(1 day, 13 hours ago)
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Lord Grayling
That this House takes note of the impact of the Government’s policies on biodiversity and the countryside.
Lord Grayling (Con)
My Lords, when this Government took office 18 months ago, they did so promising environmental recovery, but I have to say that, instead, we have seen a series of steps which, in my view, simultaneously weakened protections, tightened budgets for nature-friendly farming and put development first.
Of course, my colleagues and I want to see growth and an end to our housing shortages, and I accept that we will need to build on open land as well as in our towns and cities, but development has to be managed in a way that manages and maximises the protections for nature, the countryside and, crucially, our food supply.
It cannot make sense to reduce new housing targets in city areas while increasing them in the countryside, to build large-scale solar farms on our most productive agricultural land, and to have so much uncertainty for farmers around just how much support they will get for nature-friendly agriculture or, frankly, question marks about the budgets available.
This matters, because if farmers no longer have financially viable routes to invest in wildlife-friendly habitat—hedgerows, wildflower margins and wetland creations—biodiversity loss will simply accelerate. The uncertainty over the SFI and the grant structure for farmers looking to do the right thing for nature has to stop.
We are clearly where we are on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, but this is by no means the end of the debate. In my view, this House has made some pretty sensible amendments to the legislation. I would love to think that Ministers will accept them, although I fear the Treasury may have a different view on that. The risk is that we end up, still, with a measure that has few friends in the environmental world. I have to say to the Minister that the jury remains firmly out on the planned environmental development plans and, crucially, on the ability of Natural England to deliver the kinds of promises with actions that Ministers are saying will happen.
Beyond the debates on that piece of legislation, we on this side of the House will be watching very carefully what comes in secondary legislation and whether promises made in this House and the other House turn into reality. Then, on the horizon, there are reports of a further Bill that may emerge from the Treasury to try to drive growth; of course, the worry is that that will happen with scant regard for the impact on nature. That must not be allowed to happen.
Beyond this, most immediately in the Minister’s department, I am particularly concerned about the proposed changes to biodiversity net gain. It is certainly the case that some aspects of the way BNG is working make no sense. I had a case close to where I live, where the local tennis club had to get BNG processes to cover the merging of two tennis courts about a metre apart—that makes no sense at all. But the problem is that, if you get rid of BNG for small sites altogether, it removes one of its key benefits. As a Member of Parliament, I too often saw occasions when a developer would take a site, knock down a house, bulldoze everything that was there and kill all the nature before even applying for planning consent, so BNG on small sites does have a role to play, and I think the Office for Environmental Protection is right to have expressed real concerns about what is proposed. I urge the Minister to make sure that the outcome of the consultations on BNG do not remove its key benefits and leave small site developers free to do whatever they want on the sites they plan to develop. Ministers also need to be clear about how they expect BNG to operate alongside environmental development plans and the planned nature restoration fund, because I assure the Minister that it is not clear yet how that is going to work.
Next on her department’s list to bring forward is its land use strategy. In some respects, I have misgivings about how such a strategy is applied. The danger is that it becomes a series of Stalinistic diktats about how a landowner can use his or her land. However, if it provides a broad framework—and I stress “broad”—towards the target of 2030 for biodiversity in the UK and how we accommodate housing and infrastructure needs alongside meeting that target, then it has a role to play. It is about getting that balance right. There need to be clear guidelines for planning authorities and government departments that are taking over some local authority decision-making so that we do not take daft decisions in this country, such as, for example, building on our most important and productive agricultural land. We have to ensure that that does not happen.
I welcome the fact that the Government have taken on board most of the environmental and biodiversity targets set in place by the previous Government. That is good, but there is a big difference between accepting targets and delivering a strategy that will achieve them. So far, the jury is firmly out on whether this Government can deliver for nature and our countryside. While I note that the Minister shares many of our aspirations in this area, what has to happen now is tangible action that takes real steps towards 2030 and towards restoring the loss in biodiversity that we have experienced, turning round the issue of so many endangered species. In the growth agenda, the development agenda and the energy agenda, there has got to be a proper balance between the interests of the economy and taking this country forward and ensuring that we do not do further damage to our natural world at the same time. There has got to be equal priority between the two.
I turn to my other big biodiversity concern in this country. The Minister knows that I have for years been seeking to persuade this Government and their predecessors to speed up the process of banning bottom trawling in marine protected areas around our coasts. It is a practice that is disastrous for our marine biodiversity. Huge industrial trawlers dragging massive nets scour the bottom of the ocean doing untold damage to all kinds of marine life, and they do so over vast areas. These are enormous vessels with enormous nets. The idea that this practice is allowed in marine protected areas makes a complete nonsense of the concept of marine protected areas. If they are protected, we should not be allowing this kind of damaging practice.
I have to say that we can now do things about it. When people ask me about the Brexit benefits to the UK, I put pretty high on my list a practice which would have been impossible to ban under the common fisheries policy. We are now free to do something about it. I was pleased that the previous Government made a start in the Dogger Bank in the face of huge hostility from many EU countries who want to scour it for sand eels to turn into fish food. It is an important area for biodiversity, and this country has done the right thing to provide it with extra protections. Sometimes the environment does have to come first.
