Environment and Climate Change Committee Report: An Extraordinary Challenge: Restoring 30 per cent of our Land and Sea by 2030
(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Parminter
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the Environment and Climate Change Committee An extraordinary challenge: Restoring 30 per cent of our land and sea by 2030 (2nd Report, Session 2022–23, HL Paper 234).
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to open this debate as the past chairman of the Select Committee on Environment and Climate Change, as we debate the issue of how we in the UK meet our target to achieve 30% of our land and sea to be restored to nature by 2030. When we launched our report last year, we called it an extraordinary challenge, and that title is as apposite today as it was then.
When I look at noble Lords in this Room, I can see that I do not need to tell any of them that this global target for biodiversity for 30 by 30 was agreed at the nature COP, COP 15, back in 2022. But I put on record my thanks to the past Government, who showed considerable leadership in securing that global agreement and, in particular, to the noble Lord sitting behind me, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, who was instrumental in achieving that. I thank him and welcome that the new Labour Government have already committed to meeting their international biodiversity obligations.
We put our report together over a year ago—God knows why it takes over a year in the House of Lords to report a Select Committee, but it does—and the recommendations that we made on securing the land in England are as relevant today as they were then. That has made it even better for us to debate it today, given that we face the opportunity next month of COP 16 in Colombia, which I hope is focusing the minds of our own Government, as well as Governments right around the world, on their shared biodiversity targets.
Frankly, we should not need an international gathering on biodiversity to redouble our efforts to protect nature. This month alone we have seen five more UK seabirds added to the red list for extinction: Arctic terns, Leach’s storm petrels, common gulls and the great black-backed gull, and the great skua have all been added to that list. We know that protected species survive and thrive best in protected areas such as SSSIs and SACs, as well as the SPAs—the sites of special scientific interest, special areas of conservation and special protection areas. But there is a great swathe of other protected sites around our country, whether they are areas owned by environmental NGOs, managed for nature conservation, or national parks or national landscapes, which we have come to term AOBs, or wildlife reserves, national nature reserves or national forests—to name but a few. They are all important, but the question for us as a committee when we looked at our report was what counted towards that 30 by 30 target.
We were very clear that we accepted the international definition that was put together by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which was agreed at COP 15, that to qualify for 30 by 30 the area should be:
“a clearly defined geographical space, recognised, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values”.
We took “long term” to mean more than 30 years. Taking that definition, we listened to the advice from the Government’s own nature advisory body, the JNCC, and the other environmental groups, as well as from other stakeholders. We concluded that, at that time, the amount of land in England that could count towards 30 by 30 was 6.5%. That means that, by 2030, there remains 23.5% of land required to meet the target, which is a massive amount of land. To give it some context, that is more than 3 million hectares of land, or an area of land more than 1.5 times the size of Wales. The noble Lord, Lord Harlech, might want to challenge me on that—I do not know. Those were the figures that we identified.
In December, the Government—as was—argued that, in their delivering 30 by 30 on land and at sea, that figure was not 6.5% but 8.5%. However, they included in their definition land that is not compliant with what we take to be suitable for inclusion in 30 by 30 as compliant with the international guidance. Irrespective of arguing over those amounts, what is absolutely clear is the scale of the challenge. But we all know that it is not just size that matters; it is also about the quality and condition of the land, as is articulated in the COP 15 statement that it should be effectively conserved and managed.
When we asked Natural England for an update on the quality of those SSSIs, it indicated that only 37% were in favourable condition and that there had been no improvement in the past 13 years in improving the remaining SSSIs. When it came to monitoring, it said that less than a quarter of our SSSIs had been assessed in the past six years. Although I acknowledge that Natural England has made some extremely welcome changes since December in how it assesses and monitors SSSIs, this does not get away from the fact that we are not looking at and assessing our protected sites anywhere near enough for land managers and others to make appropriate management decisions—let alone the fact that, in February 2026, we as a country will have to report internationally on how we are doing against the 30 by 30 target. We as a committee were clear that, despite the financial implications, a proper management assessment needs to be done for every piece of land that constitutes 30 by 30, and that it should be assessed every six years.
That is the state of our best-protected land in England. What about at sea? When we asked the JNCC, we found the deeply worrying situation that only two out of our 76 MPAs—most protected areas—receive any form of monitoring, despite the threats that they face from overfishing, bottom trawling near the seabed and energy infrastructure. We think that this is insufficient. We argued very strongly for there to be more monitoring of our MPAs, both inshore and offshore. We also argued for better regulation of bottom trawling—that is, I think, an issue that several Members may wish to return to later. Like the EFRA Committee, we argued that there needs to be speedy resolution in designating more HPMAs—highly protected marine areas—because the pace of change has been glacial, to say the least.
Let me explain what I mean by “glacial”. One of the things we asked the Government to do was produce a map of how they saw themselves bringing together all the land needed for the 30 by 30 target, along with an action plan. We said—I remember it clearly—that one thing that would be invaluable in helping the Government draw up that map would be the “forthcoming” land use framework. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, may wish to say something more about the forthcoming nature of the land use framework, which we still need to see in its entirety. It is good to see that the new Government have committed to produce one of those.
However, what the Government did do in December was produce a map, along with some indications of how they saw themselves delivering the 30 by 30 target on land, but with no indication of how they saw themselves doing it at sea. In no sense could this be called an action plan because, as the Government themselves said, the map was only indicative as they had not yet agreed the criteria for what would constitute 30 by 30. There was glacial progress too by the last Government on getting any OECMs—other effective area-based conservation measures—up and running, which would have been a really important way of helping farmers, woodland managers and others voluntarily contribute towards the 30 by 30 target.
I am pleased that the Government have now committed to produce a plan for nature protection and recovery, which is to be informed by this rapid review of the environmental improvement plan. That is to be welcomed. It should be a starting point for driving nature recovery right across government departments. I suspect that if I ask the Minister now, she might say that it is probably too early for her to say how the Government see themselves securing this huge extra amount of land that we are going to need if we are going to meet 30 by 30. But it is not unfair for us to ask her today whether the Government will commit to abide by the internationally agreed guidance in drawing up the criteria for determining what will be part of those areas contributing towards 30 by 30.
I have one further question. Will the Government’s laudable plans for new homes for people be accompanied by new streams of funding to provide more homes for nature to thrive and survive?
I am sure that other colleagues will have many more questions; I do not want to go on for too long. I just want to say a particular thanks to those Members here today with whom I shared the privilege of being on the committee—it was a real honour to serve alongside them. I also thank the ever-diligent staff, who deal with us with professionalism, kindness and decency.
In conclusion, our report made it very clear that there is a long way to go if we are going to make a reality of 30 by 30. We need to do it. If our recommendations fall on stony ground, it is quite clear that 30 by 30 will be no more than a catchy slogan for international political summits, and meanwhile our precious nature will be lost.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, the worst thing in the world is to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for two reasons. One is that she was a magnificent chair of this committee, on which I was very privileged to serve, and the other is that she has now said everything that needs to be said, and said it eloquently and with no notes—goodness, there are days I hate her. I could just say that I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and sit down, but that would be a bit of a cop out. I would like to make a few additions, mostly focusing on the land-based elements of our report.
The noble Baroness used the word “slogan”, and that is what 30 by 30 is—it is a great slogan, and there are some in this Room who helped invent it, but we now need a plan, and it needs deliverables, and timescales for those deliverables, and a way of monitoring them, or we certainly will not hit the 30 by 30 target.
I will start with sites of special scientific interest. They are the jewel in the crown of nature conservation and biodiversity in this country, and they are the best protected sites that we have, but particularly the subset of those that are special areas of conservation and special protection areas. However, there have been no real increases in the number of these sites for the last 20 years.
I was probably chairing English Nature at the time when the last major additions to the suite of SSSIs went through. A small number have been declared since then—I can see that some noble Lords are going to contradict me on that one—but generally speaking we need more. It is true to say that it has not been the fashion to declare SSSIs over the last few years, but there is a real gap: there are ecological networks that need to be filled and species that need to be protected where an SSSI would be the appropriate way of doing that. We have to get over the unwillingness to declare SSSIs and see them as the pinnacle of protection. There is not a huge number of them, and we need more to fill in those gaps.
Perhaps more worrying is the whole condition argument. To hark back again—I am so old that I can remember the 1990s, for goodness sake—we at English Nature used to agonise that only about 60% of SSSIs were in favourable condition in those days. That was a key English Nature performance indicator; it had to report on that every year in its annual report, and it was a big issue for us. We are now at the point where we have less than 35% in favourable condition, and that is down from last year’s number of 37%. There is a pressing need for management plans to improve these SSSIs, for those management plans to be resourced and for there to be a system of monitoring conditions that is better than the one at the moment. In reality, if the two issues of the extent and condition of our SSSIs were tackled effectively, those two simple remedies would take us half way to 30 by 30.
One of the two other big contributions to the 30 by 30 issue is our national parks and our protected national landscapes. The Climate Change Committee was keen on giving an additional statutory duty to protect nature to what were in those days AONBs and national parks, but that was rejected, rather fulsomely if I may say so, by the Government during the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill—I break out into hives when I utter the words “Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill”. There was a compromise amendment on protected landscape plans and the contribution to environmental improvement targets, but the regulations to make that happen in practice were delayed by the fall of the Government. We now need to revisit that. To be honest, I do not think the compromise amendment should be pursued any further; we should just go straight to an action that declares a new nature purpose for protected landscapes and national parks.
There has been some progress on delineating the draft criteria for what should count towards 30 by 30. In the early days of 30 by 30 it was felt that, if we lumped in the national parks and the AONBs, we would hit it in one go, but most of the land in the national parks and AONBs is not managed for nature conservation as its primary purpose, or indeed its secondary purpose, so we have to be pretty clear about what should count and what should not. In common with the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, I think we should simply fall in line with the IUCN guidance and the international definitions, and then include other effective area-based conservation measures if they can be demonstrated to be well managed.
The last chunk of land that we need to focus on—a very big chunk—is agricultural land, which makes up a huge proportion of the land under management in this country. Nature-friendly farming is going to be crucial in this. We need to ensure that more farmers are encouraged, advised and supported to move into the higher tiers of nature-friendly farming schemes, and particularly that the guidance for that is made more specific and simpler, and is clarified. It is only at those higher tiers that we will get the right sort of outcomes that will produce genuinely high-quality land that is in favourable condition for nature conservation.
The current Government, of whom I greatly approve, have made some commitments already. They have said they will halt the decline of species by 2030, which is quite a big ask, and have honoured their international commitment to 30 by 30. Most importantly, there will be a new statutory plan to protect and restore our natural environment, with delivery plans for each of the targets therein, and a rapid review of the environmental improvement programme. That is crucial, and all our work on 30 by 30 needs to clearly link to that.
We also need to make sure that all of this work on the 30 by 30 agenda relates to other strands of work that are under way. We have local authorities beavering away on local nature recovery strategies, so we have to ensure that we understand the relationship between those and site protection. We now need to see what the land use framework—the broader framework that the Government say they support—will actually comprise; it will put nature conservation, food production and trees and all sorts of other non-environmental issues into one framework that allows us to make the best of our land, a scarce resource in this country.
The land use framework will, I hope, provide an overarching way to look at the need for land in this country. It will allow actors at national, regional and local authority level, and individual land owners, to have a basis of sound and well-analysed data, and a set of principles under which they can begin to think about how land that they have any influence on can do the best it can not only for private landowners but for the nation as a whole. It need not be something we are scared of. It is not going to be obligatory. It will, I hope, be a help. I hope that it will also be a help in some of the rather nasty local disputes we might see coming up around the use of land for development, infrastructure and housing.
I want to make one last point that your Lordships will not be surprised by from a former chairman of the Woodland Trust—about ancient woodland, my favourite topic. The time has come for proper protection for ancient woodlands. Ancient woodlands would be a key part of 30 by 30, but they have absolutely no statutory protection beyond some very finely crafted words in the National Planning Policy Framework. We had to work pretty hard to get those words in, and we are working pretty hard to make sure they do not fall out in the review of the NPPF.
In this country, we still have over 1,000 sites containing ancient woodland that are being threatened by development or inappropriate land use. That is unacceptable. They are irreplaceable habitats, they are hugely environmentally and biodiversity rich, and they have historic heritage, as well a very modern purpose of combating climate change and giving the public a lot of pleasure. Let us grasp the nettle and have a new designation of equivalent protection for ancient woodland as currently exists for SSSIs. We are due to report to COP 16. Unless we do some of these things, we are going to look a bit cheesy.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, who was very generous in what she said. I agreed with everything she said—particularly that part.
I congratulate the committee on putting together a really valuable report and will focus, at least initially, on the international role of the UK in agitation and in leading by example, where the UK has a particular role to play.
It is an obvious thing to say but, logically, there is nothing more important than mending our relationship with the natural world. Absolutely everything we have, everything we need, everything we do and our entire economic system is based on nature, which is why the damage we are doing to it, all around the world—to our rivers, mangroves, corals and forests—is just so mad.
If I more or less keep to my time now, by the time I have finished and sit down we will have lost the equivalent of nearly 400 football pitches-worth of forest. That almost defies belief and imagination. These are forests that are home to four-fifths of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, around 1 billion people depend on them for their survival, and, as we know, the forests regulate so much, not least our climate and rainfall. The Congo Basin alone is believed to generate more than half of the rainfall for the entire continent of Africa. This is not just an issue of biodiversity, and it is certainly not just an academic discussion we are having.
