English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, this is the latest legislation in a long line of tinkering that has made our sub-national governance structures more fragmented, complicated, opaque and financially unsustainable. That the opening clauses enumerate 13 types of so-called strategic authority proves that point unambiguously. Such complexity has sown confusion among councils, voters and governments, preferring the wants of the administrative state over the people and taking power further away from residents and business to the dead hand of Marsham Street.

Over 20 years as a councillor, I have seen a mania from officials who live in the London borough bubble to tidy up things outside the M25 for their own bureaucratic convenience. This is just another attempt to lard on half-baked new structures in a half-done settlement that is already unwinding and unravelling before the legislation is even passed. For example, the Budget announced that mayors could raise a new tourism tax, and the Minister lauded that in her opening remarks. Surrey was promised a mayor to do so, but now that has been taken away in the same breath as the cancellation of the mayoral elections. The Bill asks mayors to write growth plans in pursuance of the urgency of driving economic growth. I thought this Government were all about growth and that the mayors were the key to unlocking it—it is clearly not that urgent, given that those mayors have been delayed for two years.

I have heard it all before: let us get rid of the districts and the 86 things that residents value the most, so that it can all be lost in a system where 70% of the money is spent on adult and children’s services, but somehow it will all be all right. It is nonsense. If we were really interested in community empowerment, the Government would sort out a system in which three-quarters of local government expenditure is spent on the 5% of the residents who need social care and those with special educational needs and disabilities. On this, the Bill is silent—another can kicked down the road.

Nowhere in the Bill do the Government set out what local government is for. There are lots of administrative functions listed, but none viewed through the lens that, if it is not foreign policy or defence, it is capable of being done locally. It is not hard to articulate a purpose. Local government exists to raise a family, grow a business, invest in local infrastructure and protect the local environment. On this, the Bill is silent. Instead, we get 380 pages of schedules and impenetrable processes so complex and convoluted that they come round to meet themselves in the opposite direction without working out whether they benefit either the resident or the firm.

As if to prove that point, whole parts of the Bill contain duplicative provisions for mayoral and non-mayoral authorities, with extra discriminations between London and everywhere else in a metropolitan apartheid that is all about shoring up Labour’s electoral heartland at the expense of everyone else. There are more councillors within the M25 than in all the county councils of England. Some 3,108 electors get to choose a councillor in London but in the shire counties it is typically more than 10,000. That is a cynical dilution of democracy.

Schedule 26 is all about reorganisation everywhere apart from London and the mets in Birmingham and Manchester—funny, that. It is nothing less than a gerrymander to save Labour’s councillors in the city while pursuing Labour’s war on the countryside by other means.

The Bill’s title is a confidence trick that promises more structures, not fewer. There will be mayors able to raise unlimited taxes for things they have no control over, new combined authorities with dodgy decision-making provisions, and confusion between tiers. Even smaller-scale powers such as taxi licensing will be transferred up to strategic authorities without the systems, staff or experience to execute them. Proud city councils will be disbanded and relegated to parish council status with unconstrained council tax raising powers.

There will be a vandalisation of our historic county boroughs and cathedral cities, which will lose their identity and civic pride, including their lord mayors, sheriffs and lieutenants. County councils with their pension funds, which the Chancellor wants to control, will be split up. There will be destroying of the districts, which do the things that people value most, with net budgets of only around £10 million to £12 million but which scoop up the most vulnerable people Labour tells us they are most concerned about.

Worse, we now get a new war on the motorist, with new civil enforcement powers for traffic contraventions. This is not a Bill about empowerment; it is about disempowerment and centralisation. It is a disembowelment of local accountability, because part of community empowerment is all about helping people to stand for election, but the Bill actually makes it harder for single mums or community-minded businessmen to stand, with larger councils further away from people and relying more and more on the rich and retired motorist. That is the effect of Labour’s vision for devolution and empowerment: more layers taking powers further away from people while creating a new professionalised councillor class.

I have heard it said that this will save money, but the people who called for this in 2020 now say it will not save a bean. Look at Somerset, bankrupted by an LGR process that is now to be visited elsewhere, and pension strain costs of at least £1 billion, which we know will have to be factored in but have so far not been calculated, to be borne by the local ratepayer. As for the parishes, Salisbury council, for example, was converted from a city to a district, and council tax for a £383 band D is up 44% in four years—a stealth tax if ever there was one.

Fly-tipped right at the end of the Bill are some provisions on investment-sapping commercial rent reviews, as if that improves devolution or community empowerment. It is well-meaning but counterproductive. Let us pin the tail on the donkey: everyone affected will pay more for less. It is all about top down, not bottom up. We should send the Bill back under the Trade Descriptions Act: it is about neither devolution nor community empowerment.

Local Elections

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I agree with my noble friend, and I am slightly puzzled about the giggling from the other side of the Chamber, because this is an important lever in devolution for delivering growth and prosperity for our communities. We want to bring local transport back into public control to make people’s daily commutes easier, tailor local skills and training to employers’ needs so that people can get good jobs, and drive the regeneration of our local areas so that people feel proud of the places they live in. In order to do that important work, we need established local unitary authorities as the component parts of a strategic authority. That is why the decision has been taken to get those authorities set up properly. Funding will be available to them to start the work, and then the mayors will be elected in 2028.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to a pattern of unitary government by the next election in 2029. If these mayoral elections are to be delayed until 2028, what is the pattern for the rest of the unitisation in the remainder of this Parliament? What steps will be taken to make sure that equality of electoral representation, which in the shires is about 9,000 electors per councillor, is equated in London, Birmingham, Manchester and the mets, where it is currently 3,000?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, the programme of local government reorganisation outside of the priority programme is proceeding at pace. We have received proposals from all the areas that were invited to put in their proposals by 28 November. We are now out for consultation, which has already started, and we will make announcements on that by March next year. The timetable for that further devolution and local government reorganisation will be announced, and the timetables will come forward then. I pay tribute to all my former colleagues in local government, who have worked together in a fantastic way to pull together these proposals. Some of them have told me that it has been a positive experience, which is good to hear. It is good to see them working together in such a collaborative way.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will also speak to my Amendment 231A. I address Amendment 208 individually, rather than as a group as in Committee, because the facts have changed following the CG Fry Supreme Court judgment. This creates an opportunity to accelerate home building, which the Bill currently threatens to eliminate unnecessarily. I will speak to the application of the habitats regulations to Ramsar sites from the Back Benches, and leave the policy area of housebuilding to my Front-Bench colleagues, as it is their speciality. My amendments would remove Clause 90 and Schedule 6 from the Bill, preventing the legal imposition of the habitats regulations on Ramsar sites. Before I go on, I refer the House to my register of interests as an owner of development land, which, as far as I know, is not impacted by nutrient neutrality or Ramsar.

We in government chose to apply the habitats regulations to Ramsar sites through policy as a well-intentioned move to recognise the special international status of these wetland sites. I do not see evidence that our largest neighbours, such as France and Germany, have chosen to do the same. Since then, we have all watched in horror as Natural England’s advice on nutrient neutrality within the habitats regulations has led to as many as 160,000 new homes being blocked. We know that 18,000 of these are through the application of the habitats regulations to the Ramsar site on the Somerset Levels. I and my noble friends have asked the Government several times: how many more homes than this 18,000 are currently blocked by the unnecessary application of the habitats regulations to Ramsar sites? I hope that we can receive that answer today.

The CG Fry judgment, that simply adopting this as policy does not carry legal weight, was right. The habitats regulations derived from EU law and were designed to apply to sites with protection under EU law and no further. Natural England has been able to advise for years that specific land should have SPA or SAC designation and be brought under the habitats regulations. The fact that many Ramsar sites have only partial or no protection as European sites is because, so far, Natural England has judged that they do not need it. Ramsar sites already have protection under paragraph 194 of the National Planning Policy Framework. If, after the CG Fry judgment, Natural England were to advise that more European designations were necessary on the Ramsar sites and the Government accepted that, the habitat regulations would apply at that point. Should my amendment be passed, I am sure that Natural England will want to evaluate that point, and I would urge it to be highly scientific and evidence-based in that process, because the eyes of those needing houses will be on them.

The Natural England advice in the CG Fry case relating to the Ramsar site was not even that development would add to the level of phosphates in the Somerset Levels but that it would slow the rate of improvement in phosphate levels. Natural England had no objection based on the SPA designation for the Somerset Levels. This appears to be a pretty tenuous argument.

I urge the Government to accept my amendments, not to blindly block new housebuilding, and allow the habitats regulations to perform more closely to their original intention. Clause 90 and Schedule 6 unnecessarily and voluntarily gold-plate the application of the habitats regulations to Ramsar sites, for which they were not intended, to the detriment of the broader interests of our country. Without my amendments, this planning Bill, designed to accelerate housebuilding and growth, will actually block housebuilding. I beg to move.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I have heard time and again during the passage of this Bill from the Government Front Bench that this is a Bill to streamline the obstacles for anybody who wants to get anything done in this country. That is what Amendment 208 does, and I support it entirely.

Just under two weeks ago in the Supreme Court, as my noble friend Lord Roborough mentioned, four years of litigation concluded in the Fry case. The case revolved around the protections of Ramsar sites. In essence, the court was asked to judge whether Ramsar sites were subject to the same onerous requirements as sites protected by the EU habitats directive, including the potential for developments to be blocked at the stage of discharging planning conditions, many years after they have obtained that planning permission.

For over 50 years—since 1971, when the Ramsar treaty relating to over 2,500 wetlands in 172 nations was signed in the town of Ramsar in modern day Iran—it has never been the case that EU habitats directives apply to these important places. For that period, over the entire world, Ramsar sites have been protected without any reference to the EU, EU regulations or any of the other state paraphernalia that flows from Brussels. Why would they be? There are 23 such sites in Brazil, six in Cameroon, one in Mongolia, three in Equatorial Guinea and 39 in Japan. The EU is irrelevant to these places.

Natural England, as the Government’s statutory adviser, quite wrongly asserted that EU habitats regulations were relevant when they are not. Do not take my word for it: take the word of the Supreme Court. It concluded that the regulator had no business in making the equivalence between Ramsar and the other nature sites covered by the habitats directive. The Supreme Court held that Ramsar sites were not subject to this level of protection as they fell outside the habitats directive. Twelve days ago, a regulatory burden was lifted. Inexplicably, the Government now seek to undo that pro-growth judgment by bringing the Ramsar sites back within the habitats regulations, even though they fall outside the regulations’ parent directive.

We need a moment to see what has happened here. The justices concluded that Natural England had overreached itself in its advice to government, that it could not interpret the legislation accurately, that it misdirected itself and, crucially, misadvised the entire development industry as to the truth. Natural England’s dossier had the effect of holding up tens of thousands of homes. The evidence before the court in the Fry case was that 18,000 homes had been held up in Somerset alone, many already with planning permission, owing to Natural England’s misplaced concerns.

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As a Member of Parliament, I was responsible for Cambourne, which had no homes when I started out as an MP but now has, I think—I shall be there on Sunday—approaching 6,000 homes, and for the establishment of Northstowe, which was meant to have 6,000 homes by 2016. In fact, it had none, but it is now having homes built. Both tell us a great deal about the relative importance of early infrastructure and early community engagement. A process by which Parliament is thoroughly consulted about the new towns programme at an early stage, and in detail when the statutory instruments to designate a new town have been drafted, would substantially assist the process of reassuring the communities that will be most affected.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 238. I welcome the broad thrust of empowering and reinvigorating the development corporations contemplated by the Bill. In fact, I think it is the best part of the Bill.

Clause 96 seeks the achievement of sustainable development and the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. However, there will be no sustainable development without sustainable financing of the proposals that the development corporations bring forward. Since Committee, the New Towns Taskforce has published its report, and only this afternoon at Question Time the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, gave warm words to the principle of private investment in local infrastructure, perhaps by development corporations.

