the Bill, can I ask the Minister some more questions? Clause 77(2) states that the powers

“may not be exercised in relation to a private dwelling”

and quite right too, but are they exercisable in regard to a garden? That is a concern.

In Clause 77(4), why is notice not required for a second or subsequent visit? Surely that would only be courteous if they are going on to somebody else’s land. If it is a farmer’s land, they might be combining, they might be sowing or they might be getting sheep or cattle in for inoculation. They probably have a very full programme. Somebody appointed by Natural England then suddenly turns up. Would the Minister like it if that happened at home in Cumbria? She is about to catch the train down to your Lordships’ House and Natural England says, “No, you can’t do that, Minister. I need to speak to you now. Let us go and have a look at this”. This could be redrafted to be a lot better for the private individual.

The final point I put to the Minister is the question of notice in writing. When I was a surveyor, a letter in writing was all you could do. Can she tell me whether writing includes emails and social media? It comes through in written form on one’s dreaded machines. Will it be a signed letter like the one she sent us this morning, or can it be done a different way? I have asked lots of questions and it would be very helpful to have some answers. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Caithness, and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, for their excellent amendments—excellent because I was a co-signatory. These amendments seek to ensure consistency in treatment between statutory undertakers and private individual land managers as regards the powers of entry to be exercised by Natural England.

Frankly, this was an unwelcome addition to the Bill in the other place, giving Natural England even greater powers than already envisaged. I have referred before, or my noble friend has, to Natural England being turned into an authoritarian empire. This is part of what I was referring to. These amendments would require that at least 21 days’ notice be given to both sets of parties by Natural England to enter and survey or investigate any land covered by this part of the Bill. This appears to be the least amount of respect that private landowners should be entitled to. There are major issues around biosecurity—the risk that entrants to land carry on animal disease or predatory species. Given Natural England’s activities across the country, there is a considerable and real risk involved in their entry.

Farms may also have livestock that pose some risk to visitors and need to be kept away from roads and public rights of way, but for the behaviour of which they remain liable. Giving the additional time would allow landowners and Natural England to consider the risks around the entry and sensible precautions that can be taken and warnings given.

We in the Conservative Party have always strongly believed in both equal treatment before the law and the importance of public and private land ownership. These are principles we will always continue to support and are rights that we believe all should have access to. I therefore welcome Amendments 321 and 322, and I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss them in further detail.

I hope that those who drafted this law did not take the view—we have no evidence that they did—that, “The public sector is good and can be trusted but private ownership is bad and cannot be trusted, so let us go in and speak to them straightaway”. As an aside, I say to my noble friend Lord Caithness that if inspectors arrived at the farm of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and wanted to see it immediately, if it meant she could no longer travel on a ghastly Avanti train with me I can understand why she would happily ask them to come in straightaway.

However, I trust that the Government will take these amendments seriously and I agree with the underlying principles. I await the Government’s response to them with anticipation.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not want to disturb the travelling arrangements of noble Lords who live in Cumbria. Amendments 321 and 322, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and ably moved by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, would extend the written notice period required before Natural England could demand admission to land. This is currently set at 21 days for statutory undertakers and at least 24 hours in other cases.

Although we agree it is important that adequate notice is provided, the provisions in the Bill are consistent with powers of entry in similar legislation. In aligning with other legislation, we are reducing the risk of confusion for landowners but also recognising the justified difference in treatment regarding statutory undertakers, such as utility companies, whose activities may be vital for public services and so may require additional preparation to protect public safety and to prevent disruption.

However, noble Lords have made some very good points and we will consider this further. It is also worth highlighting the additional safeguards in the Bill, such as ensuring that these powers cannot be used to gain access to private residences—I believe it says “residences” not “dwellings”, so I hope that covers the point about gardens that the noble Earl made. These safeguards further ensure that the powers cannot be used in any other manner other than for carrying out functions under this part of the Bill.

The noble Earl made a very good point about a second or subsequent visit. We do need to consider that further. He also raised the point about notice in writing. He is right to point to the fact that this could be an actual letter—a physical letter—or it could be an email; it could probably not be social media, because that would not be an appropriate way of communicating directly with the person concerned.

With that, and a commitment to discuss this further, I hope that, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, will agree to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, this group relates to concerns about the wide-ranging powers afforded both to the Secretary of State and, most importantly, NE by this Bill. Amendments 326 to 332 seek to require the Secretary of State to have regard to the expertise of the person or bodies, giving greater accountability to the power to designate a person to take on NE’s responsibility. We touched on this a moment ago, and I hope the Minister will give a positive reply.

I particularly want to draw attention to Amendment 343 because this introduces a new clause which provides independent oversight for the administration of Part 3. This is important as the Bill currently invests power in Natural England that means it is both a regulator and a beneficiary, with limited ability for challenge—a point raised in earlier amendments. It is important, too, because we have also talked about the ability of Natural England to perform its current duties, let alone the duties proposed under the Bill.

I was at the launch of the IUCN UK Peatland Programme’s report yesterday and talked to a lot of people, and everybody was concerned about NE’s ability to do its job now and, with the financial pressures on it, whether there will be any hope of it doing the work proposed under this Bill satisfactorily in the future. Increased oversight would support greater adherence to scientific evidence—the subject of a number of amendments to the Bill—in the work that Natural England does.

There is also an absence of clarity in the Bill on the transparency and accountability of NRF distribution. We touched on that, and again that should be independently looked at. Amendment 361, which is in this group, is consequential on Amendment 343. The main point I come back to for the Minister is this independent oversight of the administration of Part 3. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, several of the amendments put forward by my noble friend Lord Caithness seek to ensure that those to whom the Secretary of State may delegate power are more precisely clarified. I support my noble friend’s efforts to ensure that the legislation is as clearly drafted as possible, so that it may be enacted in the way that both Houses intend. Furthermore, under this Bill, Natural England is being conferred a variety of different powers. It is therefore important that those delegated these powers, whether individuals or bodies, are appropriate. As a result, I am supportive of my noble friend’s amendments, and I am sure the Government will provide them with the necessary attention they deserve.

Amendment 343, also proposed by my noble friend, calls for the establishment of an independent body to oversee Natural England’s powers and duties. I support the principles behind such an amendment as transparency and accountability are essential requirements for effective government. I am therefore supportive of some of the ideas included in the amendment, such as requests for information, transparent reporting and independent monitoring. I hope the Government take this amendment seriously as well.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, for his Amendment 328. It is a probing amendment to ascertain which people the Government envisage taking on the responsibilities of Natural England under this part, and whether they include the farmers and occupiers affected by the EDP. I am sure that the whole Committee will welcome clarification of this question, as we have addressed it in prior groups.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The noble Earl has tabled a number of amendments that seek to amend Clauses 86 and 87. I will consider these together, as they relate to the role of Natural England and who can undertake the role of developing and implementing an EDP.

First, Amendments 326, 328, 329 and 331 seek to ensure that only appropriate persons can be designated in this role and also seek to amend or clarify who can perform this role. Noble Lords are aware that Natural England is named in the Bill as the body responsible for the preparation and implementation of environmental delivery plans. However, there may be instances where it is appropriate for another body to take on some or all of Natural England’s role. There might be a scenario where it would make sense for a different public body to do this role. In the debate on Monday, I explained, for example, that the Marine Management Organisation might take on the role for an EDP that applied to coastal waters.

Clauses 86 and 87 provide for the Secretary of State to make the necessary changes to allow another body to exercise the same functions as Natural England. Any changes by regulations made by the affirmative procedure would receive the proper scrutiny of Parliament, which would ensure that only an appropriate body could be named. The Bill has been drafted to allow this partnership approach, which includes consulting relevant local expertise—farmers and land managers, for example. We expect that farmers and land managers will be able to benefit from new opportunities to provide conservation measures and so diversify their own revenue streams.

Amendments 343 and 361 would establish an additional independent body to monitor the success of EDPs in achieving the overall improvement test. Establishing an additional body would, however, increase the burden on and cost of administration of the nature restoration fund. The fund is to be implemented on a cost-recovery basis, and this additional administration would increase developer costs through higher levy rates and divert money away from environmental delivery. However, we agree with the noble Earl that oversight is important. The Secretary of State already has oversight of the nature restoration fund, which includes final approval of all environmental delivery plans following public consultation, and the ability to amend or revoke an environmental delivery plan if it is not delivering as expected. In addition, the Office for Environmental Protection may also scrutinise and report on all matters relating to the implementation of environmental law.

On Amendments 327, 330 and 332, as I set out earlier, the meaning of “another person” includes bodies already in line with the default position under the Interpretation Act 1978. As we set out in the debate on Monday, we would only ever expect to designate a public body to fulfil the role currently fulfilled by Natural England in the Bill.

I hope I have done enough to reassure noble Lords about the safeguards that ensure the benefits for development and nature, with Natural England fulfilling the role of preparing and implementing EDPs, alongside our intentions as to who else can perform this role or otherwise participate in the delivery of EDPs. I therefore kindly ask the noble Earl to consider withdrawing his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have the last amendment in this group. I very much support my noble friend Lady Coffey on her ponds amendment. We are short of ponds in the landscape, generally, and they should not be hard to create. I like the idea of wild belt, but I am not convinced that we can compel anyone to create a natural environment in this country. We lack the natural systems that would maintain a natural environment. Anything in this country has to be managed, but to have places set aside for nature and properly managed seems a much better concept than a green belt. It is much easier for people to enjoy and much easier to look after.

My amendment says that we should recognise that construction and demolition activities cause disruption to nature, much as we recognise that wildlife can cause disruption to growing crops. The Government have recognised this in relation to wind farms; they accept the damage to wildlife that wind farms cause. What we do causes damage to nature. If I was to put on my house a bird box and a bat box, there would not be a single month in the year when I could repaint my house without some risk of disturbing wildlife. We need to take a realistic attitude to this, which I hope is what my amendment does.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to address the amendments in this group. There are some important amendments here, some that raise interesting concepts and some that are apparently sexy but may be difficult to implement. Biodiversity is vital to preserving our ecosystems, which in turn provide clean air, water and food. It holds significant cultural, aesthetic and economic value, supporting industries such as tourism and agriculture. I thank my noble friend Lady Coffey for moving the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Grayling concerning biodiversity.

Amendment 335 seeks to ensure that a biodiversity audit is incorporated into the planning application process or application for development. I recognise the potential merit in integrating biodiversity considerations at this stage in the planning process and I keenly await the Government’s response. I agree entirely that, as far as EDPs are concerned, one must do an audit at the beginning to know what one has before one can say later whether it has improved, got worse or stayed the same—I hope that the Government will correct me if I am wrong—but I think that my noble friend’s amendment may refer generally to planning applications, where a balance has to be struck. I can see the benefit of doing an environmental audit beforehand, when it might speed things up and cost less, but doing it afterwards might also speed things up and cost less. I would like to know what the Government’s thinking is.

I understand that, before I joined Natural England, about eight years ago it reached out to HS2 and said, “We know that you’ll be doing a lot of work on the route. You may come across some biodiversity problems. Talk to us in advance and we’ll see if we can sort it out”. I understand that Natural England was told, “Pooh, pooh. We don’t need you involved in this. We know what we’re doing”. By not involving Natural England in the early planning stage, HS2 hit the bat problem, which is when it invented the £110 million tunnel. So there can be merit in getting nature bodies and the developers involved with Natural England early in the planning stage.

Amendment 336 calls for transparency in offsite biodiversity mitigation decisions. If the amendment were to pass, the Government would be required to publish a statement setting out the scientific basis for that decision. Government accountability is a principle on which Members on both sides of the Committee agree and I thank my noble friend for his contribution and my noble friend Lady Coffey for moving the amendment.

I also thank my noble friend Lady Coffey and the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for their amendment contributions. These amendments seek to provide important protections for potential wild-belt areas and their associated ecosystems. I particularly like my noble friend’s amendment on ponds. It is an excellent idea and, if the Government do not accept it, I would like to hear a good reason why.

On heritage tree preservation orders, I can tell the Committee that on 27 September 2023 I was driving back from Newcastle along the Hadrian’s Wall road—well, my wife was driving and I was sitting in the passenger seat, giving my usual expert guidance on how to drive, as men often do. She said, “We’ve driven past this gap for years. Why don’t we go and look at it?” I said, “Well, you can go if you like. I’m not going to try to stagger up there. It’s about to rain”. That night, a few hours later, those swine cut down the tree. It grieves me that I did not try to stagger up to look at it. The Sycamore Gap tree was iconic. The word “iconic” is not in the amendment, but the tree, although it was not of cultural significance, was of iconic significance. I like the concept of the amendment. My only worry is that the definition seems rather wide and that it lands it all on Natural England, which is not geared up to do this.

If this amendment were to pass, I suspect that, within one month, Natural England would have a million letters from people saying, “You must ledger this tree, that tree and that tree”. It could not just say, “Thank you very much, it’s all in the register now”, and tick the box; it would have to investigate every single one, it would have to see whether it was genuine or not and, no doubt, there would have to be a review process, as people would demand that a tree be taken off the list or added to it. So, I like the concept and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that something must be done, but I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that we need to do it properly and find an easy way to do it that protects all the right trees, but not at a huge bureaucratic cost.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment. To lift the curtain a little bit on life in government, it is one of my disappointments that we did not get this enacted. I perhaps have to dob people in: it was the Ministry for Housing. We had finally got there with Plan for Water, where it was adopted as a policy. We managed to get it in there and we did the review—it was all beautiful. I am pleased that the Government did the standards; they published that in July. It just needs this final push. Now that Steve Reed has moved from Defra to the Ministry for Housing, I hope that he will take full advantage of being enlightened about the benefits of ensuring that we have proper connections and sustainable drainage and, candidly, that we can get on with it and the Government take advantage of this primary legislation to ensure that it happens.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 337 and 342. I thank my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering for her speeches tonight. She cares about these issues deeply and I commend her for her hard work. I am sure that the Committee is united in agreement that the environment is an important factor worthy of consideration in any planning Bill. I share my noble friend’s concern about building on the flood plain. Travelling down from Carlisle to London every week, at certain times of the year I look out of the window and see that scruffy low-lying land knee-deep in water. Six months later, they are building houses on it. I wonder whether someone somewhere in government should do something about it. Thank God that it is not me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

And I repeat: it is 8% in some regions—not in all regions, and not the overall figure for the United Kingdom land space.

The Secretary of State’s need for wind and solar seems to have blinded him to the mounting costs and spatial limitations they could impose. A 24/7 digital economy, data centres and artificial intelligence are not served by intermittent power. They need reliable baseload, and that means nuclear. France, Finland and Sweden—nations with some of the cheapest, cleanest electricity in Europe—all rely on nuclear. The truth is this: nuclear is not the problem; our system is. As we embrace more advanced nuclear technologies, we must try and fix it now in this Bill.

The current regulatory regime puts documentation above the national interest. It pretends that a legal checkbox exercise is the same as protecting the environment. It is not. By making it near impossible to build a handful of nuclear stations on tightly controlled sites, we are instead forcing ourselves to cover more of the countryside with wind turbines and solar panels. Of course, we all care deeply about the environment. Our national love of the countryside and of our natural heritage runs deep. But a planning system that blocks low-carbon, low-footprint, clean energy is self-defeating. It turns environmental regulation into a tool of environmental harm.

Cheap abundant nuclear is not a fantasy; it is our route to energy sovereignty, to lower bills and to powering a modern, prosperous Britain. If we are serious about delivering the infrastructure that will enable growth, attract investment, support heavy industry and safeguard our national interest, then we need to be bold enough to cut through the red tape that is holding us back. Britain stands on the cusp of a new industrial renaissance, but we cannot reach it with the planning system stuck in the past—particularly as we embrace the new, small and advanced nuclear technologies. These amendments are a crucial step towards a future that is energy secure.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment and make a plea for a simplified environmental audit for small modular nuclear reactors. I have in my hand here the speech I delivered on 22 October 2015 in the Grand Committee, aiding and supporting my noble friend Viscount Ridley on small modular nuclear reactors. The debate was supported by everyone in that Committee.

The Environment Minister said that she was totally in support of small modular nuclear reactors and that the technology was coming along rapidly and had to be followed through. We were then told that DECC, the Department for Environment and Climate Change, was carrying out a technical study which would inform the development of small modular nuclear reactors, which would conclude in 2016.

What has happened since then? Absolutely nothing—until in June this year the Government gave Rolls-Royce the go-ahead. Rolls-Royce was gagging at the bit in 2015 to crack on with this. I am afraid the last Conservative Government dithered on small modular nuclear reactors, just as Tony Blair's Government dithered on building Hinkley Point, which was initially costed at €3.3 billion. Then it went to £5 billion, £10 billion, £18 billion and £24 billion. I do not know what it is now—£30 billion or £40 billion.

