My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I am delighted to commence Second Reading. As we progress with the Bill’s passage, I will be assisted by my noble friend Lady Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist and I am very grateful to her for all her support so far. It is an enormously important Bill that will deliver meaningful change for our environment and support our goals to achieve net-zero emissions, stem the loss of our precious species and their habitats, and reduce the impacts of pollution.
2021 is a “super year” for nature, a turning point. Through the COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference, the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, and the upcoming G7 leaders’ summit, the UK has both the opportunity and responsibility to provide world leadership. The Bill is an important part of demonstrating that leadership.
The Bill sets a new and ambitious domestic framework for environmental governance as we maximise the opportunities created by leaving the European Union. It will give the Secretary of State a power to set long-term, legally binding environmental targets of at least 15 years. The Bill’s framework allows for long-term targets to be set on any aspect of the natural environment or people’s enjoyment of it. However, it requires the Government to set and achieve at least one target in four priority areas: air quality, biodiversity, water, resource efficiency and waste reduction, as well as a target for fine particulate matter or PM2.5.
These targets will be set following a robust, evidence-led process that will include seeking independent expert advice, a role for stakeholders and the public, as well as scrutiny from Parliament. They will build on progress towards achieving the long-term vision of the 25-year environment plan, complement our net-zero target and help tackle some of the serious challenges that remain. We are also tabling an amendment to require a historic, new legally binding target on species abundance in England for 2030, aiming to halt the decline of nature. This world-leading measure will do for nature what our net-zero target is doing for emissions. It will spur action across government and across society on the scale required to address the biodiversity crisis.
The new independent office for environmental protection will hold us to account in ensuring that these targets, and all environmental law obligations on public authorities, are met. The OEP’s principal objective will be to contribute to environmental protection and the improvement of the natural environment. It will provide the necessary oversight to support long-term environmental governance. The OEP, chaired by the highly respected Dame Glenys Stacey, will independently monitor the way public authorities implement environmental law. Her appointment is a huge win for the OEP; she is a strong voice for the environment and will not shy away from holding this Government, or indeed any Government, to account. The OEP will track and report on progress on environmental improvement plans and targets. It will also receive and investigate complaints on serious breaches of environmental law by public authorities, taking legal action where necessary. On that note, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord Anderson of Ipswich, in particular for our detailed conversations already on this matter.
My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my environmental interests in the register. As a former Member of the European Parliament, I recognise the very real challenge in satisfactorily replacing the EU’s environment policy architecture. While nothing is ever perfect, the EU has long been recognised as a global leader on many of the issues that noble Lords will reference today.
Underlying the architecture for a number of decades has been the European Commission, whose enforcement powers play a key role in making member states take their responsibilities seriously. Now that we are outside the EU, we will gradually depart from its policy framework but, in doing so, I hope that the Government will keep and build on the better features, including in their design of the office for environmental protection.
Your Lordships’ House has dealt with a variety of significant pieces of legislation in recent years. While I was not a Member at the time, I watched from afar as colleagues tackled the EU withdrawal Bill and its multitude of constitutional implications. Concerns about the environment featured during the debates on that Bill and, despite the passage of time, many remain unaddressed by the Government. Other legislation, such as the Trade Act, was highly contentious.
While we will, of course, approach this Bill in the same constructive spirit with which we approach all government proposals, it seems inevitable that its journey on to the statute book will require cross-party co-operation on key issues and a genuine willingness from Ministers to bring forward improvements.
There is little doubt that we must put in place a new system that protects and eventually enhances our precious natural environment. After all, we are in the midst of a climate and ecological emergency that threatens the survival of many species across the UK and, by extension, our survival as well. Inaction is simply not a choice.
My Lords, nearly half our species—our birds, our bees, our wild flowers—are in decline. Yet we rely on them for our physical health, and indeed for our mental well-being. So we need to respond urgently to this crisis. The Liberal Democrats welcome the introduction of the Environment Bill, but it requires significant strengthening if it is to be sufficiently transformative for the challenges that our nature faces. We welcome the fact that the Government are enabling targets to be set, including, as the Minister said, the 2030 nature recovery target. We know from the Climate Change Act how important targets are for driving delivery right across government and beyond, so long as they are accompanied by legally binding interim targets.
However, in many parts of the Bill, progress is tentative: it is almost as if the Government are moving forward towards environmental protection, yet the dead hand of another government department pulls them back. For example, the environmental principles should be the means of putting the environment at the heart of all policy-making. Yet, as things stand, they are merely for guidance, and are to be proportionately applied. There are critical exemptions: they do not apply to public bodies, to the Treasury or to the MoD.
