The changes are intended to make the planning system simpler and clearer, and for the most part are a welcome addition to the Government’s drive to facilitate more housebuilding and infrastructure development. However, the omission of some crucial wording relating to mineral planning could unintentionally undermine these ambitions.

Guidance on ‘facilitating the sustainable use of minerals’ can be found on page 49 of the draft text, and is rightly included under the broad heading of ‘delivering homes and supporting growth’, with a presumption in favour of sustainable development applied to mineral extraction outside of settlements.

This is welcome, and the right thing to do for the Government’s ambitions. The mineral products sector is the largest supplier to the UK construction sector, producing 400 million tonnes of essential materials and products for construction uses every year, including almost 200 million tonnes of indigenous crushed rock, sand, and gravel extracted from quarries across the country. In doing so, the sector directly employs nearly 90,000 highly skilled, permanent jobs, often in rural locations.

However, in the apparent pursuit of brevity, the Government has eliminated some important references to well-established policy principles that are in the current NPPF.

Maintaining a sufficient supply of minerals to provide the infrastructure, buildings, energy and goods that the country needs is no longer described as “essential” in the draft text. The need for mineral planning authorities to plan for a “steady and adequate supply” of aggregates is also gone.

The word ‘essential’ is an important and accurate description, and puts meat on the bones of the ‘substantial weight’ to be given to the benefits of mineral extraction.  It is also a counterweight to the tendency of council planning committees to reject appropriate applications for new mineral extraction, often leading to appeals, which are costly and time-consuming for all involved. This is often seen as discouraging businesses from investing in applications for new extraction altogether.

This is particularly important when the updated NPPF includes specific references to ‘critical and growth minerals’, such as rare earths. Downplaying the essentiality of ‘other’ minerals like crushed rock, sand, and gravel which are not included in that category implies, wrongly, that they are not essential for growth and risks making the planning system more adverse for them.

Likewise, the words ‘steady and adequate’ are more than just a turn of phrase which can be cut if the overall gist remains. They have been an accepted principle in mineral planning for decades, and have been cited in decisions and local plans to justify allocating sites for, and permitting in a timely manner, new mineral extraction and ensuring that the supply of materials is not disrupted.

It has arguably never been more important to preserve these explicit references in the NPPF. Already, a combination of unnecessary cost, delay, uncertainty, and bureaucracy in the planning system has driven a decline in permitted aggregates reserves, despite sluggish sales due to low construction levels.

For every 100 tonnes of crushed rock the industry sells, it only obtains permission to extract a new 33 tonnes. The figure for sand and gravel is 61 tonnes, but the existing level of sand and gravel reserves is already much lower, and individual sites are shorter lived.

If the Government’s planning reforms are successful in driving more construction activity, but there is no corresponding uptick in new quarry permissions, this squeeze on supply will intensify and, in the medium term, could hamper the Government’s ability to deliver the houses and infrastructure this country needs.

While there are some positive steps in the updated NPPF which should help facilitate more mineral extraction, the Government should take the simple step of reinstating the “essential” and “steady and adequate” wording to make sure its own work is not undone.

But that should be a first step. The Government can do even more to ensure the updated NPPF supports the mineral products sector to continue supplying, on a long-term, sustainable basis, the foundations for the construction boom ministers want to see.

For example, the draft text already includes a very positive line requiring that particular importance be given to ‘facilitating the exploration and extraction or processing of critical and growth minerals’ when assessing the benefits of mineral development. This should be extended to all minerals of national and local importance, including construction aggregates and industrial minerals, rather than being reserved for that specific category.

Secondly, the draft text currently only expects that spatial development strategies (SDSs) make provision for mineral supply ‘where appropriate’. This caveat should be deleted, and SDSs should not be able to opt out of planning for the supply of minerals to enable the growth and development they exist to drive. Those authorities that don’t have mineral resources within their areas will be wholly dependent on the supply of minerals from elsewhere to meet their ambitions.

