Planning and Infrastructure Bill: motion to disagree with Lords Amendment 40

MPs voted 244 to 132 on 13 November 2025 to reject Lords Amendment 40 to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. The Lords amendment would have restricted Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs) to strategic landscape matters, preventing them from being used to address harm to protected sites and species. The government's motion to disagree with that restriction passed, meaning EDPs will be able to cover a wider range of environmental impacts, including those affecting protected habitats and species. The vote concerns a central mechanism in the Bill's new Nature Restoration Fund. Under the system created by Part 3 of the Bill, developers can pay a levy to Natural England rather than carrying out site-by-site environmental mitigation. Those funds are then used for conservation measures set out in an EDP. Rejecting the Lords amendment means that EDPs can be used where development affects protected sites and species, not only broader landscape matters. Critics argued this risks allowing habitat destruction to proceed before replacement measures can take effect, with consequences for species already under pressure. The government's position was that restricting EDPs to strategic landscape matters would arbitrarily limit the fund's usefulness and that existing safeguards, including a requirement that conservation measures materially outweigh negative effects on environmental features, are sufficient. The division split almost entirely along party lines. All 240 Labour and Labour-Co-operative MPs who voted supported the government. All 74 Conservatives, all 46 Liberal Democrats, all four Green MPs, all five Reform UK MPs, and the two Your Party MPs who voted opposed the motion. A small number of independents voted on both sides. No significant cross-party alliances or Labour rebellions were recorded. The result sits alongside several other government victories on the same day overturning Lords amendments to the same Bill, including rejections of amendments on related environmental and planning matters in Divisions 351 through 354.