My Lords, when this Government took office 18 months ago, they did so promising environmental recovery, but I have to say that, instead, we have seen a series of steps which, in my view, simultaneously weakened protections, tightened budgets for nature-friendly farming and put development first.
Of course, my colleagues and I want to see growth and an end to our housing shortages, and I accept that we will need to build on open land as well as in our towns and cities, but development has to be managed in a way that manages and maximises the protections for nature, the countryside and, crucially, our food supply.
It cannot make sense to reduce new housing targets in city areas while increasing them in the countryside, to build large-scale solar farms on our most productive agricultural land, and to have so much uncertainty for farmers around just how much support they will get for nature-friendly agriculture or, frankly, question marks about the budgets available.
This matters, because if farmers no longer have financially viable routes to invest in wildlife-friendly habitat—hedgerows, wildflower margins and wetland creations—biodiversity loss will simply accelerate. The uncertainty over the SFI and the grant structure for farmers looking to do the right thing for nature has to stop.
We are clearly where we are on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, but this is by no means the end of the debate. In my view, this House has made some pretty sensible amendments to the legislation. I would love to think that Ministers will accept them, although I fear the Treasury may have a different view on that. The risk is that we end up, still, with a measure that has few friends in the environmental world. I have to say to the Minister that the jury remains firmly out on the planned environmental development plans and, crucially, on the ability of Natural England to deliver the kinds of promises with actions that Ministers are saying will happen.
Beyond the debates on that piece of legislation, we on this side of the House will be watching very carefully what comes in secondary legislation and whether promises made in this House and the other House turn into reality. Then, on the horizon, there are reports of a further Bill that may emerge from the Treasury to try to drive growth; of course, the worry is that that will happen with scant regard for the impact on nature. That must not be allowed to happen.
Beyond this, most immediately in the Minister’s department, I am particularly concerned about the proposed changes to biodiversity net gain. It is certainly the case that some aspects of the way BNG is working make no sense. I had a case close to where I live, where the local tennis club had to get BNG processes to cover the merging of two tennis courts about a metre apart—that makes no sense at all. But the problem is that, if you get rid of BNG for small sites altogether, it removes one of its key benefits. As a Member of Parliament, I too often saw occasions when a developer would take a site, knock down a house, bulldoze everything that was there and kill all the nature before even applying for planning consent, so BNG on small sites does have a role to play, and I think the Office for Environmental Protection is right to have expressed real concerns about what is proposed. I urge the Minister to make sure that the outcome of the consultations on BNG do not remove its key benefits and leave small site developers free to do whatever they want on the sites they plan to develop. Ministers also need to be clear about how they expect BNG to operate alongside environmental development plans and the planned nature restoration fund, because I assure the Minister that it is not clear yet how that is going to work.
My Lords, I declare my environmental interests as listed in the register. I am sure we all know that nature in this country is in serious decline, with species and habitats disappearing and only 33% of SSSIs in favourable condition, and they are the jewels in our nature conservation crown. Our rivers and seas are mostly in poor ecological condition, and we are one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. This is the inheritance of 70 years of undervaluation of nature. Since the Environment Act 2021, successive Governments have had legally binding targets to halt the decline of species abundance in England by 2030. The UK is also committed, under the global biodiversity framework, to manage 30% of the land and sea for nature by 2030. And there are other targets, but the Office for Environmental Protection has assessed that we are largely off-track to achieving these targets.
However, an awful lot is happening, and I am sure my noble friend the Minister will give a full picture of measures being taken by this Government: for example, the increased targeting of agricultural support payments to ensure public goods for public money; increased funding for environmental land management schemes; a commitment and plans to cease bottom trawling in MPAs where appropriate; plans for new national forests; improvements to the biodiversity net gain scheme; huge strides forward in reducing pollution and carbon through clean energy measures; clamping down on river and water body pollution; banning neonicotinoids; and pushing forward local nature recovery strategies. All those things are happening, but the turnaround of decades of harm is going to take longer than 16 months.
However, we have only five years to meet the 2030 targets. That is not going to be easy, since it often involves join-up across government departments for which biodiversity is something that they buy in the supermarket and they think is a washing powder. It is never going to be easy, so it is going to need extra-special effort. I shall focus today on three areas where we all need to put our shoulder to the wheel now to make the progress that we so desperately need. I am pleased to say that I am very much in agreement with many of the things the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, said, because this is not the time for scoring party-political points; this is the time for getting on with the job.