The magnitude of the task ahead of us is nothing short of generational. The state alone will not be able to build these new settlements; neither will councils, nor, as noble Lords heard in the previous group, will the mayors—not quickly, anyway. Only by harnessing the power of the financial markets and other private sector actors at home and abroad, including perhaps private households, will the promise of building these places become a reality. My amendment, supported by my noble friends on the Front Bench, recognises this simple truth. Some 50 years since Milton Keynes and 80 years since Stevenage were designated under the first new towns Act, it is time to bring the development corporations up to date.

I approach this subject in the knowledge that local authorities may be reorganised, that mayors may be created, and that the day-to-day financial pressures they both face have never been greater. In a former time, the development corporations would hold out their hand, perhaps to central government or to local councils, for funding. Of course, that route may be still open in some parts, but we know that the PWLB is capped and, at a time when Nestlé can borrow money cheaper than our Government can, the PWLB is not necessarily the cheapest, best value, or most available source of long-term infrastructure finance for the generational opportunities that my noble friend Lord Lansley so ably identified. Building new towns is the work of generations—it goes beyond political cycles—and relying on national and local politicians will not be enough in a world where a new secondary school costs £40 million and a flyover £100 million.

So we must help the development corporations in the single-minded pursuit of sustainable development, and we must help them get the money right. That means giving them the powers to exploit the distinction between funding and financing. Funding is simply writing the cheque, but financing is putting that deal together. It is no surprise that the financiers in the City of London have the most highly paid professions, because they have the hardest task: putting those deals together. It is not easy to finance difficult prospects but, to get Britain building, we will have to grasp that nettle.

I will not dwell too much on the significance of governance in development corporations, but I will make the factual observation that strong governance, established by statute—that is why I tabled this amendment—leads to higher covenant strength, the ability to take a higher credit rating, and the willingness of institutional investors to pony up the cash early on for infrastructure at lower prices. That is why my amendment is so important. We need to make it easy for the development corporations to raise the funds and for the pension funds to put their shoulders to the wheel, helped by the covenant strength that comes from being a statutory body.

The development corporations must be empowered to engage in all manner of financial instruments, including the issue of bonds, shares or similar, and we should contemplate other sources of finance as well. In my view, that extends to entering into joint ventures with landowners on a territory. Their land could be incorporated at the heart of financing as an in-kind contribution, so they would not enjoy the upfront benefit but they would have a return that is sustained over a long-term period. That may be good for them—it is certainly good for the taxpayer—and it enables us to get the infrastructure built up front more cheaply. It should not be the default position that a development corporation just goes for CPO powers and then ponies up a premium price—10% more than the market value—sustaining all the unpleasantness of the process. There must be a better way. My amendment pathfinds that opportunity.

In Committee, the noble Baroness—rather complacently in my view—said that the amendment was unnecessary because corporations could always borrow from the PWLB, and that was that. The bond markets are suggesting that there may be limits to that approach, which is why we need more flexibility. So I want to place finance in the widest possible context and, without central or local government necessarily acting as a banker in the traditional manner, the development corporations can be empowered.

So, although I accept that development corporations can plan for an area and have regard to all manner of desirable outcomes, ultimately those plans or outcomes will stand or fall on whether the money can be raised and the finance deals put together. That is what my amendment seeks to achieve at the best value and the greatest certainty, with the cheapness and value that come from statutory provision.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to my noble friend Lord Lansley’s Amendment 236. This gives me an opportunity to pay tribute to my noble friend and his work in this House. I declare an interest as chairman of the Greater Cheshire Development Forum.

On new towns and the new town of Adlington, I have to say that it was a wee bit of a shock. I am Lord Evans of Rainow, and Rainow is not far away—it is in the Peak District—and as you look out from the Peak District at the Cheshire Plain, Adlington is in the foothills. It is green belt, so it was a bit of a shock for me and the local communities. It is not every day that between 14,000 and 20,000 houses are set to be built in England’s green and pleasant land of east Cheshire. It was also a real shock to the Macclesfield MP, Tim Roca, as he had got married and was on his honeymoon at the time, but he was quick off the mark and put together the inevitable petition to Parliament against this proposal. It really flies in the face of democratic community empowerment—it is a coach and horses through local government. There are three outstanding local parish councils in that area: Poynton Town Council, Bollington Town Council and Pott Shrigley Parish Council. If you go on their website, you can see clearly that a lot of what they say has been articulated here today: a lack of consultation and accountability.

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Moved by

[Lord Fuller]

238: Clause 96, page 130, line 15, at end insert—
“(c) the funding and financing of development proposals, which may extend to the issuance of bonds, debt or similar financial instruments.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to empower development corporations to seek finance from the widest number of sources whether from PWLB, private money, sovereign wealth, pension funds or value in-kind as part of a joint-venture together with the ability to issue bonds, individually or severally with other development corporations.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, the development corporation parts of the Bill are the best parts of it, and my intention is to make the best of that and to support it. I came here with an open mind, not really knowing whether I was going to press the amendment but. in her winding. the Minister said two things which I am uncomfortable with, so in due course I wish to test the opinion of the House. The first was that there is an apartheid in this country in so far as development corporations are concerned.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

The noble Lord made his speech earlier. We do not need to rehearse what has been said during the debate—I spoke on this issue at the beginning of this particular debate. Perhaps he can let us know whether he will move this to a vote.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I am getting there; I just wanted to give the two reasons. The first was—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

Your Lordships are only delaying it.

First, the development corporations outside London should have the same financing as those within and, secondly, the Minister mistakenly interpreted my amendment to mean that it required development corporations only to take private finance, whereas it was to give it the option. As I am dissatisfied with the Minister’s response, I wish to put the matter to a vote.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, this group consists of amendments relating to the circumstances under which the levy for the nature restoration fund should be made mandatory. The Minister may recall that, in Committee, this was not the subject of an amendment or substantive debate but of an exchange to try to better define the circumstances. At that time, the view was that this would be under exceptional circumstances. The question is: under what exceptional circumstances?

I am very grateful to officials who gave me the benefit of time and advice yesterday. I have tabled Amendment 158A because it was not apparent to me that an amendment to an environmental delivery plan could be made simply to make the levy mandatory after the EDP has been made. I am assured that the powers are available in Clause 62 for the purpose of amending it, and that that can be done to make the levy mandatory in circumstances where the EDP has already been made. I hope the Minister is in the happy position of being able to assure me that Clause 62 can do that.

Amendment 164A, in my name, is the substantive amendment in this group, in my view. I tried to establish in discussions with the department the circumstances in which the levy should be mandatory. To paraphrase, these came down to two things. The first was that there would be occasions when Natural England, in order to fulfil the objectives of its environmental delivery plan, would need full coverage of the levy to deliver the plan. If there was not full coverage—namely, if some developers chose to go down the route of not offering to pay the levy—then the EDP would not be able to be delivered, and those who had made such a commitment to pay the levy would not be able to fulfil their environmental obligations through that route. Secondly, in a large project, such as a nationally significant infrastructure project with, essentially, one developer, if Natural England were to make an environmental delivery plan and that developer or project controller chose not to go down the route of paying the levy, then all the work done on the EDP would be pointless and it would make no progress. I have tabled Amendment 164A to try to arrive at a point where we can specify much more clearly in the Bill the circumstances in which the levy can be made mandatory. This is not unimportant; it is a very important issue.

I remind noble Lords of my registered interest, but I rely not on that but on the submissions and representations made publicly to the Government about this from the Home Builders Federation, among others. It is very concerned. From the point of view of the development community, the whole purpose is to give developers the choice between meeting their environmental obligations through the habitats and other regulations or going down the route of an EDP, with the opportunity to meet their obligations through the payment of the levy. If it is made mandatory, the choice simply does not exist anymore. For that reason, I want to define the circumstances in a clear way in the Bill.

The latter circumstance, with a single developer, is not a substantive problem. If Natural England goes down the route of consulting on a potential EDP, it would be a matter of necessity that the developer concerned was part of that consultation. Natural England would arrive at a considered view as to whether the developer in that instance was going to pay the levy and go down that route. That would determine whether the levy can be made, and the Secretary of State could rest upon the results of that consultation.

However, I believe that there is a case where, if there are multiple developers associated with a particular area—the EDP might cover a number of development sites and range across a wider area—one or more of those developers may commit to pay the levy. It may be that it is literally not possible to meet the objectives of the EDP without the others paying the levy. If they choose to go down an alternative route, they may not be able to meet their habitats regulations requirements, because they would be mitigated through the mechanism of the EDP. Alternatively, they may be trying to freeload off those who are paying the levy by saying that they will meet their habitats regulations requirements, but in practice they would be met through the EDP managed by Natural England and paid for by other developers. There is therefore a case for a mandatory levy, but I do not believe that the Bill says what those circumstances are.

I am afraid that it is not at all satisfactory to leave the power unspecified, because it will increasingly be a temptation for Natural England to initiate an environmental delivery plan, do the work, set up the potential draft, consult on it and then reach the conclusion that only by making it mandatory will it secure the necessary coverage to fund an EDP. Far from it being an exception, we will find that Natural England is increasingly defaulting towards mandatory levy payments as the basis on which it can proceed with its ambitious environmental delivery plans. That is not where we were told this would be going.

I will not press Amendments 164A or 158A, as I do not believe that what we require in the Bill is as yet specified in those amendments. I can well see that my noble friend, with his Amendment 164, could do us a great service, because if we were to take out these provisions it would press the Government to reinsert them with the necessary detail on how and when the mandatory levy should be imposed by way of substituting for what is currently in Clause 66(4) and (5).

However, if my noble friend were to take the view that it would be better for the Minister to give an assurance that she will consider whether there is scope for specifying the conditions under which the levy is mandatory—and narrowing that down to the kind of examples that I have referred to in my introductory remarks—I would be happy with that. I do not want us to take out the mandatory levy entirely; I want us to be able to specify it in more detail. I beg to move Amendment 158A.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I have been sitting for the last eight minutes next to my noble friend Lord Lansley, and I am slightly concerned by what he said. He accurately painted a picture that shows that there will be a drift, an expectation and a move by Natural England towards mandation for an EDP. I have been concerned for a while that the process by which an EDP might be consulted on and have consensus built could take a long time; I believe that it is very unlikely that we will get any EDPs operational in this Parliament, such is the process that is outlined, with multiple grounds of consultation and so forth.

I will paint an alternative picture to that of my noble friend Lord Lansley that involves a developer who just has to get on. The site that he is trying to develop is eating its head off in interest and there might even be demand for the homes—who knows? The developer has to get on and cannot afford to wait for that third year, so they cut and run. They go with a private operator under the habitats regulations; it is a proper scheme—I am not talking about shortcuts—but it means that they can get on with it.

The problem with mandation is they could end up paying twice, and that is no good. The Bill is meant to be speeding up development. So if they could have a route to develop more quickly while delivering the environmental benefits, without going down the EDP route, it should be open to them. I am concerned that mandation—and the slippery slope towards mandation being the default position, which my noble friend laid out—would see development being slowed down when it could be speeded up. Who wants to pay twice? Rather than get on with it, they hold back on the supposition that, in due course, the EDP will somehow come to the rescue. This is working against the role of the private sector in innovating and bringing in new techniques, and it is reinforcing the notion that only Natural England—that dead hand of the state—has a monopoly on how these things should be delivered. That is dangerous.

I am not going to speak against my noble friend, but I do not feel that he entirely covered the double jeopardy point, which is the logical conclusion of the amendments he has laid. In accepting that my noble friend Lord Roborough may press his amendment, I note that it will come back at Third Reading. If it does, we will need to consider the double jeopardy point about paying twice.