The reality is that there is no technological substitute for these systems: the only solution, and the ultimate challenge, is finding a way to protect what remains and restore what we have carelessly lost, and then to do everything we can, through all of our decision-making, to reconcile ourselves, our cultures our civilisations and our economies with the natural world, on which we depend. It is an obvious thing to say—and I am certain that, for this Room, it did not need to be said —but it is an argument that needs to be made repeatedly.
The reason for that is that, far too often, when we hear debates about the environment, or when the environment is discussed as a political issue, we are not actually talking about the environment; we have reduced the whole thing to a very narrow focus on carbon and climate change. It is an extraordinarily one-dimensional discussion that we are having most of the time. The reality is that we could put all the solar panels in the world on all the rooftops around the planet, and invest 10 times more in energy efficiency, but if we do not massively ramp up our efforts to protect and restore nature then it is all pointless. There is no pathway to net zero and there is no solution to climate change without forests, and I think it is really important that we keep our conversation as broad as possible. Climate change is an overwhelming threat, but it is a symptom—just one symptom—of the underlying and abusive relationship we have with the natural world.
I do not want in any way to sound like I am discouraging efforts to accelerate the much-needed clean energy transition. It is crucial, I think, that we ramp up our focus on preventing nature loss. By the way, we know that we can do it; there are examples all around the world. I had the privilege of being a Minister for the international environment, and I saw with my own eyes initiatives on a tiny scale and a huge scale—and sometimes on a national scale, where countries have managed to break the link between productivity, prosperity and environmental destruction.
I have just come back from Indonesia a couple of days ago. I hate flying—I have to be drunk to get on an aeroplane, so I am probably not making as much sense now as I would like to be. I can tell you that Indonesia, a country that has taken a lot of flak over many years for high rates, historically, of deforestation, has got its deforestation under control. It does not get the credit for it but it has—the data does not lie. It has broken the link between palm oil production and deforestation. There is still some deforestation, of course, but it is nothing compared to what it was. If all the great forest countries behaved in the way that Indonesia has, we would be having a very different discussion. We know that it can be done.
Noble Lords will remember that, a few years ago, we had the privilege of hosting COP 26 in Glasgow, which we made an effort to turn into a nature COP. We wanted a broader focus, and we delivered the Glasgow leaders’ declaration on forests. We got 145 countries, representing 90% of the world’s forests, to commit to end deforestation this decade, and secured $20 billion to support those countries to do it. We persuaded the multilateral development agencies to align their policies and portfolios with that aim. It represented—in theory, at least—an unprecedented package of support for forests. I put on record my thanks to the extraordinarily talented people in the invisible part of government—the people who do not normally take part in these debates but who do the real work. Without any doubt, that was a consequence of an extraordinarily effective diplomatic effort.
Since then, we attempted to take that same energy, approach and momentum to Montreal, which was about a year later. In order to have an impact and to be able to influence the debate, we protected those diplomatic networks that we had created. We remained co-leaders of the High Ambition Coalition and the Global Ocean Alliance—organisations designed to extract maximum ambition from countries with which we get on well. We spearheaded, with Ecuador, the Maldives and Gabon, a programme that suggested how countries might club together in order to fund what is needed for nature restoration. It was a programme that was, more or less, adopted at Montreal, in the Kunming-Montreal protocol.
There is no doubt that the UK played a very important role. I am grateful for what the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said earlier, but the truth is that I had the honour of being the front of much of this work; the real work was done by hundreds and hundreds of people in government who were up all night, four or five days in a row. I thought some of them might be knocking on the door of madness by the end of it, relying only on coffee, but they did an extraordinary job and went way beyond what I, certainly, was expecting at the time. I am very grateful to them.
What was agreed at Montreal was seismic. It was an action plan that will put the world on a path to recovery. We are here to talk about the 30 by 30 target, and obviously that was the headline achievement that was secured at Montreal. But it was also agreed—and this is hugely important—that the wealthier countries will provide at least $20 billion a year by 2025 to help countries rich in nature but economically poorer to deliver their part of the bargain.
A lot has undoubtedly been achieved since Montreal. We have targets, agreements and treaties. In basic terms, we have the tools that we need, if we are serious about it, to turn the tide on nature destruction, but if we do not use those tools and properly do our part then the targets are academic. They would just be targets on paper.
The truth is that, globally—I include the UK in this—we are not living up to the commitments we made. We are less than one year from that $20 billion a year target. By the end of next year, the rich countries are supposed to be contributing $20 billion between them. A report produced by the ODI and commissioned by the brilliant Campaign for Nature, based entirely on OECD figures, shows that just two countries are contributing what they regard as their fair share of that finance. The UK is not one of them. I am certainly not blaming the new Government, who have only just taken their seats, but the UK is not one of them. The UK has a hugely important role to play in turning those grandiose commitments into something approaching reality.
We have been at the heart of this debate for some years now. It was a colossal error of judgment on the part of the most recent iteration of the Conservative Government just to walk off the stage. We were not there at the big events; we were fiddling the figures to make it look like we were spending more money than we were, and we were letting down allies. I think we did the UK’s reputation an enormous amount of damage. This Government have the awesome responsibility of turning things around, rebuilding our reputation and showing that, when we make a promise on these issues, we stick to it and keep our word.
That matters financially, for the reasons I have just explained, but it goes far beyond finance. It is also about politics. We have a history of being able to agitate in negative ways, but also in very positive ways internationally, persuading the world to do what we think it ought to be doing. When it comes to nature, our voice has counted for something. There have been many events and times in the last few years when regional groupings have gathered to talk—for example, about the Amazon. You would have all the Amazon countries there and the UK. We have had similar events in Asia, when leaders from Asian countries have gathered to talk about their biodiversity, and the UK has been the only non-regional member there. We have a voice, and it is essential that we use it.
We have to get our rich-country friends to step up and pay their fair share. We have to mobilise the private finance that we need, because there is nothing like enough public finance to do the job. We have to make sure that the forums that we are part of, such as the G7, honour the commitments that they made. If your Lordships remember, at the last G7 there was a commitment that all international aid—not just climate or nature, but all international aid—would be aligned with the global biodiversity framework. That has not happened—it has not happened in the UK or elsewhere.
I am running out of time, so will make one final point. The biggest challenge that people talk about when it comes to restoring our relationship with nature is finance. We are told that there is a $500 billion black hole annually; that is needed every year to turn things around. By coincidence, that is also how much the top 50 food-producing countries spend each year in subsidising often highly destructive land use. The UK is one of the few countries, possibly the only country, that has really got to grips with this challenge of reforming our subsidies, such that we are paying public money in return for public goods like the environment. I know others will be talking about this in due course, but it is really important that the new Government seize that agenda, recognise the opportunity and do not in any way yield to the vested interests that undoubtedly will be trying to pressure them to water down our commitments on land use subsidy reform. It is too important internationally and for the UK.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)
My Lords, I gently remind your Lordships that, although it says an “advisory” Back-Bench speaking time of nine minutes, it is slightly more than advisory. We have a lot of speakers here today, so I hope that noble Lords will keep an eye on the clock and keep to the time limit, as far as possible.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate hugely the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, on many things, including his speech; whether it overran seems irrelevant to me because it was a real barnstormer and a fantastic challenge to this Government to step up to the plate. I think that everyone who has made the effort to get here this afternoon probably agreed with every word of it.
I was thrilled to be a part of the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. She was a fantastic chair and hers was a wonderful speech; along with the speeches from the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, it set out the big picture domestically to do with the land, our agenda and our voice. I am going to change the mood here completely and talk about something specific that I think the Government could do right now and do easily: bottom trawling. This was referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, but I am going to deep dive into it a little more—in quite short time, I hope.
Bottom trawling is a widespread industrial practice that involves dragging heavy nets, large metal doors and chains across the sea-floor in order to catch fish. It is that simple. It is very efficient for the fishing industry, because it scoops up simply everything in its path. The fishermen then haul it up, decide what they want and chuck the rest back into the ocean. Needless to say, an incredible amount is rejected, but let us try to look at it from another point of view. The ocean floor is not a barren zone. It is home to myriad species of animals, fish, plants, corals, sponges and other living things. If only we, as human beings, were able to imagine that beings other than ourselves have agency, thoughts, lives and rights, on a completely different physical scale from ours, but are also worthy of respect; if only we understood their place within our human planetary existence. Bottom trawling destroys homes. It destroys these beings’ environment. For them, it is like being in London, in the Blitz, every single night.
Leaving aside what might be dismissed as a sentimental point of view about whether the creatures down there have any rights, let us think about this from an environmental point of view. In much the same way as soil, the bottom of the ocean secures our right to be on this planet. When you bottom trawl, sediment is flung into the water in a huge, swirling cloud. Scientists call this rototilling; it is similar to deep ploughing, which tears through the mycorrhizal structures in soil and damages everything as it goes. We all know what that has done to the quality of our soil—it has been well debated and well agreed—and Governments everywhere now recognise that we have to stop this kind of farming; indeed, as was referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, we have to look for nature-friendly farming that protects this hugely vital asset. Quite honestly, the sea-floor is absolutely nothing different.
Tearing it up has consequences that are equally serious to those of tearing up the soil and allowing it to be flushed away. Resuspended sediment—in other words, the stuff that is chucked into the sea and has lain there for many thousands of years—can change the entire chemistry of the water. It changes the nutrient levels and lowers the light levels; inevitably, it therefore reduces the photosynthesis that ocean-dwelling plants can carry out. Such plants form the basis of the entire food system in the ocean, not just for us but for all the fish up the chain. The sediment is then carried away by currents, often far away, which destroys any fish’s food system. All species are inevitably affected. Can you imagine your small town suddenly being annihilated by the equivalent of a 200-foot tank?
What to do? Nationally, we could look to curb this industry, but here, where we are attempting to preserve 30% of the ocean, we must ban bottom trawling in MPAs. I think that we should ban it everywhere, but we could start by saying, “No more”, to this one. I simply do not understand how licences have been given to fishermen to fish in these areas. The only answer that makes any sense is greed and industry pressure on local MPs and government officials to allow these huge fishing companies to twist the rules—and they are not in our favour.
If we stop it, we will get some quick benefits. Marine life acts as a natural defence. It stores blue carbon, and it forms the basic infrastructure of how low-impact fisheries can thrive. In addition, the carbon emissions are offset and restored through natural carbon stores in increased oxygen production. The most astonishing fact is that the total weight of fish found in a fully protected area is on average a staggering 670% greater.
Banning bottom trawling would deliver benefits worth between £2.57 billion and £3.5 billion to the UK economy—according to Oceana, which is about the only figure we have—within 20 years. However, despite how sensible that sounds, 33,000 hours of suspected bottom trawling took place in 2023 in MPAs, where seabed features have hundreds of years of lifespan but were trashed in minutes. It is clear that the by-laws are inadequate. Of 13 sites designated as MPAs, only four are fully protected because many bylaws protect only specific bits, which allows bottom trawling elsewhere. As I said, that kicks up the sediment, which affects everything. Because of the inefficiency of the design and laws, fishermen are encouraged to cut straight through the MPAs because they have to spend more on petrol to get around them.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, the currently higher protected marine areas cover only 0.42% of English waters. Quite frankly, that is pathetic. They should cover at least 10%, and even that would be pathetic. When will the Government publish strict criteria setting out clearly what counts towards 30 by 30 at sea, including how that is going to be managed? We might not be able to see under the sea but that does not mean it does not count towards the health and well-being of every single one of us. Like our soil, our planetary health depends on it.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, I believe that restoring land and sea for nature is a crucial part of our response to the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. It is a great privilege to follow four outstanding speakers, real heroes of the environment, particularly for the environment in this nation. It is indeed an extraordinary challenge that we face, but one that I hope we can rise to.
The report contains many excellent recommendations. I commend the noble Lords on the Select Committee who have taken evidence, distilled it and brought us a report containing so much clarity and wisdom. It is imperative that the regulation of habitat protection is retained and strengthened to make sure that protected land is truly being managed for nature. Alongside that, and ultimately far more effective, is for those who own and manage land or use the sea to have a great pride for the natural world in their stewardship and for society at large to value nature. I see the beginnings of a positive change in that regard, as more and more landowners, tenants and people who work the land and the sea recognise our negative impact on the environment and notice the silenced song of creation in so many places.
The importance of nature protection and restoration is also something that the Church of England recognises, as we increasingly strive to manage our land—churchyards, glebe land and the historic farming estates—effectively for nature. In 2023, the Church Commissioners—and I declare an interest as a Church Commissioner—partnered with Natural England to expand the wide Wybunbury Moss National Nature Reserve in Cheshire, leasing land to protect that delicate ecosystem of the moss, restoring its fields to a more natural state and improving access to nature for local residents.
In Hereford, the 100 acres of the Bartonsham Meadows have been leased to the Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, which plans to enhance the flora and restore the ancient hedgerows of that those meadows. We are working closely with our tenant farmers to provide regenerative agriculture to enhance soil health, plant hedgerows and woodlands and to make ponds. In the diocese of Norwich that I serve, the careful management of churchyards, with some areas left unmown until the autumn, has allowed much more nature to thrive at Hemblington, where oxeye daisies proliferate, and at Blakeney, where wild claries are now seen for the first time in abundance.
However, I wonder whether two areas of this report could have been stronger. First, there is the international dimension. Areas of the UK’s land and sea are important for migratory birds and marine mammals. These species do not recognise international borders, but different national commitments can have a profound impact on their populations and their conservation. We also have globally rare habitats, such as heather moorland and sphagnum blanket bog, and there are other outstanding examples of unique species and habitats in the UK’s overseas territories and Crown dependencies, although this report does not cover those places in detail. These internationally important species and habitats are protected by commitments, conventions and directives which UK Governments were instrumental in creating. We have led the way in nature conservation. Ramsar sites, the Berne convention and the EU birds and habitats directive—all of them have our fingerprints on them. So can the Minister say whether His Majesty’s Government will undertake to be absolutely committed to our international obligations for nature?