My Lords, I am delighted to join this debate: it is always wonderful to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Young. It is something close to my own research expertise, but, before I join this debate, I must declare my interests as noted in the register, specifically my role as a non-executive director and founder of Natcap Research.
I want to start with the baseline facts. According to Defra in 2024, only around 7% of England’s land meets the protected status we need in order to achieve 30 by 30. As reported by the House of Lords Climate and Environment Committee in 2023, England therefore needs to find an additional 3.4 million hectares of land to meet this target. I want to approach this debate from perhaps a slightly different angle to ask, first, who owns the land on which we are looking for nature to recover? Secondly, how much land are we discussing? Lastly, are the scale and scope of government legislation and incentives sufficient to persuade land managers and other affected parties to make the necessary changes?
In terms of who owns the land, despite rumours that the vast majority is owned by the Crown, the public sector or the Forestry Commission, actually those are tiny percentages. The largest amount of land is individually owned by private landowners and by companies and trusts. That accounts for 70% of England’s land.
What government policies do we currently have to persuade these land managers to do the right thing for nature? First, there are the builders and land managers, who manage for builders and developers. We have heard before that we have biodiversity net gain targets to improve both onsite and offsite biodiversity and increase biodiversity by about 10% in biodiverse habitats. This is very much in line with the 1.5 million houses to be built by 2030. But, even if we include that, and all the debates we have been having, that still accounts for a really small percentage of the land.
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Grayling on opening this debate in such a balanced and wide-ranging way. It is also a tremendous pleasure to follow my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown. I was extremely interested in the far-reaching questions that she put to the Minister and to the whole House.
A 2024 Defra report stated that recent years have seen some of the most extreme weather conditions on record, impacting soil health, our countryside, its communities, our landscape, plant and animal health, and, obviously, our food security. There are views in the farming industry that rising temperatures might present opportunities for growing new crops, and for longer growing seasons. The very unpredictability of the changes presents very difficult problems.
This matters because—as mentioned by my friend—70% of UK land is farmed, regardless of ownership. It is obvious, therefore, that the role of the farming industry is vital in restoring nature, cutting greenhouse gases, and managing and protecting our landscapes and countryside, our biodiversity and food security.
None of these things could be done if it were not for the farming industry. Farmers deliver not only our food but our environmental aspirations. They are key—so key that the Labour Party promised in its election manifesto to “champion British farming”. Sadly, this has not proved to be the case. Labour’s first Budget crippled farming and rural investment through its inheritance tax proposals and national insurance rises. Another blow was inflicted by the very sudden closure of the sustainable farming incentive. We are told it is paused, but I think there is no clear future plan as yet. The delinked payment amount is to be reduced by 76%, with no payments above a total of £30,000. What is really important is that there is no transition period. That is so important because, of course, farmers have to plan.
My Lords, I too am very grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I must also say that I am the second barrel to the gun of the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard. As the subject is almost completely dependent on a strong and stable farming industry, I will direct my remarks to the state and prospects of that industry. I declare my farming interests in Buckinghamshire and Lincolnshire, together with membership of the NFU, the CLA and the Central Chilterns Farmer Cluster.
Those who read Farmers Weekly will have seen last week the shocking headline that the McCain Farmdex report had reported that 51% of farmers have considered leaving the industry over the last 12 months, and 61% say that work affects their mental health. Is this a surprise? We have seen seven Secretaries of State at Defra over six years. This gives farmers little confidence in the commitment to or long-term planning for the industry.
We had the Budget bombshell of the inadequately thought through inheritance tax proposal, which will shortly come into force, destroying both confidence and investment in the industry. We had the abrupt ending of the 2024 sustainable farming incentive and the old basic payments scheme. We had a national food strategy published in July that refers heavily to a promised but undelivered land use framework, a 25-year farming road map and a profitability review by the noble Baroness, Lady Batters.
At the same time, in the real world of farming, arable farmers have suffered reduced yields for the 2024 and 2025 harvests, and very low prices because of the strength of sterling and good harvests elsewhere. Potato farmers had a disastrous 2024 crop, as well as poor demand, and they are now sending off quality potatoes for animal feed and anaerobic digesters. The 2025 crop is good, but, due to favourable harvests elsewhere, the market has collapsed. Sugar beet farmers are handing back contracts to British Sugar, as it is often grown at a loss and chemicals to control virus yellows are restricted. Chemicals are similarly restricted with rape, and success or failure is a lottery.