I did not think that my party moved fast enough in government on this, and I am increasingly disappointed by the steps taken by this Administration. When last June they announced a consultation on banning bottom trawling in another 41 marine protected areas, I thought that was a good step forward, but for me that positivity was completely reversed by the subsequent policy statement that Ministers do not intend to go further and ban the practice across all MPAs in UK offshore waters, nor, apparently, will the changes to the 41 they are consulting on happen quickly either. The fact is that that decision does not command support in Parliament. It was noticeable that it was criticised by the Environmental Audit Committee, which I was part of in the last Parliament and which is now chaired by the party in power.
There is an argument that says a blanket ban in each MPA does not work, because each MPA is different and has different conservation needs. I understand that there may be variations, and I always argued that some freedom should be left for local fishing fleets still to operate, but we are not talking about local fishing fleets coming out of small ports in the United Kingdom; we are talking about giant industrial trawlers coming from other countries and tearing up the seabed. Surely, the scale of that is so vast that it has to be time for MPAs to do what they are supposed to do and provide blanket protection.
So, I ask the Minister to revisit the MPA policy and consider going much further and much faster to provide those wide-ranging protections in MPAs. Also—and this is clearly not something that lies at her desk— I would be grateful for her reassurance that the Government are not taking their decision to avoid a blanket ban because of the new deal on fisheries with the European Union. It would be a complete travesty to give away something we have gained from Brexit even though it will deliver genuine environmental benefits in our coastal waters.
I am grateful to those who have stayed to participate in this debate late on a Thursday. It is an important area. There are issues for us to address around farming, around biodiversity in the countryside, around water and around issues in our coastal waters. The Minister and I, and a number of people here today, have exchanged views on this before, and we will do so again, because I see it as my job, as somebody who feels passionately about this, to keep asking the Government these questions. I reiterate that we all want to see growth in this country and government policies that deliver prosperity, but it cannot be at the expense of what I thought were very good policies put in place by the last Government, which I hope this one will build on, that look after biodiversity and accept what we have done wrong as a country and that we need to turn the tide back.
I have three specific requests for the Minister today. The first is about progress towards the 30% commitment by 2030. We need credible time-bound proposals, transparent monitoring and adequate funding. We cannot have any more of the classic distraction that Governments of all persuasions come up with: “We will have another consultation”, while the destruction carries on in the meantime. It is now 2025, nearly 2026—four years away from that 2030 target—so it is time to see some real changes that make a real difference.
Secondly, nature recovery must be on an equal footing with housing infrastructure and food production in land-use frameworks. If nature is a secondary concern, biodiversity will be the loser. Budgets for nature must match the Government’s stated intention, and in particular, the support provided to farmers must enable them, landowners and rural communities to deliver for wildlife.
And finally, marine protected areas must be real marine protected areas. Where habitats are fragile and vulnerable, whole-site prohibitions on enormous, destructive fishing gear must be adopted without delay. As a country, we cannot claim leadership on biodiversity if 90% of our marine protected areas are still open to bottom trawling.
I do not doubt the Minister’s personal commitment in this area, but she also knows there are powerful forces in government pulling in different directions. My message to her is: please, fight the good fight. This House will be behind her, and we feel passionately about this agenda. Will she please deliver for us?
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, I declare my environmental interests as listed in the register. I am sure we all know that nature in this country is in serious decline, with species and habitats disappearing and only 33% of SSSIs in favourable condition, and they are the jewels in our nature conservation crown. Our rivers and seas are mostly in poor ecological condition, and we are one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. This is the inheritance of 70 years of undervaluation of nature. Since the Environment Act 2021, successive Governments have had legally binding targets to halt the decline of species abundance in England by 2030. The UK is also committed, under the global biodiversity framework, to manage 30% of the land and sea for nature by 2030. And there are other targets, but the Office for Environmental Protection has assessed that we are largely off-track to achieving these targets.
However, an awful lot is happening, and I am sure my noble friend the Minister will give a full picture of measures being taken by this Government: for example, the increased targeting of agricultural support payments to ensure public goods for public money; increased funding for environmental land management schemes; a commitment and plans to cease bottom trawling in MPAs where appropriate; plans for new national forests; improvements to the biodiversity net gain scheme; huge strides forward in reducing pollution and carbon through clean energy measures; clamping down on river and water body pollution; banning neonicotinoids; and pushing forward local nature recovery strategies. All those things are happening, but the turnaround of decades of harm is going to take longer than 16 months.
However, we have only five years to meet the 2030 targets. That is not going to be easy, since it often involves join-up across government departments for which biodiversity is something that they buy in the supermarket and they think is a washing powder. It is never going to be easy, so it is going to need extra-special effort. I shall focus today on three areas where we all need to put our shoulder to the wheel now to make the progress that we so desperately need. I am pleased to say that I am very much in agreement with many of the things the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, said, because this is not the time for scoring party-political points; this is the time for getting on with the job.
My first point is about the Government reviewing and resetting the environmental improvement plan and resetting their targets. I ask my noble friend the Minister to assure the House that, where we are not on track for targets, the targets will not just be reduced. It is a time for efforts up, not targets down. An example is that the tree-planting targets are insufficient. They are not even being met, but they could be—there is no problem with meeting them if we make sufficient of the right efforts—so to reduce the targets would be a travesty of ambition.
