Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Neil Duncan-Jordan Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Thursday 13th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Proper statutory protection for the internationally valuable resource that is our chalk streams is long overdue. I welcome the Minister’s words in his opening remarks, but until we see those designations we will continue to advocate for proper statutory protection for chalk streams. We urge the Minister to go further on that.

I now turn to the amendments on democratic and parliamentary accountability. The Bill does not just tinker at the edges but fundamentally concentrates power into the hands of Secretaries of State. Lords amendment 33 would ensure that if and when the Government implement their proposed regulations to remove powers from local planning committees and councillors, they must come to this House under the affirmative resolution procedure.

Clause 51 gives unlimited power to all future Secretaries of State to remove any and all decisions from planning committees—there is no limit imposed on that power. The very least that the Government should be willing to accept is a commitment to meaningful parliamentary oversight when they bring forward the regulations to remove powers from planning committees. No amount of consultation on a national scheme of delegation will change the extraordinary power in clause 51 and what it takes away from local planning committees, locally elected councillors and local communities. Lords amendment 33 offers only a small safeguard against that centralisation. For such powers to not even be affirmed by Parliament would make a mockery of the democratic process.

Similarly, Lords amendment 1 would ensure that the Government continue to be fully accountable to Parliament on their changes to national policy statements. NPSs govern the biggest projects in the land, from Hinkley Point to Sizewell, from rail freight terminals to the largest solar and wind farms in the world, and transmission lines. It is the fact NPSs are approved by Parliament that provides them with the efficacy they have in guiding decisions on such projects. In the Commons, we proposed a compromise that case law could, for example, be reflected without parliamentary processes, but policy changes on matters as significant as future plans for nuclear power stations should remain fully subject to the decisions of Parliament. We therefore oppose the Government’s attempt to remove scrutiny of national policy statements.

Amendments 2 and 3 are about protections for reservoirs, and we oppose the Government’s attempt to remove those provisions. We also oppose the Government’s intention to remove protections for assets of community value. We remain concerned about proposals for badger shooting on building sites, which remain unamended in schedule 4.

The Liberal Democrats have set out our proposals for housing and planning. Our programme for public housing, which is far more ambitious than the Government’s, is for 150,000 publicly-funded and genuinely affordable social and council rent homes per year for local people, not the 20,000 that the Government have established as their target. It is a mistake to pit development against nature and communities. On Second Reading, only the Liberal Democrats voted to stop the damaging effects on nature this Bill could have. The Government have made some changes, which we welcome, but the amendments that remain before us today could be accommodated. They are essential to ensuring that the people and nature affected by building the homes and infrastructure that we need are heard and have their place in shaping that development. We must not give up—the Liberal Democrats will not give up—on ensuring that nature and people are protected in the rush to build the homes that we need.

[Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)]

This Bill has sparked a keen interest among my constituents. It is important to recognise that people who live in Poole want to protect the environment and the benefits that living in a nature-rich part of the country gives them. I welcome some of the changes made to the Bill in the other place, many of which reflect points raised by me and others on Report, including the need for a stronger overall improvement test to ensure that changes to environmental protections do not hand developers a licence to trash nature.

As we know, Britain is already one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. We have lost half of our biodiversity, one in six species is at risk of extinction and only 14% of our habitats are in good condition. That is why I urge the Government to accept amendment 40 to safeguard vulnerable habitats and species from harmful developments.

The proposed environmental delivery plans would form part of a framework for nature recovery, allowing developers to pay into a restoration fund to offset environmental harm. That may work for nutrient neutrality, water and air quality, but it simply is not suited to the complex realities of natural habitats or declining species. We risk a situation where destruction comes before detection, with new habitats created too late to replace what has been lost. That means species losing their homes, leading to wholesale extinctions. Developers of years gone by might have got their way with a brown envelope or two, but we cannot buy back lost biodiversity.

[Mike Reader (Northampton South) (Lab)]

I am sure that my hon. Friend has considered the results of the Corry review, which recognises that we have such complex nature legislation in the UK that it makes it incredibly difficult to build. Does he agree that Lords amendment 40 makes it even more complicated for people to build the homes that we desperately need?

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

As several hon. Members have already mentioned, we have to find the correct balance between building the houses that we so desperately need and protecting our vulnerable nature and the habitats that we want to preserve.

The Wildlife and Countryside Link states that

“some species cannot be traded away for mitigation elsewhere. Once local populations are destroyed, they are unlikely ever to return.”

If we want the Bill to be a genuine win-win for development and for nature, and to keep our manifesto pledge to reverse nature’s decline, environmental delivery plans must be limited to where there is clear evidence they can actually work.

[Mr Perkins]

My hon. Friend is right that there are examples of where species should not be able to be moved, but Lords amendment 40 does not relate to some cases but to all cases, and it sets out in statute that species should never be moved. Does he agree that the Government’s approach, which will prevent species from being moved in many cases, is better than setting in statute something that could block so many opportunities?