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Honestly, I do not know whether my noble friend is planning to test the House or considering bringing it back at Third Reading if we do not get a satisfactory answer, but this is absolutely key to making sure that we do sensible government and sensible politics, not party politics. This is something on which everybody is agreed, apart from a few people in MHCLG. Frankly, I believe that your Lordships should consider really pushing this through so we get on with some sensible stuff in this Bill.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, on this group of amendments I feel as if I am on my own. I agree absolutely that SUDS, or sustainable urban drainage systems, can play a wonderful role for smaller-style developments—for ones and twos, miles away from the mains in rural areas, they are obviously the way to go and oftentimes they are the only way to go—but I cannot see for the life of me how promoting SUDS and accepting these amendments will be proportionate when we are talking not just about connecting 10 or 15 homes but building 1.5 million. We will never solve the housing problem by connecting 1.5 million homes to SUDS. We have to connect them to the mains; it is the only way forward.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

That is what Schedule 3 does.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

But I am concerned, listening to this, because we will be letting the water undertakers—the sewage firms—off the hook if we are not careful. I say to my noble friend that I have looked carefully at the amendments. This whole Bill is about speeding up development; we have to get these homes going. It seems to me that we are potentially having a perverse incentive in allowing the sewage treatment firms to have a veto over new development.

The sewage treatment works and the operators—the water undertakers—are going to be the tail that wags the dog. If they say, “We haven’t got enough capacity, therefore you can’t connect”, no new homes will be built at all. I am really concerned about this. I went to the world heritage site at Iona in Scotland and its sewage treatment works were at capacity. It ended up with the visitor centre being forced to have its own package system that drained straight through the public areas, making it worse. In Norfolk, Anglian Water is saying that its sewage treatment plants are at capacity and it cannot contemplate any new homes. It is the blocker: 40,000 new homes in the greater Norwich area, as well as other areas, are now at risk. So far, so much for speeding development. This is going to slow it down, because it gives them a get-out—a perverse incentive not to invest in what they should be doing, while taking the money from business rates and so forth.

In aggregate, we are going to end up with more polluting package systems rather than connecting. That is no good for places such as Poringland, in my own area, where there is clay and the drainage is really poor. This is really important because by promoting a multiplicity of much smaller package systems, rather than incentivising the main sewerage providers to invest, we are going to avoid scale—and we need the larger, better-structured sewage treatment works brought up to scratch, because it is only then that they would address the phosphate problem. Phosphate is very difficult to do in a package system because there are harsh chemicals, so you have to wear face masks, gloves and all the health and safety paraphernalia. It all has to be carefully handled. This is where we get the economy of scale, which is what we should be encouraging.

Another point is that if we are to allow the sewage companies to say, “We think we’re full now, so you can’t have any more”, we will end up with more small package schemes. There is the smell. They are also unreliable and expensive to maintain. It is difficult to get them adopted.

I am really concerned about Amendment 198. I do not want to put the black spot on it entirely, but it needs to be improved. We would end up with a perverse situation in which there was a lack of capacity and we incentivised the sewage treatment companies and water companies to take it easy, rather than go the extra mile. This is not some theoretical risk. In places in Norfolk such as Heacham, Docking, Snettisham, Horsford, Brancaster and the entirety of the greater Norwich area, Anglian Water is holding up the delivery of tens of thousands of houses.

This is an infrastructure Bill, so there would be unintended consequences. While the amendment is well meaning—I accept everything the noble Baroness said about what is in the Water Act, and I accept that for smaller schemes this is it—if we are to have an infrastructure Bill, we need to remove the excuses for the sewage treatment companies and the water undertakings not to invest in that most basic infrastructure. It is as if we are going back to the days before Chamberlain in Birmingham and Bazalgette here on the Embankment in London. We spent ages on the Water Bill, and there is widespread concern about sewage discharge, but sewage discharges will be solved only if we hold the water companies’ feet to the flames and get them to invest. It is a real problem if they just say, “Well, it’s a bit difficult. We’re not going to invest, and therefore you can’t build houses and can’t get the economy moving”.

In summary, we need to make sure that we take into account that SUDS has a role for smaller schemes, but we should not allow the pressure to be taken off the large companies for the big schemes—the schemes that will deliver the homes this nation needs by getting roofs over people’s heads. Otherwise, we will never meet the targets. As it is, in the Times yesterday there were questions about whether we will even get half way to delivering the housing targets, let alone all the way.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

I will speak briefly to this group. I applaud the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for her resilience in the face of some opposition from her own Benches.

Amendment 197 seeks to end the automatic right for developers to connect surface water from new homes to the public sewerage system, regardless of capacity, and would instead provide a framework for the approval and adoption of sustainable drainage systems.

Amendment 198, also in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, would go further by linking the right to connect to compliance with the Government’s newly introduced national standards for sustainable drainage systems, creating a stronger incentive for developers to follow this guidance, in advance of full implementation of Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010.

I believe that some of this was developed by the All-Party Group on Flooding and Flooded Communities, among others, and we certainly support what the noble Baroness is attempting to do with these amendments. Managing surface water is a huge challenge. It is such an irony that we have the problem of lots of surface water, but we also do not have enough water.

Protecting water quality, supporting biodiversity and reducing flood risk are really important priorities. We see the merits of these amendments. While they are not the only steps needed to achieve a fully resilient water system, they represent a constructive approach to improving drainage management in particular, and to encouraging developers to take responsibility for sustainable practices.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, having also attached my name to this amendment, for reasons I shall get to in a second, let me say that it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Grender —and the noble Baroness, Lady Young, in particular, as she has been our champion in this space.

I am going to speak about two groups of trees in Sheffield. Members of your Lordships’ House may remember the great Sheffield tree controversy and the struggles that the whole city went to to defend its street trees. Two groups of those would, I think, have been covered by a heritage tree preservation order. One was about 40 trees on Western Road that had been planted in 1919 as a living memorial for the soldiers killed in the First World War from that community. The council planned to cut them down. There were paintings by artists underneath the trees and a huge march in World War I-style uniforms from the trees down to the town hall, and a huge campaign that demonstrated just how important those trees were to the community, and nearly all of them were saved.

On the other side of the city, in a much more deprived area, there were two cherry trees that were planted to commemorate two brothers killed in the Second World War. They were just cut down and people were deeply shocked. We have talked a lot in your Lordships’ House, throughout the passage of this Bill, about how nature is terribly important to people’s health and well-being, but here we are talking about individual trees that communities have an individual relationship with and that desperately need protection. They are part of their history, part of their future. At the moment, we do not have ways of protecting them, except for communities going to the kind of extraordinary efforts that the people in Sheffield had to go through to save those trees that they did manage to save.

I will make one other point. Poland has a green monument system that marks tens of thousands of trees across Poland, and Romania has a similar scheme. Britain is supposed to be really keen on nature and really keen on heritage, and look how far behind we are.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 199 because I think it is important that we protect and recognise our historic trees. I am thinking not just of the highway and byway trees; there are some really special champion oaks in South Norfolk, where I was the leader of the council. We took steps to recognise them, bring them into the local plan and give them special designations. They form the basis of the strategic gaps between settlements, which is not just a good thing for the landscape; it also maintains that spirit of community.

I am thinking in particular of Kett’s oak, which is a champion oak said to be over 500 years old—it might be more—sat there on the B1172 between Norwich and Wymondham. It was the site of Kett’s rebellion, where Robert Kett marched 16,000 people to Mousehold Hill in Norwich, having had a petition of 29 demands. I expect the Government to want to knock this one back, but I note the context of that historical nature, as well as the landscape importance. Some of Kett’s demands were to limit the power of the gentry and to prevent the overuse of communal resources. It did not do him any good—Kett was executed on 7 December 1549 —but it is part of the lexicon. I am conscious that my noble friend Lady McIntosh is going to take me outside and duff me up afterwards. I hope I do not suffer the same fate as befell Robert Kett.

My serious point is that having a national register of important trees is not just important for biodiversity and all that sort of thing; they are part of our history and culture, and these are things to be celebrated. I warmly endorse and support Amendment 199, with my personal knowledge of Kett’s oak, and other noble Lords will have similar stories from their own areas. I suppose the salutary lesson is that when that Sycamore Gap tree was felled, quite terribly, in Northumberland last year, there was a national outpouring. Amendment 199 attempts to capture that sense of pride and purpose, and it has my full support.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, we all share an appreciation of our heritage trees. The Fortingall yew in Perthshire is estimated to be around 2,300 years old, and there are oaks on the Blenheim estate that are estimated to be over 1,000 years old. Of course, the iconic Sycamore Gap tree, which I was driven past the day before it was cut down, was over 100 years old, but while it was a relatively young tree by comparison, I think it was probably the most famous iconic tree we had, loved by millions.

Whether they be ancient yews or oaks that have stood in Britain for hundreds if not thousands of years, our heritage trees are a link to our past. That is why we have robust tree protection laws. While we are committed to maintaining those protections, will the Minister please confirm that the existing protections for trees will not be swept away inappropriately without due consideration when developments are considered? It would be unacceptable to have an EDP that meets the overall improvement test but necessitates cutting down one or more heritage trees. I think we all agree that that would be unacceptable. Will the Minister please set out the Government’s view on the current penalties for breaches of tree protection orders? Do the Government feel that these remain appropriate, or do Ministers have plans to review them or introduce new regulations and new laws?

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, given what we said on Amendment 30, these Benches definitely support the principle that we should be basing decisions on the best available scientific evidence. In principle, we certainly support Amendment 131. It picks up on the point that was made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, and, indeed, at earlier stages by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that the best scientific evidence is not always just modelling: it is around actual evidence on the ground. We will move on later to amendments that talk about the necessity for the evidence base around the baseline that we have at the moment, and therefore, as I said, we support the idea in principle but we think, actually, that the framework for the consideration of that scientific evidence is actually as important.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 131, but before I do, I would like to address comments to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, because I am persuaded by the comments made by my noble friend Lord Lansley. We are not the elected House, the Government are entitled to bring their legislation through and I am persuaded that to have removed Part 3 entirely from the Bill would have emasculated it to the extent that it would have become mute.

I do think, however—and I only wish that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, had acknowledged this—that the thumping majority given to Amendment 130 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, has meant that we have got the best of a bad job. Therefore, to suggest that the Conservatives and other Members of this House have somehow sat on their hands or perjured themselves or somehow maligned themselves is just not the way.

Turning to the substance of Amendment 130, of course we believe in the essential of having the best advice. I will not repeat the speech I gave in Committee, but noble Lords will remember that I was very exercised by the misleading way in which Natural England had wilfully misrepresented the science that it said supported its position but did not. Noble Lords will recall that it sent me a pamphlet with all sorts of scientific references at the bottom, which I read, and those scientific references totally refuted Natural England’s position.

All I will say on Amendment 131 is that getting the scientific evidence is one thing, but we have got to get the advice right as well. I feel there is a problem with this Bill, because it does not address the conflict of interest that Natural England is simultaneously the adviser, the regulator, the operator and the price setter. I listened very carefully to what the Minister said on the earlier group. If the Secretary of State is not persuaded, he is going to rely on advice given by Natural England, which in my view has not demonstrated that it meets the standard that you would expect.

I think the key thing is that we are about to place into statute an obvious conflict of interest between a regulator and an adviser. We should eliminate that by insisting on a separation of powers. We have a duty to avoid obvious conflicts of interest, but we are about to embed one in statute. I invite the Minister to reflect for a moment on whether it is right that Natural England is to be the judge, jury and executioner in its own court, and whether there might be some sort of device whereby the Secretary of State can take other advice into account rather than that of Natural England, because it is so conflicted and its track record is not good.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendments 131, 137, 151, 152, 156, 157 and 174, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Roborough and Lord Blencathra, would add additional requirements to the preparation and reporting of EDPs. While the Government share the noble Lords’ desire to ensure that the EDP process is robust, I assure noble Lords that these matters are already captured through the drafting and are amplified by the Government’s amendments to Part 3. We have included an explicit provision requiring Natural England and the Secretary of State to take account of the best available scientific evidence when preparing, amending or revoking an EDP.

I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, about evidence over time and some of the issues that occur—perhaps even conflicting evidence —but I hope that the best available scientific evidence, which is the phrase that is used here, will give the Secretary of State and Natural England the support they need to ensure that this is proportionate. It needs to be considered as the best available scientific evidence.

