Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)

My Lords, I am honoured to speak, in the last group, to my Amendments 361A and 361B, on encouraging SME builders, and to Amendments 363 and 364, on mechanisms for encouraging the speedy rollout of planning reform. Amendment 275A, which I was unable to speak to this morning, belongs in a family with the first two amendments, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, for her comments in my absence. I am especially keen to improve the position of SMEs; it is a theme of many of my amendments to many Bills before the House of Lords. My SME amendments follow a constructive discussion we had at one of the two Ministers’ helpful briefing sessions. My concern is that the new EDPs under Part 3 will further damage the position of smaller developers and construction firms, and I would like to see guidance provided to Natural England to head off that risk. I am afraid that neither the requirement to consider the viability of development in making regulations nor the tiering of the nature restoration levy by type of development quite does the trick. We know from the trouble over nutrient neutrality just how religiously Natural England follows rules designed for nature protection at the expense of anything else. We need balance in relation to how it treats small developers and the smaller sites that developers need. The truth is that SMEs contribute so much to local communities and local employment and can do so much more in construction.