Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Ravensdale Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis, a vice-chair of Peers for the Planet and co-chair of Legislators for Nuclear.

As an engineer, of course, I very keen to see Britain get building. This Bill is the single most important piece of legislation in the Government’s agenda to unlock growth and deliver for the many strategic targets the Minister outlined, including housing, clean power 2030 and defence. It is vital, therefore, that Parliament gets this right. I welcome the direction of travel in the Bill and that the Government are coming up with a number of very positive, radical ideas for the planning system.

However, the biggest problem for the Bill being able to deliver against its objectives is that Part 3, which has been presented as a solution to speed buildings and infrastructure through the system, may be a solution for housing, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, set out, there are broadly held concerns that it will not deliver for infrastructure. That is because, by the time a developer comes along and identifies a habitat’s problem, there is unlikely to be time for Natural England to put in place an EDP to the satisfaction of all stakeholders. That means there will be a twin-track approach, which could have the unfortunate side-effect of adding to the bureaucratic burden within the planning system for large infrastructure. I would be grateful if, in her summing up, the Minister could expand on how she sees EDPs delivering for large infrastructure.

At the core of many of the issues that have added billions in cost and years in delay to our large infrastructure is the habitat regulations. They are, of course, very necessary, but there have been increasing issues with how they are interpreted. As mentioned previously, Catherine Howard, partner at HSF Kramer, has been doing some sterling work with ecologists and others on straightforward, common-sense clarifications to the habitat regulations that would bring more scientific rigor to the whole process. This has been set out in her Project Nutcracker series of articles, which I hope officials have seen.

For example, the habitat regulations are worded to require the proving of a negative: in other words, proof is required that a proposed project will not have an effect on a particular habitat. This is not the way science works; instead, we come up with theories and design experiments to try to falsify them. But proving that something does not exist is not falsifiable. That means that Natural England is currently not only overburdened but wastes precious time exploring hypothetical risks that are not adequately underpinned by scientific evidence. This is the fault of a system that asks it to prove that developments will have no impact, meaning that it must investigate and account for possibilities that there is no ecological evidence for.

The fundamental change that needs to be made is the introduction of a positive duty not to grant consent where there is scientific evidence of an adverse effect. This small amendment would have an immediate effect, freeing up scarce resource at Natural England to deliver on those goals, while streamlining the planning process for all the projects going through the system.

So there is a potential common-sense reform here that many ecologists are supportive of. It would bolster the measures in the Bill to speed up delivery of infra- structure projects in this Parliament, including the much-needed projects at the centre of the Government’s spending review and infrastructure strategy, as well as delivering more effectively for nature.

I am grateful to the Minister for her engagement in this Session on embodied carbon emissions. When she sums up, could she outline what plans the Government have to introduce common guidance, or perhaps to make a Ministerial Statement clarifying the approach local authorities should take?

In conclusion, there is a significant risk here. If Part 3 does not deliver for infrastructure, all the Government’s great aspirations for infrastructure build and development will not be realised. I look forward to further engagement with the Government on our pragmatic solutions to mitigate this risk, help get Britain building in the near term and deliver for nature.