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Planning and Infrastructure Bill

My Lords, I too support Amendment 88 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, to which I have put my name. This is a time of huge opportunity. We are going to be building an unprecedented number of houses and creating 10 new towns, and the value that can be added to that effort by open green spaces and blue spaces, delivering some of the benefits that have already been spoken of around the Chamber, is tremendous. It really is an opportunity we must not miss.

It is true to say that, at the moment, deprived communities do not get as good a deal on this as richer communities, and work that the Woodland Trust has done on tree equity has shown that the poorer communities have far less access to open spaces with trees. These are vital for health, mental health, well-being and air quality; we heard about heat, natural flood risk management and the huge range of things that, apart from allowing people to have room to enjoy open spaces, are also going to be delivered by these open spaces.

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I too thank Ministers for seeing us about this amendment. I can understand a reluctance to be prescriptive at strategic planning level, but that puts a huge burden on the National Planning Policy Framework and reliance on it. I came to the conclusion that the Minister, who was an exemplary leader of her local authority, kicked her local planning authority around the block until it did deliver exceptionally well on many issues, but there are local authorities that do not do that. We have got to be clear that this is a moment in time when we are going to be building all these houses, creating all these new urban settlements, and we really have to grip the issue and have a statutory requirement in the Bill.

I welcome that Defra is going to produce a policy on access, which will come after the publication of the next environmental improvement plan, but by that time the legislative opportunity will have passed, so I think we need really to put the requirement for green and blue space in the Bill.