Secondly, there is only a passing mention in the report to the benefit of nature on human health, development and well-being. I am sure we have all experienced the benefits of spending time in nature, and I am struck that when I read the Gospels, I note how often Jesus withdraws to the natural environment of the Galilee to recharge and reconnect. Studies have shown that we thrive when out in nature, and there are many positive health benefits in terms of reducing stress and enhancing our mental well-being, as well as the enjoyment of physical exercise. In nature, children develop inquiring minds, learn to assess risk, and experience awe and wonder through taking a closer look at the flora and fauna. Yet all the evidence points to children being out in nature far less. However, when I visit schools in the diocese of Norwich, I am always struck by the passion of children for the environment. I would love it if every child could plant a tree in their formative years. There is nothing like getting your hands in the soil—“humus” and “humanity” sharing the same root.
When we pay attention to something, we are far more likely to treasure it. When we treasure something, we want to protect it. When we protect something, we want to see it thrive. Protecting land and sea for nature benefits everything and everyone. Will His Majesty’s Government undertake an assessment of the benefit of forest schools and similar nature-focused learning for child development, so that we can have a generation of children even more passionate about protecting our natural environment?
As I said, this is an extraordinary challenge, but one I believe we must meet, for our sake, for our children’s sake, and for the sake of the planet. When things are good for nature, they are generally good for humans, and generally good for business as well. The Book of Revelation speaks of the leaves of the trees being
“for the healing of the nations”.
To plant is to hope, to restore is to heal, to protect is to love, ultimately. We must do all that we can to protect species, habitats and landscapes, and I hope that His Majesty’s Government will not only take note of this report but act on it.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, this is the first opportunity I have to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Harlech, on her ministerial role; I wish her well in that. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and her committee for their work, and particularly the noble Baroness for so skilfully arranging this debate on Back British Farming Day.
I support the ambition behind the 30 by 30 policy in its aim to increase the spatial scale and connectivity of habitats, as these are key components of the nature recovery that this country needs. The criteria for contributing to 30 by 30 in England is based on three pillars: purpose, protection and management. As the report points out, while these are laudable, greater clarity is urgently needed in what these mean in practice.
Some people are calling for more land to be designated. I am not a great fan of designations. Protection should not be conflated with designation. This concern was reflected in the report, at paragraph 56:
“As the Committee heard in oral evidence: ‘just because [the area is] an SSSI, that does not automatically stop the decline in rare and threatened species we have on the site’”.
Indeed, the very designation of some land as an SSSI has caused its deterioration, because academic theory supplanted the practical land management that helped to create it. Experience shows that bottom-up, farmer-led and land manager-led projects are more successful than top-down directives in protecting and recovering nature.
So 30 by 30 is a huge opportunity for Defra to engage with environmental farmers groups. This would involve engagement with land managers and farmers across different management systems both in the lowlands and uplands. Good management practices would also extend the focus of nature recovery across a wider scale of catchment and landscapes than currently provided by the focus on designated areas alone. Every bit of the country can and should play its part—yes, even urban areas. It is good news that the Victoria Tower, part of this Palace, hosts a nest of peregrine falcons.
However, farmers face great difficulties at present. In paragraph 114, the committee states that:
“We heard that farmers in protected areas could struggle to find the time and resources to develop an understanding of what natural capital options are available on their land and that this may lead many to disengage with the process.”
How sad that would be. Does the Minister agree that using organisations such as the Peakland Environmental Farmers, co-ordinated by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, is an example of where such a collaboration could help farmers achieve these outcomes? Will the Government follow recently produced guidelines by the IUCN on human-wildlife conflict and co-existence, to help formulate strategies where different valid views are held?
I turn to what I consider an important omission from the report. How does 30 by 30 sit alongside the importance of food security, which is one of Defra’s five strategic priorities? This could be enhanced, and a lot of land could be made available for benefitting nature, if the Government would give their full support to the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023. The Minister of State for Food Security and Rural Affairs, in a recent letter wrote:
“We are now considering how to take forward the regulatory framework outlined in the Act and will share our plans with key interested parties soon”.
Can the Minister give us a more definitive timescale, as this has so much potential to help food security and biodiversity?
On the marine side, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, in asking why the Government do not stop fishing vessels from damaging our marine environment and wildlife. Free of the EU common fisheries policy, we have the power to prevent damaging fishing activity taking place in offshore marine protected areas. This power has already been deployed in a number of MPAs around England, but harmful practices, such as bottom trawling, are still allowed to take place in most of them.
Last year, fishing vessels equipped with bottom-towed gear were active in the UK’s offshore marine protected areas for over 33,000 hours, adding up to nearly four years. Oceana tells us that just 10 vessels, none of which were UK vessels, were responsible for over one-quarter of this damaging activity. EU legal challenges over the existing bottom trawling restrictions and the closure of the sand eel fisheries should be faced down. There is a genuine risk that the Government, as they seek a closer relationship with the EU, will use the sand eel win as a concession. Furthermore, the ban on mostly EU-registered bottom trawlers operating in all protected waters should be completed, and vessels of all sizes restricted from fishing forage species that local wildlife depend on.
This will also have significant benefits for climate action, with evidence showing that, globally, bottom trawling contributes roughly the same amount of emissions as the aviation sector. My view of the marine designations is similar to my critique of the terrestrial ones: protection is offered to a specific species or characteristic, rather than management of the whole water column. This can lead to a situation in which, for example, an animal is protected but its habitat is not, so the latter is able to be bottom-trawled, ruining the habitat for the animal being protected. Our current approach might explain why we are not getting the recovery outcomes that we want or expect to see in the marine environment.
At this morning’s National Farmers’ Union breakfast for “Back British Farming Day”, the Secretary of State had warm and encouraging words for farming and the environment. We will soon find out whether he can transform these into action. It is unsurprising, given the transition to a new farming scheme, with initially poor communication around its rollout and apprehension among farmers, that there is an underspend of over £350 million in Defra’s budget. Can the Minister confirm that HMT is trying to claw back at least £100 million of this? Research by the RSPB has estimated that this would mean 239,000 fewer hectares of nature-friendly farmland funded in England.
The ELMS budget has already experienced real-term cuts because it was not tied to inflation. The NFU and environmental NGOs have been calling for it to be almost doubled. Can the Minister confirm that Defra is also being asked to plan for cuts of up to 25% to meet the new Chancellor’s spending cuts? The opposition to the Secretary of State’s promises will not be from farmers but from his own Chancellor. Without sufficient resources at this critical time, there will be no chance of meeting the ambitions not only of 30 by 30 but of the legally binding targets set up by the Climate Change and Environment Acts. That is a much more serious problem for farming, the environment and food security.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for securing the debate and getting so many people together to speak on the environment. It was a very clever thing to do. The report is also good, and I thank the committee.
It is an extraordinary experience for me to agree with virtually everything that everybody has said in this debate. That is highly unusual for a Green—even among Greens in the Green Party. I thank your Lordships for the wonderful things that have been said. It is also interesting to follow the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, with whom I mostly agreed—mostly.
If I get irritable during my speech, it is because the Green Party has been saying this sort of thing for 50 years. I have personally been saying it for only 36 years, but it still gets a little repetitive sometimes. In essence, when we look at the basics of human life, without nature, we cease to exist. Without life in our oceans, the whole planet goes awry, and we cease to exist. Nature is not just something to enjoy—although that is a good aspect of it—it is our life support. Nature is resilient but, with humanity’s decimation of our species and habitats, life has become more fragile and precious.
We have conservation programmes across the UK and the globe, but climate change puts them all under threat. There are fewer birds in our skies, fish in our seas and bees on our crops. One in six UK wildlife species is now at risk of extinction. As Britain heats up, plants, insects, birds, animals and people will all need to shift north. That is happening right now and, unless we hit this 2030 target, it is possible that green corridors, the right soils and suitable spaces will not be there for many species.
A report by Wildlife and Countryside Link estimated that just 3% of land and up to 8% of sea are effectively protected for nature in England. I hope that the new Government have not been fooled by the rubbish we had from the last Government about our being on track to meet the 2030 target. It is absolutely clear that we are not on track and have a real problem.
Obviously, the Green Party offers big solutions to these big challenges. First, we need an independent commission for nature, which would protect nature and ensure the restoration of wildlife habitats. This new watchdog should be created as part of a new rights of nature Act that would enshrine the intrinsic value of nature in law. I am so sorry if I am stumbling; I can write with only my left hand at the moment, which I am not very good at, and I am having trouble reading my writing.
This independent commission for nature would set up targets for nature protection and restoration, and would enforce them through the courts; that is a very important issue. This would give individuals, communities and conservation groups the opportunity to take legal action on behalf of nature. We need legislation that sets standards for soil quality and phases out the most harmful pesticides immediately as we move towards regenerative farming methods. Only pesticides that pass this test and demonstrably do not harm bees, butterflies and other wildlife should be approved for use in the UK.
Of course, one quick win would be to stop the use of peat for horticulture. Let us ban imports of peat. Let us stop using it and understand that the damage we do to peat bogs—including peat bogs in other countries where imported peat comes from—is unrecoverable.
I hope that the Minister will do everything that she can to prevent any rollback of the existing protections for the green belt, national landscapes and sites of special scientific interest; I am sure that she will because I know that she cares. Those protections should be strengthened, not weakened. Having clean water in national parks should be obvious but it is not there. Will the Government change the rules to make it compulsory and tell the water company bosses that they will be given community service orders if they dump sewage in Windermere and every other precious waterway? I would love to see some water company bosses on their hands and knees restoring the rivers that they have absolutely trashed, and I know that my friend Feargal Sharkey would love some help with the chalk streams that run through England.
While the Government consult on that, can the Minister urgently publish the regulation and guidance needed to enforce the recent legislation that Peers helped to pass on water companies having duties to further national park purposes? Further, can the Minister promise legislation to make it absolutely clear that national parks are nature designations as well as landscape designations? There is something cold and disconnected about knowing that a beautiful landscape is a poisonous, no-go area for wildlife.
Now we come on to money. The Government will have got off to a bad start if they cut £100 million from their annual budget for nature-friendly farming in England. This cut will mean at least 239,000 fewer hectares of nature-friendly farmland, according to research from the RSPB. The Green Party argues not only that we can afford to promote nature-friendly farming but that—here, we agree with the National Farmers’ Union—a big increase in the budget is an essential step towards promoting havens for wildlife, as well as cleaning up our water supply. The Government want to protect our coastlines and oceans but there is no money to monitor progress or even establish a baseline to work from.
Of course, a ban on bottom trawling is another essential; I really do not understand the delay in making that happen, but the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, covered this issue absolutely fantastically. Could the Minister perhaps make a statement on the appointment of a Minister with a portfolio of responsibility for the international marine environment?
Finally, can we please ratify the Global Ocean Treaty agreement, which seeks to conserve marine biology? I realise that this would be a huge task for a new Government but, if the Government do not come up with the right policies, it will be to all our disbenefit.
Baroness Rock (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I declare my interests, as set out in the register, as a trustee of the Royal Countryside Fund and a director of a tenanted farming business. I was chair of the Rock review, commissioned by the Government, which made recommendations to deliver a more resilient agricultural tenanted sector in three main areas: first, to deliver sustainable food production; secondly, to meet the challenges of climate change; and thirdly, to deliver the improvement and enhancement of biodiversity.
I am also a non-executive director at Defra. However, I am deeply disappointed and, frankly, bewildered that the Secretary of State has decided to terminate my role at the end of this month, despite my only having been appointed four months ago and despite my willingness to continue to serve. In opposition, Labour was a vocal advocate of the tenant farmers and of the Rock review. It sends a worrying message to our vital tenant-farming community that my sector expertise is not recognised by Steve Reed and his ministerial team as being a useful asset. However, I remain resolute in my absolute commitment to our tenant farmers, and I promise to continue to champion them and ensure that they have a fair deal from this Government.
I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and her esteemed committee members on this excellent inquiry into the very ambitious target to protect 30% of land and sea, halt nature decline and protect and improve biodiversity by 2030. I am pleased that the new Government support the commitment that they inherited from their predecessor.
Today, as my noble friend Lord Caithness has mentioned, is Back British Farming Day. In recognition of this important day, I shall focus my remarks on what the report means for our agricultural sector and how our farmers can contribute to the 30 by 30 ambition while ensuring that our nation’s food security, as recognised by this Government, remains a priority.
So what role is there for farming? The government response to the report has rightly recognised the need to work in partnership with farmers as custodians of the countryside, in order to ensure that we balance farming and food production with nature recovery. The response also welcomed the committee’s recognition of the role of the environmental land management schemes to contribute towards 30 by 30, where that works effectively for farmers and farm businesses. However, only parts of some of those schemes will count towards the target, and exactly which schemes has yet to be determined. Furthermore, the committee reported that it had received considerable evidence regarding the challenges of accessing environmental land management schemes in protected areas.
The committee mentions the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme, which delivers improvements for nature in line with local priorities. However, that funding comes to an end in March 2025. Are this Government planning on extending the programme?
We must make sure that tenanted farms are included in achieving long-term nature conservation. That means we need longer tenancy agreements, as recommended in the Rock review. That is important, because length of tenure will allow a tenant farmer to make a more meaningful and effective environmental contribution. It was therefore extremely disappointing to note that tenant farmers are not mentioned at all in the report. That is a glaring omission, given their importance in managing, wholly or partly, 64% of total farmable land in England, including protected sites. Many of their landlords are institutions such as the National Trust, the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Cornwall and, as the right reverend Prelate mentioned, the Church Commissioners. I am extremely grateful to him for bringing up the importance of the Church Commissioners’ tenant farmers, many of whom I have met.
