Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th September 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

242B: Clause 55, page 92, line 1, at end insert—
“(2A) In the five years following the coming into force of this section, EDPs may only apply to nutrient neutrality, and other matters which the Secretary of State determines are appropriately dealt with at the scale of an EDP. (2B) After the period of five years following the coming into force of this section, provisions may be made that concern wildlife and other more local concerns, but the Secretary of State may not make more than five such EDPs in any year.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that the EDP process has time to bed in in uncontroversial areas, and that its further development is not rushed.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, responding to the noble Lord opposite, I draw the attention of the House to paragraph 4.31 of the Companion. Committee stage is a conversation; it is a free for all. Members may speak when they want and as often as they want. The point is to get to the root of the issues that we are discussing. We are here to do a job, not to stick to a timetable. If that takes us again past midnight, that is what we are here for. The point is to get through it, so that we conclude the arguments and can be much briefer and more formal on Report. This phrase “before the Minister sits down” is not a Committee phrase. We have the right to speak at any time. We must hold to that right, because that is the core of us doing our job well in this place.

The amendment proposes that we take the question of environmental delivery plans at a gentler pace, and that we start by applying them in circumstances where the concept obviously works. Things that operate on a large scale, nutrient neutrality, water problems and other such issues are landscape-scale problems that need landscape-scale solutions. However, as we heard on the last day of debate, matters such as species are much more difficult to deal with.

We have a huge amount of uncertainty at the moment. From talking to the developer community and listening to them, I know that they see the Bill as paralysing development for the next five years. The Bill is meant to accelerate development, but as we have it at the moment it does the exact opposite. It creates so much uncertainty on how Part 3 will work, what it will feel like and how it will develop. Natural England has huge powers, and there are lots of big sums of money going this way and the other, but no one knows how it will happen. No one really understands how Natural England has the capacity to manage something of this scale—or even of this type—and what sets of behaviours to expect from it. We are setting ourselves up for five years of stasis, five years of not getting anywhere, because it will take that long for the system to settle in.

There is a better way to do this: to pace things, pilot things and do the easy bits first, and to make an early announcement of where the pilot EDPs will be, so that people can get their heads around it, and have large and open discussions about this. The provision that we are looking at is supposed to last a long time. There is no point in this being done in a constricted and partisan way—it will just break open the next time we have a change in Government. Everybody who wants to be involved in this is being asked to commit over long timescales. We politicians must adjust ourselves to that; we must run this in a way that allows people to have confidence in the politics over a long time.

The Government’s behaviour on biodiversity net gain is not a good sign of where they are in this space. I urge them to have wide discussions and involve people who are of obvious quality and depth, and who are likely to be there and involved in the discussion in years to come. In particular, I urge them to involve people from opposition parties; it should not be the Conservatives’ choice of who to involve but the Government’s, rather like how my noble friend Lord Gove appointed the current chair of Natural England. They are not a natural Conservative supporter but someone who, because they were not a natural Conservative supporter, has lasted and commanded the respect of this Government. We want something that will run through—long-term thinking, long-term commitments and long-term relationships to build confidence. Amendment 242B says, “Let’s take it that way. Let’s take it slowly and carefully, let’s take people with us, rather than have some big and uncontrolled explosion.” I beg to move.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 271 and 272. In response to the Minister, one way of quickening these procedures, and getting rid of the risk of a Member speaking for a long time while withdrawing an amendment, is actually for the Government to accept a few of the amendments. Altogether, I think we have probably tabled some 400 amendments, many of which seem to be common sense. However, we seem to have had ministerial resistance to absolutely everything so far, which I do not think is a particularly good sign. However, I shall give the Government a chance because my amendments should obviously be accepted.

Even more seriously, Clause 58(2) starts quite promisingly. It says:

“In preparing an EDP, Natural England must have regard to”,


and then lists

“the development plan for the development area … the current environmental improvement plan … any Environment Act strategies”—

which, I am pleased to say, would include local nature recovery strategies. However, at the end of the subsection, it says

“so far as Natural England considers them to be relevant”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for her reply to my amendment. Would she be prepared for me to open a discussion with her officials on the subject of my amendment? We need to do something to increase developers’ understanding of what it will be like under the new regime. If we are to get development going, we need to have the confidence generated.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Of course. To all noble Lords, I say that, between Committee and Report, my noble friend and I are very happy to sit down and discuss amendments or any concerns further with officials.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I am grateful for that, but I am not surprised; that has been the way the noble Baroness has conducted herself through all her time as a Minister.