Small modular nuclear reactors are clean energy. They can be positioned around the country, avoiding the need for huge cabling and pylons. As I say, Rolls-Royce was gagging at the bit and has now got approval to go ahead. Rolls-Royce has been building small modular nuclear reactors for 70 years, perfectly safely. They are in nuclear submarines. Of course, there is a difference between the nuclear engine one has in a submarine and the land-based modular nuclear reactor. But the science is not worlds apart. It is like a car company able to build a petrol engine, then told to build a diesel engine. Yes, some of the components are different and the construction is different, but the concept is the same. It is not rocket science.

I was concerned to read the other day that the wonderful visit of President Trump may involve a deal to get American small modular nuclear reactors. Well, I say to the Government, as we have got Rolls-Royce able to make these things and ready to crack on with them, the people of this country will not understand if we get ones dumped from Westinghouse or GE Hitachi from the United States. At the moment, British industry has a head start. Let us make sure we keep that head start by not putting in excessive regulation—which the Americans might not be required to have—nor planning applications which could take years and years to put a small, safe, modular nuclear reactor outside some of our cities.

That is why we need a simplified environmental audit plan for the positioning of our modular nuclear reactors and then we can crack on and get the cheap, clean power we need. The wind farms are not overexpensive, but the government subsidy is now ridiculously high. No wonder everyone wants to build wind farms—it is money for old rope, considering the subsidy the Government give them. We will not need as many of those, and we will not need pylons all over the countryside. I urge the Government to consider not just my noble friend’s amendment but the possibility of a simplified system for small modular nuclear reactors.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, tempting as it is to have a large-scale debate about nuclear energy, I do not think that noble Lords will want that. I broadly understand where the noble Baroness is coming from, and I am sympathetic to the thrust of what she is saying. However, I say to her and to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that nuclear is part of the package. It is the essential baseload. We are going to be very reliant on wind and sun, and the whole thing has to be seen together.

We have this huge potential now. Hinkley Point C is making real progress. A final investment decision has been reached for Sizewell C. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, is right about the importance of the appraisal that GBN has undertaken, and government support for Rolls-Royce, and the announcement this week of the agreement with the US, which is twofold. The first point is regulatory alignment, which means, rather like in the pharmaceutical sector, that if one of the major regulators in the US, the UK, or Europe signs off a particular medicine, there is often mutual recognition. Clearly, this is important in meeting this point about reducing the amount of unnecessary bureaucracy in relation to regulation in future. The second point is on the announcement by a number of US companies, particularly from the west coast, who wish to invest in AI and data centres in the UK aligned to advanced modular reactors, which is fantastic news.

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, I am sure Rolls-Royce is going to be in a very good position, but it has to be open to companies to invite other countries’ reactors as well. You do not want to put all your eggs in one basket in any case. The question then comes back to the issues we have been talking about recently as to whether the regulatory system we have collectively is going to be up to meeting this challenge. I commend a report published yesterday by Britain Remade, whose conference I happened to attend, which caused such offence to my noble friend. It is a very good report about the history of nuclear power development in this country. We had the lead once upon a time. We foolishly threw it away. We have a great chance to get back in at a substantive level, but at the moment it simply costs too much. There are various reasons: there is overspecification—we have heard that before—and there is slow resource-intensive consultation, planning and permitting. We have heard about the issues around some of the environmental protections, and there are various other reasons as well.

I wanted to ask my noble friend this. She knows that there is a Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce. It was set up under the auspices of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. It gave an interim report in the summer. It is going to come back very soon with a substantive report, but the interim report spoke of,

“fundamental concerns about how regulation operates in practice, with the most prominent being that the system is perceived to be unnecessarily slow, inefficient, and costly”.

On the assumption that this report comes out within the next few weeks, will it be possible to use this Bill on Report as a way of trying to deal with some of the regulatory hurdles? I understand that my noble friend probably cannot answer that, first because the Government have not received the report, and secondly because they will have to consider how to do it, but I just express the hope that we might be able to use this Bill as a vehicle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I will very briefly respond on this amendment. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, for introducing it on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Offord of Garvel. To be honest, we are unable to support this amendment for various reasons. I understand that is a probing amendment, but it does not come across as a fully figured out or good way of doing things.

I fully take the point that other noble Lords have made about the announcements today on the back of Trump’s visit about small modular nuclear reactors, which this amendment is about, in terms of their importance for the economy. Separately, I have tabled an amendment to this Bill about the need for energy efficiency and for small modular reactors. It is important that, while we grow the economy, we make sure that the new things that we are building are actually energy efficient and fit for purpose. We cannot just keep having new power-hungry technology and expect to get to clean power at the same time. We cannot let the AI beast get out of control.

First, just to respond to this amendment, I know that it is probing, but the key thing here is that the Government have not asked for any of these powers. Indeed, they have just recently updated a lot of their nuclear policies. We have had an update to EN1 and to EN7. At no point during that time have the Government requested any of the sweeping powers set out here.

The amendment proposes that the Secretary of State may, if “this is considered necessary” and appropriate, disregard the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 and the Infrastructure Planning (Environment Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017. That wording in itself is just a carte blanche for the Minister to do whatever they want whenever they want. It is not good wording. Moreover, the amendment slashes the page limits for environmental impact assessments to 1,000 pages. I fully get that some of these documents are too long and that that can delay things, but 1,000 pages seems an arbitrary figure: 1,001 is not acceptable, but 999 pages is. It cuts the consultation period to 21 days. Again, it strikes me that these are vaguely plucked out of the air and are not properly thought through.

This could undermine democratic accountability, and people being able to consult on these things. It could incur significant legal risk, as we have obligations under retained EU law, international treaties and all sorts of things. It is also a risk as we are transitioning to a completely new way of doing nuclear energy—dispersing it, having it run by companies, and, inevitably, its being situated closer to communities. It is important for delivering this transition that we take communities with us and, as we deploy a new technology, that this is done in a way that creates confidence and does not undermine the very thing that we want to do. As we start to roll this out, it is more important than at any other point that we do this properly and appropriately. My worry is that rushing to sweeping powers like this could do the exact opposite of what the amendment intends, and undermine confidence in this part of our energy transition, so I am not able to support the amendment.

I have raised this in the House before: whenever we have this conversation about nuclear, it is always put in opposition to solar, and solar has taken over the world. Actually, this week we have had the Treasury itself saying that the long-term geological store for our historical legacy of nuclear waste has gone on to the red list and is not deliverable. Nuclear energy comes with different issues and benefits, but also has big, non-associated costs that are not always put forward. It has a long-term historical legacy of highly radioactive waste that needs to be dealt with. We recognise that nuclear is part of the mix but, coming back to what I said on the previous amendment, if the Government feel they need more regulation in this space—they may well do—we will listen to that. However, that needs to be done in the round and, as we transition to a new form of nuclear energy, this stuff needs to be done very carefully indeed.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I wanted to speak briefly on the point that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, made on regulatory alignment. I like regulatory alignment in principle, provided it meets the right level of agreed regulation. I am fairly certain with everything I read that British regulators are perhaps over-nitpicking and over-fussy here, and are causing delays at Hinkley Point by double- and triple-checking the welding. I am also fairly certain with what I read that American regulators are—I would not say sloppy—much more relaxed.

If regulatory alignment comes about from British regulation experts talking to American regulation experts and reaching agreement, I can live with that. What I could not live with is a political agreement on regulatory alignment. I admire the way that President Trump goes around the world fighting for American interests, and stuffs everybody else provided that American interests come first. My worry here would be that, at some point, he may offer a deal saying, “Okay, Britain, you want no tariffs on steel and whisky? I can go along with that, provided you accept American terms on regulatory alignment for our nuclear reactors”. It is the political deal that worries me, not any regulatory alignment brought about by experts. I do not expect the Minister to be able to answer that or comment on it; I merely flag it. I see the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, nodding, and I am glad that we agree on this point.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not get drawn into the geopolitical issues of international trade on the planning Bill, but I will address the points in the amendment.

The Government shares the ambition of the noble Lord, Lord Offord, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, who moved his amendment, to make nuclear development faster and more cost effective, and the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for SMRs. My noble friend Lady Hayman mentioned AMRs as well, which are important. Quite simply, we cannot grow the economy in the way that we want to without rapidly tackling the clean energy issue on all fronts, including nuclear. That is about not only clean energy but providing us with energy security and lower energy prices, which will help not only businesses in our country but households as well. It is important that we get on with that.

I fear that the solutions proposed in this amendment—I appreciate that it is a probing amendment—would potentially invite problems of their own, and risk undoing the growth we have seen in public support for new nuclear. I look first at allowing the Secretary of State to disregard environmental impact assessment requirements, where doing so would

“secure the provision of the generating station in an economic, efficient, proportionate and timely manner”.

We should remember that environmental assessments include not just impacts on wildlife but also take account of the impact on communities—noise, air quality, human health, and so on.

An application for a new nuclear power station will include proposals for mitigation measures designed to limit or remove any significant adverse environmental effects that it would have. This amendment could remove any requirements for those mitigation measures, which simply means that the significant impacts would not be managed. Like the noble Lord, we recognise that environmental assessment is in need of reform, which is why we are already carefully considering how to bring forward environmental outcome reports that will allow us to ensure that EIA is proportionate and to reduce the risk that these assessments are used to unduly delay development coming forward.

Allowing the Secretary of State to exempt nuclear power station projects both from the habs regulations and from any requirement to pay into an EDP could leave our most important protected sites and species at risk of irreparable harm. Simply providing for these regulations to be disregarded is probably the wrong approach and risks removing the need for even the most common-sense consideration of environmental impacts and actions to address these.

As I hope I have already set out to noble Lords in these debates, the nature restoration fund will allow developers to discharge their environmental obligations around protected sites and species more quickly and with greater impact, accelerating the delivery of infrastructure at the same time as improving the environment.

The planning regime must support new nuclear, so we have introduced a transformative draft national policy statement on nuclear energy. It is important, therefore, that both this policy statement and the overarching national policy statement for energy are considered when deciding applications for new nuclear power stations. This amendment would remove the centrality of these national policy statements in determining applications for those power stations, which would only slow down and confuse the decision-making process. The habitats regulations must be applied sensibly, which is why the overarching national policy statement for energy has already introduced the concept of critical national priority projects. This creates a presumption that the importance of low-carbon energy infrastructure is such that it is capable of amounting to imperative reasons for overriding public interest. We recognise that we need to go further and the nuclear regulatory framework—my noble friend Lord Hunt, referred to it, I believe—must avoid increasing costs where possible. We have therefore launched the Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce, which will report later this year.

The Government remain firmly of the view that, when it comes to development and the environment, we can do better than the status quo, which too often sees both infrastructure delivery and nature recovery stall. I hope that, with this explanation, the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Offord of Garvel, will be able to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, said. In fact, it would be preferable for Clause 89(2) to be removed from the Bill.

My amendment is about the Secretary of State. I have not had the chance to identify in Hansard precisely where Ministers spoke to that the other day and this morning. I just think it is fair. I do not think the Minister in any way misspoke the other day.

I do not want to do a long constitutional lecture. I should point out that right now I am very keen to monitor this legislation, but I am also keen to see the rest of the second half of Liverpool beating Atlético Madrid 2-1, which is the score now.

Back to the topic: constitutionally, any Secretary of State can undertake the role of any other Secretary of State. This is where aspects of this come into play. I have extensive experience of having many legal cases against me and other Secretaries of State when I was in government. There were certain legal cases where the sponsoring department was conceived to be the decision-making power. All I am trying to do with this amendment is to make it crystal clear that Part 3 applies to the Secretary of State for Defra. The Minister mentioned earlier that it will be, except in certain circumstances or whatever. This just avoids any difficulty in that regard.

For what it is worth, my sense is that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is yet again blocking the commencement of other legislation, which is frustrating. Nevertheless, this is something I am happy to discuss and come back to on Report. I feel particularly strongly about it and would like it to be transparent in the Bill. If people suggest that portfolios and names change, there are existing procedures in legislation which, in effect, make the changes automatically. In that regard, I hope to move my amendments on Report.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Coffey on this small but important amendment, Amendment 356. It may seem a technical thing, but it goes to the heart of how this Bill and the EDP will operate. I retired from the board of Natural England in December last year. I have worked with Defra officials for the past seven years, and I know the strength of their working relationship with Natural England, so the Committee will forgive me if I speak for a little bit longer than my noble friend did in speaking to her amendment.

When I discovered on Monday that the Secretary of State to whom Natural England will report on EDPs will be for Housing, Communities and Local Government, I was appalled. I stand by my comments from Monday that no one in that department has any knowledge of biodiversity, wildlife and the countryside or can tell the difference between a bat and a butterfly.

I know that some of my noble friends dislike Natural England, and possibly Defra as well, but at least Defra understood the legal position and duties of Natural England. I ask my noble friends and Members opposite, and outside NGOs: do they seriously think that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government understands the operation of the countryside and biodiversity? I can tell them of the fight we and Defra had to get biodiversity net gain approved and past the objections of the department for housing and levelling-up, as it then was.

My main concern is that Natural England is an NDPB with complete operational independence in a large number of matters. There was a new perm sec a few years ago who initially thought that Natural England was an executive agency fully under the command of Defra, like the Rural Payments Agency and large parts of the Environment Agency. Natural England does get some ring-fenced funding, which is controlled by Defra; for example, the £50 million for peat restoration and funding, the King’s coastal path and a few other things. But most grant in aid is for the 250 legal obligations that Natural England has to perform each year. Many of these are boring and technical but they are the day job and have to be done, like responding to tens of thousands of requests from planning authorities on planning applications which may affect nature. I recall that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, had an amendment in group 7, where it was said that if the Government give Natural England extra funding for EDPs, the Treasury will claw it back somewhere else, and the Natural England budget will be squeezed on some other vital areas.

Defra understands that Natural England is legally independent in its operations. Of course, the Secretary of State can issue instructions and take control in some areas but rarely does so. I cannot see any circumstances where Defra would order Natural England to prepare plans which could endanger or diminish an SSSI or protected landscape or any national nature reserve, but would the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government show the same restraint?

I suspect that this MHCLG plan to take over control of nature was an Angela Rayner brainwave. I am sure that she and the department thought that Natural England and Defra had too cosy a relationship and Defra might not be trusted to drive through development plans, so Housing had to take charge. Defra and Natural England do not have a cosy relationship, but they have a very good working relationship, and each understands the roles and duties of the other.

One of the changes we made six years ago was to invite a very senior Defra official to attend board meetings. He had no say in our decision-making and no vote, but he heard our thinking, and when we asked him he could give a steer on government thinking. That was and is invaluable. He was the director-general of environment and is now the interim Permanent Secretary, the excellent David Hill; a quiet, unassuming modest man but with a superb brain and great intellect—and, of prime importance, he cares about the environment and biodiversity. The thought that Housing will be in the driving seat in directing Natural England on the preparation of EDPs fills me with dread, not just for the effects on farming and the countryside but for biodiversity as well.

I wonder if the NGOs realise that Housing will be the master here. I would love to hear from the RSPB, the Wildlife Trust, the National Trust, the Woodland Trust and others on whether they are comfortable with Natural England reporting to the housing department on the operation of EDPs.

Let us briefly look at the Ministers making the decision. I regret that the new Housing Secretary of State, Steve Reed, whom I rather liked at Defra, issued a statement last week called “Build, baby, build”, and said that he would unleash a blitz of measures in this planning Bill. That does not sound like there will be much care for the environment and biodiversity. I assume that he has got a President Trump MAGA hat to go with that Trump slogan; I would much prefer to hear Ed Miliband say, “Drill, baby, drill”. However, no matter how nice they may be, the other Ministers in that department—from Peckham, Birkenhead, Greenwich and Chester—have no country or biodiversity experience.

In Defra, the new Secretary of State and Agriculture Minister do not have any rural, countryside or biodiversity experience, no matter how nice and decent they may be. Emma Hardy is quite good, and Mary Creagh is very good and has a track record of shadowing Defra and the Environmental Audit Committee. But there is one Minister in Defra who really knows her stuff, has represented a large rural area and understands the countryside and biodiversity, and she is sitting opposite us on the Government Benches. She is our own lass, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. I hope that this praise does not kill off any further career chances for her, but I know that everyone in the House supports exactly what I have said.

We face the situation with the Bill that the only civil servants and Ministers who know what should be in an EDP, if we have to go down that route, are in the government department being bypassed. I know that the Minister’s brief will say that Defra will have input and that it will work in partnership with the MHCLG, but everyone knows that, just as departments have input into the Treasury on their budgets, the Treasury dictates everything.

