Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Mike Reader Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 24th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mike Reader (Northampton South) (Lab)]

The Bill represents the most substantial reform to our planning system in a generation, and one that is critical to my constituents back home in Northampton South. For too long our planning system has functioned as a brake on growth, rather than an accelerator, and when the public think about planning, they picture an antiquated, costly and labyrinthine system. While many Members of the House were probably glued to their TV screens last May, when a soggy Prime Minister stood in front of No. 10, I was at the UK’s Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum discussing this very topic. One stat stuck in my head: only 17% of people believe that the planning system works in their favour. It is clear that reform is needed.

The Bill introduces vital changes to our planning frameworks, including improvements to how we deliver nationally significant infrastructure projects, reforms to compulsory purchase orders, and measures to boost local planning. I wish to respond to the Bill through the lens of how it benefits strategic regional placemaking, and how it could massively improve the delivery of major infrastructure. The introduction of spatial development strategies, and the Bill’s approach to strategic planning, are significant steps forward. Combined with the forthcoming English devolution Bill, that will put more power, not less, into the hands of local people. For too long our planning system has lacked the regional co-ordination needed to deliver homes and infrastructure at scale. In my view, those reforms will help to ensure that local authorities work together effectively across boundaries and across political parties.

Some Members of the House will know that I worked in construction before I was elected, and for me a real frustration has been the lack of pace in delivering major programmes in the UK. Locally I saw first hand the delays that the development consent order process faces. Just down the road from me, the A14 Huntingdon to Cambridge bypass was a real success story when it was finally delivered—it was delivered early and on budget—but it took three attempts to get through the DCO process. That meant years of congestion and pollution for local residents, and a direct, negative impact on the logistics and manufacturing businesses that I represent. More recently, my experience working with teams on the Lower Thames crossing, the A303 Stonehenge bypass, Heathrow and new nuclear, has showed me just how antiquated and cumbersome our process has become.

I therefore welcome the steps taken in the Bill to improve consenting processes, speed up decision making, and reduce the risk of erroneous judicial reviews for major programmes, as was highlighted in the Banner review. However, I think the Government could go further, and I wonder whether the Minister would consider, in this Bill or in future legislation, reforming the outdated requirements for pre-submission consultation in the Planning Act 2008. I am hugely supportive of the Bill’s direction, but we must all recognise that legislation alone cannot fix this problem. To pick up on a comment from my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), we must look at the Building Safety Regulator and make sure that that does not become a new bottleneck. Recent data reveal a concerning backlog, showing that only two higher-risk schemes had been approved out of 130 applications since the new gateway process began in October 2023. The decision process is now taking months, not the eight to 12 weeks that we were expecting from the regulator.

Finally, I have concerns about bottlenecks, and about part 3 of the Bill and the environmental delivery plans and nature restoration fund. In principle that solution is practical and will unlock delivery, but I ask the Minister whether Natural England will be given the resources and funding it needs to ensure that it does not become a new bottleneck in the planning system. Overall I fully support the Bill, and look forward to its progressing through the House.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Mike Reader Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Freddie van Mierlo]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to new clause 22. Active travel—cycling, walking and wheeling—is hugely beneficial for health and happiness, and I know there is wide agreement on that point in this House. I welcome the investments being made by this Government in active travel through increases to the budget for Active Travel England, but even when there is willingness and funding to progress a scheme, it can be hard to get a plan off the ground, because landowners can refuse to co-operate. Compulsory purchase orders are regularly used for road transport projects, but when it comes to active travel, local authorities are reticent.

I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Wakefield and Rothwell (Simon Lightwood), for responding to my written parliamentary questions on this matter. On 15 May, he informed me:

“The Department for Transport has not made an assessment of the effectiveness of compulsory purchase order powers in progressing active travel schemes”.

That is somewhat surprising given the scope of this Bill, which aims to speed up infrastructure project delivery, but he did reassure me that local authorities can use CPOs for active travel. However, there is a difference between what is theoretically possible and the reality.

