Baroness Scott of Bybrook:

Moved by Baroness Scott of Bybrook

3: After “infrastructure” insert “, thereby supporting delivery of the Government’s target of building 1.5 million safe and decent homes in England by the end of the 2024 Parliament,”

My Lords, I first declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for bringing forward a purpose Clause which, as we have said, allows us to focus on the Government’s stated intent, specifically its overarching vision to enable housebuilding and support the development of critical infrastructure.

While we welcome the Amendment, we on these Benches believe it can and must be strengthened. The Government have committed to building 1.5 million new homes, but as things currently stand, that target is undeliverable. The Bill in its present form does little to change that fundamental reality; it does not move the dial in enhancing development across the country.

In 2019, the Conservative Party pledged to deliver 1 million additional homes over the course of that Parliament. By 2024, before the General Election, we delivered on that promise. If this legislation is truly intended to unlock housebuilding, then that ambition must be explicit in the purpose of this clause. Only by doing so can we measure the Bill’s effectiveness against the Government’s target and hold them to account, both in your Lordships’ House and in the other place. That is precisely why I have tabled an amendment to Amendment 2, to include the Government’s goal of delivering 1.5 million homes in the Bill.

In this House, we are united in the view that this country needs more homes. Housing unlocks opportunity, enables labour market mobility, allows young people to move forward with their lives and removes the key barrier to productivity. However, quantity must be matched by quality. New homes must be well designed and sensitive to local character, and I trust the Minister will agree with that point.

If the Bill is the Government’s legislative vehicle for delivering this, then that ambition must be stated clearly and unambiguously. We must support the Government’s stated aim, but the ambition must be backed by a credible plan, meaningful partnerships and, as we have heard, the active involvement of local communities.

This brings me to the principle of localism and community empowerment. We welcome the inclusion of the engagement under paragraph (d) of the purpose clause proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. As we have heard, localism matters, not only as a democratic principle but as a practical necessity. We must build the right homes in the right places while preserving our community cohesion.

That is why we brought forward the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, to improve the consenting process and strengthen local control, giving communities the power to shape their own development priorities. That Act made its purpose clear: local democracy matters. When people can see the shape and benefit of development, whether through affordable homes, infrastructure improvements or environmental safeguards, public engagement grows and delivery becomes more achievable.

Part 2 of that Act sought to empower communities to make local decisions for local people. That was our approach. We did not simply talk about localism; we legislated for it. That is why we support paragraph (d), which rightly promotes greater community acceptability. Part 1 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act was guided by a clear set of missions, ambitions to build and level up, which were explicitly stated in the chapter’s title. We acted on those missions. I ask the Minister: when was the last time we heard any mention of her Government’s missions? Do they have any? In our view, this epitomises the lack of cohesion in the Government’s approach. A purpose clause can help the Government focus on their plans by clearly articulating the Bill’s rationale and its ambitions, something that is essential if the legislation is to succeed. A purpose clause will help the Minister remain mission driven.

Success will be measured not just by how many homes are built but also by where they are built. On this side of the House, we are deeply concerned that the current model of strategic planning is being used to displace urban housing need into rural areas. This is just misguided and unfair, especially given the steep housing targets now being placed on rural authorities. We must protect the unique character of our historic villages and ensure the homes we need are built where the real demand lies. I urge the Minister to think again and reconsider the urban/rural balance of housing targets. We support mandatory targets, but they must be the right targets in the right places.

The Bill is not just about housing; it also quite rightly covers critical infrastructure, key to improving the supply side of our economy. When the current Chancellor took office, she made a political choice to cancel a number of infrastructure projects that would have strengthened this economy. Instead, she redirected funding towards public sector pay. We believe that this decision revealed her priorities and underlines the need for a clear, long-term vision in this country for infrastructure.