Most landowners have clear environmental goals, but those will not be delivered without those vital tenant farmers who actually manage the land. I therefore ask the Minister to confirm the Prime Minister’s commitment to quickly implement a fair deal for tenant farmers, building on the work of the Rock review.
This Government have announced a new deal for farmers that will include optimising environmental land management schemes to produce the right outcome for all farmers, particularly small, grassland, upland and tenanted farms, while delivering food security and nature recovery in a just and equitable way. They have also announced a rapid review of the environmental improvement plan to be completed by the end of this year. That is to be commended, but I want to inject a note of caution. The National Audit Office expresses concern that the removal of the basic payment and the introduction of the sustainable farming incentive, which is part of ELMS, could see 40% of farms close unless they are able to implement productivity improvements—40% of farmers who could lose their livelihoods. There is concern that 30 by 30 could become yet another danger to farming, alongside all the other targets for housebuilding, tree planting, energy production, accessible nature areas and other infrastructure.
I confine my final remarks to solar energy. The Tenant Farmers Association has told me that it is seeing an increasing number of proposals coming forward for solar farms, many of which are impacting tenanted farmland. Some of these are small-scale and others will be considered as nationally significant infrastructure projects and will end up on the desk of the Secretary of State for final decision. As part of the planning process on land which is subject to an agricultural tenancy, consideration must be given to the impact of the development on the personal circumstances of the tenant farmer where they are not party to the development. Where it is considered that the negative impact will be significant and the tenant farmer’s livelihood is at risk, there would be sufficient evidence to turn down an application for development.
However, a recent decision of the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has been a cause of concern. His decision to give consent to a 2,500-acre solar farm being developed on the Cambridgeshire-Suffolk border has sent shock waves through the local community and further afield. The fact that he made his decision against the advice of the Planning Inspectorate is doubly concerning. Contrast that with a more recent decision, albeit on a smaller scale, by Broadland District Council in South Norfolk, which rejected an application for a solar farm on 90 acres of land in part because of the impact on the tenant farmer, who would have lost a significant area of their farming land.
In defence of his decision, the Secretary of State said that he had to make
“tough decisions with ambition and urgency”
as part of a plan to make
“the UK a clean energy superpower”.
However, surely the concerns of local communities and the impact on the viability of a tenant farmer’s business are also relevant when looking at what projects should be considered for approval. What safeguards do tenant farmers have if the Secretary of State simply decides to override those considerations? Yes, a tenant farmer could bring a judicial review against the Secretary of State, but I confess that I have not met a single tenant farmer with deep enough pockets to do that.
Here, it is critical that we go back to the commitment made by the Prime Minister, when he was leader of the Opposition, when he addressed the NFU conference in February 2023:
“Tenant farmers need a fair deal. They need to know their futures are secure ... I want to see more solar farms across the countryside … But we can’t do it by taking advantage of tenant farmers, farmers producing good British food on carefully maintained, fertile land. They can’t plan properly if the soil beneath their feet isn’t secure. It’s a huge barrier to planning sustainable food production, so we’ve got to give them a fair deal, and we’ve got to use our land well”.
The drive towards net zero cannot be the only consideration when deliberating over solar farms. Food security, local community impact, landscape impact, heritage impact and the impact on tenant farmers, who of course do not own the land they farm, all have to be taken into consideration.
Let me put it as simply as I possibly can. Tenant farmers are being evicted right now from their best and most versatile farming land by landlords in favour of solar panels. While I am certainly in favour of solar energy as we seek to rapidly decarbonise energy generation, it cannot and must not come at the cost of the livelihoods of tenant farmers.
I conclude by offering a simple solution to the Minister. We could start with ensuring that the case law, which provides the vital protections to tenant farmers, is fully referenced in the redrafted National Planning Policy Framework, which is currently under consultation. I ask that the Minister brings this to the urgent attention of the Secretaries of State for both Defra and DESNZ.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
I just remind noble Lords of the advisory time limit in the debate today.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate and to follow my noble friend Lady Rock. I declare my farming and land management interests in Wales. I also declare that I am a member of the Conservative Environment Network.
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on securing this debate and the committee on the report that it produced. Although I was not a member of that committee, I was a member of the Land Use in England Committee, whose report recommended the creation of a land use framework, and I have found that many of these reports’ key themes and recommendations complement each other.
The Environment Committee report’s recommendations clearly state that effective collaboration, partnership working and stakeholder co-ordination are crucial for achieving domestic and international biodiversity targets. According to monitoring done by Wildlife and Countryside Link, the condition of SSSIs declined between 2023 and 2024. Link categorised 34.67% of them in good condition and protected for nature in 2024, down from 36.82% a year previously. I therefore strongly urge the Government to focus on restoring nature and biodiversity in these already designated landscapes rather than getting caught up in designating new ones.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Green List regards good governance, sound design and planning and effective management as the baseline components supporting successful conservation outcomes, including interventions such as predation management. As the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust’s research has shown, there are many exemplars where private investment—not tied by prescriptive approaches—has achieved demonstrable success in reversing wildlife declines through evidence-led management, such as in the provision of habitat and interventions such as supplementary feeding and reducing predation pressure during the breeding season. Examples can be seen at the Allerton Project, Holkham, and the Peppering Biodiversity Project.
I am fortunate to have grown up, lived, and worked in Eryri. The national park’s landscape is breathtaking, and I know how hard the offices and volunteers work to preserve it. However, I was shocked to read in the committee’s report that protecting nature is not a statutory duty of protected landscapes, and that in many cases nature is not in a better condition within these areas than outside it.
As my noble friend Lord Caithness has said, we cannot rely solely on top-down directives to support nature recovery. As discussed, guidance exists, but nature has not recovered without proper management and support. The Government must therefore also nurture ground-up, farmer and land-manager-led projects on how they can contribute to the 30 by 30 target. Within that, there is enormous scope here for regenerative agriculture projects.
An example that I want to highlight is the work being done by farmer Teleri Fielden, otherwise known as the Snowdonia shepherdess, who is implementing a conservation grazing plan for her cattle. To enhance species diversity, she has a higher stocking rate in winter followed by a lower stocking rate in the spring and summer in order to allow grasses to grow longer and set seed, and other species to flower. This provides seeds and pollen to insects and birds and cover for small mammals and birds. The grazing land is a mosaic of scrub, trees and semi-natural pasture, and deadwood is not removed due to its habitat value.
The cattle need minimal supplementary feeding apart from hay, thus reducing any nutrient inputs to the land, as excessive nutrient inputs can lead to nutrient leaching and cause certain species to dominate. She undertakes routine faecal egg counting of the cattle and sheep to minimise the use of anthelmintics, and the Ivermectin class of anthelmintics is not used at all—which I hope will please the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. This ensures that the livestock manure will only enhance and not reduce insect life on that specific land area. That is particularly prevalent during the winter grazing period for dung beetles and other insects that need food during the winter.
That is an example of what only one farmer can do on their land and shows that engagement and co-operation at scale, via environmental farmers’ groups and farmer clusters, must be built into the core of local nature recovery strategies so that there is understanding and involvement at all levels between the land user and the planning or government scheme with which they are interacting.
I conclude with my questions for the Minister. First, how will the Government commit to building on the creation of ELMS and the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023, which they promised to do in their manifesto, when they are reportedly cutting their nature-friendly farming budget by some £100 million? Secondly, how will the Government balance their stated housebuilding aims with the need to protect and restore natural habitat? It is my opinion that carbon credits and offsetting are just a myth; once a habitat is gone and concreted over, it is gone for ever. Finally, I know that the Minister supported calls to create and introduce a land use framework in England; I am hopeful of and look forward to the positive changes that this will bring. When can we expect this work to start? I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Grantchester (Lab)
My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on her excellent chairmanship of the Environment and Climate Change Committee and thanking her for her excellent introduction to the committee’s report. I declare my interests as a member of the committee and, as on the register of interests, a farmer with experience of food supply chains.
Needless to say, this report was assembled under the previous Conservative Government. I welcome my noble friend the Minister to her place at the Dispatch Box and look forward to possible new approaches to tackling the long-term decline of biodiversity in the UK. I fully endorse the committee’s report. With the UK being one of the most nature-depleted countries, it is to be welcomed that, in 2022, at COP 15 on biodiversity in Montreal, the Government joined the international commitment to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030 through halting species decline and restoring nature in a sustainable environment—and here, alongside others, I pay tribute to the leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and the previous Administration in securing this agreement.
The UK has a plethora of conservation designations across a wide range of habitats that have arisen since the introduction of national parks and various site-specific measures since, resulting especially from being a member of the EU. As the report underlines, it is not merely the extent of land and sea; it is the quality of effective conservation and management across the various designations. It must be recognised that national parks were initially set up in legislation to protect the natural beauty of an area rather than its biodiversity. Boundaries were defined in this context where, often, a multitude of activities were being conducted to differing criteria and objectives, reflected in the governance arrangements.
I will pick up two key features contained in the report. With the quantity of designations of protected areas, coupled with the quality of monitoring and the variety of management across these designations, it will be important for the Government and Natural England to identify key partners. This will be extensive and will include the devolved Administrations, councils and utility companies regarding infrastructure and water, as well as associations and their memberships involved in ownership and land management. Arguably, one of the key stakeholders will be farmers, who are involved in managing 70% of the UK’s total land area.
It is opportune that the alternative support system is still under construction following Brexit and is being reflected in environmental public goods. Programmes within the scope of ELMS must be utilised to help the development of the 30% by 2030 policy. It is puzzling that Defra continues to price environmental activity in terms of income forgone instead of paying the appropriate price for the work cost and benefits of public goods; the Government have not recognised food as a public good. I would further argue that this payment formula perpetuates the thinking that food production and conservation are competing priorities.
It is now more important than ever that nature, its conservation and benefits, must work alongside thriving agricultural production and management, to mutual benefit. It was hardly encouraging that previous Conservative Administrations reduced BPS payments progressively and in a short timeframe, before developing credible and effective ELM programmes to lead the transition. These programmes need to be extensive, as well as focused on desired features, to underline the importance of biodiversity and conservation. In addition, it is important that all land management must comply with basic standards and not be made voluntary with regard to opting out to avoid undertaking environmental responsibilities.
I also underline the importance of the 30% by 2030 policy across all departments of government of both the UK and devolved Administrations. We should not categorise the policy as merely the responsibility of Defra. In this regard, biodiversity and nature conservation are recognised across government, to some extent—as reflected, for example, in the stipulation of biodiversity net gain within planning and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The challenge is to take the culture and outlook across the silos of government and not simply put differing concepts into differing departments without joining them up. I welcome that Natural England is now undertaking a multifaceted approach known as “whole-feature assessment” as it monitors management across the various protection designations.
My second key feature of the report concerns the land use framework. I declare here the added interest of being a member of the Land Use in England Committee, under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. My noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone, among others speaking in today’s debate, was a member of that committee.
The report strongly recommended setting up a land use commission, underlining the importance of the multifunctional aspects of land. This will necessarily recognise all the competing challenges in land use across government. It is vital that the thinking of the previous Conservative Government to constrain land use to Defra jurisdiction only must not persist into the new Administration. If the 30% by 2030 policy is to be fully embraced and implemented, competing claims for land can be recognised and, I hope, integrated from this multifunctional approach to land use. This has been recognised to a certain extent—for example, in nature recovery strategies within the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
The pressure on land must be integrated across competing uses and seen to work together, so that land can achieve the best outcome between uses including housing, infrastructure, transport, energy distribution and leisure. Not the least of this is to fulfil the pledge of achieving 30% of land being effectively managed for nature over time.
I conclude by drawing attention to the Crown Estate legislation currently going through your Lordships’ House and to the benefits that the Crown Estate could bring, being the third-largest landowner in the UK, with responsibility for ownership of coastal marine areas. The Crown Estate could provide valued leadership in furthering biodiversity and nature conservation.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Parminter and her committee on producing this report. It is both an impressive route map for government and a salutary report, as it shows the scale of the work needed. As the report states, one of the keys to achieving the target, besides firm and unwavering government support, is public buy-in. This is what I want to talk about today.
The recommendation in paragraph 80 is that
“the Government expand the role of robust citizen science”.
The report underlines the importance of citizen science in helping assess the achievement of targets. It is undoubtedly also a way of capturing the hearts and minds of participants.
I still remember well, aged 18, doing my A-levels, recording everything I could find in my square metre above Pickering—I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, is here today. As a southern, lowlands girl, I really had not seen sundews before, and it was thrilling.
There are many citizen science projects, whether by genus or by ecosystem, and I should just run through a few that are happening at the moment. I am sure that noble Lords have taken part in some of these. There is the Big Garden Bird Watch from the RSPB. As its CEO, Beccy Speight, says,
“With birds now facing so many challenges due to the nature and climate emergencies, every count matters. By taking part, individuals are not only practicing their own mindfulness, but they are also part of something much bigger”.
I think that captures what I want to say here very well. Then there is the Big Butterfly Count, which usually takes place during July and August. For amphibians and reptiles, there is advice on frog spawn, for example; or, in Scotland, on helping to restore the natterjack toad’s habitats. The UK Tree Health Citizen Science Network has been formed from a group of individuals and organisations working across a range of projects and activities that engage people with trees.