The Dasgupta review said that it was time for a new vocabulary, to put the environment and its value at the heart of the economy. But by excluding the Treasury, the Government are showing that they are not prepared even to open the dictionary. As for the MoD, that has one-third of all UK SSSIs—our most precious sites for biodiversity and wildlife. That is 117,000 football pitches’ worth of our most precious land. Yet although the MoD is subject to the provisions of the Climate Change Act, it is not subject to the provisions of this Bill. Those opt-outs are political choices, to weaken the environmental protection of our country. As things stand, that leaves the environmental principles pretty toothless.
My Lords, I declare my interests as a farmer/landowner and as chair of UKCEH research.
This Bill is a once-in-a-generation chance to set a course for a better quality of life for all flora and fauna, including humans, that live on our overcrowded island. While a 30-year generation is a mere heartbeat in terms of our environment, the same 30 years is also a very long time in politics. So the passion for the environment which I recognise fully in the current Ministers in both Houses must be as of naught to us during our deliberations. We must ensure that this Bill continues to protect our environment as Secretaries of State and Ministers come and go over the years and decades.
It is a huge Bill with much that is very good in it. I shall not outline that because our traditional 10-minute speaking time for Second Readings seems to have been curtailed, but I support most of what the Bill is trying to do. However, there are two main areas where I think we can improve. First, if you were from outside government and were thinking of setting up a body to oversee the Government’s environmental performance and to replace the European Commission in this respect, you would definitely never put this body with Defra or under the guidance of its Secretary of State. After all, two of the main bodies that the OEP will scrutinise are the Environment Agency and Natural England, both of which have their budgets and activities almost totally controlled by Defra. MHCLG would be another no-no department, because it manages and partly funds local authorities, which are perhaps the other main target for scrutiny.
In the private sector, when shareholders appoint auditors to scrutinise their company, they have by law to appoint outside, independent auditors, not the internal accounts department of their own company, which is what is happening here. The independent auditors are there to check on the internal accounts department, for which read Defra, and not to do their bidding. Anyone—actually, everyone—can see that the currently proposed set-up is completely wrong. The OEP has not only to be independent but to be seen to be independent. As currently set up, it is neither.
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for setting out this important Bill. I am grateful too for his long-term advocacy of many of the proposals it contains.
The Bill offers a unique opportunity to create a coherent, long-term framework for the environment that is capable of motivating all sectors and all parts of society to plan, to commit to and to collaborate on improving the environment on which we and future generations depend. I therefore especially welcome the Bill’s seeking to address the core governance elements that will be needed for the decades ahead. This is the critical component. Business will clearly have a key role to play in delivering the changes needed to meet our long-term environmental ambitions and hit our net-zero target. Unlocking private sector finance and investment will be essential, particularly given the pressures on the public purse.
For businesses to feel able to invest for the long term, it goes without saying that their trust and confidence will be prerequisites. Such trust and confidence will to a large extent depend on the governance mechanisms and processes by which long-term environmental targets and a national environmental improvement plan are set. This begs the question: do the governance mechanisms and associated processes proposed in the Bill need optimising?
The Institute of Environmental Management & Assessment—IEMA—and the Broadway Initiative are two respected bodies which think that the answer to this question is yes. They see a lack of alignment and coherence between the objectives and processes in different elements of the governance framework proposed in the Bill, which, if it remains unresolved, could result in their pulling in slightly different directions. For businesses, this raises questions about predictability and could unintentionally undermine their confidence to invest. For instance, Clause 1 places a duty on the Secretary of State to set at least one long-term target in each of four priority areas, but no directly stated purpose or outcome is specified to guide setting targets. Making good this omission would help increase certainty for businesses.
I declare my interest as chairman of the advisory board of Weber Shandwick UK.
The Bill comes before the House following Professor Dasgupta’s influential review of the economics of biodiversity. The opening paragraph of that review sets out the stark challenge that we face.
“We are totally dependent upon the natural world”,
it reminds us, and goes on to say:
“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.”
The report goes on to highlight that
“our demands … far exceed Nature’s capacity to supply”
us with the goods and services that we all rely on; that biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history; that our unsustainable engagement with nature is endangering the prosperity of current and future generations; and that at the heart of the problem lies deep-rooted, widespread institutional failure. The report warns us that reversing these trends requires action now. The Bill has to be measured against these challenges and, while I welcome much of it, regrettably, it falls short in a number of respects.
The first of these is on targets. Instead of action now, we have action sometime in the future. While the framework for setting environmental targets is to be welcomed, we need to have binding interim targets alongside the long-term ones so that we can ensure that we get started on the journey, underline the urgency of taking action now and ensure that Ministers can be held accountable for targets in the immediate future. In some cases, such as air and water pollution and water conservation, we simply need far more ambitious measures now.