Finally, subsection (c) of the proposed new purpose clause seeks to ensure that the Bill supports nature recovery through more effective development and restoration. This is particularly relevant to Part 3 of the Bill, which has prompted widespread concern. A remarkably broad coalition, including the National Trust, the NFU, the RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts, the CLA and the CPRE, have voiced serious reservations. Even the potential beneficiaries of these reforms have expressed unease. Part 3 risks weakening vital environmental protections at a time when we should be strengthening them. Rather than addressing what is not working, it introduces new uncertainties and, potentially, new problems. The proposed nature recovery fund must not become a vehicle for administrative overheads, or a centralised pot disconnected from local needs. Yet, as drafted, there is no guarantee that the money will remain local, no clear commitment to green infrastructure and no adherence to the mitigation hierarchy—these are serious omissions.

Moreover, environmental delivery plans are capped at just 10 years. Many habitats and species cannot simply be moved or recreated in such a short timescale. We also risk treating irreplaceable natural capital as disposable. Even the Government’s own watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection, has been clear: these proposals would represent a regression in the protections established by the Environmental Act. It says that

“aiming to improve environmental outcomes overall, whilst laudable, is not the same as maintaining in law high levels of protection for specific habitats and species”.

That is the crux of the matter: laudable intentions are just not enough. Part 3 stands in direct contradiction to subsection (c) of the proposed new purpose clause. Additionally, we on these Benches are not clear what problem Part 3 is trying to fix. Instead, it will implement more procedures, structures and processes, without pinpointing the issues it seeks to solve.

In Committee, we will we raise several vital issues to protect our environment, to unlock housebuilding and to enhance infrastructure. I look forward to hearing the contributions of noble Lords as we work our way through the Bill and consider ways to improve it. I beg to move.

My Lords, I am delighted that we have reached Committee, and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on having tabled the first Amendment for debate. I echo many of her comments and those of my noble friend Lady Scott. I greatly enjoyed the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt; it is great to see him in his new position. We very much enjoyed working with him when he was on the front bench, and we look forward to working with him in his new place.

My concern is not that I do not want to see the critical infrastructure and housing that we need—particularly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, in rural areas. In fact, I would propose to add a little “subsection (e)” to her existing Amendment 1, to protect the countryside from overdevelopment, as well as to protect and promote food security; those issues should be at the heart of the Bill.

I was delighted to hear on “Farming Today” this morning—I obviously had an early start—the CPRE mention the protection it would like to see for affordable homes. It mentioned in its briefing that the current definition of affordable homes is not accurate and should be revisited. Can the Minister—with whom I look forward to collaborating through the passage of the Bill—say whether the Government are minded to do that? The plea from the CPRE—which I believe is appropriate to Amendment 1, and particularly to a hypothetical “subsection (e)”, which I may bring forward on Report if the amendment is brought back—is that, to protect the countryside, it would like a commitment from the Government to use brownfield land first. I wonder whether the Minister would agree to that. In the CPRE’s view:

“England has space for 1.2 million homes on previously developed land”.

The benefit of building in this type of area is:

“These homes would: be close to jobs, schools, and transport connections; regenerate town centres and urban communities; protect green spaces and farmland from development”.

My concern is that, without an amendment such as a hypothetical little “subsection (e)” to protect the countryside and food security, we risk trampling over the countryside and greenfield in a mad dash to build houses at pace.

The CPRE also says, quite rightly, that there is a role for planning. As a one-time Member of the other place, if there were a development in my Constituency that looked as though it was going to be wildly unpopular with a village or rural community, I would always urge the developers to meet at the earliest opportunity with parish councils before the development got into the public domain. I believe that there should be—this view is also shared by the CPRE—a clear role for local planning committees in the context of the Bill and that the role of parish councils should be cherished and strengthened. Without that, we would remove grass-roots democracy.

I very much enjoyed the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on the environmental recovery programme, which is often at some distance from the damage being done. If Part 3 is to remain, I hope that it will cover the issues that were addressed successfully in the pilot project in rural North Yorkshire—the Slowing the Flow at Pickering flood scheme—where we have effectively protected the development downstream by having not a major reservoir but a small reservoir. The construction of bunds, alongside other projects such as chopping down trees and growing trees in appropriate places, has allowed us to slow the flow. It is that type of imaginative nature solution—working with nature by, for example, planting trees in appropriate places—that can achieve flood resilience and flood defences, while also not contributing to flooding going forward. I hope that the Government might be mindful of protecting the countryside and farmland for the food security that is urgently needed, while also strengthening grass-roots democracy in the way I have suggested.

