Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to say a few words about something that has not been talked about very much. Let me turn this damn phone off first—this happened in my Select Committee yesterday and it was not very good.

I want to talk about planning, because planning comes up a great deal in this Bill—quite rightly, and it is a great Bill. There is a lot about the different ways of obtaining planning, such as through the Transport and Works Act or through the Planning Inspectorate. What I cannot find is anything about planning when it comes to railways or canals. Historically, planning permission for them has been obtained through a hybrid Bill. I have been involved in a number of hybrid Bill projects: the Channel Tunnel was the first one; then there was HS1; and, more recently, HS2. I also chaired a Select Committee on a river project in east London—no, in the north-east somewhere.

There is one common thing that worries me; with greater pressure on people’s time, I have a serious worry. Who you would call a judge in any court, or an inspector in planning, becomes a group of a dozen or half a dozen Members of Parliament or Members of your Lordships’ House. They are expected to act as a judge with full transparency and full fairness; to listen to all the evidence, both from the promoter and from the people who are petitioning; and then to make a decision.

This all sounds very easy until you look at things and ask, “First of all, how is the Select Committee selected?” It is not like a Select Committee that we have here. It is a special Select Committee to act as judge and jury, so to speak, for the particular project—usually one promoted by the Government. I have to say, when you start looking at who is selected, a lot of the time the selection is based on: “Have you behaved in the House? Have you voted with your party, or have you not been there?” If you are speaking against the party too often, you are going on that committee. I could give several examples, which I will not do now, but it has got to a stage where you can look at the committee and say, “Well, I’ve got to open my correspondence in the morning meeting. Maybe I’ll be asleep after lunch, but nobody will notice”. That happens quite often.

The poor petitioners, who are not helped by the very expensive lawyers whom the promoter is employing, often have to speak on their own. They are told throughout the process, “It’s all very difficult. You’re probably not going to win, but I suppose you could try”. They then have to accept, more or less, the decision of this so-called court, which is under a lot of pressure from Ministers and everyone else to come out in favour of the promoter. I would like to ask my noble friend the Minister—I do not necessarily need an answer tonight, but I think that this deserves a petition when we get to Committee stage—do we need to use the hybrid Bill process for railways and canals anymore? The planning process that we have through the Planning Inspectorate and the Transport and Works Act seems to work very well and people have confidence in it. Certainly on the basis of HS1, I could go on to compensation and things like that, but I will not do so; I shall just say that people are very upset about it. They think that they have been treated badly, and then they do not get paid their compensation—whether or not that is related, I do not know.

We ought to have a debate about this because I suspect the reason for not having a change is because Parliament sees itself as supreme. We are very good at being supreme here, and they are very good at being even more supreme down at the other end of the Corridor. However, I think that, for something like this, which is basically a court, we should give it to the professionals. So I shall try to come up with a petition, which may at least enable some debate to take place; I may be told why that will not work, but let us hope that it will.