Planning and Infrastructure Bill Report Stage: Amendment 15

Parliament rejected a Liberal Democrat amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill on 9 June 2025, by 323 votes to 73. Amendment 15, tabled by Lib Dem MPs, would have written into the legislation a statutory target of 150,000 new social homes built per year, backed by an additional £6 billion in annual public funding on top of existing affordable housing programmes and section 106 developer contributions. The amendment would have made the social housing target legally binding, requiring a specific and substantial increase in public spending to deliver it. The Centre for Economics and Business Research, cited by Lib Dem MP Gideon Amos during the debate, assessed that the funding level proposed would be sufficient to reach 150,000 social homes per year by the end of the Parliament. Without such a provision, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill contains no binding annual figure for social housing delivery. All 318 Labour and Labour Co-operative MPs who voted did so against the amendment. The 73 votes in favour came almost entirely from the Liberal Democrats, with 56 of their MPs backing it. The four Green MPs, four Reform UK MPs, and a handful of smaller party and independent MPs also voted for it. Only one Conservative MP voted in favour, while 115 Conservatives had no vote recorded. The result was never in doubt given the size of the Labour majority, though the vote allowed the Lib Dems to place their social housing target formally on the parliamentary record.