Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Paul Holmes Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 24th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos]

It is almost as though my hon. Friend had read a further section of my speech. That is exactly what we need to do in this country to unlock some of those sites.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Gideon Amos]

I will make a little progress, but maybe later.

[Paul Holmes]

Oh, come on—I was going to be nice to you!

[Gideon Amos]

We shall put that to the test later.

We welcome the provisions that allow compulsory acquisition—where there is a compelling case in the public interest, such as to build social housing—to go ahead on the basis of existing use value, not what the owner hopes will be the value in the future, to the detriment of the public purse. That could make a big difference. It would allow councils to assemble land more affordably, and to deliver more social homes. However, councils need to be resourced to carry out such projects. To that end, I am delighted that the proposal to abolish the cap on planning application fees that my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) brought forward in her Bill in 2023 is included in this Bill.

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[Chris Curtis]

That is true. Certainty is incredibly important to enable the housing sector to invest in the skills, development and modern methods of construction that will enable us to alleviate the country’s housing crisis.

Beyond housing, we must recognise that our failure to build vital infrastructure in Britain is leaving our country vulnerable. Our energy security—the foundation of our national security—depends on having infrastructure to support a modern, productive economy. We have failed to build the transport links that are needed to get goods and people moving efficiently. We have failed to build the energy infrastructure that is needed to reduce our dependence on volatile foreign oil and gas, and we have not built a single reservoir in decades, meaning that we lack the water security that is required in the face of climate change.

[Paul Holmes]

Labour Members keep using the suggestion that reservoirs have not been built in recent times as an example of why the Government are proceeding with the Bill. However, under current guidelines and legislation, a reservoir is being built down the road in my constituency, so it is not a great example to use, is it?

[Chris Curtis]

I note the length of time that that reservoir has taken to be built. It would be nice if someone on the Conservative Benches started by acknowledging their Government’s lack of ability to build the infrastructure that this country so desperately needed for decades. The barriers that they constantly put in the way of building it are one reason why we are in this situation.

Our national security is only ever as strong as our economic security. Sure, we should be investing in defence, but we can do so only if we have a strong economy. One of the biggest reasons why we have not had a growing economy or economic security is because it has become too difficult to build in Britain. I am proud to support a Bill that will get Britain building again.

I will talk briefly about the nature restoration fund, which in principle is a policy masterstroke. What is most shameful about our current nature legislation set-up, including the habitats regulations, is not just that it stops us from building the homes and infrastructure that our country needs and that it damages our economy in the meantime, but that it does not even work on its own terms. As was mentioned earlier, Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world; I am told that it is second only to Singapore. Why is that? Because the money that we force builders to pay for nature projects is not being spent in the most efficient way.

Take for example, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Dan Tomlinson) pointed out, the infamous bat tunnel, which cost us more than £120 million to protect a tiny proportion of bats, all while critical infrastructure projects were delayed or cancelled. Imagine what we could have done for nature not just with that money, but with the extra money that would have been provided to our economy by not stalling that project for so long. Although the nature restoration fund is a welcome step forward, we must ensure that it works. It is heavily reliant on Natural England bringing forward workable delivery plans in a timely fashion.

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[Nesil Caliskan (Barking) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as the vice-president of the Local Government Association. I support the Bill because we must do everything we can to deliver the building of more housing in this country. As the Member for Barking, I see and hear at first hand the impact of the housing crisis. Every week, I meet constituents who share their personal and desperate housing stories. To fix the housing crisis, we require political will alongside national initiatives and investment from the Government, but we must also change the policy foundations, because the national planning system is not fit for purpose.

As a former London council leader who delivered a local plan that designated land for 30,000 new homes, I know only too well that the existing planning frameworks frustrate house building and that the voices of those opposing new homes—often individuals who already own their own home—are prioritised. The truth is that our planning system relies too much on the political bravery of local councillors. Local plans for new homes are stopped by a vocal minority in too many cases. This creates a national patchwork of house building, and the planning systems are used to slow down decision making in the hope that the applicant will eventually just give up.