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

I was about to come to that very point, and how serious people feel this issue is. The Wildlife Trusts have nearly 1 million members. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has more than 1 million members, and the National Trust has more than 5 million members. There is a massive base of people in this country who care deeply about nature. If we get this wrong, the risk is not just environmental, but political. People will not take it kindly if their local chalk stream is degraded, for example.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Brewer (North East Hampshire) (LD)]

As I am sure the hon. Member knows, chalk streams are among the rarest habitats in the world. This is not the first time I have mentioned them in this Chamber. Only 11 of the more than 200 chalk streams are protected, and even those 11 are in decline. The problems are over-abstraction, significant pollution and inappropriate development caused by poor planning. Does he agree that protecting these habitats through this Bill is essential, not optional?

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

Absolutely. Because of the nature of the constituency I represent, I know that chalk streams are extremely important and should be protected. They are our national inheritance, and we are their custodians. I really hope that the Government will take further steps to align this Bill with a fairer and greener future for everyone.

[David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)]

I will speak to Lords amendment 28, which was introduced in the other place but relates specifically to my constituency. The Eskdalemuir seismic array, which is near the village of Eskdalemuir in my constituency, is a seismological monitoring station established to detect seismic signals from nuclear explosions. To a generation that grew up following the end of the cold war, the facility may seem to be little more than a historical curiosity, but it continues to be a vital asset in global monitoring, in scientific research, and, crucially, in helping to keep the United Kingdom compliant with its international obligations under the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.

The Eskdalemuir seismic array has been operating since 1962, making it one of the longest-operating steerable seismic arrays in the world. The facility is geographically remote, in a low seismic noise environment, and highly calibrated and sensitive, enabling the detection of even small seismic signals at a vast distance. Over recent years, its seismometers have picked up the sonic boom from Russian jets in UK airspace, and have detected underground nuclear tests in North Korea. On one occasion, it was able to detect signals generated by the detonation of around 100 tonnes of conventional explosives in Kazakhstan. All that is clear evidence of the unique nature of the site and its capabilities.

Some might wonder what the site has to do with the Bill. What could the Bill’s impact be on the maintenance of this vital scientific facility, which is crucial to our national defence and our undertakings under international treaties? In many rural constituencies in Scotland, the march of large-scale wind farm developments continues, encouraged by the Scottish Government. The forces acting on wind turbines cause vibration in the turbine—vibrations that can travel underground for many kilometres, with obvious consequences for facilities that require seismological quiet for their effective operation.

As some Members may know, the desire of wind farm developers to push the boundaries of where their infrastructure can be located, and the boundaries of the guidance against which their applications are assessed, has led to challenges to the Ministry of Defence. A previous attempt by a developer to site a wind farm at Little Hartfell, which is in the consultation zone of the Eskdalemuir seismological monitoring station, led to judicial review proceedings against the MOD. On that occasion, the challenge did not dispute that the MOD is entitled to devise and enforce a policy to protect the array from interference with its detection capabilities—it concerned the way that proposed developments were prioritised—but the lesson is clear: developers will seek to push the boundaries of where and how their developments may be sited. Ministers must be aware of that, and willing to take measures to protect against that, where issues of national defence are at stake.

The key consideration is this: in a dangerous and difficult world, we must not water down our defence systems or let down our allies to squeeze out what, in a national context, is a small amount of extra electricity. The UK Government should robustly refuse to entertain novel technologies within the 15 km exclusion zone proposed by the Eskdalemuir working group, which would replace the existing 10 km zone. That should also apply to those applications already in the planning system that were submitted by developers who continued to pursue their projects aggressively, with full knowledge that work was ongoing to review the exclusion zone. Our national defence must come first. I am sure that most people would agree that this is an area where an abundance of caution is well justified. It would be concerning if Ministers and the MOD were pressured into going too far in the name of net zero.

I am not necessarily objective, because I am the Member of Parliament with the largest number of wind turbines in their constituency, either consented or built. I believe that industrial-scale wind farms are bad generally for the locality, but there need to be specific rules around them when national security is in question, and we have to protect our credibility with our international partners.

Any loosening of the rules on infrastructure developments around facilities like the Eskdalemuir seismic array, or passing up the opportunity to reinforce existing rules, would send entirely the wrong message, both to potential developers eager to exploit new opportunities to construct even more wind farms, and to our international partners, who rely on our ability to contribute to our own defence and our collective defence. Lords amendment 28 is an opportunity to underscore the protection needed for facilities like the Eskdalemuir seismic array, and I want this Government take those protections forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

My hon. Friend intervened on me, mentioning the Corry review, and then he cited it in his own contribution. I am sure that he would like to acknowledge that the review specifically warns about a bonfire of red tape and supports targeted changes. Does he agree that amendment 40 aims to support pragmatic reform, limiting EDPs to where they can make a positive impact, rather than where they will do harm?