Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Neil Duncan-Jordan and Lewis Cocking

Report stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Lewis Cocking]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and of course I agree. She makes an important point, and I fully support her new clause. I know she is a keen advocate for this provision in her constituency; it is about creating communities. As I have said, this Government are interested only in hitting a national target, which I and lot of experts in the industry do not think they will meet.

The Government need to think about how they are going to create the communities of the future and the places where people want to live. That means designing them to be really nice, getting developers around the table and agreeing design codes, and making sure developers really put their money where their mouth is. We should ensure we have tree-lined streets, because when we go out in our constituency, as I am sure you do in yours, Madam Deputy Speaker, a tree-lined street is absolutely beautiful to walk down. It is so much better for the people living there and everybody in the constituency if we make that a reality for lots of our residents. Rather than just focusing on building a set number of houses, we should focus on creating the communities of the future and the places where our constituents want to live.

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

I rise to speak in favour of amendment 69 and new clause 32, which were both tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff). I commend him for his work on the Bill.

I believe the Government have got it wrong with their changes to nature protection. I appreciate that Ministers will say that they come from a genuine desire to address the housing crisis, but the Bill removes the foundations of our nature laws, including the mitigation hierarchy that requires developers to avoid harm. Nearly every major conservation group opposes the Bill and the Government watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection, says that it degrades nature protections.

Amendment 69 offers practical improvements, ensuring that environmental delivery plans achieve their stated purpose of making developers pay to offset damage to nature. It ensures that plans result in an improvement to the specific feature being harmed, so that the Bill does not give a green light to degrading irreplaceable habitats.