Particularly topical is River Watch, which the Canals and Rivers Trust is running in order to involve the public in checking rivers for sewage and other pollution. I am sure the noble Lords do not need me to remind them that, when the UK was in the EU, we were subject to the water framework directive, which meant that the Government had the responsibility to carry out detailed pollution analysis of waterways and report every year. There has not been a survey done along the lines of the water framework directive since 2019, so I ask the Minister what the Government will use as a replacement for the water framework directive survey.
Then there is Buglife, a very energetic campaigning organisation that involves people in monitoring both the good, such as grasshoppers, and the bad, such as the invasive flatworm, which usually comes in with imported pot plants. Buglife’s website headlines a quotation that I think is worth repeating here, from Sir David Attenborough:
“If we and the rest of the back-boned animals were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if the invertebrates were to disappear, the world’s ecosystems would collapse.”
I congratulate Buglife on outlining why insects are so important, and it has been doing it for a long time—for example, on bees, which have just been in the headlines.
Then there are the wildlife trusts. They are particularly important, with over 900,000 members and 39,000 volunteers, who work together to make their local area wilder and make nature a bigger part of everyday life. Local nature reserves are very accessible to people, and something that people can feel is theirs. We need to encourage this feeling that nature is both our responsibility and ours to enjoy. That will be critical to achieving 30 by 30 and reversing biodiversity decline more widely.
Although digital tools are terrific—I must admit to being a huge fan of the Merlin app, because I do not see all that well, and being able to recognise a bird by its song or cry is incredibly helpful—they just do not replace the actual experience of walking through that damp, mossy wood, finding the first wood anemone announcing spring or seeing the flash of greeny-yellow and hearing the yaffle of the woodpecker; or, even better, of lying on the warm summer grass, watching the blue butterflies and trying to identify one blue from another, which I seldom succeed in: is it a holly blue or an adonis blue?
I am sorry that the Government are not going to extend the right to roam. Too much of our countryside is still inaccessible to the public. In the year 2000, the Labour Government made such a good start with the Countryside and Rights of Way Act. I am particularly pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is here because, as the Minister responsible, he really spent day and night, including many nights in Committee, achieving the outcomes of that Act.
The Labour manifesto mentioned nine new national riverside walks and three new national forests. Can the Minister give any idea of timescale for these? Importantly also, when Steve Reed was shadow Minister, he mentioned that there would be a White Paper on access to nature. That would be really important and should be an integral part of helping us to achieve what is suggested in this excellent report.
Lord Gascoigne (Con)
My Lords, I declare that I am a member of the Conservative Environment Network and Peers for the Planet. I pay tribute to the committee for its thorough report and for holding the feet of government to the fire in delivering this vital mission, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, the chair, for a frank and moving rallying cry, kick-starting what has been a fantastic debate so far.
This country has long played a leading role around the world in tackling biodiversity loss and improving the environment. A lot comes down to the many fantastic organisations and campaigners in our arsenal, but working hand in glove you need a Government to lead. I pay tribute to my former colleagues and friends who worked tirelessly to achieve successful COPs in both Glasgow and Montreal; this goes especially to my very good and noble friends Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park and Lord Sharma, who is newly ennobled, both of whom I worked with especially closely on this whole agenda while I was privileged to be in the Foreign Office and Downing Street.
Will the Minister set out what the Government will push at the upcoming biodiversity COP? More broadly, is there any indication of what the Government’s review of the environmental improvement plan means in practice? I hope that it means that we can expect not just more deliverables but more funding.
There are three specific areas that I would like to address. The first relates to access to nature. The report notes the importance of nature corridors and connectivity between sites. The previous Government set out the nature recovery network. To what extent will this Government commit to that as part of their review, and perhaps even commit to go much further by strengthening this network?
A study from Wildlife and Countryside Link has shown that the most deprived communities in England are more than twice as likely to live in areas with a low amount of natural space per person. I know that the Government have scrapped the levelling up department, but the concept of levelling up should still be delivered. This dovetails with the whole debate on the green belt—and I know that not all the green belt is the Chilterns, but there is now an open tension between building on the green belt and the need to protect and enhance it and create habitats that are publicly accessible.
We have to build more homes, but we can also improve green spaces. Many cities and urban centres have potential locations nearby, where disused and ugly sites can become accessible woodlands, wetland and other green spaces. That all takes me back to when Labour was last in power and I was a little bit younger, when from memory I think there was a similar push. I remember Lord Prescott saying, “The green belt is Labour’s achievement, and we intend to build on it”.
To what extent is Defra working with MHCLG on the revised NPPF? What specific action is Defra taking to improve nature and biodiversity provision on the green belt? Do the Government believe in the target of living within 15 minutes’ walk to a green space or water, as set by the previous Government?
On the second area which I wish to discuss, the report and then Government talked about data and citizen science, ensuring that the public have better understanding of sites. I think that we can go much further and really focus on what more we can do for young people, in echoing what I thought was a beautiful speech from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich.
I shall give a personal reflection. I am lucky to be the father of two very young daughters. Sophia is three and Helena is seven months. Out on walks with the dog or in the garden, my eldest often fills my pockets with snail shells, feathers, leaves and acorns; to her, these are the most precious things at that time. She does not think twice about putting her bare hands in the soil or jumping around in muddy puddles. We are lucky enough to have a reasonably sized back garden where Sophia and I have planted plants since the day she could walk, made ponds from old washing-up tubs and sown flower seeds and grass in areas and let them go wild—and we probably now have more bird feeders than there are in London Zoo. She and I often sit to watch the birds in the garden, sniff flowers, see dragonflies zoom around, enjoy the bats at night and watch the cameras to see the foxes and hedgehogs—and we both have, just in the last few days, seen not just frogs but our first toad.
Yes, of course I would like to take credit for that— I love it; my dad did the same for me, and it did stick eventually—but why is it that, when we grow a little bit, we lose interest in the outdoors? A few years ago, a study showed that there is a sharp dip in people’s connection with nature from the age of 11 onwards, with a slow recovery around the age of 30; the average age for nature-connectedness was 61. What can we do to maintain that fascination and longing throughout young people’s lives?
When I was in government, I often sat in debates on education with my noble friend Lady Barran; she would frequently talk about the incredible work that some schools were doing to inspire children and bring nature into the curriculum. One fantastic initiative caught my eye. Last year, the National Education Nature Park was launched to inspire young people not just to learn about biodiversity but to take action locally, to improve their school and to bring nature closer. I am sure that the Minister is aware of that scheme; I hope that the department will work with the DfE to continue to encourage more schools, nurseries and colleges to take it on so that we not only engage young people but inspire them, educate them and give them an understanding of our own environment, of nature, of what food is and of where food comes from.
That brings me to my third point, which concerns farming. Noble Lords—especially those on the two Front Benches, particularly on this side—will, I am sure, have come across James Rebanks and one of his incredible books, English Pastoral. The opening chapter is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. He talks about his journey with farming and nature, starting as a young kid, as something that is passed down through generations yet represents the bond between man, nature and the countryside. It reminded me of my own youth with my dad up in Lancashire, rocking up to farms to see his pals, being dragged through fields and hills and wading through mud. In truth, at the time, as he drove round the country lanes and roads in a mudded-up Land Rover, I never really understood nor appreciated the beauty of the land around me. I also never appreciated how there is a world beyond the towns and cities; how the bond, perhaps better called a contract, between man and the land and seas around us works; or why all this matters.
Other noble Lords have mentioned farming. It goes without saying that we need farmers for their knowledge and understanding—not to mention what they produce. The previous Government introduced the environmental land management schemes. As the report acknowledges, they will make a contribution to nature recovery; some sites could be included in the 30 by 30 target. However, as has already been noted, just as the uptake is rising after yet another stressful year, the Government have taken £100 million out of the budget. Yes, this scheme is new, and all new things can be improved and take time to embed, but what does that say about this Government’s faith in farming, never mind nature? Can the Government assure farmers that they remain committed to farming and agriculture, and that ELMS and their funds will remain in place? Is there any broader reassurance against any future cuts to Defra as a whole? Surely, if it is the right thing, the Government should support the scheme wholeheartedly—not just because it is right to give support to farmers but because it is right for nature. After a period of change and challenges, certainty for farmers matters.
We need to go much further, as we have all said. We need not just to build on the green belt but to improve it. We need not to take money away from farmers but to help them produce food and increase biodiversity. We need not to treat nature and wildlife as a “nice to have” but to put natural capital at the heart of policy across government.
Lord Banner (Con)
My Lords, I refer to my interests on the register. I declare that, up until I took my seat in this House in March, I was the interim chair—and, prior to that, deputy chair—of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, although I am no longer on its board and do not speak for it today. I am also a practising King’s Counsel in environmental and planning law; I have a number of clients affected in various ways by environmental designations. I am a member of Peers for the Planet. I am also a donor and pro bono adviser to the Save Me Trust, an animal welfare and environmental charity.
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the Environment and Climate Change Committee on their excellent and comprehensive report. The need to stem the decline in our nature, both terrestrial and marine, is truly urgent. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, nature is our life support system. It provides the air we breathe, the climate we need, the water we drink, the food we eat and the materials we use. However, it is now on life support in far too many places. The ambitious words of the 30 by 30 pledge will address this only if they are matched by ambitious actions. The committee’s report has laid down the gauntlet for the incoming Government; I encourage them to pick it up without hesitation or qualification.
I highlight the following points in particular. First, as the committee's report recognises, there is a pressing need for the Government to publish an action plan detailing how the 30 by 30 target will be delivered. The alternative is directionless drift. Secondly, proper resourcing is critical. The committee’s report notes how budget cuts have hampered effective monitoring and evaluation of ecological habitats, in particular of SSSIs. I have seen myself how resource constraints have posed perennial difficulties for the JNCC, whose critical UK-wide role in nature conservation and recovery is recognised by the report. If we are to do the job of nature recovery properly, proper investment is needed. Public finances may be finite, but do not the Government agree that nature is surely at least as deserving of a pay rise as train drivers?
Thirdly, much is said in the report about the importance of working with the farming and fishing communities to transition them towards more sustainable practices. That is of course right, and appropriate incentives and collaboration to that end are to be welcomed. However, the carrot needs to be accompanied by the stick. Both industries have, to be frank, a lot to answer for in terms of their contribution to the nature crisis our country finds itself in. Greater incentives need to come with greater regulation. Environmental principles require that the polluter pays, yet all too often the polluter gets paid. Nutrient neutrality rules mean that farmers get paid millions of pounds by developers to take agricultural land out of use, despite the fact that the nutrient pollution which necessitates this is a direct result of the very same farmers’ use of chemical fertilisers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, described— I agree with everything she said in this respect—fishing boats are still able to profit from bottom trawling, to the detriment of fragile marine ecosystems, even in marine protected areas. The role of the state should not be simply to bribe polluters to change their ways but to ensure that the law makes them pay a heavy price if they do not do so.
Fourthly, strengthening the protection of AONBs, or national landscapes, as they are now known, and enlarging them where that is supported by evidence, is, as the report suggests, an important part of achieving 30 by 30. It is equally important, however, to remember that the task is conservation of nature, not preservation of the status quo. The two are different concepts. Change does not always mean harm. For too long, the relationship between nature conservation and new development has, in many people’s minds, been mutually exclusive. That is a misconception. Done properly, proportionately and in the right places, sensitive developments to meet local needs can add to the biodiversity of protected sites and, in fact, contribute towards delivering the aims of 30 by 30—at no cost to the public purse.
Finally, restoring 30% of our land and sea by 2030 must not mean that the remaining 70% is ignored. We must strive to conserve and enhance not just designated habitats and species, but all our precious nature. I conclude by saying that, in the last decade, almost a quarter of a million badgers have been slaughtered in culls which the Labour Party manifesto conceded were “ineffective” —a concession which Sir Brian May’s recent documentary on the subject clearly demonstrates is correct. The Government’s recent announcement that the culls will not cease until the end of this Parliament has come as a huge disappointment to those who took the manifesto pledge to “end the culls” at face value. It also begs the fundamental question: if the Government accept that the culls are ineffective, why are they not taking more immediate action? Can the Minister confirm how many more badgers will be killed before the ineffective culls finally come to an end, and how are those ongoing deaths consistent with the policy commitment urgently to reverse the decline in our nature?
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, I appreciate that speech. I have to echo a lot of what has already been said by many noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, recalled that many years ago, when we were opposite numbers on the right to roam Bill, we were addressing the problems of squaring access with beautifying the countryside, but also starting to talk about reversing the decline in biodiversity—which, regrettably, has got significantly worse since then.
I then spent four years at Defra, largely dealing with the common agricultural policy and various livestock pandemics. I do not remember much attention being paid to the greening of the countryside, nor do I remember addressing the designation of protected areas until very late in my role, when I received a question from a noble Lord about SSSIs. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, referred to the favourable status of SSSIs declining dramatically; it was already declining when I received this question, and it has not been reversed.
Monitoring the areas we have already designated has been ineffective. The main purpose of the other protected areas is not greening, increasing biodiversity or whatever; it is the beauty of and access to the landscape, and ensuring that fairly large areas have a degree of protection from industrialisation or residential development.
This is a complex problem, because people assume that the label of protection, which includes AONBs and national parks, actually means something to do with nature. In reality, it means relatively little. The whole thing has to be reversed. The public do not fully understand them, normal maps used for walking or visiting the countryside do not mark them, there is little effective status to these designations and there are too many of them.
I hope that part of the future programme will look at the current designations and see if we can go further, using them as a tool in the context of the broader land use strategy we are supposed to be developing. We can then begin to meet the targets that were—I think the word is “boldly”—designated by the Government and adopted internationally. I praise the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and others who committed to and are pushing that, but the fact is that the whole structure of designation, of regulation and of the resources available to regulators such as the Environment Agency, Natural England and local government has reduced in this area in recent years. I hope that we are about to turn a corner and that new Ministers recognise the need for that.