The other golden rule in government is that the department with the money rules the roost. The Defra budget last year was £4.6 billion. The MHCLG budget was £25 billion—five times greater. Make no mistake, if this amendment does not succeed then all the expertise of Defra and its Ministers will be sidelined, the countryside will be ravaged and biodiversity will be sabotaged, as “build, baby, build” is unleashed by a department which simply does not understand. I do hope that my noble friend will return to this vital matter on Report.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I forgot a sentence in my contribution. I should have said that what we were informed of the other day completely explains how the Bill has been drafted. If it had been the Secretary of State for Defra definitively doing this, a lot of the clauses would not be needed, with the exception of compulsory purchase powers. I tabled this amendment in anticipation of raising the issue at this point.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 20th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I raised this issue in Committee. This is an identical amendment to that tabled in the House of Commons by multiple chairs of Select Committees, who were concerned about the reduced opportunity for the Government to at least reply to the parliamentary scrutiny rightly undertaken in terms of national policy statements.

I listened carefully to what the Minister said in Committee, and I have not re-tabled a whole plethora of amendments, as I would not want to be thought to be trying to hold up national policy statements unduly, because they are a good thing. I have re-tabled this amendment because when Parliament puts forward recommendations or has a resolution, the least we can expect is that the Government will respond, rather than removing that as a requirement of the law, as this legislation does. In a nutshell, that is why I think this matters.

This matters because we are starting to see an increasing number of national policy statements. There is a lot of merit in trying to give a clear direction to the country—residents, developers or whoever—to make sure that they can continue to consider future development in a measured and structured way.

Reading the responses of the Minister here and the Minister in the Commons, I am conscious that a lot of focus seems to be on the fact that a Select Committee might take a bit of time, or that we would table a resolution anyway. Actually, although this House has the opportunity to table a resolution and vote on it, it has become quite hard to table things in the Commons unless you have control of the parliamentary timetable. I notice that while this House had a debate on nuclear power—and energy Statements, for example—it did not happen at the other end. Maybe everybody was happy, but it is more likely that certain parties did not have the opportunity to look at the timetable.

One of your Lordships’ Select Committees made some recommendations in its report regarding the energy grid. I am not aware that the Government have yet replied—although they may have—recognising that a debate is to be tabled on that report as a whole. Overall, this issue does matter: when this House is minded to at least give some comments or thoughts on national policy statements, we should expect a response from the Government. That is why I am minded to test the House’s opinion on the amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend. When I was chair of the Delegated Powers Committee under the last Government, we published a report regretting the trend that over the last 30 years, more and more regulations have bypassed Parliament—not just by using the negative procedure rather than the affirmative, but through departments issuing guidance after guidance, none of which came before Parliament.

The point I want to make is a simple one of principle. We see in legislation Parliament being bypassed, in that case and in far too many cases. Parliament should not be bypassed, and necessarily so. My noble friend’s amendment simply makes the point that the Government should consider Motions by Parliament and what Select Committees say. They do not have to accept it, but at least we should have a chance to give that input. Otherwise, as I also see in cases, we will depend on various stakeholders to comment.

On the number of consultations issued by departments, there is a huge list of stakeholders, some of them great and grand organisations, royal colleges and organisations such as the RSPB with goodness knows how many million members. However, often the local MP is not listed, parliamentarians are not considered—and possibly not even the Select Committee which might have relevant views on it.

I believe my noble friend is on the right lines here, and I hope the Government will accept her amendment or at least give us assurances that Parliament will not be bypassed in the way she has suggested.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, we now have before us Amendment 3 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey—which I thought was coming in the previous group—and there is much to agree with in what she said. The national policy statements set the tone and the content for the NPPF and then the further guidance on planning legislation, so they are the fundamental base of all further changes to planning law. They are very important.

For the Government to try to take out the opportunity for democratic oversight and scrutiny is not just regrettable but a centralising process which we should not support. Planning affects everybody’s life one way or another, be it major infrastructure projects or small housing developments. Planning affects people, and if it affects people, people’s voices should be heard, and so people’s democratically elected representatives ought to be heard. It is our role in this House to scrutinise legislation. That is what is happening now, and we are saying, “This will not do”. We cannot have more centralising of planning processes and removing democratic oversight in so doing. If the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, wishes to test the opinion of the House on this issue, as she has intimated, we on these Benches will support her.

--- Later in debate ---

I am grateful to the Minister for what she said in outlining Amendment 4 in this regard. She suggested that requiring consideration of heritage assets would slow the process down. I wonder whether she or her department has an assessment on how long they think we would be adding here. As I say, the significant church of St Matthew’s, Normanton, was saved only because there was a bit of time for the community to rally round and come up with a better scheme; it is now the location for many civil weddings, it is much loved by the community and it adds to the heritage and story of that part of the country, while we have made sure that we have the water we need for the future. I would be grateful if she can say more about that and understand the concerns that I and a number of heritage groups have about the proposals, which we only saw for the first time last week.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I speak on these amendments not with any great authority on them but because I had some experience of a heritage village being destroyed to create a reservoir when I was Member of Parliament for Penrith and The Border, a huge constituency in the north of Cumbria including the beautiful lake of Ullswater.

South of Ullswater, there is a reservoir called Haweswater, which was created in the Haweswater valley. In 1929, the Manchester Corporation took possession of the village. It moved out all the villagers, exhumed 97 graves and moved the bodies to Shap, and demolished the church and the pub. Then it flooded the village and created Haweswater Reservoir. That village in the Lake District National Park was called Mardale. We have no idea how beautiful it was—we have no photographs—but if it was in keeping with all the other villages nearby, we know that it was a superb heritage Lake District village bang-smack in the middle of a national park. We would hope that that would not happen these days, but that is why we need Amendment 7A to guarantee it. Wainwright said:

“Gone for ever are the quiet wooded bays and shingly shores that nature had fashioned so sweetly in the Haweswater of old; how aggressively ugly is the tidemark of the new Haweswater”.


I think the 1980s was the first time that, in a severe drought, the level of Haweswater dropped down to the bottom and we could see what remained. One reason that was interesting is that it destroyed the wonderful myth we had for about 100 years that on quiet, cold, still nights you could still hear the church bells clanging beneath the water level. When the village was revealed, the church tower was only about 10 feet high; it had all been removed and there was nothing left. How many houses were destroyed? We know how many bodies were exhumed, but we have no record of the number of people moved out. However, the ruins would suggest a village of more than 30 houses, including a wonderful church and pub.

Wainwright mentioned the ugly tide-mark. My constituency had Ullswater, the most beautiful lake of all in the Lake District, if I may say so. On occasions of drought in this country, the level of Ullswater is lowered by two enormous pipes, one 12 feet in diameter and the other eight feet, which pump all the water down to Manchester. I do not want Mancunians to die of thirst—the answer is to build more reservoirs there—but the damage it does to the landscape in the Lake District is extraordinary. We have these wonderful images of the Lake District and its lakes, but when you see the level in Ullswater 10 feet below normal, there is an appalling scar around the whole lake. The important point about the Lake District National Park is the landscape and the visual value of what you see. Lowering severely the level of Ullswater, with Haweswater pumping into it, causes enormous environmental damage, which is about not just oils, gases and pollutants but destroying the visual quality of some of our lakes.

On the other hand, my noble friend Lord Parkinson mentioned Kielder, which is superb. It is great for tourism and fish and really improves the quality of the landscape. I disagree with him on the tree planting. They planted millions of Sitka spruce around the lake but put them right down at the water’s edge, so you got acidic run-off. Now, as the forestry departments are cutting down those trees, they are replanting those nearer the lake with proper mixed English landscape trees which do not cause that damage. There is only one thing wrong with Kielder: it is in completely the wrong place in terms of where water is required.

Over my time as a Member for a constituency in Cumbria, every few years various schemes came up to build some huge pipes and pump Kielder down south. The cost was astronomical, not to mention the huge engines that would be required to do it. Then there were other wonderfully clever schemes to pump some of it into the Tyne, let it flow down, intercept it before it got to Newcastle, then pump it into the River Wear and intercept it before it got to Bishop Auckland—and goodness knows where it would go then. There were also ideas to pump it into canals and force them to be rivers. All these schemes have been reviewed and considered; they do not work and would not work even at enormous cost. The answer must be to build appropriate reservoirs where they are needed.

Reservoirs are needed in the south, and the problem with finding them “down south”—as we up in Cumbria would say— is that they will be in areas with wonderful villages and lots of people, and they are very difficult to construct because of the damage that may be done to those local environments. They may be in places with lovely villages and AONBs, or on the edge of a national nature reserve, or even taking in one of those nature reserves. I accept that destroying a village may be necessary, but in that case, the villagers must be consulted, and they must have a right to be properly compensated. It cannot be taken for granted that a national infrastructure project can overrule those requirements.

Turning to compensation, I will be very brief because it is not in the amendment. We can come up with compensation for people living in these places, but how do you compensate for the destruction of a wonderful 1,000-year-old Norman church or the local post office—buildings which, in some ways, are not owned by people, and involve no right to compensation?

In future, to create a reservoir it may be necessary to destroy villages, even heritage villages. In that case, we should have a protection, as my noble friends have suggested in Amendments 7A and 7B. I am happy to support them.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, said that it was regrettable that these amendments were brought at this late stage. I have a feeling that it is unacceptable that the Government should, in the final throes of the Bill, introduce very significant amendments that will have a profound effect on our communities and the environment surrounding them. This is why we are having a long debate on this group of amendments.

The Government wish to find a different route for agreeing the construction of new reservoirs. While that is a laudable aim, the methods proposed in the Bill represent a huge backward step for environmental protection and democratic accountability, without considering perhaps more straightforward solutions such as water conservation. The Government’s proposals seek to shift the decision-making process from the local to the national. As a result, and in light of their amendments on removing pre-application—which we will come to in the next group—local residents, as the Minister has said, would have to register in order to speak against the decision or to make their comments heard. It is quite an ask for people to appear before the equivalent of a planning inspectorate examination, which can be quite daunting for residents to take part in. That is regrettable.

The other issue I have a problem with is that the Government intend that where a region has a water shortage and, as a consequence, housing is turned down because there is not enough water to feed the new estates, they will issue “holding directions” to stop councils refusing planning permissions and will consider call-ins to try to overturn those. How those people will get water is yet to be understood. We on these Benches believe that the Government, alongside pursuing some new reservoirs, ought to put greater emphasis on the solution to water scarcity, which should be about addressing demand inefficiency.

This includes getting water companies to reduce the scale of the leaks from their water pipes—which is approximately 20% of the totality—to 10%. That is achievable and, on its own, would solve the immediate issue of water scarcity. The use of grey water and black water—I hate those terms—within new developments also needs to be addressed by not requiring all water that is used in this country to be of drinking water quality, which is what happens now. When you get your car washed, the car wash uses water of drinking quality to clean your car, because all water produced is to that standard. There ought to be changes in that direction as well.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 20th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger and her Amendment 45, to which I tried to add my name but was too late. It was persuasively introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbots, and I will try to be brief.

The essence of responsible political choice is to look to the long term. Good agricultural land is one resource that should be with us for ever. Development should not be allowed to prejudice the long-term interests of our nation. While I support Amendment 43, in the name of my noble friend Lord Fuller, which was well supported by his local knowledge, I prefer Amendment 45 because it would guarantee the protection of grade 1, grade 2 and grade 3A land against the substantial commercial pull of solar at prevailing returns in the energy and agriculture sectors.

Such protection would help to reverse the short-sighted change to planning guidance based on short-sighted thinking, to my view, by the Blair Government. Labour has never been a real friend of the farming community, despite its national importance, articulated so well by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and the need to grow our own food. It would be wonderful to see a change of heart in the changed circumstances we see today, where food security is so important.

My view is that we should concentrate solar investment in urban areas and on urban rooftops—for example, on businesses and on supermarkets, which I promoted in my years at Tesco—especially in countries such as Hungary and Thailand, where the sun is hot and shines more brightly. I should perhaps end by saying that I have an interest as a part owner of two small fields, the remnants of a family farm long since sold.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, there are 3.3 billion barrels of oil easily available in the North Sea. An independent study by Westwood Global Energy Group for Offshore Energies UK suggests that up to 7.5 billion barrels could still be produced, while the Government’s own figures suggest about 3.2 billion barrels. The North Sea Transition Authority estimates that there are 6.1 billion barrels of oil of contingent resources and 4 billion barrels of oil in mapped leads and prospects—whatever those are—plus an additional 11.2 billion barrels in plays outside these mapped areas. There are billions and billions of gallons of oil that we could use, and we need. But we have a fanatical Secretary of State for Energy who is obsessed with the last bit of his title: the Minister for Net Zero. He is destroying the UK’s energy needs on our doorstep—or under our seabed, to be more precise. Energy should be our priority.

Without substantial new investment in domestic production, the UK is projected to import about 70% of its oil and gas needs by 2030, rising to over 80% by 2035. Even with a goal of net zero by 2050, the UK will still need between 13 billion and 15 billion barrels of oil and gas equivalent to meet its energy needs. Although demand for oil and gas will fall significantly, they are expected to meet a quarter of energy needs by 2050 to provide long-term power and support the energy transition, especially when paired with carbon capture technology. So a quarter of our energy needs will still come from oil and gas. We are sitting on billions of gallons of oil that we will not extract from our own country, and we will then import billions from abroad. How barking mad is that?

This fanatical energy department is not only destroying our oil and gas production systems but putting whole swathes of British industry out of action, making it uncompetitive by removing a cheap commodity that all our competitors use. There will never be Labour’s dream of growth while the Secretary of State is still in post—no wonder most of the Cabinet want him sacked. His obsession with net zero is also leading to the destruction of some of our finest countryside and the imposition of massive—

[Earl Russell (LD)]

What does this have to do with the amendment at hand?

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

That is in the sentence that I am just about to say.

The Secretary of State’s obsession with net zero is now leading to the destruction of some of our finest British countryside, with the imposition of massive solar farms on some of our finest productive land. We would not need all these solar farms if we actually dug out the oil sitting under our own North Sea, but he has now put a stop to that. That is the point of my introduction. No doubt, as the MP for Doncaster North, he will still get his avocados, soya milk and pomegranate seeds from overseas, while our UK farms, producing the food that most Britons eat—our beef, our lamb and our wonderful vegetables, such as broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, et cetera—will be covered over by solar panels.

My noble friend has made that point, and I will raise a different but related one tonight. My friend the noble Lord, Lord Alton, is not with us tonight. Noble Lords may have heard of a report about a month ago that a bus lost control in Victoria Street and crashed into a bus stop, including pedestrians. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, was one of those injured and was rushed to hospital. The photographs of his injuries are quite horrific, but he says that he believes he has not suffered catastrophic injuries, despite the bus fracturing his spine. He is in a brace, recovering. We wish him a speedy recovery and wish him back here as soon as possible.

Crucially, of course, he is as mentally sharp as ever, with lots of posts going out weekly defending victims of human rights abuses in all those countries that kill, torture, enslave and abuse their citizens. One of those countries is China. It is a threat to us militarily, as it builds a massive military complex superior to the United States. It is a threat to us commercially, as it steals every commercial secret we have. It is a threat to us politically and culturally, as it infiltrates our universities, institutions and even this Parliament.

The important point I want to make in this debate tonight is to say, in my inadequate way, what I think the noble Lord, Lord Alton, would have said if he were with us tonight. My concern is that we will be filling England with some of the products from that oppressive and hostile regime. China manufactures 80% of the solar panels in the world. Some 68% of all the solar panels sold and used in the United Kingdom come from China, many made by the slave labour of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. Even those not made in that province are still made in the hostile Chinese regime, which has an appalling human rights record.

What has happened to the Labour Party, which permits the Secretary of State to cover our countryside with products made by such a deplorable regime? Some of the Members opposite will be old enough to remember the late Robin Cook, Labour Foreign Secretary, and his ethical foreign policy. It did not quite work out as planned, but at least he sought to have one. Underpinning the ethical initiative was the guiding idea that Britain would seek to advance the cause of human rights in international affairs. I know that is not easy, and I appreciate how Governments face difficult problems and have to get into bed with some awful regimes in order to keep out even more awful regimes, but this is an easy one as far as solar panels are concerned.

