Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Maclean of Redditch Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to my Amendments 95 and 98. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for her support for the protection of good agricultural land. Amendment 95 is a broader application of the principle that was debated and rejected by Government and Liberal Democrat Benches in this House last week. We on these Benches believe that food security is national security and, unlike for this Government, these are not empty words: we intend to put that into practice.

We remain concerned that the principle of protecting the best and most versatile land—grades 1, 2 and 3A—appears to be trampled at will, for not just solar farms under NSIP but other developments. We must do better. This land is responsible for supplying the lowest-cost, highest-quality food produced in our country and is far more productive than weaker grades of land. Building without due consideration on the land that we need to feed us is, frankly, short-sighted.

Amendment 98 asks the Government to report annually on how much of our land is being converted from agriculture to tarmac, steel, photovoltaic panels and concrete, and provides the basis for a more informed national debate on how we treat our productive land. I will not test the will of the House on these amendments. However, I would be most grateful to receive an assurance from the Minister that the Government take this issue as seriously as they should. This was not entirely clear from the response to the debate on solar farms and BMV last week.

I also support of the concept of Amendment 88, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis. Well-planned development needs to take into consideration access to green and blue open space, but also how this space can contribute to nature connectivity.

[Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 121 is a vital step towards bringing clarity and scrutiny to the Government’s grey-belt policy. This amendment asks the Secretary of State to publish a clear framework for grey-belt designation within six months of Royal Assent and to lay it before both Houses. Its purpose is straightforward: to ensure that this policy is defined, transparent and subject to oversight. This concept has received remarkably little scrutiny or discussion during the passage of the Bill.

The concept of the grey belt has shifted since it was introduced in the Labour Party’s manifesto. It was first presented as previously developed land and disused car parks—which is largely brownfield land already. Since then, it has expanded in ways that raise serious concerns. Our party is not opposed to using grey-belt land sensibly, but we share the concerns of the Lords Built Environment Committee, which described the rollout as “rushed and incoherent” and unlikely to have

“any significant or lasting impact”

on planning or housing delivery, suggesting that the concept might be “largely redundant”. The current definition includes land in the green belt comprising previously developed land and/or any other land that does not strongly contribute to green-belt purposes.

The Local Government Association and many councillors, including in my home town of Solihull and my former constituency, Redditch, warn that this vague language contributes little and could invite subjective judgments and threaten green-belt protection in places such as Solihull and Redditch, with no other surrounding towns. The entire green belt could be vulnerable. Small housebuilders have warned that it will not help them, especially given under-resourced planning departments.

The risks are clear. Inconsistent criteria and monitoring could lead to uneven treatment and uncertainty. There is no plan to measure progress or success. In short, this policy has shifted without sufficient clarity or scrutiny. My amendment offers Parliament the chance to correct that, and I commend it to the House.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 88, to which I have added my name. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, for all her work on this, and the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for meeting us to talk about this amendment.

Without this amendment putting green and blue spaces on a statutory basis, this will be a planning Bill for the privileged. We have heard evidence from the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, this afternoon as to why this might be. There is also further evidence discovered by Wildlife and Countryside Link, which conducted regression model analysis, using official ONS datasets, for first-time buyers by local authority area in 2023. It compared this with the ONS data on the number of adults in each authority who were first-time buyers. First-time buyers are the people who will need green and blue space the most; they will have young families. Wildlife and Countryside Link analysed and mapped the percentage rate for those first-time buyers with in-depth green-space data. It found a direct, statistically significant correlation between lack of green space and higher numbers of first-time buyers. In other words, the first-time buyers are going somewhere because it is cheap: it lacks green space, it lacks amenities, so of course, things are cheaper. That is exactly what this Bill should be resisting.

When we met, the Minister said that she did not like this amendment because it was too prescriptive. She is right that local development plans should decide what green and blue spaces there should be; I do not have a problem with that. However, if there is no statutory requirement for a network of easily accessible green spaces, there will be far fewer of those spaces. This amendment is absolutely in line with Defra’s stated aims, and it would contribute substantially to sustainable urban drainage delivery. It would not tie the hands of local or regional planning authorities; it just points them in the right direction and makes sure they head in that direction. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and his colleagues will bear in mind that swift bricks and other nature-friendly construction methods will not result in more swifts unless the network of green and blue spaces exists to provide food sources.