Just as the Government’s planning reform drive is far from over, there is more that can be done beyond the updated NPPF to put mineral planning on a clearer, more consistent, and more sustainable footing. But ministers should start by simply correcting the backwards steps currently in the draft document, and taking a couple more steps forward.

5 min read15 min

The revelation that the Prime Minister appointed Mandelson as US ambassador despite being aware of his links to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein has triggered the most perilous period of his premiership so far. In the last few days, he has lost his chief of staff and director of communications, while on Monday, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar told him to resign.

The Mandelson affair has caused anger and frustration among Labour women in particular.

Labour had 190 women MPs elected at the 2024 general election, the largest number ever returned to the House of Commons by a single political party.

However, many women in the party believe that recent revelations over how Mandelson was appointed typify a deep-rooted misogyny within Labour, with former special adviser Baroness Ayesha Hazarika describing last week’s events as “shameful” for her party. 

“I have never known rage and fury and devastation, particularly for female MPs, peers, councillors, party members, as I have over this last week,” she told Sky News at the weekend.

“This is a story about male power and a boys’ club… I’m afraid we have also seen a microcosm of that in politics, particularly Labour politics this week.”

The Starmer administration has faced accusations of being a boys’ club long before the Mandelson affair. Female Labour MPs, such as former transport secretary Louise Haigh, have complained about anonymous briefings targeting women in cabinet. At the same time, Downing Street has been accused of overlooking women to give senior jobs to men. 

Seemingly recognising the strength of feeling, the Prime Minister is set to address the Women’s PLP on Wednesday afternoon.

PoliticsHome understands that Starmer has been having meetings with women across the party in recent days to listen to their concerns.

“I do think this is a real opportunity to make progress on misogyny in politics,” one Labour woman MP who preferred to remain anonymous told PoliticsHome.

Following the recent resignations of Morgan McSweeney and Tim Allan as Starmer’s chief of staff and director of communications, respectively, and the expected resignation of Chris Wormald as head of the civil service in the coming weeks, the Prime Minister’s latest government reset is seen as an opportunity to address this perceived problem.

At the time of writing, Home Office permanent secretary Dame Antonia Romeo is expected to replace Wormald as the first female cabinet secretary.

Many Labour women would like to see Steph Driver return to Downing Street to lead the communications operation.

“It depends [on] who gets appointed as to whether the bully boys club improves,” the same MP quoted above added.

She continued: “The women in the PLP have made the right call on each [u-turn] and have privately expressed their concerns at each and every opportunity, and haven’t been to the press. And we have been seen as disloyal for doing so.”

The MP said putting experienced women “in the real positions of power” where they are “listened to” would help the government show it is properly tackling the Mandelson scandal.

Speaking to the wider PLP on Monday night, Starmer pledged to take a more inclusive approach to government, with No 10 having regularly been accused of paying too little attention to the views of backbench MPs in the 18 months it has been in power.

The soft-left Tribune group has called for a cabinet reshuffle to ensure the PM’s senior team better reflects the parliamentary party.

Speaking to PoliticsHome, Labour MP Florence Eshalomi said that moving forward, there “needs to be regular engagement and listening when female parliamentarians raise concerns”, adding “the mistakes of that boys’ network” had been exposed. 

Referring to Mandelson’s history within the party, Eshalomi asked: “Would a woman who had been sacked twice still get appointed, still get an important job? As women, we are not afforded that.”

Speaking before the Women’s PLP meeting on Wednesday, Eshalomi said she would go along with “an open mind to listen to what [Starmer] has to say.”

Labour MP Emily Darlington, who is a campaigner for equality for women in Parliament, told PoliticsHome that the Epstein case had revealed “a culture around the rich and powerful men that get protected”, adding, “the closed men’s spaces in politics continue”. 

“It controls who is promoted, who is put in place, and who has power within those networks. We are seeing those two scenarios, both of those things coming together.”

Labour women are also frustrated because the Mandelson scandal and subsequent debate about a boys’ club come at the same time as the government is bringing out a strategy for tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG).

“In terms of the trust of women and girls up and down the country, we want them to believe us when we say it is a key priority for the government. It will fall on us as women parliamentarians to repair that [trust], said Eshalomi, the MP for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green.

