Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Lord cannot withdraw his amendment until I have withdrawn mine.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her replies and I look forward to continuing to work with her throughout the Bill. I again thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for bringing this forward; it is a debate that is useful to have at the beginning of any Bill, just to set the tone.

I want to return to the central issue, which was raised repeatedly by nearly every noble Lord who spoke in this debate, and that is the future of local democracy under the provision of the Bill. At Second Reading and again today, the Minister insisted that this legislation does not represent an attack on local democracy. She reaffirmed the Government’s position that local decision-making remains central to the planning process. I fear we may be reading different Bills, because in clause after clause the principle of localism—the very foundation of community-led planning—is being eroded. We are witnessing the repeal of large sections of the Localism Act and seeing the introduction of powers that allow government-imposed national and significant infrastructure projects to bypass not only local consent but, in many cases, meaningful public engagement altogether. This Bill shifts power upwards, away from communities and towards the centre. That is why I believe that paragraph (d) of the purpose clause is not only helpful but essential. It reasserts a principle that should never have been up for negotiation: local voices must be heard and development should happen with communities, not to them. I thank all noble Lords who contributed to supporting this principle.

Finally, I turn back to paragraph (c) of the proposed purpose clause. This is clearly an emotive issue, and rightly so. It has drawn attention from across the Committee today, not least because of the direct relevance to Part 3 of the Bill, which risks weakening vital environmental protections at precisely the moment we should be strengthening them. It represents a step backwards, a regression from the hard-won safeguards enshrined in the Conservatives’ Environment Act. The problems do not stop there: there are gaps, inconsistencies and serious omissions. I urge the Minister to please step back, listen carefully and engage with these concerns, not just from the Committee but from a broad coalition outside it.

I hope the Committee will forgive me—it is quite personal—if I say that in my opinion it is bizarre that during the passage of LURB, noble Lords blocked reform of nutrient neutrality in this place. This leaves me curious to see whether they will raise the same concerns now that nutrient neutrality provisions are in their own Bill. We have wasted a number of years when up to 160,000 new homes could have been built in this country.

I conclude by reaffirming that we are committed to working constructively with the Government throughout Committee and in the remaining stages of the Bill. We want to deliver more homes and the important infrastructure that this country needs, but we need the process to get that right.

I had the privilege of working on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, and many noble Lords will recall the year I spent taking that legislation through this House. With the same level of commitment I had to that Bill, I look forward to engaging with the Minister to ensure that we get this Bill through and get it right. At this point, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 3 (to Amendment 2) withdrawn.

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[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

With Amendment 17 I will also debate Amendments 18 to 23 in my name. These have been described as a “redirection”; I am not exactly sure what that means, but there is a theme that I hope will become clear. I thank my noble friends on the Front Bench for adding their names to Amendments 17 and 23.

As the Explanatory Notes and various bits of memoranda make clear, this clause is designed to try to speed up aspects of planning, and I understand that flexibility may be wanted. I was a bit surprised when Minister Pennycook in the other place suggested in Committee, talking about offshore generation, that perhaps the MMO could become the planning authority in that regard. The MMO is simply not big enough to get into that.

The theme through my amendments is the fact that a Secretary of State has some literally very special powers, called special development orders. That is why I have tabled some quite detailed amendments. While the narrative, including in Committee and in various memoranda, has been that it can go to an alternative consenting authority, the reason I have tabled these amendments is that there is an alternative consenting authority: the Secretary of State himself or herself.

Amendment 17 tries to probe why the Bill refers to Section 59. You do not need to go through the NSIP and DCO process because the Secretary of State could, more or less, just authorise this tomorrow, without any public consultation, engagement and all sorts of things. The Secretary of State already has the power to do that. I expect that it is usually used for things such as MoD land, so the reasons may be somewhat related to national security infrastructure and so on, but I am concerned that this hands a heck of a lot of power to the Secretary of State, and we should at least be considering that carefully.

That is particularly true when thinking about nuclear and other energy generation, which my Amendment 23 covers. The amount of land taken by most energy projects is pretty significant, not just land for the station itself or the transmission network but the preparation land. That is why I would like to see a commitment, ideally in law, that this will never apply to where a Secretary of State themselves can, on request, give planning permission to something from a developer.

I turn to another aspect of my amendments. This is a novel process—I think that is the explanation in various memoranda—and it will be done by regulations. Putting in the Bill three months for the Secretary of State to make a particular decision seems reasonable if the whole point of this is that it be done quicker. By the way, that is just considering whether something should go through the DCO process or an alternative consenting authority.

