Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, to my mind, the missions are one of the crucial parts of the Bill and I want them to be effective. They are supposed to be targeted and measurable and have a clear direction, but not to be prescriptive. That is a recipe for something that is quite hard to get your hands on. It needs a dedicated set of eyes, informed as to what is going on, and a really good system of communication, so that the likes of us can know when we ought to intervene.

The missions as designed are not department by department but cross-government. There are missions for living standards and pride in place. In my home town of Eastbourne, one crucial thing we want to do is get a sixth form—we do not have a sixth form in a town of 120,000 people—but that comes under the Department for Education, which will not be looking at living standards or pride in place. The people running that need to be able to cross to a different department to get things to happen. Similarly, there is a mission for digital connectivity, but one of the real obstacles to that sits in Defra. In other countries, the water supply system has been used to run optical fibre, but Defra will not allow that. How will the people running that mission swing Defra round to their way of thinking?

In Committee, I want to explore how we make these missions effective and how we in Parliament can play our role in ensuring that the Government are keeping up with them. At one stage, the Government had a structure of levelling-up directors in mind. They do not seem to have appeared. Although apparently six months ago they were interviewed for, so far as I know, none has been appointed. Parliament does not have the capacity to handle something this complex that is continuing. I therefore propose that the Government appoint an outside agency, such as something like the Institute for Government, to assemble a team to do the work, to keep us in Parliament up to speed with what is going on with the missions, and to enable us to perform our critical role properly.

The other thing I suspect others may be involved in—I will certainly support it or propose it if not—is strengthening the Section 62 duty regarding the purposes of national parks. In our bit of the South Downs, we have a big SSSI running up from the town along the coast. It is supposed to be for chalk grassland. It is actually 150 hectares of knee-high brambles, because Natural England has not taken any real interest in the fact that it is in a national park. Therefore, it is important that this fulfil the role of the national park in protecting, creating and celebrating chalk downland. Similarly, the Environment Agency takes no special care of the national park’s rivers. For the Forestry Commission, “If three or four hectares of ancient woodland gets cut down, what does it matter?” No, it matters. Those government agencies ought to be paying attention to what is going on in national parks and giving weight to the purposes of having national parks, so I shall certainly be pursuing that.

Many noble Lords have raised lots of different things. I know I will enjoy the conversations on the environment and on building communities. I am very much with my noble friend Lord Horam that landowners should receive much less of the value that we give them by granting them planning permission. It is we who grant planning permission; the value should remain largely with us. I am with the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and other noble Lords, on wanting to support parishes. I am also with my noble friend Lord Moylan on wanting things to be effective for the people. If I decided to get half a dozen people together to go up on to the downs to do something about a patch of brambles, golly, the permissions that I would have to get—layer upon layer. I hope we see some of the amendments hinted at from my noble friend Lord Heseltine and see something coming out of the Bill to allow partnership and local initiative to flourish.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I support Amendment 221 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, to which, as he indicated, my right reverend friend the Bishop of Chelmsford added her name. She apologises for being unable to be in her place today; in my own brief remarks, I will make a number of points that she would have contributed had she been here. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who, like the noble Lord, Lord Best, has a long and honourable history of leading the thinking on housing matters in this land.

I declare my interest in housing for older people: as set out in the register, I am a board member of the Wythenshawe Community Housing Group. In fact, it is more than an interest; it is a passion. In my time as chair of the association, we have opened a flagship development of 135 apartments for older people with mixed rental, shared ownership and outright purchase. Developments such as this enable local people to live in dignity in old age. They provide social space as well as private dwellings. In many cases, they allow residents to remain close to their family networks and former neighbours—the support networks that they need in later life. We can do well for older people but that should not have to rely on episcopal passion or potluck. It needs to be part of how we plan housing provision at a strategic level.

Research by BNP Paribas Real Estate published late last year found that there is a shortfall of more than 487,000 senior living housing units. As our population ages and the housing crisis continues, this housing shortage is set to grow. The 2021 census confirmed that there are more people than ever in older age groups. Some 18.6% of the total population, more than 11 million of us, were aged 65 years or older—an increase from 16.4% at the previous census a decade earlier. There is expected to be a 31% increase in those aged over 65 over the next 15 years. I reached that milestone myself a few months ago; I have a real interest in remaining part of these statistics for many years to come.

Furthermore, as has been indicated, housing is not just for fully able people. Some 91% of homes in England fail basic accessibility standards. Not only do we need more housing but we need to work to improve the suitability of our existing and new housing stock. In doing so, it is important to note that, as the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, reminded us before the dinner break, older people are not a homogenous group so needs will vary.

The recent Mayhew review suggested that 50,000 homes are designed for older people annually. Providing suitable housing for seniors not only addresses their housing and care needs but reduces demand for NHS services, as people stay healthier for longer, and frees up housing and surplus bedrooms for younger families. Amendment 221 would facilitate an important part of the solution to these issues, enabling the Government to consider older people’s housing needs in drawing up plans. These should include more integrated retirement communities, such as the one that I referred to in Wythenshawe. They foster social connection, especially for people living alone in the latter years of their lives. This would help to counter the epidemic of homelessness, since over 6 million people will be living in single person households by 2040, half of them over the age of 80.

There is a real opportunity in this Bill for His Majesty’s Government to work more comprehensively to address the housing needs of our ageing population. I urge them to take it.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have not heard Amendments 191A and 191B extensively discussed; it is possible that I zoned out earlier. I have two points. First, proposed new subsection (5) in Amendment 191A says that a national development management policy must contain

“explanations of the reasons for the policy, and … in particular… an explanation of how it takes account of Government policy relating to the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change.”

