Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 20th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

3: Clause 2, page 3, line 33, leave out subsection (3)
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to prevent the removal of a requirement for the Government to reply to any resolutions by Parliament or recommendations from a select committee.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I raised this issue in Committee. This is an identical amendment to that tabled in the House of Commons by multiple chairs of Select Committees, who were concerned about the reduced opportunity for the Government to at least reply to the parliamentary scrutiny rightly undertaken in terms of national policy statements.

I listened carefully to what the Minister said in Committee, and I have not re-tabled a whole plethora of amendments, as I would not want to be thought to be trying to hold up national policy statements unduly, because they are a good thing. I have re-tabled this amendment because when Parliament puts forward recommendations or has a resolution, the least we can expect is that the Government will respond, rather than removing that as a requirement of the law, as this legislation does. In a nutshell, that is why I think this matters.

This matters because we are starting to see an increasing number of national policy statements. There is a lot of merit in trying to give a clear direction to the country—residents, developers or whoever—to make sure that they can continue to consider future development in a measured and structured way.

Reading the responses of the Minister here and the Minister in the Commons, I am conscious that a lot of focus seems to be on the fact that a Select Committee might take a bit of time, or that we would table a resolution anyway. Actually, although this House has the opportunity to table a resolution and vote on it, it has become quite hard to table things in the Commons unless you have control of the parliamentary timetable. I notice that while this House had a debate on nuclear power—and energy Statements, for example—it did not happen at the other end. Maybe everybody was happy, but it is more likely that certain parties did not have the opportunity to look at the timetable.

One of your Lordships’ Select Committees made some recommendations in its report regarding the energy grid. I am not aware that the Government have yet replied—although they may have—recognising that a debate is to be tabled on that report as a whole. Overall, this issue does matter: when this House is minded to at least give some comments or thoughts on national policy statements, we should expect a response from the Government. That is why I am minded to test the House’s opinion on the amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend. When I was chair of the Delegated Powers Committee under the last Government, we published a report regretting the trend that over the last 30 years, more and more regulations have bypassed Parliament—not just by using the negative procedure rather than the affirmative, but through departments issuing guidance after guidance, none of which came before Parliament.

The point I want to make is a simple one of principle. We see in legislation Parliament being bypassed, in that case and in far too many cases. Parliament should not be bypassed, and necessarily so. My noble friend’s amendment simply makes the point that the Government should consider Motions by Parliament and what Select Committees say. They do not have to accept it, but at least we should have a chance to give that input. Otherwise, as I also see in cases, we will depend on various stakeholders to comment.

On the number of consultations issued by departments, there is a huge list of stakeholders, some of them great and grand organisations, royal colleges and organisations such as the RSPB with goodness knows how many million members. However, often the local MP is not listed, parliamentarians are not considered—and possibly not even the Select Committee which might have relevant views on it.

I believe my noble friend is on the right lines here, and I hope the Government will accept her amendment or at least give us assurances that Parliament will not be bypassed in the way she has suggested.

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The new procedure cannot and will not be used to bypass due parliamentary scrutiny. Rather, we are adjusting the parliamentary scrutiny requirements when making certain types of updates to an NPS so that the process is more proportionate and enables NPSs to be updated more quickly. At the end of the reflective amendment process, the NPS as amended will still need to be laid in Parliament for 21 days, during which time the House of Commons can resolve that the amendment should not be proceeded with. For these reasons, I kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have heard the Minister but do not think that the answer has changed since Committee, which I regret. I am concerned that removing any requirement on the Government to reply to either House is not satisfactory when it comes to parliamentary scrutiny. Therefore, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

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Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

21: Clause 11, page 17, line 28, at end insert—
“(4A) After paragraph 104(2)(b) of the Planning Act 2008 (decisions in cases where national policy statement has effect) insert—“(ba) any Environmental Delivery Plan made under the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 which has effect in relation to development of the description to which the application relates,”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that when determining whether planning consent should be granted for a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project, the Secretary of State must take into account any EDP applying to the land which will be developed.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister has just said potentially her favourite words. She spent a lot of Committee on this Bill saying that “in due course” was her least favourite phrase, so it was delightful for her to be able at least to say “very soon”. I wonder whether the same might apply to my amendment; sadly, I expect not. In Committee, I mentioned that I was not satisfied with the response of the Minister and that I would be minded to bring the amendment back on Report. It is somewhat clunky, but it is just the nature of the Bill that we are discussing NSIPs and, as a consequence, I have to speak to my amendment at this stage of the Bill.

So what does my amendment basically say? In essence, we will have environmental delivery plans; what I am asking is that, alongside other matters that the Secretary of State has to consider, they should consider the environmental delivery plan when it comes to an NSIP. For me, this seems logical. I am conscious that other provisions in Section 104 of the Planning Act refer to the need to consider

“any national policy statement which has effect in relation to development of the description to which the application relates”.

It requires

“the appropriate marine policy documents … determined in accordance with section 59 of the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009”

and consideration of “any local impact report” as well as—I am conscious the Minister may say this—

“any other matters which the Secretary of State thinks are both important and relevant to the … decision”.

The reason why I believe the proposed wording merits being included in the Bill and put into legislation is that, in other parts of legislation, the primary duty of the Secretary of State for Defra is to achieve a variety of targets for nature recovery. But, as we debated in Committee, in reality what we are considering now is what the Secretary of State for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will consider. Let us be candid: there has not always been a happy exchange between the two departments in previous history, especially with the new Secretary of State, having just been the Secretary of State at Defra, now talking about “Build, baby, build” and rolling out a whole series of reasons for why infrastructure is being held up—which could not necessarily be stood up properly.

Coming back to my amendment—by the way, I tabled a similar amendment on councillors’ consideration of matters that are not NSIPs—we are trying to get to the bottom of what the EDP will really do, which is still unclear to me. On the whole purpose of this, it is quite possible that an environmental delivery plan may cover land being used by an NSIP. But, according to the answer from the Minister in Committee—I appreciate that she did not use this phrase—it is the quintessence of cash for trash: “That will have already been considered and we don’t need to think about it ever again. There should be no reason for it to be even considered by the Secretary of State when they’re making their determination”. However, I believe it matters so much that it should be.

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

My Lords, Amendment 21, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, seeks to ensure that any applicable environmental delivery plan, or EDP, is taken into account by the Secretary of State when making a decision whether to grant permission to a nationally significant infrastructure project.

I can assure noble Lords that the way in which EDPs will work in practice means that this amendment is not necessary. Meeting the relevant environmental obligations with an EDP, just as when satisfying them under the current system, is a separate part of the process to the granting of permission. When a promoter commits to pay the levy in relation to an EDP, the making of that commitment discharges the relevant environmental obligation.

I emphasise again that it will, aside from in exceptional circumstances, be a voluntary decision for the promoter of a nationally significant infrastructure project to decide whether they pay the levy to rely on the EDP. This means that while the Secretary of State will need to consider a wide variety of matters, for the purposes of these decisions, the EDP will not be a consideration other than as a way of reflecting that the impact of development on the relevant environmental feature will have been addressed. It does not need to be considered beyond that in the decision to grant permission. This notwithstanding, the Secretary of State may already have regard to any matters which they think are both important and relevant to their decision.

I therefore hope, with this explanation, that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I was clearly hoping for a little bit more than that from the Government—but I am also conscious that we need to get into the real nuts and bolts of the EDP in practice, which we will consider later. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 21 withdrawn.