This is broader than that, because the biggest environmental and land use policy, the principles of which we all approved in the last Parliament, in the Environment Act and the Agriculture Act, envisages improvement in what is usually referred to as carbon reduction and greening but is agricultural practice more broadly. That needs driving in a new direction. Unfortunately, most of the schemes that have come out, particularly in the Agriculture Bill, make the mistake of emphasising hiving off from farming bits of land that are to be regarded as green and as contributing to biodiversity targets.
Some of that has to happen, but we will not achieve our targets if we do not also address the problem of making sure that food production, which should continue at a high level, also becomes greener, less carbon intensive and less biodiversity destroying. If we hive off bits of agricultural land, grazing land and upland land in particular, from the requirement to help meet biodiversity targets, we will be making a serious mistake. There is no need for there to be such diverse problems.
One of the issues for the ELMS strategy is that we deliver an outcome that is consistent and points in the same direction, instead of dividing up land into different parcels with substantially different biodiversity approval rates. That strategy has to be abandoned.
We have not tackled the problem of marine areas. We have designated some as higher marine areas, but we have not taken steps to reduce fishing and dredging in our inshore and beach areas. Unless we do that, we will not fulfil the target on the marine side. There is a great possibility of managing to do so on the land, but there is a lot more to do on the marine side, starting, as someone suggested earlier, with banning bottom dredging.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I add my voice in welcoming this excellent report and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and her committee on it and on securing the debate today. I declare my interests: I sit on the rural interest group of the Church of England Synod, and I am a patron of Upper Teesdale Agricultural Support Services. In upper Teesdale, almost 50% of the farms are tenanted, as they are in North Yorkshire, where I was an MP. As with every area of policy—this is no exception—we need to balance the interest of preserving nature and the natural world with that of those engaged in making a living and running a business in that environment. There is always a danger, which may flow from mapping and monitoring, of setting arbitrary targets that are too prescriptive and threaten that balance, as set out in the report.
I shall take a perhaps more parochial and domestic view than that of my noble friend Lord Goldsmith, whom I congratulate on what he achieved at COP 15. I will look at SSSIs and national parks, where setting planning policies too strictly prevents farmers and businesses, such as tourism and hospitality, from operating freely. The report has an omission, in that it does not reflect on the role of farmers and businesses in this regard, and indeed that of fishermen in protecting and restoring our seas. We must allow them to ply their trade, earn a living and provide food for the country.
Marine life faces a threat from the development and operation of offshore wind farms. We took evidence on this in the previous EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee, under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I firmly believe that more research needs to be done in this area.
Farmers play a crucial role as custodians of the countryside and are integral to rural communities. Farmers manage 70% of the UK’s land area and must be regarded as key partners in nature conservation. They have faced a plethora of changes in the new schemes in a very short timeframe and, frankly, an IT system that is not fit for purpose. Recognising their contribution to the natural world will encourage and incentivise landowners and tenants alike to increase their engagement in policy. In developing the 30 by 30 policy, we must recognise the role of farmers on the land and ensure that nature conservation, if it is to be successful, is underpinned by a prosperous, economically viable farming sector.
Farmers have faced a major reset of policy since we left the European Union, and the more that environmental programmes such as ELMS and SFI have regard to the public good and allowing farmers to do that work, the better. Farmers need clarity and certainty in that regard going forward. After seven years of specific support under the CAP, farmers need to be able to create a long-term viable business plan.
Will the Minister, who I welcome to her place today, commit to Defra spending the identified underspend of £358 million over three years? Will she ensure that that money is spent not just on nature conservation but in working with farmers to ensure that they are allowed to grow crops and produce food to boost food security, self-sufficiency and increased exports abroad?
The position of tenant farmers has been ably expressed by a number of speakers, notably my noble friend Lady Rock and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. This issue is particularly key in upland areas and on family farms in SSSI areas; the role of national parks here must be made clearer. In many instances, tenants are simply not able to claim for environmental schemes as they do not own the land on which they farm. I understand from UTASS that some 70 farming families are stuck in agreements at this time; that the agreements are almost 20 years old; that there has been no review of payments; and that those in the schemes have no ability to enter or transfer into SFI or country stewardship schemes. That is unacceptable. I understand that Natural England has a role in this regard, but we have to query whether it has the resources and the time to commit to this matter at this crucial stage.
ELMS has not emerged as the simpler, less complex, easy-to-administer scheme that farmers and the public were promised. That has to change. We must also end this piecemeal approach to reform and have a comprehensive and holistic approach that recognises what works and when. For example, an area that is good for wading birds is simply not suitable for rewilding or tree planting. I endorse entirely what my noble friend Lady Rock has said. It is unacceptable to propose booting a tenant farmer off the land that they have farmed for a generation in north Yorkshire in order to make way for yet another solar farm. That is not the way forward.
In summing up today, will the Minister undertake to consult closely with farmers and farming organisations going forward as the Government create new policy, starting with forthcoming Bills such as the Water (Special Measures) Bill but including—even more importantly—the Budget on 30 October? We must recognise the specific challenges that farmers have faced over the past five years: the fallout from Covid; imperfect supply chains; the higher input costs of energy and fertilisers, with poorer returns and a shortage of labour; and extreme weather, together with major flooding.
I disagree with my noble friend Lord Banner, whom I welcome to his place. I chaired the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee when we did a degree of work looking at how, if we were to dispense with the badger cull, we would have to accept badgers continuing, across the country, to introduce TB into herds that are currently not infected. I urge my noble friend to reconsider his views in this regard; in saying that, I hope not to be attacked by badger lovers, as I have been previously.
I would like to say a word on sites of special scientific interest. As I mentioned previously, I understand that changes to those schemes must be endorsed by Natural England. Does it have the resources? Will the Minister look at this and perhaps write to me afterwards?
Following today’s report, I ask the Minister to set out what is going to change. Will Defra be clearer about how its 30 by 30 ambition links with other policies, including the Environment Act, the protected landscape targets, the land use framework, the local nature recovery strategies, Natural England’s designation programme and national planning policies? Will she ensure that there is an SFI option for upland and moorland to ensure a sustainable future for upland and family farms? Will Defra ensure that farmers and other businesses working in the countryside are able to do their jobs, while enhancing the environment as conservationists at the same time?
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I was a member of the committee that produced this report, under the superb chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, which made it a most enjoyable experience. I welcome the Government’s commitment to 30 by 30. I suggest that the best way of getting there, because it will not be easy, is to involve the public on a large scale. Conservation should be everywhere, not over there. It should not be something which is done in reserves that you never visit and in places managed by other people; it should be in green spaces in towns and cities. We want people to develop a close connection with nature, at scale. It is good both for nature and for people. Access to nature is a key policy, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich said, and it should be a very strong government objective to move in that direction.
The concept of OECMs—other effective area-based conservation measures—provides a route for doing that. They are defined as:
“A geographically defined area other than a Protected Area, which is governed and managed in ways that achieve positive and sustained long-term outcomes for the in-situ conservation of biodiversity, with associated ecosystem functions and services and where applicable, cultural, spiritual, socio-economic, and other locally relevant values”.
As my noble friend Lord Gascoigne said, an obvious place to start is the National Education Nature Park, so I urge Defra to reach across to the Department for Education and find ways of being supportive of that initiative, which has a very strong Civil Service team associated with it and has made a good start. It is hugely important that we build back an understanding and appreciation of nature. Children are the right place to start, not just for their own sake but because they involve their parents. It is much the easiest and quickest way to do it.
Beyond that, the Department for Education is—or at least was—building on the idea of a natural history GCSE. It seems, from what has been said to date, that nature might form a greater part of the 11 to 16 curriculum. We have a very strong base for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award in schools, a substantial part of which is about getting children out into nature—not just trekking around the countryside but, in truly urban schools, doing things in urban environments. Please can Defra make links with these organisations? They would really benefit from the skills, experience and contacts Defra can bring.
A corner of a school’s grounds is a perfect example of a potential OECM. We can move from there to bits of park, riverbanks, patches of green, graveyards and belfries—for the bats, if nothing else. Indeed, my wood in Kent, which the public have access to, would be an excellent OECM—as, indeed, would my noble friend Lord Gascoigne’s garden, I expect. We ought also to focus on the commitments made by developers under biodiversity net gain. There is a huge potential for them to be promised on the day and neglected for years afterwards and never really looked at.
We need to make sure that 30 by 30 becomes part of everyone’s lives. We need to set up a structure, in a way that is easy to use and understand, to register an OECM, so that it is easy to volunteer and there are structures for insurance, training and getting the authority to operate. We need to provide public data on what the OECMs are so that everybody knows what is where and what is going on.
Please can we make much better use of the amateur workforce to monitor and judge what is going on? There is a huge resource out there. I was part of it in my teens, and I am again now—and if the Government’s plans go ahead, I will have a lot more time for it. It is a huge and expert community; it produces dictionaries of what is going on, with what kind of species, across the UK. We ought to be involved in monitoring SSSIs. The equipment is there. Everything is electronic these days: you record what you have seen, it all goes into a common database, and what you have seen is verified and accompanied by pictures. Why do you have to wait six years to monitor an SSSI? Just ask the local botanical recording society or whoever is relevant to look at it every year. Get yourself a real flow of data. We would love to do it; we just do not get asked. We must make sure that data collection is happening in a way that produces a flow of data into a common data source, as many of these things do. It needs a bit of organising, and public effort, and then the Government can devote their resources to auditing to make sure that that public effort is achieving what it should. There is real potential there to do much better, using people who would just like to be asked.
To change subjects, I think there is also a very big opportunity for raising biodiversity in lowland broadleaved woodland. We have got a pattern of declining biodiversity, which has been documented by, for instance, the Rothamsted Insect Survey and the British Trust for Ornithology. A pattern of declining use is probably responsible for that. Look at what is happening worldwide. I visited the forestry authorities in Japan, where there is very much the same pattern. It is due to people not spending as much time as they did earning their living in the woods. However, there are ways of bringing woods back into use that will create a much more biodiverse woodland structure, resulting from woodlands being a source of concentrated carbon. If we are going to replace fossil fuels in the chemical industry, we are going to need to use every potential source of concentrated carbon, and in woodlands we have such a source.
What we do not have at the moment is a really strong organisation to collect that resource. There are bits of it there; there are organisations such as the Environmental Farmers Group and effective collective organisations of farmers, which could deliver enough product in enough volume consistently. There are potential technologies that could make use of that wood: woodchip is beginning to be used to create jet fuel, for instance, but it is at an early stage. We would need to create a system of contractors to collect the woodland material and deliver it to those who would use it. We have promised to do this by 2050. That is not a long time, and we need to be thinking about how that structure would work.
Something that did that would also offer a solution to what we do with the contents of farm slurry pits and other farm waste, because anything with concentrated carbon in it is going to have a value and a place in our economy. There are ways that we can get to 30 by 30. Defra is at the centre of this, and I very much hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, has a very enjoyable five years helping us get there.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, it is an honour to bat clean-up in such an esteemed debate as this. It is difficult to say something new, but I have a different angle to offer—perhaps that of a critical friend.
What an extraordinary challenge it is to restore 30% of our land and sea by 2030. Some might suggest other adjectives for it: a grandiose challenge, possibly a hubristic challenge, a distracting challenge, maybe an unnecessary challenge, and quite possibly an insurmountable challenge. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the Environment and Climate Change Committee for throwing such a forensic and unforgiving light upon it. I hope the Government reflect upon this excellent report and the important contributions to this debate, and ask themselves why exactly we are doing this, can we do this and do we necessarily even want to do this.
Environmental protection and the restoration of our nature-depleted nation is vitally important, but signing up to arbitrary targets that are unsuited to the character of our densely populated island, and which our fragile rural economy simply cannot deliver, will distract from the more important tasks of sustainably feeding the nation while protecting our wider landscape from the degradations of climate change and an expanding population, and the pressures of the Government’s ambitious economic agenda.
We are nearly half way through the 10-year 30 by 30 programme and yet we cannot even agree what we are seeking to achieve and what success looks like. The committee says that we have achieved 6.5% protection as of July 2023, “at a maximum”. Defra countered in December that 8.5% counted towards 30 by 30, and it produced a map identifying an additional 26.8% as potential 30 by 30. Meanwhile, Wildlife and Countryside Link suggests we had merely 3.11% coverage in October 2023, but that number, according to a recent briefing, has since fallen to just 2.93%.
The disparity in numbers proves only one thing: we have no idea what we are doing. We have an alphabet soup of landscape “protections”—SSSIs, SACs, LNRSs, Ramsars, OECMs, HLS, CS, SFIs, NRPs—overseen by a squadron of statutory bodies, each with different targets and ambitions, but no one can agree what qualifies even as “protected” status, let alone the “restored” status required for 30 by 30. SSSIs are considered the baseline, which cover 8% of our landscape, but so few SSSIs are in favourable condition, and the monitoring is so sparse and intermittent that we cannot evaluate progress. Either we agree to a readily identifiable and measurable metric and stick to it, or we should abandon 30 by 30 altogether.
Today is Back British Farming Day—I note my interests as a Devon farmer and land manager. The next five years will be a crucial for our farming industry as we bed in the Government’s two key farming objectives: food security—which we all know is national security—and environmental land management, the transition to which should be completed by 2027 or 2028. Given that land enrolled in agri-environment schemes does not count towards 30 by 30, we simply cannot achieve these two key objectives while also “protecting” an additional 25% of our land. The maths simply do not work. We cannot create more land, and yet the Government also want to build 1.5 million homes, improve infrastructure, increase access to nature and expand onshore renewables. We cannot do it all.