Secondly, if we leave to one side the problem of our seas, much of our terrestrial biodiversity loss comes from the way that land is managed. It is managed for all sorts of purposes—food and farming, climate, flood-risk management, water quality, sustainable soils, human health and well-being, development, growth and jobs. I welcome the recent update that has been circulated from Minister Creagh on the land use framework: a framework to encourage rational decision-making about land at national, regional and local level. I hate to introduce a note of political dissent, but the Conservative Government promised the framework by Christmas 2021, then again for Christmas 2022 and then again for Christmas 2023.
I am aware of a huge amount of progress having been made behind the scenes, but it would be good to get from my noble friend the Minister her best estimate of the publication date and the process of implementing the land use framework, because it is urgent. Already, spatial plans are being developed by regional mayoral authorities, government departments and local authorities on issues such as housing, infrastructure, transport and energy, and individual landowners are making day-to-day decisions and choices that will last for many years.
In the post-war settlement, the Labour Government magnificently addressed capital, labour and land as the three pillars of economic recovery. In my view, it would be a fine thing for a new Labour Government to reset the economic importance of land at this stage, so I hope my noble friend the Minister can assure us that 2026 means January or February, not December.
Thirdly, I was sitting weeping gently as I ate my lunch, watching what was happening in the Commons this afternoon on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, because it has shown how distressingly easy it is to fall into the thinking that we can either have growth or we can have nature. But we are smarter than that: we can do both. There have been polarising statements about newts, bats and lizards. I bet there is not a single Member of this House present today who has actually seen a British lizard. If you have, come and see me later. Ah, the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, claims to have: very good, sir.
However, polarising statements about these species being a block to developments are simply not borne out by the data. For example, over five years, data across more than 50 local authorities under the current district licensing scheme for newts shows that fewer than 1% of planning applications had any newt issues at all, and all those that had newt issues were resolved within 10 days. All the evidence available shows that newts, as in this example, do not slow down or impede development.
This is borne out by information I extracted with difficulty from the Home Builders Federation recently. It put down its perception of the blockages and problems impeding development. It said the biggest barriers to development were viability, affordability, the absence of support for first-time buyers, local planning authority delays, and shortage of construction skills. There was only a small range of biodiversity issues on its list. So can the noble Baroness persuade others in government not to resort to nature bashing and polarising headlines?
I can see my Whip out of the corner of my eye telling me I have gone over time, but I have a commitment to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, who asked me, since he could not be with us today, to talk about his amendment to achieve protection for chalk streams. It was supported on Report and will no doubt figure at ping-pong, but he has asked me to ask the Minister very nicely if she would include it in the Bill. I applaud my noble friend Lady Hayman for her knowledge, willingness to listen and commitment to reaching agreements. It is refreshing to work with her.
Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)
My Lords, I am delighted to join this debate: it is always wonderful to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Young. It is something close to my own research expertise, but, before I join this debate, I must declare my interests as noted in the register, specifically my role as a non-executive director and founder of Natcap Research.
I want to start with the baseline facts. According to Defra in 2024, only around 7% of England’s land meets the protected status we need in order to achieve 30 by 30. As reported by the House of Lords Climate and Environment Committee in 2023, England therefore needs to find an additional 3.4 million hectares of land to meet this target. I want to approach this debate from perhaps a slightly different angle to ask, first, who owns the land on which we are looking for nature to recover? Secondly, how much land are we discussing? Lastly, are the scale and scope of government legislation and incentives sufficient to persuade land managers and other affected parties to make the necessary changes?
In terms of who owns the land, despite rumours that the vast majority is owned by the Crown, the public sector or the Forestry Commission, actually those are tiny percentages. The largest amount of land is individually owned by private landowners and by companies and trusts. That accounts for 70% of England’s land.
What government policies do we currently have to persuade these land managers to do the right thing for nature? First, there are the builders and land managers, who manage for builders and developers. We have heard before that we have biodiversity net gain targets to improve both onsite and offsite biodiversity and increase biodiversity by about 10% in biodiverse habitats. This is very much in line with the 1.5 million houses to be built by 2030. But, even if we include that, and all the debates we have been having, that still accounts for a really small percentage of the land.
Secondly, there are land managers tasked with offsetting their CO2 emissions through tree planting and peatlands. Again, that is a really small amount of land, even if it reached 100%. Thirdly, there are the farmers and land managers, who until recently have been incentivised by ELMS and the like. This represents the largest percentage of land that could be converted or could be surplus to food production.
If you add all this up on the back of an envelope, as I did, if everything is reached by 100%, this comes to around 1.4 million hectares, which means we are still 2 million hectares short. There are many caveats in that. The first is that there is double-counting. Many of these commitments that talk about BNG, ELMS and other things overlap. In addition, particularly with BNG, we are finding that developers are doing onsite enhancement rather than offsetting. So this is a really big undershoot in terms of the amount of land we need.
We have this very large shortfall, so what should we do about it? We now need to move beyond who owns the land, and instead ask: who are the big actors determining how the land is managed in England, and what incentives and structures are there to improve the impact on nature? This is not something we normally consider, but I believe we must, because the top five UK supermarkets’ food-supply chains are linked to between 4 million and 7 million hectares of land in England. Compare that with something we have debated at length in this House—namely, the water utility companies—which account for only 140,000 hectares. What changes are needed, then, to persuade these actors, particularly the large supermarkets? For these large companies, it is not the incentives associated with ELMS, BNG or carbon offsets that are needed. We need instead to demonstrate to them why nature is important to their balance sheets and risk registers, and ultimately boards and shareholders.