That is a very welcome requirement, if the Government pick up on it, but it is huge. Having that in there will have a vast impact on policy and what will be done, because so many aspects of our life impact on our response to climate change—the design of our transport systems, how we handle our energy, the kind of houses that we are building, how we make the facilities outside the house that people need accessible to them. This would be a really encouraging development if the Government were to go down that road. I had hoped to hear from the Benches opposite some advocacy of their amendments in this direction. I hope that they mean this seriously.

My second point concerns the aspect of these amendments and others that says what the role of Parliament is in looking at the development of national development management policy. We have another Bill with us, the REUL Bill, in which this is a very cogent consideration. I very much hope that this House holds firm and says that Parliament does have a role here and that we will not let this Bill away without insisting on it.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I want to ask a question based on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. He said that the crucial point of the Bill and these clauses is the role and primacy of the two documents—the development plan and the national development management plan—and where they stand in that relationship. Clause 86 makes it clear that the NDMPs take precedence over the development plans if there is a conflict. But where does a third document stand, which the noble Lord also mentioned, the NPPFs, which were introduced via the Localism Act 2011? The document replaced a two-foot-high pile of codes, practice notes and so on about planning. In the instant that it was introduced it was controversial because it reduced the amount of planning paperwork that people needed to have knowledge of and refer to, and it made access to the planning process much easier for lay people and for councils. It seems to have proved its worth and to be a useful document. Echoing the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, my question is: is this document now effectively a dead letter? If it is not, where does it stand in relation to the two documents which are given a mention in Clause 86 and in subsequent policy?

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

With that being said, while I understand the intention behind this amendment and fully support the important role that local nature recovery strategies will play, this is not an amendment that we feel able to support. I will reflect on the debate and we will consider these matters further, but I hope that I have said enough to enable noble Lords not to press their amendment at this stage.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much hope that my noble friend will reflect. As he started his remarks, I was buoyed with confidence that the Government had taken on board the sheer difficulty of turning what throughout my lifetime has been a process of depleting nature into a process of augmenting nature. It requires difficult internal decisions in all sorts of processes to get this right. Unless we give the process a good deal of strength and power, it will, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said, just be ignored; there will always be an excuse for letting it go. I urge my noble friend that this may be the time for a little too much force on the tiller, to make sure that we make this change. If we find that we are clogging up the development system, we can perhaps let it go a bit, but we have been headed in the wrong direction for so long that we need to be absolutely sure that we are doing enough to turn the corner.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his wise intervention. We have come a very long way. Over a decade ago, the natural environment White Paper created local nature partnerships. Some of those have been incredibly successful but some have not. What we are trying to create here on a statutory basis is something that will see around 50 of these right across the country, with consistency and a determination to draw the threads of the desire to restore nature through the planning system and get good decision-making as a result. I am happy to work with my colleagues and anyone in this House to see whether that can be tweaked but, at this stage, I think we are going a long way towards creating the kind of regulatory and statutory basis that we need to see the proper restoration of nature.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

I hope I have not been too unfair on the proposal. We need fresh thinking, but the job of this House is to scrutinise legislation. That is what we need to do with Clause 127.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I cede everything to my noble friend Lord Young when it comes to experience and wisdom in this matter, but I am very attracted by the idea of running the pilot proposed by the Bill. It has long seemed to me deeply inequitable that when it comes to property development, the landowner gets so much for the uplift and the community gets so little. We very much need to explore and try out ways of setting that right, and this seems an excellent thing to try. I share my noble friend’s reservations that aspects of it may turn out not to be right, but that should not prevent us having a go. My amendment just says that if it proves to be a success, and I shall keep my fingers firmly crossed that it is, it would seem foolish to let it die after 10 years without giving Parliament the opportunity to let it continue.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, very much for the best explanation of community land auctions that I have heard. I have searched the internet to find a good explanation but have heard the best one this afternoon from him.

The issue is how we capture for local communities the uplift—a very large uplift in many cases—in land values once planning consent has been given to a site. This is one way in which it could work and it has some attraction to it. However, living as I do in West Yorkshire, where land values are not like those in Surrey, Hampshire or Berkshire, the inevitable consequence of community land auctions is exactly as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said: to the well off, more shall be given while to the least well off, little shall be given.

As far as I can tell, this will exacerbate regional inequalities. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, this is a levelling-up Bill. Living where I do, I was really looking forward to lots of proposals in it to reduce regional inequalities, but this is one example of where it will do the opposite. Somehow we have to find ways of extracting the very considerable uplift in land values once planning consent is given for housing.

Where I live, we still have many former industrial sites in need of costly remediation, and those land values will not be there for a community land auction. The provision will work only on greenfield sites, which is contrary to what we are trying to achieve. It will increase regional inequalities, which is contrary to the purpose of the Bill. If we can find a better way of extracting land value once planning consent or planning allocations have been given, that is where we should go. I am not convinced that this is the way, interesting though the proposal is. “Let us see the evidence” is what I would like to say. I know we are going to do a pilot, but somebody somewhere in the department has done some thinking and provided some evidence. Let us see it before we make a decision on this, because otherwise it is a dive into the unknown.

My last point is that there have not been good examples recently of local authorities getting involved in commercial practice—in fact, the contrary is the case. That is where this would take us: local authorities bidding for and buying land at a certain value and then hoping that, once they sell it on with planning consent, the extra can be extracted. That is putting a lot of faith in the commercial expertise within local authorities, which I am not sure they have. If I was putting a bet on developers and landowners against local authorities, I know which one would win.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support what my noble friend has just said, having grown up in that part of the country and spending many happy decades fishing there. I just ask my noble friend the Minister, if he is going to give special consideration to chalk streams, to end the discrimination against Sussex. In particular, my local chalk stream should be included in the list, which it is not at the moment. The fact that it is called the Lottbridge Sewer should not be enough to exclude it.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to support every word that the noble Viscount has just said—a rare event.

I have recently joined a group of people who meet monthly to assess the health of the chalk stream that runs through their village by counting river flies, and the experience has been a real pleasure. There is nothing as satisfying as seeing a healthy ecosystem, and luckily theirs is.