My Lords, I am sympathetic to these amendments, but I am also very sympathetic to what the Government are trying to achieve in getting things built.

My colleagues and I have been at the other end of this telescope in communities trying to build things and get things done. We are now at year 41 and probably nearly a thousand projects in—some have been very small; others, such as the Olympics, became quite big. You get a perspective from practice on all that, which might be helpful to this discussion. Many years ago, we came across the challenge of what we call the two Ds: democracy and delivery. What I discovered many years ago with an East End group of people, on a failing group of housing estates where everything was failing constantly, was that local people were fed up to the back teeth with endless chatter and endless promises by councillors, when nothing seemed to happen. We only really became credible in Bromley-by-Bow, and trust began to emerge, when we delivered our first nursery with local parents and their children, which made a difference to their lives, and began to take over a derelict park where people were injecting every day in a completely dysfunctional situation.

It might be just worth me sharing the reasons why we made certain long-term choices. When I arrived in Tower Hamlets in the early 1980s, it was profoundly dysfunctional. The schools did not succeed, and the roads did not get swept. Some 97% of everything was run by the state, and it was a terrible mess. I was a local clergyman arriving in a rundown church; 12 old people sat where they had always sat in a 200-seater church, and it looked as though the dead had been carried out and no one had noticed. I had £400 in the bank. The little problem for me was to ask myself: what on earth can I do about this? The answer was: I do not have the faintest idea. As a Yorkshireman, my initial instinct was to do a runner; it is all too much for me. Phillip, the Jewish headteacher across the road at the primary school, was retiring early because it had become too much for him, so I thought, “This is me in a few years’ time, falling off my trolley”—I was 29 then.

We were grappling with these problems. Our first engagement in trying to do something about it was with the Liberals—they were not Liberal Democrats then. Someone called Peter Hughes was the leader of the council at that point, who had created nine neighbourhoods. Peter was a very good guy. We spent time working together with his officers on how we might take control of the derelict park behind our church buildings and manage it. We spent six months putting that model together, and we were just about there when there was a local election. The Liberal Democrats lost the election and the Labour Party won the election. Because the neighbourhoods had been a Liberal idea, the Labour Party decided to remove that structure and create seven committees. This was our first experience of trying to get anything done, with all the churn, with the public sector and its processes and the state. No one is to blame.

One of the things that we became involved in trying to build in the early days was a set of nurseries that began in Bromley-by-Bow. We ended up running four, growing a whole range of relationships with families, who then began trust us. They were very vulnerable families involved in welfare issues, health issues and all the rest of it. Yet there came a point, at year 10, when Tower Hamlets Council, then in that form, decided that it was going to pull all the nursery care in-house—I think to protect pensions, local authority officers and a whole range of stuff. All those relationships that we had spent many years building and all the connections made with health and so on began to be destroyed. Even today, that is having implications.

In the 1990s, through the common purpose programme, we started to work with the business community—originally with the manager of the Tesco, across the road. One reason for that is that we found them to be honest, reliable and consistent, and not subject to this kind of churn. We began to develop what has become known as the social enterprise movement and to put a business logic behind this work. When it came to involving residents, we began to realise that it is very easy to sit on a representative committee and say you represent the community and then blame the council, the councillors and everyone else—anyone can do that. We began to ask whether they were going to work with us on building a housing company to take over some of the housing in Poplar and build a proper social business model that would start to connect housing, education, health and place-making. It is through doing stuff that you learn, rather than through complaining and chattering about stuff. We started to build Poplar HARCA.

Some 28 years later, that company today owns 10,000 properties and 34% of the land in Poplar, and has brought in hundreds of millions of pounds in investment. At the moment, it has an investment programme of about £2 billion in play, where local residents have become seriously involved in issues of waste management—how you put it underground and how you remove the dustbins and all the rats—the size of balconies, bankers, money and all the rest of it. There is a great opportunity in the Bill and in what the Government are trying to achieve to start to rethink some of this stuff that is not working.

