Planning and Infrastructure Bill: motion to disagree with Lords Amendment 38

What happened: On 13 November 2025, the House of Commons voted by 252 to 130 to reject Lords Amendment 38 to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. The amendment, which had been proposed in the House of Lords by the Bishop of Norwich and supported by Liberal Democrat peers, would have required new spatial development strategies to include specific protections for chalk streams. The government's motion to disagree with the Lords passed comfortably, continuing a pattern of the Commons overriding a series of Lords amendments to the Bill on the same day.

Why it matters: Chalk streams are a rare and ecologically sensitive habitat, with the vast majority of the world's chalk streams located in England. Lords Amendment 38 sought to give them explicit statutory protection within the planning framework, so that development decisions in spatial strategies could not overlook them. By rejecting the amendment, the government maintained its position that chalk stream protection is better handled through existing and future policy instruments rather than primary legislation. Critics of the government's position argue that non-statutory protections are less secure because they can be changed without returning to Parliament. The vote means chalk streams will not receive the bespoke legislative safeguard the Lords sought to introduce.

The politics: The vote divided cleanly along government-versus-opposition lines. All 250 Labour and Labour and Co-operative members who voted supported the government's position, while Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, Reform UK and several independents voted against. There were no notable rebellions on either side. The result was one of several votes on the same day in which the Commons rejected Lords amendments to the Bill, including disagreements over environmental delivery plans, brownfield-first development requirements, and parliamentary scrutiny of national policy statements. The Liberal Democrats were particularly vocal in opposing the government's stance on chalk stream protection, with several of their MPs speaking in favour of the Lords amendment during the debate.