I welcome the fact that, through the Bill, the Government will create a national scheme of delegation. This will allow planning professionals to work more effectively, ensuring consistency across the country. Allowing planning authorities the flexibility to set their own fees and recover costs is an important step, but given that there is a £360 million deficit nationally, will the Minister reassure us all that the councils will be held responsible for ringfencing that income in their planning departments so that local authorities can improve their performance?

Transport and infrastructure form a crucial component in unlocking the potential for house building, because both private and public sector developments need clear business cases to build. Strong business cases rely on land value, which is boosted by infrastructure, including but not exclusively transport connectivity. The measures in the Bill to streamline the process for agreeing nationally important infrastructure are therefore welcome, but I would like the Government to consider whether the Bill goes far enough.

The HS2 bat tunnels are frequently mentioned in this Chamber, but there are other examples, including the Lower Thames crossing, which has been delayed for over three decades. It has become the UK’s biggest ever planning application, with over 2,000 pages and costing £800 million in planning costs. Taking applications through the national significant infrastructure projects process—a mouthful to say—is too costly and takes far too long. A large part of the problem are the statutory pre-application consultation requirements. This means that all the parties involved operate in a hyper-risk-averse manner, focusing on endless negotiations. That serves the taxpayer and our communities in no way, so I encourage my hon. Friend the Minister to look again specifically at reforming the pre-application process to reduce delays and get essential infrastructure consented faster.

[Paul Holmes]

The hon. Lady rightly talks about ambition and ensuring that we get planning applications delivered quickly. Does she think that the 56% reduction and the 1,694 fewer homes that her local Labour council will have to deliver will speed up the length of time it will take for them to get through?

[Nesil Caliskan]

The hon. Gentleman gives me an opportunity to highlight the fact that my local authority has been building homes far faster than most local authorities across the country. The general slowing in the delivery of housing over the past two years is absolutely to do with the fact that the previous Government crashed the economy and that interest rates and inflation went through the roof. I have yet to come across a developer or local authority that does not say that all its pipeline was impacted by the economic crisis.

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[Paul Holmes]

The hon. Lady is correct to say that there were some issues with housing supply during the last economic crisis, but the numbers that I am asking her about relate to her Government’s proposals under the new scheme. Will she tell her constituents or her Labour councillors—who she does not think should make planning decisions locally—whether she supports the 1,694 fewer houses that her Government are requiring her council to deliver?

[Nesil Caliskan]

My local authority has committed to building homes and it has a good record. One barrier to being able to deliver homes at speed is the fact that we see infrastructure delayed year after year. With the Bill’s proposals to allow CPOs and land assemblies to happen far quicker, we will see homes built at pace in a way that we have not seen in a generation in this country.

I take this opportunity to thank the Ministers and their teams for their work. The Bill provides a generational opportunity for us to get house building back on track in this country. It is a welcome shake-up to the planning system. It will help to deliver the homes and infrastructure that are so desperately needed in this country. It is the first step of many that will allow us to tackle the housing crisis that my constituents in Barking and Dagenham are so badly impacted by every single day.

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[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Suffolk Coastal) (Lab)]

I put on record my strong support for the Bill. I want to focus much of my contribution today on two aspects—nature recovery and electricity infrastructure. Net zero and nature are two sides of the same coin, and it would be a coin with no value if we had one without the other.

The proposed environmental delivery plans and the nature restoration fund are positive steps that could transform nature’s recovery. In Suffolk, we have seen how that idea can work well. The Wildlife Trusts’ biodiversity net gain service has helped to establish new nature reserves, such as Martlesham Wilds on the River Deben. However, more can be done to ensure that nature and development sit happily alongside each other.

First, we must make it explicit that there are firm timeframes for the delivery of conservation measures set out in an EDP. Secondly, we must have higher expectations of developers. Nature-rich open spaces, nature highways and solar panels on new builds are incredibly simple things to implement, but they will make a world of difference to our communities and to nature.

I turn to the electricity infrastructure aspects of the Bill and why they are so important in Suffolk Coastal, where we have four nationally significant energy infrastructure projects planned with Sizewell C, National Grid, National Grid Ventures and ScottishPower Renewables. It is often said that up to 25% of the UK’s energy will be either made in or transported through my constituency. We are home to some of the most important biodiverse sites in the UK, with 36 sites of special scientific interest in the constituency, and more than 50% of Suffolk Coastal is designated as a natural landscape.

