Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 147, but before I come to that, I want to say how much I support what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said. We need this jigsaw of plans and ideas to work on the ground.

The advantage of being sweeper behind my noble friend Lord Trenchard and the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, is that most of what I was going to say has already been said. I just reiterate the key point that we are failing to look after our national treasure of chalk streams. We have only about 280 in this country, which run from west Dorset up to Yorkshire, but those represent 85% of the chalk streams in the world.

Chalk streams are paying the price for being located often in some of the busiest areas of the country and they can be subject to both the direct impacts of development—for example, building next to a chalk stream—and the indirect effects of new development, in terms of additional water requirement and water discharges.

Only 17% of chalk stream water bodies are achieving “high” or “good” status under the water framework. It is clear that further work is needed to protect them. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned the recent work of Brighton University on the Itchen. One of the interesting things about that research—and I hope the Minister has read it—is the amount of tyre particles that were found. Can the Minister please confirm that any developments and infrastructure, including transport, will not create further pathways for contaminated surface water and road run-off to enter chalk streams and the drains, streams and brooks that feed them? Special status is needed for these globally rare and locally precious treasures to drive investment and ensure protection and restoration.

The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, mentioned the local nature recovery strategies. She is right that those in themselves are not good enough and there are streams in Norfolk and Suffolk that are not included within LNRSs. LNRSs cannot account for a catchment-wide approach as chalk streams often span multiple local areas, so it is vital that local authorities work together if we are going to save our chalk streams, and that is why the spatial development strategy is important to them.

In conclusion, these low-energy, globally important river systems cannot simply be moved and certainly cannot be recreated elsewhere, so off-setting any impact via approaches such as the nature restoration fund is impossible. The practical, sensible solution is to give them greater protection where they are and include them in any spatial development plan. When I was in government, I was very pleased to work with the Minister on chalk streams. We worked well together and successfully. The tables are now turned; it is up to the Minister whether she will work with us.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I support several of the amendments and will speak to most of them. Amendment 146, the lead amendment, is, in essence, the right approach. The importance of chalk streams has been mentioned. I used to live near the chalk stream in Hampshire, the River Test, and as a Minister I visited many.

I welcome the speeches by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, about the importance of local nature recovery strategies and the land use framework. My noble friends Lord Trenchard and Lord Caithness have gently teased the Minister—often it is easy to say things in opposition and then, all of a sudden, you have to face the realities of government.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, asked about the land use framework. A couple of years ago, I wrote quite a substantial LUF. MHCLG—DLUHC at the time—was concerned about the impact it could have on housebuilding, when we were trying to get a combination of food security and the development of homes and the like. The good news is that it was Steve Reed, who was Secretary of State at Defra until a few days ago, who put out this consultation. Now, of course, he is Secretary of State at MHCLG. I hope that, in his new department, he will not put a barrier in the way of the land use framework, and that together with the new Secretary of State for Defra, Emma Reynolds, this can be published as quickly as possible. I am conscious that new Secretaries of State often want to have a look at these things, but I am sure that Emma Reynolds will trust the judgment of Steve Reed and have an excellent land use framework, which should absolutely be incorporated into spatial development strategies.

I will not say more about LNRSs, other than to say they will be one of the most critical things to happen as a consequence of local government. Therefore, it is a no-brainer that they should be an integral part of SDSs.

I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, who tabled the amendment, cannot respond, but I will pick up on that separately. I want to get clarity on permissible activities. I would not want the SDS to start getting into the nitty-gritty of where there are existing rights. For example, there will be challenges around abstraction rights for a lot of landowners and farmers in 2027, when there will be a significant reduction in abstraction. The people putting together the SDS should be aware of that and need to think carefully about how that interplay goes. However, while it should be considered, I am not convinced the SDS should be the way in which permitting starts to happen—though I may have misinterpreted the amendment.

One reason why the Test is the best place in the world to go fishing for various kinds of trout is that it is a chalk stream. It was fishing that got Feargal Sharkey into the whole issue of water. Through my friend Charles Walker, who used to be an MP until the last election, when he retired—it happens to be his birthday today, so happy birthday to Charles—I know that anglers are very protective of those rights and substantially concerned about the water. My noble friend referred to the importance of good eco status. The Environment Agency’s principal measure in assessing eco status is the size of fish—it is a classic measure. There is a reason for that, and, as a consequence, that is why anglers are so involved. I would be nervous if the spatial development strategy started to get involved in aspects of licensing in that regard.

My noble friend Lord Trenchard tabled the related Amendment 355, which is more strategic and will be debated in a later group, but in one fell swoop Amendment 354 would give formal designation and protection status to rivers, which at the moment only 11% of chalk streams have. That is a clever device in order to achieve the outcomes your Lordships would want.