I wanted to go back to one of my earlier amendments on biodiversity data. Since she has her colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, sitting next to her, might she have a conversation about unblocking the flow of biodiversity data generated in the course of planning permissions and getting that through to the local environment record centres, so that it is available to become part of the scientific information, which Natural England can draw on in making an EDP? Her department, or parts of it, and Natural England are active in this area. I would really like to know that this is an area where the Government are determined to make progress.

I am encouraged by the Minister’s nodding. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 242B withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 285A commits to a new clause, which would require Natural England to undertake a baseline biodiversity survey for an EDP, very much along the lines that the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has just said, and would require the Secretary of State to consider this when determining whether an EDP passes the overall improvement test. I am very keen on biodiversity. My noble friend Lady Coffey referred to me as a twitcher. I take that not entirely well, because “twitcher” is slightly derogatory. I would like to be called a birder, and that is reflected in my coat of arms where there are four examples of a particular species which she will probably know from her reed beds at Minsmere: the bearded reedling, which of course is more commonly known as a bearded tit.

The reason for this biodiversity baseline is so that, as the noble Baroness said, you can find out what is happening now. The previous information may be out of date. It is important for the future condition of the area and to see whether the EDP is working, and it would highlight risks. In the interests of time, I will leave it there to hear what the Minister says on this.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and my noble friend Lord Randall. First, turning to baseline data and coming back to earlier discussions in Committee, I know that work is going on to improve what we have by way of baseline data, and I have been involved in extensive discussions with the local environment record centres and others. I would really appreciate being given an understanding, either now or by letter, of what the Government’s intentions are by way of giving momentum and a sense of determination to taking our current system and moving it on to the point where we gather all the environmental information, which we collect into one place, both that generated by the planning system and the extensive environmental data generated through high-quality amateur systems, and use for the benefit of understanding what is going on in local ecology.

It is all very well to do a baseline survey—it is traditional around us to do them in February—but doing proper baseline to really understand what is going on in an area requires presence throughout the year over a period of years. We have that data. We are collecting it. The world is full of seriously good amateur natural historians putting in a lot of work for free, and we are not taking advantage of that. We do not even use it to monitor the condition of SSSIs. Where the Government intend to go on this and how they will pick up on the discussions currently taking place and take them forward are important to understand before we get to Report. I will write to the Minister on that subject.

Secondly, when it comes to such things as water quality and nutrient neutrality, I am afraid that the monitoring system run by the Environment Agency has been run down to such an extent that we really do not have a good picture of what is going on in the average river catchment. As I have said before in Committee, my brother, Tim Palmer, is involved in the efforts that the Wylye Valley farmers are making. They have created their own laboratory. They are doing their own measurements, working with the Environment Agency, producing a much better quality of baseline data, and understanding where the problems come from and what can be done to deal with them.

High-resolution data makes it possible to resolve problems. The sort of stuff we have as the general flow from the Environment Agency just leaves us puzzling. Again, I very much hope that the Government will find themselves able to work with all the resources, interest and determination that are out there in the farming and other communities to get the data better and not just think that they have to pay huge amounts to environmental consultants to do it through the usual methods. There are better ways of doing these things by opening up. I hope that is the direction the Government will take.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, on the face of it, I welcome government Amendment 245A and the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, because it is clearly right that the public should understand what the sequence proposed might be.

My noble friend Lord Lucas has stolen some of my thunder in identifying that some of the research can take place only at certain times of year which, if it is a particular time window, may be, say, 11 months away, and there is this temporal longevity which may happen over many seasons. It is really important that, as part of that requirement for laying out the sequencing, we get an understanding of what timescales may be needed, because my concern is what happens at the point at which an EDP is first mooted and that sequencing process starts. What assurances can the Minister give that, because the process may take several years, it will not, in effect, impose a moratorium on any development while we wait for the sequences and processes to go through? These were laid out in the helpful diagram from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the bits before.

It is important that government Amendment 245A which, as I say, I welcome, should be coupled with the anticipated timescales. It might be implicit in the amendment, but it would be helpful if the noble Baroness could make it explicit that sequences and timescales are in there and whether that applies to a moratorium in the meantime.