Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to introduce this group of related amendments, which are all concerned with how planning in general and housing in particular can play a positive role in promoting mental, physical and social health and well-being, building what I would describe as a healthy and health-creating society.

The Minister will recognise some of the amendments in this group, which are very similar to ones that the now Government supported so effectively in opposition when I tabled them during the passage of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. I believe we even won a vote. While I hope she will support them, I suspect that she will not, and I understand that the Government have to choose. However, I hope that this debate will provide the Minister with more ammunition to argue for change within government. There are very good and powerful arguments behind the amendments in this group that I know will be set out by noble Lords. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and my noble friend Lord Carlile of Berriew for adding their names to my amendments. I also thank Hugh Ellis and Rosalie Callway of the TCPA for their invaluable advice and support.

Before turning to my own amendments, I add my support to the amendments on sport and physical activity from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. They powerfully make the point about the importance of both. It is not just the activity involved that is important for health and well-being, but the social aspects it embodies.

Two of the amendments in this group, Amendment 132 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and Amendment 185D from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, set out definitions of the purpose of planning. It is very important that we remember what this is all about: why planning is necessary. Both these definitions of planning surely include ensuring the health and well-being of the population and not damaging it. I am also delighted to support Amendment 185SA from the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, on a code of practice for design. This, as will be apparent in what I go on to say, is very important.

There are two overlapping arguments for my amendments. I will not repeat what I said at Second Reading, but I will touch on some of the points: the evidence from health research—the straightforward health arguments, if you like—and what I will call the evidence of experience, the salutary tales from recent history. Poorly planned neighbourhoods with poor amenities and badly designed homes with little or no access to nature, inadequate insulation of heat or against noise, and that are not secure or well-heated in winter or cool enough in summer, are a recipe for personal and societal stress and can be directly linked to risks of mental and physical illness and disease. Stress itself is implicated in increased inflammation and linked to many long-term conditions, from heart disease and diabetes to depression and anxiety. It is also very clear that the Minister’s colleagues in the Department of Health understand this very well. In the new NHS plan, there is reference to the importance of healthy neighbourhoods, and that is what all these amendments are designed to achieve.

Turning to the evidence from experience, the current housing system is too often failing to promote people’s physical, mental and social health, especially in the most deprived areas. Poor housing costs wider society at least £18.5 billion a year through poor educational achievement, loss of productivity and on-costs to health and care services, including £1.4 billion a year to the NHS.

Across the country, too many homes are being built that are poor quality, poorly located and unaffordable. A recent survey showed that a third of people across all sectors described their new homes as poor quality. Permitted development rights have only made that worse.

I have said all the problems, but it is also very clear, on the positive side, that well-designed safe homes with access to facilities provide part of the foundation for successful and prosperous lives. Prosperity and the ambition for sustainable growth go hand in hand with healthy, safe environments. Existing guidance and advice have not ensured the development of good housing and health-promoting neighbourhoods. There is no evidence that other non-mandatory guidance will help. That is, of course, why I am promoting these amendments.

Anyone who has played any role in government will know that, when setting out these sorts of regulations or guidance to authorities, some of them follow it very well and some do not. If this is all to be contained in what is in essence guidance, as the Minister has already mentioned, how will the Government deal with the people who do not follow the guidance in place? I entirely recognise that we need more homes, and I would also have referred to the 159,000 children that the Minister referred to as living in temporary accommodation at the moment, which is an appalling situation.

Amendment 123 says that any national or local plan or strategy for development must be designed to improve the physical, mental and social health and well-being of people. This reunites planning and health— the two were once inseparable in government and policy—and it takes account of the vital role that planning has in improving health and well-being.

Amendment 185SF, according to the Member’s explanatory statement,

“is based on Clause 43 of the Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill which places a duty on strategic authorities on health promotion and health inequalities. It uses the same language but replaces strategic authorities with local planning authorities. The effect of this amendment is to place a duty on planning authorities to promote health improvement and health inequalities”.

The obvious question—and I am particularly interested in the answer—is: if it is appropriate for the top-tier authority to have regard to that, why is it not for the planning authority? Is the higher-level authority simply irrelevant, and are the words in the other Bill just words without any follow-through into planning itself?

My Amendments 189, 191 and 193 place similar duties on development corporations. They already have, in this Bill, duties on sustainable development and climate change and, I would add, the positive promotion of the physical, mental and social health of the residents in their areas by ensuring the creation of healthy homes and neighbourhoods. These three elements —sustainable development, climate change and health improvement—fit very naturally together, as earlier debates today have shown, and actions to address one tend to reinforce the others.

My final two amendments, which are very familiar, are about healthy homes and neighbourhoods. Amendment 226 places a duty on the Secretary of State to promote a comprehensive regulatory framework for planning and the built environment designed to secure the health and well-being of the people in England and healthy homes and neighbourhoods. Amendment 351 provides a schedule describing that. This means dealing with all the health issues that I mentioned earlier on this group of amendments.

The current arrangements have not worked, and if not this regulatory framework—which I am not wedded to the detail of—what are the Government going to put in place? If the Government have the ambition to create decent homes and developments, which I think they do, they need some levers in place. It is as simple as that. I beg to move.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to three amendments in my name, but first I thank the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, for his generous comments with regard to the amendments that I tabled. I completely echo what he said in reverse: I am fully supportive of what he has just put before the Committee.

During the last sitting of the Committee, I spoke to a series of amendments on the importance of physical activity and well-being in the context of planning law, and I now rise to speak to Amendments 138A, 185SC and 185SD. In so doing I thank ukactive, a not-for-profit profit organisation that represents and supports the UK’s physical activity sector. I thank it for its consistent high-quality work on the subject in the interests of its members and the wider world of sport, recreation and physical activity, for which it is widely renowned.