Regarding reporting, as well as the mid-point and end-point reports on each EDP, Natural England will publish annual reports across the NRF with a summary of its accounts, including setting out the total amount received in levy payments and the amount spent on conservation measures. This is on top of the individual monitoring that Natural England will put in place to monitor the delivery and impact of conservation measures. I hope that goes some way towards reassuring the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, on his points about Natural England.

In addition, these amendments would require Natural England to report on the impact of conservation measures on the local economy and the community. The Bill already requires public consultation that will provide the opportunity for people to raise such matters, which will be considered by the Secretary of State when making an EDP. While we share the noble Lord’s desire to support local communities, it would not be appropriate and would add a significant burden to require Natural England to report on how each conservation measure is affecting the local economy. The final limb of these amendments would make it mandatory for the levy regulations to cover various matters currently specified as those that the Secretary of State may cover. I assure noble Lords that this is unnecessary because, while we would not propose to mandate for them, we fully expect the Secretary of State to make provision in these areas. I hope that, with these explanations and assurances, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Fuller]

134: Clause 55, page 92, line 22, at end insert—
“(8A) Any conservation measures provided by a landholding within the scope of an EDP must be legally secured by an agreement under section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.”Member’s explanatory statement
These changes are proposed as a means to ensure the deliverability of conservation measures provided by an EDP and to provide a stronger enforceability route than alternatives like a HM Land Registry Charge, which does not have the same level of legal enforceability.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 134 seeks to ensure that the conservation measures envisaged by the Bill are actually delivered for the liability period. The premise of the Bill is that, for the EDPs, a sum of money is paid for a government-endorsed plan, which will last for 10 years on the understanding that compensatory conservation measures will be provided elsewhere. The problem is that on one hand the EDP lasts for 10 years, but on the other hand the obligations are for conservation measures to last for 30 years in the case of biodiversity net gain and 80 years in the case of nutrient neutrality. There is a clear disconnect here, and that undermines the value and enforceability unless it is cleared up, and the Bill should do that.

Let us say you are a developer. Let us say you are prepared to palm off your obligations to address nutrient neutrality to a provider. Let us say you pay Natural England or its affiliates a fee to assume those liabilities in your place for 80 years—the perpetuity period. That money you pay has to last for the practical delivery of the conservation measures for that entire period. It is quite an onerous commitment. Each year, the grass may need to be cut, ditches dredged, fences mended, and sampling and monitoring undertaken. What happens for the 70 years that follow the initial 10-year period, from years 11 to 80, after the EDP expires? I would have expected the Bill to have some hints, but it does not.

Moving on, how might those liabilities be valued? Without value nothing can be delivered. This is an actuarial problem. Obviously, the value will depend on the annual cost of providing the measures over 80 years, in the case of nutrient neutrality, discounted back to present value—and that price will partly depend on the opportunity cost of the money for the period linked to the long-term gilt rate. Any one-off set-up charges might include inspection fees and renewal fees, and the more frequent they are, the more expensive they will be. The valuation is important, because unless there is sufficiency, there can be no guarantees that the conservation measures a developer has purchased will actually be delivered. On all this, the Bill is silent.

Pricing aside, I spoke in Committee about the enforceability of the conservation measures contemplated by the EDP that the housebuilder has purchased. So I now want to focus on those who will deliver the conservation measures which have been paid for, and the enforceability of those measures. This is not something that can be left to Natural England to make up as it goes along, as it has done so far—working at a snail’s pace, chopping and changing as it goes. That is no way to address a generational requirement. It needs to be on the face of the Bill: any measures need to be secured for as long as it takes, in a structure that transcends the normal lifespan of a company or partnership.

Of course, there are ways of recognising these legal obligations, either in contract or by a charge or covenant at the Land Registry. All these are enforceable, but Land Registry claims in particular require the lottery of a court or tribunal case. I ask: who is going to be bothered in 75 years, in 2100, to litigate in court a fag-end of five years of a nutrient neutrality deal that may get off the ground next spring or, for that matter, in 25 years—that is, if the operator has not run out of money and gone bust in the meantime? It is important that the obligations to deliver these measures are recorded in a form that can go the distance and be enforced without the uncertainty of litigation.

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[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I apologise; I shall not intervene again. Schedule 4 says that the environmental impacts can be disregarded, but the Minister is telling us that the environmental impacts identified in the EDP can be disregarded. We agree, and that is what my noble friend is seeking to introduce into the Bill.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I shall not press this amendment to a vote—we have a lot of business to do—but I am not convinced that the noble Baroness and, inter alia, Natural England as the advisers, have really understood the importance of getting this contractualised, of the enforceability and of considering what might happen not just this year or next but in 80 years and in the intervening period, given the changes of ownership, succession, bankruptcy, sale—who knows? Section 106 may not be perfect, and I accept the noble Baroness’s point about the unilateral undertaking —we are on Report and not at Third Reading. However, I think we should come back to this at Third Reading rather than just leaving it to Natural England.

I have been involved in this space for three and a half years as a person with significant interest in Norfolk Environmental Credits Ltd, the company established by all the planning authorities in Norfolk. We have had to dig deep, take the best advice and try to game all the scenarios to ensure that, ultimately, the promises made by those delivering these conservation measures can and will be delivered for the entirety of the period. The Bill is deficient because it does not seek and frame that enforceability.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

The noble Lord said at the beginning that he would not be pressing the amendment to a vote, so that should be sufficient, without needing to rehearse the debate yet again.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord and shall wind up. The noble Baroness and I have a meeting next week, when I hope that we can develop this point further to see whether the Government may somehow address these concerns at Third Reading. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 134 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. He is right that there is no way that Part 3 could have been crafted by anyone in Defra. It has absolutely been done by the local government department. That shows in almost every square inch of what we read.

I was asked to table Amendment 173A by the CLA. It is about ring-fencing the nature restoration levy. The risk at the moment is that the nature ring-fence applies only to the expenditure of levy income by Natural England. If funds are transferred away from Natural England or if the levy is collected and spent by another department or public body—both scenarios are actively permitted under this Bill—the ring-fence disappears. The overall design of Part 3 therefore allows levy cash to be collected by the Treasury and subsumed into wider government business as well as to be used to fund Natural England’s general functions. As compensation measures envisaged under EDPs are not legally required to be delivered, Part 3 creates a potentially substantial tax revenue stream for central government without any consultation or manifesto mandate if this ring-fence is not fixed.

I expect the Chancellor will not be reading my speech, but I can imagine that Treasury officials will be scrambling anywhere and everywhere to get money for a variety of purposes. It is as important for developers as it is for nature that this ring-fence is watertight and that nature compensation measures are funded and credible. If levy cash is instead appropriated for different purposes, the lack of funding for nature compensation would be a material consideration in planning that would allow the refusal of planning permissions. It is well known that hundreds of millions—billions—of pounds were collected under the apprenticeship levy and never applied to apprenticeships. We have to be mindful of the risks that could happen with this levy and whether nature will truly benefit.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I have spoken about the lifetime of the EDP and the enforceability of measures, but now we get to the price to be charged. I will amplify some of the points in Amendment 141. There are very large sums of money and long periods to be considered here. I do not really care whether MHCLG or Defra has drafted all this stuff as none of them really understands how to discount a cash flow. That is clear. If you are someone who has bought a house from the developer on the basis that the nutrient neutrality obligation has been washed away, hidden in the price of your new home is the market rate for mitigating a new dwelling-house, which in Norfolk is somewhere between £5,000 and £15,000. That is quite a sum.

In Committee, noble Lords, particularly the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, multiplied present prices paid by the number of mitigations in a scheme, got to multi-million pound sums and wondered what would happen to the profit. Well, if only. The profit really depends on the annualised cost of providing the measures, not in one year but over 80 years discounted back to the present value, and none of this understanding is in the Bill.

I know as part of Norfolk Environmental Credits, which I founded on behalf of the local councils, that notwithstanding that we have sold more than £10 million- worth of mitigations, the balance sheet value is zero because of the way that international accounting rules require us to discount the revenues against the costs over the whole period for 80 years. There is no corporation tax to be paid or profit to be booked, only risks and liabilities to be hedged, keeping our fingers crossed that inflation and interest are kept on top of until the last few years, possibly as far away as 75 years’ time, when we will all be dead and the money nearly exhausted unless, of course, the provider has not got his sums right, in which case he would have gone bust years previously. None of this is contemplated by the Bill.

We discussed this in Committee, but there is no more detail here on Report. I think it would be sensible for the Bill to contemplate some benchmark accounting standards to value the upfront cash contributions against the tail liabilities on a consistent basis. The reason is that if we do that and get a level playing field, we will get private operators innovating and competing on the same basis to drive costs down, while still maintaining the obligations. The Bill is silent on all this and, as a result, we will never get the leading private markets in nature mitigation going, which will be a missed economic opportunity for our nation.

What consideration have the Government given to providing a consistency of accounting approach, coupled with the enforceability I spoke of on the previous group? The Bill is long on aspiration but conspicuously silent on the legal, contractual, commercial ways of achieving these objectives. Without commercial contractability, we are never going to get delivery. It is bound to fail unless these things are belatedly considered at Third Reading, but it is very late in the day.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

My Lords, I will first address the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, which relate to the regulation-making powers governing the nature restoration levy. It is worth highlighting that the Bill provides the framework, but the detail of how the levy will operate will be brought forward through regulations laid under the affirmative procedure, giving both Houses of Parliament an opportunity to debate them.

Amendments 141 and 175 would preclude Natural England including the cost of purchasing land in the nature restoration levy and prevent Natural England spending levy income on land acquired by compulsory purchase. The nature restoration fund has been designed to work on a cost recovery basis. Given the potential for EDPs to address a wide range of different matters, there may be circumstances where the acquisition of land under CPO or by negotiation is required to deliver the most appropriate and cost-effective conservation measures. Ensuring that these costs are able to be covered by the levy will support Natural England to deliver against the overall improvement test for an EDP. While I recognise the noble Lord’s concerns around the use of compulsory purchase, allowing for these powers is crucial to ensure that there is certainty that, where necessary and appropriate, land can be acquired to deliver conservation measures and these costs are recoverable. Consultation on each EDP will provide the opportunity to scrutinise the measures to be covered by the levy and, as an additional safeguard, compulsory purchase powers can be used only with the approval of the Secretary of State. With this explanation, I hope that the noble Lord will not press his amendments.

Limiting the ability of Natural England to reserve money for future expenditure as proposed by Amendment 176 would constrain Natural England’s ability to plan for the most efficient conservation measures and prepare for unforeseen circumstances, including deploying any necessary back-up measures. This amendment would also undermine the ability of EDPs to cover the costs of ongoing maintenance and upkeep of conservation measures.

Amendment 177 seeks to ensure that regulations will include provisions about the return of any money that is no longer needed for delivering an EDP to the parties that appeared in that EDP. As mentioned in Committee, the scope of the regulation-making powers in Clause 71 is already sufficient to allow for the appropriate management of any unspent funds, as well as allowing for any necessary refund procedures.

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[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 182A, which has just been so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Curry, and have very little to add, other than to say that I support all the amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 178A, as he does.

Implementation and monitoring of this very ambitious project need a proper, open tender process, for two basic reasons: value for money and the fact that the private sector locally, including farmers, is going to know the land, the systems and the available resources far better than the rather uncharitably described “sticky fingers” of Natural England—but then I suggested earlier that it might “run amok”, so perhaps I should not be too bold. Natural England’s engagement in direct delivery, if it can actually deliver it, which is a question mark, should surely be the last resort, and it will almost certainly be considerably more expensive. I thoroughly support my colleague the noble Lord, Lord Curry, in his amendment.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I will talk briefly in support of Amendment 182A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Curry. This Bill should be shaping how private operators will address the market for mitigation; instead, we have Natural England becoming a monopoly supplier of mitigations in a drive to nationalise nature and, in so doing, potentially drive out private initiative.