In Committee, this issue was raised by my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), who is a powerful advocate for cycling. We were informed then by the Minister for Housing and Planning that updated guidance was published in October last year, and that it will be updated following the passage of the Bill. I have been through that guidance, and I can tell the House that nothing in it refers to active travel; it is covered only in so far as it falls under the umbrella term “highway”. The problem is that those rules work fine for roads, but are insufficiently adapted for the challenges of an active travel project. Furthermore, this guidance is non-statutory and is an interpretation of current law.

The Minister also signposted me to upcoming guidance from Active Travel England. This will support local authorities in the design and delivery of active travel routes, but it does not include consideration of CPOs. Again and again when the Minister states that there is already guidance, we see that it is insufficient and does not cover CPOs.

It is welcome news that, in response to another of my written questions, the Government have shared that future Active Travel England guidance will include case studies of the use of compulsory purchase orders for active travel routes. However, this is not enough. Active Travel England does good work, but it is not the Government and will never carry the same weight as statutory guidance. That is why new clause 22, which specifically requires such guidance to be published by Ministers, should be part of the Bill. All other options have been exhausted.

Before going further, let me make it clear that I do not believe that CPOs should be wielded lightly. It is far better to have a constructive relationships with landowners. CPOs should be a last resort, but without the threat of one in the back pocket, we are sending local authorities into negotiations with both hands tied behind their backs.

My county of Oxfordshire is hugely ambitious in its desire to reduce car journeys and roll out a county-wide strategic active travel network linking towns and villages together. In my own corner of the county, there is a clear case for the Thame to Haddenham greenway, which would link the town of Thame with the train station in Haddenham, and allow villagers in Haddenham to get safely to Thame and enjoy the town. There is widespread cross-party support for it, and I am pleased that Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire are working closely together to progress the project. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith), another of my constituency neighbours, for his support.

When I was a councillor, residents of the beautiful small town of Watlington told me just how valuable a cycleway between Watlington and the village of Lewknor would be. Lewknor sits just off junction 6 of the M40, and it enjoys good bus connections to London and Oxford through the Oxford tube and airport buses. An informal park and ride works well enough, but would it not be so much better if there was a cycle route covering those 2.5 miles? Yet I learned early on that the landowner has no intention of co-operating, even though an old railway would be a perfect route, and the project was stopped dead in its tracks.

It may surprise Members that the issue this new clause seeks to address has already been considered closely by our colleagues in Wales. In 2019, the Welsh Assembly, as it was still called, looked in detail at the issue. The Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee made some observations within the context of the Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013 that I think are relevant to building the case for better guidance. The committee was cross-party and chaired by an AM for the Welsh Conservatives. It received evidence from Sustrans that:

“without effective support to ensure that land is made available, key sections of route which could make everyday journeys viable could take years to be delivered, or not be delivered at all.”

Sustrans suggested that the CPO process is a block on active travel routes, as objections to CPOs may be made on the grounds that there is one or more alternative—albeit lower-grade—route options, leaving local authorities vulnerable to challenge. As a result, local authorities are discouraged from beginning a lengthy and costly CPO process. The committee received further evidence from Sustrans that:

“Greater guidance and support is needed for local authorities”.

It concluded with a recommendation that the Welsh Government should work with local authorities and other stakeholders to find ways to “unblock” the process of using CPOs to develop cycle routes.

Perhaps recognising this problem, in response to another written question, the Minister yesterday pointed me in the direction of public path construction under the Highways Act 1980 for the creation of active travel routes. Although I am grateful for his response, it raises more questions than answers, and I am sure he will be pleased to hear that I will be submitting those questions through MemberHub. I have previously worked with local groups who wanted to get rights of way registered, and it is simply not possible for the highway authority to create public paths where none already exist. The application process requires statements from multiple people showing continuous use over at least 20 years, which does not work for a route that already cannot be used due to private ownership.

Before I wrap up, let me give another shout-out to the work of the Welsh Government, who have recognised that funding for active travel can be hard to find and is often assembled piecemeal. This gives rise to a chicken-and-egg situation: why seek a CPO if there is no funding, and why get funding if there is no viable route assembled? In Wales, guidance therefore requires a compelling public interest in acquisition, but not immediate financial readiness; in contrast, in England, guidance emphasises the importance of demonstrating financial readiness. Will the Minister therefore consider following in Wales’s footsteps? I ask the Government not to dismiss my concerns around the inadequacy of the current guidance or the good work of their colleagues in Wales. A Government serious about active travel would engage with these issues, as I am sure this Government will want to do following this debate.