My Lords, I join in the chorus of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, for bringing this matter before the House. There are never too many occasions to raise this, and the level of expertise, passion and dedication shown should come as no surprise—it certainly comes as no surprise to me, and neither do the two themes that seem to be emerging from this discussion: relationships and respect; that is, the relationship between central government and the people on the ground who have to deliver, or certainly live with, these policies, and respect for those people.
I am just about old enough to remember my family farm in Wiltshire. I was pretty tiny at the time, but I remember that biodiversity—it probably went by another name back in those days—and food production were seen not as an either/or but as an essential combination. They were seen as nothing surprising; it was our obligation, not just our pleasure, to deliver biodiversity in the most interesting and diverse way we could, because doing that ensured that we were able to produce food—in our case, it was a dairy farm—to the highest standards. Buying patterns, food production and the larger political landscape have changed since then, but the fundamentals have not. I remember very clearly that, back in those days, we did all that because we wanted to do it, not because we were obliged, forced or even paid to do it by whoever were the Government of the day.
Noble Lords will have received yesterday an interesting briefing from the RSPB. It was quite solid in parts, as you would expect, but I wanted to highlight two aspects of it that concerned me a bit, because what started as a solid document drifted into the usual sort of lazy stereotyping in part of it. I will highlight two case studies. One, fairly close to my heart these days, is Lake Vyrnwy in north Wales, a substantial 5,000-hectare area of land, owned and managed by the RSPB since 1996. You would think, therefore, that it would be the epitome of biodiversity success. Yet, in that time, the numbers of hen harriers, merlin, black and red grouse, breeding curlews, and peregrine falcons have all fallen. Every single one of those crucial, iconic species has declined in the 30-odd years that one of Britain’s leading conservation and biodiversity charities has been in charge of that site.
My Lords, the UK has been described as one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth. My friend Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta wrote his famous The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review in February 2021, which starts:
“We are facing a global crisis. We are totally dependent upon the natural world. It supplies us with every oxygen-laden breath we take and every mouthful of food we eat. But we are currently damaging it so profoundly that many of its natural systems are now on the verge of breakdown”.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, for initiating this debate—he is a fellow alumnus of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge—and for his opening speech.
To go back to Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta—who has just written a book this yearm On Natural Capital: The Value of the World Around Us—he says of nature that
“the demands we make of its goods and services far exceed its ability to meet them on a sustainable basis”;
the difference between the two is a measure of the human ecological overreach. Since 1950, the global economy has grown fifteenfold; absolute poverty has declined from 60% of the world at that time to 10% today, in spite of the world population going up from 2.5 billion to 8.1 billion people on this planet. In many ways, as he says, humanity has never had it so good. But our global success has come with an increasingly impoverished biosphere, including extinction of species. Currently, average extinction rates are 100 to 1,000 times higher than those that the world has seen for several million years.
In endorsing Sir Partha Dasgupta’s new book, David Attenborough, a national treasure, says:
“Partha Dasgupta provides the compass we urgently need… by bringing economics and ecology together, we can help save the natural world at what may be the last minute – and in doing so, save ourselves”.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria. I declare my farming and land management interests in Wales, as set out in the register. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Grayling on securing this important debate before the Budget.
I begin with the policy area that should have been the cornerstone of recovery: land management. The Government’s handling of environmental land management schemes—SFI, Countryside Stewardship and Landscape Recovery—has created deep uncertainty among farmers and land managers. Pauses, reviews and shifting signals have left farmers unsure whether they can commit to habitat restoration, soil recovery or long-term stewardship. As we have heard this evening, these schemes cover 70% of England’s land, so, where they falter, our biodiversity targets falter with them.
As we have heard from nearly all noble Lords, that same instability now extends to inheritance tax. Farmers who want to invest in nature recovery are being actively discouraged by the Government’s proposed changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief. The NFU has warned that the reforms could force farmers to sell part of their farms simply to meet their future tax liabilities, and the CLA has cautioned that they risk making some farms “economically unviable” precisely when we need them to deliver environmental benefits.
