I am definitely not feeling comradely right now.

We must get away from this polarisation. These amendments, jointly in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Ravensdale, are valuable and worth considering, particularly in the area of infra- structure. But they are complex, and they need calm and informed judgement and analysis before we go overboard for them. We will not stay calm, and we will not have orderly evidence-based judgement, if we get the sort of article that reports in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has been portraying it, in places—some of which he reflected this evening.

The ENGOs are not on an ego trip. They are not intrinsically against growth. The regulators are doing their best job with their resources against habitats regulations that were invented in order to stem this massive decline of biodiversity in this country, which threatens our existence. Every species extinction foreshadows our own. We have to get away from this belief that somehow everybody else in Europe implementing the habitats regulations is doing it with less purity, and is being far less up themselves— if noble Lords will pardon that Unparliamentary Language—than we are. The reality is that most places implementing the habitats directive are not trying to maintain and recover biodiversity in an area that is as densely populated and as much contested, in terms of land use, as this country is, particularly England. We have to bear that in mind: we are trying to cram an awful lot into a very small space of land, particularly in the south-east and around our coastal regions. So let us get off the polarisation argument.

The Telegraph piece is headed:

“Eco-zealots are crushing the economy”.

That does not foster good and sane debate. It says that

“the anti-growth environmental quangos are blocking developments on spurious grounds” and that Natural England has an “anti-growth” mindset. I do not believe any of these points. It may well be that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has been quoted incorrectly, but from what he said tonight I do not believe that. It would be very unfortunate if we fell into the trap of polarising growth against development; we are smart enough to do both, and there is real commitment across conservation interests to do that. So let us stop winding up this debate in an irresponsible way.

I was going to go on to many of the other reasons for delay in the planning system but, at this time of the night, I will not. I will simply say that, when you talk to developers who are not on their soapboxes about the barriers they face, you find that the barriers are not solely environmental; there are many others. It is an example of the poverty of the noble Lord’s case and the way he is making it—not necessarily its basic tenet—that he quotes the old, hackneyed example of the HS2 bat tunnel. The problem with the HS2 bat tunnel was the problem of HS2, not the problem of nature conservation. If, as we had recommended 20 years ago, HS2 was called MS2, Medium Speed 2, it would have been possible to have mightily reduced the cost of the whole project by taking 20 miles an hour off the top speed and allowing the route to wiggle around all the things that we have now spent a fortune compensating for.