Planning Reforms: Energy and Housing Costs

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Thursday 15th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I have heard my noble friend speak on this issue many times, and he is quite right to point to the restrictions that the value of land places on the system. Of course, we are always looking at new methods of making sure that the houses we need are viable and will deliver the quantity of housing needed, and we continue to explore all avenues to deliver that properly. I hope my noble friend will look at the Planning and Infrastructure Bill: there is progress in there, and I hope he likes what he sees.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a councillor in Central Bedfordshire. The benefits to growth and innovation of densifying our cities are well recognised, yet the UK has some of the lowest-density cities in the G7, and this Government are now seeking to facilitate building on the green belt rather than driving densification and regeneration of our cities. Will the Minister confirm that this Government will move forward with the previous Conservative Government’s strong presumption in favour of brownfield development?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am sorry, but the noble Lord is quite wrong in his assumption. We are prioritising building on brownfield sites. I know he has a particular bugbear about London; I was with the Mayor of London just last week and was very pleased to see his review of the use of the green belt in London as part of the work on the London Plan. I was interested to hear that, of the half a million hectares of green belt in London, just 13% is made up of parks and accessible green space. The mayor is making progress on this, and so are we. Brownfield will always be our first choice, but we are looking at grey-belt and green-belt development as well.