However, as the noble Viscount has pointed out, chalk streams are extremely vulnerable. In fact, the amendment should not be necessary at all because we should automatically be protecting the health and well-being of our chalk streams. So I very much support the amendment. I hope it comes back again and again and we vote on it—or perhaps the Minister will snap it up as a good thing to do.

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[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as per the register. I apologise to the Committee that I have not previously participated in these proceedings, but I have been away a lot with the Council of Europe, monitoring elections in Montenegro and Bulgaria, and other places. As an aside, I must say, with Lib Dem Peers here, that Bulgaria adopted a proportional representation system. It has 14 political parties, organised into seven coalitions, and this was the fifth general election in two years we monitored, with exactly the same result as the other four. It has got a completely ungovernable country and, once again, a Government who will shortly collapse.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, that we have 250,000 miles of footpath, and we will shortly have completed 2,000 miles of the King Charles III England Coast Path. That seems to me to be an awful lot of mileage for people to walk on, but of course there are some right to roam fanatics who want to make a political point about having the right to roam on anyone’s land. I think it is more important that we develop footpaths and make sure they are open for access by ordinary people in every part of the United Kingdom.

I really must congratulate my noble friend Lord Randall on an outstanding speech today, moving his amendment; it was highly persuasive. The current amendment is an important opportunity to further nature recovery aspirations across the 24% of England designated as national park or area of outstanding natural beauty. England’s areas of outstanding natural beauty and the national parks are even more important now as we face the climate, nature and well-being challenges of the 21st century. They are more important than when the iconic National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act was passed in 1949, as part of the World War II settlement.

I have lived in the Lake District National Park for about 20 years—just outside it now—and I can honestly say that the biodiversity of the national park is every bit as bad as some of the silage fields outside it, which are crop-bare three times a year and the hedgerows cut down to almost nothing. There is no better biodiversity in the national park. That is something which the amendment seeks to change, and I know the Government want to change it.

There is widespread recognition, including in the 2019 Landscapes Review commissioned by the Government, that aspects of the legislation need updating if our protected landscapes are to be able to rise to these 21st-century challenges and deliver the crucial benefits people and nature need. My noble friend’s amendment is a crucial opportunity to make these important changes, fulfilling the welcome intentions of the Government announced in last January’s initial response to the review. However, if the Government are minded to add a reference to nature recovery and biodiversity, it should be added, in my opinion, with equal priority to the current statutory purposes, not given primacy over the existing purposes. That is where I depart slightly from my noble friend: it should not be given priority over the other purposes but have equal weight.

I suggest also that the duty of regard placed on public bodies is strengthened and extended to encompass delivery of agreed statutory national park and AONB management plans. It is possible that a similar effect to the amendment, regarding statutory purposes, could be achieved if the Government and Defra, and my noble friend the Minister, asked Natural England, the statutory adviser on landscapes in England, to provide further advice or guidance to clarify interpretation of the current wordings, although I accept this would not give the same strength or security, or the signalling, desired by some concerned with the issue. However, I suggest that it might be an acceptable compromise if my noble friend’s amendment is not acceptable in any way to the Government. Without a slightly tweaked amendment or the compromise I have suggested, I am afraid we may miss the opportunity to build in appropriate and more effective tools to protect these landscapes at this critical time.

In my final comment, I say to my noble friend Lord Hodgson that I live near the A66 and, if I had known he was coming, I would have invited him in for a glass or two of Highland Park. I would hope that, after a few glasses, I could have persuaded him to give up this mad idea of walking the whole length and breadth of the country.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on their 30 by 30 target. It is an enormous and ambitious thing to take on. In that context, I urge them to support my noble friend Lord Randall’s amendment. We have large areas of national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, a lot of which does not sensibly qualify for 30 by 30 at the moment. We have structures within them which could help drive them in that direction, if we pass the sort of amendment that my noble friend has suggested. I like proposed new subsection (5) in particular, which would make other agencies join in the purpose of the national park.

My Amendment 504GJC—after 30 years, I still do not understand how the numbering works, but that is where it is—concerns other effective area-based conservation measures. We are not, I think, going to get to 30 by 30 on the basis of national landscapes. We need a structure which allows not for nature protection to be provided somewhere else but for nature protection to be something that all of us can influence and be involved in.

Fortunately, the Convention on Biological Diversity has provided the concept of an OECM, which I think we can adapt in very positive ways. An OECM could be a corner of a park in a city, or a corner of a school playground that is developed in conjunction with the National Education Nature Park, which I see from the Natural History Museum is starting to be rolled out. It could be this great network of connection that we want farmers to develop across the landscape, so wildlife can move across it. It could even be golf courses, for goodness’ sake—I believe there is one golf course which allows daisies on the fairways. There is real scope for getting wildlife back into golfers’ lives—I have not yet met one who wants it but we will get there in the end.