This is what some of our supermarkets are now doing. Tesco, Unilever, McCain and Waitrose are already starting to look at the land they manage in England through this lens; for example, adopting regenerative agricultural practices. They are doing so not because they want to be seen to be doing the right thing for nature, but because by adopting these approaches they reduce the risk of soil erosion, improve soil quality and enhance biodiversity and carbon sequestration. At the same time, they are achieving similar, if not higher, yields in their crops. So it is a win-win situation for nature and agriculture.
If regenerative agriculture were to become widespread for all farmland in the UK, we could—and, I believe, would—start to see widespread recovery for nature, and we would get to 30 by 30. But—and there is always a but—to do so we need proper incentives and support for the transition, and for the Government to set the right level of audit to adopt to ensure that there is a level playing field for all people working in this space. Such a framework does exist: it is called the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures—TNFD—which identifies economic risks and opportunities. The International Sustainability Standards Board announced last week that it will begin standard-setting on nature-related risks and opportunities, drawing on the TNFD’s disclosure framework, and highlighted its value. Many countries have made TNFD mandatory, but it is still voluntary in the UK. Perhaps the Minister could address this in her response. Are there plans to mandate this in the UK?
If we really want to see a rapid change in land use—and have any chance of reaching 30 by 30 and reversing species decline—we need to think about not just who owns the land but the people who manage it. How do we give them the incentives and structures required to ensure that the outcome that we all desire is achieved?
Baroness Shephard of Northwold (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Grayling on opening this debate in such a balanced and wide-ranging way. It is also a tremendous pleasure to follow my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown. I was extremely interested in the far-reaching questions that she put to the Minister and to the whole House.
A 2024 Defra report stated that recent years have seen some of the most extreme weather conditions on record, impacting soil health, our countryside, its communities, our landscape, plant and animal health, and, obviously, our food security. There are views in the farming industry that rising temperatures might present opportunities for growing new crops, and for longer growing seasons. The very unpredictability of the changes presents very difficult problems.
This matters because—as mentioned by my friend—70% of UK land is farmed, regardless of ownership. It is obvious, therefore, that the role of the farming industry is vital in restoring nature, cutting greenhouse gases, and managing and protecting our landscapes and countryside, our biodiversity and food security.
None of these things could be done if it were not for the farming industry. Farmers deliver not only our food but our environmental aspirations. They are key—so key that the Labour Party promised in its election manifesto to “champion British farming”. Sadly, this has not proved to be the case. Labour’s first Budget crippled farming and rural investment through its inheritance tax proposals and national insurance rises. Another blow was inflicted by the very sudden closure of the sustainable farming incentive. We are told it is paused, but I think there is no clear future plan as yet. The delinked payment amount is to be reduced by 76%, with no payments above a total of £30,000. What is really important is that there is no transition period. That is so important because, of course, farmers have to plan.
The result of all of this is quite simply that our key farming industry and communities have lost confidence and trust in the Government. That confidence and trust are now at their lowest ever level. The recent announcement in the farming press by Velcourt, the well-known farming management company, of a proposed 20% cut in its operations exemplifies the current lack of confidence in this Government within the industry.
I exempt the Minister from the comments I am about to make, but the widespread view in the farming industry is that the Government do not understand that, in order to protect our food security and environment, farmers need reliable support from government. It needs to be reliable because the industry, by definition, has to plan ahead, often by a year, two years or further still. Farmers should not be penalised by taxation or criticised for possessing the land, the machinery and the investment that they need in order to feed and protect us all.
Things are bad. A recent CLA report highlights the lack of trust in government within rural communities. The CLA president, Victoria Vyvyan, said:
“Labour’s attacks on business are damaging the economy in rural areas. When local businesses fold, they don’t just take jobs with them. They take prosperity, identity and quiet bonds that hold a place together”.
That is true. I say again that 70% of land in the UK is farmed. I believe the Minister knows that, to protect our biodiversity, environment and food security—in short, our future—the nation needs a confident and vibrant farming industry. I hope that she will be able to persuade her government colleagues of that important and overriding fact.
Lord Carrington (CB)
My Lords, I too am very grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I must also say that I am the second barrel to the gun of the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard. As the subject is almost completely dependent on a strong and stable farming industry, I will direct my remarks to the state and prospects of that industry. I declare my farming interests in Buckinghamshire and Lincolnshire, together with membership of the NFU, the CLA and the Central Chilterns Farmer Cluster.
Those who read Farmers Weekly will have seen last week the shocking headline that the McCain Farmdex report had reported that 51% of farmers have considered leaving the industry over the last 12 months, and 61% say that work affects their mental health. Is this a surprise? We have seen seven Secretaries of State at Defra over six years. This gives farmers little confidence in the commitment to or long-term planning for the industry.
We had the Budget bombshell of the inadequately thought through inheritance tax proposal, which will shortly come into force, destroying both confidence and investment in the industry. We had the abrupt ending of the 2024 sustainable farming incentive and the old basic payments scheme. We had a national food strategy published in July that refers heavily to a promised but undelivered land use framework, a 25-year farming road map and a profitability review by the noble Baroness, Lady Batters.
