Planning and infrastructure: Should Parliament take more control?

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Planning and infrastructure: Should Parliament take more control? - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 80

14 Mar 2025

Angela Rayner MP, Deputy Prime Minister, Prime Minister's Questions, 20 November 2025. © House of Commons

Labour’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill promises to speed up the planning process to boost housebuilding and infrastructure development. But does it go far enough, especially when it comes to Parliament’s role? Meanwhile, Ruth and Mark unpack the Reform UK fallout between Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe, exploring why small parties often struggle with internal disputes. And what does it really mean to be an “Independent” MP? Should lone wolves, party rebels and political outcasts all be treated the same?

LISTEN

Labour’s new Planning and Infrastructure Bill promises a wave of housebuilding and major infrastructure projects — but will it deliver? Robbie Owen, Head of Infrastructure Planning and Government Affairs at law firm Pinsent Masons, isn’t convinced. He argues that to truly fast-track major projects, the Government should revive an old parliamentary mechanism: one-clause bills that authorise big-ticket schemes while shielding them from judicial review. Plus, he suggests that more transformative projects, like HS2, may need to be directly approved by Parliament so the Hybrid Bill process may need to be utilised more often. He also suggests that this Bill will not be the last word on the issue for this Government: further legislation will probably be required.

This week, Ruth and Mark also dissect the dramatic fallout between Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and MP Rupert Lowe. Does this high-profile clash expose an inherent challenge for small and emerging parties—a lack of political culture and mechanisms to manage internal disputes?

And with Rupert Lowe joining the swelling ranks of independent MPs, we ask: what does "independent" really mean? Some have left their parties voluntarily, others were elected as non-party candidates, while some lost the whip for defying party lines—or were suspended due to allegations. While a few are true political lone wolves, others remain quietly loyal to their former parties, voting in step and hoping to return to the fold.

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Our guest

Robbie Owen

Robbie is a Parliamentary Agent, Head of Infrastructure Planning & Government Affairs and a Partner at law firm Pinsent Masons. He is also a Board Director and Secretary of the National Infrastructure Planning Association (NIPA), which he founded in 2010. He has advised a Premier League football club on the Football Governance Bill and acted as Parliamentary Agent on the Holocaust Memorial Bill, concerning development of the UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in Victoria Tower Gardens adjacent to Parliament.

Resources

Hansard Society

Paul Evans, Hybrid Bills and Parliament: History, procedure and controversies, Hansard Society blog, 15 October 2023
Ruth Fox and Matthew England, HS2 fiasco: What does it mean for Parliament?, Hansard Society blog, 15 October 2023

UK Parliament

Planning and Infrastructure Bill and supporting documents, 13 March 2025

Transcript

Please note, this transcript is automatically generated. There may consequently be minor errors and the text is not formatted according to our style guide. If you wish to reference or cite the transcript copy below, please first check against the audio version above.

[00:00:00] Intro: You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/PM.

[00:00:16] Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

[00:00:23] Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy.

[00:00:24] Coming up in this week's edition.

[00:00:26] Ruth Fox: Catastrophic meltdown or little local difficulty? Will Reform's internal rows derail them? And what are the parliamentary implications?

[00:00:34] Mark D'Arcy: Bad news for bats and greater crested newts and all kinds of other protected creatures. The government's just published its Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Will it mean less protection for them and maybe more work for MPs?

[00:00:47] Ruth Fox: And we've been looking ahead. There are plenty of clouds on the horizon for the government whips on everything from social security cuts to relations with the European Union.

[00:00:56] Mark D'Arcy: And Ruth, just before we get into what you described just now as Reform's possible catastrophic meltdown or maybe local difficulty, just a reminder that if you're listening to this podcast in the hope of hearing about the assisted dying bill that's going through Parliament at the moment, we've actually got a special dedicated podcast looking at all the nuances of that process, all the twists and turns in the current Public Bill Committee.

[00:01:19] So look out for that in your podcast feed. It'll be there very soon. And in the meantime, Ruth, what about Reform?

[00:01:28] All sorts of shenanigans, a vast bust up between Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe, one of the new MPs elected for Reform in Great Yarmouth last July. This has led already to the suspension of Rupert Lowe.

[00:01:40] He's not just lost the Reform whip, he's been told, apparently, that there's no way back for him. He, in turn, has been tweeting out requests for Nigel Farage to meet him for dinner so that they can iron out their differences and restore harmony by the time they get to the port and cigars. It's an incredibly messy bust up. And I think what it goes to is the internal culture, a problem that small parties in Parliament tend to have, that they aren't configured to manage personal or policy differences or some other kind of issue in the way that the bigger parties are. I suppose it's a generic problem, especially when you're a relatively new start-up, as reform is.

[00:02:19] Ruth Fox: Yes and of course remember Reform until very recently was essentially primarily owned by Nigel Farage.

[00:02:25] Mark D'Arcy: It was the Reform party Limited.

[00:02:26] Ruth Fox: Yes, um, so they're changing their constitution, they're sort of democratising and reorganising, which in itself is obviously likely to lead to fallout.

[00:02:34] But yeah, they're very small, these differences therefore magnified. You've got Lee Anderson really the only one of the group with any parliamentary experience, but he's somebody who's been in three political parties, he's their Chief Whip, but not perhaps an individual whose sort of, uh, approach to political life is designed to, uh, to calm things down.

[00:02:54] Mark D'Arcy: He's not exactly Mr Consensus, is he?

[00:02:56] Ruth Fox: No. Rupert Lowe, I mean, he's a businessman, I think it's an interesting question about the way in which businessmen who become politicians, become parliamentarians, actually find parliamentary and political life quite challenging, because that sort of executive direction that they're used to, getting things done and done quickly, it's a very different life in Parliament. And he's got limited political experience. He had a short spell as a member of the European Parliament, but I mean, a very different context. And, you know my thoughts on that Parliament.

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