In the debate on the first group, I clumsily mentioned the Minister’s commitment to write. It was actually Minister Pennycook, in the House of Commons Committee where this was considered, who pledged several times in the debate on this clause to write to the Committee. That letter may have been sent to the members of the Committee, but it certainly has never appeared on the Bill website or been deposited in the Libraries of either House. He pledged to give more examples of how this would work in practice. The reason for me probing this today is that we could end up with some kind of Stalinist Secretary of State who is determined to build whatever they like anywhere and everywhere. As it stands, through this amendment and this new clause, we will give them the powers to do that, and I do not think we should. That is why I wanted to look at this clause.

I turn to Article 6 of the convention on human rights. Again, a back-up memorandum says:

“These alternative consenting regimes are likely to be … the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, Highways Act 1980, Transport and Works Act 1992 and the Harbours Act 1964”.


But it does not say that it will be only that, which, again, is part of my concern.

So, in a variety of ways, this is probing to see whether we can properly get, in effect, a commitment from the Government on the Floor of this House or through a letter from the Minister—if it is not in legislation—that can candidly be used in a future court case when somebody might want to oppose the Secretary of State doing something so draconian. It would show that it was made clear to this House and this Parliament that that would never happen. So far, none of the back-up memoranda or Explanatory Notes makes that explicit, and that is what I hope to achieve today.

I am particularly concerned about energy projects. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is no longer in his place, but I explained on the previous group that I have extensive experience of trying to handle NSIPs as a Member of Parliament and now as a Peer in this place, and I am still very concerned about my local community and what is happening in that regard. With that, I beg to move.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Coffey for explaining this group. That leaves me no need to go through it again, but I am pleased to support her Amendments 17 and 23. I will be brief, but I wanted to say something about both of them, especially Amendment 17. This amendment is vital because it probes the fundamental issue of democratic accountability and local consent. If the government-imposed national significant infrastructure projects can proceed without planning consent or public engagement, we risk undermining public trust by excluding communities from decisions that directly affect them. This also weakens local accountability by sidelining local authorities and stakeholders, and it increases the risks of legal and political challenges, as the lack of consultation may well lead to resistance or even to judicial review.

Probing this issue is essential to ensure that any such powers are used only when they are truly justified—when they are proportionate to the situation and exercised with true transparency. I raised this concern in the opening group today, and it is one on which we really need some clear answers. I ask again, why is it necessary for government-imposed NSIPs to bypass both planning consent and public engagement? How is this consistent with the Government’s continued claims that localism is protected?

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for not preceding the noble Baroness, Lady Scott.

Amendment 17 would remove the required consent for the construction of or extensions to a generating station for electricity. Can the Minister explain why, in this instance, the government proposal is that it be disapplied from the existing requirements for going through a proper process? It is important to understand the reason. If it is for timeliness, what causes the delays? If it is for reasons of cost, is that related to timeliness? Is there another way to have accountability and public discourse without creating delays and cost pressures? Otherwise, why would we want to disapply the current requirements for consent? Again, there is a thread of accountability running through this: there is a tension, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned, between getting things done and accountability for local communities.

With those few comments, I look forward to a detailed answer from the Minister.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

45: Clause 6, page 13, line 23, at end insert—
“(7A) Where the Secretary of State decides not to accept an application under subsection (2) and (5), the Secretary of State must publish the reasons for the decision and identify the relevant statutory or regulatory basis.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to increase transparency and protect developers from arbitrary rejection.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 45 seeks to enhance transparency in the development consent order—DCO—acceptance process. It would require the Secretary of State to publish the reasons whenever an application is not accepted under the relevant subsections of Clause 6, along with the precise statutory or regulatory basis for such a decision. This is a simple yet crucial step towards ensuring accountability and transparency in the decision-making process.

By explicitly identifying the legal grounds on which an application is rejected, the amendment would help to eliminate ambiguity and to reinforce the rule of law within the planning system. Currently, developers face significant uncertainty and frustration when their applications are rejected without clear explanations. This can hinder timely resubmission by leaving applicants unsure of what issues need to be addressed or whether the rejection was based on procedural, technical or substantive grounds. The resulting delay not only increases the costs and administrative burden for developers but can stall projects that may be vital to meeting national infrastructure and environmental goals.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response, but I am not reassured. I am still not at all clear what the developers are being asked for, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Banner, and we have heard from developers as well. There needs to be clarity not about what they should change but why they have been turned down. I hope the Minister and I can talk more about this, but I am considering bringing it back on Report if we do not get the reassurance that the clarity that developers need from the Secretary of State will be delivered by any changes that the Government are making. If not, we will press to make changes ourselves. At the moment, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 45 withdrawn.