Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Martin Wrigley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos]

The hon. Gentleman leads me on to the next part of my speech. Our amendment 15, which would support the delivery of 150,000 new social homes per year, would be funded by the taxation proposal set out in our costed manifesto. That would provide an extra £6 billion per year, on top of the existing affordable housing programme and section 106 contributions. According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, that would be enough to enable us to deliver 150,000 social homes per year by the end of the Parliament.

On the rights of communities, more people engage with their local councils on planning than on almost any other area, but far too often that engagement becomes a dawning recognition that all the key powers and levers on planning have been taken away from local areas by successive Governments, leaving local communities and the elected councillors who represent them increasingly powerless over the development that takes place around them. Housing numbers are set by a formula made in Whitehall and dictated not by population, but by demand and supply ratios, even though studies show that that has never yet reduced the price of a single house. Private builders will quite reasonably act to sustain the price of their product, and adding consents in this context is only likely to unleash development in inappropriate areas.

[Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we saw in the recent Westminster Hall debate that the standard method for calculating the number of homes not only does not reduce prices, but inevitably ratchets them up and increases them?

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend is very perceptive and hard-working on this issue. He raises a significant problem with the current standard method, and I pay tribute to him.

It is not just the standard method that is dictated from Whitehall; so too are rules on second homes and short-term lets, so communities cannot stem the loss of family homes for local people—something that our new clause 20 would put right. Rules on transport and highway capacity are also set by Whitehall, so local authorities such as my own Cheddon Fitzpaine parish council cannot question them. In the battle between underfunded local authorities and developers with big profits to make, Whitehall rules also mean that commitments to deliver affordable housing and infrastructure can all too often be evaded on grounds of viability—something that our new clause 112 would tackle by requiring an absolute minimum of 20% social housing in any development.

No wonder trust in local politics is at such a low. That has only been made worse by the chaos of the previous Conservative Government: with one rule for them and another for everyone else, basic fairness went out the window. The UK may rightly be ranked among the top 20 countries in the world by Transparency International, but nothing undermines fairness more than foul play, even if it is, as we know, very rare. Our new clause 11 would ensure that never again can Ministers favour a planning application from a donor without that being exposed in the public record. It cannot ever be right for a planning decision to be taken by those who will financially benefit from it.

Trust in the fairness of local democracy is so often shaped by how much trust people have in the local planning processes. Our amendment 1 would remove from this Bill the powers it gives Whitehall to control the running of councils, and the rights of councillors to make decisions on planning applications. The powers in this Bill mean that, for the first time, even a unanimous decision by every single councillor will not be enough to enable them to change a decision that their officers or planning consultants made on their behalf. Giving employees and consultants power over the heads of the elected representatives who employ them is a dangerous step, and no Parliament should endorse it.

It is not just elected councillors who will lose their vote on planning. Members of this House will lose their vote when it comes to changes to national policy statements that set the rules for the largest national infrastructure projects, from Hinkley C and Swansea tidal lagoon to the world’s biggest offshore and onshore wind and solar farms. Our amendment 128 would allow the Government to change national policy statements to reflect changes in the law, but it would preserve this House’s right to decide whether national policy on massive projects should be changed.

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[Alberto Costa]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s suggestion, and I would welcome more resources going into local planning teams, but what we have here is a problem, which she may well encounter in her own constituency. Hon. Members should be very careful indeed when developers promise X, Y and Z affordable, social and accessible homes, even with legally binding section 106 agreements, because those agreements can be changed at whim when a local planning authority is put under pressure.

[Martin Wrigley]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with the Liberal Democrats that, given the unreliability of section 106 agreements and developers living up to them, as he demonstrated, the best way to get affordable homes for his constituents and mine is through an increased amount of social housing delivered by the local council?

[Alberto Costa]

I would welcome that. The Government need to take into account Lutterworth East and to ask themselves why a Labour parliamentarian and a Conservative parliamentarian have had to go begging to the Government to look into the matter. The Government purport to want to see more social housing, more affordable housing and more accessible housing, but with Lutterworth East they have had the opportunity to look into that and have chosen not to rectify the issue. In concluding—I am aware that others wish to speak—I simply ask the Government whether they are willing to have a meeting with me and the Labour parliamentarian in question to discuss what they could do on this matter, given that the developer, incredibly, is none other than a county council.