Lord Blencathra (Con)

My Lords, in view of the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, saying that she is opposed to the measure, I feel it is my turn to stand up and say that this is a very sensible amendment. Based on my time in Natural England, I strongly support it. Generally, it was my experience that local authorities bounced over to Natural England tens of thousands of planning applications, most of which were irrelevant to us, in that we had no real reason to give a view. If the application affected an SSSI, a national nature reserve, a national park or AONB as they were they called, something protected by the habitats regulations, or developments on the finest agricultural land, then Natural England was duty bound to respond, and always did so—in complex cases sometimes not as quickly as some would have liked. However, we had to get it right, or as right as possible, since it could result in the rejection of the application by the council, leading to appeals and judicial reviews and possibly the loss of a good infrastructure project. What are the statistics to justify this change? In its 2023-24 annual report to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Natural England reported that it had received 24,664 planning application consultations; 20,503 consultations—91.7%—were responded to within 21 days or to an otherwise agreed deadline. Some 754 deadline extensions to planning application consultations were granted—that is 3.7%. Natural England sent 20,370 responses to customers, with the average time taken to provide a substantive response being 11.9 days. In addition, Natural England received 1,096 pre-application consultations, either directly from developers or via local planning authorities. They responded to 68.9% of these within 21 days or to otherwise agreed deadlines. Natural England now deals with a high proportion of complex cases, mostly relating to impacts on habitat sites or protected landscapes such as national parks and national landscapes. In 2023-24, this included receiving 161 consultations for nationally significant infra- structure projects, or NSIPs, 895 local plan consultations and 96 environmental impact assessment requests relating to screening and/or scoping. In the past few years, there has been a 40% increase in NSIPs, and they require a lot of work and, in some cases, site visits and meetings. However, as the Minister said, Natural England is legally bound to respond to all requests. All told, in that year, Natural England had more than 32,000 planning consultations, and in 47% of them, it had no statutory remit, since they were very low risk. That is 15,000 cases where Natural England had to spend time writing back, saying that it had nothing to comment on. I got the clear impression, and I am not that cynical, that many local authorities bunged applications to Natural England to tick a box and show their local representatives that they were investigating every avenue before granting permission and that even Natural England was happy because it did not object. Therefore, I was very keen for Natural England to move to this new strategic approach and shift to focusing on high-risk and high-opportunity casework, with an emphasis on strategic engagement and delivering solutions up front. Natural England also wants to emphasise the importance of high-quality applications as well as the need to reduce the level of unnecessary consultations that it receives. It can do that by signposting local planning authorities to its new impact risk zones delivery advice service. This is an exciting and long overdue shift. I have no time to dig into the details tonight, but there are three main thrusts in my opinion. First, low-risk, routine applications must be put on what I would call autopilot so that Natural England can concentrate on planning advice work and moving on to a more strategic place. There need to be standard responses for lower-risk work, and the supplementary provisions that the Minister has outlined in subsection (3) of the new clause in Amendment 68 will set out how local authorities can determine these applications themselves based on criteria published by Natural England and approved by the Secretary of State. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has tremendous experience of this from her time at Natural England, but I assure her that this is very low-risk stuff. My shelves are full of books called, “The Idiot’s Guide to How to Work Your Mac”, “The Idiot’s Guide to How to Work Your iPad” and “The Idiot’s Guide to Switching on Your Mobile Phone”. I am not making an insinuation about local councils, but I can see the Natural England advice being something like “The Idiot’s Guide to How to Grant Planning Permission in Local Councils for Low-Risk Applications”, and I hope the guidance will be that simple. The second thrust is that Natural England needs to concentrate on the big strategic stuff. This is where it can make the biggest impact for nature recovery, recognising that nature and economic growth co-exist and need to thrive together. Thirdly, Natural England is keen to do much more upfront, pre-application engagement and sees the importance of securing opportunities and mitigation for nature within development policies. It needs to focus its efforts on where the opportunities are greatest as well as addressing significant environmental risks. This means having as much time as possible to advise on high-risk and high-opportunity casework. If it can take that approach now, it will secure lasting environmental outcomes and create wider economic and social benefits for communities. I must tell noble Lords what justifies doing this upfront work. It was just before I joined, but I understand that Natural England reached out to HS2 as soon as it got the original Bill passed to say, “Come to us as soon as possible with any and all the plans you’ve got which may impact on protected sites or habitats along the route, and we’ll work on mitigation measures to head off the problems”. I understand the answer that came back was, “We are HS2; we do not need your input, so just butt out”. Then, when it was too late, HS2 came along to say that it had hit a problem with protected bats and to ask what it should do about it. It was HS2’s plan to build that £100 million tunnel, not Natural England’s, but we had to approve it, since HS2’s arrogance meant it had run out of options. I see the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, in his place. He might agree that we would all say that £100 million for a bat tunnel is obscene, but to HS2 it was just pocket money that it was spending. I must say to some of my noble friends that Natural England’s decision on this and other things was not an out-of-control quango doing it for the hell of it or doing it because it thought it could do it. It was following United Kingdom habitats regulations. I say United Kingdom habitats regulations because we incorporated them all into UK law. I said to Conservative Ministers at the time, “If you don’t like Natural England implementing the law, then change the law”. Finally, nearly every official I spoke to was certain that if HS2 had involved Natural England eight years ago, the problem of the route and the bats would have been headed off and it would have solved it without that expense. That is why pre-planning engagement is so important: it speeds up planning and avoids crises arising at the last minute because organisations have found that they have hit an environmental problem. Natural England must be freed from the 15,000 irrelevant low-risk cases so that it has time to deal early on with the big strategic stuff that will make a difference and promote growth while safeguarding our biodiversity. That is why I support the amendment.