Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 20th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, at the beginning of Report on this important Bill, I move my Amendment 1, which is to insert a new purpose clause at the beginning of the Bill to define what it is about. While this Bill aims to deliver significant change, without a clear guiding statement of intent we risk losing sight of the balanced objectives necessary to truly sustainable development. Amendment 1 sets out the core purposes of this Bill:

“to … accelerate the delivery of new homes and critical infrastructure … improve the planning and consenting processes … support nature recovery through more effective development and restoration, and … increase community acceptability of infrastructure and development”.

This is not merely a statement of aspiration. It is an important mechanism for accountability and clarity that directs the interpretation and implementation of every subsequent clause.

In Committee, there was support from across the Committee for a similar amendment. The benefit of adding a purpose clause to the Bill is that it will enshrine in law the tension between the need for construction and the requirement for robust environmental and democratic safeguards. The necessity of explicitly stating the duty to support nature recovery, for instance, directly addresses those profound concerns debated in Committee on Part 3 of the Bill.

Equally, many have voiced concerns about the negative impact of these reforms on local democracy and community voices. The CPRE, for instance, has concerns regarding the “dangerous erosion of democracy” inherent in measures that increase ministerial powers, such as the ability to issue holding directions to stop councils refusing planning permission when they do not accede to the law. To prevent them by issuing holding directions is a huge step in denuding local voices and local democratic councils from making the decisions about issues that affect their areas and communities. The inclusion of, for instance, the need to

“increase community acceptability of infrastructure and development”

directly mandates that the Government and implementing authorities address these democratic deficits. It would transform community engagement from a burdensome hoop to jump through—a problem noted by the previous regime in the Planning Act 2008, which led to proposals removing pre-application consultation requirements—into a stated core objective of the entire legislative framework.

The Government’s stated objective for this Bill remains the right one: we must

“speed up and streamline the delivery of new homes and critical infrastructure”;

however, acceleration without clear direction risks unintended long-term consequences that undermine the very public good that the Government seek to achieve. By accepting Amendment 1, we would embed clarity, provide a crucial framework for legal interpretation and establish legislative accountability for all stakeholders, ensuring that this major infrastructure Bill delivers not just efficiency but genuine sustainable development and broad public confidence. I beg to move.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, so here we are again. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for focusing our minds at the outset on what this Bill is about. It is a welcome amendment because the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has at least attempted to bring some thematic coherence to a ragbag of proposals from a dozen departments, none of which appears to be talking to each other.

I have read the press notices and compared them to the Bill’s text—never has a Bill been more oversold by a Government. Belatedly, it now seems that the Government’s purpose for this Bill is to persuade the OBR that it will speed up the process of development so that its economic forecasts can help the Chancellor balance her books. But most of the proposals of this Bill will prove that Newtonian notion that, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It hands development veto powers to a self-serving quango and it talks about empowerment and streamlining processes, but it emasculates those with the local knowledge and mandate to unblock officialdom. Instead, it proposes a system whereby the Secretary of State is to become a one-person planning committee—good luck keeping to the 12-week determination deadlines on that one. It could have ironed out Hillside or introduced a proportionality test so that at least the little boys could get on, but there is boneheaded resistance there.

One talking head on the “Today” programme this morning bemoaned the lack of planning permissions, the number of which seems to be falling like autumn leaves, but failed to realise that it is the building safety regulator that has put the black spot on building in London, with a response rate of at least 44 weeks. On that, the Bill is silent. So, instead of unblocking the blockers, it creates an EDP process that is so ponderous that it is unlikely to unlock any stalled homes within this Parliament. It is three and a half years since we started the neutrality madness, and it will be at least another three and a half years before we can rip off that scab. So much for speeding up building; all it is doing is putting speed bumps in the way.

Of course, I welcome the important and critical proposals to free up the placement of roadside power poles to improve the electricity grid. But even this Government recognise that the potential of development corporations is something for the next Parliament—just at the moment that those structures and powers to unleash them are being thrown up in the air. For all the bluster and press notices, this Bill will slow development, not speed it up. By any measure, the Government’s purpose will be frustrated by their own legislation.

I come to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, which would

“accelerate the delivery of new homes … improve the planning and consenting processes … support nature … and … increase community acceptability”.

This is what we will debate over four long days. But what the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has done is laid out the functions of the Bill; they are not its purpose. The reason that this Bill is in such a muddle is that it has not been framed through the purpose lens that dates back to the Labour Government of the post-war period, when the planning system was established in the first place.

Quite simply, the purpose of planning is to arbitrate between private interests and the public good; everything flows from there, and that balance between private and public is what makes the system work. It makes the economy flourish and enhances the environment. This Bill gets that balance all wrong, with too much state interference and not enough private initiative, so I am sorry to say that it is bound to fail. That is a shame, because we need to get those homes built and those rivers cleaned up, that clean power flowing and those new towns going—but little will be achieved, because in this Bill all roads flow to Marsham Street, back home to the dead hand of the state.