I want a commitment from the Government that all the solar wind farms rubber-stamped by Ed Miliband will have a condition that they will not use any Chinese-produced solar panels, bearing in mind that 32% of the solar panels in this country are not Chinese—so there are alternatives. I understand that there is a company based in south Wales called GB-Sol that manufactures a wide range of solar panel modules for domestic, commercial and specialist applications. There is a company called UKSOL, a British solar modules brand, that produces high-efficiency PV modules. There is another company called Romag, a large and established manufacturer that also produces British solar panels, as well as one called Anglo Solar, which I found—another UK company.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I tabled my Amendment 50 before the Government tabled their own Amendment 49 in this group. Both seek, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, to leave out Clause 41. It is fair to say that that was the part of the Bill that caused the most concern among heritage groups. We heard in Committee about the concerns raised by bodies including the National Trust, the Heritage Alliance and the Government’s own heritage adviser, Historic England. I am pleased to say that the noble Lord, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, who responded to the debate in Committee and is a man who cares about both our heritage and innovation, very sensibly listened to that chorus of disapproval and undertook to look at this matter again in discussion with other Ministers.

I was therefore very pleased when I saw the government amendment that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, has tabled in this group, which responds to the concerns raised in Committee, both in this House and in another place, and in the representations made by heritage bodies. I also welcome the fact that she and the Heritage Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, have met heritage groups directly to discuss this and other aspects of the Bill. That is very welcome, and I understand that it is the first of a number of round tables that they will hold on this issue.

Heritage and the construction of new infrastructure are sometimes held up to be in competition, which of course they are not. As the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, knows, for instance, from his time as chairman of the Heritage Railway Association, a proper celebration of our past can help to inspire and drive the innovation of the future. As we heard in Committee, if development is done in a way that respects the past and the vernacular of local communities, it then has greater support from those communities and is a much speedier and more welcome thing.

Having seen the government amendment, I will not press my Amendment 50 here on Report. I am glad that the Government have listened to the concerns raised in these debates.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I am in the rather frightening position of agreeing with Amendment 48 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle—no doubt they are as concerned about my support for them as I am. However, they have raised some very good points here.

I am in complete agreement with my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and his desire to delete Clause 41 in its entirety—now with the Government's amendment—but the noble Baronesses who have tabled Amendment 48 deserve some praise. We can all look at buildings, monuments or parts of the countryside and think that they are wonderful and should not be built on or destroyed, but we do not have our valuable heritage determined by such random means. As the amendment makes clear in proposed new sub-paragraph (b),

“structures and sites are designated for protection only where they are of special or particular historic or cultural significance”.

That is the key point. These protected sites are not based on the subjective opinions of us or local people, but on an objective determination using nationally approved criteria on what qualifies a building for listed building protection, or to be a scheduled monument or conservation area. Proposed new sub-paragraph (c) merely asks that due regard be given to conserving the historic environment alongside the need for future infrastructure. The question is, how long will that new infrastructure last?

I did a Google search, and this is what I got on typical building lifespan expectations. Standard residential buildings often have a design life of 50 years, with a possible maximum of 100 years. Commercial buildings can vary widely: some modern commercial properties may be constructed with a short design life of just 20 or 30 years, while others, such as high-quality concrete and steel structures, are built to last 100 years or more. Historical and monumental structures can, with constant care, last hundreds or even thousands of years, as seen with some Roman structures.

We destroy our history at our peril. It was Sir Winston Churchill who said:

“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us”. —[Official Report, Commons, 28/10/1943; col. 403.]


On the one hand, we have the magnificent House of Commons next door and this marvellous Palace here. On the other, we have some of those appalling—but, no doubt, award-winning at the time—1970s tower blocks, which we are now flattening as quickly as possible because of their destructive effect on the people forced to reside in them. No Government would dare to demolish Stonehenge or Hadrian’s Wall, nor to drive a road through them, but there are thousands of ancient buildings that, although not as famous or sexy as Stonehenge or Hadrian’s Wall, are a vital part of our history and deserve protection—or, at the very least, special consideration—before they are demolished for some new construction.

In England, there are 9,320 grade 1 listed buildings and 21,782 grade 2 listed buildings. It is estimated that more than 1,000 of these buildings are over 1,000 years old. I cannot imagine any new development that would justify the destruction or damage of one of these buildings —except, possibly, a runway extension at Heathrow. Very few projects would justify it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has amendments in later groups on protecting heritage trees. In Committee and in HS2 Bills, we have debated saving ancient woodlands. Once they are gone, they can never be replaced. The same applies to conservation areas. Amendment 48 does not call for a complete ban; it calls merely for regard to be had to the need to conserve our historic environment alongside the need for future infrastructure. I commend the noble Baronesses for tabling that amendment and bringing it to the attention of the House.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot resist a brief anecdote. When the inner ring road was being built around Birmingham’s city centre in the 1960s, the highways department at Birmingham City Council approached the Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham and said that, unfortunately, both the Pugin-designed Catholic cathedral and the Pugin-designed archbishop’s House next door to it would have to go to make way for the road. When the archbishop entered a modest word of protest against this loss, querying whether it was entirely necessary, the result was that the courteous gentlemen of the highways department went away and rethought the plans somewhat and the archbishop was given a choice: he could lose either the Pugin-designed cathedral or the Pugin-designed house. That explains why, to this day, the cathedral still stands but the house has long since gone. Happily, that approach to heritage is not something that we would see today.

At this point, I wish merely to congratulate those Members of your Lordships’ House who have spoken so clearly and valiantly against the original proposal in the Bill. I also thank the Government for listening, because what was originally proposed really was unsustainable; what we have now is a great deal more acceptable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Borwick. I am absolutely delighted that he has tabled it. As a disabled person, I have to say that the guidance on accessible charging is not worth very much, as it has not made an impact on my ability to move to an electric car. I totally agree about the barriers that the noble Lord mentioned of raised kerbs, gravel or, indeed, poorly lit charging stations, or even lack of accessible bays.

To use a charging station, I need to be able to open the door of my car to the widest possible point. My chair comes apart—the wheels come off, and the frame and the wheels sit on my front seat—and I do not want to damage any other cars while I am getting in and out. It does not take me much longer than a non-disabled person to do so, but when I tried, very hard, several times to move to an electric vehicle it proved impossible.

The first time I tried, I was close to signing the paperwork but had a look around my local area. There was no accessible charging station within at least 30 miles of my house, which was not particularly useful. The advice from the garage was that perhaps I should just take someone with me wherever I went, and they could get in and out of the car to charge it for me.

The problems go deeper than that. As we are seeing charging stations develop, they are taking over accessible bays. One time I was sat in a queue at a service station—admittedly, it was at a busy time—and looked at how much longer it would take me to charge my car, because I need a wider bay. It was a significant amount of time, compared to my place in the queue. What I am worried about is the impact this is going to have if we do not do something now for disabled people.

I recognise that there are probably changes coming to the Motability scheme. I do not have a Motability car, but I do receive personal independence payments. There are an increasing number of electric vehicles on Motability’s books, and Motability is removing cars that a lot of disabled people can drive. This is cutting down people’s choices and options. There is also a lack of wheelchair-accessible vehicles that are electric and allow a tailgate lift, so if someone has an electric wheelchair, that policy is shutting down their options and making things really difficult.

I recently visited Newport, and I offer some praise to Newport Council. It has done an amazing job of providing not just accessible charging stations but lots of different options in its car parks. This is a real model that we should take forward. The council has looked at the guidance, recognised that it is not going to help disabled people, and gone above and beyond. But that is one council; sadly, there are gaps all over the rest of the country. Ultimately, I do not want disabled people to be blamed for not caring about the environment, as they were when plastic straws were banned. Disabled people experienced a massive backlash: they were told they were going to be murdering turtles and dolphins, but plastic straws were the only means by which many people could drink. We can already see that disabled people have been accused of not caring about the environment and not making the switch. Rather, they want to but are unable to do so.

With that in mind, I strongly support the amendment. We have to do something to make it possible for disabled people to switch to electric vehicles.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 53, 54 and 55 but express some concern about Amendment 52. My noble friend Lord Moylan is absolutely right to call for an impact assessment before local authorities go overboard with removing non-electric car spaces in an obsessive drive for electric vehicle charging points. There are 2.6 million plug-in cars in the UK, including hybrids and fully electric— 5% of the total. But there are 33 million petrol and diesel cars in the UK. AutoTrader issued a report in July this year, stating that the current sales trajectory of new electric cars would see just 45% market share by 2030, well below the 80% projected and mandated target set by the Government. Personally, I prefer to trust AutoTrader’s expert analysis rather than government wish-list projections.

What are the Government’s projections? They believe there could be between 8 million and 12 million hybrid vehicles and electric cars by 2030 if uptake aligns with their targets. By 2040, the number could reach 25 million according to the Local Government Association. Some projections, aligned with the UK’s net-zero goals, estimate up to 37.4 million electric vehicles by 2050 if we go flat out on net zero. So we might have 11 million hybrid cars if—I repeat, if—the uptake aligns with government targets. But we see that those targets are 100% out already, just as the Government’s heat pump projections are about 500% out. In the nicest possible way, it is all wishful thinking.

But the big danger here—and this is where my noble friends’ amendments are spot on—is the Local Government Association’s projection of 25 million electric cars by 2040. Where on earth does the LGA get this information from? What does it know about forecasting electric car uptake? The only ones who can do that are car manufacturers, dealers, others in the trade who have their finger on the pulse of buyer motivation, and those who understand battery replacement costs, Chinese cheap car penetration, trade-in values and so on. If local authorities take up the Local Government Association’s projection and take it seriously—as they are likely to do—we will see twice as many non-electric car parking spaces ripped out, and we will have electric car places instead, so that projection will be wrong.

I simply ask noble Lords to cast their minds back to 2020, when everyone thought that electric vehicles were the bee’s knees and would rapidly replace petrol and diesel cars. In 2019, the Department for Transport forecast that there would be 1.5 million electric cars by the end of 2020. In fact, at the end of 2020 there were approximately 431,000 ultra-low emission vehicles, and that includes battery-electric and fully electric. That is one-third of the Government’s projection. What would have happened if local authorities had had the money and resources to implement that flawed projection? Thank goodness they did not have the money to do it; otherwise, they would have removed thousands of conventional car parking spaces and installed three times more electric charging points than there were cars. That is why it is essential that local authorities follow the measure in my noble friend’s amendments.

We must have a parking impact assessment before permitting EV charging points that would replace general use parking, and businesses and residents must have the power to request a review when EV installations reduce conventional parking. We have seen local authorities ride roughshod over local residents, closing roads and imposing ridiculously low speed restrictions, but I have no doubt that many will ignore the needs of petrol car drivers in the fanatical pursuit of electric cars.

I also strongly support my noble friend Lord Borwick’s Amendment 55. I congratulate him on all the work he has done with London cabs over the years to make them accessible. I and thousands of other people in London would not be able to move anywhere around this city were it not for the ramps that he insisted be built into London cabs; the new, longer ramps are just superb. Most charging points that I have seen seem to be about one metre above the payment. Theoretically, they should be accessible for disabled motorists, but many charging points are not usable for motorists with wheelchair-adapted vehicles. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson on her excellent speech setting out many of the deficiencies she has faced.

In 2018, it was calculated that about 400,000 vehicles had been adapted or converted for wheelchair users, but that includes drivers and passengers. It is a relatively small number in comparison to the 30 million other vehicles on the road. However, if you are a wheelchair user, there first needs to be a dropped kerb. Imagine that you are a wheelchair user, a driver, in a car: there are only two ways to use it. You either get a ramp at the back to get out and in, or a little hoist to get out of the driver’s seat. The first decision you have to make if you see an electric charging point is whether to drive up in such a way that you are exiting on to the street and taking a risk there, or whether to turn the vehicle round so that the driver’s seat is next to the kerb. In the latter case, there needs to be a dropped kerb nearby so that you can get out of the vehicle and on to the pavement. I am not suggesting that every charging point must have a dropped kerb, but there needs to be one nearby. Then, the charging plug must not face the street or car, since the wheelchair user cannot get round to that side to use it. It is not rocket science. It is not expensive to make sure that all plug-in points either face the pavement or are at right-angles to it, or at least do not face the street.

While I have no solution for the scenario where the plug for the car is in the middle of the bonnet or the boot and the wheelchair user can plug in okay, but then cannot get on to the pavement to plug in at the other end, the latest statistics show that most plugs on cars are at the rear. Some 37% of electric vehicles in the UK are configured with the plug at the right rear; the left rear is the second most common location, found on 31% of vehicles. The left front is less common still, accounting for 18% of vehicles. The wheelchair user therefore has to get to the left rear, the right rear or the front to plug in, and then has to get on to the pavement to plug into the socket there. I therefore believe that my noble friend Lord Borwick is absolutely right. If the Government do not make this simple concession, I hope that he will push his amendment to the vote.

Finally, I flag my concern at the mention of cross-pavement charging points. Suffice it to say that, in my short journeys to the House of Lords in my trusty chariot, I battle daily with e-bikes and scooters dumped or parked anywhere on the pavement. Then one contends with temporary construction work, which necessitates cables and pipes crossing the pavement. To be fair, in nearly every case, the construction companies cover them up with temporary cable ramps or protectors but, in about 50% of the cases, they are so high, lumpy and protruding that I cannot get a wheelchair over and sometimes get grounded trying to cross them. However, these construction companies know the law and they try to safeguard pedestrians.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I was not making a suggestion about whether climate science is there. There are different levels of science in all manner of different disciplines in planning. Some of it is contested and others are not so. That is why we have planning officials, quangos and scientists. I cannot support this amendment, and I rise because the noble Baroness indicated that she may want to press it to a vote, so I place my objection on the record.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, contrary to my noble friend, I support Amendment 62—in part. The “in part” is because I do not want climate change to freeze out biodiversity, which is ultimately far more important for local authorities, which have specific biodiversity duties but no legal climate change responsibilities. The other reason that it is in part is that, while some of the training is meritorious, it need not be mandatory.

I was privileged to serve on the board of Natural England for almost seven years and on the extraordinary Joint Nature Conservation Committee—the official adviser to the four Governments of the United Kingdom on all matters of biodiversity, both in the UK and internationally. All the top experts in both organisations said that, if we could go back to the drawing board, there would not be two UN conventions—one on climate change and one on biodiversity—but just one. Our chairman, Tony Juniper, consistently said that they were two sides of the same coin, and I entirely agree with him, even if agreeing with Tony may antagonise some of my noble friends around me. The point is that, if we saved our peat bogs, planted enough of the right trees in the right place and stopped ripping the ocean floor apart, we would save so much carbon that we would not need to put our industries out of business, inflict heat pumps on households and penalise anything that produces carbon.

The consequences of those two conventions are that all NGOs and Governments have focused heavily on climate change and that biodiversity gets a poor look-in, and that is a tragedy. With a tremendous amount of political will and with horrendous expenditure that will impact every person, it is possible to reverse climate change eventually. However, we are losing species in the world at a phenomenal rate and, when a species is gone, it is lost for ever. Forget these gimmicks of restoring mammoths, since most of the species being lost are the unsexy flora and fauna that may be vital to future human existence.

I come to the point of council training. The UK has lost dozens of species; even hedgehogs are critically endangered. Also endangered are water voles, turtle doves and farmland birds. Local authorities need to be aware of that, and training for councillors on biodiversity is quite important, in my opinion.

I cannot find any legal duty on councillors to take climate change into account when making decisions. I researched this in case my memory was failing, and the only law on climate change is the Climate Change Act 2008, which was amended in 2019 to add the net-zero requirement. All the requirements of the Act relate to action by central government not local authorities.

I understand that local councillors need to be trained in the legal matters to be taken into consideration when determining a planning application—nothing more, nothing less. My concern is that more than 300 councils have declared a so-called climate emergency and 85% of them have adopted climate action plans, which are all inconsistent with each other. Many of these plans are showboating; some are meritorious, such as Wirral Council’s tree-planting policy, but it is not a legal requirement. Councillors should receive training in strictly only those matters that are legal requirements to be taken into account in planning applications, not in things like Waltham Forest’s policy to divest its pension fund from fossil fuel companies.

We have a completely different scenario with biodiversity, since we have lots of legislation on biodiversity that needs to be taken into account in deciding planning applications. I will not go into it all, but the key elements for councillors are contained in my noble friend Lord Gove’s marvellous Environment Act 2021. It is a watershed Act.

The sections that I will briefly mention now will deliver nature recovery for the first time, provided that the Government do not cut the funding. The key item is local nature recovery strategies, which councils, NGOs, Defra and Natural England consider to be the main vehicle to bring about nature recovery. All 48 designated areas have now completed their LNRS plans, I think, but only five have been published so far. I believe that the rest are due to be finished by the end of this year. The success of the strategies will depend on farmers and landowners doing their bit through ELMS, and it is a tragedy that the Government are cutting ELMS funding.

I suggest that training for local councillors needs to focus on the 2021 Act. The main sections are as follows: Sections 98 to 101 on biodiversity net gain; Sections 102 and 103 on the general duty to conserve and enhance biodiversity; Sections 104 to 108 on local nature recovery strategies; Section 109 on species conservation strategies; Section 110 on protected site strategies; Section 111 on wildlife conservation licences; Sections 112 and 113 on habitats regulations amendments, which might possibly be for councillors; and Sections 117 to 139 on conservation covenants, which they might come across. There may be other things, but I suggest to the House that these key issues are what local councillors should be informed of and trained on.