It was one of the underpinnings of the Dasgupta report that everybody should have an appreciation of and involvement in nature. The structure of OECMs allows us to create that, involving everybody in getting to 30 by 30. The structure I have proposed in Amendment 504GJC has a low threshold, because you want people to be able to join in to begin with, without going through huge layers of bureaucracy, but you may well need a fiercer award within that to qualify for 30 by 30. It identifies an individual who has charge of the area and a purpose for it. This should be something personal which is down to a group of people or an individual landowner, which they are doing themselves and for which they are responsible, for which we can thank them for taking responsibility, but to which we can also hold them to account. I therefore very much hope that the Government will democratise 30 by 30, spreading it out and making it a national rather than a purely institutional ambition, and that they will give us the tools with which we can do that.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I believe I have done so. The clause is justified for all the reasons I have mentioned.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am fascinated by the possibility of using this same mechanism on the chartered accountants, of whom I am a fellow and whom government often wishes would conduct themselves otherwise when looking after and examining the health of companies on behalf of shareholders; and on bodies such as psychiatrists’, which are currently adopting some very strange policies that seem to run counter to the national interest. But do we really want to rob these bodies of their independence, in a way that this clause starts us down the road to doing? Or do we want to encourage—and I have nothing, I am glad to say, to do with the role of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors—these bodies to heal themselves when they are sick, as appears to have happened in this case? There are a lot of bodies that have grown up over the years doing very important work within their segments of British public life. Are we really saying that this is the start of bringing them all under the Government, or are we happy to say that they may go wrong sometimes but what matters is that they sort themselves out and stay independent?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I would simply encourage my noble friend to read my remarks in Hansard. There is no promise in this clause to the effect that the current or a future Secretary of State will initiate a review, but that there should be a power for them to do so. I would encourage my noble friend to reflect on the justification I gave in the terms that I gave it, which is that we are clear that the independence of RICS in operating as it does is not in doubt.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

We now come to Amendment 476 from Lady Hayman of Ullock. Or perhaps it is the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

Perhaps the noble Baronesses have the old version of the Marshalled List, which listed Amendment 476 several groups later.

Amendment 476

Moved by

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[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I cannot resist being able to speak about letterboxes. To be honest, letterbox height is important. Even those of us who are seasoned leaflet deliverers do not have the same daily meeting with letterboxes of various heights as the posties do.

From the point of view of the people who are doing their daily rounds delivering mail, we ought to have letterboxes not just at the right height but of the right width, horizontal not vertical, and where you can push thin letters through without their being crumpled up. The hard brushes and spring-loaded letterboxes should be condemned to oblivion, in my view.

Just as important is the number of Royal Mail deliverers who find, when they put their hand through a letterbox to deliver a letter, that there is a dog at the other end that takes a snap at their fingers. When people in my ward help with delivery, we give them a ruler to push through. I can show you the bite marks on the ruler. Dogs are behind those letterboxes and therefore there ought to be safeguards at the other side of the letterboxes for those who are delivering.

I had to go to one house in Yorkshire that said on the door, “Beware of the cat”. When you tried to deliver a leaflet, a paw came out, with claws out ready to strike if you were not quick enough. Beware of cats in Yorkshire, and beware of dogs everywhere.

Although we are making light of this, it is important that it is addressed: that we get letterboxes at a height where posties do not have to break their backs to deliver Royal Mail. Get rid of those horrible hard brushes—there is no need for any of that, and let us get the height right. That will be to everybody’s benefit.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I support everything the noble Baroness just said. From long experience of canvassing and getting bloody knuckles as you try to withdraw your hand from the letterbox but the spring bites them, shortly before the dog’s teeth just miss your retreating hand, I think there would be support across the House and general congratulations if the Government were able to do something along these lines, but I suspect it should not require retrofitting. Chewing up people’s front doors would just be too expensive, but any new front door should certainly not have any of these devices on it.

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 504GG in my name, and note that I am co-chair of the Midlands Engine All-Party Parliamentary Group. I thank my supporters, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for her help in refining and improving the amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for their support.

I have spoken before in Committee about high streets, and will try not to repeat much of what I have previously said. I do not need to speak about the importance of regenerating high streets in the regions—I know that the Government get its vital importance for levelling up. Their plans for enhanced compulsory purchase powers and high street rental auctions could form part of the solution here.

However, I have spoken to many local stakeholders about these new powers, and the consensus is that they will not do much to move the dial. They are not commensurate with the scale of the change that needs to happen if we are to look toward a future where high streets in our regional cities are bustling with activity, are pleasant environments where people want to come and spend time, and are integrated with transport systems to allow easy transit for people to spend time there.

It has been estimated that the cost of each high street rental auction could be at least £6,000. In a time of strain on local authorities’ finances, they are unlikely to be used. In any case, high street rental auctions and compulsory purchase powers have been set up to address the supply of high street units, but supply is not the issue here. Anyone looking to set up on high streets in my home city of Derby is spoilt for choice. Most landlords would not choose to have an empty property. The issue here is demand, not supply. The Government really need to look much more closely at how they can incentivise businesses to set up on high streets. This critical point should be addressed in the Bill and will move the dial.

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[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, since it is a long time since I last contributed in this Committee, I start by declaring my interest as co-chair of Peers for the Planet. Amendment 478 has cross-party support, and I am grateful to all noble Lords who signed it. Alongside Amendment 504GJE, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, the amendment recognises the enormous potential of maximising the UK’s solar capacity, not only in terms of energy production but also in terms of that levelling-up agenda to which we have devoted so many hours in Committee.

The amendment would require the Secretary of State to make building regulations requiring all new homes and buildings in England to be built with solar panels from 1 April 2025. It is a simple but sensible and important amendment, which recognises the need for flexibility for different types of building—not every one will be suitable—and gives appropriate exemptions. It could be aligned with the introduction of the future homes standard in 2025. As I said, rooftop solar on buildings can bring many benefits, including reducing bills, enhancing energy security, bringing jobs and skills across the whole country and decarbonising our homes.

I recognise that the Government have made welcome progress on solar since I first tabled this amendment through the commitments they made in their recent Powering Up Britain package, which adopted many of the Skidmore review recommendations. In their new energy security plan, the Government recognise the importance of solar deployment—both rooftop and ground—in decarbonising the power sector. But, as so often with government strategy in these areas of net zero and the environment, the Government use more nouns and more adjectives than verbs. This amendment tries to put some action immediately into the area of solar power. For a true rooftop revolution, much more action is needed.

Analysis by the trade body Solar Energy UK found that further efforts than those outlined in the Powering Up Britain package will be needed to secure the Government’s ambition of 70 gigawatts of solar by 2035. The recent BEIS Committee report also called for more action, recommending that the UK

“ramp up the pace at which new solar capacity is deployed”.