Darlingon, the MP for Milton Keynes Central, said she wanted to see the PM and the government talk about VAWG more going forward.

“I would love to see him [Starmer] talking about this more, and this would be a good thing to come out of this scandal, especially for the victims of the biggest grooming and trafficking scandal of our age,” she told PoliticsHome.

Admitting that it was “painful to lose a sponsor”, Louis stood by the interview, claiming: “That’s what I do. That’s my unique place in the British broadcasting landscape. I’m willing to have difficult conversations and long may it continue.”

He continued: “The interview went out a couple of days after [a terrorist incident outside a synagogue in Manchester on the holy day of Yom Kippur], and there’s a lot of fear that’s real, and I want to acknowledge that.

“At the same time I’m very proud of how we handled the interview and how we did it. But I don’t want to minimise the feelings that are going on.”

He told his X followers: “I went on the podcast and as hard as the lobby groups and media tried, they couldn’t twist anything I said. So they have resorted to lobbying for Louis’ sponsorship to be pulled in an attempt to scare others out of giving me a platform.”

The creative director behind Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance is lifting the lid on how one of his halftime show’s most talked-about details came to be.

In a new interview with Variety, creative director Harriet Cuddeford explained that this came about when the NFL wouldn’t grant Bad Bunny’s team permission to use the 25 carts that would have been necessary to bring their plans to life on the field.

Their solution, apparently, was to ditch a lot of their intended foliage in place of around 380 costumed background artists.

Cuddeford admitted: “That solution of making the plant people, and then the plant people getting on and off in time, plus all the sets and all the performers – it was audacious in every direction. There were over 330 actual cast performers in addition to the plant people. It was just huge.”

She also shared: “There’s just so many variables in live TV. Even the weather. It was on a real grass field, and there’s no roof. We had to have backup rain plans.

“There were so many things that could have caused an issue. But it just kind of almost flawlessly unfolded before our eyes. We were all just like, ‘Wow, it worked!’.”

Pippa Heylings MP (Photography by Dinendra Haria)

8 min read2 min

As Nigel Farage kindly undertakes a thorough “spring cleaning” for the Conservatives, with the offer of a home for unhappy MPs, Kemi Badenoch’s right flank is falling away. She has not, however, changed tack to lean into her more centrist base.

With the Tories now opposed to their own 2050 net-zero target, the Liberal Democrats believe Badenoch is making a mistake – one they are happy to exploit.

Ed Davey’s party gained 60 seats from the Tories at the last election, mostly in rural and suburban areas across the south of England, and at the heart of their campaign was anger over sewage being discharged by water companies into rivers and seas.

According to Pippa Heylings, the Lib Dems’ energy spokesperson, turning the Conservatives further away from net-zero action will help her party “solidify” its grip on those formerly Conservative seats.

The 61-year-old MP for South Cambridgeshire points to polling from More in Common, which last year showed that around 25 per cent of those who voted Lib Dem consider ‘climate change and the environment’ to be one of the top issues facing the country – almost twice the proportion of the public as a whole.

“At the moment, you’ve got Reform, who are weaponising concerns around net-zero”, she says, and “the Conservatives recklessly rowing back on the very infrastructure they created to tackle climate change, which is the Climate Change Act”.

Many of the Tory MPs who now claim that the UK’s 2050 net-zero target is causing damage to the economy – like shadow cabinet member Andrew Bowie – were the same people who helped enshrine the goal into law in 2019.

“Andrew Bowie was Theresa May’s private secretary when that happened,” Heylings points out. “I can’t understand the cognitive dissonance of that – except pure politics.”

Badenoch and Farage, she says, are fighting over a relatively small minority of voters who are opposed to the net-zero target. 

The result? Lib Dems will find it easier to hold and gain seats.

“I think they’re underestimating the appetite for more on climate change,” she says of the Conservatives and Reform. “Our polling, consistently, is showing that. Energy companies are doing this polling as well, and they’re finding exactly the same.”