[Paul Holmes]

The hon. Lady is quite rightly outlining how the environment should be protected, which I believe is part of the aim of the Bill. How does she defend to her constituents the fact that under Ministers’ proposals, her housing targets will be uplifted by 82%?

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

I wonder if the hon. Gentleman rolls out that line to every Member. I am actually talking about the SSSIs and the energy infrastructure, rather than housing. The sites that I speak of—the SSSIs and the natural landscapes—are not only recognised by but critical for this Government if we are to deliver on our ambitions to improve biodiversity.

There has been much talk in the press of late about nimbyism, but I ask the Minister: are people nimbys if they ask why nature-rich marshlands and the RSPB’s nature reserves are picked as the best place for National Grid’s energy infrastructure to make landfall? Are people nimbys if they question why the four projects I have mentioned are being brought forward in isolation from each other and with no co-ordination? Are people nimbys if they fully support our country’s push to net zero, but they ask if they can do more to protect nature? If we listened more to some of those fair and valid questions, we could do more to protect nature and progress with net zero.

The previous Government totally vacated the space of leadership in our country’s energy and biodiversity planning. That void was filled by energy developers, which were left to take the lead and bring forward proposals that were totally unsuitable in our landscapes, all because it was cheaper than taking projects to brownfield sites. We have been left with a series of unco-ordinated, whack-a-mole projects on the east coast of England. The much-welcomed land use framework should be extended to create a land and sea use framework to allow for better leadership and co-ordination of energy infrastructure projects. First and foremost, it is critical we ensure that energy developers that are working in the same area work with communities to plan for the cumulative impact of these vast projects.

The community often has the answers to problems that the developers do not. For instance, farmers have told me that it should be a requirement to bury network cables to a minimum of 1.8 metres on arable farming land. That is the minimum legal standard required for arable farmers to continue to use their land for farming. It seems common sense to make that a requirement.

I do not have time today to go into detail on the need for community benefits to deliver for communities who host infrastructure, but while I welcome the Government’s recent announcements, which mean that communities such as mine that may be set to host substations should benefit, we can be far more ambitious. We can and should expect more from private firms that profit so vastly from the great green energy revolution. I urge the Government to consider those aspects of the Bill.

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[Paul Holmes]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I appreciate being able to make this point of order. I would like to seek your guidance on the speech from the hon. Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor), in which she defended developers and also solicitors. Did she have to declare her interest as a practising solicitor, for which privilege she was paid £7,500 this quarter?

[Rachel Taylor]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I no longer have a practising certificate as a solicitor, and I gave up practising as soon as I came into this House.

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[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

There have been many eloquent and thoughtful contributions to the debate today, and I would like to build on and respond to some of the comments that have been made. Great speeches have been made by hon. Friends and Members from all parts of the House. In particular, may I mention my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay)? Like me, he has some concerns about the Bill, despite knowing the Government’s genuine intentions. It comes with some serious questions, particularly about giving power to Natural England—a quango—while removing and cutting other quangos; and about the future resourcing of Natural England, with those extra responsibilities. I hope the Minister for Housing and Planning will be able to answer some of those concerns in his wind-up.

The Deputy Prime Minister has maintained that democracy will still be there for local people who want to have their say over planning applications, but the simple fact is that the Bill will cut the rights of planning committees and local authorities to make decisions for their local areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) mentioned that house building was up in rural areas versus urban areas, and I will come on to that point later. He was absolutely right to outline the challenges he has in Mid Buckinghamshire and in the wider county. He was also right to focus on the infrastructure and how it is wrong just to focus on renewables. Thousands of acres will be used up for solar power across the country, and the Conservatives believe that we should be looking at alternative options for energy.

The hon. Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb) says that he is a planning bore, and that he became one during his time listening to various members of the Labour party. When we were both in opposing student political parties at the University of Southampton in 2000—not so long ago, I will say—he was not a bore then, and I do not expect that he will be in the speeches he makes during his career in the House.

