Planning bill will 'push the public towards Reform', Labour MP warns prime minister

Keir Starmer's planning bill will "push the public towards Reform", a Labour MP has said as he urges his colleagues to back amendments to the legislation.

- Helena Horton

Chris Hinchliff, the MP for North East Hertfordshire, has submitted a package of amendments to the bill, which as it stands, he says, lets developers "pay cash to trash nature". These will be debated in parliament during the report stage in early June.

The planning and infrastructure bill, currently at committee stage in parliament, is what Labour is using to meet its target of building 1.5m homes by 2029. It will speed up housing developments and large infrastructure projects by allowing developers to avoid meeting environmental obligations to protect habitats and species such as barn owls, otters, bats and newts, at the site of their project, by paying into a central nature recovery fund that will be used to create environmental improvement elsewhere.