17:35 Valerie Vaz (Labour)

The Government say that this is about housing, but 1 million homes have been approved but not built. Some are built on floodplains, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) mentioned, and there is no mention of climate change. Why does the Minister not mandate that every new build should have solar panels on the roof? There are serious concerns about making planning changes.

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17:49 Helen Hayes (Labour)

Planning has a vital role to play in our response to the climate emergency, both in achieving net zero and in adapting to climate change which is already happening. It is critical in delivering the homes we need to end the housing crisis, and in delivering the infrastructure and services to support new residents. It is vital for economic development and the delivery of green jobs. At its most basic level, planning should be a framework for fairness. It should ensure that new development delivers what communities need, not what makes the most profit, and it should safeguard the things that they hold most dear. There is no doubt that our planning system is in need of reform, but this White Paper takes entirely the wrong approach. Locking communities and local councillors out of planning decisions on individual applications will not deliver more homes, better design, or zero-carbon development. It will create a developers’ charter for identikit places. Deregulating the planning system by expanding permitted development rights will mean that instead of protecting character and quality in our town and city centres they will be eroded, as shopping streets are pepper-potted with homes, and roofscapes become a mess of ad hoc two-storey extensions.

Instead of treating the planning system as inconvenient red tape to be swept away as much as possible, the Government should be seeking to make it fit for purpose for the challenges of the 21st century. From 2010, the Tory-Lib Dem coalition Government embarked on a bonfire of planning regulations, which removed many of the design standards intended to ensure low-carbon development, including the zero-carbon homes programme. That has resulted in more than a decade of lost time to deliver net zero, a decade in which new homes have continued to be built, which will now need to be retrofitted in the future when they could have been built to zero-carbon standards in the first place. The Government have been utterly negligent on low-carbon building, and making the superficial and subjective concept of beauty the core principle of their planning policy will do little to address that.

In the short time that is left available to me, I urge the Government to think again and place climate change at the heart of the system, people at the heart of the process, zero carbon and genuinely affordable homes as the key priority for delivery, and land reform to stop windfall profits as a core concern.

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17:52 Charlotte Nichols (Labour)

The Government’s White Paper has not only nothing on the natural environment, but almost nothing on affordable rent or on net zero. It does not address wider infrastructure such as transport, retail or leisure, and simply puts developers in the driving seat of their cranes and diggers and gives them a green light to do what they like. I am not opposed to house building. Indeed, probably the largest volume of casework that I deal with relates to the lack of appropriate housing, especially affordable housing for large families and for constituents of my age looking to get on to the housing ladder.

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18:08 Yasmin Qureshi (Labour)

The Tory Government’s proposals fail to address the wider issues that face our country. The climate crisis is more acute than ever, and without a concerted effort to integrate planning infrastructure and development, we will struggle to achieve our net zero targets. We need sustainable transport. Bolton South East has a disproportionate number of people who are reliant on public transport—70% of them do not have a car—yet none of these plans talk about integrated solutions for the community. It is only Labour with Andy Burnham in power in Greater Manchester that is leading the way on an integrated transport network and the public ownership of buses.

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18:22 Catherine McKinnell (Labour)

That is not where we should be taking our planning system. Local shops, employment, transport links, leisure and climate change are all key elements that should form a fundamental part of any cohesive planning system that shapes the communities our constituents live in.

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18:46 Darren Jones (Labour)

The planning process is part of our democracy. It is one of the reasons we elect local councillors and one of the reasons we have planning committees that are independent of party political leadership. Citizens in every community across the country have a stake and a say in what happens in their local area, but the Conservatives’ planning reforms pull the rug from under our local democracy and instead roll out the red carpet for the big developers, with the automatic granting of outline planning permission; statutory presumptions in favour of development; planning notices moving to online only; no real role for existing neighbourhood plans; still not enough action on net zero energy-efficient housing resources and low-carbon heat; proposals that do not go far enough to deliver more council and affordable housing; and, based on recent permitted development rights, high-street shops that can be converted into often low-quality housing, with limited standards on space, light or community structure, and mobile phone masts that can be seemingly plonked anywhere. All in all, it is a complete shambles.

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18:56 Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat)

Every new home should be built with the climate and ecological emergency in mind. Domestic heating accounts for about 14% of the UK’s carbon emissions. We cannot hope to reach our emissions targets without proper plans to decarbonise heating. Climate action begins at home. Rather than undermining local authorities, the Government should be directing their energy towards building greener, more resilient and more sustainable homes.

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19:10 Ruth Cadbury (Labour)

From the outset, the health and wellbeing of people and communities were at the heart of what became the town and country planning system. Planning is making decisions that are central to our lives and that impact on the generations that follow. It is not about churning out housing “units”. It is about delivering homes—enough homes for the full range of pockets and household types, particularly young people who want to get on with their lives. It is not just about building new estates. It is about place making, incorporating the social, transport and physical infrastructure that makes a place a community and ensuring that there are places of work, providing jobs, regeneration and growth. Planning is about deciding how we move towards net zero, how we enhance and improve our biodiversity, how we protect and enhance our natural environment, and how we build strong and sustainable local high streets.

Specialist housing, which my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) mentioned, protecting our high streets, levelling up, protecting and enhancing our natural environment, delivering net zero, mitigating the impact of climate change—the Government talk the talk on those objectives, but do not walk the walk. The specific proposals are not there, and we cannot support the Government without those details. It feels as if they are just not interested.

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