Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 130 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown. It is supported by those champions of nature, the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Young and Lady Grender. I only wish I could have signed it myself.

I am not particularly interested in making things easier for developers—streamlining their processes is not my primary aim—but I strongly agree with the issues listed in Amendment 130: nutrient neutrality, water quality, water resource and air quality. Humans need these things for health. All our concerns about Part 3 have been supported by quite a lot of organisations, such as the Wildlife and Countryside Link, the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, the Bat Conservation Trust, the Better Planning Coalition, the Wildlife Trusts and the Royal Society, which have all raised concerns just as we in your Lordships’ House have done.

Our concerns and our amendments to Part 3 are a demonstration of how much we do not trust this Government to care about the countryside, nature, wildlife and human well-being. I trusted some in the previous Government to protect the countryside because they owned so much of it—they probably had its interests at heart and in their wallets—but many in this Government clearly prefer bulldozers to bats and beavers. To me, that immediately signals that we have a problem with this Government. Labour has been disappointing on nature, the environment and climate change. It occasionally talks about those things but does not understand them, and that is a source of real anxiety to me.

I have no trust in this Government doing the right thing to protect nature. They are opposing a series of very moderate, sensible suggestions to make our planning system more nature friendly. When I say that, I mean human friendly as well. We are nothing without nature—we need it very badly—but Labour has rejected the most minor of measures, for example over swift bricks in new buildings. It has said no to the most basic protections for our precious and rare chalk streams and fails to do the most obvious things, such as stopping developers attaching new buildings to already overloaded sewage systems.

If the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, decides to put this amendment to a vote, we on the Green Benches will support her very strongly.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 122 in the name of my noble friend Lord Roborough, because it is important that guidance is issued to Natural England on a number of issues that are going to be relevant. I am particularly keen on proposed new subsection (6)(d) on

“the need to define the proposed conservation measures relating to an EDP during a pre consultation period and to seek expressions of interest from appropriate persons or bodies to deliver them”.

It is hugely important that the private sector is involved. I hear good words from Natural England about getting on with farmers and trying to work with the private sector. The results are absolutely appalling when you look at them, and the private sector is very fed up with Natural England. This rather echoes the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who said that those of us who are keen on preserving and improving the countryside and biodiversity are very disappointed with how the Labour Government have behaved. It comes in stark contrast to what they said a few months ago when they were in opposition, which is where they will be again in a few years’ time; then they will be back in favour of the countryside.

I like Amendment 130 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, very much. I hope that she will press it.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, given the time, I will be brief. I support Amendment 130 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis; that is because I went to some of the very useful briefings on how EDPs will be prepared.

A couple of things stood out to me. One is that Natural England proposes to base its EDP preparations on modelling much more than on actual monitoring and measuring on the ground; it will not require demonstration of the success of EDPs before the destruction of habitats is allowed. The other is that, given the voluntary nature of EDPs, the proposal is that the scale of the conservation measures will expand or contract in proportion to how much is paid into the relevant restoration fund.

Relying on modelling is hard when it comes to species. Modelling physics, such as on the flow of nutrients or the spread of air pollution, is complex but it is nothing like as complex as modelling ecology. We can measure for the presence or absence of chemicals much more easily and reliably than we can for species. Further, models are only as good as the data you base them on, but we just do not have the biological records to support really precise, accurate modelling. I cite the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, which says:

“It should be emphasised that biodiversity datasets are, by their nature, incomplete … access to private land to collect such information is frequently difficult or impossible”.


Just imagine how much private land has never been properly surveyed, even for notable species.

I turn to my second concern: the scalability of EDPs depending on the money paid in. When we heard from experts at a briefing for Peers, it became clear that the intention is that, if only a few developers paid to use an EDP, the provisions would be scaled accordingly. This relies on the fact that the ecological requirements—and, therefore, the benefits—would scale by the same proportion, as well as the money, but that is very unlikely to be true. Ecology does not scale linearly. If you halve the size of a habitat, you degrade it by more than half, and you often hit thresholds below which things are not viable. That is one of the reasons why this kind of strategic, joined-up planning can help, but the lack of detail on exactly how this measure will work makes me fear that it has not been fully thought through.

All in all, it seems very risky to try to undertake using EDPs, as I understand them, as part of the planned work for species because the consequences of us being wrong are so high. By the time we know something might not be working, it will be too late to do anything about it because we will have lost the habitat and the animals and plants in it. Restricting EDPs to physical modelling, where we can have a lot more confidence in our accuracy, precision and scalability, seems a much more sensible way to progress.