Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Mawson and Lord Lucas

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for his comprehensive reply.

The common theme between the amendments is empowering officials to do their job well. I will pick up an example from the noble Lord, Lord Mawson. If an official in the local hospital is only looking up the line to someone in the health department, it is very hard for them to take into account the needs of other aspects of the community.

If there is something in law or secondary legislation—whatever it is, I look forward to seeing it—that the Government produce that says, “You must consult, you must talk to these people and you must take them into account”, that empowers the official to do so. It does not make it happen, but it sets out a structure where we can communicate properly between silos. We can get things done as a community and not in little bits.

I am sure that we can all think of examples of where things would have been done much better if the community had been involved. In fact, we do not need to look much further than our own front door. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, has a lot of experience with construction, but when I took one of my friends who is in the industry through the front door and asked him how much he thought it cost, he was at about a 50th of what it was. We were not involved; the community was not consulted. This has been done to us; we were not part of that decision. The same applies to our “HMP Westminster”-style enclosure. I therefore really encourage the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, to work with my noble friends Lord Hayward and Lord Forsyth to see whether we can get our own mechanisms to be rather better than they are.

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I have commented on the door and had conversations with various people around the House, which was very fascinating as a parable of this problem.

Christine Gilbert was a very good local authority leader who understood the limitations of the state and understood that just the processes and systems alone would not get us there. Something else needed to happen in which the local authority, the NHS and the normal players were obviously key partners. It was about the people and relationships; the machinery was not going to get us there, and she understood that as a very capable leader.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I also felt that the Minister’s reply to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, was good, but I would be grateful if he could send him and us a link to the guidance that he referred to so that we can check through it and understand how it works before Report. In the case of my amendment, I await the Hillsborough law. If it can do what Amendment 158 is setting out to do and a lot more across government, it will make a huge contribution. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.