Regulating for rooftop solar on all new buildings is a specific, simple, straightforward action which the Government could take now. As highlighted in the Skidmore Mission Zero report, there is currently no target to make rooftop solar a standard for buildings across the UK.

I hope we have learned some of the lessons of the past when we allowed buildings to be constructed which we knew at the time would not meet the energy needs of the future. In fact, sometimes we got the regulations right once and then reneged on them and went backwards. We have ended up with buildings that are inappropriate and have to be retrofitted, which is more expensive and less effective. This is a real opportunity not to make that mistake again.

Solar for all new homes and buildings is backed by the public, by industry and by the experts. It makes financial sense and, as I say, it is much cheaper than retrofitting in years to come. Other countries have understood this and are making provision for rooftop solar on commercial and residential properties. In March, the EU agreed revisions to the energy performance of buildings directive, which will require all member states to ensure that new buildings are equipped with solar technologies where technically suitable and economically feasible—exactly what I am trying to achieve in this amendment.

The recent letter to the Government from the Environmental Audit Committee urged them to urgently address key barriers to solar deployment across the planning process, which is another debate we have had on the Bill. The committee highlighted evidence of a tendency among developers to just fit the minimum that they need, and the fact that housebuilders will build to the regulations—so we need to change the regulations. It recommended that

“the Future Homes Standard incorporate installation of solar PV … as a minimum requirement for newly constructed housing”.

That is precisely what my amendment is asking for, and it would support the government policy and ambition to increase from 14.5 gigawatts of solar now to 70 gigawatts. On that basis, I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. My amendment is directed at commercial premises. When I stand on the top of the Downs above Eastbourne and look down, I see several hundred acres of white commercial roofs and associated car parks, and there is, I think, one building in that lot which has solar panels on. The reasons for this are entirely structural; they are to do with the difficulties of negotiating between the people using the building, the people who own it and the people who want to handle the electricity that is generated.

I supported the carrot in the Energy Bill—the local energy proposals—to try to get things going and give people a decent price for the energy they are generating. However, we cannot leave commercial spaces untouched if we are to take solar seriously. It is ridiculous to cover farmland with solar panels when industrial roofs and car parks are going uncovered. A carrot having been proposed in the Energy Bill, this is my proposal for a stick. This is something to enable local authorities to get things moving, and to give local landlords and building occupiers a real incentive to come on board a scheme.

After all, these premises are the places where electricity is used in the middle of a sunny day, so they ought to have solar panels to supply directly the energy they need for freezers, charging visiting cars or whatever else. They are the big energy users in the middle of the day, and they ought to have solar panels, and we ought to be pushing that.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I should declare my interest as a director of Peers for the Planet. I shall address the two amendments in my name. I strongly support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, but, in the interests of time, I shall limit my remarks on them.

Residential and commercial buildings together contribute about 25% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, and figures from the Climate Change Committee tell us that the UK has more than 2.5 million homes and another 1.9 million other buildings—offices, hospitals, shops, et cetera. The majority of those are heated by gas boilers, which also provide hot water, and the bulk of the rest use petroleum.

The Climate Change Committee also tells us that we cannot reach net zero if we continue to use gas for heat, so changing how we heat our homes and buildings is essential to reach net zero. Ending our reliance on gas can also help to reduce the cost of living through lower energy bills—something that should give us all pause for thought during debates on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, and I know it has already been mentioned by several speakers. When we add to that the estimated quarter of a million extra jobs that will be needed, relevance to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill just increases.

The Government should be given credit for introducing the future homes standard, which aims to ensure that new homes built before 2025 will produce 75% to 80% less carbon emissions than homes built under the current building regulations. The heat and buildings strategy states that from 2025 gas boilers will be banned from all new buildings and from 2035 boilers will start to be phased out from existing buildings. As far as we know, that is still the Government’s plan.

The question then is: what will replace gas boilers? My Amendments 504GJK and 504GJL are asking the Government to apply a bit of scientific rigour to answer that question and to be guided by objective evidence as we take these momentous decisions on major changes to our infrastructure that will be with us for the next several generations.

The facts are that there are plans for a hydrogen village pilot. There has already been a heat pump pilot, albeit nearly all air source, which is different and has been shown to be 40% less energy efficient than ground source heat pumps. There have also been various central plant district heating demonstrator projects. That is all excellent, and to be applauded, but there is no plan to pilot networked ground source heat pumps, and that is a gaping gap. A demonstrator pilot is sorely needed, because although networked heat pumps have plenty in common with individual heat pumps and with district heating, and often get lumped in with one or the other, the reality is that networked heat pumps is a very different approach and need to be assessed and evaluated on its own merits.

What is it? A ground source heat pump—which I shall refer to as a GSHP—network works by installing shared network pipework containing water for multiple homes to connect to, as opposed to each home needing the space for its individual ground source heat pump. The under-street network absorbs heat from the ground at a near constant year-round 10 degrees centigrade, and applies it to each home’s heat pump, where it is condensed and increased to the heat required for space heating and hot water. It is worth noting here that in most homes, the heat pump unit will be smaller than a gas boiler.