At the same time, in the real world of farming, arable farmers have suffered reduced yields for the 2024 and 2025 harvests, and very low prices because of the strength of sterling and good harvests elsewhere. Potato farmers had a disastrous 2024 crop, as well as poor demand, and they are now sending off quality potatoes for animal feed and anaerobic digesters. The 2025 crop is good, but, due to favourable harvests elsewhere, the market has collapsed. Sugar beet farmers are handing back contracts to British Sugar, as it is often grown at a loss and chemicals to control virus yellows are restricted. Chemicals are similarly restricted with rape, and success or failure is a lottery.
For some livestock farmers, the situation is more stable, but profitability remains a struggle due to the lack of pricing power. Animal diseases such as bluetongue and avian flu are a growing threat. Meanwhile, dairy farmers are struggling to cover the cost of production as the price of milk falls.
The result of all this is that some farmers are selling up, investment has stalled and, as we have heard, contract farmers such as Velcourt are reducing their acreage as they cannot make a decent return on capital employed.
Ultimately, the business of farming is producing food profitably and sustainably for a growing population. Environmental work can be driven only by profitability. It therefore comes as no surprise that farmers and landowners are looking at other uses of their land, such as solar farms, that will provide a secure and decent return. Let us therefore please stop criticising farmers for the loss of good agricultural land in the absence of policies that enable them to farm profitably.
The way forward is for the Government to cease prevaricating and make their decisions on future farm support. When will we see the 2026 SFI and the land use strategy, which has already been mentioned, and when will the farming profitability review be published?
Happily, it is not all doom and gloom on the farming front. The All-Party Group on Science and Technology in Agriculture has released its report, Feeding Britain Sustainably to 2050. The report calls for more locally grown food, lower inputs and emissions and a smaller environmental footprint, and argues that policies to support rather than hinder farmers—like tax hikes—and to relieve pressure on farmland through a land use framework are needed. Current policies undermine productivity and innovation, promoting environmental goals at the expense of food production.
We require co-ordination across government on policies, and there needs to be a complete rethink on support for domestic food production. The report pointed to the strong scientific evidence that indicates that a land-sparing approach, which involves harnessing farming innovations to optimise high-yield production on as small an area of land as possible, would leave core land intact for nature and carbon sequestration. This offers a more efficient and cost-effective basis for farm policy to deliver on food, climate and biodiversity goals. Are the Government considering this approach?
Finally, I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify what is meant by the Government’s frequently quoted phrase,
“food security is national security”.
Does this involve producing more of our own food, or tying into more food imports?
Lord Hart of Tenby (Con)
My Lords, I join in the chorus of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, for bringing this matter before the House. There are never too many occasions to raise this, and the level of expertise, passion and dedication shown should come as no surprise—it certainly comes as no surprise to me, and neither do the two themes that seem to be emerging from this discussion: relationships and respect; that is, the relationship between central government and the people on the ground who have to deliver, or certainly live with, these policies, and respect for those people.
I am just about old enough to remember my family farm in Wiltshire. I was pretty tiny at the time, but I remember that biodiversity—it probably went by another name back in those days—and food production were seen not as an either/or but as an essential combination. They were seen as nothing surprising; it was our obligation, not just our pleasure, to deliver biodiversity in the most interesting and diverse way we could, because doing that ensured that we were able to produce food—in our case, it was a dairy farm—to the highest standards. Buying patterns, food production and the larger political landscape have changed since then, but the fundamentals have not. I remember very clearly that, back in those days, we did all that because we wanted to do it, not because we were obliged, forced or even paid to do it by whoever were the Government of the day.
Noble Lords will have received yesterday an interesting briefing from the RSPB. It was quite solid in parts, as you would expect, but I wanted to highlight two aspects of it that concerned me a bit, because what started as a solid document drifted into the usual sort of lazy stereotyping in part of it. I will highlight two case studies. One, fairly close to my heart these days, is Lake Vyrnwy in north Wales, a substantial 5,000-hectare area of land, owned and managed by the RSPB since 1996. You would think, therefore, that it would be the epitome of biodiversity success. Yet, in that time, the numbers of hen harriers, merlin, black and red grouse, breeding curlews, and peregrine falcons have all fallen. Every single one of those crucial, iconic species has declined in the 30-odd years that one of Britain’s leading conservation and biodiversity charities has been in charge of that site.
Contrast that with case study two: Bolton Castle, in Wensleydale in Yorkshire—a site of special scientific interest, a special protection area and a special site of conservation. In 2024, it boasted 250 pairs of nesting curlew—there are only 450 pairs in the whole of the south of England—and that is not to mention ouzels, dunlins, stonechats and a range of other upland birds that, for many of us, are a very rare sight indeed. My message, which emerges from this, is that that success story is not despite the shooting interests of that estate in Yorkshire or despite the incredible, dedicated work of gamekeepers, land managers and farmers there; it is because of them. That is why it is such a success. We could say it was despite government, if we wanted to be cynical. This is an area commended by the British Trust for Ornithology—BTO—and even by Mary Colwell, the director of Curlew Action, an important charity looking after the interests of one particular species. You could multiply this incredible success story many times across the UK, but particularly across upland areas of the UK.