To be fair, I have a lot of time for the Liberal Democrats, and I have worked with all parties. I notice the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who once very helpfully helped me, is here. When we built the first integrated working health centre of its kind in the country, one of his challenges was to engage with a little local difficulty. As Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, he took hold of the problem and helped us solve it. Not every Minister did that over the years, but he did.

I share the thought that this is a very challenging matter for the Government. The issues are complicated. It is an opportunity for innovation, but I do not see enough talk about innovation in this legislation. I encourage the Government to persist with delivery issues, because they have been democratically elected and have a responsibility to build some of these homes.

Yes, we need to work together on these issues, but we now live in an entrepreneurial age. We built 97 businesses with local people on East End housing estates, and we found that our children and our residents want to do stuff. They do not just want to become involved in a committee, with a black person and a woman—very condescending stuff—to sit round a table talking about things they have never done. They might want to become involved in the very delivery of the things themselves. There is great opportunity for that through this Bill. It opens a conversation about what community engagement is in the modern world and how local residents can become participants rather than just talkers and spectators, ticking boxes of one representative group or another. That is the space we are in. I certainly am willing to work with this or any Government in that space, because there is a desperate need for innovation in place-making.

I have not had an opportunity to sit down with the Minister. One of the things that worries me at the moment is that I can hear Wes Streeting, quite rightly, wanting to move large parts of the health service out of hospitals and into communities and get upstream in the prevention agenda. We have been leading that agenda for 30-odd years. We have 55,000 patients nowadays and we know quite a bit about it. That is the right direction of travel; they are in the right space. But it is one thing to want it and another thing to do it. That aspiration in the health service is not connected with this conversation we are having. I am trying to have a conversation with the Minister about this—we all need to have this conversation. There is a real opportunity to join the dots here, but can we please have the conversation?

My Lords, I declare my interest as a practising Silk in planning and environmental law, with a range of clients affected by planning regulation in various ways. I am a non-executive director of SAV Group, a property developer, and of Crossman Special Projects, a land promoter. I am the author of the independent review into legal challenges against NSIPs, which I will speak more on later in these proceedings.

I like purpose clauses in legislation. They are helpful because, in time, the courts will have to interpret the provisions of what will become the Act in due course, and if we do not spell out what the purpose is then the courts will have to define that. Surely it is far better to have a degree of parliamentary control in specifying what the purposes are. If that is to be done—it is not essential, but it is certainly nice to have—I certainly cannot improve on the Amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, as proposed to be amended by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and my noble friend Lady Scott.

I have a degree of nervousness, however, about the Bill having its own purpose without there being an overall statutory purpose of planning, as is advocated by the Royal Town Planning Institute and proposed in Amendment 132 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I do not agree with all the wording of that, but that is not the point for today’s purposes.

The Bill, once enacted, will be part of the wider framework of planning Acts, of which there are many. If it has its own stated purpose but the purpose of planning is not stated, there is a risk of a potential mismatch. That could be remedied by having an overall purpose of planning, which would have a number of advantages. For example, in the context of the increased role of planning officers, they would have that guiding beacon, which may avoid undue pressure being placed on planning officers by elected members—something that does happen, and there is a risk that it may happen to a greater extent if some of the other provisions of the Bill find their way into law. I would advocate consideration of the RTPI proposal, as outlined in Amendment 132.

I emphatically agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the need for proportionality. We have to put an end to the days of environmental statements being delivered by vans. No one will read them apart from the people who paid huge fees to produce them and review them—I declare a kind of interest in that respect too, of course. The EIA process is largely intended to help the public understand the environmental effects—it is consultation and taking into account the fruits of the consultation. No member of the public is going to read a lorry full of documents; it is simply not going to happen. Proportionality would be hugely helpful in that respect. There are recent instances of DCO examining inspectors asking 2,000-plus questions. I am sure that was with the best of intentions, but if we aim for perfection, we will not achieve anything.