Secondly, where we needed a powerful, independent office for environmental protection, backed up by the full force of the law, the Bill gives us a hobbled regulator, its independence compromised by the ability of Ministers to interfere in how it carries out its enforcement functions and its effectiveness undermined by the constraints placed on judicial enforcement, as my noble friend Lady Parminter pointed out. As briefings from the Bingham Centre and ClientEarth have highlighted, the Bill curtails the power and discretion of the courts. Extraordinarily, Clause 37(7) states:
My Lords, like all noble Lords, I welcome this Bill and congratulate the Minister on his passion and conviction on this. However, there are a number of concerns.
The first is about the office for environmental protection. If the Government take the environment as seriously as they say they do, I do not understand at all why this cannot be an independent body, of the nature of the National Audit Office. However much the Government choose to stretch the definition, its independence will always be constrained because of its nature as a part of Defra. I fail to understand why the Government think it would be constitutionally inappropriate to allow this body to have the power to initiate legal enforcement proceedings against the Government. Just the other day, I was speaking to someone who lived on and looked after the upper reaches of the Test. This is looked after by Southern Water yet, at the same time, that company is siphoning off money from the water, which is damaging the river course further down and reducing the wetland. We are going against each other—who is going to sort this out?
I am also concerned that the OEP will not have enough funds. A lot of this is about investigation—looking, visiting, seeing and monitoring. A whole series of attention-grabbing green headlines will become meaningless if we cannot enforce the good environmental rules we need.
I would like to talk about a couple of things that are very scary right now. One, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Cameron, is the UK’s rivers. I declare my interest as someone who swims in rivers a lot; I have swum in three in the past week. But I take my life in my hands, because I know that agricultural pollution is rampant and we release untreated human sewage directly into our waterways. This is due not to a lack of laws but to the inability to enforce these laws. There are regulatory agencies in England and Wales, but they have been drastically weakened by cuts to their funding and resources.
My Lords, it is a real honour to speak in this debate and share in the passion and expertise of this House in favour of clear, swift, accountable action to safeguard the environment and combat climate change. It is a particular pleasure to pay tribute to my colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury, who makes his valedictory speech today, to which I look forward. I thank Bishop Nicholas for his leadership within the Church of England, this House and more widely on climate questions. That leadership has played a key role in our national Church’s commitment to net zero by 2030.
The evidence is stark. Humanity stands at a crossroads in these next five years. We have a tiny window to make rapid decisions and take action that will affect the life of the entire planet for, perhaps, centuries to come. The majority world is looking to us and this Parliament for justice, for an example and for leadership on climate and environmental matters in this year of COP 15 and COP 26. My sister and brother Anglicans in Kenya, South Africa, Bangladesh and many other places are already suffering the effects of our and others’ delay. Future generations—today’s young people—look to us to take the right actions now to give them at least a better chance of keeping global heating below 1.5 degrees. We are stewards of this good earth—God’s wonderful creation. As a nation, we bear a disproportionate responsibility for its present condition. As a Parliament, we have the opportunity for extraordinary and disproportionate leadership for the coming decade. It is a powerful testimony to human endeavour that our combined impact on the planet is now rapidly altering its climate and threatening the life of the earth. It is a powerful insight into the complexity and selfishness of the human heart that progress in environmental matters is so immensely difficult.
In that context, I warmly welcome the Bill. As other noble Lords have said, it is wide-ranging and contains a number of ambitious targets. The Bill will be closely watched as an indicator of the Government’s priorities in the run-up to COP 26. The creation of the office for environmental protection is a vital and imaginative step forward. However, I do not yet see in the Bill sufficient guarantees of financial and political independence essential to good governance. I believe this has now been mentioned by every noble Lord who has spoken thus far. The trajectory is clear, and I hope that the Government will listen very carefully and take action.
20 of 140 shown
Clearly, the environment must transcend the work of Defra alone. That is why we are embedding internationally recognised environmental principles into domestic law. These principles include the integration, prevention, and precautionary principles, as well as the rectification at source principle and the polluter pays principle. Policymakers across government, from the Department for Work and Pensions to the Department for Transport, will be legally obliged through a statutory policy statement to consider these principles in all policy development where it affects the environment. This is a serious innovation in how the Government make policy.
The resources and waste measures in the Bill will move us away from a “take, make, throw” model to a more circular economy that keeps materials in use for longer. Measures in the Bill will act across the product life cycle so that we can become a world leader in using resources efficiently. The Government will not only ensure that producers are paying the full costs of the waste they create through extended producer responsibility, but empower our citizens to make more sustainable choices, with clearer product information through material efficiency and eco-labelling, in addition to a more consistent recycling system that is common to every local authority
We will provide for more effective enforcement against litter and fly-tipping. We have also taken powers to act on our manifesto commitment to ban the export of plastics to non-OECD countries. These measures combined will have tangible impacts on citizens and our economy, ensuring that the Government are reducing the impact of consumption on our planet. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for their interest in these matters particularly.