Finally, I will spend a few moments on other new clauses and amendments, including those tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson). The Bill removes hope value to improve the use of CPOs for some projects, but there are further projects that would benefit from a similar policy. Amendments 88 and 89 would ensure that hope value is not added to the cost of recreational facilities such as playing fields when an authority purchases the land with the intention of keeping it as a playing field. Removing hope value is particularly important in an area like Oxfordshire, where any whiff of development massively increases costs. In fact, it is one reason that so many small and medium-sized farms will be caught by the Government’s changes to agricultural property relief. If this House accepts the principle of disregarding hope value, that should also apply to the value of land for the purposes of inheritance tax for farms that remain farms.

I also support new clause 107, which would create a duty for any public body to consider the public good when selling land or property. I am aware of local organisations and good causes in my constituency that are looking for space to support their activities where land is disposed of by local authorities. It is right that local organisations benefit when public bodies sell land or properties, such as the men’s sheds movement, which seeks to improve mental health by offering practical hobbies in a space where people can meet and share skills.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak to these new clauses and amendments. I humbly ask Members across the House to support new clause 22.

[Mike Reader (Northampton South) (Lab)]

It is fantastic to speak in the Chamber on a subject that has been part of my career for the better part of 20 years. I started working in the construction sector as a civil engineer and finished my time working on major programmes around the world.

Planning, and particularly planning in respect of national programmes and major infrastructure, has been a headache for me for a long time. The prolonged wasteful consultation that happens on major programmes, which stops the urgency and prevents an outcome-focused approach to delivering the major infrastructure that we need, is almost like death by a thousand cuts for a lot of communities. It is death by consultation and fatigue; it means that people do not engage in the process, and it drives a culture of nimbyism rather than a culture of wanting to deliver the homes and schools—the civil and social infrastructure—that we desperately need, and that everyone across this House calls out for in their constituencies.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Mike Reader Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Thursday 13th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)]

This Bill has sparked a keen interest among my constituents. It is important to recognise that people who live in Poole want to protect the environment and the benefits that living in a nature-rich part of the country gives them. I welcome some of the changes made to the Bill in the other place, many of which reflect points raised by me and others on Report, including the need for a stronger overall improvement test to ensure that changes to environmental protections do not hand developers a licence to trash nature.

As we know, Britain is already one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. We have lost half of our biodiversity, one in six species is at risk of extinction and only 14% of our habitats are in good condition. That is why I urge the Government to accept amendment 40 to safeguard vulnerable habitats and species from harmful developments.

The proposed environmental delivery plans would form part of a framework for nature recovery, allowing developers to pay into a restoration fund to offset environmental harm. That may work for nutrient neutrality, water and air quality, but it simply is not suited to the complex realities of natural habitats or declining species. We risk a situation where destruction comes before detection, with new habitats created too late to replace what has been lost. That means species losing their homes, leading to wholesale extinctions. Developers of years gone by might have got their way with a brown envelope or two, but we cannot buy back lost biodiversity.

[Mike Reader (Northampton South) (Lab)]

I am sure that my hon. Friend has considered the results of the Corry review, which recognises that we have such complex nature legislation in the UK that it makes it incredibly difficult to build. Does he agree that Lords amendment 40 makes it even more complicated for people to build the homes that we desperately need?

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

As several hon. Members have already mentioned, we have to find the correct balance between building the houses that we so desperately need and protecting our vulnerable nature and the habitats that we want to preserve.

The Wildlife and Countryside Link states that

“some species cannot be traded away for mitigation elsewhere. Once local populations are destroyed, they are unlikely ever to return.”

If we want the Bill to be a genuine win-win for development and for nature, and to keep our manifesto pledge to reverse nature’s decline, environmental delivery plans must be limited to where there is clear evidence they can actually work.

--- Later in debate ---

It is very important that this House reiterates to the Government that we cannot give carte blanche to bull- dozers and that we must build better and build in harmony with nature, protecting nature and economic prosperity and ensuring that everybody has a decent, affordable place to live. We can and must do these things together.