If a farmer intensively cultivates every inch of land, relief is available, but, if they re-wet peatland, create wetlands, plant woodland or commit to long-term ecological recovery, they may lose it. This is a perverse incentive. It rewards environmental degradation and penalises stewardship. Nature recovery depends on generational continuity and these policies undermine it.
Compounding this is the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which conservation organisations, from the CPRE to the Wildlife Trusts, warn will weaken environmental safeguards to accelerate growth. Biodiversity does not benefit from speed. It benefits from scrutiny, local accountability and protections that prevent short-term economic pressures overriding long-term ecological health. Yet the Bill risks increased habitat loss, reduced oversight and fast-tracked development across landscapes already under strain.
20 of 30 shown
Next on her department’s list to bring forward is its land use strategy. In some respects, I have misgivings about how such a strategy is applied. The danger is that it becomes a series of Stalinistic diktats about how a landowner can use his or her land. However, if it provides a broad framework—and I stress “broad”—towards the target of 2030 for biodiversity in the UK and how we accommodate housing and infrastructure needs alongside meeting that target, then it has a role to play. It is about getting that balance right. There need to be clear guidelines for planning authorities and government departments that are taking over some local authority decision-making so that we do not take daft decisions in this country, such as, for example, building on our most important and productive agricultural land. We have to ensure that that does not happen.
I welcome the fact that the Government have taken on board most of the environmental and biodiversity targets set in place by the previous Government. That is good, but there is a big difference between accepting targets and delivering a strategy that will achieve them. So far, the jury is firmly out on whether this Government can deliver for nature and our countryside. While I note that the Minister shares many of our aspirations in this area, what has to happen now is tangible action that takes real steps towards 2030 and towards restoring the loss in biodiversity that we have experienced, turning round the issue of so many endangered species. In the growth agenda, the development agenda and the energy agenda, there has got to be a proper balance between the interests of the economy and taking this country forward and ensuring that we do not do further damage to our natural world at the same time. There has got to be equal priority between the two.
I turn to my other big biodiversity concern in this country. The Minister knows that I have for years been seeking to persuade this Government and their predecessors to speed up the process of banning bottom trawling in marine protected areas around our coasts. It is a practice that is disastrous for our marine biodiversity. Huge industrial trawlers dragging massive nets scour the bottom of the ocean doing untold damage to all kinds of marine life, and they do so over vast areas. These are enormous vessels with enormous nets. The idea that this practice is allowed in marine protected areas makes a complete nonsense of the concept of marine protected areas. If they are protected, we should not be allowing this kind of damaging practice.
I have to say that we can now do things about it. When people ask me about the Brexit benefits to the UK, I put pretty high on my list a practice which would have been impossible to ban under the common fisheries policy. We are now free to do something about it. I was pleased that the previous Government made a start in the Dogger Bank in the face of huge hostility from many EU countries who want to scour it for sand eels to turn into fish food. It is an important area for biodiversity, and this country has done the right thing to provide it with extra protections. Sometimes the environment does have to come first.
I did not think that my party moved fast enough in government on this, and I am increasingly disappointed by the steps taken by this Administration. When last June they announced a consultation on banning bottom trawling in another 41 marine protected areas, I thought that was a good step forward, but for me that positivity was completely reversed by the subsequent policy statement that Ministers do not intend to go further and ban the practice across all MPAs in UK offshore waters, nor, apparently, will the changes to the 41 they are consulting on happen quickly either. The fact is that that decision does not command support in Parliament. It was noticeable that it was criticised by the Environmental Audit Committee, which I was part of in the last Parliament and which is now chaired by the party in power.
There is an argument that says a blanket ban in each MPA does not work, because each MPA is different and has different conservation needs. I understand that there may be variations, and I always argued that some freedom should be left for local fishing fleets still to operate, but we are not talking about local fishing fleets coming out of small ports in the United Kingdom; we are talking about giant industrial trawlers coming from other countries and tearing up the seabed. Surely, the scale of that is so vast that it has to be time for MPAs to do what they are supposed to do and provide blanket protection.
So, I ask the Minister to revisit the MPA policy and consider going much further and much faster to provide those wide-ranging protections in MPAs. Also—and this is clearly not something that lies at her desk— I would be grateful for her reassurance that the Government are not taking their decision to avoid a blanket ban because of the new deal on fisheries with the European Union. It would be a complete travesty to give away something we have gained from Brexit even though it will deliver genuine environmental benefits in our coastal waters.