The Bill gives the Secretary of State the power to amend REACH regulation, including the REACH Enforcement Regulations 2008. Effective regulation of chemicals is essential for the protection of human health and the environment. The UK is a world leader in the management and regulation of chemicals; that does not change now that we have left the European Union. This power will ensure that legislation can keep up to date with and respond to emerging needs or ambitions for the management of chemicals. We will build on our global reputation and continue to provide a strong and influential voice on the world stage as an active party to the four UN conventions on chemicals and waste. We will continue our work to improve regulation, strengthening the evidence base and ambition globally. The intention is to make sure that we have the means to keep REACH fit for purpose.
We are learning more and more about the damage that poor air quality does to human health, including from knowledgeable advocates in this House. I was pleased to meet the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, a couple of weeks ago to hear more about this issue from her. The Bill will require the Secretary of State to set at least two legally binding targets on air quality. This will include a concentration limit for fine particulate matter—the most damaging pollutant to human health—and a more sophisticated population exposure reduction target. Last year, we set out our plans for the long-term PM2.5 target to drive continuous improvement through reductions in exposure to pollution for all citizens irrespective of whether future statutory limits have already been achieved. We will set out further detail on this world-leading approach to air quality in due course, including through public consultation. The new powers in this Bill, alongside the existing legal framework for air quality, build on the £3.8 billion we have already invested in action to tackle air pollution.
In a changing climate we need additional tools to help us to manage our precious water resources. Modernised legislation will secure a long-term, resilient water supply and sewerage services. This will include powers to direct water companies to work together to meet current and future demand for water. Planning will be more robust; it will ensure that water companies are better able to maintain water supplies and support Defra’s broader efforts to address flooding. We will also strengthen our powers to vary or revoke abstraction licences where these cause environmental damage. These powers will be available from 2028 after our current abstraction plan is fully implemented by 2027. Through the plan, we are collaborating with stakeholders now to achieve sustainable abstraction.
I am also pleased to announce that the Government will be tabling amendments to the Bill in Committee to help to reduce the harm from storm overflows to our rivers, waterways and coastlines. A significant amount of work has gone into this and I thank the right honourable Member for Ludlow, Philip Dunne, in the other place for his work on this hugely important issue.
Many noble Lords share my passion for our natural world, and the nature part of the Bill is full of innovative measures to support our ambitions for a green recovery. I mentioned already how our collective appreciation for nature has increased over the course of the pandemic. Many have discovered new corners of refuge in our local green spaces, and the Government want to ensure that local communities can share these green spaces with the wildlife which calls these valuable habitats their homes. Biodiversity net gain will be mandated in the planning system, ensuring that developments such as new homes are not built at the expense of nature, and creating thriving natural spaces for communities. These will require a 10% net improvement in biodiversity, guaranteeing that richer natural spaces will come with new developments.
Local nature recovery strategies will create strong local leadership to support nature recovery. They will identify priorities and map opportunities for conserving and enhancing nature, helping to ensure that our investments will have the maximum benefit. Local nature recovery strategies will form the foundation of an England-wide nature recovery network. To complement these new tools for nature, we are amending the biodiversity duty in the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act, following post-legislative scrutiny by a Select Committee of this House, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. This strengthened duty will require an active process of improvement to conserve and enhance nature, rather than merely maintain the status quo.
The Government have also amended the Bill in the other place to provide for powers to amend the habitats regulations. This will enable us to focus our conservation efforts on our new domestic framework, developed as part of this Bill, while ensuring that we continue to fulfil our international obligations under multilateral environmental agreements such as the Bern convention. Our forthcoming Green Paper will explore how we can deliver this as part of our ambition to halt the decline of nature and protect 30% of our land by 2030. The paper will also consider measures to improve the status of native species such as the hedgehog, water voles and red squirrels.
These measures will collectively underpin the delivery of a new legally binding target on species abundance for 2030, which I mentioned earlier and will table in Committee, aiming to halt the decline of species. This will put our ambition for the recovery of nature on a par with our net-zero ambition.
I thank my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge and the right reverend Prelates the Bishop of Manchester, the Bishop of Chichester, the Bishop of Oxford and the Bishop of Salisbury, as well as the Bishop of Norwich and others whom I met recently, for their valuable contributions on this issue. These new amendments will be complemented by actions set out in our recently published England tree and peat action plans, on which I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for their useful insights.
