Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Report (5th Day)

Clause 90: Amendments relating to this Part

Amendment 208

208: Leave out Clause 90

My Lords, I will also speak to my Amendment 231A. I address Amendment 208 individually, rather than as a group as in Committee, because the facts have changed following the CG Fry Supreme Court judgment. This creates an opportunity to accelerate home building, which the Bill currently threatens to eliminate unnecessarily. I will speak to the application of the habitats regulations to Ramsar sites from the Back Benches, and leave the policy area of housebuilding to my Front-Bench colleagues, as it is their speciality. My amendments would remove Clause 90 and Schedule 6 from the Bill, preventing the legal imposition of the habitats regulations on Ramsar sites. Before I go on, I refer the House to my register of interests as an owner of development land, which, as far as I know, is not impacted by nutrient neutrality or Ramsar.

We in government chose to apply the habitats regulations to Ramsar sites through policy as a well-intentioned move to recognise the special international status of these wetland sites. I do not see evidence that our largest neighbours, such as France and Germany, have chosen to do the same. Since then, we have all watched in horror as Natural England’s advice on nutrient neutrality within the habitats regulations has led to as many as 160,000 new homes being blocked. We know that 18,000 of these are through the application of the habitats regulations to the Ramsar site on the Somerset Levels. I and my noble friends have asked the Government several times: how many more homes than this 18,000 are currently blocked by the unnecessary application of the habitats regulations to Ramsar sites? I hope that we can receive that answer today.

The CG Fry judgment, that simply adopting this as policy does not carry legal weight, was right. The habitats regulations derived from EU law and were designed to apply to sites with protection under EU law and no further. Natural England has been able to advise for years that specific land should have SPA or SAC designation and be brought under the habitats regulations. The fact that many Ramsar sites have only partial or no protection as European sites is because, so far, Natural England has judged that they do not need it. Ramsar sites already have protection under paragraph 194 of the National Planning Policy Framework. If, after the CG Fry judgment, Natural England were to advise that more European designations were necessary on the Ramsar sites and the Government accepted that, the habitat regulations would apply at that point. Should my amendment be passed, I am sure that Natural England will want to evaluate that point, and I would urge it to be highly scientific and evidence-based in that process, because the eyes of those needing houses will be on them.

My Lords, I have heard time and again during the passage of this Bill from the Government Front Bench that this is a Bill to streamline the obstacles for anybody who wants to get anything done in this country. That is what Amendment 208 does, and I support it entirely.

Just under two weeks ago in the Supreme Court, as my noble friend Lord Roborough mentioned, four years of litigation concluded in the Fry case. The case revolved around the protections of Ramsar sites. In essence, the court was asked to judge whether Ramsar sites were subject to the same onerous requirements as sites protected by the EU habitats directive, including the potential for developments to be blocked at the stage of discharging planning conditions, many years after they have obtained that planning permission.

For over 50 years—since 1971, when the Ramsar treaty relating to over 2,500 wetlands in 172 nations was signed in the town of Ramsar in modern day Iran—it has never been the case that EU habitats directives apply to these important places. For that period, over the entire world, Ramsar sites have been protected without any reference to the EU, EU regulations or any of the other state paraphernalia that flows from Brussels. Why would they be? There are 23 such sites in Brazil, six in Cameroon, one in Mongolia, three in Equatorial Guinea and 39 in Japan. The EU is irrelevant to these places.

Natural England, as the Government’s statutory adviser, quite wrongly asserted that EU habitats regulations were relevant when they are not. Do not take my word for it: take the word of the Supreme Court. It concluded that the regulator had no business in making the equivalence between Ramsar and the other nature sites covered by the habitats directive. The Supreme Court held that Ramsar sites were not subject to this level of protection as they fell outside the habitats directive. Twelve days ago, a regulatory burden was lifted. Inexplicably, the Government now seek to undo that pro-growth judgment by bringing the Ramsar sites back within the habitats regulations, even though they fall outside the regulations’ parent directive.

The economic consequences have been crippling. Housing affordability is worsening. The scientific analysis behind Natural England’s objections remains questionable. I know this from its approach to nutrient neutrality in Norfolk. In effect, a global treaty was used to gold-plate EU legislation when it had no business doing so in the UK. This is not me saying it: it is what the Supreme Court found. Natural England got it wrong—badly wrong. Even when it had the chance to throw in the towel and admit its mistake, it pressed on for four years.

Let us get this right. The quango the Government tell us could be trusted to get Britain building again is exposed as a blocker, not a builder—not as a matter of opinion but as a matter of law. That is not to say that there should be no regulation at all—in fact, quite the reverse. We on these Benches believe strongly that Ramsar sites should be protected, as they currently are in government policy under paragraph 194 of the National Planning Policy Framework, subject to the ordinary principles of planning law. It is just that this organisation, which will simultaneously be the adviser, regulator, operator, price-setter, enforcer and promoter of all the EDPs being contemplated by Part 3 of this Bill, is making a complete Horlicks of it again. Tens of thousands of homes, quite unnecessarily and wrongly, have been held up and fewer affordable homes have been built, especially in the rural communities that need them most, because Natural England lacked the competence and professionalism properly to read, interpret and advise Ministers on the regulations.