I am intrigued by proposed new subsection (b) in the noble Baroness’s amendment, whereby councillors would be trained in “ecological surveying”. The only training that they need is to be able to read and understand the technical ecological reports they might receive, not to do the surveying.

I turn to the mycological bit. As far as mushrooms are concerned, I initially assumed that this was one of those in-jokes we used to have in government that councillors and Ministers were treated like mushrooms by their civil servants—that is, kept in the dark and fed a lot of bull stuff. Of course, I can understand the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, being interested in mushrooms. If she invites me to dinner, I hope she will not serve me mushrooms, being an Australian.

Seriously, however, I am concerned about the huge increase in the last 12 months of trendy Tik-Tokers deciding that foraging is the latest fad and stripping woodlands of far too many mushrooms. That has happened in just the last 12 months. Many years ago, when I was food Minister, I became friends with the wonderful chef, Antonio Carluccio, and had various meetings with him. He was a mushroom afficionado. After a four-course lunch consisting of a mushroom starter, a mushroom amuse-bouche, a mushroom main course and a delicious mushroom pudding, he presented me with an official Italian mushroom picker’s knife. Italy takes fungi seriously. It had a little curved blade; a centimetre scale, so that no ceps were cut under 4 centimetres and others at no less than 2 centimetres; and a little brush at the end to clean off the dirt. Antonio drummed it into me that mushrooms should never be washed—

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

Can I ask the noble Lord to stick to the amendment? Italian mushrooms might be a very important issue, but as far as this amendment is concerned, it is very discursive.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I take the Whip’s comment with a slight pinch of salt—albeit not on my mushrooms. The amendment refers to mushrooms, and I am citing an example of mushrooms because it is relevant to the debate. If we were working normal hours, my remarks would probably be shorter, in view of the timescale. Since the Government have deliberately added an extra three hours to this debate, my remarks, which are still only seven minutes’ long, are quite relevant and apposite.

I conclude by saying that there is some merit in what the noble Baroness has suggested in these amendments, particularly on the biodiversity training, but we should leave aside the rest of it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I want to point out, since he addressed me directly, that mushrooms are a tiny fraction of the mycological ecosphere and that what we are talking about here are the fungi that are essential for plants to be able to attract nutrients. I would be very happy to discuss all this with him later.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Jamieson was quicker to his feet than I was. I will make a few comments on Amendment 87F, standing in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey.

I served as a councillor for eight years on the unitary Medway Council, working for some of that time on planning, and had the benefit of representing a constituency in Kent in the other place. I am very aware that whenever a substantial planning application is put to the local community there is generally uproar and a lot of concern. There may be a lot of consultation and a lot of money spent by the developer. There are presentations to the local public and local councillors, and everything else that goes with that. It can be quite upsetting for local communities. In my experience, the Liberal Democrats are very adept at exploiting that concern, usually for political advantage.

Having gone through that process, we find that a lot of the planning applications never actually get built out—and at a time when we have a huge demand for housing. Developers then look again at somewhere a bit simpler to develop out. It is not for us in this place to dictate the market—that is obviously for developers—but the terms that my noble friend Lady Coffey has proposed are right. Perhaps we should start to recognise some of the names among the bigger developers that seem to be going for applications and not building them out. We hear, obliquely, about hundreds of thousands of planning applications that have been approved that are yet to be built out. I do not know the exact figure —I do not think that I have ever known it—but we are told that it is in the many hundreds of thousands.

If my noble friend Lady Coffey’s amendment were to be adopted, it would be very refreshing to know those numbers regularly. It could give local people some pressure to knock on the doors of the developers and ask, “Are you going to do this or not?” In addition, other authorities would be able to look at neighbouring authorities elsewhere in the country and, if they see similar developer names, they might start to wonder what those developers were doing.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. When I looked at the figures last year, I found that 1.1 million homes were approved that were not built. That is quite a few hundreds of thousands.

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his clarification. As I said, I was only guessing that the figure was in the hundreds of thousands; I am glad to have the clarity that is 1.1 million. There we have it: there is the potential for the growth that we are looking for and for the supply of housing within a local plan, yet we seem to keep hearing calls for new land and new development. The answer, however, is in our lap. It would be nice for this to be rather more transparent, so that we could consider it more closely.

--- Later in debate ---

The idea that we should be putting something in the Bill that cuts down oversight when we are one of the most nature-depleted corners of this battered planet cannot be defended and is deeply concerning. This requires real skills, knowledge and training. Most local authorities say that they do not have those resources available to them. Indeed, they are scarce overall, so it is better if they are concentrated in one place, with real expertise. It would also limit the opportunities to deliver win-wins from development. We need proposals that would actually improve development for people, and for nature as well.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, in view of the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, saying that she is opposed to the measure, I feel it is my turn to stand up and say that this is a very sensible amendment. Based on my time in Natural England, I strongly support it.

Generally, it was my experience that local authorities bounced over to Natural England tens of thousands of planning applications, most of which were irrelevant to us, in that we had no real reason to give a view. If the application affected an SSSI, a national nature reserve, a national park or AONB as they were they called, something protected by the habitats regulations, or developments on the finest agricultural land, then Natural England was duty bound to respond, and always did so—in complex cases sometimes not as quickly as some would have liked. However, we had to get it right, or as right as possible, since it could result in the rejection of the application by the council, leading to appeals and judicial reviews and possibly the loss of a good infrastructure project.

What are the statistics to justify this change? In its 2023-24 annual report to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Natural England reported that it had received 24,664 planning application consultations; 20,503 consultations—91.7%—were responded to within 21 days or to an otherwise agreed deadline. Some 754 deadline extensions to planning application consultations were granted—that is 3.7%. Natural England sent 20,370 responses to customers, with the average time taken to provide a substantive response being 11.9 days. In addition, Natural England received 1,096 pre-application consultations, either directly from developers or via local planning authorities. They responded to 68.9% of these within 21 days or to otherwise agreed deadlines.

Natural England now deals with a high proportion of complex cases, mostly relating to impacts on habitat sites or protected landscapes such as national parks and national landscapes. In 2023-24, this included receiving 161 consultations for nationally significant infra- structure projects, or NSIPs, 895 local plan consultations and 96 environmental impact assessment requests relating to screening and/or scoping.

In the past few years, there has been a 40% increase in NSIPs, and they require a lot of work and, in some cases, site visits and meetings. However, as the Minister said, Natural England is legally bound to respond to all requests. All told, in that year, Natural England had more than 32,000 planning consultations, and in 47% of them, it had no statutory remit, since they were very low risk. That is 15,000 cases where Natural England had to spend time writing back, saying that it had nothing to comment on. I got the clear impression, and I am not that cynical, that many local authorities bunged applications to Natural England to tick a box and show their local representatives that they were investigating every avenue before granting permission and that even Natural England was happy because it did not object.

Therefore, I was very keen for Natural England to move to this new strategic approach and shift to focusing on high-risk and high-opportunity casework, with an emphasis on strategic engagement and delivering solutions up front. Natural England also wants to emphasise the importance of high-quality applications as well as the need to reduce the level of unnecessary consultations that it receives. It can do that by signposting local planning authorities to its new impact risk zones delivery advice service.

This is an exciting and long overdue shift. I have no time to dig into the details tonight, but there are three main thrusts in my opinion. First, low-risk, routine applications must be put on what I would call autopilot so that Natural England can concentrate on planning advice work and moving on to a more strategic place. There need to be standard responses for lower-risk work, and the supplementary provisions that the Minister has outlined in subsection (3) of the new clause in Amendment 68 will set out how local authorities can determine these applications themselves based on criteria published by Natural England and approved by the Secretary of State.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has tremendous experience of this from her time at Natural England, but I assure her that this is very low-risk stuff. My shelves are full of books called, “The Idiot’s Guide to How to Work Your Mac”, “The Idiot’s Guide to How to Work Your iPad” and “The Idiot’s Guide to Switching on Your Mobile Phone”. I am not making an insinuation about local councils, but I can see the Natural England advice being something like “The Idiot’s Guide to How to Grant Planning Permission in Local Councils for Low-Risk Applications”, and I hope the guidance will be that simple.

The second thrust is that Natural England needs to concentrate on the big strategic stuff. This is where it can make the biggest impact for nature recovery, recognising that nature and economic growth co-exist and need to thrive together. Thirdly, Natural England is keen to do much more upfront, pre-application engagement and sees the importance of securing opportunities and mitigation for nature within development policies. It needs to focus its efforts on where the opportunities are greatest as well as addressing significant environmental risks. This means having as much time as possible to advise on high-risk and high-opportunity casework. If it can take that approach now, it will secure lasting environmental outcomes and create wider economic and social benefits for communities.

I must tell noble Lords what justifies doing this upfront work. It was just before I joined, but I understand that Natural England reached out to HS2 as soon as it got the original Bill passed to say, “Come to us as soon as possible with any and all the plans you’ve got which may impact on protected sites or habitats along the route, and we’ll work on mitigation measures to head off the problems”. I understand the answer that came back was, “We are HS2; we do not need your input, so just butt out”. Then, when it was too late, HS2 came along to say that it had hit a problem with protected bats and to ask what it should do about it. It was HS2’s plan to build that £100 million tunnel, not Natural England’s, but we had to approve it, since HS2’s arrogance meant it had run out of options.

I see the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, in his place. He might agree that we would all say that £100 million for a bat tunnel is obscene, but to HS2 it was just pocket money that it was spending. I must say to some of my noble friends that Natural England’s decision on this and other things was not an out-of-control quango doing it for the hell of it or doing it because it thought it could do it. It was following United Kingdom habitats regulations. I say United Kingdom habitats regulations because we incorporated them all into UK law. I said to Conservative Ministers at the time, “If you don’t like Natural England implementing the law, then change the law”.

Finally, nearly every official I spoke to was certain that if HS2 had involved Natural England eight years ago, the problem of the route and the bats would have been headed off and it would have solved it without that expense. That is why pre-planning engagement is so important: it speeds up planning and avoids crises arising at the last minute because organisations have found that they have hit an environmental problem. Natural England must be freed from the 15,000 irrelevant low-risk cases so that it has time to deal early on with the big strategic stuff that will make a difference and promote growth while safeguarding our biodiversity. That is why I support the amendment.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and it reflects well the view that there are differences of opinion on this late Government amendment, Amendment 68, around the House. It also reinforces the point that it is disappointing that at this late stage in the Bill a significant shift in policy is being introduced by this Government. This is not tidying up, this is not in response to anything that anybody raised in Committee; it is clearly something that is driven by political aims, as was made very clear in the press release that accompanied the indication of the Government’s new amendments at this stage of the Bill.

It is very disappointing that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, mentioned, a large consultation by the department on statutory consultees is upcoming, and if there was going to be a detailed look at the role of Natural England as a statutory consultee, it could have fitted into that. There could have been a proper consultation with those most affected, local authorities, whereas instead it is just foisted on us at this late stage with no consultation in the meantime with the LGA. I have spoken to the LGA, so I would be delighted if the Minister could tell me that she has any views from it. She was very keen to tell us what the view of Natural England was, as was the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, but what are the views of those most affected, which is hard-pushed local authorities? The absence of planning advice is not going to speed up planning. They are still going to have to make the decisions. It is not going to do what the press release said, which is,

“helping to accelerate approvals for new homes and infrastructure”.

They are going to be struggling around to find the advice that they have previously had.

I have a couple of questions to put to the Minister. First, in her opening remarks, she talked about the fact that, last August, Natural England sent a letter to all local authorities telling them that there would be a cutting back in planning services. Given that Natural England already has an established modus operandi from last year, which was about cutting back in a progressive way, what is the problem since then that needs solving? Why do we need legislation given that there was a perfectly reasonable non-legislative means for Natural England to prioritise cases?

Secondly, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Young, mentioned, and looking at the wording of the amendment, the only person that Natural England has to consult in determining the statement on dealing with requests for advice is the Secretary of State. For a Labour Government—a Labour Government—to be saying that Natural England will do a consultation on something that will fundamentally change the resources available to local authorities, which are in the vanguard of protecting our countryside and building the homes we need, and the only people it is going to talk to are people in the department is a disgrace. It is an absolute disgrace that new Section 4A(6) just says:

“Before publishing a statement … Natural England must … consult the Secretary of State”.


It does not have to talk to local authorities, and yet they will have to live with these decisions.

I go back to my central point. I do not see why this is needed, given that a perfectly reasonable process was put in place by Natural England to streamline the advice that it gives to local authorities. It leads me to believe that there is something more lurking behind this amendment that we cannot quite see. It is absolutely wrong that a Labour Government are putting this forward without consulting the very people at the heart of our communities who are responsible for doing this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, as time is short, I will simply focus on the lifeblood of local communities: small enterprises, or SMEs as we call them. A journey of a thousand leagues starts with a single step, we are told. Equally, major corporations driving economic growth did not start as large enterprises. That is why I always seek to “think small first” in regulating, and indeed why I supported the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, on planning fees. I trust that the Government will deliver on the lowest possible fees for SMEs.

My Amendment 119, which the noble Earl, Lord Russell, has kindly supported, seeks to build on the constructive discussions we all had with the Bill Ministers, in which they expressed their wish to support SMEs and small developments in the planning system. The fact is that such enterprises are at a disadvantage in our system. We need to do something about it and to bring about a culture change in the attitude to SMEs. It is a chilling fact that, according to the Government’s SME plan, SME housebuilders’ share of the market has declined from 39% in 1988 to 10% in 2020, yet they contribute disproportionately to local communities and local employment, helping to fill the skills gap in construction.

My amendment in Committee focused on giving new guidance to Natural England, because I want it to support smaller players and to take a more balanced view than its current remit permits. On reflection, I thought Ministers might prefer a more general duty that would give SMEs a special role in the whole planning system. This would require all involved to “have regard”—not the strongest of words—to the fact that SMEs

“may in practice face more difficulties when engaging in the planning process”,

and to “consider”, again a gentle word,

“whether such barriers can be removed or reduced”.

It is derived from a similar duty that we introduced to the Procurement Bill, in which I and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, were involved. This was widely welcomed by businesses and charities. In my amendment I have kept the definition of such enterprises modest to make it more acceptable—

“between one and nine residential dwellings”—

but I would be happy for the Government to amend this at Third Reading or ping-pong.

The role of SMEs in development is a serious omission from the Bill. This is bad for community cohesion and a lost opportunity for growth. The Government said in their own small business plan that accelerating the growth of SMEs could boost growth by 1% a year. Unfortunately, what we heard from the Minister in Committee does not cut the mustard. An example would be the requirement to consider the viability of development in making levy regulations. I cannot see how this would make a big difference to SMEs. The truth is that none of the considerations, nor the financial support she has mentioned, have any chance of reversing the adverse trend in SME housebuilding or changing the culture in local authorities and agencies, let alone in Marsham Street.

Unless the Minister can give an undertaking to bring forward a suitable proposal on SMEs in the planning process itself, I will want to test the opinion of the House when we reach that clause.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 119 and agree with the excellent case set out by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. My support comes from two cases in my constituency some years ago, caused by the forerunner of Natural England. I think it was the Countryside Commission at the time, and then it was the Countryside Agency, before being amalgamated into Natural England. These two cases simply demonstrate the point that my noble friend has been making. They were a couple of years apart, but the issues were the same, and they have annoyed me to this day because I was absolutely powerless to help small businesses in my constituency.

The first was on creating the Pennine Bridleway, and later a national trail alongside Hadrian’s Wall, both of which had many miles in my constituency. Some of that opened in 2002, some in 2006, and some is not opened yet, but the approval process in principle started either in the late 1980s or early 1990s. The plan was to make these national trails and encourage thousands more people to use them—no bad thing in itself, and I liked the idea. Local farmers were generally not opposed, since they thought they could get involved in providing services to the walkers and riders.

Farmers and householders along Hadrian’s Wall said that, without toilet facilities en route, their stone walls—or behind them—had become toilets. With no cafeterias for miles, sandwich wrappers and uneaten food were dumped in their fields and were a hazard to sheep. They said it would be good for them if they could convert a barn into a coffee shop or toilets, as a quid pro quo for letting thousands of people march over their land. It seemed a very good idea to me at the time to assist small farmers in this way. This was in the wilds of northern Cumbria, near the Scottish border, where some farms had more rushes than grass. It used to be called marginal land but the EU terminology is “severely disadvantaged area”. The lush land of East Anglia it is not. They need every opportunity there to make money and survive.

