Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the two noble Baronesses who have just spoken, demonstrating the breadth of support for this set of amendments around the House. As the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, said, to paraphrase, this is a common-sense set of measures which are not big-P “political” at all—it just something that obviously needs to be done.

I am speaking to Amendments 70 and 81, to which I attached my name, and for my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who tabled Amendments 86, 120, 121A and 121B. Briefly, on the first two, we have to set the context. A week ago, the Committee on Climate Change told the Government that we have to be preparing for 2 degrees of warming by 2050. Even more critically perhaps, in the context of this Bill, the Government and the country have not yet adapted to the levels of warming that we already have.

As in so many other areas—not just flooding but heat and cold—we are building homes that immediately need to be retrofitted, or homes that are setting people up for months, if not years, of misery. If a home was flooded and we had the kind of measures proposed by Amendment 70, it would be possible to clean the home up and, potentially, for people to move back in quite quickly. Without those measures, there are issues around the cost of insurance and months or even years of misery before there is any way that the home is occupiable again. We should not be building homes in that condition, and where homes are being retrofitted it should be to prepare them for that.

Those are my views on Amendments 70 and 81. I spoke extensively in Committee on Amendment 81, so I shall just repeat: the flood plain is not beside the river; the flood plain is part of the river.

My noble friend’s amendments are about the other side of this issue. They do not deal with the flood-water rushing down the river, the surface water that is rushing off the hard surfaces that is so typical of many areas, or the impounded soils that reflect so much of our land management now. This is saying that we should catch that water and use it in the right kind of way. It is talking about having infrastructure systems that have sustainable harvesting—we talked a lot about water butts in Committee—in order to distribute fit-for-purpose water among residents. It makes no sense at all that we still use massive quantities of expensive—in both financial and energy terms—treated drinking water for purposes where we do not need anything like that quality.

These amendments are also about reducing costs. We have a cost of living crisis, so if we can use free water rather than water that we have to pay for, that would be a win-win all round. Similarly, Amendment 120 is about water efficiency and making sure that the design minimises the amount of water use. These are all practical things and it is hard to see any reason why anyone could argue that they should not be in the Bill.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my registered interests, particularly that I chair a company that advises people on sustainability, and water is central to that.

I want to encourage the Government to move on this subject. I hope that they will allow me to do so by pointing out that the previous Government still have to explain how they managed to get rid of the regulations that would have meant that, instead of building 1.5 million homes that are not fit for the future and that have to be retrofitted, we reduced the opportunities to make our building code insist that, when people sell a house, it is fit for the future. This is a wonderful opportunity for the present Government to show that they have changed that way of looking at things and I am very surprised that they have not done so on this central issue of water.

We know what will happen. There are not many things in life that are certain, but one is that we will have too little water at some times of the year and far too much water at other times of the year. Therefore, I wonder why the Government have not jumped up to say how good these amendments are and that this is exactly what we should have. I do not always agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, but I agree with her comment that this is obvious: this is what we should be doing and there should not be any argument about it. So why are we not doing it?

When I was chairman of the Climate Change Committee, one of the problems we faced was that the adaptation side did not have the same statutory role that the mitigation part had. There is no doubt that, historically, we have not adapted fast enough, so we need to adapt very much faster.

I say to the Minister: if we do not start putting right the new houses, when we have such a long history of old houses that will have to be done, all we will do is build a greater problem for ourselves and our children, and that is unacceptable. It is much more unacceptable for the Government to say that designers “may” use the best advice. The problem is that, if they do not use the best advice, people will sell houses to others who will have to pay the cost of retrofitting. The housebuilders are therefore making profits by taking the money and not building houses that are suitable. It is the duty of the Government to insist that the standards are such that, when you buy a house, you can rely—at least for some reasonable time—on it being proper and fit for the future.

I hope that the Minister will be extremely generous in her acceptance of these amendments and, if not, that she will promise to come back with amendments that will do what—as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said—everybody needs and knows needs to be done.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh, Lady Willis, Lady Bennett and Lady Jones, for resuming this all-important discussion we held in Committee. Indeed, many of the amendments aim to define whether the Bill meets the climate reality of what is happening today or continues to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Amendment 70 strengthens the requirement that planning decisions consider cumulative flood risk. Too many developments are still approved on already saturated land, leaving new residents vulnerable and the taxpayer to pick up the cost of recurring floods. As our colleague in the Commons, Gideon Amos, argued:

“Nobody should have to deal with that raw sewage coming into their home and garden”,—[Official Report, Commons, 12/3/25; col. 416WH.]


when flood-waters surge. However, this remains a lived experience for thousands today, because sustainable drainage rules have not been made mandatory. Amendment 70 ensures that flood plain development decisions properly account for these realities.

Amendment 81 would require local plans to align with catchment-wide flood mitigation strategies. That is long overdue. After all, flooding has no respect for, or understanding of, council boundaries, so planning policies must be equally joined up to match that. The amendment would prevent the patchwork approach that critics have warned has left entire communities at risk.

Amendment 86 focuses on sustainable drainage systems —SUDS—echoing the unfulfilled recommendations, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, of the Pitt Review from 2008; and on our own Benches there is a long-standing call to commence Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. These systems manage rainfall where it lands, reduce sewage overload and help alleviate combined sewer overflows, reducing the unacceptable discharge of sewage which has been witnessed so often in flood events.

Amendments 120 and 120A shift focus from drainage to water efficiency and the long-term supply. They would require the Secretary of State to issue national guidance promoting water reuse, rainwater harvesting, greywater systems and distributed storage at development scale. These are pragmatic, tried and tested approaches to reducing both flooding and water scarcity—two sides of the same crisis which increasingly confronts so many of our UK communities.

Taken together, all these amendments turn abstract sustainability pledges into enforceable planning duties, at a time when the Government’s own reviews have concluded that the current policy is simply not working. We on these Benches believe that these fixes are essential, not optional. Our planning system must no longer treat flooding as an afterthought but as a central test of responsible design. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to these very useful amendments.