[Mike Reader (Northampton South) (Lab)]

I did think that the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Dr Chowns) was about to slip up in her round-up and say, “Build, baby, build”—we almost had her there.

Every single week at my constituency surgeries, people come and talk to me about housing shortages, whether it is people living in overcrowded or temporary accommodation or people facing homelessness, and tomorrow will be no exception. In fact, the impact of the storms in my constituency this weekend will likely mean that hundreds of people—perhaps up to a thousand—will be temporarily removed from their temporary mobile homes in the Billing aquadrome, putting additional pressure on our housing system. It is right that the Government are stepping forward to try to fix this. I have been quite surprised in some of the debates on this Bill that we are not putting more focus on how we deal with homelessness, and that a debate on planning and infrastructure has instead come down in many cases purely to a discussion of nature.

[Dr Chowns]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that there are many hundreds of thousands of homes sitting empty around the country and that this Bill will not do anything to address that issue, which could go a very long way to addressing the problems of homelessness that he claims to worry about?

[Mike Reader]

The hon. Lady is completely right that there are lots of empty homes. I am sure that there must have been some amendments tabled by the Greens that I have missed, and that they have been constructive and worked with Government to address that issue through the Bill.

Working cross-party is what I have always tried to do in this place. I am proud to chair the all-party parliamentary group for excellence in the built environment and the all-party parliamentary group on infrastructure and, even though the Minister and I do not always agree with the membership of the group—I have to say, some of the members do take unwarranted and quite grotty shots at the Minister—I am proud to chair the Representative Planning Group with Simon Dudley, the treasurer of the Conservatives.

I am pleased that the Government have recognised a point that I raised on Second Reading that solving the housing crisis will take action from the whole Government. The Bill is part of it, but there are many other things that we need to do to fix the mess that we inherited. I am also reassured that concerns that I and others raised on Second Reading around how EDPs will work have been recognised, particularly in some of the latest amendments, as well as by the Minister’s comments on how brownfield will be dealt with, which is so critical.

[Mr Perkins]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the housing issues that we all see in our constituencies, so it is interesting that there are so few advocates for building. Whenever there is a new housing application in Chesterfield, we get people who live nearby saying, “I’m a bit concerned about this.” We get lots of people saying that there are not enough houses around, but they never come to us and say, “Please can you support one of these new applications?” Maybe we should give some thought to how we do more to build for the huge number of people who are inadequately housed. We need more housing developments in order to actually create some movement in favour of these developments.

[Mike Reader]

My hon. Friend could not be more right. Part of why we set up the cross-party Representative Planning Group was to create an opportunity to bring forward legislation that ensures that all voices are heard in the housing debate, not just the loudest and angriest and those with lots of spare time on their hands.

I am surprised by the position taken by the Conservatives. I was fortunate to sit on the Committee for the devolution Bill. I recognise that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), is an absolute expert on local government, and he made some amazing contributions in Committee. As I am sure many Members did, I listened to the Leader of the Opposition’s speech at the Conservative party conference. She spoke about cutting bureaucracy, making things easier and cutting down on Government waste, but many of the amendments the shadow Minister spoke to do just the opposite. Lords amendment 3 adds layers of process to how planning will work, increasing the risk of judicial review. Lords amendment 33, which the Minister picked up on in his opening remarks, adds more parliamentary processes to trying to fix our housing crisis. I hope when he sums up that the shadow Minister will reflect on whether his position on this Bill reflects the position of his party’s leader and her call to cut regulation and get us building.

A big point here is trust. Unfortunately, the debate on this Bill has focused on trust—trust in Government, trust in those who build our homes and trust in our planning system as well. If Members turn their mind back to May 2024, they will remember a soggy former Prime Minister standing with music playing behind him. I was at the UK Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum to discuss housing and how we get Britain building. I listened to a whole industry that is completely fed up with the Conservatives. One of my engagements over the past couple of days was a discussion on trust in the housing sector. I cannot remember the specific numbers, but I am thinking of figures from a couple of years ago: less than 20% of people had trust in developers, and less than 20% of people had trust in our planning process. It is clear that the whole process is broken, and that is why we are working really hard through this Bill to try to fix it.