In a GSHP network, the infrastructure is owned and paid for by a third party, with each home paying an annual fixed network fee. The best way to think about a GSHP network is that the infrastructure reflects the gas grids we currently have, which are owned by utilities, and we would in the same way pay to connect to a heat network. Ground source heat pump networks have the potential to reach parts that other heating solutions cannot.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I would be very happy to arrange a meeting with the noble Baroness and appropriate officials to discuss the point that she has just made.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for his answer to my amendment. I take much comfort in what he said about new build and planning permission and so on, and I can see how that all might work, but I do not see any sign of proposals that will work in persuading people to retrofit, and there is huge potential there. I very much hope that in due time the Government will turn their thoughts in that direction. I would just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, that if she knows someone who can build a new town in three years, will she please introduce them to the restoration and renewal team.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, it is coming up to the witching hour, so I will not extend this discussion any further. I am grateful for the considered response that the Minister, as ever, gave. I think that there are issues about planning decisions and integrating net zero into planning decisions at every level, which we have discussed at other stages and which we may well come back to. But, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I could just respond briefly on the Cornwall point. There is a big issue with those SSSIs and a number of issues with farmers, although I think the Farmers Weekly article somewhat exaggerates the position. However, the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, which I chair, has a number of board members from the farming community and we are looking at this. Certainly, Natural England could have handled the situation better, but I do not think it is quite as terminal as the noble Lord suggests.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

We need to wind up.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

No. I have a lengthy speech, possibly of a couple of hours, to make.

I have considerable sympathy for all these amendments, but I am not committed to their wording. What is evident is that the national parks are in no state to contribute to 30 by 30 in the way they should, and something needs to be done. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, knows from her involvement with the South Downs that I live adjacent to, something needs to be done to make it possible for the national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty to become a beacon for 30 by 30 and contribute their weight to that. But part of that is my noble friend’s emphasis on commerce.

The reason why our local big SSSI consists of waist-high brambles is that there is no income. There is no money coming into the area to deal with what is going on. It is really important that at the same time as dealing with nature conservation, we deal with providing the means for that—and that cannot be just endless subsidy from the Government. These places ought to become self-sustaining, particularly with regard to subsection (1)(e) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 139, which quite rightly points out that we want people to use these spaces a lot more. If they are using these spaces, which immediately generates cost for the owners and concern for the wildlife, we need them to do it in a way which generates income so that we can offset those things.

I am in no way committed to the route which these amendments take, but the matters they raise are important. The one bit that requires specific engagement is subsection (5) in Amendment 139. It is clear that other bodies are not contributing to the purposes of national parks and AONBs in the way that they should be and that the current regulations do not allow that, so some change of wording is required. I do not go as far, perhaps, as the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, would wish and am very happy to listen to what the Government’s plans are. However, it is really important that the Government address the concerns raised by this group of amendments, and address them well.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, what my noble friend has said is absolutely right; he has said much of what I was going to say. I want to raise one point about what the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, said. It is a point that we ought to consider. She said that some species are thriving better outside national parks than inside them. As I said at great length on the Environment Bill and the Agriculture Bill, the management system is absolutely crucial. You can have whatever targets or designations you want on our land, but it is the management system within and on that land that will provide the right answer.

There is no doubt that, in the national parks, we can continue to produce food which we need for an expanding population. We can make them more productive and improve biodiversity. But having served on the Rural Economy Committee in your Lordships’ House, I know what a small proportion of the whole rural economy farming is, although it is still the backbone of it. Like my noble friend Lord Lucas, I have sympathy with all three amendments. I am not wedded to their wording but hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to come forward, as he did with our amendment on water, with wording that captures everything we all want but in the right format to make the Bill a better one, and to make our national parks and AONBs the places we would like them to be—but also living communities and not just set in aspic.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, this a very full group of powerful amendments and I find them all very appealing. I particularly support the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, in his brilliant Healthy Homes campaign with the Town and Country Planning Association, but a completely convincing case has been made from all parts of the House for his amendment. I will concentrate on Amendment 280, to which I have put my name in support of the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, on creating a road map for addressing embodied carbon emissions in buildings.

It has been a rather rude awakening for me to discover that, in concentrating on the energy efficiency of buildings once occupied and taking measures to cut their operational carbon emissions when in use, I have been missing the bigger picture: half buildings’ emissions come from the process of producing and maintaining the building—that is, from the embodied carbon generated by the whole construction process. Many of us in the world of housing have focused on improving energy efficiency in new homes and have failed to recognise that we could be doing far more to cut the carbon emissions that result from the construction of those homes.

Construction, which uses more raw materials than any other industry, is responsible for a quarter of all carbon emissions. Half of these come from embodied carbon, particularly in the production of concrete and steel. Half a million tonnes of building materials are used daily in the UK. Moreover, demolition and excavation generate no less than 62% of all UK waste, to say nothing of the consequences for landfill and the nasty impact of air pollution.

I am very grateful to Shaun Spiers and colleagues at the Green Alliance for their work on “circular construction”: reducing the type and quality of raw materials, reusing, recycling and regenerating, rather than demolishing and building anew. Their work shows that there are plenty of ways in which this huge driver of carbon emissions can be addressed without adding to cost. An example is British Land’s new headquarters in London, which went for retrofitting in place of new build and took less time, while cutting costs by 15% to 18.5%.

A new embodied carbon section in the building regulations, referred to as Part Z, would send the construction industry down the right road. The Environment Act 2021 gives the Government the power to take this approach forward. Some neighbouring European countries are already getting there: for example, the Netherlands is committed to reducing raw material consumption by 50% by 2030. But what is needed first in the UK is an agreed set of metrics—an approved methodology—as the basis for calculating the whole-life carbon emissions, both operational and embodied, of construction work. Big players such as Lendlease, Atkins and Laing O’Rourke stand ready to help in devising this. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, provides the basis for that essential first step, with proper regard to the need for full consultation.

Frankly, I have been pretty ignorant about the significance of embodied carbon in construction. I now realise that concentrating on energy efficiency in the use of buildings once built misses the point. Key players in the industry are ready to adopt new practices to cut embodied carbon emissions. This amendment would enable the Government to progress this change of emphasis, which is surely overdue. I strongly support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have an illustration—as ever, from Eastbourne—of what is going on with solar panels. We have in the middle of town about 400 hectares of grazing marshes. There is a proposal to build a solar farm on a chunk of that, right next to 100 hectares of industrial estate. None of the firms have solar panels and nor do their car parks. There is clearly a local demand for solar electricity and the grid connection needed for it, but nothing is happening to provide solar panels on the existing space, which could so easily be used for them.

