Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Pippa Heylings Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Hinchliff]

I rise to speak in favour of the amendments in my name, particularly amendment 69, which has 53 supporters from across the House.

Every family stuck on a housing waiting list, and every child suffering the insecurity of temporary accommodation, represents a moral stain on our country. I welcome Ministers’ urgency in seeking to address those corrosive failures, which, for millions, underpin a lingering sense that our country is deeply broken. However, I fear that the Government have misdiagnosed the root cause of the housing crisis, which is fundamentally that private capital will never deliver the public good that we need.

The evidence is clear that processes that uphold democracy and nature are not the problem; profit maximisation is. The planning system consistently approves more homes than the private sector delivers, and when homes are built, they are too often unaffordable for those at the sharp end of the housing crisis. Last year, less than 2% of homes delivered through section 106 were for social rent. After 20 years of deregulation, hoping that just one more wave will finally make the market deliver is simply not credible. It certainly does not justify stripping away the few protections that we have left for our natural environment, especially when the Government’s own assessment could provide no concrete evidence that it would work.

We are already one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world, and we can spend what little remains of our natural inheritance only once. If the Government press ahead with their proposals, the national account will soon be empty. There is the kernel of a good idea in a nature restoration fund, but the weight of evidence against the way that it has been drafted is overwhelming: nature organisations, academics, ecologists and the Office for Environmental Protection have all raised serious concerns. I welcome the tone of earlier commitments from Government Front Benchers, but amendment 69 gives Ministers the opportunity to rescue something positive from the wreckage of this legislation by ensuring that environmental delivery plans serve their purpose without allowing developers to pay cash to destroy nature, and that conservation takes place before damage, so that endangered species are not pushed close to extinction before replacement habitats are established.

The amendment outlines that conservation must result in improvements to the specific feature harmed. That will protect irreplaceable habitats such as chalk streams. Our natural capital, which underpins all prosperity in this country, declined by a third from 1990 to 2014. This is a chance to reverse that trend. Given that Letchworth Garden City in my constituency sprang into life without a single mature tree being felled, we can build the homes that we desperately need to clear our housing waiting lists in harmony with nature.

To conclude, the primary value to which our politics has sought to appeal has for decades been self-serving ambition, but as the party of change and of the people, Labour has a duty to serve a higher virtue: hope. I am talking about hope for a future in which our nation no longer imagines housing as an ever-appreciating financial asset, and instead builds homes that provide the secure and healthy environment essential for our physical and mental wellbeing, and that allow everyone to put down the roots necessary to grow and fulfil their truest potential; hope for a future in which we create connected communities of friendship and co-operation, rather than having the grey and miserable utilitarianism of commuter dormitories; hope for a future in which we take every possible opportunity to restore the glories of British nature and can meaningfully say, for the first time in generations, that we have left the nation richer than we found it; in short, hope that we choose by design to surround every man, woman and child in these islands with constant proof that life is beautiful.

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

I declare my interest as co-chair of the all-party group on local nature recovery.

When the Government first introduced this Bill, they branded it a win-win. They said that we could build the homes and infrastructure that this country desperately needs and protect and restore nature. We have seen in my constituency—one of the fastest growing areas of the country, with a Liberal Democrat-run local planning authority—that it is indeed possible to demand from developers both ambitious house building and high environmental standards that restore nature. We Liberal Democrats believe that a healthy childhood for all children includes homes that are energy-efficient and warm, not cold and damp; access to green space for mental and physical health; and infrastructure, including public transport, GPs and schools.

When done well, nature is a partner to the healthy homes and green energy that our country needs. However, through this Bill, the Government risk taking a wrecking ball to good-quality development. Nature is not a blocker to development. We are pointing the figure at the wrong culprit, and this is cheap, false rhetoric. Nature is not to blame. The Government’s own watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection, has publicly warned that the Bill in its current form will be a regression from current environmental protections, rather than increasing the number of homes, helping nature and helping us to meet our binding climate and nature pledges. Instead it will remove vital safeguards and put protected sites and species at risk.

Over 30 leading environmental organisations, including the RSPB, the wildlife trusts and the National Trust, have raised the alarm about part 3 of the Bill, with its very worrying plan to move to a “cash to trash” model for the nature restoration fund. I know the Minister has rejected that characterisation, but in the Environmental Audit Committee we heard robust evidence from expert witnesses that we could call it a “pay some amount later for something, somewhere” fund.

[Gideon Amos]

Does my hon. Friend share my dismay that the Government are not receptive to amendments to part 3 that would restore the mitigation hierarchy and protection for irreplaceable species and ancient woodland?

