Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Wilson of Sedgefield Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, will join me in thanking all noble Lords who participated in the debate. I particularly thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Maclean, and the noble Lords, Lord Deben and Lord Jackson, for their support for my amendment.

I want to make it clear to the House that I have spent many hours in the Public Bill Office discussing various iterations of this amendment to ensure that it is absolutely in scope for this legislation. I absolutely assure the House that this amendment replicates exactly the procedures already in legislation in relation to alcohol licensing. I assure all noble Lords that local authorities around the country support passing this amendment as quickly as possible, and that Ministers and the Prime Minister have categorically said—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Is the noble Lord going to push his amendment to a vote or withdraw it? We are at that stage now.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

We are at that stage, but I want the House to be aware that there is support from all quarters to ensure that this is passed. The Minister has said that she does not accept my offer of further discussions to see whether we can find a way forward before Third Reading. She has not accepted the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I am disappointed that the Front Bench of the Conservative Party does not appear to be listening to what Conservative Back-Benchers are saying. Since there is no opportunity to bring this back at another time, the time for decision is now. I wish to test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, given that time is short, I will contain our remarks to the standout amendment in this group, Amendment 130, moved so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown. It is a means to address a fundamental question we all have on the Bill: how do we help the Government deliver the win-win for nature and the economy by giving developers certainty about this new process, given that we are moving away from an established process which has served for many years, while at the same time ensuring that the environmental protections we want are locked in? The approach taken by the noble Baroness is to curtail the scope of this new process by saying that an EDP can happen only where it has been shown that those approaches will work, benefiting conservation at the strategic landscape scale.

I have to say that we, as Liberal Democrats, thought long and hard about supporting this amendment. It is our contention that we should always follow the science, so if there were scientific evidence that there could be conservation benefits for a species, for example, it would normally be our position to support that. Therefore, this approach to curtail it by area rather than evidence is not one that we would normally support. But as noble Lords will see, after thinking long and hard, we put our Front-Bench name to this amendment. The reason is that we are not convinced at this point in the debate that there are sufficient safeguards about how that scientific evidence will be considered by Natural England to ensure that the environmental safeguards that we all want will be in place. Therefore, we on these Benches will listen very carefully to what the Minister has to say in response to this amendment but, if the noble Baroness is minded to move to a vote on it, at this point in time, we would support her.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

My Lords, the usual channels have agreed that we should pause now to allow for a short break before Oral Questions at 3 pm. Although unusual, I therefore beg to move that the debate on this amendment be adjourned, and we will return to it later this afternoon.

Debate on Amendment 122 adjourned.