In recent weeks, various nature groups and newspaper columnists have promoted claims that the government’s flagship planning and infrastructure bill is a “nature sellout”. The argument goes that the government is conspiring with malign developers to destroy irreplaceable habitats as a first resort. This sounds alarming, if only it were true.

The truth is that our current framework for protecting habitats has been in place for decades but has failed to prevent nature loss. This is because we approach conservation in the least effective way possible, with tens of thousands of individual site-by-site protections. Ecological science is clear that this is outdated. Modern conservation strategies recognise the necessity of interconnectivity and scale for supporting complex ecosystems.

As well as failing nature, this system adds yet more costs and barriers to the new homes and infrastructure our country needs, because builders are distracted by cooking up well-meaning but ultimately piecemeal mitigation schemes with questionable impact, such as the now infamous HS2 bat tunnel, which is ridiculed by environmentalists and industrialists alike.

Without more homes, wealth will continue to concentrate and homelessness will grow. Without better infrastructure, we cannot build more prosperous communities........

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