The Government are working hard to ensure that we tackle biodiversity loss at home, but we are also taking action abroad to protect the world’s most precious and significant forests. We are the first country in the world to introduce legislation to prohibit regulated businesses from using agricultural commodities that have been cultivated on land that was illegally occupied or used. Over 90% of deforestation is illegal in some of the world’s most important forests, such as the Amazon.
I am aware of the anticipation surrounding the Bill, and, while its passage has been delayed due to exceptional circumstances, work on implementing its measures has not stopped at any point. Dame Glenys Stacey has been appointed as chair of the office for environmental protection, and an announcement on appointments to the OEP’s board is being made today. A draft principles policy statement has just finished public consultation, and the Government have started developing our legally binding targets with experts. Technical consultations have been launched, for example on the deposit return scheme for drinks containers, extended producer responsibility for packaging and consistent recycling collections. I have spoken to many noble Lords already about measures in the Bill, for which I thank all noble Lords.
I would like to notify the House that, in addition to the species abundance target and storm overflow amendments, I will table some devolution-related and minor amendments. First, I will table an amendment to increase the scope of the environmental principles duty for UK Ministers to cover reserved matters in Scotland. This will ensure that there is no gap in the application of the environmental principles, and that it is in line with the devolution settlement. Secondly, I will table a couple of amendments requested by Senedd Cymru to enable better collaboration between the OEP and the equivalent devolved bodies. Finally, I will table some minor amendments to ensure that consultations will count towards the statutory duty to consult, even if they are technically conducted before the Bill achieves Royal Assent.
Finally, I hope that noble Lords will agree that this truly is a landmark Bill. It provides a holistic approach, tackling real-world issues, such as simplified recycling systems, through to more structural changes to our environmental governance, ensuring that policy decisions account for the environment. This is an ambitious Bill that will aid our recovery and help us to meet our goals of net-zero emissions, stem the loss of biodiversity and reduce the damage that pollution does to our natural world.
I look forward to what I am absolutely certain will be a rigorous and lively debate. I expect nothing less for a Bill of such magnitude and gravity, at a time when we can wait no longer to act. I beg to move.
However, we are not convinced that the Bill as drafted will deliver on the lofty promises made by the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and others. In some areas, it presents a step backwards from the status quo or previous proposals. Even where important progress is being made, such as with new provisions around deforestation and supply chains, there remains a lot of room to be more ambitious.
This weekend, I was in Birmingham, talking to local authority members, including the cabinet member for the environment and transport. I learned about the journey that Birmingham is on to become carbon neutral by 2030, which is very ambitious, considering that the Government’s target is 2050 and the West Midlands Combined Authority’s target is 2041. We welcome this bold and brave commitment by Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe.
I also heard about the council’s plans to ensure that every citizen has the fundamental human right to breathe clean air. The city council recently launched a clean air zone on 1 June. While I am aware of the partnership between this Government and the council, the important thing moving forward is to understand the impact that the project has on the business community, which has struggled over the past 12 months, especially during Covid. Will the Government and the Minister commit to resourcing local authorities that are seizing the initiative to launch clean air zones—and provide the right level of support to the communities that may be impacted by them?
Sadly, the Bill as it stands does not set a target for air quality, leaving it to the discretion of the Secretary of State. This is a missed opportunity. The WHO guidelines should be seen as minimum requirements, and we call on the Government to use them nationally. Air pollution has reached dangerous levels, with 60% of people in England now breathing illegally poor air. The office for environmental protection will be effective only if it is sufficiently independent of the Government. Parliament must play its role in supporting the principle of the OEP’s independence. The public need the confidence that the Government will be properly held to account on their duty to protect the environment.
The UK is currently using and wasting resources at unsustainable levels, contributing to simultaneous climate and ecological breakdowns. UK consumption is now such that the average UK citizen will have a greater carbon footprint in 12 days than citizens in several other nations will have in a year.
Litter is wreaking havoc on British wildlife, killing millions of mammals every year and choking our seas with plastic. There must be an increased emphasis on reducing resource use and encouraging design for resource efficiency, including through reuse. Reducing resource use will ensure a more efficient economy, reduce the effects of extraction and disposal on wildlife and ecosystems and contribute to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.
The Bill is the Government’s first opportunity to show that we will not lose out as a result of leaving the EU. If we cannot secure strong environmental protections in the Bill, that does not bode well for the workers’ rights, workplace protections and consumer protections that we need in our everyday lives.
The Minister said that the Bill would be the means of introducing biodiversity net gain. That should be a powerful way of achieving a net gain for our nature in the future. Yet major infrastructure projects are excluded. We need all planning applications and developments to be included, and all government departments to be subject to the provisions of this important Bill.
