Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Crisp Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and to pick up a couple of the points he made so eloquently. I am going to talk about two things: the relationship between health and planning, and between health and housing.

Second Reading is about underlying principles, and I want to start with: what is planning for? It is too often cast, and is cast at the moment, as an obstacle. I understand why, and we have heard already about the frustrations with major infrastructure projects—how does one explain to a foreigner why we cannot manage those projects in this country?—and with the costs and delays involved, and about the need to speed up decision-making more generally. It has not always been like that, and it need not be like that.

Planning can be a positive force for transformation, for creating places and communities that support health and well-being, prosperity and the environment. These three have been linked, for example, in Ebenezer Howard’s original concept of garden cities, and today we must all recognise those links between health, prosperity and the environment. For example, the creation of healthy environments and a healthy, stable workforce is vital to a thriving economy, and the opposite is damaging to growth, as we have already seen from the chronic levels of sickness around the country at the moment. My noble friend Lady Willis of Summertown pointed out how the natural environment enhances our health and is vital in cities as well as in the countryside.

There is almost nothing in all the various aspects of planning today that addresses health, and where there is it relates almost exclusively to healthcare facilities. There is some increasing emphasis on prevention, but nothing yet on creating health, by which I mean creating the conditions for people to be healthy and helping them to be so, which is a pretty good starting point, it seems to me, for planning for community and places. We need to recreate the link that people have understood in the past.

Turning to housing, many noble Lords will know that Nye Bevan and other previous Health Ministers were also Housing Ministers. Perhaps it is not surprising, though I am not about to make an amendment suggesting a change in the responsibilities of government at the moment. But there is no need, I suspect, to tell noble Lords about the links between health and homes. Mould, damp, cold, heat, unsafe construction, fires, falls, accessibility, extraordinary mental stress from the worries about repairs and risks, and other mental health aspects are an important part of this. But there is also a positive side: if we get our housing right, it provides great stability, a great foundation for life. It allows children to do their homework, if the rooms are big enough. It allows us all to live through life’s changes without having necessarily to move.

We need new homes which promote health and well-being and provide a foundation for a healthy and productive life, rather than, as so many do, damage health and add to the feelings of insecurity and helplessness that are sadly so prevalent today. The TCPA has published a booklet entitled A Home to Die For?, which has pictures of some of the worst homes being created today, particularly through permitted development rights. I see nothing in this Bill that will address those issues.

Some noble Lords will recall that I introduced the Healthy Homes Bill in the last Parliament and attempted to get a set of healthy homes standards in the levelling-up Bill, with excellent support from His Majesty’s then Opposition, and the Liberal Democrats and many others. Indeed, we won a vote on it in this House and lost the ping-pong by only one vote. I hope there may still be some warm feelings towards these ideas on the now government side, and that we may still make some progress on them. I will of course be looking for support elsewhere.

I know the Minister will point me towards policies—and there are some very positive policies, although even there, without enough reference to health and well-being—but they are too easily ignored or overruled in the name, ultimately, of viability. People start the planning with all good intentions, but in the end, we lose those vital aspects. The evidence is all around us, as shown in the booklet I referred to. My noble friend Lord Best described very well the mechanics of this. But he also pointed to the very positive role that development corporations could have in the future, and we have many good examples of that, including the Olympic legacy. I hope this is something we will explore.

In conclusion, I want to quote from my great friend Professor Omaswa, who used to run the Ugandan Health Service:

“Health is made at home, hospitals are for repairs”.


Planning can do a great deal to create health, support the new localised NHS agenda that I believe we will be having, and help create sustained growth—and I mean sustained growth, not just a short dash of growth—by providing the support people need to lead fulfilling and economically productive lives.