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.

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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.

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[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.