In certain respects, the Bill leaves the environment worse off than when we were under the auspices of the European Union. It will introduce the new governance body to hold the Government to account—the OEP—and we welcome the setting up of that. However, as it stands, it is insufficiently independent of the Government, whom it is meant to hold to account. It has no power to fine, and its actions are hampered by the fact that if it applies for an environmental review, a court cannot impose any sanctions if those would cause substantial hardship. That just cannot be right.
On Report in the Commons, late additions were introduced, which will sweep away important protections for our most precious habitats for wildlife and biodiversity. Those were previously protected by domestic legislation enacting the EU habitats directive, but those protections are to be swept away to ensure that Project Speed can go ahead. Particular protections for the homes of creatures such as our nightingales and bitterns are to be swept away just so that developers can have a free-for-all in the new zoned planning areas that planning reforms are bringing fast down the track.
In an awful lot of areas in the Bill, the Government are taking powers unto themselves, including on setting provisions for the critical issue of water quality. We need the best quality for our water, yet here the Government seem to be saying, “In future we’ll decide who we want to consult, and then we’ll tell Parliament what we’ve decided.” Of course we need to look to amend water quality standards as our understanding of the science changes—but the process review must be consultative and transparent, and it must make it clear how any changes will ensure that government targets are being met. As it stands, Clause 83 is not sufficiently robust, and needs significant amendment.
Where the Bill is right is in making clear the vital role of local authorities in delivering nature for their local communities. I applaud the fact that the Government have listened to the lobbying—if I may call it that—of Peers right across this House on strengthening local authorities’ biodiversity duties. That is welcome—but they will need the resources to do the job properly. Only recently, the Association of Local Government Ecologists said that only one in three councils has in-house ecology officers.
Local authorities will need the resources, particularly if they are to make a good job of delivering the new local nature recovery strategies. We accept that, as the Government say, those could be a powerful way of bringing together multiple stakeholders and funds, both from biodiversity net gain and from ELMS, to deliver ecologically coherent nature recovery strategies. They could be a really powerful tool, but at the moment they are separate from local authorities’ planning functions and strategic decision-making. I look forward to reintroducing an amendment tabled by Sarah Olney MP in the Commons, which would rectify that omission and embed local nature recovery strategies in the planning process.
We know that nature is important for people’s mental well-being, but in order to enjoy it they have to have access to it. Recent ONS figures showed that nationally, only one in eight households has access to a shared or private garden. In London that figure drops to one in five. Clause 1 says that the Government “may” introduce targets for people to be able to enjoy local nature, but that is not set as a priority area. In the list of targets that the Government produced last August, which was updated in October, there are no targets for access at all. I know that my noble friends Lord Addington and Lady Scott of Needham Market—who cannot be with us today—will seek to return to this issue in Committee, because it is critical to increase the proportion of people who have access to good-quality natural green space to enjoy.
As the Minister said, the Government will enable targets to be set for air quality. But we agree with Labour that what is in the Bill now is not strong enough. My noble friend Lady Walmsley, from the Liberal Democrat health team, will seek to work with others across parties in Committee to strengthen the air quality provisions.
In their 25-year environment plan, the Government said that they wanted to improve the environment within a generation. If they really want to do that, the Bill is a little sluggish in certain respects. For example, although I welcome the inclusion of the extended producer responsibility obligations, which could be a powerful way to embed the polluter pays principle in law, the Government have not moved on from some of the low-hanging fruit on which they have already delivered, such as single-use plastic, to address other plastic issues. Why do they not take the opportunity to say in the Bill how they are going to deal with other single-use plastics, such as wet wipes? Wet wipes contain plastic, but we know that they can be produced without plastic, and they are affecting our wildlife and clogging up our waterways.
Equally, where are the measures to address the commercial abstraction of water? There is nothing in the Bill on reducing household water consumption, whose effects we know will be exacerbated in future years by climate change. We will introduce amendments to ensure that there is labelling of water-efficient household appliances, and compulsory water metering.
Of course, this is not just about driving down consumption of our resources; it is also about looking at the UK’s global ecological footprint, as the Minister rightly said. We really welcome the inclusion of the due diligence obligation on companies selling commodities in the UK which contribute to deforestation. I would say that we welcome it, given that it was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, but, credit where credit is due, I take my hat off to the Minister for personally championing this issue. It has been well noted and we are grateful for it. He would be surprised if I did not say that I wished it went a little further, and that we hope it will address both legal and illegal deforestation, tackle the issue of businesses which finance those operations and respect the rights of local communities.
