Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Fourth sitting)

John Grady Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. Notwith-standing the comments from my fellow shadow Minister, who made an excellent contribution, can I press the Minister on one question? My hon. Friend outlined the Opposition’s concern over removing wholesale—we are not saying that the Minister is doing this—the checks and balances relating to somebody being able to challenge a decision that they deem has not been taken in the right way.

However, it would be remiss of us as a party not to acknowledge that there are cases where JR is used vexatiously. To use an example from my constituency, I waited for 12 years to get a 300-foot extension to Southampton airport’s runway. It took three judicial reviews before we finally got that through. There was unmitigated support from the local authority and me as the Member of Parliament at the time, and it was taken to JR for what I would say were very dubious reasons, just to try to delay the project.

I understand why the Minister is bringing in the measures, notwithstanding some of the concerns that my hon. Friend mentioned about the balance. However, I am reassured by what the Minister said about not removing the ability to challenge and tightening the process around what can be accepted as being without merit.

I have one question for the Minister, which he may not be able to answer today—I would not necessarily expect him to—but perhaps he could write to me about it. Following Lord Banner’s work, which was a thoughtful examination of how legal challenges could be streamlined, has the Minister made any assessments, through officials or the Department, of how much time or cost on average the changes to clause 8 might mean for the system overall? I am not expecting him to get his abacus out and look at that now, but I wonder whether he could outline to the Committee, through an impact assessment, the effect of some of the changes.

We will not push this clause to a Division. We understand the principled reason why the Minister is bringing it forward, even if we have some concern about the detail of the measure.

[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. This clause and the other clauses in this chapter are good news for Scotland, because we in Scotland depend on projects in England to proceed. Many projects are cross-border and need consent in both countries. That is important for jobs, particularly jobs for young people.

I have had the misfortune to be involved in infrastructure projects for many years. From time to time judicial reviews without any merit are brought solely to delay and frustrate projects. It is right and proper that the law is changed to make it clear that, once the High Court has made a decision, following argument—because the right to an oral hearing is retained—further appeals are prevented. Such appeals can lead to significant delays, depending on the business of the Court of the Appeal, which has many pressing priorities.

Some mention was made of costs. I will briefly describe the cost to developers, because the Labour party is a pro-business, pro-environment party. If someone has a development that is subject to a judicial review, they have planned their contracting strategy, and what it will cost to build the development, and their financing. If there is an indeterminate delay, and a series of additional delays of unpredictable length—as a lawyer, I could never tell people how long litigation would take—they are then exposed to significant fluctuations in the financial and commodities markets. There are therefore real costs, so I naturally support clause 8. The clause, along with the rest of the package of reforms to the development consent order regime, will create the opportunity for significant additional employment in Scotland, jobs for our young people, and great net zero and housing projects.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley, for his constructive tone on this clause—and others; I do not mean to confine his constructive attitude to just this clause. I welcome his praise for Lord Banner’s review, which I agree was thoughtful and insightful. As part of that review Lord Banner made it clear that although the duration differs between different applications, each attempt to apply for a judicial review currently extends the duration of a claim by, on average, several weeks, and in some cases by several months. In large numbers of cases, time is added by legal challenges that are unsuccessful. The changes made by the Bill aim to strike the right balance between improving efficiency and ensuring access to justice.

To be clear, this clause does remove the paper permission stage, but only makes changes by removing the right to appeal for cases that are deemed “totally without merit”. Other cases will retain that right of appeal if they are deemed to be with merit and able to be considered. We think these changes will make a difference to the time that projects take to work their way through the system, and we will work with the judiciary to advance a number of other changes to the process for NSIP judicial reviews, such as introducing target timescales for cases that we think will have a beneficial impact. On that basis, I commend the clause to the Committee.

Clause 9

Connections to electricity network: licence and other modifications

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[John Grady]

I rise simply to add my support to this provision. There is an extensive requirement to develop the electricity generation industry in Scotland and England, and this will give rise to great long-term jobs and apprenticeships for young people, as well as move us on to cheaper, secure, lower-carbon energy.

Such queues have been a long-standing issue in the electricity industry, as any developer will tell you, and half the time it is absolutely impossible to know when their project will be connected. That is no basis on which to attract the significant investment we need in our industry in this country, because developers can go to other jurisdictions and get much quicker connections.

This reform has been carefully put together by the ministerial team and Ofgem. The Minister for Energy has addressed the issue, and the reform is to be applauded. It may seem a rather arid and dry topic, but ultimately the reform is of significant benefit to industry in the United Kingdom.

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[Michael Shanks]

I thank the shadow Minister for the way he is discussing these topics. I appreciate that they are from a planning system alien to the one with which he is, I am sure, very familiar—I am tempted to say that the shadow Energy Secretary could join him on the Bench, but he is not here.

