Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to address Amendments 115 and 116, introduced with such eloquence by the noble Baronesses, Lady Willis of Summertown, Lady Young and Lady Bennett. These amendments attempt to reinforce safeguards within our planning system on a very strategic level. They are precise and would embed formal compliance with the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017, and they go directly to the preparation of local plans and spatial development strategies. They would ensure that environmental due diligence is not left until the late stages, when it is most vulnerable to oversight or to legal challenge—an aspect of the Bill that makes us very nervous.

Amendment 115 would oblige local planning authorities to conduct strategic environmental impact assessments for every site considered for development during plan making, and it would require that the plan’s compliance with habitats regulations be established from the beginning. This would ensure the first step of something close to our hearts in this Chamber, and which I hope we will discuss later in considering other groups: the all-important mitigation hierarchy. Avoidance of harm to sensitive habitats in advance would be actively enforced before development locations are finalised. The current system’s reliance on site-by-site reactive checks too often leaves nature protection exposed to the risk of retrospective fix or reactive compensation.

Amendment 116 would extend this by compelling authorities to guarantee habitat regulation compliance at the highest strategic levels. Both amendments would make environmental improvement an explicit statutory purpose within planning, a principle that aligns tightly with our belief on these Benches that operational planning must be future-facing and nature-positive, rather than solely a mechanism to accommodate growth. Their adoption would help steer development to appropriate places, supporting broader non-negotiable national goals to halt and reverse nature decline by 2030 and double nature by 2050. I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to both amendments.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to convey from this side of the House our hopes for the swift recovery of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman.

As I raised in Committee, spatial development strategies and local plans should be the strategic documents that map out development in an area. This could be the stage where all the complex issues and trade-offs can be addressed to deliver the housing, commercial infrastructure and community facilities that we need, while also addressing the environmental impact and other issues. As such, there is a strong argument that these should include the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulation and strategic impact assessments, as well as many other regulations that must often now be carried out on a site-by-site basis.

It would also be an alternative, as I believe the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, mentioned, to the Government’s proposed EDPs. This, if done correctly with the appropriate legislation, regulation and powers given to those local plans and local authorities, could deliver both better outcomes for the environment and a faster, simpler planning system, particularly had some of our previous amendments been included—for instance, my noble friend Lord Banner’s amendment on proportionality. As the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, pointed out, this could facilitate at an earlier stage a focus on areas and sites more appropriate for development. For landowners and developers, it could reduce the cost and speed up the process.

We support the intentions of these amendments, however—unfortunately, there is a however—the amendment as laid out does not address the key second part: ensuring that developments in line with an approved spatial development strategy or local plan satisfy the requirements of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations, with no further need for environmental impact assessments on a site-by-site basis. To address this latter part would require substantial additions to the Bill, which are not being proposed. As such, these amendments risk adding stages and processes while still needing to substantially repeat these subsequently on a site-by-site basis, with that additional burden adding delays to the planning process and further costs for no particular benefit. For those reasons, while we support the intentions, we cannot support these amendments.

I should also like to take this opportunity, as we are discussing habitats regulations, to ask whether the Government still intend to block the development of tens of thousands of much needed homes by giving force to the habitats regulation in Clause 90 to Ramsar sites.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this debate. Amendment 115, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, seeks to ensure that local plans comply with the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017, and that an authority which prepares a local plan carries out a full environmental impact assessment for all sites designated as suitable for development in that plan.

I hope I can deal with these matters quickly and reassure the noble Baroness that local planning authorities are already required to undertake habitats regulations assessments where there is the potential for impact on a site or species protected under the regulations. Additionally, local plans need to undertake strategic environmental assessment, which will form part of the local plan that is consulted on and then considered for adoption. The noble Baroness’s amendment would go further and would require not only a strategic environmental assessment of the plan, but project-level environmental impact assessments of sites designated as suitable for development under the plan.