My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) is a strong advocate for his constituency. He is right to say that the introduction of EDPs is a good idea, but as cases show—I will develop some of the thinking behind this later on—there is a mercenary approach that does not provide local habitat protection, and just tries to move the issues somewhere else.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) mentioned local planning and removing powers. He said that the use of the compulsory purchase order is anti-democratic when it comes to agricultural land, and he is absolutely correct. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) recognises, as we do, the Government’s mandate to try to build the 1.5 million homes required under their legislation. However, I have to say to the House that nobody believes they will be able to achieve it, including the Minister for Housing and Planning—[Interruption.] It is on the record.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) mentioned the “rural versus urban” competition that the Government have created, and the 80% uplift in his constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) said that targets had doubled in his constituency while they were down in London. I failed to persuade a single Labour Member to admit that the Mayor of London is not capable of delivering the numbers, although the Government have reduced them by a record amount. My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) said that there were no details of community improvement funds, and that the threshold for solar developments was still too low and needed to be raised. We look forward to discussing that in Committee.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) mentioned the green belt and nature being at the heart of planning, and the top-down application in the Bill. I completely agree with her. Last but by no means least, my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) said that development consent orders should be accountable and better suited for local people, and we entirely agree.

We on this side of the House have always had concerns about the Government’s centralising zeal when it comes to planning. When they first introduced the Bill to the House, it cemented many of our fears about the traditional centralising mission that Ministers in this Administration have shown a taste for in various areas of government since taking office. Let us face it: that is the Labour party’s way. While we all recognise that there is a need for tangible changes to deliver suitable and relevant infrastructure, they should not be to the detriment of the rights and responsibilities of locally elected representatives and planning committees or those who now face having their land taken away by this Government’s unfair compulsory purchase order changes; but that is what the Bill does. The Deputy Prime Minister said that she wanted to streamline decision making, but we all know that the Bill takes those local powers away.

I once said during a Westminster Hall debate that it was fundamentally not good practice or good governance to deliver substantial changes to the national planning policy framework before legislating for an overarching change in planning infrastructure policy. It leads to confusion on the ground and delays in good planning, and rushed enforced devolution and local government reorganisation will further delay and complicate the intended consequences of the Bill. Let us also not forget that the Government have now introduced new housing targets that will reclassify land from grey belt, and will see areas green-lighted for development over the objections of local people and local authorities. This Bill will do that on a strategic scale that we have never seen before. Instead of delivering an algorithm that would fairly distribute building targets, the Government have introduced a politically motivated, unfair housing target regime that has opposition councils in its crosshairs, tripling the building burden in some cases, while rewarding Labour councils for their failure to deliver in their own authorities. This reeks of political gerrymandering, and the Government must think again.

The Deputy Prime Minister said that she wanted the homes that she will be delivering to be affordable. May I remind Labour Members that it was her Government, when she came in, who scrapped Help to Buy, scrapped shared ownership, and scrapped mechanisms that allowed the people in this country to get on to the housing ladder?

There are three areas of concern in the Bill. First, it threatens to remove local councillors’ ability to have their say by setting up a national scheme of delegation that will specify which types of application will be determined by council officers and which should go to planning committees—rules all made from the desks of Ministers in Whitehall—but not planning applications that can be decided in the committee rooms of town halls across the United Kingdom. The Local Government Association agrees, and has commented:

“there remain concerns around how it will ensure that councils—who know their areas best and what they need—remain at the heart of the planning process. The democratic role of councillors in decision-making is the backbone of the English”

—and British—

“planning system, and this should not be diminished.”

We agree; the Government do not.

These changes will require rural county areas to develop 56% more housing than the last Government’s standard method. That is more than any other local authority type and equates to over 180,000 homes needing to be delivered in counties per year, compared with just over 115,000 under the previous method. On average, that is a rural uplift of 115%, while urban areas with major conurbations—mostly Labour authorities—are only up by 17%.

[Joe Morris]

The hon. Gentleman and I both represent rural constituencies, and we both know there is a demographic crisis in those areas. Does he agree that young people in rural areas need homes to live in and homes to work from? What do he and his party have against young people in rural areas?

[Paul Holmes]

I do not have anything against young people in rural areas at all, but surely the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will not see it as fair that his Government have reduced targets on their own authorities in urban centres, where there is already the infrastructure, where generally housing supply is better and where it is easier to get that infrastructure through, but are punishing rural areas across the country.

