I don’t know why, but it continues to astonish me just how foolish politicians can be – and how easily persuaded they are by really bad advice from smart but tin-eared advisors.
In less than a year, Starmer and Reeves have squandered the gift of the huge majority won at last year’s General Election – on one key issue after another: responding to the genocide in Gaza; on wantonly cruel cuts in disability benefits; on finding creative ways of taxing wealth; on dealing with the water companies – and, now, on its new Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
On May 23rd, the Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB (with a combined membership of more than 2 million) launched a devastating attack on Labour’s whole approach to streamlining the planning system through the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Part 3 of the Bill will make it possible for developers to ignore existing environmental protections by paying money into a so-called ‘Nature Recovery Fund’ which will be used to pay for environmental projects elsewhere. Starmer and Reeves have gone out of their way, time after time, to claim that it’s these environmental safeguards that are responsible for delays and blockages in the planning process, even though they know this is completely untrue.
According to the Wildlife Trusts, roughly 3% of proposals for new housing are delayed for environmental reasons. As The Guardian reported: “the data from analysis of 17,433 planning appeals in England in 2024 found that newts were relevant in just 140 (0.8%) planning appeals, and bats were relevant in 432 (2.48%).
So what makes Starmer and Reeves both stupid and totally dishonest? By all accounts the rationale of their tin-eared advisers is to demonstrate to ‘’Reform-friendly’ Labour voters that the environment is as unsafe in their hands as it would be in Nigel Farage’s. That economic growth is all that matters. That caring for the natural world is a middle-class self-indulgence (‘the well-to-do prioritising the nice-to-have’ over the interests of working people). And that pouring as much concrete as possible is self-evidently the best way of achieving that growth.
And they go on pursuing this ideological path despite the fact that there are no supporting polls or surveys showing that this is what really matters to Labour voters tempted by Reform’s populist bullshit.
So they lie. They dig in. They break promises left, right and centre, ready to die, apparently, in this self-constructed ditch of developer-led deceit. That’s why every single amendment put forward through the Committee examining the Bill was summarily dismissed by the loyal but lumpen Labour MPs on the Committee.
Including an amendment tabled by veteran Labour MP Barry Gardiner requiring all house builders to provide a specially designed brick (costing £35) to help cavity-nesting such as swifts, house martins, sparrows and starlings – a measure which Labour in opposition enthusiastically supported! And there’s huge public support for this one small, cost-effective biodiversity regulation.
To get a measure of this Government’s subservient obedience to the demands of the volume housebuilders, just listen to the words of housing minister Matthew Pennycook: “we are not convinced that legislating to mandate the use of specific wildlife features is the right approach, whether that is done through building regulations or a free standing legal requirement”.
It’s all so demeaning. So unnecessary. And now that the mainstream environment movement, urged on primarily by the Wildlife Trusts, has realised just how high the stakes are with this Planning and Infrastructure Bill, it’s reasonable to assume that there will be a much more serious debate in the House of Lords, bringing down on Ministers’ helmeted heads the righteous outrage of the entire movement.
As we’ve learnt, in less than one deeply depressing year, this is a Government that needs to be kicked harder and harder until they get desperate enough to make the pain go away.
P.S. If you want to read a brilliant summary of ‘reasons to be outraged’ (and what to do about it), check out George Monbiot’s article in the Guardian on Tuesday) (https://www.monbiot.com/2025/05/16/planning-his-own-demise/)