I hope that everybody who will speak today accepts that there is a nature crisis. On that front, I look forward to the valedictory comments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury, who both in this Chamber and in wider civil society has been such a champion for respecting our planetary resources and encouraging people to take those responsibilities seriously. He will be missed, but I look forward to what he has to say to us today. The nature we love is in crisis. As the Minister said, this is a massively important year for us, with the CBD coming up in October. It is an opportunity for the UK to show global ambition and to have a route map to get there. We on the Liberal Democrats Benches look forward to working with colleagues throughout the House to ensure that this Bill enables the UK to stand proud and to have the ambition and the route map to protect the global and national environment that we all love.
The other area is one where a truly independent OEP would of course come down like a ton of bricks: the urgent need for Defra and the Environment Agency to put right the appalling pollution of our rivers. Eighty-six per cent of our rivers are not in good ecological condition. We have once again reverted to being the dirty man of Europe. Something needs to be done and done quickly. Rumour has it—and the Minister mentioned it today—that Defra has its own set of amendments here, but it would be good to know exactly what is proposed as soon as possible. Even then, I would hope to push the Government a little further. For instance, water pollution is as much about what you are taking out of a river as what you are putting in. Abstraction licences and compulsory water metering are on my target list for amendments.
Then there is the major problem of combined sewer overflows and the huge quantities of sewage we put into our rivers. I shall not bore you with statistics but, believe me, what goes on is totally shocking. From talking to scientists it is clear that river pollution is no simple matter. Every catchment is different and has different problems needing different solutions. We should make better use of existing catchment-based partnerships, increasing their number and formalising them within the Bill. Like the inshore fisheries and conservation authorities set up by the 2009 Act, these catchment conservation authorities should be given more powers to monitor and control their own rivers.
Finally, I want to air a nagging doubt that lurks always at the back of my mind. It is not really to do with this Bill, but it is something we should think on. For sure, our generation of farmers has fallen short by overfocusing on the production of cheap food, to the detriment of our biodiversity and possibly even our nation’s nutrition, but we are a very crowded island: England is three times more densely populated than France and four times more than Spain. I worry that, with all our current demands for more habitats, more trees, more forests, more carbon sinks, more rural leisure, more national parks and masses more new housing, all of which I approve of, we will wake up in 40 years’ time, in the middle of a third world war, and say, “Hang on, was it your generation that diminished our ability to feed ourselves, so that now we cannot survive?” I am sure we can fit all the land uses into our landscape, but during the frantic activity we shall all have on this Bill over the next few months, we must never forget that the primary purpose of agricultural land is to produce food for our nation.
Another example is to be found in Clause 7, which covers environmental improvement plans, or EIPs. Their implementation will be key to achieving national, long-term environmental targets. While an EIP will be required to include interim targets, there is no specific requirement for one to include the policies and actions that the Government intend to take to ensure that long-term environmental targets are achieved. Is it not the case that the confidence and certainty that businesses need to make long-term investments would be strengthened if the Bill required EIPs to include the policies and actions that the Government intend to take? I can therefore understand why bodies such as IEMA and the Broadway Initiative see it as essential that the Bill closely aligns its core governance elements with a coherent set of objectives to give businesses the trust and confidence that they need to invest in the future.
Trust and confidence are also the watchwords that will underpin the development of environmental markets. There is a significant private sector interest in the potential of well-designed markets for nature alongside sources of private funding that are potentially available to support nature recovery. However, to maximise the impact of both public and private investment in nature, there is a need for agreed standards and accreditation to give confidence to markets, investors, regulators and other stakeholders. I declare an interest as chair of the United Kingdom Accreditation Service—UKAS—which is the government-appointed national accreditation body. UKAS accreditation already provides this confidence and assurance in many environmentally related areas, such as carbon trading schemes, emissions measurements, the microgeneration certification scheme and the Woodland Carbon Code, to name but a few. We work closely with our UK quality infrastructure partner, the British Standards Institute—the BSI—in the development of consensus-based standards that meet the needs of all stakeholders. In short, the UK already has in place a proven means to create both the standards framework that will be needed and the underpinning accreditation to demonstrate whether and where those standards are, or are not, being achieved. As the saying goes, if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it. This is especially true if this Bill is going to achieve its effect.
In conclusion, I strongly support this very important Bill. It is a good Bill and, with a few tweaks to its governance proposals, it could become an even better one.
“A statement of non-compliance”
by the court
“does not affect the validity of the conduct in respect of which it is given.”
Clause 37(8) compounds this reversal of legal precedent by constraining the power of the court to provide a remedy if that would
“cause substantial hardship to, or substantially prejudice the rights of”
any third party.