I understand the point that the shadow Minister is making. For hon. Members who are not familiar with the Scottish system, a public inquiry can be triggered with one objection into the planning system. The public inquiry can take years to conclude and often is not reflective of actual community sentiment on a particular project. This system does not exist in any form anywhere else in the UK. The purpose of these consenting reforms is to deliver significant efficiencies in the consenting process, and to make decisions faster—not necessarily to make positive decisions faster, just to make decisions faster. Introducing another element that feels like the element that we are removing takes away from that.

As I have said previously, there are still significant opportunities for communities to participate in the process. One of the key aspects that we are introducing is the right of a reporter, who is an experienced specialist in planning and consenting, to consider representations about whether there should be a public hearing on a particular process. That reporter will then make the decision about whether it should go forward into a hearing session or a public inquiry. That is rather than what we have at the moment, which is an automatic trigger that holds up projects for a significant length of time.

I am always happy to meet with the shadow Scottish Secretary on a range of things. I am happy to engage with him, because I appreciate that his part of Scotland has a significant amount of network infrastructure being built; but for the reasons I have outlined, this amendment goes counter to our objectives, and does not sit with the reforms we are making to the Scottish planning system, as distinct from the planning system in England and Wales.

[John Grady]

I will make a couple of brief remarks as a resident Scottish MP. The Minister has referenced co-operation between the Scottish and UK Governments. That is to be welcomed; it reflects this Government’s determination to do right by Scotland and to work productively with the SNP Government in Holyrood.

These provisions will help to unlock significant investment in Scotland. We heard last week how SSE’s programme of projects, which these provisions help to unlock, will lead to £22 billion of investment by 2030. That is the biggest investment we have seen in the north of Scotland since the second world war. Just think what we could achieve if we had a Labour Government in Scotland as well as in England.

The Minister is right to have worked closely with the Scottish Government on reforming the provisions, which in many cases predate 1989, because the 1989 Act was a consolidation. He is right to have worked productively with the Scottish Government, putting Scotland first, because that will give rise to significant investment and jobs—jobs for our young people and high-quality jobs—as well as access for the people of Great Britain to greater volumes of fixed-price electricity that is not subject to fluctuations in wholesale markets, as we have seen over the last few years.

[Paul Holmes]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

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[Michael Shanks]

No, I will carry on answering this point, if that is okay.

We are very enthusiastic about clause 17—who would have thought it? To be clear about this point—I feel as if I am the only Scottish MP on this Committee, but I am not—when this Government increase spending in a particular area, that results in a budget transfer to the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Irish Executive, which they can spend on whatever they see as their local priorities. An increase in NHS spending in England does not lead to the exact same in Scotland. We will not bind the hands of every single decision that is made in this case. This is about conferring a power on Scottish Government Ministers to set and charge fees to electricity network operators for necessary wayleave applications in Scotland.

[John Grady]

I thank the Minister, although he must feel awfully lonely as the Front-Bench Scotsman. As the Member for Rutherglen just on the other side of the Clyde from me, does he agree that the charging of fees for necessary wayleaves is a rather odd way to relitigate the referendum that took place in 1999, and a rather odd way to relitigate the questions of devolution? I know that the Conservative party has some trouble, from time to time, in accepting the devolution settlement. We seem to have moved from the West Lothian question to the Hamble Valley question. It is remarkably confusing.

[The Chair]

Order. Let us stick to the point.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill (First sitting)

John Grady Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 24th April 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Nesil Caliskan (Barking) (Lab)]

I was a local councillor until I resigned last May, but I am not sure whether I need to declare that. I am a vice president of the Local Government Association, which will be relevant for the panel this afternoon.

[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

Until the general election I, too, was a solicitor and I had a practice for many years in the energy sector.

[The Chair]

I thank all Members for declaring their interests, which have been noted.

Examination of Witnesses

Robbie Owen and Sir John Armitt gave evidence.

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[Michael Shanks]

Finally, Dhara, picking up on the questions on connections reform and the wider push in the Bill on how we build network infrastructure more quickly and the ambition of that, how critical is it to the broader energy space—particularly on the questions of energy security, bringing down bills and the wider space on our energy mix going forward—that we build more network infrastructure and get the grid working? How critical is that aspect to delivering in the 2020s, and in the 2030s in particular, to meet the demand that we are going to see, and the Government’s other objective of bringing down bills?

Dhara Vyas: That is absolutely the right question to be asking, because we will not achieve any of it unless we unblock the issues we are seeing within the infrastructure space. The reality is that with these so-called zombie projects, at least half of them are ready to move on to the next stage. In large part, that is down to the work that has been happening as part of the connections reform project. It is really important that we keep on moving with the momentum we have right now, because gaining planning permission and making progress through the new milestones that the National Energy System Operator has set out is the next big challenge for us.

