NATURE campaigners warned today that Labour’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill could become a “licence to destroy.”

Currently at committee stage, the Bill aims to streamline regulations for developers so they can speed up their projects.

But leaders of 32 nature organisations have written to the environment and housing secretaries, warning that the Bill will weaken environmental law and risk local species extinction as well as irreversible habitat loss.

Woodland Trust chief executive Darren Moorcroft said: “Without amendments, this legislation moves away from ‘first, do no harm’ and towards ‘licence to destroy’.”

He warned that there would also be little incentive for developers to leave trees and woods in places with affordable housing, which would impact residents’ physical and mental wellbeing.

Labour leaders have continued to frame nature protection as an obstacle to development.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said that developers should not have to “worry about bats and newts,” while a bizarre row broke out between Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and the British Arachnological Society when he misleadingly claimed a colony of “distinguished jumping spiders” had prevented construction of a housing estate.