My Lords, from the noble Lord’s experience, does he think it possible to legislate for regulators to use their common sense?

I tried with my proportionality Clause, which we will come to later in the proceedings. That is the best I can do so far; I am toying with tweaking it so that if it were to find its way on to the statute book, the Secretary of State would have the ability to publish statutory guidance on how to give effect to it. But, to echo what the noble Lord said before, if proportionality was spelled out in neon lights in legislation, it would send a message to everybody—consultees, consultants, applicants, decision-makers, the courts and the public—that less can be more. To my mind, that is a fundamental way of furthering the objectives of the Bill.

My Lords, I declare my interest as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis.

I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, have set out around the purposes of the Bill, and in particular what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said about putting growth front and centre.

It is important to set out a bit of broader context here, because this goes all the way back to 2008. In the decades before 2008, we had that consistent 2.3% labour productivity growth over many years, but since then, that productivity growth has fallen off a cliff, with only around 0.5% per annum growth since then. That then feeds through into flat real wages. Again, there was a 2% growth in real wages for decades, but they have been flat since 2008, which has led to all those problems with debt, tax take, the NHS, and even the political problems—the frustrations of those who have been left behind.

Of course, growth is a complex picture, as are the reasons behind that slowdown in growth, but our inability to build enough productive infrastructure to invest in that is very high up on that list, whether that is new infrastructure to bring down the price of electricity; new transport infrastructure, with all the agglomeration benefits that come with that; or new digital infrastructure.

We can contrast what is going on elsewhere in the world—to expand on what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said—with electricity. China has gone from 6,000 to 10,000 terawatt hours of electricity generation in the past 10 years, whereas our electricity generation has been flat or even declining slightly, at only around 300 terawatt hours. That of course has many other implications: the cost of our electricity, which is around four times that of the United States; the knock-on effects of that to inward investment; and circling back to growth as well. Even if we look at the Government’s targets, such as the 2030 target for clean electricity generation, the amount of electricity infrastructure that we need to build to hit that target is far below what we need to hit to get to 2030, and of course that will have effects on net zero and on energy security as well.

The planning system is at the heart of this, with the key issues of judicial review and environmental regulation, which are being addressed to some extent in the Bill. But, circling back to growth, that needs to be front and centre. It is vital that the Bill delivers for critical infrastructure as well as houses, so that purpose Clause which sets that out front and centre in the Bill is vital, with all the benefits it will bring for net zero, the environment, and energy security, and resolving those broader issues of net debt, government spending and quality of life.

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 1 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and I thank her for explaining the basis of her approach so clearly. I was not able to speak at Second Reading but I have an interest in planning, going back to the 1980s, both in government and in business, and one of my most rewarding experiences was as chair of the Built Environment Committee before I joined the front bench.

I am not sure it is strictly relevant, but I am the joint owner with my brother and sister of a cottage and a couple of fields in agricultural use in an AONB in Wiltshire, this is declared in the register.

It is always good to start with a debate on the purpose of a Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, was saying, although, unlike my noble friend Lord Banner, I have some doubts about adding such a Clause to a Bill. That is because it is so very difficult to get it right in an ever-changing world, and because such clauses tend to lead to more, not less, legal argy-bargy. However, I agree with my noble friend Lord Banner that environmental impact assessments could be simplified—I was also present at their birth, I am embarrassed to say.

If we are to have such a purpose clause, it needs to include an explicit reference to the importance of growth and, above all, to achieving a reduction in the delays in the planning system and in the construction of housing and infrastructure. It seems that year after year, these delays have got worse, not better, under all political parties. Speeding up the system would provide a one-off growth spurt, which nearly all of us across the House believe is urgently needed.

In trying to achieve this, I have a question for the Minister. Can she share with the Committee the things in the Bill that she believes will hurry things up, such as the reduction of the involvement of planning committees in less contentious schemes, less judicial review—we hope—fewer statutory consultees, investment in planning expertise and the ability of councils to fix planning fees at a level that helps them to provide a more efficient service? Can she also set out those that, although she believes them to be needed, will slow things down, especially in achieving our housing, infrastructure and energy objectives? That might include the new spatial development strategies, new arguments over CPOs and the elaborate processes on the environmental delivery plan that were outlined by my noble friend Lady Scott.