With that court case to hand, you would imagine that the Government would have been delighted with the court’s decision. They are the ones who keep saying we need to sweep away all the gold-plating of the regulations that holds back growth. The Government tell us that they have chosen a path to lower regulation. By this Bill they have sought to persuade the OBR that they are sincere in this aim. But what is this? Within an hour of the Supreme Court’s decision, the Treasury’s own solicitors were boasting online that they were going to reapply the gold plate that had been summarily removed by the court justices with the implementation of Clause 90.

The Government have kidded the public and the press that they are interested in sweeping away bureaucracy. Instead, they lard on ever more regulation and delay. So I invite Members of this House to support this amendment, in line with the judgment of our learned friends; to agree that we already have all the protections we need for Ramsar sites in the NPPF; and—here is the important thing—that the UK should be consistent with our treaty obligations and the custom and practice of all the other 172 global signatories to the Ramsar Convention from all around the world. We should not be an outlier in this, yet that is what the Government are intending by their own Clause 90.

The Prime Minister tells us that he wants to follow international treaties and international law. He has said it not once, but a hundred times. Both the treaty and the law are clear: Clause 90 is not needed. Let us see whether his Government are a builder or a blocker, whether they are sincere about streamlining regulations, or whether they will have our economy stuck in the mud.

My Lords, Amendments 208 and 231A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, and other noble Lords, seek to remove Clause 90 and Schedule 6 from the Bill. These Benches are not supportive of these amendments. While we appreciate the arguments that have been made about streamlining and simplifying the legislative framework, it is more important to recognise the significance of Ramsar sites and to treat them in the same category as European sites when it comes to environmental protection.

These wetlands—there are 176 designated sites in the UK—are often of extraordinary ecological value, supporting biodiversity that is not only nationally but internationally important. To remove the relevant provisions at this stage would risk sending the wrong signal about our priorities and would weaken the coherence of the overall environmental protections.

The Government’s goal all along has been to preserve sites that are of environmental importance. The arguments about Part 3 of the Bill have not entirely gone the way we had hoped, but they have gone a long way towards raising the importance of the environment as far as the planning system goes. We are keen to uphold the value of Ramsar sites, alongside other protected areas, and to dismiss the arguments made by those who, on one hand, say that we need more houses on these wetland sites, but, on the other hand, argue for other sites—perhaps in the green belt or designated sites—not to be built on. Let us be clear: the environment comes first, and protecting biodiversity and our precious environmental heritage is of key importance to us.

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of Amendments 208 and 231A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Roborough. These may appear as technical provisions, with Clause 90 dealing with temporary possession of land in connection with compulsory purchase and Schedule 6 making consequential changes to Part 3 of the Bill, but, as we have heard from the speakers so far, their combined efforts risk damaging the very housing and infrastructure goals that this legislation is seeking to advance.

The Bill, as currently drafted, extends the legal obligations of the habitats regulations to Ramsar sites. In practice, this means further restrictions on housing development and a fresh layer of uncertainty for local planning authorities and developers alike. The result, as my noble friend Lord Roborough warned, is that a Bill meant to get Britain building risks doing totally the opposite by tying up housing delivery in yet more red tape and delay. This point cannot be overstated: the country faces a housing crisis—not a crisis of ambition, but a crisis of delivery. By removing Schedule 6, we would avoid further complexity in the already overburdened environmental assessment framework, a system that too often paralyses local authorities and developers in costly uncertainty rather than securing real gains for nature.

The Government’s own target of 1.5 million new homes will not be met if planning reforms continue to tangle it up with excessive regulation and unintended consequences. Of course, environmental protection must remain a central consideration in planning, but, as my noble friend rightly observed, the small nut being cracked by the sledgehammer of Part 3 has now been shown to be even smaller. The recent ruling to which he referred has already resolved many of the issues these provisions sought to address. What remains, therefore, is unnecessary bureaucracy and an additional drag on housing delivery.

My Lords, Amendments 208 and 231A, both tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, seek to remove Clause 90 and Schedule 6 from the Bill. These relate to Ramsar sites, as we have heard, and noble Lords will be aware from the debate that these are wetlands of international importance that have been designated under the Ramsar Convention on wetlands. I thank noble Lords who have contributed to this debate.

To date, in England, these sites have been given the protection of the habitats regulations assessment process through policy as set out in the National Planning Policy Framework. To support the effective operation of the nature restoration fund, we propose placing protections for Ramsar sites on a legislative footing, with Part 1 of Schedule 6 amending the habitats regulations so that protections for Ramsar sites align with the protection of other internationally important sites. Placing protection of Ramsar sites on a statutory footing will ensure that the NRF can be used to address the negative effects of development on Ramsar sites, and this has been welcomed by environmental groups as a pragmatic step to align protections across sites of international importance.

The Government have, of course, carefully considered the implications of the recent Supreme Court judgments, which we have been debating, that distinguished in very specific circumstances between the legal protection provided to European sites under the habitats regulations and the policy protection afforded to Ramsar sites. This ruling has led to some commentary suggesting that placing Ramsar protections on a statutory footing will serve to prevent development from coming forward. This belief was expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in her speech just now; this, however, is mistaken.