Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, and I agreed with every word he said.

Planning is part of the social contract. For the Government to deliver that social contract, the people for whom the planning is developed need to be part of it. If the Bill is to deliver the homes and communities that people are glad to live in, we must amend parts of it so that people are guaranteed a decent input at an early stage.

During this debate, we have heard of some of the things the public will be faced with: master plans, strategic development plans, local plans and neighbourhood plans. They have local authorities; they will have mayors and development corporations. It is jaw dropping. For a normal member of the public who is not immersed in the sort of world we have been immersed in this afternoon, they are going to really struggle to have their input, unless there is something in the Bill that makes it much easier for them. Certainly, diminishing the role of the elected councillor is a very regressive step. In fact, the Government should really be encouraging local authorities to have a bigger role.

To look back to some years ago, Planning for Real exercises really invigorated people in my local authority. The community could come out to wherever it was—the town hall, the village hall or the pub—and get truly involved. If we look at the tools that are available now—I am glad the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned digital twinning—we see that they have massively taken on the ability for people to get truly involved, because they will be able to overlay all those plans that I mentioned and the nature recovery areas so that people can see in real time what the developments being proposed will mean to them. The Bill needs to include some of that far more imaginatively, so that people are not disempowered by it, which is what I fear.

Of course, local government has not been perfect: only about one-third of local authorities have up-to-date adopted local plans. That is why it is crucial that the Bill takes forward public input much more positively. If none of those things happen, people will find it find it even harder to have a say in shaping their community’s future.

In my remaining time, I want to mention Part 3 of the Bill. Surely, we are clever enough to design legislation that allows for growing communities and for nature to be healthy. A number of noble Lords have mentioned mitigation hierarchies to avoid harm and mitigating unavoidable impacts. A very last resort is providing compensation measures, and the Bill goes straight to that last resort. We must insert a mitigation hierarchy clause.

Finally, from everything I have heard this afternoon—it will not be dying in a ditch; it will be dying in a chalk stream—we will fight to the last to have these irreplaceable habitats recognised in the Bill as such. The name is on the tin: if the Government cannot see that, that is exactly why this House should make a stand.