What is the net impact on speed, given the Government’s manifesto commitment to cut red tape? I have a real concern that the need for speed and streamlining will be outgunned by other objectives, including amendments favoured by Members of this House. Growth, and all that it enables a Government to do, will be the loser.

My Lords, I will speak briefly, mainly to declare my registered interests before we get to the meat of Committee. I am a director and beneficial owner of Porter and Verrells, which builds one-off bespoke homes, among other functions. I am a non-executive director of Elixr.Earth, which builds through digital twinning and finance, place-shaping at scale. I am also a non-executive director of Rentplus Homes and a strategic adviser to Inspired Solutions, both of which deliver affordable housing without any recourse to public funds.

My noble friend Lord Fuller would not forgive me if I did not mention that all the worthy things that have been discussed are not functions of the Bill. They are consequential on the Bill being pushed through. The function of the Bill is to regulate between private property ownership and perceived public good or public harm.

My Lords, I am delighted to be in Committee. I agree with the impact of these clauses in consideration of future judicial decisions. It matters because there has been a trend in aspects of case law that then make other aspects of complying with the law rather complicated, leading to some of the adjustments that the Government are seeking to secure. When we talk about judicial review and what the Government are intending, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has tabled some rather drastic amendments. I am not surprised. Mr Robbie Owen gave evidence in the other House that my noble friend Lord Banner’s review did not go far enough. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe hit the nail on the head. What is going to change?

The Amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, is right. At the moment nothing in the Bill ties everything together to make sure that we get more homes built and improve the natural environment. We have to make sure that happens.

In her closing speech at Second Reading, the Minister said that councils have a lot of powers. I would be interested to understand what amendments may come in at this stage to achieve the objectives that the Government say the Bill is trying to achieve. Why are we not seeing certain powers being granted to the Government to speed up housing—not just planning permission but completion? The Town and Country Planning Act allows councils to issue completion notices. As the Whip in the Commons on the Infrastructure Act 2015, I had to deal with four Ministers, so good luck to the Whips here on the front bench in co-ordinating all that. The Government took powers there for when councils were being slow. It was not necessarily call-in, but if they were not keeping to timetables, the decisions could be made by Ministers. I do not think that happened very often under the previous Conservative Administration, but here we seem to be going with a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Why are Ministers not using the powers they already have to achieve what they want this to do and instead putting this legislation in place? That is why I welcome the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. It gives us an opportunity to ask, “What is this Bill going to do? Will it achieve the aims of what is there?”

I make a plea through the Minister for Bill managers to update the parliamentary website with all the different things that they said that they would write on. The Minister in the other place promised on 29 April to write about one of the clauses that we are debating today, but Parliament is still waiting. To my knowledge, no letter has been issued. It is certainly not on the Bill website, and it certainly has not been deposited in the House. That is a further plea about process.

The letter went out yesterday on some of the issues that were raised at the drop-in. The noble Baroness may have missed that in her inbox, but it did go out yesterday.

I appreciate that, and I have not seen it in my inbox, but I am referring to Minister Pennycook making a pledge to write in Committee in the Commons. I am not aware that has ever been issued. It is certainly not available to Members of this House. It would be great, as a general approach, if we could try to make sure that is there.

Overall, this Bill needs to be massively strengthened to make sure—to quote Ronseal—that it “does exactly what it says on the tin”, that we will get the outcome that my noble friend Lady Scott on the front bench has put forward in Amendment 3 and that we will get on with making sure more homes are delivered for the people of this country, as well as other aspects of infrastructure that I recognise this country desperately needs.

My Lords, we need to move to consider the Statement, as the Minister delivering it must attend Grand Committee for a debate which will commence before this group finishes. While unusual, I therefore beg to move that the debate on this Amendment do adjourn, and we will return to it after the Statement.

House resumed.