What does all this mean? It is a message, I hope—to the Government Front Bench, stakeholders and other people with an interest in this agenda—that all these ambitions will succeed only if we show the necessary degree of co-operation and respect to those who will have to deliver them, who want to deliver them and who will have to live with the consequences of government policy around food production, farming and, in particular, conservation.
Certain comments were made by my noble friend Lord Grayling at the beginning about growth. It is perfectly possible to have growth at the same time as an enhanced and improving biodiversity landscape. However, we need to be careful that there are agencies and quangos—and I hate to pick on Natural England, but it is probably the most powerful agency in this particular field—that have the ability to put their foot on the brake of growth, apparently in the interests of conservation. That is not always the case, because biodiversity includes the human population just as much as it does the animal, bird or wider biodiversity ambitions that we have. Without the communities of these fantastic parts of the British Isles, these schemes will find it very difficult to get off the ground.
So my message is: let us not repeat the mistakes of the past; let us involve the people who matter, who know and care; and let us co-operate in a collegiate way and not fall into the trap of some of the divisions that always seem to accompany the decisions of Parliament, particularly with regard to our dealings with rural issues and conservation.
Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, the UK has been described as one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth. My friend Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta wrote his famous The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review in February 2021, which starts:
“We are facing a global crisis. We are totally dependent upon the natural world. It supplies us with every oxygen-laden breath we take and every mouthful of food we eat. But we are currently damaging it so profoundly that many of its natural systems are now on the verge of breakdown”.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, for initiating this debate—he is a fellow alumnus of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge—and for his opening speech.
To go back to Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta—who has just written a book this yearm On Natural Capital: The Value of the World Around Us—he says of nature that
“the demands we make of its goods and services far exceed its ability to meet them on a sustainable basis”;
the difference between the two is a measure of the human ecological overreach. Since 1950, the global economy has grown fifteenfold; absolute poverty has declined from 60% of the world at that time to 10% today, in spite of the world population going up from 2.5 billion to 8.1 billion people on this planet. In many ways, as he says, humanity has never had it so good. But our global success has come with an increasingly impoverished biosphere, including extinction of species. Currently, average extinction rates are 100 to 1,000 times higher than those that the world has seen for several million years.
In endorsing Sir Partha Dasgupta’s new book, David Attenborough, a national treasure, says:
“Partha Dasgupta provides the compass we urgently need… by bringing economics and ecology together, we can help save the natural world at what may be the last minute – and in doing so, save ourselves”.
When it comes to countryside policies, the reality is that urban authorities receive 41% more government-funded spending per capita while rural residents pay 20% more council tax per head. Would the Minister acknowledge this?
Evidence from the Dasgupta review in 2021 highlights the fact that biodiversity underpins rural productivity, food security and long-term economic stability. The United Kingdom Food Security Report 2024 found that biodiversity decline and climate shocks account for around 40% of food price inflation, demonstrating the economic stakes of countryside environmental management.
On taxation, as we have heard—the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, mentioned it—the change in the law whereby the Government have now, with their measures on inheritance tax relief, doubled the tax for family businesses and farmers means that it will be a huge burden on family farm transfers and rural business succession. The countryside and biodiversity policy agendas are increasingly interdependent.
With rural economy productivity, rural areas account for 21% of England’s population but only 15% of economic output. Environmental land management schemes, or ELMS, remain the UK’s primary mechanism for biodiversity recovery, but the SFI closure, funding uncertainty and limited landscape recovery scale threaten progress towards the Environment Act 2021 targets. Would the Minister agree with that, and that a more ambitious, stable and better funded higher-tier LNR programme is essential?
The BNG, which the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, mentioned in his opening speech, is one of the most important policy tools for reversing biodiversity decline, while maintaining development and growth. Yet, without stronger local authority capacity, coherent land use planning and robust enforcement, BNG risks falling short of its ecological potential. Strengthening, monitoring, supporting councils, and integrating BNG with broader ELMS and Landscape Recovery schemes will be essential. Does the Minister agree with that?
When it comes to protected sites in the nature recovery network and essential pillars of biodiversity, weak site condition, limited enforcement, fragmented landscapes and insufficient local delivery capacity threaten progress. We need to strengthen these areas. The UK’s species abundance targets are ambitious, but they are at risk as well. On the critical point of biodiversity recovery, policies exist but delivery remains slow due to funding gaps, workforce shortages and uncertainty around long-term land use planning.
On the issue of soil, I say that I took part in COP 26 in Glasgow as president of the CBI and I spoke at about 40 different events, but not one person mentioned soil. A few years ago, the Indian spiritual leader Sadhguru set off from Parliament Square to raise awareness of soil with the Save Soil campaign, so that 3% to 6% of organic content should be in soil.
I conclude with this: the biodiversity hit to economies is estimated at up to $25 trillion a year, reported in the FT last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change equivalent, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Tackling biodiversity loss, climate change, water scarcity, food insecurity and health risks in isolation is not only compounding those issues but driving spiralling economic costs.
I conclude with this: Sir Partha Dasgupta—who I started with—says in his report:
“We are part of Nature, not separate from it”.