Of course, had we a developed and functioning land use framework, we might have the ability to assess this and to weigh the competing demands upon our limited and vulnerable land supply—but we do not, and without it such grandiose and complex ambitions as 30 by 30 are not achievable. They should be shelved. We cannot run before we can walk, and currently we can barely crawl. Could the Minister please confirm when the Government plan to launch their land use strategy, and honour the tireless work of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone?
Who or what is going to pay for this challenge, other than the farmers deprived of their economic opportunity? The Government are yet to confirm even the agri-environment budget for this Parliament, and, given the fiscal black hole and the strains on the public purse, I cannot see any more money becoming available. Private finance is much heralded but it is struggling to work out the relatively simple carbon and nutrient neutrality markets, let alone the complexities of biodiversity and nature restoration. Farmers’ incomes are decreasing and, to recall a hackneyed truth, they cannot go green while in the red. Can the Minister please clarify whether the Government have conducted any assessment of the cost of 30 by 30?
The most compelling evidence of the state of our protected landscapes is the Independent Review of Protected Site Management on Dartmoor, commissioned by Defra and chaired by the truly extraordinary David Fursdon, which reported in December 2023. It is current and is based on detailed evidence gathered from a broad array of stakeholders. It is well researched and clearly articulates a complex and very sorry account of the state of one of our country’s most iconic protected landscapes. I highly recommend it to all noble Lords and specifically request that the Minister read it in detail.
Much of Dartmoor has been protected via SSSI and other designations for nearly 50 years—as long as the Green Party has been in place—yet the review concludes that Dartmoor is
“not in a good state”
and that its protection needs
“to change radically and urgently”.
There is no record of the condition of the land when it was designated, so there are no means to determine whether it is now better or worse. Worse still, there are no staff available to monitor and manage the protected land today. Dartmoor was once served by 12 Natural England staff but now has only one and a half. Relations between farmers, commoners and Natural England are poor, communications are fraught and trust has all but disappeared. No one can even agree what land management prescriptions are required to restore this vital and yet fragile landscape; stocking densities are allegedly too high and yet also far too low.
The solution is long-term data collection, sensitive and skilful management and the building of genuine partnerships and trust, underpinned by committed funding over multiple years. This is not something that can be fixed by 2030 with grandstanding, ill-informed designations backed up by inadequate financial and regulatory support.
In the interests of time, I have largely confined my comments to the terrestrial elements of 30 by 30 and have not ventured out to sea. That is not because I see the marine environment as any less important; it is not. Given the ambitious programme of offshore wind revealed in our recent debate on the Crown Estate Bill, the marine environment is in as much need of protection as the land, if not more. To that end, can the Minister please confirm where Defra has got to on marine net gain? I know that a consultation concluded last year but I have heard nothing further. Just as BNG has been rolled out for all land-based development, MNG is essential as we seek to harness the renewable power of our seas and oceans.
In conclusion, this Government have quite rightly made some bold decisions on a number of fronts in their first few months in office, jettisoning policies at an impressive rate, driven by budgetary constraints and an eye to the practical and the possible. Can we hope that they might make a sensible and brave decision and shelve this undoubtedly worthy but impractical and unobtainable goal of 30 by 30?
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, in standing in for my noble friend Lord Roborough, who could not be present at the start of this debate, I must tell the Committee that the last time I clutched a Dispatch Box desperately seeking inspiration was Thursday 20 March 1997. I was the last Conservative Minister to answer a departmental Question at 3.15 pm, immediately followed by John Major answering his last PMQs, and then we prorogued for the general election. Some 28 years later I am an example of His Majesty’s policy of patching up and mending old things, and putting them to work again.
I need to declare my interests as on the register but to go further too. I remain for the next three months the deputy chair of Natural England. I have checked with the clerks and, while I can talk factually about nature, Natural England, this report and the last Government’s response, under the Addison rule I cannot speak officially for Natural England, nor answer questions about its activities or advocate its policies—only the Minister can do that. Because of my position in Natural England, I am automatically on the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, so I leave it to the Minister to say what a brilliant job we are doing in Natural England.
I welcome the Minister to her post. There is no one better on the Labour Benches in the Lords to do it, and she is an excellent addition to the Defra ministerial team.
I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and all the noble Lords who conducted the 30 by 30 inquiry, on their recommendations. I also commend the 16 noble Lords who have spoken today. They made excellent points, including in the superb speech by my noble friend Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, who is welcome to take this seat back any time he likes.
A lot has happened since the report was published in July 2023, and not just the change of Government. Noble Lords have read the last Government’s response, and in the changed circumstances I see no point in rehashing it all today. The report called for national parks to be given a new statutory duty to protect nature, and Section 245 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act imposed a new duty to do just that; I hope that my noble friend Lord Harlech will be reassured by that. As I recall, that was the Lord Randall amendment in the Lords.
The report called for local nature recovery strategies to be given statutory underpinning in local development plans. Schedule 7 to the levelling-up Act did that; I believe that was the Baroness Parminter amendment. On SSSIs, I say to my noble friend Lord Harlech that Natural England has now moved fully to assessing the condition of SSSI features at the site scale, and the focus is on bringing SSSI condition assessments up to date and in line with the EIP target to complete this by the end of January 2028—although that is highly dependent on not cutting Natural England’s grant in aid.
Natural England is also progressing the EIP target to have action under way and on track by January 2028, which will bring 50% of SSSI features into favourable condition. Natural England is continuing to look for improvements in the approach to monitoring —to make more use of modern technology, such as earth observation, to increase the contribution of participatory science, and to utilise condition assessments gathered by third parties, such as ENGOs, which my noble friend Lord Lucas called for—and we aim to grow that.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, that I have been involved in about six new SSSI designations or extensions. They may not be many in number but two were absolutely massive, including a large one down in west Cornwall—which was slightly controversial—and another large one near RAF Fairford and the waterworks around there.
The report underplays the role played by national nature reserves, which I argue are a legitimate component of other effective conservation measures. I submit that the country’s NNRs meet the OECM criteria defined in CBD 15 and in the Government’s nature recovery Green Paper. There are currently 221 national nature reserve sites, which comprise 110,000 hectares or 427 square miles. That is 0.85% of England’s area. Natural England manages 134, the Wildlife Trusts 50, the National Trust 20, local authorities 29 and the RSPB, National Parks, other NGOs and other government agencies 34.
Let me cite a superb example: the new, supersized Purbeck Heaths NNR announced in 2020. Seven organisations manage it: Natural England, the National Trust, the RSPB, the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust, the Dorset Wildlife Trust, Forestry England and the Rempstone Estate. The new NNR is larger than the original NNR, which was 996 hectares—it is now 3,331 hectares, a 234% increase. It is better, as it is increasing biodiversity and creating a more dynamic and resilient landscape, and it is more joined up, as it has a huge continuous grazing area and landscape-scale objectives.
Another excellent example is the Somerset Wetlands “super” NNR which links up six pre-existing national nature reserves on the Somerset Levels and Moors. It is managed in partnership by Natural England, the Environment Agency and five other NGOs. The crucial point is that some say NNRs should not be included in the OECM category nor count towards 30 by 30, since they are not statutorily protected—but that is a feeble point. These organisations are all approved by Natural England to manage reserves properly and bring about species recovery and conservation. Thus, I say to the Minister that they should be included as part of our 30 by 30 targets, since they may be managed by other effective means, as my noble friend Lord Lucas pointed out.
Finally on national nature reserves, paragraph 83 of the report said:
“We recommend that the Government enable and resource Natural England to develop and publicise accessible digital and offline tools and communications to enable members of the public to learn about and engage with their local protected areas”.
I agree entirely but, before doing so, we need to sort out proper online publicity for the 134 national nature reserves run by Natural England. I invite everyone, including the Minister, to search “visit a national nature reserve” on Google. Up will pop some very sexy sites with superb photos, but they are all from the National Trust, the RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts and NNRs run by similar organisations. Down that list somewhere will be a GOV.UK site called “National Nature Reserves in England”. Click on that and it will reveal 11 regional categories. Click on “North West NNRs” and it will reveal seven more categories. If the Minister clicks on “Cumbria”, that will list 37 NNRs—without a single map to help you. If she clicks on “Bassenthwaite Lake”, she will get this:
“The reserve is a shallow, balanced nutrient lake in the north-west of the Lake District. Main habitats: open water”.
To paraphrase Bob Geldof, is that it? It is the most beautiful landscape—after Ullswater and Blencathra, of course—and there is not a single photo of it, nor of any other national nature reserve, featured on GOV.UK. No wonder the NNRs managed by the other organisations have five times the visitor numbers. We all want people to access nature for the benefits it brings to health. I hope the Minister will have far more success than I have had over the last six years trying to get a dedicated site for national nature reserves, rather than buried in the bowels of GOV.UK.
The report, in paragraphs 73 to 75, urges the Government to prioritise working with the overseas territories. As the Minister will know, 94% of the United Kingdom’s biodiversity is not in Great Britain and Northern Ireland but in our 14 overseas territories, their unique islands and their 6.4 million square kilometres of ocean. The Darwin Plus scheme applies to our OTs.
I was the Minister way back at the first Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio, which launched the Darwin Initiative. I must admit, as a new, five week-old Environment Minister, I had not a clue what I was launching. I read the brief and had no idea how successful the scheme would turn out to be. Now, the Government have funded over 1,275 projects at a cost of £230 million, achieving both biodiversity conservation and multi- dimensional poverty reduction. Twelve years ago, I worked with our overseas territories for a few years and saw at first hand the splendid work the Joint Nature Conservation Committee did in our OTs and how the OTs desperately wanted more JNCC input, if only it could afford it.
Minister, it is an easy and impressive win for us in here in the United Kingdom to support the Blue Belt programme and the overseas territories biodiversity strategy being worked up at this precise moment by the JNCC and Defra. The JNCC has also done work on creating blue finance criteria, so that companies can invest in nature recovery projects in our United Kingdom’s oceans and our overseas territories’ seas and know that it is not genuine and not bluewashing.
The report made some very important recommendations on marine monitoring, and discussing all the implications could be a full day’s debate in itself. The last Government’s response pointed to the targets in the EIP and said that monitoring is very complex. Indeed it is. Natural England identified our marine protected areas in just 10 years. That was a splendid achievement, but identifying and designating them is one thing; managing them is another. All of us here can stand on a piece of land and have a fair idea of what it is, its condition and what we think we would like to do to improve it, but we can stand at the edge of the ocean and we have not got a clue what is happening under the surface. If we cannot measure it, we cannot manage it.
All I can say today is that I encourage the Government to step up all marine monitoring efforts, which are essential for biodiversity and carbon capture and form part of our 30 by 30 target. I agree entirely with my noble friend Lord Caithness, the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and my noble friend Lord Banner, on bottom trawling. I have been deeply involved in all this for the last six years and, as your Lordships know, I can bore for England—or Natural England—on it, but let me give some general observations and advice to the Minister, if I may be so impertinent.
Much of the Government’s growth talk has been about building houses, and more houses are urgently needed. I accept that not all so-called green-belt land is sacrosanct and there are poorer bits which can be built on, but genuine high-quality green belt must be protected. Growth and nature are not exclusive; they are complementary. If the Government build houses on grey belt land, they must ensure that there is green space right around them for gardens, space for nature and rewilding, tree-lined streets and not just a token little green park 15 minutes away. I agree with my noble friend Lord Gascoigne, who made that exact same point. Nature recovery is essential in our towns and cities, not just the countryside.
On the countryside, I appeal to the Minister to maintain the £2.4 billion expenditure on ELMS and innovation grants. Farmers are key to nature recovery, as well as producing the food we need.
My main disagreement with my noble friend Lord Banner is that, in my experience farmers excel with carrots rather than sticks. I hope the Government will take on board the points made about tenant farmers by my noble friends Lady Rock and Lady McIntosh of Pickering.
Also, Minister, please get the message across to all those doing big infrastructure projects to consult Defra’s arm’s-length bodies, including Natural England, at a very early stage to look at what protected species might be affected. Workarounds can then be done in the early stages, but if they wait until the bulldozers are about to demolish the bat roosts, the ancient woodlands or the Ramsar sites, then delays will occur—delays caused not by the intransigence of Defra’s arm’s-length bodies but by the law.
Over the last few years, the Forestry Commission, the Environment Agency and Natural England have liaised to increase co-operative working on the ground. That makes sense. If we are to deliver 30 by 30, then we have to work together. If, for example, we look at a river catchment area, the Environment Agency will have a view on river flows and dredging, the Forestry Commission will have a view on what trees should be planted on the banks or nearby and Natural England will have a view on what other flora and fauna, such as beavers or voles, could be present. By co-operating, we get the best possible solutions to reduce flooding, increase woodland and recover nature and wildlife, and that will help deliver 30 by 30. Working together would assist in removing the uncertainty that concerned the noble Earl, Lord Devon. My plea to the Minister is that all the Ministers, in the Commons and here, and the directorates in Defra collaborate in the way that the three ALBs I mentioned are collaborating on the ground at operational level.
As the Government look to create three new national forests and nine new river footpaths, deliver the best possible nature recovery programmes in ELMs and revise their EIP targets, can we ensure, for example, that the forests link in with existing SSSIs, national nature reserves or landscape recovery projects to create wildlife corridors which are more joined up and protected, as my noble friend Lord Gascoigne suggested? Our national forests could also be part of our 30 by 30 targets, as well as the ELM and landscape recovery schemes, provided they meet the criteria. The take-up of schemes for landscape recovery has been incredibly excellent and is beginning to make a real difference for nature recovery: that is farmers volunteering to farm for food and nature. A time may soon come when these could also be included in our 30 by 30 target, provided that they meet the quality thresholds.