Farmers on the route of the proposed Pennine Bridleway also wanted to convert some barns into tack rooms, providing food and water for people and horses, and parking space for their trailers. Only a few riders would want to traverse its whole length, or at least the stretches which were open; most wanted to park up and ride a loop of about 15 miles or so. Again, that was a reasonable suggestion which I thought would benefit everyone: walker and riders, the local farmers who would have them on their land, and the environment, which would not be desecrated with rubbish. But that was not to be.

The Countryside Commission said, “Nothing to do with us”. Its job was the trails and bridleway, and it did not care about helping the rural businesses along the route. It was purely a local planning matter. To hear that from a body set up with a remit of helping rural businesses, I was appalled and angered. It would not even publish a statement suggesting to local councils that it might be a jolly good idea to support planning applications which would provide those small infrastructure developments. I approached the local councils, which said they could not comment until an official planning application was received and would not bend the rules to look favourably on them in principle.

I ended up opposing something that I thought was a good thing because of the recalcitrance of government bodies and local councils that would do absolutely nothing to help small businesses in their own patch. I may be wrong but to this day I do not think that a single farm or private building on either of those routes has been given planning permission for even a simple tearoom. That is why I support my noble friend.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, briefly, I support Amendment 103, in the name of my noble friend Lord Banner, who I see is now in his place, on proportionality in planning. In Committee, his amendment was rejected out of hand.

This is a Bill promoted by several departments. We have spent the last hour with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, from Defra, justifying government Amendment 68 strictly on the grounds of proportionality between good governance, effective value for money and so forth. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, from the other department, that the Government cannot have it both ways. Government Amendment 68 having been pressed so hard on the positive angle of proportionality, I now challenge her to accept Amendment 103, which makes exactly the same grounds, but of course from my noble friend Lord Banner’s perspective rather than the other.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Banner (Con)]

My Lords, there is a danger that this subject tends to generate more heat than light, as I think we have heard just now, so I thought I would—from the perspective of a planning silk—explain what these amendments would and would not do, so that we are all clear about that.

These amendments are not about the principle of asylum hotels, nor are they about the principle of small boats. They are about providing clarity and certainty to the planning regime, which needs clarity and certainty in order to operate effectively. Currently, the position in law under Section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act is that a change of use of premises requires planning permission only if that change of use is material. There is case law—most recently the Epping judgment, but there are other judgments over the last few years, including cases in Great Yarmouth—to the effect of whether a change of use is material is an evaluative judgment on the facts of the case.

In the context of asylum hotels, that can be a very difficult and unpredictable evaluative judgment, made even more difficult by the mission creep of some of these hotels. They can start off with families, then the nature of their use can change. That uncertainty is disadvantageous to all participants in the planning system. It is disadvantageous to the commercial hotel operators, because they are being asked to invest money to fit out the hotel for asylum seekers, without knowing whether that investment may come back to bite them if it later turns out they needed planning permission and did not have it, and they are enforced against. It creates uncertainty for communities, because they do not know whether particular operations in their neighbourhood require planning permission and are something to which they should be given a right to participate in the decision-making on.

Fundamentally, it creates uncertainty for local planning authorities, which are on the horns of a dilemma. They have to choose whether to turn a blind eye and let a potential breach of planning control continue, or to bring enforcement proceedings, which, if brought in court, can cost hundreds of thousands—sometimes millions—of pounds, putting them and the local taxpayer at risk of significant adverse costs. It is very hard to tell in advance what the prospects of success in such proceedings will be, given the very delicate, nuanced nature of the decision, and the evaluative judgment on whether a particular change of use is material or not.

Fundamentally, the clue is in the name. Planning is meant to be predictable in all forms and all manifestations of the regime. If you cannot plan, the system does not work. Therefore, this amendment would make it very straightforward and provide a clear line in the sand that any change of use to an asylum hotel or an HMO would be deemed a material change of use. Every protagonist in the planning system would then know where they stand: that this needs planning permission.

These amendments do not constrain the decision whether to grant planning permission, and nor do they in any way affect the merits or prospects of an application for planning permission. All they do is let everybody know where they stand. I urge the House, and particularly the Liberal Democrats: let us focus on the real issue that these amendments put into play and cut the rhetoric.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I will comment briefly on these amendments. The Government may say that if you stop these conversions of hotels, where will we put the people? The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, asked the same question. That is a fair question. The answer is to use all spare military accommodation, recently used by servicemen and women. From what I read, the Government want to do that, and they must have the guts to stick to it, because they will have public support, even though left-wing immigration lawyers will mount judicial reviews against it.

So, His Majesty’s Government, do not be terrified into closing RAF Wethersfield, but increase numbers there to the maximum possible and reopen Napier barracks. I stayed there 50 years ago, and it is 100 times better now than it was then. Many noble Lords will have experience of military accommodation in the past, including officer accommodation, and it was not up to the standards now available for illegal migrants.

It was deplorable that some lawyers and immigration groups took action to close Napier, which was used only for single men. How did these single men get here? They walked hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles through Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Greece, Romania and other European countries, and lived in appalling conditions near the beach at Calais, before crowding into a little boat. Others have come from Eritrea, Somalia and up through Egypt, Libya, Italy and on to Calais. I am sure they had premium accommodation en route.

How dare anyone suggest that the accommodation in any of our former military bases is not good enough for single men of fighting age, when it was good enough for British men and women of fighting age? If they had to stay in Barry Buddon, stuck out in the coast in Fife next to Carnoustie, where 30 of us were in a nissen hut with one big cast iron potbelly stove, they might have something to complain about, but not in the current accommodation. So, His Majesty’s Government, please do not back down on the use of former military accommodation, or any other spare government accommodation, and that can take the pressure off unsuitable hotels.

On Amendment 87E, I do not trust any Government to use this power anywhere in the country, and put up temporary accommodation all around the land, but if some of the military bases are not big enough, or are regarded as not having quality accommodation, then move in temporary accommodation—caravans, chalets, portable homes, portakabins—and put them on these bases or other military land. That is a better solution and answers some of the question, “If you close these hotels, where will you put them?”. I have suggested it in my comments tonight.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I first turn to Amendments 73 to 75, 263 and 264 brought by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. I thank the noble Baroness for once again raising an important issue but I point out that it relates to ongoing legal proceedings, which I am sure that she appreciates I cannot comment on.

The asylum accommodation system is under significant pressure. While the priority is to end the use of asylum hotels as soon as possible, the Government need to be able to control the number of such hotels and retain the ability to open new asylum hotels—only if and when it is necessary—to manage fluctuations in demand. The amendments would remove the ability to do so.

The Home Office is under a legal obligation to provide accommodation for destitute asylum seekers while their application for asylum is being considered. We know that this has led to concerns among some people about the use of hotels for this purpose. We are conscious that the use of hotels for the purpose of housing asylum seekers has caused understandable concern. That is why we have an ambition to resolve it in a controlled and orderly way.

Listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, I was frankly astonished to hear her words about giving local people a voice. Under her Government, as a council leader I pressed over and over again for our hotels in Stevenage not to be used for this purpose by agents of the Home Office, not least because international businesses in my town needed them. Her Government did not listen to our community, its elected representatives or our businesses; they overruled us and ploughed ahead regardless.

This Government have made clear our intention to stop the use of hotels to house asylum seekers. This is borne out by the fact that the number of hotels so used has almost halved since its peak under the previous Government. More broadly, the Home Office is working on a future strategy for asylum accommodation. The department is working in collaboration with local authorities to develop several potential accommodation models that could test a more sustainable, flexible and collaborative outcome. The department is also working at pace to deliver a range of alternative sites, including—to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra—military sites, that would contribute to a more flexible estate.

Restricting the use of houses in multiple occupation for asylum accommodation would have the perverse effect of making it even more difficult to end the use of asylum hotels. While we understand why these amendments have been brought forward—I will not comment on why, but we understand it—they would nevertheless result in greater instability in the provision of asylum accommodation, and prevent us proceeding in the controlled and orderly way that we want to.

Amendment 87E, brought by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, would give the Secretary of State powers to make regulations to deal with applications for planning permission where temporary asylum application processing facilities were proposed. The amendment is unnecessary, as these powers would be duplicative of existing powers in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. In particular, Section 59 allows the Secretary of State to make a development order that can either itself grant planning permission or make for the grant of planning permission by the local planning authority or the Secretary of State. That includes timescales, publicity and consultation. Section 70 allows local planning authorities to grant planning permission for development, including conditional planning permission, and Section 77 makes provision in relation to the Secretary of State being able to call in applications for planning permission to determine them himself.

In addition, it would also not be appropriate to take such powers for a specific type of development in primary legislation. We are committed to progressing asylum cases in an efficient and cost-effective way. The Home Office’s programme of transformation and business improvement is speeding up decision-making, reducing the time people spend in the system and reducing the numbers who are awaiting an interview or decision and remain in hotels.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 88 and congratulate noble Lords on all the excellent speeches we have heard so far in support of it. The provision of green space is terribly important when building homes. I am in despair to see so many developments of little houses packed tightly together with little or no garden space and no small green spaces in the public areas.

I urge the Minister to dig out the excellent 2020 report, commissioned by her department, Living With Beauty; Promoting Health, Well-being and Sustainable Growth, which inter alia made the point that communities were more likely to approve of new housing if it was of a beautiful design and harmonious with the local architecture. It was written by the urban design expert Nicholas Boys Smith, the founder and chairman of Create Streets. He was also chair of the advisory board of the Government’s Office for Place and is an academician of the Academy of Urbanism.

Chapter 10 is called “Neighbourhoods: create places not just houses” and says:

“the research is remarkably consistent. Most of us prefer places we can walk in, where there is greenery frequently present and where we find the streets and squares beautiful to look at and be in. We prefer places that do not cost the earth but can help us live in harmony with it”.

I urge the Minister to read and implement the report, especially Chapter 11, which is called “Nature: re-green our towns and cities”. I make no apologies for quoting the first few paragraphs of this chapter since it makes the point better and more succinctly than I can. It says:

“Sustainability and beauty are not in conflict. Rather they are in symbiosis. This is true at all three scales of building, place, and settlement and has been evident on our visits. It is also reflected in polling and well-being data. Much of the evidence we received … stressed this point.


‘There is a considerable body of evidence that shows green spaces in rural and urban areas are highly beneficial to health and well-being and also provide space for people to meet. The perception of beauty is an important factor for realising these benefits’.


Put simply, green is good for us, as Natural England argued in their evidence to us. The presence of greenery in the urban environment normally has a positive impact on our mental and our physical health. Street trees seem particularly important. They are associated with cleaner air, slower cars, fewer accidents. They provide shade in hot summers. And, perhaps astonishingly given the complexity of human life, street trees have a measurable effect on human health even taking into account income, age and education.


At all three scales, we therefore believe that it is necessary to ‘re-green’ our lives. It is important not to be naïve, however. Many essentially very poor development proposals attempt to cover up their shortcomings with some token tree planting. A strip of grass or a couple of trees cannot rescue a polluted, ugly and profoundly inhumane place”.


I agree entirely with those words. If we cannot rescue those places that are currently built, at least we should stop building new ones in the future. The London National Park City briefed me a few years ago that its research suggested that people would not walk more than about 250 metres to a park or a green space. Therefore, I say to the Minister, the answer is in these amendments—build the green space into the gardens in the streets and little parks or accessible green space in all housing developments. If people will not go to the parks and green spaces, bring the parks and green spaces to them.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, in speaking in support of Amendment 88 in the name of my noble friend Lady Willis of Summertown, I reiterate in particular the point she made in her introduction to the amendment that if, as we have heard on many occasions, the Government’s view is that this amendment is unnecessary because the matter is covered by the NPPF, please could they show us the workings? Can they demonstrate to us with firm data that the NPPF is indeed working to protect green space in our towns, cities and villages? If we do not have the data, how can we believe what the Government tell us?

We then tend to fall back on anecdotes. We have heard a number of anecdotes already this afternoon, and I will add my own. One of my penances in life is that I support Oxford United. I live in Oxford and, as one of my friends said, when you support Oxford United, you support them through thin and thin. Near the Kassam Stadium—which is in a more deprived part of Oxford, the Blackbird Leys estate—there used to be a very nice little green park. It was small, but it was a bit of greenery where children could run around and kick a ball. Just in the last year or so, that green space has been completely covered wall-to-wall with houses—they are packed in and there is no green space left. Anecdotes like that make us anxious. We do not see where green and blue space is being protected.

I hope that the Minister will respond to my noble friend Lady Willis’s request and, probably not at this moment but in writing, send us all the data that shows that the NPPF is delivering what the Government claim it delivers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, in the course of the planning system, we gather a great deal of high-quality biodiversity data. By and large, we then throw it away. We should not be doing this. We should be keeping it, making sure it is accessible, so that we can really plot what we are doing in 30 by 30 and in our campaign to restore nature to this country. It is ridiculous that we throw it away.

The Minister very kindly wrote me a letter after Committee saying, among other things, that when discharging the biodiversity gain condition, applicants can choose to share their data with local environmental records centres, and many are already choosing to do so. I organised a ring-round; it is not happening—it is not true—so we must have some very clear regulation that this data should not be lost. If this cannot be done in this Bill, then please may I sit down with the Minister in preparation for the next planning Bill? This cannot go on. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 87BA. The most important vehicle for nature recovery in this country is via the local nature recovery strategies being developed by the 48 local authorities in charge. One can design a recovery strategy only if one knows what is there in the first place, or rather what is not there, what is lacking and needs to be recovered. My noble friend’s amendment is wise and right, but I would urge the Government to go further, since many organisations collect species information, often working collaboratively to pool data and make it available for research and conservation purposes.

The primary network for this collaboration is the National Biodiversity Network, the NBN, which brings together government bodies, charities, volunteer-led recording schemes, data aggregators and networks. The NBN is a charity that oversees the UK-wide partnership for gathering and sharing biodiversity data.

Then we have the Biological Records Centre, the BRC, which was established in 1964. The BRC co-ordinates and supports wildlife recording schemes and societies across the UK, working with volunteer recorders. It manages the online recording tools called iRecord and iNaturalistUK, and its data is published on the NBN Atlas.

Then we come to the local environmental records centres, the LERCs, the organisation mentioned in my noble friend’s amendment. Natural England has divided England into 159 distinct national character areas, or NCAs. Each NCA is defined by a unique combination of natural and human factors, including landscape, biodiversity, geodiversity—that is geology and land forms—history, and cultural and economic activity.

That information is invaluable in helping authorities develop their LNRS but so is all available data, government and private. My noble friend’s amendment asks that the biodiversity information collected in the course of a planning application should be given to the LERCS—I would add that it should be given to the NBN and the BRC also. We cannot have enough data available for decision-making.

Where I depart from my noble friend’s amendment is that he wants to make it compulsory and legal; I would hope that is not necessary and that exhortation from the Government to the local authorities would ensure that this information is sent to the three organisations we have mentioned in our amendments.

I hope that they will not use the excuse that this is all confidential in the planning application and they cannot send it. That is nonsense; it should not be deemed confidential, and it should be passed on to those organisations. If the Secretary of State wants another new slogan in addition to “Build, baby, build”, I would suggest “Data, baby, data, data, data”.

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the amendments in my name in this group, starting with Amendment 87FB. These are about bats, which I will come on to in a minute.

In the meantime, I would like to say that His Majesty’s Government have made a number of statements complaining about the obstructive planning laws which impede building. The Government are to be applauded in taking this sensible viewpoint, and I am very happy to help them by putting down these amendments, which will, I hope, alleviate one of the expensive and absurd difficulties that come in the way of those seeking to build. As I said at Second Reading, bats are an example of good intention being taken over by those concerned with the implementation of the legislation extending their remit to an absurd degree.

I quoted at Second Reading the £100 million bat tunnel—as my noble friend Lord Lucas pointed out at the time, that is 10 doors to this House. There was also my own case of having a house demolished, which the bat people had confirmed was bat-free. Nevertheless, they insisted on each tile being removed one by one, which meant I had to employ six people for four weeks, removing tiles one by one for inspection by a bat person. This cost £30,000, as opposed to one man and a machine taking half a day, which would have cost £500.

The legislation initiated under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 goes through Natural England to the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management which sets the competency standards and that inspectors are registered with them. It has become an industry of its own. Local authorities, in order to avoid criticism for not complying with the Wildlife and Countryside Act, go for the easy life and automatically demand an inspection for bats even where it may not be a sensible or reasonable request. This is then carried out by the registered bat inspectors, which would be fine, but it is abused, as in my case, where, with no evidence of bats, an extra £30,000 had to be paid to confirm their inspection.

