Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 131 and my other amendments in this group. Amendments 131, 137, 151 and 152 seek reassurance that Natural England will use the best available evidence when developing and approving EDPs, and that that will be confirmed by the Secretary of State. The reason for these amendments is that this has not always been clearly the case. That in turn is evidenced by the revised heather burning regulations that we will be debating tomorrow.

Amendment 156 would require that Natural England report each year on the performance of each EDP in that year. The Minister did not reassure the House in Committee that the reporting requirements for the nature restoration fund or individual EDPs were satisfactory. I am sure that each EDP will be reporting its performance internally annually. Can the Minister confirm that and, if so, why is there a reluctance to share that with the public?

Amendment 157 seeks to require the impact on the local community and economy to be assessed and reported on. In some of the more remote parts of our country we have seen rewilding schemes and similar undertaken which have undermined local economies and created distrust within local communities. It is critically important that there is this level of engagement with local communities. Requiring that ensures that their views are taken fully into account.

I hope the Minister can provide some reassurance here. Amendment 174 makes a simple substitution of “must” for “may”. Why would Natural England not be required to publish these conservation measures? Do we really think it will publish if doing so is merely voluntary? I hope the Government have made progress in addressing these concerns since Committee. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is absolutely pointless voting for this, because Natural England cannot do the job it has at the moment. Unless it is better resourced and has better structure, it is completely pointless giving it any more jobs. However, I stand here in the throes of two very strong emotions. I signed 38 Conservative amendments—I have never done anything like that before. I committed to something that I thought that the Conservatives were going to do, and they did not do it. They let us all down: they decided not to try to take out Part 3. That is shameful. If you are in opposition, why do you not oppose? What they have just done is playing politics. This is why politicians have such a bad reputation.

My second emotion is fury, which I normally mostly reserve for the Government. Part 3 absolutely stinks, and there should be no effort to get it through this House. It is a terrible piece of legislation. It completely ignores the fact that we need nature. We depend on nature, and the Labour Government are so eco-ignorant that they completely avoid the plot.

Going back to the Conservatives, they are not to be trusted. If they cannot oppose the Government when they know the Government are wrong, why on earth are they sitting here? Why are they bothering? There are some noble Lords on this side—I use the word “noble” advisedly—who, if I had moved Amendment 123, having cosigned it, would have supported me. I am very touched by that, and I thank them. However, we are allowing these amendments to go through. We are trying to improve them, but it is like putting lipstick on a lamppost. I am not going to say “pig”—I like pigs. It is like trying to tart up something that does not need it because it should be thrown out. I ask noble Lords not to vote for this and not to trust the Tories on any amendment they put forward from now on. They are playing politics. They are not trying to do their best for Britain: they are just thinking about themselves.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, that was great fun. I hope the noble Baroness feels better for her confession of how many Conservative amendments she signed. It is a surprise to us all, I am sure.

I take a slightly different view. I do not know why we did not vote on Amendment 123; I wish we had, because I certainly would have supported it. I support all these attempts to improve the Bill. Why? Because the Government say that we should follow the science. They make great play of the evidence that should be underpinning all these EDPs. The amendments in this group, essentially, are about providing proper evidence, and surely that is not controversial. The best evidence is frequently referred to and proper reporting is required. I cannot understand why anybody would be against any of that.

I agree that Part 3 is a disaster, but we are trying to improve it. I do not know about lipstick on a lamp-post: I think we are just trying to improve it a bit, given what we have been given. I support these amendments, for what they are worth, and I think that castigating the Opposition does not really help greatly. They are trying as hard as they can to improve this.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

May I just say—not least to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones—that, as it happens, I support the view that it would be wrong to take out Part 3 at this stage? I say that for procedural reasons. If we took out Part 3, in effect, we would send it back to the other place without Part 3 in it and it would reinstate it. I fail to see at what point we would be able to do all the things that we have just been talking about and will go on to talk about, which is to revise Part 3 so that we can do our job, which is to take all the most harmful aspects of Part 3 out and put improvements in.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am so sorry—I do not know whether I am allowed to shout at the noble Lord again. What are they revising? Tell me what they are revising. They are not revising anything: they are intransigent. They refuse to listen, so why are we even trying?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I understand what the noble Baroness is saying and I think Part 3 is so devastating, but I am not going to do a Second Reading speech, because I was pretty critical then. In respect of the amendments here, I particularly like Amendment 174. I also support the amendments on annual reporting.

On the best available scientific evidence, I think it is just worth considering this. I agree entirely that we have to have the scientific evidence, but one of the issues that Natural England has regularly been criticised for in terms of development is, for example, offshore wind farms. The Government are very clear they believe they are absolutely vital in terms of achieving net zero or, indeed, decarbonising electricity by 2030. It is the situation, however, that developers are then asked to do at least two seasons of what impact there will be on birds, and elements like that. One of the key reasons why so many projects get delayed is the extent of the evidence required in order to satisfy the decisions.

Having been a Secretary of State for Defra, and in charge of the R&D budget, I can assure noble Lords the House that every scientist will keep saying, “There’s a gap in the evidence” when they want more money. I am not complaining about that, but we need to make sure that we have appropriate evidence. We should not ignore the science, but to continue to try to say “the best available” means we could be here for a very long time. That may be the benefit that some people wish to achieve, but, while we definitely need proper scientific evidence, we have to balance what is ever going to be the best available.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park. It is a difficult thing to do in the wake of the very learned speech by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, but there are sometimes occasions when things do not work in theory but work in practice. In Gibraltar, where a similar measure has been introduced, the population of swifts has stabilised, as I understand it. In the Duchy of Cornwall estate, where this requirement is made of builders, the occupancy rate of the cavities created by the swift bricks is 97%, not in every case by swifts but by other cavity nesting birds.

While I perfectly accept that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, may be right—possibly there is something in the atmosphere in Oxford, I do not know—at the cost of the measure, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said, it is worth an experiment and going ahead and making this requirement. I do not think it will happen, despite the good will of the builders, unless it is passed into law.

I am always against new and excessive regulation, but there are good and bad regulations. Good regulations impose a very small burden on economic actors and have a direct outcome that is intimately and obviously related to the regulatory measure. Of course, bad regulations tend to impose very high burdens and produce all sorts of unintended consequences. Granted, this measure may not produce the intended consequence to the full degree hoped for, but it is very hard to see what poor unintended consequences it could have, and the cost of introducing it would be very small.

Think, for those houses where it works, of the sheer joy of the children of those households in being able to look out of the window and see swifts not only nesting but flying to and fro, maybe even catching those insects in full sight of their bedrooms. It is a very pleasing thought. We should all support this, rally round and make the leap of faith that may be required but is fully justified in this case.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I did say not to trust any more amendments from this side, but this is one I will vote for if the noble Lord puts it to the House. It is worth repeating that there is no downside. Secondly, there are eight species that use these swift bricks, four of which are red-listed. So this is a much bigger issue than swifts—sorry to the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith. It is for our native birds, and we should keep that in mind when we vote.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 138 tabled by my noble friend Lord Roborough. Non-native invasive species are one of the top five pressures on biodiversity. It is extraordinary that despite there being a variety of government strategies under way, there is still, frankly, a lack of stuff really getting done. It is vital that as and when—or if—these EDPs get created, this must be tackled.

I recommend that the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, speak to the Senior Deputy Speaker. The noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, when he was a Defra Minister, was obsessed by biosecurity and tackling these invasive species. He used to pull up not the Japanese one but the balsam stuff—