It is not a sensible or feasible solution to a very clear problem; it will drastically increase pressure on existing rural infrastructure and override the democratically elected local leaders who have a stake in, and should have a say in, the development of their local areas. It also raises the question of how this legislation is deliverable when local government reorganisation will change the spatial development strategies of local authorities. It is further concerning that the chief executive of Homes England has cast doubt on whether the Government can realistically meet their goal of 1.5 million homes, and so did the Housing Minister, in a Select Committee hearing last year. Council leaders, developers and even the Government’s own experts are warning that these targets are unachievable.

[Wendy Morton]

On that point, does my hon. Friend agree that one way of helping to deliver homes would be to ensure that those that have planning permission are built out first, thus saving the green belt and some of our suburban areas and rural areas, sooner rather than later? [Interruption.]

[Paul Holmes]

Labour Members shout from a sedentary position to ask why we never did it. This is one of the largest planning Bills to come before the House in a number of years, and nowhere have the Government mentioned that they would force developers to build houses that have already been given planning permission. We have a Government who have reduced housing targets in urban areas, where it is easier to build due to existing infrastructure, population density and the availability of brownfield sites.

Instead, Labour’s reforms to the NPPF and their proposals in this Bill have resulted in top-down targets that will silence local voices. The Government have chosen to prioritise building in rural areas and on the green belt rather than focusing where the demand for housing is greatest, in our cities and urban centres. By only allowing councillors to debate and discuss the proposals that the Deputy Prime Minister and the Government define as large development, local people’s voices within the planning system will be eroded, taking away the discretion that planning committees can use to resolve small applications that come down to very nuanced decisions.

The principle of environmental delivery plans is certainly welcome, and we know they have been looked on favourably by proponents of sustainable development. It is vital that nature recovery is incorporated into building plans. It is concerning, however, as the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) said, that Natural England will have its workload dramatically increased, amid uncertainty about whether it has the budget and authority and whether it can bear the burden of those additional responsibilities. Can the Minister outline any assessment his Department has done on the budgetary increases that would be required for Natural England to take on the additional responsibilities envisaged in the Bill?

Furthermore, and most concerning, the Government seek to overhaul the compulsory purchase process, allowing land to be acquired for projects deemed to be in the public interest, and will change the process to allow faster land acquisition. Farmers may be forced to sell the land for its current value, rather than its potential worth if developed, but farmers deserve a fair price if they choose to sell their land, rather than below market price. They are already being hammered over inheritance tax and the suspension of the sustainable farming incentive; the proposed changes to CPOs will introduce a further power imbalance that threatens to override their legitimate right to a fair deal.

The Countryside Alliance warns that

“giving councils more power to reduce the value of land is a step too far, especially in the context of such a challenging outlook for farmers and the inheritance tax fiasco. This is not about people blocking development, it’s about the state paying the market price for land. We need more houses and more economic development, but not at the cost of basic principles.”

Although it is true that tenant farmers will get an increase on any CPO purchases, landowning farmers who already face unsustainable pressure will once again be short-changed by this Government’s plans.

While the Government say that they want to deliver more homes, increase affordability, streamline the system and deliver the homes we need, nobody accepts that they can do it. They give with one hand, but have overwhelmingly taken away with the other, through destroying this country’s economy, the ability of developers and people to build the housing we need. As we have outlined, their plans, as with any rushed piece of work, threaten to overwhelm the system, in some cases threaten to erode the safeguards in place to encourage sustainable and vital development, and remove local voices from local people. I look forward to Labour MPs explaining to the Labour leaders of their councils why their Labour Deputy Prime Minister took away their local rights as councillors to represent their local communities.

We will always stand up against excessive Government centralisation, and in favour of local representatives who know their communities best. We have a duty to do so. We have a duty to defend farmers who, as stewards of the land, must have their land rights respected; to defend local democracy and the role of local councils, which disagree with their power being taken away; and to defend the people out there who want new housing, but want local choices for local people. It is clear that the Government cannot deliver on that challenge. We will amend and improve the Bill to ensure that it delivers for local councillors and local people; the Government simply have not done so.