Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Banner Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comments on Motion G and assets of community value. I am conscious of the new Bill that will arrive here. I am also very grateful for the remarks of Minister Matthew Pennycook, as they recognise that this is an issue. I was elated when your Lordships voted for the amendment at the time, but I am conscious that some of these things can be done through secondary regulations. As a consequence, I shall not try to test anything further, but I look forward to the consultation coming forward shortly—genuinely shortly—as well, I hope, as some draft regulations at the same time. They are so easy that I have written them for the Government already through my first amendment. I hope that we can make progress so that I do not have to revisit this with a further amendment to the Bill that we will look forward to examining.

[Lord Banner (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, endorse Motion F. The national scheme of delegation strikes the right balance between going far enough and not too far, which is not without difficulty. I urge the Minister and her officials to bear in mind the imperative of avoiding a proliferation of different thresholds. We have the national scheme of delegation thresholds; we have the 150 dwelling threshold announced a few days ago in relation to the exercise of potential haul-in powers to prevent refusals; and we also have coming down the line potential thresholds in relation to standardised Section 106. What I have been hearing from developers in the last few days is that the potential range and proliferation of thresholds—because we also have the EIA thresholds—make decision-making quite difficult in how to calibrate their developments, so the simpler it is, the better.

The Minister also mentioned the forthcoming NPPF consultation. Is she able to indicate when the final version of the new NPPF will be published? I appreciate that she cannot give a precise indication. There is anecdotal evidence that during the consultation on the last NPPF some applications were put on hold because applicants wanted to wait to see the final version. Indeed, there is some evidence that during the passage of this Bill some infrastructure projects have been put on hold so as to benefit from some of the streamlining, so the greater the clarity that can be provided as to how long—we hope that it will be fairly quickly—the post-consultation process will take to produce the new NPPF, the better.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the positive engagement we have had during the Bill, where compromise has been reached on a number of very important issues. It shows that all the hours we have spent discussing and scrutinising the Bill have not been in vain. I am particularly grateful that the Government have seen the light over the requirement of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for an affirmative procedure on the national scheme of delegation. It is an issue on which we on these Benches supported the noble Lord, but we also tabled our own amendments, because we thought it was very important that the first iteration of the national scheme of delegation should be properly and fully scrutinised. We are really pleased that the Government have conceded on that issue.