As I mentioned in Committee, this would require a depth of information about a specific development proposal that simply would not be available at the plan-making stage, and it is adequately captured by any development that comes forward, which meets the threshold for requiring this further assessment. I hope this provides the necessary reassurance, and I hope the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

Turning to Amendment 116, the noble Baroness has rightly highlighted an important matter regarding the application of habitats regulations to the preparation of spatial development strategies. However, I reassure her that the amendment she proposes is unnecessary. Paragraph 12 of Schedule 3 to the Bill already ensures that the requirements of the habitats regulations are applied to spatial development strategies. This provision obliges strategic planning authorities to undertake habitats regulations assessments where appropriate.

The noble Baroness’s amendment seeks to mandate habitats regulations assessments for specific site allocations within spatial development strategies, but the Bill explicitly prohibits such allocations. As a result, strategic planning authorities will not be in a position to carry out site-specific habitats regulations assessments during the preparation of SDSs. Such assessments, if required, would need to be conducted at a later stage in the planning process, even if this amendment was accepted by the House.

I shall answer a couple of the questions asked. My noble friend Lady Young asked about the land use framework. This is being actively worked on by Defra and is due for publication next year. The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, asked about Ramsar. We shall have a debate about that later in the course of the Bill, so I am sure he will have his questions answered at that point. Given those clarifications, I hope the noble Baroness will consider not pressing her amendments.

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[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and, by extension, the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I was for six years the chairman of a local enterprise partnership. It is often overlooked that the prosperity of the parts of this country that are having greatest difficulties can be majorly improved by enabling SMEs to take forward their projects. As has been said, the rules are the rules for everyone. It is much easier for big enterprises, which have large head offices and all the rest of it, to deal with the very considerable amount of administrative and other paperwork that is increasingly a part of the planning process. That in turn makes it discriminatory. We should not allow that discrimination. The kind of impact that major projects have on a place is very often qualitatively different from the impact that smaller, much more minor and modest proposals will have.

The underlying point behind the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, is a very good one, because we are favouring the big boys over the small boys. I come from a part of England that is a long way from many centres of population; there is a very real concern that, increasingly, with the way the local economy is going—thanks to the activities of venture capital and large companies, for example—the profits that may be made from activities in these areas are being expatriated to other parts of the globe, or certainly to more prosperous parts of our country. It is an essential component of balancing the interests of the various parties engaged in these things that we look very carefully at the way in which the administration of the system is carried out, to make sure that the small man gets a fair crack of the whip. It is as simple as that.

As I have been listening to the debate on this and other parts of this Bill, I have remembered the words of Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy, a now almost unread book from the 17th century. He said: “Are not men mad to write such stuff who intend to make others so?”

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, in Committee we were sympathetic to the intentions of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath. The Government should consider this carefully. We have heard some powerful speeches on it that I will not repeat. I will go back on just one point that the noble Lord raised. A few weeks ago, the Government reassured the House from the Dispatch Box that cumulative impact assessments for gambling licensing would be considered when parliamentary time allows. We will hold them to account on this promise. Will the Minister give the House a timescale for it?

I support my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe’s amendments to support small and medium-sized businesses. As we have raised elsewhere, the planning process is overly bureaucratic and time consuming, and I share the sentiments of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, that 12 months is frequently a very short time. This places a significant financial and resource burden on applicants, which falls particularly hard on smaller businesses that do not have the resources and expertise of larger enterprises.

As we debated previously on Report, the cost per property of the planning process can be significantly higher for smaller developments. It is right that planning authorities should have regard to this, and I ask the Minister what the Government will do to ensure that this burden is lowered, particularly for SMEs. Supporting SMEs is one of the most effective ways to inject greater competition and diversity into the sector and, ultimately, to strengthen the wider economy. Therefore, we will support my noble friend’s amendments should she choose to test the opinion of the House.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I would be enormously grateful if he would make it clear to the House what his position is on Amendment 117. He said that he will hold the Government to account but wants to know what the timescale is. Well, the timescale is a couple of minutes, if we have a vote on this. Will he just explain where he stands, bearing in mind that noble Lords behind him have made very clear their intention to support this amendment?

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

I believe I have made our position very clear, and we will hold the Government to account.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Before he sits down, will my noble friend accept that he has not made the position clear? The Benches behind want to know why we are not supporting this but merely giving the Government yet another chance to get off the hook. Can we not be a bit tough and actually do what we are here for—to oppose them when they have got it wrong?