We rely on nature to sustain us, yet we are degrading it faster than it can regenerate. Nature is our most precious asset.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria. I declare my farming and land management interests in Wales, as set out in the register. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Grayling on securing this important debate before the Budget.
I begin with the policy area that should have been the cornerstone of recovery: land management. The Government’s handling of environmental land management schemes—SFI, Countryside Stewardship and Landscape Recovery—has created deep uncertainty among farmers and land managers. Pauses, reviews and shifting signals have left farmers unsure whether they can commit to habitat restoration, soil recovery or long-term stewardship. As we have heard this evening, these schemes cover 70% of England’s land, so, where they falter, our biodiversity targets falter with them.
As we have heard from nearly all noble Lords, that same instability now extends to inheritance tax. Farmers who want to invest in nature recovery are being actively discouraged by the Government’s proposed changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief. The NFU has warned that the reforms could force farmers to sell part of their farms simply to meet their future tax liabilities, and the CLA has cautioned that they risk making some farms “economically unviable” precisely when we need them to deliver environmental benefits.
If a farmer intensively cultivates every inch of land, relief is available, but, if they re-wet peatland, create wetlands, plant woodland or commit to long-term ecological recovery, they may lose it. This is a perverse incentive. It rewards environmental degradation and penalises stewardship. Nature recovery depends on generational continuity and these policies undermine it.
Compounding this is the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which conservation organisations, from the CPRE to the Wildlife Trusts, warn will weaken environmental safeguards to accelerate growth. Biodiversity does not benefit from speed. It benefits from scrutiny, local accountability and protections that prevent short-term economic pressures overriding long-term ecological health. Yet the Bill risks increased habitat loss, reduced oversight and fast-tracked development across landscapes already under strain.
The same problem appears in an area which has not yet been mentioned: the Government’s energy strategy. Ministers insist that accelerated renewables deployment is inherently good for nature, but that is not how it is playing out on the ground. As Professor Dieter Helm has argued forcefully in the Times, the Government’s claim that renewables are “nine times cheaper” than gas relies on ignoring the enormous system costs: new pylons, substations, storage, cabling and “lots of back-up gas” needed to stabilise an intermittent system. We now require 120 gigawatts of installed capacity to meet the same demand once met by 60 gigawatts, meaning more infrastructure, more land take and more environmental pressure. Professor Helm warns that the Government are
“digging an ever-deeper energy policy hole”
and that this dash for infrastructure is not climate leadership but an ecological burden being loaded on to rural Britain.
Climate policy is not automatically nature policy. Net zero will not succeed politically, economically or ecologically if it is pursued at the expense of the landscapes and communities it affects most. The countryside is not merely a backdrop for targets; it is a living system of farms, hedgerows, rivers and habitats already stretched to breaking point. Weakening environmental protections, destabilising nature-friendly farming schemes and penalising ecological land management through the tax system are not the actions of a Government who have grasped the scale of the biodiversity crisis.
Given the deep uncertainty facing farmers who wish to commit to long-term environmental management, can the Minister tell the House when the Government will announce the next round of countryside stewardship agreements and whether farmers can expect continuity of funding in time for the coming planting and restoration seasons?
We cannot rebuild nature on the back of contradictory policy signals or wishful economics. We need coherence, honesty and a willingness to listen to those who live and work on the land.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, for securing this Opposition day debate and for the opportunity it presents to take stock of how government policies are shaping biodiversity and the health of our countryside. It has been an absolute privilege to hear the speeches that we have had this afternoon on this issue.
This debate touches on all our shared national identity and environmental stewardship for future generations. Everyone has spoken with determination and passion on the need to halt the decline and work to preserve our precious heritage, from our ancient woodlands to our unique and fragile chalk streams. We have heard many times about the nature depletion levels in the UK. The abundance of species in England has fallen by 32% since the 1970s, with one in seven species at risk of extinction. I thank the Wildlife and Countryside Link for its briefing and the analysis that it shared with us, which confirms that only 3% of England’s land area can count currently towards the 30 by 30 target. Does the Minister’s own department’s research show a different percentage? If so, what is it? If she does not have it with her, she can write.
We have made some progress on this issue. When it comes to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which is obsessing many of us in this House, the amendment from the excellent lobbyist and right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich on Report drew attention to the unique and irreplaceable value of our chalk streams. Those rare ecosystems, found in only a handful of places worldwide, are one of the jewels in the crown of our natural heritage.
His amendment, which was supported across the House, was a reminder that care for the environment is not peripheral but a duty central to any credible planning policy. We hope that it survives the bumpy ride in the Commons right now and comes back and survives in some way.
I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Parminter, whose persistence and expertise ensured that the Government accepted the inclusion of the mitigation hierarchy written into the Bill. I thank the Minister for including it. That hierarchy—a clear sequence requiring avoidance of harm before mitigation or compensation—is a small but vital safeguard against the steady erosion of biodiversity that has, for far too long, been the by-product of unbalanced development. It means that, when we make decisions about where to build, we do so with nature in mind, not as an afterthought but as a founding principle and starting point.
It will therefore not come as a shock to hear that we believe there are other improvements that can be made to the Bill, even at this late stage, to ensure that biodiversity has the urgency attached to it that is so vital. I particularly support the noble Baronesses, Lady Willis and Lady Young, and the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, as we continue to believe that the Bill could be improved by ensuring that EDPs are not used inappropriately when it comes to harming wildlife. I genuinely know and trust that the Minister will ensure that we continue a dialogue on this between now and ping-pong.