Voters in her constituency, she insists, “really worry” about global warming, and tell her so on the doorstep.

“What they say is: ‘I really want to know that we’re handing on a better world, because it’s a scary world now, and I want to hand on a better world to the next generation’.”

Speaking at last year’s Lib Dem conference, Heylings pledged that her party would take on “the myths being peddled” about net-zero by parties on the right. But are they doing that forcefully enough?

“We can always do better,” she admits. “We’ve got to find the cut-through in the media to hear us, but in the Chamber, time after time – if you just look at what the Lib Dems are doing – we are constantly challenging that.”

When Richard Tice chucks out his “net-stupid zero” phrase, Heylings counters it with “fracking stupid Reform”.

“Reform wants people to go down the pits again,” she argues. “They want them to go down the mines again. This is not going forwards.”

What does Heylings make of Energy Secretary Ed Miliband?

“I think he’s doing very well,” she says, particularly delighted by news that the UK has joined nine other European countries in accelerating the rollout of windfarms in the North Sea, which will be internationally linked via interconnector cables.

“We are actually looking at a collective offshore wind target that will power millions and millions of homes and will drive the costs down. To me, this is just absolutely brilliant.”

Her “one concern” is that amid such heavy focus on energy security, Miliband and his department are not paying anywhere near enough attention to the net-zero half of his brief.

“That’s why we brought forward the Climate and Nature Bill,” she says, referring to a Private Members’ Bill that the government refused to back. “We have to be looking at adaptation and resilience as well. How communities – and the environment that we’re in – can be resilient to the climate shocks we can no longer avoid.”

For Heylings, Labour’s most damaging move since taking office has been its decision to put nature against growth. Ministers have suggested there is a binary choice between, for example, protecting newts and getting homes built.

It is a “lazy” approach, she says. “You can do both growth and nature recovery. We’ve proven it. It’s what I’m dedicating my life to – that balance.”

The MP, a previous planning committee chair on her local council, adds: “I’ve worked with developers, and I know that if you get the rules clear, you’ve got policy certainty, they will absorb that need.”

Prior to her involvement in politics, Heylings worked internationally with NGOs, governments and charities, including eight years in East Africa and 15 years in Latin America and the Caribbean. In that time, she served as a policy adviser to the UK’s international climate policy programme, supported governments at global COP summits and played a key role in the creation of the Galapagos Islands Marine Reserve.

“It completely changed my outlook on the world,” she recalls. “On the interdependency of society, prosperity and natural resources. That was because I was seeing it at levels where people were living on the edge – literally, in terms of poverty.

“Climate change was already impacting those communities, so you could see immediately the impact of resource scarcity throwing whole communities into desperate situations.”

When she returned to the UK in 2012, she joined the Green Party, having been inspired by their manifesto for youth. After a couple of years, she found herself put off by the party’s anti-markets stance.

“I know that we need disruption, entrepreneurialism, innovation – we need the markets, in a regulated way. That’s what I found with the Lib Dems. I found governable policy.”

Since Zack Polanski’s election as leader, the Greens have overtaken the Lib Dems in national opinion polls, leaving her party trailing in fifth place. Does Heylings see Polanski as a threat to the Lib Dems’ ability to attract environmentally minded voters?

“What is needed right now is for the voices across all parties to be as strong as possible, to bring us back to the need to tackle the climate and environment crisis,” she replies. “So it’s good, for me, that there are loud Green Party voices as well and that they’re getting airtime.”

She appears similarly relaxed when asked why the Lib Dems are failing to make more progress of their own in the polls.

“Last year we had our best local elections and we beat – for the first time ever – both Conservatives and Labour in terms of the number of seats we won,” she says, adding that the party has continued to score impressively in council by-elections since then. “When you actually put ballots in boxes, people are choosing us.”

Yet there is clearly debate amongst the party’s MPs as to whether a wider policy prospectus and stronger messaging is needed.

One of Heylings’ disgruntled colleagues recently told The Guardian that Davey and his team must “move with significant pace towards the development of a national story for the party to tell”. Are they right about that?

