Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, very briefly, I support my noble friend in this probing effort to establish what the intention of the Government is. He is right to highlight the risk that this becomes a revenue-raising mechanism as opposed to a cost-offsetting mechanism. There have been many examples over the years where different public bodies have sought to do that, and he is right to seek clarification.

The one caveat I would add is that there may be some cases where it is right to levy a punitive charge, where there has been a failure on the part of the third-party body that is being charged, but that should be under only very limited circumstances and where there has been a palpable and measurable failure in what that organisation has done; for example, a lane rental that has been put in place to carry out works that have been done inadequately, leading to disruption afterwards. My noble friend is absolutely right to ensure that the Government are clear about whether these measures will allow profits to be made or whether they are simply to offset costs. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answer.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak briefly to make an apology. I have Amendment 71 in a later group, but I have to catch an Avanti train to Carlisle—and that, as my noble friend Lord Hendy will know, is a bit of a hazardous process these days. So I probably will not be here for the amendment that I have tabled, but it is relevant to the point about charges, because it is an amendment about trying to liberalise the regime, to enable people who cannot park their electric car off the road to charge from their home across the pavement. That will cut bills for people by a considerable amount. Lots of profit is being made somewhere in the provision of on-street charging systems, and enabling people to charge their car from their own home would be a pro-environment measure in increasing the attractiveness of electric car ownership but also a cost of living measure, to which I hope the department will give consideration. I apologise again if I am not around when this matter is discussed.