I recently came across the case of a young couple wishing to alter their attic to add needed extra accommodation. They were required by the local authority to have a preliminary bat inspection at a cost of £1,000. Without this inspection, the local authority would not permit them to even apply for planning consent, which might not have been granted. Why could they not put in for planning and, if it was approved, carry out a survey where at least they would be putting some money towards something positive?

Amendments 203B, 203C and 87FC seek to ensure that there is some comeback to unreasonable requests so that the system is not allowed to run wild, as it does at the present time. My Amendment 87FB would enable some form of discipline to be imposed on local authorities in respect of the demands for bat inspections. This is in line with government policy. It would assist in the development of housing, which the Government are keen on.

It gives me great pleasure to assist His Majesty’s Government by introducing what I hope will be a first step in implementing their expressed wish to bring some kind of sense to the planning process.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to make a quick point. If you are trying to build a lot of houses, you have to sell them. The rate of sale determines the rate of building: if you do not sell the houses, the builder goes bankrupt because houses are very expensive to build. As a result, it would open up the market much wider if we incorporated these standards for access, because more people would be in the market who could buy them. It must help the rate of sales, because there is a bigger market. Why not do it? I cannot see why not. We are assured that it does not cost any more to do it, so it seems silly not to.

On smaller houses, people who travel live in caravans and motor homes and are very happy doing that. Why are we trying to be so prescriptive about the size of houses? If you build a house of a size that is going to sell, why not?

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, not for the first time in this House, I will strike a slightly contrary note. I believe Amendment 89 is well intentioned but goes a bit too far in calling for all housing to meet the standards set out in M4(2) and M4(3).

M4(2) sets a standard for new homes to be accessible and adaptable, meaning they are designed to be easily adapted for future needs, such as those of an elderly person or those with a temporary disability. It is not a standard for full wheelchair accessibility, which is covered in the much more stringent M4(3) standard. M4(2) requires the dwelling to have features such as the provision for a future stairlift or lift, and may require certain features such as low-level windows.

The regulations were naive in believing that one could build homes that could be easily adapted for wheelchair users. All of us on all sides happily voted these through. It is like motherhood and apple pie: we thought we were doing something helpful for the disabled, and I do not think we took into account the practicalities and the cost. I simply do not believe that you can build these homes to be easily converted for the disabled at the same cost as current homes.

It is not just a matter of level access; it is a whole host of different features. You need wider doors everywhere. Kitchens may have to be ripped out and built at a much lower level for wheelchair users. You cannot have any wall cabinets; there will never be enough space in a kitchen designed for wheelchair users.

As for bathrooms, it is not just a matter of extra grab handles; the whole bathroom needs to be twice to three times the size to fit a wheelchair user. If a wheelchair user is not ambulatory at all and has to be stuck in the wheelchair, you need an absolutely level access shower. That means ripping out the standard shower and putting in a flat one when you might not have the drainage to do it. These are just some of the practical problems I see day to day if one tries to design that in at the beginning. As for space to install a lift—forget it. That would require a massive redesign at potentially enormous cost.

The point is that there are an estimated 1.2 million wheelchair users in the UK. This number includes permanent users and the 400,000 ambulatory users, which includes people like me who can walk a bit, provided we have our chariot wheelchair to help us. Wheelchair users make up roughly 11% of the disabled population. That is why I think it is over the top to call for all housing to be suitable or adapted for wheelchair users when only 11% of the population needs it. Perhaps local authorities should be under an obligation to deliver 15% of wheelchair-accessible or adaptable housing in all new buildings.

Turning briefly to the housing needs of an older generation, I have a simple, one-word solution: bungalows, either detached, semi-detached or even a single-storey terrace. It is believed that about 2 million bungalows were built in the last century, before builders stopped building them, since they take up more space and they can now cram a dozen rabbit hutches of about three storeys high into the same space taken up by one bungalow. In 1987, there were 26,000 new bungalows registered. In 2017, there were only 2,210.

I do not have a solution to that. If builders will not build them, I am loathe to demand that there should be a compulsory quota. Perhaps another slogan for the Secretary of State, in addition to “Build, baby, build”, should be “Bring back bungalows”.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 89 and 97, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, would mean that the homes we build must reflect the needs of our population. In an ageing society and one where the nature of disability is changing, this becomes ever more urgent. Accessibility and adaptability are not luxuries; they are the foundations of a fair and future-proof housing system. We are therefore grateful to the noble Lord for bringing back this important debate on Report and thank him for his tireless work on these issues.

On Amendment 91, tabled by my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger, more homes are important—of course they are—but homes that respect local character, reflect vernacular and are, quite frankly, pleasant to look at are important too. Having scrapped the Office for Place and having not implemented the LURA requirements for design statements alongside local plans in local planning authorities, the Government appear to be riding roughshod over the very principles of good design and placemaking that Parliament sought to embed in legislation.

What are the Government going to do to uphold and protect the principles of design quality, to ensure that places we build are not only affordable and efficient but beautiful, sustainable and built to last? I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, shares this sentiment. She will speak to her Amendment 92 in the next group, which seeks to strengthen the same call.

On Amendment 112, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, as we said in Committee, stepping-stone accommodation is an idea with real potential and one that speaks to a compassionate and practical approach to housing need. But, as ever in this House, we must balance principle with practice. I support wholeheartedly the spirit of this amendment, but I sound a note of caution. Our existing space standards were developed for good reason. They exist to prevent a return to poor-quality housing—the rabbit hutch flats of the past—homes that compromise health, dignity and long-term liveability.

If we are to disapply or adapt such standards in specific cases, we need to do so with clear safeguards in place. The noble Baroness has helpfully proposed a specific minimum size and has begun to flesh out the practicalities of this proposal—that is a constructive way forward. But before we enshrine such figures in legislation, there should be a proper consultation both with the sector and, crucially, with those we seek to serve.

Stepping-stone accommodation could play a valuable role in tackling housing need, but it must be done right. It must offer dignity, not just a stopgap. Above all, it must serve the people it is designed to help, not simply the pressures we have in the system at this time.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I thank my supporters on this amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Parminter. I also thank the Minister for all the engagement we have had on this issue between Committee and Report. I feel a slight sense of déjà vu bringing this amendment before the House, because it is very similar to one tabled to the then Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill a few years back. We have made some really good progress in the intervening period across both guidance and legislation. I will concentrate my remarks on some of the issues I have discussed with the Minister between Committee and Report. I think we and the Government agree on the general direction of travel; our differences may be in how this should be implemented.

I come back to the point raised by the Government that we now have guidance in the National Planning Policy Framework, which is really positive, that climate and nature should be considered within planning decisions. The difference between having the duty in the NPPF and having the special regard duty in statute is that, with the NPPF, a climate and nature duty is just one consideration among many others for decision-makers on the ground to take account of. It does not have any elevated weight within the planning system. This is quite analogous to issues I have talked about earlier in Committee around duties on regulators; at the moment, regulators do not have that specific strategic direction in line with the Government’s goals, which has led to some of the issues around consenting of large infra- structure, for example. Our duty, using that “special regard” wording, would effectively prioritise or upweight climate within the planning system, which would really make a difference in ensuring that it is adequately considered. That is the core of our difference with the Government. They need to consider how climate can be better embedded and have weight within the planning system.

The other area we have talked about is the concern around litigation and possible legal cases in the court because of an amendment such as this. Actually, since this amendment was first debated during the then Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, around eight other legislative or regulatory frameworks—ranging from pension scheme trustees to financial regulators, NHS trusts, Ofgem, the Crown Estate, Great British Energy and Ofwat—now have climate and nature duties. As far as I am aware, that has not resulted in any legal cases. On the contrary, the feedback from organisations with these duties appears to demonstrate that they are effectively driving the decision-making and delivery of climate and nature-friendly policies and strategies in these institutions.

The amendment has been reviewed by planning and legal experts and has been derisked by using that well-established legal term “special regard”, which has been tried and tested in the courts over many years in relation to Section 66 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. It also provides clarity. We have had a number of cases go through the courts that are stopping sustainable developments in the UK. It would go in the reverse direction and provide welcome clarity to the planning system. The amendment has had wide support, including from the Chartered Institute of Housing, Rights Community Action, UK100 and the Town and Country Planning Association.

We have a potential way forward here in that the National Planning Policy Framework, is being updated between now and the end of the year. There is a good opportunity here for the Government to consider the wording of the NPPF in the updates they are making. I have proposed some wording to the Minister for how the NPPF could be updated to go back to that point about adding weight to climate and environment within the planning system. If the Minister could consider those updates in the revision to the NPPF and meet me and other stakeholders after the passage of the Bill, that would be a good step forward and a good way to address the outcomes aimed at by this amendment.

In the final analysis, this is about letting local authorities get on with the job of building sustainable developments and infrastructure right across the country to support growth and support our climate and nature targets. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, when I saw Amendments 206 and 114, I knew that I had to table my Amendment 121F, so that biodiversity was not forgotten again as all attention focused on climate change. I say again, and for the last time on this Bill, that with enormous political will and expenditure, it is possible to reverse climate change, but when a species is lost, it is gone forever.

Local authorities have no locus on climate change—no climate change laws apply to them—but they have many obligations under the Environment Act 2021 to save biodiversity. Therefore, I risk saying to the distinguished and noble Lords who have signed Amendment 114, and are far more expert on this matter than I am, that my amendment is more important than theirs.

Proposed new subsection (2) is, I would assert, rather vague. It states:

“A planning authority when exercising a relevant function under the planning Acts shall have special regard to the need to mitigate and adapt to climate change”.


I think the Government already have all the powers and housing regulations to impose standards on insulation, heat pumps and issues relating to net-zero targets. Indeed, a House of Commons 2023 report stated that the role of local authorities is already defined, namely:

“Implementing enforcing minimum energy efficiency standards for new builds … Delivering funding to retrofit existing homes and improve their energy efficiency … Shaping housing, infrastructure and renewable energy development in their area in their role as local planning authorities … Developing and delivering heat network connections … Encouraging active travel, decarbonising public transport and installing public chargepoints for electric vehicles”.


That is why I say that Amendment 114 is unnecessary.

Although there is only one target on climate change—net zero by 2050—the UK has 23 targets on halting and reversing biodiversity loss. They were published in March, as referred to in my amendment, in the policy paper Blueprint for Halting and Reversing Biodiversity Loss: the UK’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan for 2030, which is the UK plan to implement the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework, agreed in 2022, in which the UK played a leading role and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee played a very important role.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

First, I would like to associate these Benches with the best wishes sent to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I hope she is better soon. One or two of us spotted her attempting to struggle in this morning. The Minister here has had to take up a whole raft of amendments on which she was not expecting to lead at the start of today. We thank her for picking this up.

This is a comprehensive suite of technical amendments, and we are wrapping our heads around it. As firm federalists, we obviously welcome the consultation across borders, particularly in Amendments 145 and 133, mandating specific consultation requirements on Natural England. Proper cross-border consultations are the baseline requirement for sensible environmental policy. We will watch with some care with regard to marine and coastal access. The required removal of existing environmental checks suggests to us that the EDP framework risks some kind of weakening of protection.

We welcome the suite of amendments to Schedule 6 to explicitly amend the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 to treat Ramsar sites more like European sites, requiring an appropriate assessment for plans or projects situated wholly in England that are likely to have a significant effect on a Ramsar site. Extending statutory protections to these internationally important wetlands is a move towards a more robust nature safeguard. On the whole, we welcome this suite of amendments, but there are one or two that we will watch.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I too wish the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, a speedy recovery. We both endure long journeys on the west coast main line with Avanti, and that is enough to make any of us ill on any occasion.

As we have said throughout the passage of this Bill, Governments should not, as a rule, introduce amendments to their own legislation that are not in response to scrutiny of the Bill. We have been disappointed by the Government’s approach to this Bill and, as many noble Lords have said, there is a reason for our procedures in this House. Amendments should be debated in Committee, wherever possible, before the House is asked to make a decision on them on Report.

The amendments in this group mostly relate to circumstances touching on the devolved regions of the UK. We understand that these changes have been discussed with the devolved authorities and are content with them. The only area where we have particular concern is the government amendments in respect of protections for Ramsar sites. My noble friend set out the Official Opposition’s view in an earlier group, so I will briefly say that we do not think the Government are right to introduce Clause 90 and Schedule 6 through this Bill, as they will effectively block new homes rather than unlocking development.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, one of the amendments—which I now cannot find the number of—substitutes all Ramsar sites with “certain Ramsar sites”. Can the Minister clarify why certain Ramsar sites are being excluded whereas before all Ramsar sites were within the scope of the Bill?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall, and indeed everyone who has spoken in this group.

I will be very brief, starting with Amendment 246, to which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, said, I have attached my name. I heard some expressions of shock around me when the noble Baroness said that there were 30 million bird strikes a year. That is 30 million deaths. This is from the British Trust for Ornithology. The estimate is 100 million bird strikes—the 30 million is the immediate deaths. Some of the strikes are where the birds suffer the fate the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, set out, where they get trapped and who knows what happens to them in the longer term. Flying at full speed into a window is not good for you, even if it does not kill you.

Around the world the figures on this are in the billions. We are as a species “care-less”—and yes, Hansard, I am putting a hyphen in there. We are not taking care. Yet, as the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, said, lots of countries are at least doing much better than us. We often hear Britain talked about as a nation of animal lovers and bird lovers. We have the twitchers out there chasing some rare species that has turned up. Surely we can take this modest measure of Amendment 246. The noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, has listened to what the Government have said and adapted it accordingly. This is what we are supposed to do.

My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecomb has attached her name to Amendment 140. I had a much stronger amendment in Committee which I did not bring back because I was leaving all the small, modest ones that the Government could agree to for Report. I suggested that we should be building the entire fabric of buildings to care for nature. I spoke about a museum exhibit that is working in that direction. I have no doubt that we will have to get to that, but how bad will the state of nature be before we get to that point, and how hard will the recovery be?

I very much support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, but pick up on what she said about new ponds. We are seeing in some parts of the country, in a limited way, the restoration of “ghost ponds”, which can be up to 1,000 years old. If you carefully excavate them, knowing what you are doing and having done the lidar survey, you can get seeds that are 1,000 years old germinating in the original pond conditions when it has been restored. In East Anglia, there are 22 ponds where this has been done, and 136 species, all thought to be from historic seeds, have come up in those ponds. Making this a way in which we can let these ponds free is a win-win.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this group. On this side, we share the passion that has been expressed across the House for a biodiverse and environmentally rich country. The proposals brought forward here are all rightly focused on boosting habitats for species and promoting nature. We agree wholeheartedly with that objective, which is shared among noble Lords on all Benches. The Government will resist these amendments at this stage, but we hope that these constructive proposals will be considered carefully by Ministers and their officials ahead of the planned nature Bill, which we are told to expect later in the Parliament.

I will make a few short personal comments which are relevant to the Bill. In our little, deliberately overgrown garden up north, we have five hedgehogs—because we have five hedgehog houses. I spend a fortune on five-litre drums of mealworms. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, if he was in his place, “Provide the habitat and the food and you will get nature back”.

As far as bird strikes are concerned, on Amendment 246, some of the proposals there might seem expensive. However, I found that spending £5 on some stickers to put on the window glass stopped overnight 100% of bird strikes where birds were flying into the glass because of the reflection from the trees in the garden.

My final observation is that I despair every week, going back up north and finding yet another little garden being dug up and paved over. That removes the chance for the hedgehogs to get their slugs from the flowerbed and there is no grass for the blackbirds to dig up the worms from. These are personal observations, but they are relevant to the important amendments before us today.

I mentioned the nature Bill. Can the Minister give a timetable for the Government’s plans to introduce a nature Bill? When can we expect it to be introduced? Will there be an opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny on the planned Bill? I hope that the Minister can give us a little clarity on that.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, we recognise that many of our most precious species are in decline, and we are clear that we need to restore the health of our ecosystems.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for her amendment, which seeks to enhance biodiversity in new development. However, as I set out previously, this is not about what we are doing but about the mechanism for doing it. That is where we have an issue. We do not believe that the use of building regulations is the best way of achieving our shared ambition, given that they are used primarily for human health and safety. As I have explained, expanding their scope to deliver unrelated environmental objectives risks weakening their clarity and efficacy and introducing delay and further complexity.