In an earlier group, I touched very briefly on the distinction between permitting and licensing. In my view, licensing is the way to go, because it prevents the derivative secondary markets that enrich the speculators at the expense of delivering the outcome. We cannot afford to create by way of permitting a new milk quota disaster—for those with long memories—where the mitigation industry just became a collateralised asset class that had everything to do with speculation and nothing to do with nature recovery.

That is not an argument against private involvement, but it is an argument for channelling and regulating a fast-developing industry where we have global leadership, the encouragement of which will enrich our economy. We just need to avoid the Wild West I have seen emerging among some chancers who are taking the money and spending it on Ferraris rather than laying it down to provide mitigations for the entire liability period.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches are firm and constant supporters of the right of locally elected councillors to make decisions in their area based on clear national policies. The proposals in the Bill for a national diktat of delegation are the backdrop to this group of amendments. The Government are ostensibly in favour of devolution of decision-making. However, there is a tendency within the Bill to centralise decisions on planning by making it virtually impossible for local decisions to reflect local need and nuance.

Amendment 62A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, is interesting but could be problematic—actually, I thought it less problematic when I heard the noble Baroness’s explanation of the first part of the amendment. Although there are occasions during the life of a plan when unforeseen events arise which mean the local plan is not sacrosanct, on the whole it ought to be, otherwise it will be nibbled away at during its lifetime through precedent.

I have some sympathy with the second part of the noble Baroness’s amendment. Too often, housing sites are assessed as being able to accommodate a large number of units, then along comes the developer—with his eyes on the profit line—who applies for a different balance of houses in which larger, more expensive and more profitable units are to be built. The consequence is that the balance that we need, which is somewhere in between, is not met. The result of allowing developers to determine the density of a site is that more land then has to be allocated for development. I will give one example from my own area. A housing site was allocated in the local plan, under the national rules, for 402 homes. Currently, just over 200 are being built, because of the need—apparently—for five-bed exec homes. The local assessment of housing need shows that what are required are start-up homes and smaller homes with two or three beds. I have a lot of sympathy with that part of the amendment.

Amendment 63, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is right to seek to put safeguards in place in the rush to take the local out of local democracy. As the noble Lord explained, the amendment is to ensure that the affirmative resolution would be required for the initial changes to the national scheme of delegation. That has got to be right, because it will set the tone for the future of what is accepted as being part of a national scheme of delegation and what is okay for local decision-makers. That is fundamental, and the noble Lord is right to raise it in the amendment. If he wishes to take it to a vote, we on these Benches will support him.

The noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, has not yet had the opportunity to speak to her Amendment 76, so I hope she does not mind if I comment on it. We on these Benches will support the noble Baroness if she wishes to take it to a vote. This amendment would be another move towards empowering local decision-makers with the right to take planning applications to committee where there is a volume of valid objections to an application, and then to have the debate in a public setting.

Amendment 87F, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, seeks a sensible change to help understand where the real problems lie in the failure to build the houses the country needs. As the noble Baroness hinted, it is not with local planning committees or authorities, otherwise there would not be 1.2 million units with full planning permission waiting for construction. Those figures are from the ONS, and I am not going to quarrel with the ONS. If the Government could get the housing developers to start building those 1.2 million units, we would be well on the way to the 1.5 million that the Government reckon they need during the lifetime of this Parliament.

This is an important group because it is about getting the balance between national need and local decision-making, and between a national view of what is acceptable and local elected councillors being able to reflect local need, nuance and requirements in their local setting. I hope that at least the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, will put his amendment to the vote. It is fundamental to the democratic process to have local decisions on planning.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 76 in the name of my noble friends on the Front Bench. As I have reminded noble Lords before, I have sat on a planning committee many times, I have appointed such a committee as a leader of a council and chosen the chairman, and I know it is a very important quasi-judicial position. Planning exists to arbitrate between the public good and the private interest. I use the word arbitrate purposely because people who sit on the planning committee have a difficult job. They have to weigh up so much conflicting information. It is an adversarial system, because, ultimately, either the proposer wins or the objector wins. There is no grey purpose in the middle.

Much of the Bill is established under the false premise that local planning committees are the blockers of development and it is only with the ranks of officials that we can get things going. Of course, this is rubbish. Evidence for that assertion was given by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which this morning ruled that it was wrong that Governments and quangos had asserted that Ramsar sites had an equivalence to European sites and thus had to have a full environmental assessment, and overturned it on that narrow point. Within an hour, we had officials and Treasury solicitors boasting how this Bill is going to turn that around and reinstall that unnecessary gold-plating—gold-plating that, after four years, the Court of Appeal ruled should not have happened.

The Government’s suggestion that Ministers should usurp planning committees and instead form a national planning committee among themselves in Marsham Street is as fanciful as it is risible. It is a recipe for hurry up and slow down, and it is not fooling anybody that that is going to speed up development.

The premise is that officialdom brings none of its own particular personal or institutional prejudices to bear, but each quango brings its own vetoes. We have Natural England, with a track record of leaving no stone unturned in blocking or delaying development. We have the railways, which ballast every proposal for a new footbridge with £5 million-worth of cost and preposterous delays. We have the highways authorities, which tie themselves in knots over overly precious technical guidance and misdirect themselves that the private motorcar is intrinsically bad, when it is not. And that is before we get to the other bad actors, which time does not permit me to list.

I do not deny the importance of these quango representations, but the problem is that they all claim a veto, and it is from this that we have the £100 million bat bridge or that mitigating trade in great crested newts, which are rare in Europe but commonplace in every pond in my electoral ward in Norfolk. It is the way that planning works: it takes only one of these proverbial blackballs or vetoes from one of the statutory consultees to stymie a proposal.

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Above all, it is the change of tone that I would worry about. I express concern about some of the public statements that have been made about nature being a blocker, in a way that is incredibly polarising and unhelpful, and, quite frankly, in many cases not true. I recently received the Home Builders Federation’s list of 10 barriers to housing development. Of those 10, there is really only one that applies to nature; the rest are all sorts of other considerations. Nature should not be demonised in the way that it is. I worry that this amendment could be either seen as doing that or interpreted in practice as doing that.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, in the last group your Lordships’ House gave a pretty strong steer when it felt that the role of councillors and councils in determining local planning applications locally, based on a plan—not acting capriciously but on balance, with all the material considerations taken into account—was a very important principle, not just for the way that we run things in the country but for the fact that decisions are made by accountable people in a democratic way.

I am astonished that government Amendment 64 has come forward—although I am not surprised that the Government’s Back Benches are so sparsely populated. What this amendment would do is emasculate the principle of a proper local planning process. It raises the spectre of political interference, at very short timescales, in what is a quasi-judicial process. Clearly—and this is the reason I will ask for reassurance in a moment—it demonstrates a prematurity that is likely to slow down the process of development, rather than speed it up.

My evidence for the slowing down was given by my noble friend Lord Banner. I did not take down all the different sections and stages, but there are clearly statutory safeguard overrides, as well as practice guidance, procedures and statute, so that when development processes come forward, everybody has their say, in the right way, with the appropriate process. While there will always be a winner and a loser, at least people can say that it was done properly.

My concern with this is what the process will be whereby a Minister may call in a decision for stalling it. What intelligence will be relied on, and on what timescale? Planning committee agendas are normally published seven days in advance of the meeting. So within five working days of a recommendation for refusal from the officers, what is the process by which Ministers will be advised, “You’d better jump in on this one; this one might go wrong”?

What happens if there is a recommendation for approval but, on the basis of hearsay, rumour or possibly a letter in the local newspaper, there is a suggestion that the committee might decide to go the other way? I cannot quite understand how that would normally happen, because, as anyone who sits on a planning committee knows, they keep their mouths shut for risk of predetermination. This is where I am concerned about party-political interference in planning. There may be nods and winks and comments such as, “We think that so and so on the other side might be going this way”.

It all belies the fact that, as we all know, because the planning committee meets regularly and because it is quite an onerous thing and other people have different responsibilities, there is a series of substitutions, which are quite proper, with trained substitutes on that committee. With all those moving parts, I wonder, with a week to go, on what basis would the Secretary of State jump in?

I play to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Young, about a quango report. At what stage are we going to prematurely judge that, of all the different material considerations, one report may be more important than another, when we all know that it is the role of the committee to balance all of them in the round and take in all the material considerations? Are we going to sleepwalk into a situation where Ministers give an additional vicarious respectability to one set of reports over another, with only half the evidence to hand and without seeing in the round the benefit of all the objections, proposals and debate in the chamber? We understand that the purpose of the Bill is to speed up planning, but it seems that its consequence is to slow it right down. How on earth would we end up in a situation where Ministers could be properly advised?

In this House, and in Parliament, there is a proper 12-stage process. We are at stage 10 of 12. For the reasons that my noble friend Lord Banner gave—about the interplay of all the complexity and detail here—this should have been brought forward in Committee or at a much earlier stage. But here we are, at the 11th hour, in Parliament’s revising Chamber, trying to work this out on the hoof. I cannot support this. It rides a coach and horses through established process, principles and democracy. It is half-baked, and it should be thrown out.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, to speak in strong support of Amendment 87D in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. It seeks to address a clear gap in our planning framework: the ease with which valued community buildings can be demolished under permitted development rights.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, for reminding us in Committee that, since 2017, it has not been possible to demolish a pub under permitted development rights and that, since 2020, the same protection has rightly been extended to theatres, live music venues and concert halls. But every other community building—from sports halls to scout huts, youth clubs, village halls, arts centres, community hubs, social clubs, rehearsal rooms, day centres and faith spaces—can legally be demolished through permitted development under class B, in Part 11 of the general permitted development order, usually via only a prior approval notice to the council. In other words, a community can spend months achieving an asset of community value status, believing it has secured protection, yet the owner can still flatten the building with no full planning process, and the opportunity to save it is lost for ever.

The Minister suggested in response to the noble Baroness in Committee that local authorities can already protect such assets by issuing Article 4 directions. Although that may sound reassuring, in practice it is neither adequate nor realistic. Article 4 powers are slow, complex and discretionary. They require public consultation, ministerial approval and significant resources that many councils simply do not have. They are rarely used pre-emptively, and too often they are invoked after buildings have already been lost.

This amendment would provide a far simpler and fairer solution: an automatic national safeguard for assets that communities have already demonstrated to be of real social value. These are not sentimental relics but the social infrastructure of everyday life: the places where children learn to play sport, where community choirs rehearse, where food banks and lunch clubs operate and where amateur dramatic societies, after-school classes and local support groups meet. Once demolished, these spaces are almost never replaced.

As has been referenced, the London Nightlife Taskforce, which offers strategic advice to the mayor and will publish a major action plan later this year, has already underlined the urgency of this issue. Its early findings show that demolition and redevelopment continue to erode London’s community and cultural infrastructure, despite existing local powers. The task force, supported by the Night Time Industries Association, the Music Venue Trust and UKHospitality, is calling for stronger statutory safeguards to prevent the loss of spaces that sustain local life and creativity. Although its recommendations are directed at London, the same challenge exists nationwide. Communities in Manchester, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow and countless smaller towns face the same slow erosion of shared civic space, too often replaced by development that contributes little to social cohesion.

If we accept that pubs, theatres and music venues deserve protection from demolition, surely the same logic must apply to any building formally recognised by its community as an asset of value. This modest reform would give communities a genuine say before their most valued spaces disappeared.

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[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 119 and agree with the excellent case set out by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. My support comes from two cases in my constituency some years ago, caused by the forerunner of Natural England. I think it was the Countryside Commission at the time, and then it was the Countryside Agency, before being amalgamated into Natural England. These two cases simply demonstrate the point that my noble friend has been making. They were a couple of years apart, but the issues were the same, and they have annoyed me to this day because I was absolutely powerless to help small businesses in my constituency.

The first was on creating the Pennine Bridleway, and later a national trail alongside Hadrian’s Wall, both of which had many miles in my constituency. Some of that opened in 2002, some in 2006, and some is not opened yet, but the approval process in principle started either in the late 1980s or early 1990s. The plan was to make these national trails and encourage thousands more people to use them—no bad thing in itself, and I liked the idea. Local farmers were generally not opposed, since they thought they could get involved in providing services to the walkers and riders.

