Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 178, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, for their support. This amendment concerns local plans. As we all know, when it comes to planning, local plans are really the infrastructure, the plumbing, of decisions on whether stuff happens locally, and how it relates to local nature recovery strategies and land use frameworks. I rather hesitate to speak about land use frameworks and have never talked about them in this House before. The noble Baroness opposite is known as the world expert in this area, and I am sure she will put me right on any detail I have wrong in her subsequent contribution.

Two revolutionary things are happening or are about to happen to how we use our land in England in particular. First, local nature recovery strategies, part of the very enlightened Conservative Environment Act, are now being implemented. Local authorities, primarily—the responsible authorities for local nature recovery strategies—are going through this process at the moment. A handful of strategies have been agreed by Defra and signed off, and I hope the remaining 20 or so will be fairly soon. They are all about attempting to ensure that the decline of nature in our nation, which we are all too aware of, is not only reversed but becomes very positive as we move towards targets such as 30 by 30 later in the decade.

With land use frameworks under consultation at the moment, we are expecting recommendations to come out from government. I think the wish of us all is to ensure that land is used in appropriate ways, that there is multiuse and that dilemmas—or what are sometimes seen as conflicts, such as between food security and nature recovery in our countryside—are not that at all, and everybody works together to the benefit of everybody.

My amendment is really very simple, saying that for nature recovery and land use to be successful—which I am sure this Government and the Minister want them to be—they need to be delivered. Delivery is the key issue and the key challenge. One of the fundamental ways they can be delivered—and they will not be delivered if this does not happen—is if they are integrated into and taken account of well in local plans. That is what this amendment is asking. Huge amounts of work have gone into local nature recovery strategies across England in terms of consultation and the work of local authorities, environmental groups, landowners and farmers. All of that has been enthusiastic and positive, but delivery cannot happen if they are not part of our planning infrastructure.

I am not suggesting that this amendment is perfect; I would clearly fall on the floor if the Minister accepted it as it is, but I ask the Government and the Minister how they will ensure that these two key planks of previous and present government policy can be delivered and implemented through local plans.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I support everything that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has just said about Amendment 178—apart from his remarks about my expertise in land use frameworks. I am not expert; I am just old and have been around the block for so long promoting the idea of land use frameworks that people get confused about whether I actually know anything or not.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, absolutely hit the nail on the head. We have quite a number of new plans concerning land and nature around at the moment, invented by various pieces of legislation and policy, and it is vital that local plans, which are a key vehicle, take account of them. Otherwise, what is the point of doing them? Local plans are central vehicles for the delivery of the land use framework and local nature recovery strategies, which the noble Lord ably pointed out the value of.

I would just question the Minister as to whether local plans will be required to comply with the land use framework and local nature recovery strategies. If not, what will the delivery vehicles be for implementing these important plans, which we have only just agreed were important and are now being worked through? If there is no implementation vehicle, what is the point of doing them?

It would be good also to hear from the Minister what the latest is on the land use framework. The Conservative Party, when in government, promised me the land use framework by Christmas 2022, and then by Christmas 2023. The Labour Government went out to consultation fairly promptly after the election, before Christmas 2024. I was delighted yesterday to hear the new Defra Secretary of State endorse the importance of the land use framework under her new regime. We are again getting pretty close to Christmas. Can the Minister say whether we might see the next version by Christmas 2025?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra for signing my Amendment 185. This amendment was originally in a separate group but, for the benefit of the Committee, I put it into what I would call the odds and sods group—I am not suggesting that any of the amendments are odd or, indeed, that any noble Lords are sods. Nevertheless, this is about addressing a particular situation where it is right that Members of Parliament should be calm, considered, important consultees on any nationally significant infrastructure projects that are proposed in their constituency. Many constituents fully expect Members of Parliament to have opinions on such matters. I appreciate that, at times, many Members of Parliament will say that they have no say on planning because it is a matter for the council. Well, of course, with NSIPs, it is different: it is a matter for the Secretary of State, who may delegate. It is therefore important that Members of Parliament have, in effect, an automatic right to participate in the examination.

The other thing—this came up for me when I used to be an MP—is that it is not always straightforward when modifications to NSIPs are made once consent has already been granted. That part of the process tends to just fly by with very little awareness but can be hugely significant. There is limited resource for MPs compared to, say, councillors, who can access their council officers in local authorities. For me, this would be a helpful check in both ways: first, being guaranteed not only to be notified of the original application and being able to speak at the various examinations but also to be made fully made of subsequent changes. I am very conscious that noble Lords may suggest that this is a barrier; it is not. It is about empowering the rights of local communities through the inclusion of their Member of Parliament.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 185J, which is on the GDPR, the general data protection regulation, which I am sure we all have to deal with on the internet every day when we make an inquiry on anything. It is around the issue of transparency versus data regulation. As we have talked about before, one of the key things about the planning system is that it has to have public confidence. One of the key ways that it has public confidence is through transparency. When that transparency disappears, it becomes a real issue. This is one of the conflicts that has come out between planning and GDPR.

It really came about in 2017, when Basildon Council—which I do not know well, I have to admit—received a £150,000 fine for disclosures that it made of personal information during a planning application. It was a major case, clearly, as reflected in the fine, but it was due to the failure of the council to redact certain personal information in that planning decision and procedure. The reaction to that from local authorities generally was to go into panic mode and decide that—quite rightly, as far as council tax payers were concerned—they did not want to be seen to be risking public money by making mistakes on procedural issues on planning and by contraventions of the GDPR.

Having done some research on this, as far as I can see, I think that this is the only example or incidence ever of a significant GDPR fine for planning on a local authority. However, I have come across in my local community people who have suffered from local authorities, in terms of planning, particularly in the area of enforcement, going through a process of overredaction or restricted disclosure—in fact, blanket non-disclosure on a number of occasions. This means that transparency is disappearing. People are often unable to find out what is happening in terms of enforcement cases, meaning that community confidence in that procedure and its outcomes is lost. There is also a definite inconsistency between local authorities in how this is applied.