Labour government is ignoring scientific advice on the risks posed by proposals in their new Bill, while senior ministers have been cosying up to lobbyists for developers, reports PAUL LUSHION, our environment correspondent
Croydon MP Steve Reed, the former environment secretary, in his new role as housing minister, is ordering Labour MPs to vote against amendments which would provide important legal protections from development for wildlife and the environment.
Under threat: rare wildlife, such as otters, and their habitats are at risk under Croydon MP Steve Reed’s ‘cash to trash’ development proposals
Conservation groups across the country raised the alarm about their serious concerns over the Labour government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
Amendment 130 was added to the Bill by the House of Lords.
“Amendment 130 provides extra safeguards to stop development destroying wildlife and wild places where you live,” the London Wildlife Trust has said.
The Lords also agreed another amendment, Amendment 94, that gives added protection to chalk streams, such as Croydon’s River Wandle.
“But this won’t happen if MPs don’t vote to keep the Amendment in the Bill,” according to Richard Barnes, the head of planning and external affairs at the London Wildlife Trust.
The National Tust, the RSPB, regional wildlife trusts and other ecological organisations and environmentalists have said the Bill in its original form “could be disastrous for wildlife and wild places”.
Threat to nature: Streatham and Croydon North MP Steve Reed has let being housing secretary go to his head
But Reed wants what environmentalists have described as a “cash to trash” system, where developers pay into a fund in order to get planning permission to build on previously protected areas of natural habitat.
Studies consistently show that Britain is already one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. Reed’s “Build Baby Build” Bill threatens to make that situation much worse.
Reed’s draft Bill removes protected animals such as dormice, badgers, hedgehogs, otters and nightingales, and rare habitats such as wetlands and ancient woodlands, from new rules which allow developers to sidestep environmental laws to speed up house building.
Under Reed’s draft legislation, developers will be able to pay into a national “nature recovery fund” and go ahead with their project straight away, instead of having to carry out an environmental survey and avoid, or mitigate, damage before putting spades into the ground.
Stock answer: Sarah Jones MP has toed the party line over Reed’s Bill
The Lords’ amendment would mean the nature recovery fund is restricted to impacts from water and air pollution, meaning developers would still have to take the usual measures to mitigate damage to wildlife and habitats.
Reed, the MP for Streatham (and Croydon North if he can be bothered) has told Labour MPs to reject the amendment when the Bill returns to the Commons for the final stages before being passed into law next week.
Reed’s Labour colleagues, such as Croydon West MP Sarah Jones, have fobbed off constituents with misleading responses when they have raised their concerns over the withdrawal of vital protections for wildlife and habitat.
“I know that there have been concerns that the Bill will remove existing environmental protections and put irreplaceable habitat such as ancient woodlands at risk. I am pleased to confirm that this is not the case,” MP Jones’s stock response said.
“I believe that the Bill will ultimately deliver more for nature, not less.”
But environmental experts say that is simply untrue.
In a letter to MPs some of the UK’s biggest nature charities say the government rollback of environmental law “lacks any rigorous scientific or ecological justification”.
The environmentalists’ letter criticises Reed’s Bill, saying: “There is no credible, published, or well-established evidence that this model can simply be scaled or replicated for multiple species nationwide without risking serious ecological harm, legal uncertainty and increased costs for both developers and land managers.”
In the Commons yesterday, Green MP Dr Ellie Chowns described the government’s “zero-sum game” approach to development and nature as “a complete misconception”.
Uncertain future: Reed’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill could put protected habitat such as Coulsdon’s Farthing Down at greater risk of development, according to environmentalists
“Economic prosperity, social justice and environmental responsilbility, environmental protection can and must all go together. They are fundamentally interlinked,” the MP for North Herefordshire told the House.
“The Lords added sensible, evidence-based amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to strengthen nature protection. But the government rejected them.
“Ministers need to listen – to experts, to trusted organisations, and to the public.”
But according to The Grauniad, the only people the Labour government has been listening to are profit-hungry developers and their lobbyists.
The Grauniad reports that in the past year, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has not met a single environmental organisation or the body for professional ecologists to discuss the proposals in the Bill. In the same period, Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, has had four meetings with environmentalists, compared with 16 with leading developers.
Read more: Reed took £1,786 football tickets from water company owners
Read more: Steve Reed’s aide blocks members’ vote on Mandelson scandal
Read more: The Fraud: how Reed’s Labour spied on Croydon councillors
Read more: Reed’s housing plan is just the same as Thatcher’s and Blair’s
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The evil Steve Reed did nothing to save the environment when he was Environment minister, and now he is housing minister, he is again demonstrating his contempt for the environment by trying to allow housing developers, especially the big ones who will give him larger back-handers, to build whatever they want wherever they like.
Is this a Croydon problem as Reed is copying Croydon’s mayor who has long been in awe of big business and their ridiculous ideas (eg. Westfield, or whatever they are calling themselves this week).
No, it’s a Keir Starmer problem. Reed is only obeying orders.
Think you might have these two the wrong way round, Angus.
Starmer owes his position to fraudster McSweeney and his Lambeth chum Reed.
Steve Reed’s “nature recovery fund” sounds about as credible as Carbon Offsetting and will do nothing to protect what’s left of biodiversity in the UK. In fact it shows complete ignorance of what biodiversity is. You can’t just destroy a habitat with many co-existing species in one place and plant a few trees somewhere else expecting all of those interactions to magically appear again.
Steve two-faced Reed was very keen to cosy up to water pollution campaigner Feargal Sharkey before the last General Election, promptly dropping him and the cause he espoused once Starmer strolled into to number 10. Labour are utterly untrustworthy and malignant with it
Former environment minister, now housing minister, proving that he doesn’t understand either.
Labour have joined the Conservatives and Reform in believing that profits for rich people are the only thing that matters and leaving the rest of us to suffer.
Please moderate your divisive rich v. poor rhetoric Peter. That’s more Corbyn, less cuddly Greens
I campaigned for Reed when he wanted to be MP after Malcolm Wicks died. I am now coming to regret doing so. And now I am beginning to regret voting for this lot.
Don’t suppose you ever received an email from Reed sent to Croydon North CLP members before Malcolm Wicks died?
By all accounts, Malcolm Wicks was a good MP, whereas nobody has a good word to say about the worse than useless Steve Reed !
To quote John Cooper Clarke:
“They can’t find a good word for you, but I can: twat!”
It will come as a surprise to nobody that the Croydon North MP and housing minister, Steve Reed, is wrong to try and strong-arm MPs into voting for the (unamended) Planning & Infrastructure Bill, which would allow housing developers freedom to build anywhere and everywhere at the expense of nature and the environment…..
“Nature is not a blocker to housing growth and the government risks missing both its housing and nature targets if it views it as such…” is in a new report by the cross-party Environmental Audit Committee of MPs.
Croydon council destroying badger sets in old coulsdon and allowing planning permission to override the best interests of nature conservation