Farmers and householders along Hadrian’s Wall said that, without toilet facilities en route, their stone walls—or behind them—had become toilets. With no cafeterias for miles, sandwich wrappers and uneaten food were dumped in their fields and were a hazard to sheep. They said it would be good for them if they could convert a barn into a coffee shop or toilets, as a quid pro quo for letting thousands of people march over their land. It seemed a very good idea to me at the time to assist small farmers in this way. This was in the wilds of northern Cumbria, near the Scottish border, where some farms had more rushes than grass. It used to be called marginal land but the EU terminology is “severely disadvantaged area”. The lush land of East Anglia it is not. They need every opportunity there to make money and survive.

Farmers on the route of the proposed Pennine Bridleway also wanted to convert some barns into tack rooms, providing food and water for people and horses, and parking space for their trailers. Only a few riders would want to traverse its whole length, or at least the stretches which were open; most wanted to park up and ride a loop of about 15 miles or so. Again, that was a reasonable suggestion which I thought would benefit everyone: walker and riders, the local farmers who would have them on their land, and the environment, which would not be desecrated with rubbish. But that was not to be.

The Countryside Commission said, “Nothing to do with us”. Its job was the trails and bridleway, and it did not care about helping the rural businesses along the route. It was purely a local planning matter. To hear that from a body set up with a remit of helping rural businesses, I was appalled and angered. It would not even publish a statement suggesting to local councils that it might be a jolly good idea to support planning applications which would provide those small infrastructure developments. I approached the local councils, which said they could not comment until an official planning application was received and would not bend the rules to look favourably on them in principle.

I ended up opposing something that I thought was a good thing because of the recalcitrance of government bodies and local councils that would do absolutely nothing to help small businesses in their own patch. I may be wrong but to this day I do not think that a single farm or private building on either of those routes has been given planning permission for even a simple tearoom. That is why I support my noble friend.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, briefly, I support Amendment 103, in the name of my noble friend Lord Banner, who I see is now in his place, on proportionality in planning. In Committee, his amendment was rejected out of hand.

This is a Bill promoted by several departments. We have spent the last hour with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, from Defra, justifying government Amendment 68 strictly on the grounds of proportionality between good governance, effective value for money and so forth. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, from the other department, that the Government cannot have it both ways. Government Amendment 68 having been pressed so hard on the positive angle of proportionality, I now challenge her to accept Amendment 103, which makes exactly the same grounds, but of course from my noble friend Lord Banner’s perspective rather than the other.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I wish briefly to support Amendment 69, for the reasons advanced by the noble Earl. I just want to raise one question. The amendment would provide for guidance promoting the use of mediation. I would like to know whether the expectation of that amendment, if agreed, is that mediation should become mandatory, as is really the case in much civil litigation. If it is to be mandatory, what would be the sanctions for non-compliance with a direction for mediation?

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who so ably introduced Amendment 62 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. I do not need to say very much, but I will just add a couple of extra perspectives. This amendment would ensure that there is training for members of planning committees and planning officers on climate and biodiversity and an enhanced ecological literacy. I particularly applaud the appearance of mycological surveying here as someone who is very passionate about soil science, but I will not go further down that road at this moment, given the hour. What I will say is that this ties very well with our extensive discussion in Committee on the plans and ideas put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about overall strengthening of the planning process—the idea of a chief planning officer and of strengthening planning committees—namely, that we need to strengthen public and political trust.

I declare here my position as vice-president of the Local Government Association. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, noted the lack of resources that local authorities have. If something is not statutory, it is very likely that it will not get done—that is all that local councils have the money to do. We have a huge problem with lack of trust in politics, lack of faith in politics, concern about the planning system and concern that local voices and concerns are not being heard in the system. This is a way of both strengthening the system itself in technical and scientific terms and helping to strengthen trust in the system, which is so crucial in terms of restoring trust in our overall political system and local government system.

I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, is planning, but I think that this is something on which we should think about testing the opinion of the House. I look forward to hearing the Minister perhaps tell us that the Government will follow along these lines, in which case a vote would not be necessary. It is really important that we put these principles in the Bill and make them statutory. Then we can ensure that they will get done; otherwise, it is very likely that they will not.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, nobody, I believe, would want to disagree with members of planning committees, those decision-makers at all levels, being trained. Noble Lords will remember that I tabled an amendment in Committee on Ministers and the Secretary of State having the equivalent training as that expected of councillors. I have not pressed that on Report.

However, I am concerned because, if we are going to start enumerating all the essential skills that the committee must take into account when weighing all the evidence in the balance, and if we are going to cherry pick climate, quadrats and field trips on mycorrhizal fungi and everything else, how will they rank against the impact on residents, business, the economy and the socioeconomic impacts of development? They are all sort of subjective, but then we get the objective ones: space standards, design, viability and so on. It would be invidious to single out just climate change and mycorrhizal fungi in the Bill. Regulations will come forward and we will have an opportunity to influence those, potentially, at a later date in the Moses Room when we can have this debate all over again.

I have sat on a planning committee, and I have appointed a planning committee. We take our obligations and our own authority for training very seriously and it is right that we do. It costs tens of thousands of pounds—hundreds of thousands in some cases, as we heard in the previous debate—to bring a planning application forward. Members of the planning committee should have the widest experience and training.

That training should be not necessarily in the issues themselves but in the ability to work out, critically, whether what they are being told by officials and quangos is valid scientifically. There are different types of science.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Oh!

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I was not making a suggestion about whether climate science is there. There are different levels of science in all manner of different disciplines in planning. Some of it is contested and others are not so. That is why we have planning officials, quangos and scientists. I cannot support this amendment, and I rise because the noble Baroness indicated that she may want to press it to a vote, so I place my objection on the record.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, contrary to my noble friend, I support Amendment 62—in part. The “in part” is because I do not want climate change to freeze out biodiversity, which is ultimately far more important for local authorities, which have specific biodiversity duties but no legal climate change responsibilities. The other reason that it is in part is that, while some of the training is meritorious, it need not be mandatory.

I was privileged to serve on the board of Natural England for almost seven years and on the extraordinary Joint Nature Conservation Committee—the official adviser to the four Governments of the United Kingdom on all matters of biodiversity, both in the UK and internationally. All the top experts in both organisations said that, if we could go back to the drawing board, there would not be two UN conventions—one on climate change and one on biodiversity—but just one. Our chairman, Tony Juniper, consistently said that they were two sides of the same coin, and I entirely agree with him, even if agreeing with Tony may antagonise some of my noble friends around me. The point is that, if we saved our peat bogs, planted enough of the right trees in the right place and stopped ripping the ocean floor apart, we would save so much carbon that we would not need to put our industries out of business, inflict heat pumps on households and penalise anything that produces carbon.

The consequences of those two conventions are that all NGOs and Governments have focused heavily on climate change and that biodiversity gets a poor look-in, and that is a tragedy. With a tremendous amount of political will and with horrendous expenditure that will impact every person, it is possible to reverse climate change eventually. However, we are losing species in the world at a phenomenal rate and, when a species is gone, it is lost for ever. Forget these gimmicks of restoring mammoths, since most of the species being lost are the unsexy flora and fauna that may be vital to future human existence.

I come to the point of council training. The UK has lost dozens of species; even hedgehogs are critically endangered. Also endangered are water voles, turtle doves and farmland birds. Local authorities need to be aware of that, and training for councillors on biodiversity is quite important, in my opinion.

I cannot find any legal duty on councillors to take climate change into account when making decisions. I researched this in case my memory was failing, and the only law on climate change is the Climate Change Act 2008, which was amended in 2019 to add the net-zero requirement. All the requirements of the Act relate to action by central government not local authorities.

I understand that local councillors need to be trained in the legal matters to be taken into consideration when determining a planning application—nothing more, nothing less. My concern is that more than 300 councils have declared a so-called climate emergency and 85% of them have adopted climate action plans, which are all inconsistent with each other. Many of these plans are showboating; some are meritorious, such as Wirral Council’s tree-planting policy, but it is not a legal requirement. Councillors should receive training in strictly only those matters that are legal requirements to be taken into account in planning applications, not in things like Waltham Forest’s policy to divest its pension fund from fossil fuel companies.

We have a completely different scenario with biodiversity, since we have lots of legislation on biodiversity that needs to be taken into account in deciding planning applications. I will not go into it all, but the key elements for councillors are contained in my noble friend Lord Gove’s marvellous Environment Act 2021. It is a watershed Act.

The sections that I will briefly mention now will deliver nature recovery for the first time, provided that the Government do not cut the funding. The key item is local nature recovery strategies, which councils, NGOs, Defra and Natural England consider to be the main vehicle to bring about nature recovery. All 48 designated areas have now completed their LNRS plans, I think, but only five have been published so far. I believe that the rest are due to be finished by the end of this year. The success of the strategies will depend on farmers and landowners doing their bit through ELMS, and it is a tragedy that the Government are cutting ELMS funding.

I suggest that training for local councillors needs to focus on the 2021 Act. The main sections are as follows: Sections 98 to 101 on biodiversity net gain; Sections 102 and 103 on the general duty to conserve and enhance biodiversity; Sections 104 to 108 on local nature recovery strategies; Section 109 on species conservation strategies; Section 110 on protected site strategies; Section 111 on wildlife conservation licences; Sections 112 and 113 on habitats regulations amendments, which might possibly be for councillors; and Sections 117 to 139 on conservation covenants, which they might come across. There may be other things, but I suggest to the House that these key issues are what local councillors should be informed of and trained on.

I am intrigued by proposed new subsection (b) in the noble Baroness’s amendment, whereby councillors would be trained in “ecological surveying”. The only training that they need is to be able to read and understand the technical ecological reports they might receive, not to do the surveying.

I turn to the mycological bit. As far as mushrooms are concerned, I initially assumed that this was one of those in-jokes we used to have in government that councillors and Ministers were treated like mushrooms by their civil servants—that is, kept in the dark and fed a lot of bull stuff. Of course, I can understand the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, being interested in mushrooms. If she invites me to dinner, I hope she will not serve me mushrooms, being an Australian.

Seriously, however, I am concerned about the huge increase in the last 12 months of trendy Tik-Tokers deciding that foraging is the latest fad and stripping woodlands of far too many mushrooms. That has happened in just the last 12 months. Many years ago, when I was food Minister, I became friends with the wonderful chef, Antonio Carluccio, and had various meetings with him. He was a mushroom afficionado. After a four-course lunch consisting of a mushroom starter, a mushroom amuse-bouche, a mushroom main course and a delicious mushroom pudding, he presented me with an official Italian mushroom picker’s knife. Italy takes fungi seriously. It had a little curved blade; a centimetre scale, so that no ceps were cut under 4 centimetres and others at no less than 2 centimetres; and a little brush at the end to clean off the dirt. Antonio drummed it into me that mushrooms should never be washed—

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 20th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Fuller]

25: Clause 25, page 34, line 33, at end insert—
“10Q Long duration electricity storage: safety(1) The Authority must ensure that the scheme established by section 10P includes measures to be taken by LDES operators (as defined by that section) to reduce fire risk and protect public safety.(2) The scheme must ensure that before installing long duration electricity storage, LDES operators consult the local fire authority who must assess the fire risk posed by the installation.(3) The LDES operator must pay the local fire authority a reasonable fee for their assessment of the fire risk under subsection (2).(4) The Secretary of State may, by regulations made by statutory instrument, to define a “reasonable fee” for the purpose of this section.(5) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that proposals for long duration energy storage systems, which may contain flammable batteries and equipment, are designed in consultation local fire authorities to minimise fire risk and protect public safety.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, when I moved this amendment, which is now Amendment 25, in Committee, the lamented noble Lord, Lord Khan, went as far as he could at that point to open the door to accepting the principle that when electricity storage systems are planned, it is with the full knowledge, connivance and consent of the local fire authority, so that the fire and public safety risks and mitigations are fully understood. I am therefore disappointed that the meeting to discuss this is scheduled for after completion of Report. I fear that, rather than agreeing to my sensible, proportionate and non-controversial proposals, precious time is now being wasted litigating it on the Floor of your Lordships’ House and, wholly avoidably, with additional time spent in the Division Lobbies.

