My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman or president or vice- president of a range of environmental organisations. I apologise to the Committee; Sod’s law says that I have three groups in a row, in the evening, before a holiday break, at a time when the huge number of supporters that I had lined up to speak to these amendments, alas, have had to depart.
Amendments 295 and 312E—one in my name and one in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock, and both supported ably, as I am sure we will hear, by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis—are about green belts. A green belt sounds like a thoroughly good thing, and it has been a pretty good thing. It is big—it is nearly 13% of the land surface in England—and it surrounds some of our key towns and cities. It was invented to prevent urban sprawl, which it certainly has done very successfully. It has prevented the sort of ugly ribbon development that you see in other countries, ensured a clarity between what is town and urban and what is country, and safeguarded the rurality of our countryside. The green belt was introduced 70 years
ago, but it has not really changed very much or kept up with the times. We need to expect more of that 13% of our land resource, because it is very substantial.
At the moment, 85% of the green belt has no environmental or landscape designation at all. To be honest, the green belt is not very green. Apart from restraining urban sprawl, it is mostly farmland—arable, horticultural or improved grassland—and does not do very much at all to contribute to halting the decline of biodiversity. A recent study on green belt in the north-east showed that only 1.34% of it had public access through rights of way, so it is really not fulfilling some of the Government’s key priorities. For example, it has recently been reported that 8 million households in this country are not able to access green space within a 15-minute walk, which is a recent government target. The green belt would be a huge resource to help fulfil that target, as it would others, such as on biodiversity, human health and the whole range. It is not joined up in any way in policy terms with other government priorities for land use, such as biodiversity net gain, net-zero carbon, local nature recovery strategies, natural flood risk management projects or water protection—I could go on and on. We need to see change in the purpose of the green belt.
The purposes of the green belt are currently not even in statute but simply enshrined as guidance in the National Planning Policy Framework. My amendment would change that: it would transpose the existing purposes of green-belt land and add some new purposes relating to climate change, biodiversity, natural capital and public access. This would join up green-belt policy with other government policies and commitments that exist, for example, not in the Bill but in the levelling up White Paper that preceded it. The concept of ensuring that our land delivers multiple benefits is vital to the future definition of green belt. It is also vital that it focuses planning authorities on the delivery of multiple benefits from all of the land within their plan when they are framing local plans. The green belt is vital to joining up policies at local level as well as national level.
I hope that the Government will address the question of what the green belt is for when they publish their land use framework, which we have been promised for 2023. I have some concern that that might not be the case, since the land use framework is rumoured to focus very much on Defra issues of agriculture, climate change and biodiversity, rather than joining up with DLUHC issues of planning and environmental outcomes. It seems to me that this is a real opportunity now, rather than waiting for anything that might or might not happen in the future, to place clear, multifunctional objectives for green belt in statute, and that that is the safest way forward in the absence of a land use framework.
5.45 pm
I turn now to Amendment 312E, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock, which basically addresses the same issue but through a different route. It would require the Government to report on further secondary legislation that might be necessary to improve the utility of the green belt. I am sure that my noble friend’s amendment is more statesmanlike than mine, and would enable there to be a period of consultation
on joining up planning, environment, climate change and access policies across a range of departments. However, after 70 years of very little change in the purposes of the green belt and the relevant policy, and umpteen calls from a whole variety of reports and agencies to widen green-belt objectives, I personally favour the direct route of bringing a wider range of objectives into statute and leaving only the detailed clarification of that subsequently to secondary legislation.
No doubt if the principle of these amendments—widening and clarifying the purposes of the green belt —is supported in the Committee, we could come back at Report with a middle way between these amendments; or if they were persuaded that this is a fine thing to do, the Government might come forward and table their own amendment at Report. I hope that the Minister will be able today to commit to the real need for widening the objectives of the green belt to meet the broader objectives for our land which the Government are already committed to. Perhaps the Minister could give us some indication, if bringing this into statute is not supported by the Government, of how and when they intend to review and expand the objectives of the green belt. I beg to move.