We are in a really difficult position right now. Bills and debt owed by customers to energy suppliers are at a record high. We are still really feeling and living in the long shadow of the cost of living crisis, which was partly down to the energy security crisis following the illegal invasion of Ukraine. Investing in an abundance of clean power will be completely pointless unless we have the infrastructure to move it around the country, and unless we invest in clean power, we will not ultimately bring down bills to the extent that we need to. The other part of that is demand. We will see demand increase by at least sixfold. We are going to have electrification of our homes and our transport, which brings us back full circle to the need to be able to move the electricity around.

[John Grady]

Q I have a question for Christianna, Beatrice and Charlotte. To bring this to life, I am a Scottish MP, so if I am building a set of offshore wind farms in the north of Scotland, I also need to build transmission infrastructure from Scotland down to England. The holdouts of this involve connection queues, planning delays in Scotland and planning delays in England. The Bill, with the reforms in England and Scotland, seeks to reduce those delays. I want to unpick what that means for my constituents in terms of jobs and investment. How much money will be invested in the grid in Scotland over the next five to 10 years, because this Bill helps speed that investment up?

Christianna Logan: Our programme of projects to deliver for 2030 is a £22 billion investment. It is the biggest investment that we have seen in the north of Scotland probably since the second world war, so it is really significantyou’re your constituents. Our colleagues in ScottishPower have their investments in your area as well. Alongside that, there is a significant number of jobs—we expect around 6,000 jobs enabled through our investments in Scotland specifically. Just this year, we will be recruiting another 600 people into SSEN transmission to help with this transformation of our grid network.

All of that, as you say, is dependent on us getting consent to progress all these projects and the necessary regulatory approvals for the investments. We have been working very closely with Government and Ofgem on the reforms, and we believe that the proposals put forward in the Bill will take us forward in that regard. As I said earlier, the secondary legislation and the work with the Scottish Government will be critical to capturing those benefits.

[John Grady]

Q Charlotte, some of the projects you are doing rely on Scottish infrastructure. Is it the same in England: more jobs, more activity?

Charlotte Mitchell: Yes, more jobs and more activity. Picking up on the point about consenting, we have similar yet different challenges in England and Wales. As you note, the Bill looks to streamline the NSIP regime. That is incredibly important for us at National Grid. We are very supportive of the measures in the Bill, and there are three in particular that I would like to namecheck as helping us to accelerate the projects that we need to move that power around, as we have been discussing.

The first one is the commitment to refresh the national policy statements every five years, or more frequently. We really welcome that, because it is incredibly important that we have policy stability for our projects. I would just caution that we do not update them so frequently that the policy landscape moves, but five years feels like the right cadence for refreshing those.

Another measure in the Bill that will help is the ability to opt out of the NSIP regime, where that is more appropriate for particular projects. At National Grid, for example, sometimes when we are upgrading a substation we need to move some overhead lines around. You can trip that threshold and end up in the NSIP regime, where really that does not feel like the spirit of the regime—that is not what it was set up to do. The ability to write to the Secretary of State and explain why it is not the most appropriate regime is really helpful for us, and we really welcome that measure.

The third one was spoken about by the previous panel: yesterday’s announcement of looking again at the consultation requirements and moving to a non-statutory footing for consultation on NSIP projects. Again, that will help us to engage in a more targeted, effective and proportionate way, so that we can bring projects forward while continuing to engage communities. That will help us to ensure that we have the right projects in the right places.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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[Lewis Cocking]

Q How will that affect the timeframe? I suppose the Government want projects to happen quickly, but you are now saying that there is another process to go through, so can you explain how that will affect the timeframe of projects?

Beatrice Filkin: What we set out in the decision last week sets off the piece of work that NESO are doing over this year. That helps projects, because as we have talked about, there are a number of projects in the queue that are either nowhere near ready or are not deemed needed for the overall strategic plan. So the process of sorting through the queue will speed up that very constrained access to the network to enable those projects that are needed and ready to join and connect to the network earlier.

[John Grady]

Q I want to ask about coastal Scotland, and I declare an interest: my granddad and several of my cousins were trawlermen in Scotland. Offshore wind represents a big opportunity in Scotland for coastal communities and harbours, which have suffered economic decline over the years. Have I got that right?

Beatrice Filkin: Are you asking whether it provides an opportunity to local communities?

[John Grady]

Yes.

Beatrice Filkin: Absolutely. We see this in terms of not only the build process, but the operations of these pieces of infrastructure.

[John Grady]

Q So this Bill, which speeds up planning and consent for transmission and generation infrastructure, is really important for Scotland’s coastal communities. That must follow, mustn’t it?

Beatrice Filkin: Yes.

Christianna Logan: Investment in things like ports infrastructure comes directly as a result of the investment in these projects, and that investment is not secured until we achieve consents, whether that is networks or offshore wind as our customer. So absolutely there is a benefit. There is also the community benefit that will come as a result of these projects.

Beatrice Filkin: There are also the wider supply chain opportunities. Obviously, we want to see the international and UK supply chain relocating here and providing degrees of the supply chain directly for these projects from our home communities.

[The Chair]

As we have a bit more time, there is a last question from Amanda Martin.