We have talked about the big amendments, but I want to turn to EDPs. If any Member wants to come in on that, I am very happy to discuss it. There are other great measures in the Bill that will get lost. Lords amendment 34 seeks to improve how heritage sites are dealt with. That is fantastic for somewhere like Northamptonshire, which has one of the largest volumes of country houses, manors and stately homes in the country. Lords amendment 39 addresses brownfield sites, and Lords amendment 31 addresses the provision of EV charging, which came up a couple of weeks ago when I was on “Politics East” alongside the hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane) and we were asked for our views.

I am pleased that the Bill is returning to a focus on planning. Some of the amendments show that the Government have listened to those who build and those who want to see homes built across our country, and we are taking positive steps. EDPs have been the topic of a number of speeches. It is a contentious point both for my hon. Friends and Opposition Members. I have worked in the industry for 20 years, starting out fixing houses that were filling with sewage, and ending my career working on mega and giga projects around the world. I have experience of planning, approvals and consenting processes—in the most developed countries and in some developing countries as well—and I can tell Members that our process is so complicated.

I referenced the Corry review in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan). The review, commissioned by DEFRA, found that we have some of the most inefficient, inconsistent and difficult-to-navigate nature legislation in the world, and it is not fit for purpose to drive nature recovery. Those who argue against change argue for the status quo, which has led to our country being one of the most nature-depleted in the world. That is what those who argue against this Bill argue for. They argue for more of the same, more nature destruction and a process that does not deliver homes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Reader]

I take the point. The intention behind amendment 40 is well meant: there are situations, as my hon. Friend has said, in which EDPs will not be needed and there are other ways to deal with those situations through existing legislation. Having such a finite definition in the two lines of the amendment, which people have focused on, creates what the Corry review calls the problem: adding more complexity to the process, not simplifying it.

I make no complaints about starting my career as a civil engineer and working in industry, and I am sad to hear that some of my colleagues and some of those across the House have the idea of greedy developers taking all our money and making millions of pounds in profit without ever giving back to society. I am interested to see, through this debate, the very well-funded environmental lobby. I am proud to be an environmentalist and to be on the executive committee of SERA, Labour’s environmental campaign, and I am grateful for the debate that I have had with them through this process to inform my thinking.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) mentioned the 3% stat—that only 3% of planning fails because of nature. The truth is that the assessment would be done long before the planning process, and I am surprised that schemes have got to that point on nature, as I am by the 3%. The chances are that when going for early viability on a project, nature challenges will be looked at. The complexity and difficulty of delivering in this country, because of the way our legislation is set up and the risk entailed, means that many schemes do not go ahead in the first place. I recognise the stat that my hon. Friend has presented, but it is slightly erroneous, because when there are particular nature issues, most projects will never get to the planning stage.

It is really positive, however, to see so much brought forward by the Government—nearly 30 additional amendments—as they listen to the concerns of both Houses, to the environmental lobby and to those who build the homes we desperately need, and improve the way the law will work. There are great opportunities to support that going forward.

I will add a slight observation. Through my career, I coined the three Cs of delivery, whether I was working on the Hudson tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York; on the Peru reconstruction programme, a project that was championed by another former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, as a great example of exporting British expertise to a country and working in partnership to deliver nature restoration, new schools and new hospitals; on airports in places such as Keflavik in Iceland; on regeneration schemes in Greece; or even on the new hospitals and prison programmes and other things that we deliver in our great country. Those three Cs are certainty, commerciality and cost—and that is what it fundamentally comes down to when delivering projects.

I am sure that everyone recognises that cost is critical. If we cannot afford it, we cannot deliver it, so we have to get cost right. At the moment, viability particularly impacts our ability to deliver homes, and this legislation will start to improve that. Commerciality is the one that I like to focus on when talking to industry, because how we deal with apportionment of risk, change and commercial incentivisation is how we get projects working well, such as the Silvertown tunnel in Newham, and how we get projects that run very badly, such as HS2 phase 1, where the commerciality is completely wrong.