As the grid is reinforced, the ability to stabilise the electricity supply and isolate it from surges and shocks is essential. A number of long-term and short-term technologies exist to smooth the path of electricity from the generator to the consumer, and LDES facilities are part of that mix. These solid-state devices are needed alongside rotational energy sources in the energy balance. The people of the Iberian peninsula—where I am travelling to when the House rises this evening—will attest to the consequences of failing to have network stabilisation in place. A tiny 0.2 hertz perturbation in the grid set in train a chain reaction that brought down their entire grid, which required an unprecedented black start. That is what is at stake here.

Some of these long-term storage technologies contain highly flammable materials such as lithium. Hydrogen storage could be another possibility, but I am going to restrict my remarks to lithium for the purposes of proving the point. Not a day goes by when a fire is not caused by a lithium battery in a car, in a refuse freighter, or in a block of flats when a scooter overheats. The issue is clear: when a lithium battery catches fire, huge quantities of water are required to extinguish it. I will not remind the House excessively about the details of the car-based conflagration at Luton Airport, but once it took hold, the batteries in electric cars quickly made the fire unfightable for longer, more so than had petrol and diesel alone been involved.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, for his amendment. I start by apologising to him for the meeting date, which I understand is 30 October. He will know from comments made earlier that I have had a great number of meetings before Report, so I can only assume that it was a misunderstanding and apologise to him that it was not held before we got to Report.

The noble Lord said that over on this side we would not be shedding any tears about the price of Lamborghinis going up, but he obviously does not understand my guilty pleasure of fast cars—but then I come from the same town as Lewis Hamilton, so I have an excuse.

The noble Lord’s amendment seeks to require long-duration electricity storage—LDES—operators to consult the local fire authorities to assess the project’s fire risk before installation. In Committee, the noble Lord commented on the frequency and danger of lithium battery fires. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for the distinction that he made between individual battery fires and these large-scale ones. I reassure the noble Lord that the Government take issues relating to fire safety extremely seriously—I know that my noble friend Lord Khan gave the same reassurance—but we still do not feel that this amendment is proportionate or necessary, and indeed it could create unintended risks for fire services.

I understand that these concerns are largely in relation to lithium-ion batteries. Analysis from DESNZ suggests that fires at battery energy storage sites are rare. The latest available five-year annual average fire incidence rate for GB batteries is 0.7%, which is lower than that for wider non-domestic building fires in England, which is around 0.8%. We expect all LDES developers to ensure that their sites are safe, regardless of the technology employed. It is still, of course, vital that any risks are appropriately and proportionately managed to ensure that we maintain public safety and trust. We have spoken previously of the role that the Health and Safety Executive plays in regulating storage assets. Developers and operators of these sites have a legal duty to manage risks, and government expects them to engage with local fire services when drawing up emergency response plans.

Defra will conclude its industry consultation shortly on the modernisation of environmental permitting for industry, which includes proposals to bring BESS within scope of the 2016 permitting regulations. If introduced, EPR would require developers and operators to demonstrate to the Environment Agency how specific risks are being managed, while providing for the ongoing regulation of battery storage sites. While it is already the Government’s expectation that developers engage with fire services during the planning process, this amendment risks imposing additional administrative burdens on fire services which are not proportionate to the risks associated with this technology.

DESNZ is actively engaging fire authorities and the battery storage industry on the whole issue of battery fire safety. In fact, Minister Shanks hosted a round table today on battery safety, which included representatives from the National Fire Chiefs Council and battery developers, so I can reassure the House that Minister Shanks is taking this issue extremely seriously. I hope that that provides some reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell.

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, is satisfied with the reassurances and will agree to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I came to this debate keen to divide the House on this important matter. However, during the debate a number of issues have come to light, not least the meeting held today by Minister Shanks and the acceptance that we are still owed a meeting where we can discuss this. Rather than detain the House at this point with a Division, I wonder whether the Minister and I might have an understanding that we will keep the date in the diary and, if I am not satisfied, then the opportunity will come to bring this back at Third Reading.

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Moved by

[Lord Fuller]

43: After Clause 28, insert the following new Clause—
“Prohibition on the application of the nationally significant infrastructure projects regime to large-scale solar developments on the best and most versatile land(1) Section 14 of the Planning Act 2008 (nationally significant infrastructure projects: general) is amended as follows.(2) After subsection (1) insert—“(1A) Large-scale solar developments must not be considered nationally significant infrastructure projects where they are built or developed on agricultural land at grade 1, 2, or 3a.”.(3) After subsection (3) insert—“(3ZA) The Secretary of State may not use orders under subsection (3)(a) to extend the application of subsection (1) to large-scale solar developments.”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that planning decisions remain in the hands of local councils for large-scale solar developments on the best and most versatile land through prohibiting such developments from falling under the nationally significant infrastructure projects provisions in the Planning Act 2008.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 43, co-signed by my Front-Bench colleagues, is simple and straightforward, rather like Amendment 45 from my noble friend Lady Hodgson, who, sadly, is not in her place.

Our amendments are similar, but I prefer my own, because my proposal is not the complete ban on solar developments on the best and most versatile land contemplated by my noble friend. What mine seeks to achieve is that where such proposals do come forward, they are successful only with the consent and agreement of local people. It recognises that solar farms have a role to play in our energy security, but that role must be balanced with an effective use of our best farmland for food security.

This amendment will not prevent or fetter the development of solar farms on the poorest-quality land or restrain smaller proposals on better-quality land where they command the support of the local authority. But where large-scale solar proposals do come forward that include the best and most versatile land, my amendment means that the NSIP process cannot and will not be engaged. It is not the absolute ban on solar on the best land, but it does put a hurdle on which the applicant will need to work hard with local people to surpass, and that restores the balance of negotiating power that has become out of kilter between the developers and local residents.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I believe I said—I hope I did—that all stages would be monitored, from application to operation. I hope that is reassuring to the noble Lord.

In relation to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, on China—it is important to pick them up—the Government are committed to tackling the issue of Uyghur forced labour in supply chains, including the mining of polysilicon used in the manufacture of solar panels. We expect UK businesses and solar developers to do everything in their power to remove any instances of forced labour from their supply chains. The Procurement Act 2023, which came into force on 24 February, enables public sector contracting authorities to reject bids from and terminate contracts with suppliers that are known to use forced labour themselves or anywhere in their supply chain.

The Government are considering how to strengthen Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which places a requirement on businesses with a turnover of £36 million or more to publish an annual modern slavery statement, including possible penalties for non-compliance, as well as working with a wide range of stakeholders to update the Section 54 statutory guidance. I hope that gives the noble Lord some reassurance that we are taking this very seriously indeed.

From my time as the Minister in MHCLG with responsibility for net zero, I know that we have looked extensively at the UK supply chains and what might be done to further promote and help them to grow their businesses. All this being said, I agree with the sentiments of the noble Baroness that more should be done to install solar on rooftops. We are pursuing various measures in connection to this, as mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, from solar on schools and hospitals and our new building standards to tax breaks and our new £13.2 billion warm homes plan. We have recently conducted a call for evidence about solar car parks, which the noble Baroness praised in Committee.

It is important that we do not overstate the amount of agricultural land that might be occupied by solar infrastructure. I know the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, questioned the Government’s figures on land use. Without being drawn into that discussion, it is clear that a relatively small amount of land, 0.4% in the most ambitious scenarios, is due to have solar installed by 2030. This does not constitute a threat to food security or to British farming, which the Government will always champion. Rather, the primary threat to British agriculture comes from the damaging effects of climate change, and the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, already mentioned the impact on harvests this year. We have to take that into account as well. I, for one, think that Britain should do its part in the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Building low-carbon power plants is an essential aspect of this.

I hope that the noble Lord and the noble Baroness will note the steps the Government have taken to return the decision-making of more solar projects to local authorities and the existing robust provisions for planning authorities to consider impacts on food production, and that the noble Lord might consider withdrawing his amendment.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her winding. I do not intend to relitigate the debate we have just had; it is very late. It is almost as if the Government timetabled this debate after hours so the viewers at home could not see it. That is a shame, because the viewers would have seen for the first time the Lib Dems’ touching concern for the chilling effect on the investment prospects of the international investors for whom they wear their hearts on their sleeves.

We have reached a turning point in our nation’s story. We have a choice: will we stand up for those who put food in our bellies or is the Minister stuck in the middle of a fight between the Prime Minister on one hand, who says he believes in food security being national security, and an Energy Minister on the other who is impoverishing our nation, sacrificing thousands of British jobs on the altar of net zero while importing the jobs we used to make, but this time for more polluting factories overseas, which achieves nothing but to make us poorer?

We have a choice before us. It is not a binary choice of one or the other, as suggested by the noble Earl, Lord Russell. In our proposal, 58% of the national land would continue to be available. That is not binary; that is proportionate. Here is an opportunity for us all to get the balance right between energy security and food security by agreeing to my amendment. The counterfactual is that we condemn our countryside to an uncontrolled future, where our landscapes are impoverished and collateralised, passed around the global financial system like chips on a poker table.

To govern is to choose. Will this Government continue their war on the countryside or will they, even at this late hour, support our landscapes, the food producers and the rural economy? We should know. I would like to test the opinion of the House.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 20th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, at the beginning of Report on this important Bill, I move my Amendment 1, which is to insert a new purpose clause at the beginning of the Bill to define what it is about. While this Bill aims to deliver significant change, without a clear guiding statement of intent we risk losing sight of the balanced objectives necessary to truly sustainable development. Amendment 1 sets out the core purposes of this Bill:

“to … accelerate the delivery of new homes and critical infrastructure … improve the planning and consenting processes … support nature recovery through more effective development and restoration, and … increase community acceptability of infrastructure and development”.

This is not merely a statement of aspiration. It is an important mechanism for accountability and clarity that directs the interpretation and implementation of every subsequent clause.

In Committee, there was support from across the Committee for a similar amendment. The benefit of adding a purpose clause to the Bill is that it will enshrine in law the tension between the need for construction and the requirement for robust environmental and democratic safeguards. The necessity of explicitly stating the duty to support nature recovery, for instance, directly addresses those profound concerns debated in Committee on Part 3 of the Bill.

Equally, many have voiced concerns about the negative impact of these reforms on local democracy and community voices. The CPRE, for instance, has concerns regarding the “dangerous erosion of democracy” inherent in measures that increase ministerial powers, such as the ability to issue holding directions to stop councils refusing planning permission when they do not accede to the law. To prevent them by issuing holding directions is a huge step in denuding local voices and local democratic councils from making the decisions about issues that affect their areas and communities. The inclusion of, for instance, the need to

“increase community acceptability of infrastructure and development”

directly mandates that the Government and implementing authorities address these democratic deficits. It would transform community engagement from a burdensome hoop to jump through—a problem noted by the previous regime in the Planning Act 2008, which led to proposals removing pre-application consultation requirements—into a stated core objective of the entire legislative framework.

The Government’s stated objective for this Bill remains the right one: we must

“speed up and streamline the delivery of new homes and critical infrastructure”;

however, acceleration without clear direction risks unintended long-term consequences that undermine the very public good that the Government seek to achieve. By accepting Amendment 1, we would embed clarity, provide a crucial framework for legal interpretation and establish legislative accountability for all stakeholders, ensuring that this major infrastructure Bill delivers not just efficiency but genuine sustainable development and broad public confidence. I beg to move.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, so here we are again. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for focusing our minds at the outset on what this Bill is about. It is a welcome amendment because the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has at least attempted to bring some thematic coherence to a ragbag of proposals from a dozen departments, none of which appears to be talking to each other.

