Contribution
My Lords, I will speak briefly to the proposition that Part 3 not stand part of the Bill, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and I have signed. It was unusual, but I feel that it was the right thing to do to bring this forward to indicate the strength of political feeling on these matters of nature protection. I am pleased to have added my name to them. Equally, I think it is right that they are not pursued at this stage.
I pay my respects to and thank the Government, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and others, who have worked on and looked again at the concerns raised about the possible impacts of this Bill as it was initially drafted. Those have been voiced very strongly by the general public, by the NGO community and by Members of both Houses of this Parliament. It is not often that such a package of government amendments is tabled without a vote, but I must say it is a very welcome move. After Second Reading, I was not looking forward to the rest of the stages because I could see a showdown on basic nature protections coming down the line, so I am immensely grateful that this Bill has been substantially amended and improved. These amendments are not perfect, as others have said, but they do offer some substantial improvements.
I believe in the friendly hand of scrutiny, and I am convinced that Governments who listen and compromise make better laws than those who do not. Fundamentally, however, I feel that this Bill is still flawed. It carries a fundamental flaw through its heart in Part 3, because it identifies the wrong problems and then sets out to fix them in a not particularly great way. All the while, there are multiple other blockages to the planning system that do not really get the solutions that they need. They need to be unlocked so that we can get growth for housing, transition to clean power and do everything else that we really need to do.
I know the Government have made concessions and want this Bill passed. My hope is that, with shorter speeches from all, this Government will continue to listen, and we can continue the constructive dialogue in the time remaining to discuss the remaining important issues. In the interests of that time, I will not run through the changes but on these Benches we still have concerns about the environmental delivery plans and the nature restoration levy as representing a really significant shift in approach—an approach that generally has worked fairly well.
This change of approach carries with it significant bureaucratic burdens and inherent risk for the businesses which will be undertaking this stuff and will face reputational damage. It creates an almost communist scale of new bureaucracy about moving nature as if it was Lego bricks from one place to another, but I am deeply concerned about the irreplaceable habitats. We will have opportunities to discuss this on the remaining clauses of this Bill.
We are also concerned about the mitigation hierarchy. Fundamentally, I still do not understand; I have looked at all the updated energy policies, such as EN-1 and those on nuclear power, the grid and renewables, and the mitigation hierarchy remains at the heart of those policies. I do not understand why, when that will continue to be the case after the Bill has passed, the mitigation hierarchy needs to be removed for housing. The Government might want to make arguments about the mitigation hierarchy in relation to nationally significant infrastructure projects but, when we can deliver energy projects with the mitigation hierarchy, I do not see why that needs to be removed for housing.
I shall close on the comments of the Chancellor of the Exchequer this morning, as quoted in the Times. While I deeply respect the Minister and everything that has been done here, I worry that another Bill will come down the line; that some aspects of this Government still perceive nature as a blockage to planning and development, even though the Government’s own impact assessment shows that this is not the case; and that commitments made here might be changed later on. Still, I thank the Minister; there is more to discuss, but I am grateful.