I am grateful to those who have stayed to participate in this debate late on a Thursday. It is an important area. There are issues for us to address around farming, around biodiversity in the countryside, around water and around issues in our coastal waters. The Minister and I, and a number of people here today, have exchanged views on this before, and we will do so again, because I see it as my job, as somebody who feels passionately about this, to keep asking the Government these questions. I reiterate that we all want to see growth in this country and government policies that deliver prosperity, but it cannot be at the expense of what I thought were very good policies put in place by the last Government, which I hope this one will build on, that look after biodiversity and accept what we have done wrong as a country and that we need to turn the tide back.
I have three specific requests for the Minister today. The first is about progress towards the 30% commitment by 2030. We need credible time-bound proposals, transparent monitoring and adequate funding. We cannot have any more of the classic distraction that Governments of all persuasions come up with: “We will have another consultation”, while the destruction carries on in the meantime. It is now 2025, nearly 2026—four years away from that 2030 target—so it is time to see some real changes that make a real difference.
Secondly, nature recovery must be on an equal footing with housing infrastructure and food production in land-use frameworks. If nature is a secondary concern, biodiversity will be the loser. Budgets for nature must match the Government’s stated intention, and in particular, the support provided to farmers must enable them, landowners and rural communities to deliver for wildlife.
And finally, marine protected areas must be real marine protected areas. Where habitats are fragile and vulnerable, whole-site prohibitions on enormous, destructive fishing gear must be adopted without delay. As a country, we cannot claim leadership on biodiversity if 90% of our marine protected areas are still open to bottom trawling.
I do not doubt the Minister’s personal commitment in this area, but she also knows there are powerful forces in government pulling in different directions. My message to her is: please, fight the good fight. This House will be behind her, and we feel passionately about this agenda. Will she please deliver for us?
My first point is about the Government reviewing and resetting the environmental improvement plan and resetting their targets. I ask my noble friend the Minister to assure the House that, where we are not on track for targets, the targets will not just be reduced. It is a time for efforts up, not targets down. An example is that the tree-planting targets are insufficient. They are not even being met, but they could be—there is no problem with meeting them if we make sufficient of the right efforts—so to reduce the targets would be a travesty of ambition.
Secondly, if we leave to one side the problem of our seas, much of our terrestrial biodiversity loss comes from the way that land is managed. It is managed for all sorts of purposes—food and farming, climate, flood-risk management, water quality, sustainable soils, human health and well-being, development, growth and jobs. I welcome the recent update that has been circulated from Minister Creagh on the land use framework: a framework to encourage rational decision-making about land at national, regional and local level. I hate to introduce a note of political dissent, but the Conservative Government promised the framework by Christmas 2021, then again for Christmas 2022 and then again for Christmas 2023.
I am aware of a huge amount of progress having been made behind the scenes, but it would be good to get from my noble friend the Minister her best estimate of the publication date and the process of implementing the land use framework, because it is urgent. Already, spatial plans are being developed by regional mayoral authorities, government departments and local authorities on issues such as housing, infrastructure, transport and energy, and individual landowners are making day-to-day decisions and choices that will last for many years.
In the post-war settlement, the Labour Government magnificently addressed capital, labour and land as the three pillars of economic recovery. In my view, it would be a fine thing for a new Labour Government to reset the economic importance of land at this stage, so I hope my noble friend the Minister can assure us that 2026 means January or February, not December.
Thirdly, I was sitting weeping gently as I ate my lunch, watching what was happening in the Commons this afternoon on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, because it has shown how distressingly easy it is to fall into the thinking that we can either have growth or we can have nature. But we are smarter than that: we can do both. There have been polarising statements about newts, bats and lizards. I bet there is not a single Member of this House present today who has actually seen a British lizard. If you have, come and see me later. Ah, the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, claims to have: very good, sir.
However, polarising statements about these species being a block to developments are simply not borne out by the data. For example, over five years, data across more than 50 local authorities under the current district licensing scheme for newts shows that fewer than 1% of planning applications had any newt issues at all, and all those that had newt issues were resolved within 10 days. All the evidence available shows that newts, as in this example, do not slow down or impede development.
