Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly, mainly to declare my registered interests before we get to the meat of Committee. I am a director and beneficial owner of Porter and Verrells, which builds one-off bespoke homes, among other functions. I am a non-executive director of Elixr.Earth, which builds through digital twinning and finance, place-shaping at scale. I am also a non-executive director of Rentplus Homes and a strategic adviser to Inspired Solutions, both of which deliver affordable housing without any recourse to public funds.

My noble friend Lord Fuller would not forgive me if I did not mention that all the worthy things that have been discussed are not functions of the Bill. They are consequential on the Bill being pushed through. The function of the Bill is to regulate between private property ownership and perceived public good or public harm.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to be in Committee. I agree with the impact of these clauses in consideration of future judicial decisions. It matters because there has been a trend in aspects of case law that then make other aspects of complying with the law rather complicated, leading to some of the adjustments that the Government are seeking to secure. When we talk about judicial review and what the Government are intending, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has tabled some rather drastic amendments. I am not surprised. Mr Robbie Owen gave evidence in the other House that my noble friend Lord Banner’s review did not go far enough. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe hit the nail on the head. What is going to change?

The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, is right. At the moment nothing in the Bill ties everything together to make sure that we get more homes built and improve the natural environment. We have to make sure that happens.

In her closing speech at Second Reading, the Minister said that councils have a lot of powers. I would be interested to understand what amendments may come in at this stage to achieve the objectives that the Government say the Bill is trying to achieve. Why are we not seeing certain powers being granted to the Government to speed up housing—not just planning permission but completion? The Town and Country Planning Act allows councils to issue completion notices. As the Whip in the Commons on the Infrastructure Act 2015, I had to deal with four Ministers, so good luck to the Whips here on the Front Bench in co-ordinating all that. The Government took powers there for when councils were being slow. It was not necessarily call-in, but if they were not keeping to timetables, the decisions could be made by Ministers. I do not think that happened very often under the previous Conservative Administration, but here we seem to be going with a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Why are Ministers not using the powers they already have to achieve what they want this to do and instead putting this legislation in place? That is why I welcome the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. It gives us an opportunity to ask, “What is this Bill going to do? Will it achieve the aims of what is there?”

I make a plea through the Minister for Bill managers to update the parliamentary website with all the different things that they said that they would write on. The Minister in the other place promised on 29 April to write about one of the clauses that we are debating today, but Parliament is still waiting. To my knowledge, no letter has been issued. It is certainly not on the Bill website, and it certainly has not been deposited in the House. That is a further plea about process.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

The letter went out yesterday on some of the issues that were raised at the drop-in. The noble Baroness may have missed that in her inbox, but it did go out yesterday.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I appreciate that, and I have not seen it in my inbox, but I am referring to Minister Pennycook making a pledge to write in Committee in the Commons. I am not aware that has ever been issued. It is certainly not available to Members of this House. It would be great, as a general approach, if we could try to make sure that is there.

Overall, this Bill needs to be massively strengthened to make sure—to quote Ronseal—that it “does exactly what it says on the tin”, that we will get the outcome that my noble friend Lady Scott on the Front Bench has put forward in Amendment 3 and that we will get on with making sure more homes are delivered for the people of this country, as well as other aspects of infrastructure that I recognise this country desperately needs.

[Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)]

My Lords, we need to move to consider the Statement, as the Minister delivering it must attend Grand Committee for a debate which will commence before this group finishes. While unusual, I therefore beg to move that the debate on this amendment do adjourn, and we will return to it after the Statement.