Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Wendy Morton Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Paul Holmes]

The Conservative party has always believed in the rights of locally elected councillors and planning committees to make decisions for the people they serve; we have said that consistently through the passage of this Bill. The hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) has tabled new clause 1 to ensure that planning committees have their current powers reinstated under the Government’s proposals. The Minister is saying this afternoon, as he will say tomorrow, that he does not trust any planning committee or any Labour-controlled council to make decisions based on the wishes of the constituents in their local areas. We think that that is a disgrace.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that our constituents expect to have their voice heard on a local planning committee? Provided that councils are well-trained, the system that we have is working quite well.

[Chris Curtis (Milton Keynes North) (Lab)]

Oh, is it?

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[Wendy Morton]

To put it more simply, the sense of urban sprawl is about the green belt not just between specific villages but between communities. We see that between Streetly and Pheasey in my constituency on the edge of Birmingham. Does he agree that it would help to tackle the problem if the Government adopted a truly brownfield-first approach by developing the 1.2 million homes that it is estimated are available on brownfield sites?

[Blake Stephenson]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. Those green spaces on the edge of and between towns are at risk. It is not just the fields that are at risk but people’s access to green space, which is vital for mental health and wellbeing.

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[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

The current system is broken, absolutely, but I do not think that hard-pressed planning officers are the problem. I think developers are the problem, and that is the point that I am coming on to make.

Last year, less than 2% of new homes were social rents delivered through the planning system. Private developers prioritise maximum profit with high-end luxury builds, particularly in constituencies such as mine. At the current rate, we would need to build over 5 million homes to deliver just 90,000 social rent properties, yet there are over 1 million people on waiting lists. That is why I signed new clause 32 to introduce binding quotas for affordable and social rent homes. If we are serious, as I believe Labour is, about getting families out of temporary accommodation and off waiting lists, local authorities need the power and funding to lead a new generation of council house building.

We also cannot ignore the fact that the developer-led model creates conflict with nature, as under-resourced councils are forced to accept whatever sites developers propose, regardless of how suitable or unsuitable they are for sustainable development. There is no amount of killing badgers or red tape bonfires that will fix that. It is too simplistic to argue that this is a debate of builders versus blockers. The overwhelming majority of planning applications are approved, which is why we had more than a million planning permissions approved in the past decade that have yet to be built. Developers continue to drip feed developments into the system, prioritising properties that maximise profit and are far from affordable for local people.

It is time, therefore, to move away from the failed market dogma and, I believe, to return to Labour values. The post-war Labour Government built millions of homes supported by the planning system our party created, and it is time we did it again.

[Wendy Morton]

I rise to speak to new clause 84, in my name, and to add my support for new clause 51 on solar and battery energy storage systems, and new clause 39 on solar.

New clause 84 seeks to prohibit the development of battery energy storage systems on higher-quality agricultural land. In a debate on this topic in this Chamber just last week, we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) that there is 78 GW of battery capacity that is either operational, awaiting construction having received planning permission or awaiting consideration, which is equal to supplying 200 million homes—10 times the number of houses we actually have. This is ludicrous.

There are numerous questions over safety, fire risk, accessibility and proximity to homes and communities, yet these storage systems are replacing land that could be used for crops and grazing for animals with metal containers, eating into our national food security at a time that we should be increasing food security and strengthening our food chains. Farmland, as we all know in this place, is irreplaceable—when it is gone, it is gone. We are seeing far too many planning applications coming forward that would risk green-belt land being trashed, with the term “grey belt” used to create a grey area that planning inspectors will take advantage of. I hope the Government are listening to this point, and those made by others on solar, as well.

In the time I have, I want to support a number of other new clauses and amendments that I know matter to my constituents, such as new clause 79, on the duty to co-operate. It is not that we do not expect to have targets in constituencies such as mine; we just do not expect to do all the heavy lifting. We do not expect to have to pick up the can and let failing authorities such as Labour-led Birmingham off the hook. The council certainly cannot manage Birmingham’s bins and it cannot manage its housing, either; three years on, none of the properties in the Commonwealth village in Perry Barr has been let.

It cannot be right that housing targets in areas like Birmingham and London are being placed on authorities such as Walsall, where our targets are being hiked up— not least when evidence points to more people wanting to live in towns and centres. Surely what we should be doing is regenerating these areas and building on our brownfield. If we do it sensibly, it will protect the green belt, protect our environment and protect the green and open spaces that we all love and enjoy.

I will also speak in support of new clause 45, on intentional unauthorised development, something that really irks some of my constituents. They write to me and come to see me about developers or individuals who flagrantly breach or ignore planning regulation or permissions, creating misery for their neighbours. How can someone simply get away with doing that sort of thing without repercussions, when others abide by the rules and are left picking up the pieces?

I have already spoken of my support for new clause 43 on preventing the merging of villages. That is crucial to constituencies like mine, which is on the edge of Birmingham, and has communities that are at risk of being consumed into its urban sprawl. Finally, there is so much I could say on Natural England. I worry that the Government are giving more powers over planning to an unelected quango, while taking power away from local authorities and councillors.