“I don’t support anybody talking outside the party in that way,” says Heylings. “I think, like every party, we are internally working on that. There may be colleagues who want to work at a faster pace, but we are working on it.”

While she sees anonymous briefings to the media as unhelpful, Heylings insists she is “absolutely” in favour of an internal debate about what the national narrative should be, adding: “I want that to be as live and robust as possible – and we’re having it.”

Another reported complaint among her colleagues is that the Lib Dems lack a “big retail offer on the economy”. Does the party have one of those?

“It’s coming,” she whispers. “You will see the beginnings of that at the spring conference.”

She tells The House that this offer will “help define and differentiate us”, while also relating to her brief around climate and energy costs.

With that work under way, the MP goes so far as to claim it is possible that the Lib Dems could become Britain’s next official opposition.

“I’m very ambitious. I’m ambitious in terms of: we want to be the next official opposition. Absolutely.”

Some might say, given how the Lib Dems are currently polling, she sounds worryingly similar here to 2019-era Jo “next PM” Swinson. Does Heylings really believe that is doable? “Yes,” she replies.

“We are listening very hard right now. You can’t just go in and say, ‘This is what we’ll do’. We’re listening very hard to know, in the seats that we want to win, what else do we need to be offering, and how do we need to be offering it. You will be hearing from us.”

The Warm Homes Plan (WHP) shifts from a ‘fabric first’ towards a ‘heat pump first’ approach. Combined with the decision to end the Energy Company Obligation, which had a fabric-first approach, more homeowners will be encouraged to install low–carbon heating technologies.

But, are the right technologies being supported, and will rural households have access to the support needed to decarbonise their heating fairly and affordably?

While heat pumps will undoubt­edly play an important role in many homes, there is no single solution that fits the diverse realities of the UK’s rural housing stock. Many rural homes are older, harder‑to‑treat, and face significant challenges with insulation, electricity supply, and instal­lation. For these households, which often face higher levels of fuel poverty, mandating only electric solutions risks imposing high upfront and running costs, substantial disruption, and, ultimately, limited consumer uptake.

For rural MPs, the WHP must be read along­side the consultation on Exploring the Role of Alternative Clean Heating Solutions which closes on 10th February. This seeks to identify alternatives for the estimated 20 per cent of homes the government recognises might not be suitable for heat pumps.

Calor welcomes the government’s ambition and the prin­ciple of universal access outlined in the WHP. However, the plan lacks a strategic approach for rural homes as many of the technologies currently supported might not be suitable, locking them out of schemes. Fairness and consumer choice for rural households must sit at the heart of policy design.

 This means ensuring that Renewable Liquid Gases (RLGs) – such as BioLPG – are fully taken forward in the government’s heat strategy.

BioLPG is already available in the UK and is fully compatible with existing heating systems, and can cut carbon emissions immediately. BioLPG, offers up to 90 per cent carbon savings compared to conventional LPG, while producing dramatically lower particulate and NOx emissions than heating oil.

Heat pumps can cost upwards of £12,000 to install in off‑grid homes, even before fabric improvements are considered. The bill for some homes can be considerably higher. In contrast, switching to BioLPG requires no disruption, protects consumer choice, and ensures a just transition for house­holds that cannot easily electrify.

The consultation rightly acknowledges the potential of renewable liquid fuels. An ambi­tious and well‑designed Renewable Liquid Heating Fuel Obligation, similar to that already deployed in the transport sector, would unlock investment, give certainty to producers, and accelerate supply of RLGs at scale. It is vital the government continues its dialogue with industry to bring forward an obligation as this would enable rural households to transition quickly and affordably.

As the UK shapes its future heat policy, the priority must be a prag­matic, consumer‑led pathway that delivers emissions reduction while safeguarding rural communities. Heat pumps have an important role to play, but they are not the only answer. RLGs present a ready‑made, cost‑effective and low‑carbon solution that can work alongside electrification – not in competition with it.

If the WHP is to properly deliver for rural communities, RLGs like BioLPG must be given the full policy recognition they deserve.