Nature threatened by Planning Bill

Victor Anderson fears the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill will give developers too much power to damage nature

“Builders versus blockers” is how the government likes to present the choice. That approach is the basis of their Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which has now completed its Commons stages but is expected to run into a lot of trouble in the House of Lords.

The problem is that the “builders” are mostly private developers, seeking to make a profit by selling valuable properties in nice locations to well-off people, and not wanting to spend money on affordable housing, while many of the “blockers” are just people who appreciate a walk in the countryside, local parks and trees (a lifeline for many during Covid), or there being somewhere outdoors where their children can play.

The government is proposing to set up a system for developers to buy their way out of their current legal obligations for nature conservation, by paying a “nature restoration levy”, with the idea of compensating for destroying one area of habitat by spending money on improving or creating one elsewhere. This is a hazardous business, with many existing areas of habitat having taken thousands of years or more to come into existence, and irreplaceable once destroyed.

Ministers have turned down the many amendments tabled in the Commons to try to create a more careful system, although at the same time they are very aware of criticisms and pressures from every environmental organisation, including the official Office for Environmental Protection, and aware also that these pressures will be reflected in another blizzard of amendments in the Lords. Already, there have been hints, in the press and in Parliament, that the government will come forward with its own compromise amendments. These haven’t appeared yet, presumably because they first want to gauge the strength of opposition from peers.

One Labour backbencher, Neil Duncan-Jordan, argued that nature is being “scapegoated” for the failure of the developer-led housing system, and there are many cases of developers getting planning permission, increasing the value of their land, but still not building. Some of the amendments from MPs sought ways of ensuring minimum proportions of affordable or social housing, or making developers stick to any undertakings they give about affordable housing in order to get planning permission. All of this was turned down by the government.

This is also not the sort of Planning Bill any government would come up with if they were serious about climate change. Unless there is planning for the consequences of changes in the climate, any other plans made are not going to be much use. Yet the Bill has little to say about adaptation, and nothing to require consistency between the National Policy Statements which govern infrastructure development and the carbon budgets which are supposed to limit emissions.

There is a major problem now in the House of Commons because of the nature of Labour backbenchers. Few are prepared to stick their heads above the parapet and raise awkward questions, largely because of the disciplinary system, which has seen MPs such as John McDonnell excluded from the parliamentary party and candidates such as Faiza Shaheen being vetoed from standing at the general election. Campaign groups wanting a hearing or amendments or questions tabled are increasingly having to go to Liberal Democrat MPs instead, and this has certainly been the case with the Planning Bill. There is likely to be a similar need to approach independent cross-benchers when the Bill is in the Lords, probably in July.

But now imagine a situation in which there is an elected House of Lords. Given the current character of the Labour Party, its Labour members would automatically vote through the Bill in the same way as Labour MPs have just done in the Commons. This isn’t scrutiny; it isn’t Parliament doing its job of improving the quality of our laws. Without a more democratic and diverse Labour Party, a directly elected Upper House could easily mean less democracy overall and less detailed examination of legislation.

The government will have a choice when it gets into trouble in the Lords: do they hype up “builders versus blockers” into a clash between “the people and the peers”? Or do they understand that careful reform of the planning system isn’t the same as just giving in to whatever the developers want planning permission for?