[Pippa Heylings]

I completely concur. We appreciate the work done by my hon. Friend and others in the Bill Committee, and by tabling numerous amendments at this stage to help the Government improve the Bill.

Why do we need more stringent regulations and demands on developers, rather than less? Why do we need evidence and mitigations approved prior to development, rather than a “pay later for something, somewhere” nature restoration fund? It is because we have the evidence to show what happens without much-needed investment in enforcement capacity for local councils. On the Environmental Audit Committee, we heard the conclusions of the Lost Nature report: for nearly 6,000 homes across 42 developments, only half of the environmental pledges were kept. The others were missing in action—a staggering 83% of hedgehog highways, 100% of bug boxes and 75% of both bat and bird boxes. We need more. That is why I am speaking to the targeted amendments my hon. Friend has mentioned, to make sure we can have this win-win. His ew clause 1 would reinstate the mitigation hierarchy as a legal duty. Simply put, the duty is: first, avoid harm; then mitigate if that is not possible; and only compensate and offset as a last resort. This principle has underpinned environmental planning for decades and cannot be cast aside.

Amendments 6 to 10 and new clauses 26 and 29 aim to address the Office for Environmental Protection’s concerns and strengthen the overall improvement test for environmental delivery plans. I support new clause 21, which requires local plans to have due consideration to the local nature recovery strategies, which are currently silent in the planning system. Amendments 16 and 70 would give protections to England’s globally rare chalk streams—our rainforest and our groundwater. We have 85% of the world’s chalk streams, many of them in Lib Dem constituencies, including mine, yet they remain unprotected.

I hope the Government will consider amendments to the Bill, because we face a choice: pass this nature-wrecking Bill as it stands, or fix it by adopting amendments to protect chalk streams, restore wildlife and create a planning system that works with nature, not against it. I know what the Liberal Democrats will be voting for.

[Naushabah Khan]

I rise to speak as a member of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, and in support of new clause 50.

For too long, affordable housing has become a catch-all term that means anything but. Shared ownership and discounted market schemes are products that may work for some, but for many, they offer no real housing security. What those people need is not the option of getting a foot on the property ladder in the distant future, but a roof over their heads now. They need security, stability and homes that are truly affordable, and that means social rent. If we are serious about tackling the housing emergency, then clear, national targets for delivery of social rent homes are essential. That is why I support new clause 50, which would bring forward the accountability and direction that we need to get building and start delivering for those who have been let down for too long.

As housing charity Shelter identifies, building more social rent homes is the only lasting solution to the housing emergency. Those homes are genuinely affordable because their rent is linked to local income; there are secure tenancies; and any rent increases are more predictable. In my constituency—I know colleagues from across the House will recognise this from their inboxes—families are trapped in substandard housing or temporary accommodation for years on end. Many of us have, I fear, become desensitised to the stories of families with no kitchen to cook in, no quiet space for children to learn, and no peace in which to rest.

That is the daily reality for far too many families in the UK. This is a national scandal. Let us be honest: it did not appear overnight. For over a decade, the previous Government failed to build the homes that this country desperately needs. They dismantled council house building, slashed local authority budgets, and left the private rented sector unchecked. Those failures have left this Government with an inheritance of a hollowed-out system that responds to homelessness after the fact, instead of preventing it at root.

I welcome the fact that this Labour Government are changing this reality for families in my constituency through significant policy changes, and by allocating £800 million to the affordable homes programme, and I am proud that a significant proportion of those homes will be for social rent, but we need to go further. Publishing or updating planning guidance on how local and national decision makers can contribute to the delivery of social rented homes can make a significant difference. That would align planning, investment and delivery with a shared goal.

We know the scale of the challenge. As many have noted, we need to build 90,000 social rented homes each year, not just for the remainder of this Parliament, but for the next decade, to meet current demand and get on top of the deep backlog. We must equip councils and delivery partners with the resources, planning powers and clarity of mission that they need. New clause 50 supports that clarity, making sure that every local and regional planning decision is pulling in the same direction.

I agree with the Minister on the need for strategic planning, the potential that spatial development strategies have to unlock large-scale regional housing solutions, and the power of land value uplift to fund affordable homes. These are important tools, but they would be better supported by clear targets. Setting a national target for social rented homes is not about Whitehall dictating numbers from above; it is about saying that we are serious about tackling homelessness.

I echo the words of this Government: this country needs builders, not blockers. Central to that sentiment must be setting a clear social housing strategy, so that we know not just that we must build, but how much we must build, and hold ourselves accountable for delivering those homes.