The planning system already sets out to support biodiversity and achieve nature recovery alongside the delivery of homes and infrastructure. Since 2024, subject to certain exceptions, biodiversity net gain has been mandatory for new planning permissions to achieve at least 10% net gain in biodiversity value. This is a significant step towards achieving our biodiversity targets set through the Environment Act. As we have set out previously, planning policy is clear that opportunities to improve biodiversity in development should be integrated as part of the design, including wildlife-friendly features. We will be consulting on a new requirement for integral nest boxes which can support a range of cavity-nesting birds, including swifts, starlings and house sparrows. Additionally, planning guidance such as the National Model Design Code and Natural England’s green infrastructure framework supports decision-makers to select design elements which suit individual proposals, including green roofs and walls, hedgehog highways—mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman—bird bricks and bird and bat boxes. These can be used by local councils as a toolkit to set local design expectations. I hope therefore that the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, can withdraw her amendment.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for tabling Amendment 203A. However, as mentioned in the previous debate on a similar amendment, the Government cannot support the introduction of a new permitted development right for ponds as an amendment to this Bill. We continue to recognise that ponds can deliver important biodiversity benefits, and we do want to encourage them in the right location. We also note the benefits of ponds for farmers in providing valuable sources of irrigation during dry periods. However, it remains the case that changes to permitted development rights are brought forward through secondary legislation as amendments to the general permitted development order. Such changes generally follow public consultation to ensure that the views of the public, including those who would benefit from the rights created, are taken into account. Consultation also allows for consideration of any potential impacts of the proposal and consideration of how these might be mitigated.

There are also existing permitted development rights which do enable the creation of ponds where appropriate. For example, under an agricultural permitted development right, farmers can create ponds and on-farm reservoirs, subject to certain limitations and conditions to manage and control their impacts. Home owners can also create new ponds in their gardens under householder permitted development rights, again subject to certain limitations and conditions. This amendment seeks to provide a national grant of planning permission for ponds across the whole of England, regardless of whether one would be appropriate in a particular location, such as on land used for public recreation or in an area where it could increase flood risks. To ensure that ponds are appropriately located, there are circumstances where a planning application is appropriate. We therefore cannot support the amendment. However, as always, we continue to keep permitted development rights under review. For these reasons, I would kindly ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendment.

Turning to Amendment 246, I recognise the desire to reduce bird fatalities that result from collisions with buildings, and I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, for meeting with me ahead of this debate to discuss her interest in ensuring that new buildings are designed to reduce bird fatalities. Amendment 246 seeks to ensure that buildings incorporate features to reduce bird fatalities, particularly through design and the use of bird-safe glass, by embedding bird safety within the National Planning Policy Framework. The NPPF is already clear that planning policies and decisions should contribute to and enhance the natural and local environment, and that opportunities to improve biodiversity in and around development should be integrated as part of the design.

When determining planning applications, local planning authorities should apply the principle that, if significant harm to biodiversity resulting from the development cannot be avoided, adequately mitigated or, as a last resort, compensated for, planning permission should be refused. Supporting guidance such as the National Model Design Code and Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Framework demonstrate how well-designed places can foster rich and varied biodiversity by facilitating habitats and movement corridors for wildlife. Local design codes allow local authorities to set their own rules for high-quality places. I am very happy to consider what more can be done to promote the kinds of features that can help species safety that the noble Baroness has outlined. However, amending the NPPF to state that all new and refurbished developments should incorporate measures to prevent bird fatalities, such as bird-safe glass, would extend the reach of planning considerably beyond the extent of current controls and would likely increase construction costs and design complexity, ultimately constraining the delivery of the housing and infrastructure we so desperately need.

In addition, while some types of development, such as large-scale commercial schemes, may warrant targeted intervention, a blanket requirement would not adequately reflect the risks to species across diverse building types and locations. Bird fatalities due to collisions with buildings are a genuine concern, but a measure such as this has the potential to drive up costs and building delays without delivering proportionate benefits for nature. In light of these considerations, I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, will agree not to press her amendment.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who asked me a specific question about the nature Bill, he will know that that is the province of Defra, so I do not have an answer for him immediately. If it is future legislation that is not already planned for this Session, I doubt whether we will be able to answer his question as specifically as he wants, but I will endeavour to seek advice from Defra about when and if they intend to bring a Bill forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 148 and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for introducing it so clearly. It is quite a modest little amendment because all it asks is that, within six months, the Government publish draft regulations that would address a number of issues that have been of concern to several folks around the House, as well as external audiences. It is about a set of important issues that can give assurance that the Bill will definitely deliver, both for the environment and for development.

The Government have already given a bit of clarification on the requirements laid out in this amendment, with some very useful but limited government amendments being tabled after the Commons stages of the Bill. We have had assurances that irreplaceable habitats would be unlikely to meet the overall improvement test. We have had assurances that the environmental principles are already captured through drafting and various government amendments. We have had reference to the Secretary of State meeting the environmental principles policy statement as an alternative to the mitigation hierarchy. However, there were also other downsides in the comments made by the Minister in Committee.

For example, on whether measures need to be put in place in particular circumstances before a site is developed, I was rather concerned that it was said that that might be the case in instances where habitats or species are rare or fragile. You would think that if habitats or species are that rare or that fragile, we probably ought to be using the mitigation hierarchy to avoid doing damage to those really important areas. The Minister was clear that the Government would not require developers to use the mitigation hierarchy to do that very important thing: to try to avoid damage to the most important sites and to direct development to sites of rather less importance. That is fundamental if the Bill is to deliver both for the environment and for development.

The Minister very kindly had a drop-in session on EDPs, during which I asked whether we might see guidance and draft secondary legislation before Third Reading. Actually, I asked whether we would see it before Report, but I got a stout rebuttal at that point. It is really important that if there is a need for clarity, as I believe there is on the sorts of issues that are in Amendment 148, we see as much as possible of what will be in the guidance before we have to finally press the button on the Bill, because at the moment we are buying a bit of a pig in a poke.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I too support Amendment 148. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has said, it is a modest but sensible little amendment with broad support, as we have seen tonight from all sides of the House. It deals with many of the concerns raised by Members from all Benches, including covering a number of amendments that we on these Benches have tabled.

I see no need to speak at length. I know there is some suggestion that this could be an adequate solution to the ills of Part 3. I am afraid it does not go far enough in that regard, but it could be part of the solution. That is why I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, that if she intends to move it to a vote, the Official Opposition will support her. If she does not wish to vote on it tonight, we will need to return to this at Third Reading and discuss it further.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 148, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, would require the Secretary of State to bring forward regulations dealing with various matters within six months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent. I am incredibly grateful to the noble Baroness for her continued engagement with Part 3 and welcome the opportunity to revisit the important matters raised by her amendment.

As set out in the recent all-Peers letter on the NRF, the Government are confident that each of the matters raised in this amendment is appropriately addressed in the legislation and that the safeguards in the Bill are sufficiently robust to guard against the misuse of this new approach. However, we recognise the particular desire for the Government to set out in greater detail how the mitigation hierarchy will inform the preparation of EDPs. I am happy to commit to working with the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, to determine the best way for the mitigation hierarchy to be considered in the preparation of an EDP. To be clear: this includes my undertaking, if necessary, to bring forward an amendment at Third Reading.

I have already spoken about the mitigation hierarchy at some length in previous debates, so I will not repeat all those points, but I again draw Peers’ attention to the recent all-Peers letter, which sets out how the elements of the mitigation hierarchy are expressed through the legislation. The hierarchy starts by saying that development should avoid or reduce impacts wherever possible. Natural England is already able to achieve this by requiring that conditions are imposed on any development that relies on an EDP. These standard conditions will be a form of conservation measure under Clause 55.

At the other end of the hierarchy, harm should be compensated for only as a last resort. This too is incorporated into Part 3. Network conservation measures are a form of compensation measure, in old money. The Bill makes it clear that these can be used only where Natural England considers that they would make greater environmental improvement than measures delivered at the site being impacted. It is inherent in this that Natural England must prefer conservation measures, which would previously have been called mitigation measures, to compensation measures. Both these structures are reinforced by the existing legal obligation, under the Environment Act 2021, for the Secretary of State to have due regard to the environmental principles policy statement when making policy, which will also apply when making an EDP. This will itself encourage compliance with the mitigation hierarchy through the prevention and “rectification at source” principles.

As I have said, I welcome the opportunity to work with the noble Baroness to ensure that there is clarity as to how this framework will be deployed in practice. In respect of the other limbs of her amendment, the Government’s amendments clarify that Natural England and the Secretary of State will need to have regard to the best available scientific evidence. This approach to evidence feeds into the consideration of any baselining that Natural England will have to do to appropriately model the impact of development on a relevant environmental feature.

The noble Baroness’s amendment also speaks to the position in respect of irreplaceable habitats. This returns us to the overall improvement test, which simply would not allow an EDP to be made if it would lead to irreversible or irreparable harm, as this would fail to secure the overall improvement of the conservation status of the relevant environmental feature required under the test. Where an environmental feature is irreplaceable, an EDP could not allow for this feature to be lost, as that would fail to materially outweigh the impact of the development.

I am therefore confident that putting a duty on the Secretary of State to make regulations on these matters is unnecessary, but I recognise that the Government will want to carefully consider areas where it would be useful to provide further guidance to Natural England as part of the implementation of the NRF. I therefore hope the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, feels able to withdraw her amendment. I will not speak to Amendment 236A, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, suggested.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

I will speak briefly to this group. I applaud the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for her resilience in the face of some opposition from her own Benches.

Amendment 197 seeks to end the automatic right for developers to connect surface water from new homes to the public sewerage system, regardless of capacity, and would instead provide a framework for the approval and adoption of sustainable drainage systems.

Amendment 198, also in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, would go further by linking the right to connect to compliance with the Government’s newly introduced national standards for sustainable drainage systems, creating a stronger incentive for developers to follow this guidance, in advance of full implementation of Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010.

I believe that some of this was developed by the All-Party Group on Flooding and Flooded Communities, among others, and we certainly support what the noble Baroness is attempting to do with these amendments. Managing surface water is a huge challenge. It is such an irony that we have the problem of lots of surface water, but we also do not have enough water.

Protecting water quality, supporting biodiversity and reducing flood risk are really important priorities. We see the merits of these amendments. While they are not the only steps needed to achieve a fully resilient water system, they represent a constructive approach to improving drainage management in particular, and to encouraging developers to take responsibility for sustainable practices.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for tabling her amendments in this group. I know that the whole House respects her for her commitment to the issue of sustainable drainage, and I pay tribute to her for her persistence in raising this particular matter, because it is about time that we made some progress on it.

Our water system is put under pressure when developments are built out and connected up, and my noble friend is right to raise this. Can the Minister please take this opportunity to set out the Government’s ongoing work on delivering a sustainable future for our water systems? We would also be interested to hear what active steps the department is taking to engage with the development sector, including small and medium-sized developers, to ensure that existing non-statutory standards for sustainable drainage have been implemented.

My noble friends have mentioned 2010. I can beat that. I think it was in 1992 that, as Environment Minister, I was shown a revolutionary new system whereby the downpipes from our houses are connected to a soakaway and a system of seepage pipes about a foot underground, where the water then slowly leaked back into the soil. For big commercial car parks, the seepage pipes were put down a metre, so they were not crushed.

Those systems were in development then, and I said, “This is a jolly good idea, we should do it”, but the word was, “Oh no, Minister, it is not quite the right time to do it yet”. So I would be interested to hear what the Minister can say about that particular area. What development work is going on for seepage systems in ordinary domestic houses? We have millions of gallons of pure raindrops falling on our roofs, we put it into the sewerage system and then the water companies spend millions of pounds taking out the clean water again. Seepage systems must be the way to go in the near future.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for proposing these amendments, and for her persistence in these matters. I remember having long discussions with her on the same subject over the course of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill.

Proper implementation, adoption and maintenance of sustainable drainage systems can significantly reduce the pressure on sewer networks from new developments by as much as 87%. This creates capacity for further development in areas where conventional drainage alone would be insufficient. There is growing need for SUDS in more developments, with designs that can withstand changing climate conditions, support broader water infrastructure goals and contribute to addressing the water pollution challenges.

Progress has already been made through the planning system to improve SUDS delivery. I am afraid that I do not accept the assertion of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, that MHCLG has been holding this up. The updated National Planning Policy Framework, published on 12 December, now requires SUDS for all developments that have drainage implications.

Sewerage companies have the authority to reject connection requests if they believe that the mode of construction or condition of the drain or sewer will prejudice their network or fail to meet reasonable standards. There is no automatic right to connect to the sewer system.

The Independent Water Commission, led by Sir Jon Cunliffe, has reviewed the regulatory framework for the water sector in England and Wales. Both the UK and Welsh Governments are assessing the findings, including any potential impact on the right to connect. Any legislative changes to Section 106 should take into account the findings of the Independent Water Commission’s report before moving forward. The Government remain strongly committed to requiring standardised SUDS in new developments and increasing rainwater management strategies to mitigate flood risks and to adapt to climate change.

In June 2025, the Government released updated non-statutory national standards for SUDS, which have been positively received by stakeholders as a very constructive development. Later this year, the Government plan to consult on national planning policies, including those related to flood risk and SUDS. Additionally, a consultation will be launched on ending freehold estates which will explore ways to reduce the reliance on private management arrangements for community assets, such as SUDS. When we bring those national planning policies forward, I hope that the noble Baroness will take part in the discussions. As she has such a detailed knowledge of the subject, I am sure that she would be very helpful in the preparation of those national planning policies.

For all these reasons, the Government cannot accept Amendments 197 and 198. I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw Amendment 197.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 199 because I think it is important that we protect and recognise our historic trees. I am thinking not just of the highway and byway trees; there are some really special champion oaks in South Norfolk, where I was the leader of the council. We took steps to recognise them, bring them into the local plan and give them special designations. They form the basis of the strategic gaps between settlements, which is not just a good thing for the landscape; it also maintains that spirit of community.

I am thinking in particular of Kett’s oak, which is a champion oak said to be over 500 years old—it might be more—sat there on the B1172 between Norwich and Wymondham. It was the site of Kett’s rebellion, where Robert Kett marched 16,000 people to Mousehold Hill in Norwich, having had a petition of 29 demands. I expect the Government to want to knock this one back, but I note the context of that historical nature, as well as the landscape importance. Some of Kett’s demands were to limit the power of the gentry and to prevent the overuse of communal resources. It did not do him any good—Kett was executed on 7 December 1549 —but it is part of the lexicon. I am conscious that my noble friend Lady McIntosh is going to take me outside and duff me up afterwards. I hope I do not suffer the same fate as befell Robert Kett.

My serious point is that having a national register of important trees is not just important for biodiversity and all that sort of thing; they are part of our history and culture, and these are things to be celebrated. I warmly endorse and support Amendment 199, with my personal knowledge of Kett’s oak, and other noble Lords will have similar stories from their own areas. I suppose the salutary lesson is that when that Sycamore Gap tree was felled, quite terribly, in Northumberland last year, there was a national outpouring. Amendment 199 attempts to capture that sense of pride and purpose, and it has my full support.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, we all share an appreciation of our heritage trees. The Fortingall yew in Perthshire is estimated to be around 2,300 years old, and there are oaks on the Blenheim estate that are estimated to be over 1,000 years old. Of course, the iconic Sycamore Gap tree, which I was driven past the day before it was cut down, was over 100 years old, but while it was a relatively young tree by comparison, I think it was probably the most famous iconic tree we had, loved by millions.

Whether they be ancient yews or oaks that have stood in Britain for hundreds if not thousands of years, our heritage trees are a link to our past. That is why we have robust tree protection laws. While we are committed to maintaining those protections, will the Minister please confirm that the existing protections for trees will not be swept away inappropriately without due consideration when developments are considered? It would be unacceptable to have an EDP that meets the overall improvement test but necessitates cutting down one or more heritage trees. I think we all agree that that would be unacceptable. Will the Minister please set out the Government’s view on the current penalties for breaches of tree protection orders? Do the Government feel that these remain appropriate, or do Ministers have plans to review them or introduce new regulations and new laws?

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Grender has cosigned the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Rock. Unfortunately, she is not well and so is not here tonight. She has asked me to make it clear that she fully supports the amendments.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Rock, supported by my noble friend Lady Coffey and the noble Baroness, Lady Grender.

These are very important amendments, not just because the contents are wise and right, but also because of the detailed knowledge my noble friend has of tenant farming—better than anyone else in this House. My noble friend is a non-executive director of Imagination Technologies and First News UK. She is the senior independent director of the Keller Group, a company of 10,000 employees with a revenue of £3 billion. She is also the chair of Costain, another company with revenue of almost £1.5 billion. My noble friend is a top-notch executive with experience of analysing problems and delivering solutions, and has been headhunted by some of the most important companies in the United Kingdom. Therefore, it is no surprise that in 2022, the Defra Secretary of State asked her to chair the Tenancy Working Group, which had two clear objectives.

The first was to look at how the new government financial schemes will be accessible, open and flexible to tenant farmers. The second was to look at longer-term changes that would ensure a robust, vibrant and thriving agricultural tenanted sector for the future. With roughly a third of farmland in England being tenanted, tenant farmers are absolutely vital to the nation’s food production, alongside the delivery of environmental outcomes.