Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting).
Ellie Chowns (Green)
It is also crucial to understand that the system has long-term goals, future generations being one of them, and addressing the climate crisis being another. Within three to five years, the repeated impacts from climate change will be the dominant political issue we confront, and we need a system that works for that, as well as for housing growth.
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Matthew Pennycook (Labour)
Obviously, the new towns taskforce has to decide what it wants on policy. The challenge that we face with them is legitimacy, and there is still work to do in making sure that there is a Rolls-Royce process of getting public consent for this new generation of places. However, the outcome is such an opportunity to generate places that genuinely enhance people’s health, deal with the climate crisis and provide high levels of affordability. What a contrast that is with what we have delivered through town and country planning at local plan level, which is a lot of the bolt-on, car-dependent development. Frankly, as a planner, I find that shameful. The opportunity with development corporations is there and I hope that the Government seize it.
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Olly Glover (Liberal Democrat)
Paul Miner: We broadly agree with Rachel. Overall, the Bill needs to strike a better balance between the various objectives that the planning system seeks to fulfil. It is not just about facilitating development but about mitigating and adapting to climate change, as well as helping to secure nature recovery. We think that the Bill can do more to give the wider public and ourselves confidence that, in future, we will get better plans and decisions that will look to achieve a vision for getting more sustainable development, as well as meeting our climate change targets and our very ambitious nature conservation targets.
One element that has not come up in questioning so far, which we are particularly keen to raise, is clause 22 on householder payments for electricity transmission lines. We do not think that making payments to householders is the way to go. Instead, we should really focus on building on the good practice that we already have for onshore wind farms, where we consult and involve communities in community benefit schemes, and also look to achieve community benefit schemes that help communities, in turn, address climate change, get more rooftop solar on people’s homes in rural areas and improve the energy efficiency of rural housing. It seems to us that giving payments to householders completely goes against working in any kind of public interest, and we urge parliamentarians to look at that clause of the Bill again.
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John Grady (Labour)
On the Bill, we support the Government’s general principles about clarification and simplification. We recognise that the strong national growth and infrastructure demands open up some of the opportunities for green energy and all sorts of other things that we are calling for in local government.
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David Simmonds (Conservative)
Councillor Clewer: I do not think we gold plate our local plans. There are many councils that want to go beyond existing guidance, particularly on net zero, for example. That is mostly to stop expensive retrofitting in future and make people’s bills cheaper. There are areas where councils will want to go beyond existing national policy, but every example I can think of was done for a very good reason and will end up with broad public support.
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17:02 Lee Pitcher (Labour)
Q I am just trying to understand, Richard. I have watched programmes, I have worked in the world of climate and I spoke at COP26, so I have a bit of background. You have talked to us about the number of species that are dying out now and, globally, I know they are dying out 100 times faster than normal evolutionary rates of extinction.
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17:39 Gideon Amos (Liberal Democrat)
Q I, too, am grateful for the Ministers’ time today. In the interests of brevity, I want to ask a question of the Energy Minister. There are provisions in the Bill on overhead lines at generating stations. Are the Government looking at further reforms that would make the delivery of the electricity network simpler and more straightforward, by widening permitted development for the electricity distribution network and transmission network, given that we all want to reach net zero and the challenges that industry faces?
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