Let me conclude on this note: the one area where the Government cannot blame the Tories—
Lord Blencathra (Con)
There is more than one, but one area is our Environment Act, which has given us the tools for nature recovery for the first time in our history. I invite all colleagues to look at Sections 98 to 116, which include “Biodiversity gain”, the “duty to conserve and enhance” nature, “Local nature recovery strategies”, “Species conservation strategies”, “Protected site strategies”, controlling tree felling and “Habitats Regulations”. Add in “Conservation Covenants” in Part 7 and the ELM schemes from the Agriculture Act and we have the greatest raft of measures for nature recovery that this country has ever seen. As nature recovers in those areas, then they can become protected and could qualify for 30 by 30. I suggest to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that these powers are better than the new commission she suggested, but I do wish her a speedy recovery for her trusty right boot, provided it is not used on me.
Indeed, the Labour manifesto, on page 58, calls it “our Environment Ac.t” I did not expect it to say, “Michael Gove’s brilliant Environment Act”, but what I take from that wording is that they will tweak the EIP targets and tweak some other things, but they will not undermine the excellent new levers in our Environment Act. Let us use every lever in that Act, not just to bend the curve on nature loss, but to achieve real, sustained and progressive recovery of nature in this country.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for securing today’s debate and for her excellent chairmanship of the committee, which came out with this excellent report. I thank all members of the Environment and Climate Change Committee for their work. This has been an excellent and important debate. This is an area in which is challenging to move forward, and it is something that we need to get a grip on.
I thank noble Lords who have kindly welcomed me today and over the past few weeks. People have been generous and supportive, and I appreciate it very much. It is genuinely an honour to hold this position, following the example of the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, sitting opposite. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, to his role. As I am going to have to follow him in every single debate, it could be quite fun.
The report represents a wealth of expertise and insights into the state of nature in this country and offers many valuable recommendations on how we can make the changes that we need to rise to what the report calls “an extraordinary challenge”. I assure noble Lords that this Government are committed to charting a new course and ensuring that nature is truly on the road to recovery.
The Secretary of State has confirmed the Government’s intention to launch a rapid review of the Environmental Improvement Plan, to make sure it is fit for purpose so that it will deliver on our ambitious targets, including 30 by 30. We therefore think that this debate and consideration of the recommendations in the committee’s report are very timely. We want to make sure that those recommendations are properly considered as we carry out the work of the review of the EIP. While this work is clearly newly under way—we are a very new Government—I will do my best to address and respond to the points raised during the discussion as best I can.
As we have heard clearly today, our biodiversity is in crisis. Without nature we have no economy, no food, no health and no society. However, we now stand at a moment in time when nature needs us to defend it. Critical to those efforts is what we have been debating today: the 30 by 30 target to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030. As we have heard, it was the UK’s international leadership that helped to secure a global 30 by 30 target at the UN biodiversity summit in December 2022. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, for keeping going on this issue until he achieved it. What is the word I am looking for? Persistence, that is the word. Of course, he was supported in that by the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, and others. Their leadership made an ambitious commitment here in the UK, which we have to deliver on land and at sea.
Targets are meaningless if you do not actually deliver them, so I am pleased that the new Labour Government have renewed that commitment, and we are now focusing on how we can deliver it for the long term. That will be critical to supporting our wider priorities, including cleaner rivers, lakes and seas—the first of two water Bills will be coming shortly—and boosting food security; we have heard about farming. Those priorities also include protecting communities from the dangers of flooding and delivering our legally binding environmental targets.
With just over five years remaining until 2030, we are rapidly approaching the halfway point of this decade, yet unfortunately we are still one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. That is why I am grateful for the contributions today; they are valuable in helping to inform how we move forward.
What is clear is the sheer scale of the extraordinary challenge we are facing. We have not yet seen the urgent step change that the report rightly calls for. Achieving 30 by 30 will require a clear vision and a delivery strategy to drive the urgent progress we need, but one that draws on the work already taking place across government and beyond. The 30 by 30 programme is about bringing these efforts together to ensure that more nature recovery actions have a lasting long-term legacy.
Importantly, it is also about collaboration between and right across sectors. The Government intend to take immediate action to realise the urgent step change needed, and are currently in the process of reviewing our approach. Later this year we hope to confirm the criteria for land that counts towards 30 by 30 in England in order to set a clear and ambitious standard to ensure that only areas that are effectively conserved and managed can contribute towards the commitment. In addition to confirming the criteria, later this year we will begin piloting the process for recognising land that already meets those criteria.
Building on the committee’s recommendations, that will help us to develop a process to identify land beyond protected areas that meets the 30 by 30 criteria and can be formally recognised as other effective area-based conservation measures, as was mentioned in the debate. These areas represent a unique opportunity to take a more inclusive approach and recognise where nature is being effectively protected outside of those designated sites. We desperately need a clear strategy to chart our course to meeting that target, and it is important that we continue to drive that work forward. This includes ensuring that our protected areas are delivering as they should be for nature.
Our national parks and national landscapes and the Broads—collectively, our protected landscapes—are extremely special places. We know that they cover nearly one-quarter of England and contain around half of England’s priority habitats, but we also know that they continue to suffer the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, mentioned Windermere and pollution. This is clearly an area that we have to tackle quickly, which is why we are prioritising our water Bill. We are committed to ensuring that these iconic landscapes become wilder and greener and deliver a significant contribution towards the 30 by 30 target in England.
At sea, the Government have taken significant steps to protect our marine environment. We have 181 marine protected areas, including three highly protected marine areas, and as a priority we need to work out how we are going to properly provide protection for them.
The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and others talked about bottom trawling. I assure noble Lords that we think it is extremely concerning and we understand its negative impacts. Our marine regulators have assessed all fishing activities on the protected species and habitats in our MPAs and identified bottom-towed fishing as a major pressure, so it is very much on our agenda. To support our 30 by 30 target, the Marine Management Organisation has introduced by-laws, which we heard about from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, to restrict the use of bottom-towed gear over sensitive habitats. More recently, in March the MMO introduced a new by-law restricting the use of bottom-towed gear over rock and reef habitats in 13 MPAs. That means that around 60% of our marine protected areas are now protected by by-laws that limit the use of damaging fishing gear used for bottom trawling. We are pushing that further and continuing to work on strengthening protections. Evidence was gathered last year on the impacts of fishing on seabed sediments, and further by-laws are being produced for consultation. So I assure noble Lords that we are taking the issue seriously and moving forward on it.
We are aiming for 48% of marine protected species and habitats to reach a healthy state by 2028, with the remainder in recovering condition. Natural England and the JNCC are developing an MPA monitoring strategy.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I will try to remember where I was and what I was talking about. Oh yes—I was making lots of promises, was I not?
I talked about the fact that we are developing an MPA monitoring strategy in order to address progress on marine areas. We want to deliver this in March 2028, basically to make sure that we are making continuous progress in this area.
I turn to the specific points made in the debate; if I miss any questions, I will of course write to noble Lords afterwards. I just want to confirm that, later this year, we will confirm the criteria for land counting towards 30 by 30 in England; that was raised by a few people.
The requirement for long-term protection is one issue that was raised; clearly, it is really important. We know that committing land to long-term management can be an extremely challenging prospect for landowners, even those who want to deliver and work for nature conservation; we know that this has been hampered by short-term funding cycles and management agreements. What we are actively doing at the moment is considering the committee’s recommendation, as we review our approach to achieving 30 by 30, to ensure that we establish the most appropriate timescales for the long term and support people who want to work to that.
A number of noble Lords asked about SSSIs. In particular, my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone talked about the importance of how they are counted, while the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, talked about the quality of SSSIs being of critical interest and importance. We recognise the committee’s recommendation that, in order to count towards 30 by 30, they have to be in good condition. We are looking at how we can reflect the condition of SSSIs in our approach.
The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked specific questions regarding Natural England’s resources. Some of them were quite complex, so we will write to her with the detail.
The monitoring of protected sites also came up. The noble Lord, Lord Banner, asked about monitoring, as did my noble friend Lord Whitty, who is no longer in his place. The environmental improvement plan was mentioned; I mentioned it previously.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, asked specifically about the six-year cycle for looking at SSSIs. I want to let him know that the Joint Nature Conservation Committee has moved from a six-yearly assessment cycle, so that is not how it is going to continue. Instead, we are moving to a risk-based process for SSSIs, so that we can be much more targeted and efficient in how we assess them. As part of this, Natural England is developing a long-term prioritised monitoring programme and is working to make better use of new technologies such as remote sensing.
Citizen science and partnership working were mentioned. I assure noble Lords that citizen science is already being used to support assessments; for example, we are working with organisations such as the British Trust for Ornithology and the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland in this area.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked about protected landscapes. Again, protecting these important landscapes is obviously incredibly important. The new Government are committed to working on how we can improve our protected landscapes so that they offer more to 30 by 30—basically, achieving their full potential going forward, because we know that, at the moment, they are not.
The noble Baroness, Lady Rock, asked about continuing the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme. I am not fobbing her off in any way at all and will come back to this when we talk about the budget but, at the moment, we are simply still looking at the spending review. I assure noble Lords that we have not made any final decisions about this issue, but clearly will be doing so.
The noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, raised the review of the environmental improvement plan, which I mentioned earlier. I assure him that the review I mentioned will be completed by the end of the year. The idea is to provide a clear vision on how we are going to use it to achieve our environmental goals.
Marine monitoring, including HPMA monitoring, was mentioned by a number of noble Lords. The committee made a recommendation on expanding the current marine monitoring programme, both inshore and offshore. I am sure noble Lords are aware that this is an extremely complex process that requires long-term vision and, of course, investment. We want to work in close collaboration with Natural England, the JNCC and Cefas on what the future of that marine management should look like and the best practice to deliver against the statutory targets that have been set. It is also important that any data they collect complies with accessibility standards and is publicly available.
The noble Earl, Lord Devon, who has kindly given me apologies for having to get his train, asked about marine net gain. For the record, we are currently working to develop options, including timescales for the operation of that policy. It has not disappeared; we will provide more information in due course.
Further on marine, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked about the Blue Belt. I can give him a firm yes; we support the Blue Belt, which is very important.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked who the Minister responsible for international development is. I can confirm that it is Mary Creagh MP.
The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked about overseas territories, including Darwin Plus. The committee rightly recognised that the overseas territories will be integral to the UK’s contribution to the global biodiversity framework goals and targets, and calls for effective partnership working. Clearly it is for the individual territories to decide how they want to work within this and how they want to work with us, but we are working closely with the Governments and Administrations of the overseas territories to develop a new overseas territory biodiversity strategy. I assure noble Lords that we are working hand in hand and looking to move forward in this area.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked about the Global Ocean Treaty. I confirm that we fully agree with her on the importance of the Agreement on Biodiversity beyond Natural Jurisdictions for protecting our marine environment, especially for achieving 30 by 30 for the ocean under the global biodiversity framework. It is important that we show progress on that; we want to make progress and to work with the international community to deliver on these agreements. My understanding is that at the moment the FCDO and Defra teams are working together to come up with a realistic timeline to introduce the necessary legislation for UK ratification.
The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, asked about citizen science and partnership working. These are critical. That is something that we are building through the work we are doing in looking at how to achieve results. The role of partners is going to be incredibly important. This is a huge collaborative effort and we have to work in partnership. The public sector, the conservation sector, farmers, developers and business: we all have to come together if we are genuinely going to achieve these targets.
The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, asked about partnership details for specific organisations. I will just say that we are looking right across the piece to see how we can deliver with partners.
My noble friend Lord Grantchester mentioned the devolved Administrations. This is an important opportunity to work collaboratively with the devolved Administrations as we review and develop our approach here.
The noble Lords, Lord Gascoigne and Lord Harlech, asked about building and the environment. The green belt in particular was mentioned. We are consulting on what we are referring to as the grey belt, which are the areas that are designated as green belt but are not of good standard. Part of the reason for consulting on and talking about the grey belt is to make sure that we protect the green belt that is of value—pulling out the areas that are not, but protecting the areas that are important.
There was a lot of discussion around ELMS. I shall try to cover a few bits but clearly time is ticking on. Just to confirm, we are absolutely committed to ELMS. My honourable friend Daniel Zeichner, the Farming Minister, is working really hard, talking to stakeholders and looking at how we develop ELMS to make it more fit for the future, particularly around such things as nature-friendly farming. Our manifesto said that
“food security is national security”:
we want to work with farmers and other stakeholders, including tenants. We take the needs of tenants and their rights very seriously. There is a lot of good work going on there.
That brings me to the Budget. As I say, we are still in discussions and nothing has been agreed or decided yet on whether there will be any cuts to the farming budget.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned the OECMs. Again, we will be looking at the committee’s recommendations around this to develop a process to identify land outside the designations. In that same vein, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, talked about national nature reserves. I just say that many of these are already in SSSIs, so already contributing.
Finally, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich talked about forest schools. My granddaughter has just finished three years at a forest school. She has thrived and grown and it has been the most wonderful experience for her, so I have huge admiration for the work that they do.
Once again, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for securing today’s debate and her committee for all its work. It is a huge piece of work and can greatly inform the Government as we actively consider the recommendations it sets out. I look forward to working constructively with everybody in this Room as we go forward and will write if I have missed anyone’s question.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
All that remains at the end of this long, thoughtful and valuable debate is, on behalf of us all, to wish the new Minister and her colleagues well in delivering on this important target. The interest this afternoon and early evening shows that there are people around the House who will keep her feet to the fire. I beg to move.