The third C is certainty. That is what we have to give the market after 14 years of failure of a Conservative party that flip-flopped on housing policy, with a revolving door of Housing Ministers—we have all heard the tropes, so I will not keep going. We need certainty in the timescales around how planning works. The Bill simplifies that, making it clear how the judicial review process works and how we go through planning to give certainty to the communities that are impacted and which need those homes.

The amendments brought forward by the Lords that the Government are taking forward improve that certainty of the legal process. Even yesterday, in the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, we heard evidence on the planning process for delivering community energy, and I am sure everyone would support more small-scale community energy. We were blown away by the complexity of planning regulation in trying to get, say, solar panels on to a community building or a small-scale district heating scheme delivered in a local community for their benefit. The scale of complexity of our planning process is such a big challenge. As well as improving certainty of the legal process, the Bill improves certainty around nature protection. The engineering design process will help us deliver more homes and protect nature.

Since coming to this House, I have chosen to add a fourth C to my three Cs: the C of courage. What I saw in industry was a Government who did not have courage and that flip-flopped on their decisions, and that meant chaos. As has been said, we have inherited a system that fails to deliver the homes that we desperately need. That political courage to do difficult things, find compromise and drive forward is what the Bill represents, and I am proud to give my backing to my Government in pushing it through and ensuring that we deliver homes for people right across our country.

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

There has been great anxiety about the possible negative impacts on the environment of this legislation. Lords amendment 40 seeks to restore site specific protections for most cases where they do not involve wider issues, such as nutrient neutrality, but it has been opposed by the Government, as we have heard. Can we trust the Government to have their heart in the right place when it comes to nature versus development? We can pick up a big clue by looking at what has been happening in my constituency in West Sussex.

For the last four years, Horsham district has been contending with the complications of water neutrality, which is often wrongly confused with nutrient neutrality. It is something that applies only to my district and a couple of neighbouring areas. It concerns possible damage to a unique wetlands habitat on the River Arun, which is home to a rare species of snail and many birds. On a precautionary basis, Natural England has required a halt to any new development that would increase demand on the water supply abstracted at nearby Hardham. Natural England was wrong to impose such a draconian limit. The “not one litre more” rule prevented small businesses from building even the smallest project, and that seriously damaged the local economy.

I do not have any confidence either in the abrupt lifting of all restrictions, as happened a fortnight ago. Southern Water promised to reduce its Hardham abstraction licence by a few million litres a day, but that will not make any difference, because it never used the whole allowance anyway—it was just a notional figure set many decades ago.

The immediate crisis for Horsham is how the changes affect planning and housing development. For the past four years, Horsham has been in the ludicrous position of having to obey two totally contradictory laws. One law says that we have to build circa 1,000 houses a year. The other law says that we cannot build any houses at all if they will use extra water. That is clearly quite a challenge. As a result, we have fallen from being an authority that exceeded our housing targets, even though they were very stiff, to being one of the worst performers in the country, with a land supply of less than one year. It is literally against the law for us to obey the law.

As a result, Horsham district council has been forced to accept a series of applications that contradict its local plan and that make complete nonsense of the strategic plan-led development that the Government always profess to support. Complications around water neutrality have prevented a new local plan from being passed, and that has prevented major new environmental provisions from coming into force.

This legal nonsense has done huge damage to Horsham district and is set to do even more. The sudden lifting of water neutrality today leaves us exposed to wholly unconstrained development, which will do major damage to our environmental ambitions. It is impossible to make meaningful plans for new schools, clinics and community services to support the enormous targets that we will be forced to build when speculative developments keep going through that have none of those attributes.

Do I trust the Government to have their heart in the right place when it comes to environmental protections? No, I do not. Do I believe that they are committed to plan-led development? No, I do not. The Government are content to see holes dug all across our beautiful Horsham countryside in the hope that it might dig the Chancellor out of her own personal fiscal black hole.

I therefore urge the Minister to support Lords amendment 40, and to consider how the legislation is affecting my constituency. I invite him to meet me and Horsham district council so that we can explain that what he is doing will not just sacrifice our local environment but make the delivery of affordable housing—my overall key ambition for Horsham—harder, not easier.