This is borne out by information I extracted with difficulty from the Home Builders Federation recently. It put down its perception of the blockages and problems impeding development. It said the biggest barriers to development were viability, affordability, the absence of support for first-time buyers, local planning authority delays, and shortage of construction skills. There was only a small range of biodiversity issues on its list. So can the noble Baroness persuade others in government not to resort to nature bashing and polarising headlines?
I can see my Whip out of the corner of my eye telling me I have gone over time, but I have a commitment to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, who asked me, since he could not be with us today, to talk about his amendment to achieve protection for chalk streams. It was supported on Report and will no doubt figure at ping-pong, but he has asked me to ask the Minister very nicely if she would include it in the Bill. I applaud my noble friend Lady Hayman for her knowledge, willingness to listen and commitment to reaching agreements. It is refreshing to work with her.
Secondly, there are land managers tasked with offsetting their CO2 emissions through tree planting and peatlands. Again, that is a really small amount of land, even if it reached 100%. Thirdly, there are the farmers and land managers, who until recently have been incentivised by ELMS and the like. This represents the largest percentage of land that could be converted or could be surplus to food production.
If you add all this up on the back of an envelope, as I did, if everything is reached by 100%, this comes to around 1.4 million hectares, which means we are still 2 million hectares short. There are many caveats in that. The first is that there is double-counting. Many of these commitments that talk about BNG, ELMS and other things overlap. In addition, particularly with BNG, we are finding that developers are doing onsite enhancement rather than offsetting. So this is a really big undershoot in terms of the amount of land we need.
We have this very large shortfall, so what should we do about it? We now need to move beyond who owns the land, and instead ask: who are the big actors determining how the land is managed in England, and what incentives and structures are there to improve the impact on nature? This is not something we normally consider, but I believe we must, because the top five UK supermarkets’ food-supply chains are linked to between 4 million and 7 million hectares of land in England. Compare that with something we have debated at length in this House—namely, the water utility companies—which account for only 140,000 hectares. What changes are needed, then, to persuade these actors, particularly the large supermarkets? For these large companies, it is not the incentives associated with ELMS, BNG or carbon offsets that are needed. We need instead to demonstrate to them why nature is important to their balance sheets and risk registers, and ultimately boards and shareholders.
This is what some of our supermarkets are now doing. Tesco, Unilever, McCain and Waitrose are already starting to look at the land they manage in England through this lens; for example, adopting regenerative agricultural practices. They are doing so not because they want to be seen to be doing the right thing for nature, but because by adopting these approaches they reduce the risk of soil erosion, improve soil quality and enhance biodiversity and carbon sequestration. At the same time, they are achieving similar, if not higher, yields in their crops. So it is a win-win situation for nature and agriculture.
If regenerative agriculture were to become widespread for all farmland in the UK, we could—and, I believe, would—start to see widespread recovery for nature, and we would get to 30 by 30. But—and there is always a but—to do so we need proper incentives and support for the transition, and for the Government to set the right level of audit to adopt to ensure that there is a level playing field for all people working in this space. Such a framework does exist: it is called the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures—TNFD—which identifies economic risks and opportunities. The International Sustainability Standards Board announced last week that it will begin standard-setting on nature-related risks and opportunities, drawing on the TNFD’s disclosure framework, and highlighted its value. Many countries have made TNFD mandatory, but it is still voluntary in the UK. Perhaps the Minister could address this in her response. Are there plans to mandate this in the UK?
If we really want to see a rapid change in land use—and have any chance of reaching 30 by 30 and reversing species decline—we need to think about not just who owns the land but the people who manage it. How do we give them the incentives and structures required to ensure that the outcome that we all desire is achieved?
The result of all of this is quite simply that our key farming industry and communities have lost confidence and trust in the Government. That confidence and trust are now at their lowest ever level. The recent announcement in the farming press by Velcourt, the well-known farming management company, of a proposed 20% cut in its operations exemplifies the current lack of confidence in this Government within the industry.
I exempt the Minister from the comments I am about to make, but the widespread view in the farming industry is that the Government do not understand that, in order to protect our food security and environment, farmers need reliable support from government. It needs to be reliable because the industry, by definition, has to plan ahead, often by a year, two years or further still. Farmers should not be penalised by taxation or criticised for possessing the land, the machinery and the investment that they need in order to feed and protect us all.
Things are bad. A recent CLA report highlights the lack of trust in government within rural communities. The CLA president, Victoria Vyvyan, said:
“Labour’s attacks on business are damaging the economy in rural areas. When local businesses fold, they don’t just take jobs with them. They take prosperity, identity and quiet bonds that hold a place together”.
