Why Labour’s growth drive may cause a green backlash

On the face of it, the government’s shake-up of planning rules to boost housebuilding and infrastructure projects makes sense and should encourage economic growth.

- ANDREW GRICE

The Office for Budget Responsibility fiscal watchdog has acknowledged it in a rare piece of good news for Rachel Reeves.

Yet there is another side to this story. The government’s narrative is that it is on the side of the “builders” and taking on “the blockers” holding the country back. A chief villain is 3,500 environmental regulations. When ministers published a review of these rules this month, they promised “no more bat tunnels” – a reference to the infamous £100m tunnel in Buckinghamshire for the HS2 project.

But, not for the first time, Labour’s rhetoric was not matched by reality. The review, by Dan Corry, who headed the Downing Street policy unit under Gordon Brown, opposed the “bonfire of regulations” pro-growth campaigners wanted, instead calling for the rules to be streamlined to avoid needless duplication. Crucially, Corry found: “We have only rarely had instances suggested to us where development was stopped by environmental regulation alone.”

You wouldn’t have known that from the spin with which the government launched the report. It garnered headlines by promising to cut “archaic green tape” harming growth. Ministers insist their planning shake-up is a “win, win” that will both protect nature and grow the economy.