Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Third sitting).
09:26 Gideon Amos (Liberal Democrat)
Part 1 of the Bill rightly recognises the need for more efficient ways to keep national policy statements up to date. In the past, NPSs have fallen behind Government policy, which has led to delay. For example, as Justice Holgate noted in the Drax development consent order challenge, the energy NPS designated in 2011 left important questions about greenhouse gas emissions unanswered because it did not reflect Parliament’s net zero decisions.
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09:44 Gideon Amos (Liberal Democrat)
First, it is claimed that since Parliament will have considered the changes, it does not need to scrutinise the resulting amendments to NPSs. However, it is far from certain that national policy statement amendments will reflect new or amended legislation. Let me give an example. In its 2023 review, the Transport Committee was very critical of the draft national networks national policy statement, and said that new planning policies for major road and rail schemes need clarifying against net zero laws. However, the Department for Transport not only failed to accept any of the MPs’ recommendations but put a climate test from the outdated 2015 policy back into the NPS it designated in 2024. Given that the reason for updating the NPS was to update the climate test, that completely compounded the original justification for carrying out the review. There is therefore no certainty that legal decisions will be reflected if my amendment is not accepted.
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Gideon Amos (Liberal Democrat)
Without wanting to shock the Minister too much, I rise to support the clause. The Liberal Democrats want measures that will help to facilitate net zero and other developments, and the clause will provide an opportunity for many decisions to go into the Town and Country Planning Act regime, which is local, is accountable and involves local planning committees. That shows that this does not necessarily need to be a slower process; it could at times be a quicker process with more local involvement. I have been involved in NSIP projects that could have gone through that process but in fact came through the Planning Act 2008 regime. Direction under the proposed new section could be very helpful in ensuring more local processing of planning applications.
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