I wish the Minister well in making sure that her new Secretary of State gives a clean bill to what he proposed in his previous role, and that we get the land use framework as a welcome Christmas present, not only for this House but for the country at large.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I make one suggestion to the Minister, if I may. One way of achieving the objective that many of us seek for chalk streams would be to include specific reference to them in footnote 7 to the National Planning Policy Framework. That would carry through very successfully into many other decisions.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, if I may I will start by being grumpy in the direction of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and others. This is Committee, and it is inappropriate to say, “Before the Minister sits down”. Saying that, as a Back-Bencher, suggests that allowing us to speak again is in some ways a concession on the part of the Minister. In Committee we can speak as many times as we like, whenever we like. That is a right which I do not see much exercised today, but we really should preserve it. On Report we are restricted; Committee is a free-for-all. It is important for getting to the bottom of things that we assert our right as Back-Benchers to speak when we wish to, and do not act as if this is a concession by the Government or Ministers.

Anyway, to turn to my amendment, my object here is to see whether we can make the planning system work better and improve the flow of national planning policy into decisions taken on the ground by imposing a duty of candour on the system. At the bottom end, the duty of candour is a strengthening of the power of officers because it removes from them the pressure to bend their advice to what they think will please the members of their authority, or maybe the public beyond that. It gives them a duty to be straightforward, honest and open about what things actually are. It is a considerable help to an official in dealing with members that they know they have to be clear—that they cannot say things just because they will get it in the neck from members if they do not say what members think they want.

Similarly, it helps members in their dealings with the public if the public know that the members are under a duty of candour to say things as they are, rather than trying to pretend that things are difficult or duck awkward decisions. In addition, operating the system in such a way that everybody knows that it has to be open and truthful, and that what is said is the way things are, is a great help to the public in dealing with change, which is naturally often unwelcome, and understanding how that fits into the development of the country as a whole.

Everybody I have talked to is committed to us having more houses. We want the Government to succeed in their ambitions, but it is often painful when it comes down to individual decisions, as the last group of amendments has demonstrated. There are always reasons not to do something. Having a system that we trust, and really understanding how it works, must be helpful, and having a duty of candour would make a difference to that. I beg to move.

[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.

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[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I am very supportive of the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and co-signed by my noble friend Lord Roborough. I would actually encourage the noble Baroness to retable Amendment 242A, if she is allowed to, because I do not think we will have deliberated on it—I am sure the Public Bill Office can advise—and it will work well, as she says, next week.

On Amendments 185F and 185G, the noble Baroness made a very good point. This is one of my wider frustrations with aspects of people using certain things, certain regulations or “the nature” as an excuse. As the noble Baroness has well laid out, quite often it can be a factor: there are things that can change—rulings and decisions about licensing. The abstraction of water is one example I have used before when talking about the impact—that happened at Sizewell C. Nevertheless, one of my wider points would be that, if you really want to accelerate a lot of infrastructure, do not start planning to build stuff in a place that has already been designated as the most important for nature in this country; find somewhere else, and think it through. One reason why quite a lot of people move to certain places in the country is that they are beautiful, environmental places. I do not want to go over Sizewell C, and I will keep to the point of the regulation, but this is really a way to future-proof and to get a lot of this infrastructure flowing.

There are things that we could get into about which species are the right ones to consider in habitat regulations; there are other debates forming about whether we should look after only things that are really at risk. That does not necessarily work. We have already heard today about the importance of global biodiversity and chalk streams, but I think this is a very useful amendment.

I am glad that we are doing at least part of the debate today, because it will give the Government time over the weekend to think about whether their modest proposals in revising Part 3, which are welcome, really go far enough to help local communities, local developers and local councillors so that we can move forward. By getting rid of some of these unnecessary arguments, we would have the homes and the development that are much desired, and we would still have places, right around our country, that are special for nature and special for our planet.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to support the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, on Amendment 185F, tabled by her and supported by my noble friend Lord Roborough. I do not need to talk at length, because the noble Baroness has set out excellent arguments for progressing this and other amendments. She said that this is one of the most important amendments in the Bill, and she is right. We are touching on it today in advance of next week, when we will discuss this and similar improvements.

The noble Baroness has set out a simpler solution than the massive bureaucracy created in Part 3. Part 3 and the EDPs are a massive sledgehammer to crack the nut of nutrient neutrality. With the amendments that we will discuss next week in addition to this one, we can offer the Government a simpler solution than the EDP monolith. We need to tackle the problems of nutrient neutrality and will address some of the amendments next week.

Amendment 185F would require local planning authorities to consider compliance with the habitats regulations and to conduct full environmental impact assessments on sites that are proposed as suitable for development. As my noble friend Lady Coffey said, let us plan this in advance—do not wait until developers come along to put in a planning application and then discover that they are trying to do it in the wrong place. This is not about adding a new layer of bureaucracy; on the contrary, it is about moving necessary assessment upstream to where it can do the most good.

Too often, local plans identify sites for housing or infrastructure which turn out to be wholly unsuitable when subjected to proper ecological scrutiny. By then, the damage is done: developers are frustrated, communities are confused and valuable habitats are placed at risk. This amendment from the noble Baroness would support local authorities to screen out inappropriate sites early, giving greater certainty to developers and the public. It would also help to ensure that sites allocated in the plan were truly deliverable. It is, in short, a sensible and proportionate proposal, reflecting long-standing principles that plan-making is a stage at which big environmental choices should be made and that doing so reduces conflict and costs later on. I hope the Minister will take the advice of our friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. As I said earlier, she is an expert on this matter, no matter how much she may deny being a world expert.