In its briefing, ClientEarth gave an indicative example of how absurd this is. If a permit for a new mine was granted with a failure to consider the impact on air quality, such that the operation would cause serious pollution and adverse health impacts for many years, the court could not quash it unless it could show that it would not cause serious hardship to the mine owner or substantially prejudice their right to operate the mine. The court would obviously not be able to do that; as a result, the mine could operate indefinitely, regardless of its impact. Far from addressing the institutional failures that Professor Dasgupta highlighted, the compromises to the independence of the OEP, and the constraints on the courts’ ability to enforce environmental law, bake that failure in from the very start. I am sure that noble Lords will wish to improve the Bill in this area during its passage through this House.
Another area that will need to be addressed is the role of local authorities in protecting biodiversity. While the Bill has much to say about the duties of local authorities—as my noble friend Lady Parminter said, that is welcome—it has next to nothing to say about their powers to carry out these duties. Local authorities are on the front line in protecting biodiversity and they need to be empowered to do so. Consequently, I intend to table amendments in Committee that would allow local authorities to designate land as a site at risk of biodiversity loss, with associated powers to inspect such land and enter into conservation covenant agreements with landowners, as provided for in Part 7 of the Bill.
We welcome the fact that this Bill is finally before this House but we regret that the urgency of action that the Dasgupta Review called for is largely absent, despite the Minister’s declaration just a few minutes ago that we can wait no longer to act. We regret that institutional weaknesses remain abundant and are, in fact, reinforced by the Bill. Improvements to the Bill need to be made across a wide range of issues, including tackling air pollution, protecting local and international biodiversity, acting to end the financing of deforestation, enforcing packaging waste responsibilities, conserving water resources and protecting rivers from pollution.
However, there is good news for the Minister, who I do not doubt would prefer a much more effective Bill, given his personal commitment to this subject. We intend to help him out by working across the House to bring forward constructive amendments to strengthen the Bill and tackle the urgent challenges that noble Lords, including the Minister, have so starkly highlighted.
The EA’s environment and business budget, which covers agricultural regulation, waste crimes and incident response, has been cut from £117 million in 2010 to just £40 million in 2020. Even if you do not allow for inflation, that equates to an effective quartering of what we spend per year. The net effect is that in many critical areas our regulators are completely impotent. For example, in 2019-20, the total budget for agricultural enforcement across England was just £320,000, equating to 0.65 full-time staff in each of 14 areas. Such drastic cuts to regulatory agencies mean that polluters can continue, secure in the knowledge that they are unlikely to be caught or prosecuted. Staggeringly, each farm in England can now expect an inspection just once every 263 years. It is useless. The number of court actions against river polluters fell from 235 in 2002 to three last year.
Currently, the state of many of our farming and policing policies means that on the River Wye—a place I am concerned about and a place where I swam—you can erect sheds containing 40,000 birds. These are usually paid for by big multinationals, which get tax breaks, as the sheds are classed as farm buildings although they are factories. There is almost no authority to stop them putting the slurry, the chemicals, the phosphates and the sewage back into this amazing river, which is now almost without fish in large chunks.
As has been brought up by many noble Lords, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Oates, I am also concerned about the planning permissions. The proposals on net gain and protecting habitats will become much more difficult.
In my remaining couple of minutes, I would like to bring the House’s attention to something very current; it happened last week. Noble Lords may or may not like Knepp rewilding estate in Horsham, but it is a beacon of an attempt to bring rewilding into this country. It is visited by hundreds of thousands of people; it has set a fantastic standard. Yet the owners of Knepp lost a case just last week. Horsham District Council declared by six to three that it will allow a housing estate of 3,500 new houses right on the border of this extraordinary natural wilding achievement. The Minister just said that we want 30% of land to be maintained for nature, so what on earth is happening? Horsham District Council, which has its own nature recovery programme, has been leaned on by the Government to produce more houses. It appears, staggeringly, that this project will go ahead.
I believe the Minister: having visited Knepp, he knows how wonderful it is. We, with Natural England, want to encourage more such places around the country—little ones, big ones and ones that entrance adults, children and teachers about the flora and fauna that are so precious to us all. Yet 3,500 houses will block the nature corridor, bringing pollution, noise and light right to the edge of Knepp, not even separated by a road. Something has to be done. I am pleased with the Bill but, my gosh, it needs a lot of work, and I will be supporting all the amendments I believe in.
Many of the decisions required of the OEP across the next decade will be difficult and unpopular politically, but right and just in terms of risk, geopolitics and intergenerational equity. Financial and political independence for the OEP is therefore essential. Parliament and government need a voice in both appointments and budgets for the OEP not only to lead in the United Kingdom but to be a gold standard internationally.
It is never easy to share or give away power or entrust oversight to others. But this new body must be above party politics and immune to particular Ministers’ enthusiasms or lack of enthusiasm. I urge the Secretary of State to give further serious consideration to measures that will strengthen the financial and political independence of the OEP in the debates that will follow. I warmly welcome the Bill.