December 2025

I beg to move, That this House has considered planning policy for quarries. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I am grateful for the opportunity to bring the issue of planning policy for quarries to Westminster Hall today. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this important debate. I would like to declare at the very outset that, like many hundreds of my constituents, I will be impacted by the development that I am going to refer to. My South Leicest

As the hon. Lady will hear in the remaining parts of my speech, I entirely concur with her comments. Given that the proposed quarry site is not allocated in Leicestershire county council’s minerals plan, which runs until 2031, we can understand why a group such as the concerned residents present today would try to seek the advice of a professional minerals planner to review the proposals, consider the data and write a report that the residents group could use as the basis for their representatio

I absolutely agree, and I sympathise entirely with the hon. Lady. I would go further. I made the point earlier about finding suitable experts who are able to apply their technical expertise to help campaign groups or MPs to rebut planning applications on a technical basis. They are simply not there, for fear of a conflict of interest given their commercial interests with large-scale developers. The hon. Lady makes an important point and has put it on the record. The UK has committed, through reg

To conclude, there is no doubt that quarrying plays an extremely important role in delivering the homes, roads and infrastructure that our country needs, as the Minister has said and I acknowledge. That cannot and must not, however, come at the expense of the health of the people of our country. The residents of Misterton, Walcote, Lutterworth and the surrounding villages, as well as all our constituents, are asking us to pay attention to the latest science and heed the lessons of the past, part

Parliamentary appearance by Alberto Costa