Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

2: In the subsection, after “The purpose of this Act is to” insert “accelerate the delivery of new homes and critical infrastructure by”

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for her amendment. Although I am seeking to amend her amendment, I echo the point she raised; it is very useful to have a debate about the principles. As the noble Baroness inferred, the scope of the Bill, which is set out at the beginning, is very dry. It does not give the sense of what this is all about. I commend her perseverance in tabling this amendment and allowing us to debate this. I know that the House seems to frown on these “in principle” debates at the beginning of Committee, as I found in trying to amend her amendment.

The noble Baroness is right to identify that there are a lot of tensions and challenges in taking forward this agenda. They are not easily solved, and sometimes we have to accept that there are going to be some trade-offs. My main concern is to speed up energy infrastructure to get us to clean power and, as rapidly as possible, to net zero. I agree that balancing the need for new homes and critical infrastructure with a planning consent process that commands public confidence and supports nature recovery is absolutely right. One of the big problems is that many well-meaning agencies, regulators, planning committees and campaigners have made it almost impossible to get the kind of investment we need in our energy infrastructure. Clearly, it would be perverse for me to say we should disregard the whole issue of nature preservation and environmental issues in the charge for net zero. Equally, many of those organisations concerned about the environment have impeded our real efforts to achieve net zero. Somehow, we have to find a way through.

My noble friend the Minister will be aware of media speculation that her department is about to announce some concessions in relation to Part 3. There are many Labour MPs committed to the growth agenda who would be concerned if Part 3 is watered down and so impedes progress on the growth agenda. Whatever agreement may have been reached with some of the environmental organisations about the actions they are going to take as a result of what the media are certainly talking about as an agreement, it is my experience of the Lords that it will always pocket concessions given at an early stage and come back for more. Discussion of Part 3 is going to be very important. Many Labour MPs will be taking a close interest in the Government’s continued commitment to the growth agenda.

I do not need to say much more about the issues of energy infrastructure. The Commons Environmental Audit Committee in 2024 concluded that many planned renewable energy projects were hampered by persistent problems accessing the electricity grid. National Grid wants to spend £30 billion over the next few years to upgrade our electricity network, and it needs to have confidence that the system is not going to obstruct it in the way that it has for so many years in the past.

It is not just energy. A recent report by Dr Mann Virdee for the Council on Geostrategy basically indicated that:

“Britain’s planning system is one of the primary barriers to efficient infrastructure delivery”.


It is characterised by an

“overly complex and burdensome framework. … Developers face extensive requirements for documentation. The planning application for the Lower Thames Crossing … ran to almost 360,000 pages”—

what a waste of energy. Does anyone think that this is anything other than a risk-averse box-ticking exercise by the myriad regulators we have, who seem to have lost any sense of common sense when it comes to consideration?

Even in the case of Sizewell C, which I have a great affection for—the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, will know that—had an impact assessment that ran to 44,260 pages. You also then have to go through a justification process as well. This is all a complete waste of time and effort. We need to have confidence, as the Bill goes through, that we are going to see a really streamlined impact.

Following the OBR’s recent report, there has been a lot of comment about the public finances, but for me one of the most significant points in that report is its reference to this legislation and the housebuilding ambitions of the Government—which I applaud—and reckon that GDP will grow by 0.2% as a result of these planning reforms. In the current situation of the public finances, that is something to hold on to.

My amendment merely takes all of the characteristics that the noble Baroness put forward but puts growth at the top of the agenda. We need to send a very powerful message to the regulators, and to all the agencies that have obstructed progress in this country for so long, that they need to get that growth is the number one aim of this. I beg to move.

Amendment 3 (to Amendment 2)

Moved by

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[Lord Banner (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a practising Silk in planning and environmental law, with a range of clients affected by planning regulation in various ways. I am a non-executive director of SAV Group, a property developer, and of Crossman Special Projects, a land promoter. I am the author of the independent review into legal challenges against NSIPs, which I will speak more on later in these proceedings.

I like purpose clauses in legislation. They are helpful because, in time, the courts will have to interpret the provisions of what will become the Act in due course, and if we do not spell out what the purpose is then the courts will have to define that. Surely it is far better to have a degree of parliamentary control in specifying what the purposes are. If that is to be done—it is not essential, but it is certainly nice to have—I certainly cannot improve on the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, as proposed to be amended by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and my noble friend Lady Scott.

I have a degree of nervousness, however, about the Bill having its own purpose without there being an overall statutory purpose of planning, as is advocated by the Royal Town Planning Institute and proposed in Amendment 132 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I do not agree with all the wording of that, but that is not the point for today’s purposes.

The Bill, once enacted, will be part of the wider framework of planning Acts, of which there are many. If it has its own stated purpose but the purpose of planning is not stated, there is a risk of a potential mismatch. That could be remedied by having an overall purpose of planning, which would have a number of advantages. For example, in the context of the increased role of planning officers, they would have that guiding beacon, which may avoid undue pressure being placed on planning officers by elected members—something that does happen, and there is a risk that it may happen to a greater extent if some of the other provisions of the Bill find their way into law. I would advocate consideration of the RTPI proposal, as outlined in Amendment 132.

I emphatically agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the need for proportionality. We have to put an end to the days of environmental statements being delivered by vans. No one will read them apart from the people who paid huge fees to produce them and review them—I declare a kind of interest in that respect too, of course. The EIA process is largely intended to help the public understand the environmental effects—it is consultation and taking into account the fruits of the consultation. No member of the public is going to read a lorry full of documents; it is simply not going to happen. Proportionality would be hugely helpful in that respect. There are recent instances of DCO examining inspectors asking 2,000-plus questions. I am sure that was with the best of intentions, but if we aim for perfection, we will not achieve anything.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, from the noble Lord’s experience, does he think it possible to legislate for regulators to use their common sense?

[Lord Banner (Con)]

I tried with my proportionality clause, which we will come to later in the proceedings. That is the best I can do so far; I am toying with tweaking it so that if it were to find its way on to the statute book, the Secretary of State would have the ability to publish statutory guidance on how to give effect to it. But, to echo what the noble Lord said before, if proportionality was spelled out in neon lights in legislation, it would send a message to everybody—consultees, consultants, applicants, decision-makers, the courts and the public—that less can be more. To my mind, that is a fundamental way of furthering the objectives of the Bill.