Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Wilson of Sedgefield Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th September 2025 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I would like to remind noble Lords that we have a large number of groups on this Bill to get through today. While this is Committee, I rise to remind noble Lords of the guidance in the Companian at paragraph 8.81 on speeches at the amending stages of Bills:

“Members taking part in debate at an amending stage should not use their speech simply to summarise or repeat at length points made by others. They should not make ‘second reading’ speeches or make discursive interventions which are not relevant to the amendment(s) under discussion”.


While there have many important contributions from all sides of the Committee, parts of our recent debates have strayed into Second Reading speeches and away from the amendments. So that we can make progress on the remaining groups, I therefore ask all noble Lords to ensure that their remarks on further amendments are relevant to the topic under discussion, and brief.

Amendment 185N

Moved by

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[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

The Companion says that, whether or not a noble Lord wishes to push their amendment to a vote, they have to be brief. We are going here into areas that are not affected by the amendments, and the noble Lord has been speaking for three minutes.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I have been commenting on the comments made by various noble Lords. I just wanted to be clear about how this is part of a wider issue of which this Committee and the country need to be aware. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment now but give notice that I may wish to bring it back on Report.

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[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, back in 2022, when the nutrient neutrality rules came in, it started a three and a half year hiatus that has prevented the building of new affordable homes, caused the bankruptcy of local architects, the closure of local builders’ merchants, the liquidation of many smaller builders and the folding of so many white van journeyman contractors—the plasterers, plumbers, groundworkers, roofers and tilers.

What was the basis of this catastrophe? As a council leader, I sought to find out. It did not take long to identify Natural England as the culprit. So I asked it for its reasoning. It advanced a theory that there was complete equivalence between the application of a single kilogram of phosphate anywhere in a catchment, regardless of the distance from a special area of conservation that needed protection under the regulations. It fundamentally refused to countenance the sort of risk-based approach that would be applied in any other walk of life or by any other regulator. Its approach was that the flushing of a lavatory directly into the protected Surlingham Broad was absolutely equivalent to going to the loo in Shipdham, over 30 miles away along a convoluted network of ditches, streams, tributaries and rivers before those rivers passed by the Surlingham Broad.

It is nonsense. I do not deny that there might be some infinitesimally small, theoretical riparian link between the lavatory in Surlingham and the toilet in Shipdham, but anyone who has studied for O-level or GCSE maths knows that the area around a point increases with the square of the distance, so the effect of the loo in Shipdham would be 30 times 30—900 times—less impactful; that is, if the water from that loo did not percolate into the aquifer, become assimilated into littoral plants, adsorbed on to soil particles or carried away in a farmer’s crops, in which case the impact would be significantly less, and it is.

When I asked, the designated person said that as there are no major processes for permanent phosphate losses within the aquatic environment, the nutrient neutrality approach is to assume that all the phosphorus will at some point reach the site, albeit this may take varying lengths of time and therefore there is the possibility of it contributing to the eutrophication impacts now or in the future. You do not have to be a scientist to realise that this “bathtub principle” is poppycock.

I asked Natural England to provide me with the scientific evidence. It sent me a slim paper repeating its assertions, with a long list of academic references. So I read them. The academic references that Natural England said supported its position argued the reverse. They made it clear that there were major processes for the permanent phosphate losses from the aquatic environment.

As I said in the previous group, this is my specialist subject. Before I joined your Lordships’ House, I gave written evidence to the Built Environment Committee on this point. I will not list all the ways in which I said that the scientific papers contradicted the Natural England stance but, in summary, it disregarded a whole range of natural mitigation factors, including: confusing adsorption with absorption; denying percolation to the underlying aquifer; ignoring the precipitation of phosphates in the calcareous soils that are found in the Yare catchment and along the River Wensum; the related effects of high soil pH in locking up phosphates; the effect of dilution by rainwater and the flows out to sea; and the incorporation and deposition of organic manures in the crops and along the brooks and streams.

The ban on housebuilding has been advanced on a completely unscientific, false premise, and one cooked up by Natural England. In short, Natural England’s interpretation of the scientific literature was misleading and mendacious. Its justification used selective quotation to misrepresent the balance of evidence.

Under the regulations, the test is one of significant harm. Natural England has misdirected itself and advised Ministers to substitute “significant” with “any”. How can it be trusted if it acts in this way? Its misrepresentation of the risk of the flushing of toilets in new homes has allowed it to prosecute a war on the housebuilding industry without justification. It is the enemy of growth. I can hardly believe I am going to say it, but this is probably the once and only time I believe the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because she has fingered Natural England in the article in the Times referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, as the enemy of growth.

Further, I then scrutinised Natural England’s nutrient calculator, which I found to be loaded with flaws and poor assumptions.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

Which amendment is the noble Lord referring to?

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I am talking to all of them—particularly those in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey but also Amendment 333.

There is more. I scrutinised Natural England’s nutrient calculator. It used the wrong digital elevation model. It used the wrong areas of influence on sewage treatment works. No allowance was made for excess capacity in the sewage treatment works. I am going to come to a very important point in a moment. The incorrect number of residents per property was assumed, which is significant where there are holiday homes. It assumed much greater water consumption for each house than we knew to be the case. The numbers for manures coming from outdoor pig units were underestimated by somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times, by reference to Defra booklet RB209. Suffice it to say that the calculator is orders of magnitude adrift.

There was then a completely arbitrary 20% buffer applied over and above the calculated number for no justifiable reasons. It was all very shoddy. The dodgy statistics have resulted in an extra £5,000 to £15,000 extra tariff per home for every house built in what is essentially the entirety of the district in which I live and its two neighbours.