That is true. I say again that 70% of land in the UK is farmed. I believe the Minister knows that, to protect our biodiversity, environment and food security—in short, our future—the nation needs a confident and vibrant farming industry. I hope that she will be able to persuade her government colleagues of that important and overriding fact.
For some livestock farmers, the situation is more stable, but profitability remains a struggle due to the lack of pricing power. Animal diseases such as bluetongue and avian flu are a growing threat. Meanwhile, dairy farmers are struggling to cover the cost of production as the price of milk falls.
The result of all this is that some farmers are selling up, investment has stalled and, as we have heard, contract farmers such as Velcourt are reducing their acreage as they cannot make a decent return on capital employed.
Ultimately, the business of farming is producing food profitably and sustainably for a growing population. Environmental work can be driven only by profitability. It therefore comes as no surprise that farmers and landowners are looking at other uses of their land, such as solar farms, that will provide a secure and decent return. Let us therefore please stop criticising farmers for the loss of good agricultural land in the absence of policies that enable them to farm profitably.
The way forward is for the Government to cease prevaricating and make their decisions on future farm support. When will we see the 2026 SFI and the land use strategy, which has already been mentioned, and when will the farming profitability review be published?
Happily, it is not all doom and gloom on the farming front. The All-Party Group on Science and Technology in Agriculture has released its report, Feeding Britain Sustainably to 2050. The report calls for more locally grown food, lower inputs and emissions and a smaller environmental footprint, and argues that policies to support rather than hinder farmers—like tax hikes—and to relieve pressure on farmland through a land use framework are needed. Current policies undermine productivity and innovation, promoting environmental goals at the expense of food production.
We require co-ordination across government on policies, and there needs to be a complete rethink on support for domestic food production. The report pointed to the strong scientific evidence that indicates that a land-sparing approach, which involves harnessing farming innovations to optimise high-yield production on as small an area of land as possible, would leave core land intact for nature and carbon sequestration. This offers a more efficient and cost-effective basis for farm policy to deliver on food, climate and biodiversity goals. Are the Government considering this approach?
Finally, I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify what is meant by the Government’s frequently quoted phrase,
“food security is national security”.
Does this involve producing more of our own food, or tying into more food imports?
Contrast that with case study two: Bolton Castle, in Wensleydale in Yorkshire—a site of special scientific interest, a special protection area and a special site of conservation. In 2024, it boasted 250 pairs of nesting curlew—there are only 450 pairs in the whole of the south of England—and that is not to mention ouzels, dunlins, stonechats and a range of other upland birds that, for many of us, are a very rare sight indeed. My message, which emerges from this, is that that success story is not despite the shooting interests of that estate in Yorkshire or despite the incredible, dedicated work of gamekeepers, land managers and farmers there; it is because of them. That is why it is such a success. We could say it was despite government, if we wanted to be cynical. This is an area commended by the British Trust for Ornithology—BTO—and even by Mary Colwell, the director of Curlew Action, an important charity looking after the interests of one particular species. You could multiply this incredible success story many times across the UK, but particularly across upland areas of the UK.
What does all this mean? It is a message, I hope—to the Government Front Bench, stakeholders and other people with an interest in this agenda—that all these ambitions will succeed only if we show the necessary degree of co-operation and respect to those who will have to deliver them, who want to deliver them and who will have to live with the consequences of government policy around food production, farming and, in particular, conservation.
Certain comments were made by my noble friend Lord Grayling at the beginning about growth. It is perfectly possible to have growth at the same time as an enhanced and improving biodiversity landscape. However, we need to be careful that there are agencies and quangos—and I hate to pick on Natural England, but it is probably the most powerful agency in this particular field—that have the ability to put their foot on the brake of growth, apparently in the interests of conservation. That is not always the case, because biodiversity includes the human population just as much as it does the animal, bird or wider biodiversity ambitions that we have. Without the communities of these fantastic parts of the British Isles, these schemes will find it very difficult to get off the ground.
So my message is: let us not repeat the mistakes of the past; let us involve the people who matter, who know and care; and let us co-operate in a collegiate way and not fall into the trap of some of the divisions that always seem to accompany the decisions of Parliament, particularly with regard to our dealings with rural issues and conservation.