The Government’s policy is pointing in the right direction, but it is inadequate. It needs reinforcing. They need to give a much harder shove to putting solar panels on existing commercial buildings and commercial space. I very much hope that, if the exact wording of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, cannot be accepted, the Government will commit to bringing something back at a later stage or finding another way of doing something about it, because where they are at the moment will not do.

Exactly the same applies to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, which I have great sympathy for. Therefore, I do not see the virtue in Amendment 191B, the wording of which seems very strange. I do not think that “should” bears the meaning that my noble friend tried to put on it; it is an imperative in legislation. Statements such as

“all new homes should be secure and built in such a way as to minimise the risk of crime”

mean that we would need to have eight-inch thick concrete blocks with tiny portholes for windows, because these are absolute words and not the much more open and discursive words employed in Amendment 198, which I therefore favour.

I also like the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. We need to look seriously at embodied carbon. If that involves new construction methods, we need to learn from the lesson of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. It was the miracle of its time, but that wonderful new method of doing things has not worked out. If we are going to introduce new methods and new structures extensively in housing and other buildings, we really must go back to not only testing them to destruction but monitoring how they are working in the environment. We used to do that with new building methods; we need to get back to it now.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to offer the strongest possible Green support for all these amendments, which really fit into the intersection of Green policies on public health, climate and poverty eradication. I will make just three brief points.

First, on solar panels on a suitable new homes and buildings, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for pursuing this for so long. If I look on Twitter, the question I am asked most often is, “Why do new homes not have solar panels?” It seems such a no-brainer to the public, and they cannot understand why. Of course, the answer to that goes back to 2013 when David Cameron had gone from “hug a husky” to referring to “green crap”. The plan to bring in this effective regulation was abandoned a decade ago. This means that more than 2 million British households are now paying vastly more for their energy than they need to be paying, while also emitting more carbon than they need to be emitting.

Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others have been extremely powerful on the parlous state of public health and the relationship that has to housing. It is interesting that if we go back to the start of the NHS in 1948, Aneurin Bevan was Minister for both the NHS and housing. Those two things were seen as intimately interrelated. Somehow or other, we seem to have lost the plot with this. To quote some figures from the Building Research Establishment, it is estimated that poor housing costs the NHS £1.4 billion a year—money that could be saved.

Thirdly and finally, I acknowledge the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, about his awakening to the issue of embodied carbon. This is something that has been largely ignored. There has been the shallow approach of “That’s a terrible building. We’ll knock it down and build something better”. I have just come from a conference in Zagreb—an international conference with a lot of European speakers. I was hearing of so many amazing projects that are happening across Europe and looking at how we can build in innovative new ways while using existing materials.

I shall quote just one example of this. If a building needs to be knocked down, how can we reuse those materials, rather than just throwing them away? In Copenhagen, there is something called Resource Rows: housing has been built largely with slabs of bricks cut from existing buildings that had to be demolished. Those slabs are cut out and put into the walls of the new buildings. They have recycled materials. The timber is coming from where they have put a new Metro extension in. The timber frames that went around the concrete pieces for the Metro then go into building housing right beside it. They have greenhouses for growing vegetables on site, made from old windows. This is the kind of innovation that is happening elsewhere because they have the regulations that demand it. We are lacking those regulations; we are lacking this guidance from the Government. Just look at what we are building now.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 221A on swift bricks, as your Lordships might expect. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has, in the terms of the noble Lord, Lord Randall, flown back from a nearby cavity just to be here for this debate, but she could not be here at the start, so your Lordships get me instead.

This is something that I have been talking about. I was on TalkTV, talking to Julia Hartley-Brewer about restoring biodiversity. I happened to mention swift bricks in that discussion and the presenter said in response, “Isn’t that just a small thing? Don’t we have to do much more?”. Of course that is true, but, if you are a swift then a swift brick is not a small thing. The fact that you need somewhere to make your home and raise your young is a matter of life and death. As the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said, there has been a 60% decline in the population in the last 25 years. These beautiful and utterly amazing creations of nature depend on having a place to rest and raise their young, and we are closing those spaces off.

The noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, also made an important point about human well-being—how much we all benefit from having swifts around and what a wonderful addition they are to our environment. Think about young people, such as the toddler who says, “What’s that?”, and has it explained so that they learn more. That is crucial.

The state of our biodiversity is absolutely parlous. We are one of the worst corners of this planet for nature. As we heard passionately from the Benches opposite, surely the Government cannot oppose this—they cannot oppose what was said by MPs in the other place and is being said by so many petitioners. Please let us have some common sense here.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I too wish to support Amendment 221A. Swifts, by their nature, nest in holes in trees but took advantage of the advent of human buildings to transfer their allegiance in our direction. Now in our towns, any tree with a hole in it is immediately felled as a danger to people and we are blocking up the places where swifts used to nest in buildings. We need to do something about that—it is absolutely our obligation.

We also have to deal with the quantity of insects, so bringing 30 by 30 into towns is really important too, but swift bricks seem to me an absolutely symbolic act. We would be saying that we will start to make room for nature around us and in our habitations. It would involve people, as Dasgupta wished, in direct contact with nature, rather than nature being somewhere else where they do not have to go if they do not want to. That makes this a really important symbolic advance.