I have read the press notices and compared them to the Bill’s text—never has a Bill been more oversold by a Government. Belatedly, it now seems that the Government’s purpose for this Bill is to persuade the OBR that it will speed up the process of development so that its economic forecasts can help the Chancellor balance her books. But most of the proposals of this Bill will prove that Newtonian notion that, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It hands development veto powers to a self-serving quango and it talks about empowerment and streamlining processes, but it emasculates those with the local knowledge and mandate to unblock officialdom. Instead, it proposes a system whereby the Secretary of State is to become a one-person planning committee—good luck keeping to the 12-week determination deadlines on that one. It could have ironed out Hillside or introduced a proportionality test so that at least the little boys could get on, but there is boneheaded resistance there.

One talking head on the “Today” programme this morning bemoaned the lack of planning permissions, the number of which seems to be falling like autumn leaves, but failed to realise that it is the building safety regulator that has put the black spot on building in London, with a response rate of at least 44 weeks. On that, the Bill is silent. So, instead of unblocking the blockers, it creates an EDP process that is so ponderous that it is unlikely to unlock any stalled homes within this Parliament. It is three and a half years since we started the neutrality madness, and it will be at least another three and a half years before we can rip off that scab. So much for speeding up building; all it is doing is putting speed bumps in the way.

Of course, I welcome the important and critical proposals to free up the placement of roadside power poles to improve the electricity grid. But even this Government recognise that the potential of development corporations is something for the next Parliament—just at the moment that those structures and powers to unleash them are being thrown up in the air. For all the bluster and press notices, this Bill will slow development, not speed it up. By any measure, the Government’s purpose will be frustrated by their own legislation.

I come to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, which would

“accelerate the delivery of new homes … improve the planning and consenting processes … support nature … and … increase community acceptability”.

This is what we will debate over four long days. But what the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has done is laid out the functions of the Bill; they are not its purpose. The reason that this Bill is in such a muddle is that it has not been framed through the purpose lens that dates back to the Labour Government of the post-war period, when the planning system was established in the first place.

Quite simply, the purpose of planning is to arbitrate between private interests and the public good; everything flows from there, and that balance between private and public is what makes the system work. It makes the economy flourish and enhances the environment. This Bill gets that balance all wrong, with too much state interference and not enough private initiative, so I am sorry to say that it is bound to fail. That is a shame, because we need to get those homes built and those rivers cleaned up, that clean power flowing and those new towns going—but little will be achieved, because in this Bill all roads flow to Marsham Street, back home to the dead hand of the state.

Building Safety Levy (England) Regulations 2025

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I was explaining that the publication of the remediation portfolio dashboard showed that thousands of people are still trapped in unsellable homes with unsafe cladding, fire safety defects and, often, high service charges and insurance. That is why, writing in the British Safety Council magazine in July, the organisation End Our Cladding Scandal said:

“But on the ground—in the eyes of residents and leaseholders who remain trapped—nothing has changed”.


It went on to say:

“Labour … is failing to deliver on its manifesto commitments on building safety”.


Those are its words, not mine. The Government have a target to complete remediation by 2029 for high-rise buildings and by 2031 for 11-metre to 18-metre buildings. Some 14 years after the tragedy, surely we can do better than that. The Government’s initiative is called the remediation acceleration plan, so might we have some acceleration?

My second point concerns exemptions. The original proposition was that leaseholders, who bear no responsibility at all for what has gone wrong, should not have to bear the costs of putting things right, but that principle has been eroded: some buildings, leaseholders and defects do not qualify. For example, buildings under 11 metres do not qualify even if they have the same cladding as the Grenfell Tower.

The previous Government argued that, in those cases, there was no threat to life as people could escape. But that left the leaseholders in difficulty. In one case, Aviva insisted on cladding removal within 4 months as a condition of insurance cover, with no one else prepared to quote. Leaseholders had to pay £45,000 each. There are many other examples, such as insurers wanting combustible balconies replaced or people being unable to sell because their lender insisted on an EWS certificate, which could not be provided. Those leaseholders have no protection.

The latest RAP—remediation acceleration plan—announces the Government’s intention to

“provide funding in those exceptional cases where multi-occupied residential buildings under 11 metres have life-critical fire safety risks from cladding and do not have an alternative route to funding”.

However, what the insurers and lenders insist on is often not “life-critical”, but the property is unsellable or uninsurable without the work, so the leaseholders have to pay to put the defects right.

There is a separate category of non-qualifying leaseholders—people who invested their life savings in a small number of buy to lets. Where the block is being remediated not by the developer but by the building safety fund, they are exposed to the full costs of non-cladding remedial work—often a high five-figure sum. As this work is carried out at the same time as the cladding, this can hold up remediation for everyone, as the freeholder will not have the cash to pay if a non-qualifying leaseholder cannot pay or sell. In Wales, there are no non-qualifying leaseholders. Those leaseholders are no more responsible for the defects than any other leaseholder. It is a distinction that should be removed, not least to accelerate the progress of remediation.

Some defects are not covered. The 2025 update to the remediation acceleration plan refers only to “unsafe cladding”, often leaving leaseholders exposed to other costs. Again, that is a distinction that should not be there. The leaseholders have no more responsibility for the non-cladding defects than the cladding defects. Those leaseholders who enfranchised, encouraged by successive Governments, are now in a worse position than those leaseholders who did not enfranchise—another inequity.

I make two final points. The Government said in their manifesto:

“We will put a renewed focus on ensuring those responsible for the building safety crisis pay to put it right”.


This SI is about the developers, but what about the construction materials industry, found by the Grenfell inquiry to have been guilty of “systematic dishonesty” and “making false claims” and by which not a penny has been paid? Eight years after Grenfell, the latest update tells us that the Government are consulting on

“robust sanctions, penalties and liabilities for manufacturers”.

Again, progress has been far too slow.

Finally, we know that the Government plan to legislate to address some of the problems I have been outlining. On 6 October, the Secretary of State wrote to End Our Cladding Scandal, saying:

“This will include a new Bill in Parliament to ensure that delinquent buildings get fixed”.


I understand that the Bill will have a hard end date for remediation, with criminal prosecution if it is not done. But this suggests that delinquent buildings will not get fixed until we have the Bill, implying yet further delay. We are told it will be introduced when parliamentary time allows, but that sits uneasily with the Government’s commitment to move things at a faster pace.

Does the Minister understand the frustration of those who, through no fault of their own, face hardship and risks? What can she do to reassure them that the Government will address with renewed urgency the problems that confront them?

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a freeholder of a mixed-use building, 15 metres tall, constructed in 2018—post Grenfell—in Norwich. Addressing the consequences of the use of aluminium composite materials in pre-Grenfell tall buildings is the priority that the Building Safety Act is meant to resolve and a commitment that should remain undimmed. Unlike my noble friend Lord Young, I will constrain my comments to the effect of the proposed regulations, which are contemplated to be introduced on 1 October, on the construction of new homes, not existing homes. That does not mean I do not care about the existing homes, but I think we need to view part of these regulations through the lens of the construction industry.

It is common ground that we need more homes, driven not only by the UK population, which the ONS tells us is now just shy of 70 million, but because you cannot sell capitalism to people who cannot accumulate capital—and the best way of doing that, for most families, is by building a stake in their own home. Nothing we do should discourage or disincentivise the need to build the homes our nation needs.

There are enough headwinds in construction already and the Minister probably has some of those ringing in her ears from her lunchtime meeting with SME builders. There are more headwinds to come. The BSA levy is potentially one of those headwinds and could chill construction still further at a very delicate fiscal moment. That is important because if there is no building, there is no levy and there is no money to fix the cladding.

We know that there is a crisis of confidence in London’s building industry. I will focus on London for the moment because a lack of housing starts in London is going to imperil the Government’s nationwide housebuilding ambitions. All historic sources on housing starts point to London being in crisis. The Molior data shows that just 2,000 private homes were started in the first half of the year—a record low. MHCLG data shows that the total number of homes started in the entirety of the 12 months to quarter 1 2025 is 60% lower than the previous record low, set in 1990. The GLA’s affordable data shows that only 347 homes were started in Q1—a record low, following lows in 2024-25. Right up to date, the interim statistics show that in the last quarter for London new starts were 40% lower than the previous low point, with nothing over 18 metres started anywhere.

Developers in London are on strike, and if we cannot sort out building in London, we will never get roofs over people’s heads nationally. This is not just about the levy holding things back; house prices have risen in the capital by 1% since 2015, a previous high point. Berkeley Homes tells me that the bill costs have risen by over 40% in the same period—directionally, half on materials and half on regulatory burdens. So we know that viability is under threat. Planning has previously been fingered as the hold-up for development, but now if you get your planning consent, you need to get building safety regulator approval before you start digging foundations for all the dwelling homes that are excluded from the levy. It is therefore the building safety regulator that is putting speed bumps in the way.

These regulations provide for applications to be made to the regulator before 1 October next year or the levy will apply. That sounds like a long way away, but I am told it is currently taking 44 weeks, at best, for the regulator to reply to an application. More often than not, that reply is in the negative. I have heard of a refusal from the regulator that was evidenced by a single word: “Roof”. That is just not good enough. It is already too late to apply and hope for an approval, with just 50 weeks to go until 1 October 2026. That is also not helping many of the thousands of already completed homes in London that are doing nothing but eating their heads off in interest for want of a final approval.

I have done some research and learned that the reasons for all this relate to the fact that staffing and the transition have not been sorted out between the HSE and the building safety regulator. There is far too much subjective interpretation between professionals, each of whom may be correct in their difference of preference, but either option could be safely implemented. The regulator’s IT system is incompatible with the software that all developers use, particularly because it does not use the indexes. That is important because rather than someone going online, clicking on the screen and being transported instantly to one of the thousands of A0 plans through the index, the regulator’s IT system—I am told—means that you have to search manually through all 1,000 sheets. It is hardly surprising that it is taking so long. We then have the numbers: an additional £60 to £70 per square metre in London—and up to £90 in Fulham—and directionally £25 to £35 elsewhere.

I have consulted developers. More than ever, time is money. Reluctantly, they are prepared to accept the levy—that is good news; there is an alignment on the need and the willingness to pay. But their view— I agree with this, and I ask the Minister whether she does too—is that, before the levy comes into play, the building safety regulator needs to sort out its relationship with the HSE. The software needs to be made compatible with BIM, so that we actually get some productivity. We have to agree to objective, accepted standards for what is an acceptable way of building new homes, rather than be subject to arbitrary preference. There needs to be a response within four weeks and not 44 weeks.

If the builders are making that proposal, I think that it is a fair bargain and that the Government should accept it. Unless they do, the developers’ strike will continue and then no levy will be created at all. That does not help anybody, still less the people for whom my noble friend Lord Young is most concerned.

It is important that we think also about the cash flow. I have looked carefully at the regulations and the implementation. I am concerned that, particularly for a large-scale flatted development, should one go ahead, the entirety of the levy—remember, that it is £90 per square metre in Fulham—would be paid on the entire development at the point at which the very first part of that development had a completion certificate. Just at the point at which the developer is suffering greatest cash stress, the entire bill would be due. I am concerned for the cash-flow viability of these organisations, noting that the Financial Times has reported that, in the entirety of London—a city of 10 million people—in the last quarter, fewer than two dozen new flats have been sold. That is a real crisis point.

Will the Minister recognise that until the system is working smoothly, nobody will start anything over 18 metres and that unless we can get the workability, timescales and IT right, the strike will continue? Will she give a commitment that, at the point at which the levy is introduced, approval times will be down to, say, a reasonable four weeks, because time is money and money is risk? On that basis, there will be a grudging acceptance—but an acceptance none the less—by the industry that we can move forward, and then the people for whom my noble friend Lord Young is most concerned can be remediated more quickly. Unless we get an accommodation between the Government and the development industry on going forward positively, this will not be sorted out and the Government will stand zero chance of meeting their ambitious housing targets, which we should all endorse.