When it comes to countryside policies, the reality is that urban authorities receive 41% more government-funded spending per capita while rural residents pay 20% more council tax per head. Would the Minister acknowledge this?
Evidence from the Dasgupta review in 2021 highlights the fact that biodiversity underpins rural productivity, food security and long-term economic stability. The United Kingdom Food Security Report 2024 found that biodiversity decline and climate shocks account for around 40% of food price inflation, demonstrating the economic stakes of countryside environmental management.
On taxation, as we have heard—the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, mentioned it—the change in the law whereby the Government have now, with their measures on inheritance tax relief, doubled the tax for family businesses and farmers means that it will be a huge burden on family farm transfers and rural business succession. The countryside and biodiversity policy agendas are increasingly interdependent.
With rural economy productivity, rural areas account for 21% of England’s population but only 15% of economic output. Environmental land management schemes, or ELMS, remain the UK’s primary mechanism for biodiversity recovery, but the SFI closure, funding uncertainty and limited landscape recovery scale threaten progress towards the Environment Act 2021 targets. Would the Minister agree with that, and that a more ambitious, stable and better funded higher-tier LNR programme is essential?
The BNG, which the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, mentioned in his opening speech, is one of the most important policy tools for reversing biodiversity decline, while maintaining development and growth. Yet, without stronger local authority capacity, coherent land use planning and robust enforcement, BNG risks falling short of its ecological potential. Strengthening, monitoring, supporting councils, and integrating BNG with broader ELMS and Landscape Recovery schemes will be essential. Does the Minister agree with that?
When it comes to protected sites in the nature recovery network and essential pillars of biodiversity, weak site condition, limited enforcement, fragmented landscapes and insufficient local delivery capacity threaten progress. We need to strengthen these areas. The UK’s species abundance targets are ambitious, but they are at risk as well. On the critical point of biodiversity recovery, policies exist but delivery remains slow due to funding gaps, workforce shortages and uncertainty around long-term land use planning.
On the issue of soil, I say that I took part in COP 26 in Glasgow as president of the CBI and I spoke at about 40 different events, but not one person mentioned soil. A few years ago, the Indian spiritual leader Sadhguru set off from Parliament Square to raise awareness of soil with the Save Soil campaign, so that 3% to 6% of organic content should be in soil.
I conclude with this: the biodiversity hit to economies is estimated at up to $25 trillion a year, reported in the FT last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change equivalent, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Tackling biodiversity loss, climate change, water scarcity, food insecurity and health risks in isolation is not only compounding those issues but driving spiralling economic costs.
I conclude with this: Sir Partha Dasgupta—who I started with—says in his report:
“We are part of Nature, not separate from it”.
We rely on nature to sustain us, yet we are degrading it faster than it can regenerate. Nature is our most precious asset.
The same problem appears in an area which has not yet been mentioned: the Government’s energy strategy. Ministers insist that accelerated renewables deployment is inherently good for nature, but that is not how it is playing out on the ground. As Professor Dieter Helm has argued forcefully in theTimes, the Government’s claim that renewables are “nine times cheaper” than gas relies on ignoring the enormous system costs: new pylons, substations, storage, cabling and “lots of back-up gas” needed to stabilise an intermittent system. We now require 120 gigawatts of installed capacity to meet the same demand once met by 60 gigawatts, meaning more infrastructure, more land take and more environmental pressure. Professor Helm warns that the Government are
“digging an ever-deeper energy policy hole”
and that this dash for infrastructure is not climate leadership but an ecological burden being loaded on to rural Britain.
Climate policy is not automatically nature policy. Net zero will not succeed politically, economically or ecologically if it is pursued at the expense of the landscapes and communities it affects most. The countryside is not merely a backdrop for targets; it is a living system of farms, hedgerows, rivers and habitats already stretched to breaking point. Weakening environmental protections, destabilising nature-friendly farming schemes and penalising ecological land management through the tax system are not the actions of a Government who have grasped the scale of the biodiversity crisis.
Given the deep uncertainty facing farmers who wish to commit to long-term environmental management, can the Minister tell the House when the Government will announce the next round of countryside stewardship agreements and whether farmers can expect continuity of funding in time for the coming planting and restoration seasons?
We cannot rebuild nature on the back of contradictory policy signals or wishful economics. We need coherence, honesty and a willingness to listen to those who live and work on the land.