I like the amendment: it is just that you put in a swift brick. There are no downsides, no penalties and no rules. You could fill it with cement a year later and no one is going to prosecute you. I have got scaffolding on my house at the moment, so we are putting up some swift boxes because it is not suitable for swift bricks. The best supplier I found said, “If you’re buying a swift box, why don’t you put a bat box on the back?”. I looked up the regulations as to what would happen if a bat actually occupied that box, and it is ridiculous. It would be tens of thousands of pounds off the value of the house, and all the regulations mean that you cannot do anything without bringing in a bat person if you have bats in a bat box. I could not paint it or shift it; I could not paint around it; I could not make noise next to it. The contrast between bat regulation and this proposal on swifts is stark. I am not putting in a bat box—I am not bats—but I am putting in swift boxes.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 13th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)]

My Lords, I will be even briefer in full support of the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I agree with everything that has been said. I will not rise to the bait at the mention of HS2; that is not going to happen. But we need legislation—we cannot afford to lose this incredible habitat.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much hope that the Government will take this amendment seriously. I would like to see them accept it. I do not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that ancient woodland is irreplaceable. It just takes a very long time—a matter of centuries—to replace it. As part of our planning, when it comes to 30 by 30, where to put woodlands and the extremely important issue of connection, we ought to be saying that losing 0.2% of our ancient woodland every year is not good. We want to plan to add 0.5% a year to where we plant and how we connect. We should have a long-term strategy to make sure that, in 100 years, we have twice as much woodland as now; otherwise, we will continue to bite into it.

A planning permission is currently being sought in Kent. I can see the argument for it. We want a supply of ragstone. A lot of important buildings are built of ragstone. This may be entirely the right place from which to get it. An additional Thames crossing is in prospect. We may well need it. We know that there will be circumstances in which we want to tear down ancient woodland. You cannot just take the soil and stick it somewhere else in the hope that things will re-establish themselves. It needs much better, more careful and longer-term planning.

Ten thousand years ago, there was none of this stuff. It has moved and come since. All these plants and animals have moved here during this period. We should not think that we cannot multiply it. We should be planning on the basis that we can, which needs a lot of thought, care and consideration. I declare an interest. I own a PAWS—a plantation on an ancient woodland site. I do not have any ancient woodland but I own a space where one used to be. We should give it careful attention, ensuring that every time we damage a woodland, there is proper consultation and consideration. It should not just be about whether we should lose this bit but about how we, as a local authority, plan to end up with more in a century’s time, rather than saying, “Shall we eat this slice of an ever-diminishing cake now?”.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I ought to start by saying that I am a member of the Woodland Trust and therefore protection of woodland is very important to me, so I wholly support the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, in her amendment.

Ancient woodland is ancient. The definition of ancient woodland is that it has been around since the 1600s or even longer. The combined effect of a copse or even a small woodland area in biodiversity terms is enormous. The Woodland Trust and others define these areas as being our equivalent of the rainforests in the tropics in the extent of the diversity of nature that is encouraged to live among the trees. So, it is not simply a question of cutting down a tree; it is destroying a habitat. I think that is what we ought to be thinking of and it is exactly what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, thought about.

Some of these ancient woodland areas are homes to threatened or at-risk species, so again it is not just about, “Let’s cut down the old oak tree”; it is about protecting a whole habitat for a huge number of species. The National Planning Policy Framework, which was published last week, has a tiny paragraph saying that

“development resulting in the loss or deterioration of irreplaceable habitats … such as ancient woodland … should be refused, unless there are wholly exceptional reasons and a suitable compensation strategy exists”.

If only it had ended at “should be refused”. Because if we are, as a country, intent on protecting and enhancing our environment, those bodies of ancient woodland are exactly the sites that we should be protecting in full. What the noble Baroness, Lady Young, is asking, which we on these Benches wholly support, is that we strengthen that protection of ancient woodland, which is a key element of any Government’s environmental protection. So, I thank the noble Baroness for tabling the amendment and if she presses it to a vote, as she has indicated, we will be with her.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 18th September 2023 Lords Chamber

Amendment 281 in my name is intended simply to persuade the Government that it is important to provide this information to the public and to enable accountability of the Government for the state of very important public buildings. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 282NE in this rather miscellaneous group. It is one of the joys of England that we have a lot of towns with houses that have no driveways but front gardens. We need to take care of that in the context of our policy for making everyone drive electric. As we have set things up at the moment, we have introduced an imperative that people should pave over their front garden and use it to park their car. If they do so, they will have a dedicated parking space and can charge from their own house, at the rate they are buying electricity in a deal they have made themselves rather than from some organisation doing it in the street. They also pay VAT at 5% rather than 15%. Zoopla says that, if you do that, you will increase the value of your house by at least 10%.

It is both for people’s convenience and a necessity. If you get an electric car and rely on very thinly provided street parking, you may find that you have to park some long distance from your house and cannot be sure of being able to charge your car when you need to do so. We are creating an environment that will result, if we are not very careful, in our towns becoming much less charming and beautiful places because of our good ambition that more people have electric cars.

I ask my noble friend to make it clear to local authorities that they can do something about this and do not have to give permission for a dropped kerb or paving over front gardens. They can wind this into an organised rollout of on-street charging and not let desecration happen by default.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will introduce my noble friend Lady Bennett’s Amendment 282NC, as she has been called away to “Gardeners’ Question Time”. Of course, I will vote to support Amendment 281.

I will be very brief. This is a quite simple amendment based on a report from the New Economics Foundation entitled Losing Altitude: The Economics of Air Transport in Great Britain. It takes on the Conservatives, on their own ground, on questions of growth and economics. There are still arguments that airport facilities are needed for business travel, but it has declined by 50% in the past decades.

All the infuriating by-products of air travel—the noise, disruption and pollution—are not actually worth while. The sector is one of the poorest job creators in the economy per pound of revenue. Automation and efficiency savings have meant that the rapid rise in passenger numbers between 2015 and 2019 was not enough to restore direct employment to its peak in 2007, plus wages are significantly lower in real terms than they were in 2006. That is obviously not for the top jobs; this is for the bulk of workers. Quite honestly, air travel just cannot be justified on any grounds anymore.

The amendment proposed a review to examine the costs and benefits of planned expansion of the UK air transport sector. Quite honestly, it is not worth it.