While others elsewhere have been a bit obsessed about spin from No.10 over the past 48 hours, I know that all of us on these Benches do not share the sentiments behind some of the spin that might have come from next door—I do not know—suggesting that newts and bats are standing in the way of bulldozers and building. I certainly know that that is not a sentiment shared by the Minister. Indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, pointed out, all the statistical information suggests that planning and development are not constrained in this way. Again, can the Minister share what her department’s analysis shows? For example, what percentage of developments since—to pluck a month and a year out of the air—July 2024 have been constrained by species?
As the briefing from the RSPB makes clear, progress on biodiversity recovery remains hesitant and fragmented. The Government’s own environmental improvement plan has admirable ambitions, but the gap between aspiration and delivery is the frightening issue from all the briefings that we receive. The Office for Environmental Protection warned in its latest annual progress report that, unless things change materially, key targets such as the 30 by 30 for land and sea will not be met, citing a lack of strategy, guidance and action.
We are told that record sums are being allocated to environmental programmes, but too little of that funding seems to find its way to those on the front line: farmers, local authorities struggling to maintain conservation staff, or community groups restoring habitats destroyed by neglect. Vision is great, but it is quite another thing to sustain structures, commitments and action.
The decline of biodiversity cannot be reversed through these aims alone. The most important thing is coherence between Defra, MHCLG and, above all, the Treasury, with all departments moving in the same direction. Yet time and again we see competing priorities, particularly in planning, undermining this unity.
We should also remember that the biodiversity crisis is not confined to designated habitats. Nature does not recognise the boundary at the edge of a national park. The character of the countryside depends as much on the health of its working land—its farms, rivers and rural communities—as it does on protected zones. That is why we have long argued for integrated, locally driven environmental policy that trusts local partnerships to steward the land they know best.
We should also recognise, as set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, and the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, the central role that farmers play in safeguarding biodiversity across the countryside. Farmers are not only fundamental to our food security but pivotal in shaping the health of our soils, wetlands and wildlife habitats. Government policies must support and reward those farmers who adopt nature-friendly practices, such as maintaining hedgerows, planting wildflower margins, reducing pesticide use and restoring wetlands.
I join with other noble Lords in asking what the update is on the SFI and other subsidies. I am keeping my fingers crossed about the Budget and the threshold with regard to inheritance tax. I know that the Minister will not be able to comment on that, but it is a defining thing and the recommendations from the EFRA Committee in the Commons are extremely helpful in that regard. If at all possible, I would also like any information the Minister may have, given that we are nearly at the end of 2025, on the farming road map.
In that spirit, I hope the Government will take seriously not only the criticism raised in the debate but the spirit of collaboration expressed in it. When this House works together, it is possible that we can deliver 30 by 30, but we will all need to work as a team.
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Grayling for securing this important debate on the impact of this Government’s policies on biodiversity and the countryside. The scorecard is looking pretty grim, as many noble Lords have pointed out in this fascinating debate, and I will address further some of those points.
Before I do so, I refer your Lordships’ House to my registered interests as a quasi-regenerative farmer with Countryside Stewardship, landscape recovery and sustainable farming incentive schemes, as an owner of woodland and developer of new forests under the Woodland Carbon Code, as a peatland restorer under the Peatland Carbon Code and as an investor in natural capital-related businesses.
Most of us in this debate bear the scars of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Creating a new system via the environmental delivery plans to protect and compensate for damage to nature in development simply confuses the issue when we, in government, put in place protections and market structures that ensure that nature overall should benefit from development through our landmark Environment Act 2021.
My noble friend Lord Grayling and others mentioned the biodiversity net gain market, created in the Environment Act and underpinned by the mitigation hierarchy. The BNG industry report from July this year highlights 21,000 acres now dedicated to biodiversity net gain after only 15 months of operation, and forecasts a £3 billion market size by 2035. Should the Government accept our amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, this would allow those BNG markets to continue to develop, with greater experience building among those buying these units as well as selling them, proving that nature does not need to get in the way of growth.
Earlier this year, the Government conducted a consultation on its functioning. Can the Minister tell us when the Government will respond? We would welcome any changes that make the system easier to use for smaller developers and that allow the market to function more effectively for nature and growth. I agree with my noble friends that this need not mean exempting small developments.
What nature needs as much as our rural community is consistency. Habitats need to be left alone in order to thrive; farmers need to be able to plan ahead to make good decisions for their businesses and the right decisions for land use. This Government have halved inheritance tax reliefs under APR and BPR, destabilising that long-term planning. They have smashed delinked payments, brought SFI applications to an end and forced the farming community to wait until a date—which we hope we will hear shortly—in 2026 before any information or payments will be available for new schemes.
While the one-year extension to Countryside Stewardship mid-tier schemes, due to end this year, is most welcome, it was late. The net result is anecdotal evidence that many farmers have ploughed up or cultivated land that had been managed under these environmental schemes, in order to have some confidence that their businesses would survive. Can the Minister confirm that the beneficiaries of this extension will be able to apply for the new SFIs to be launched next year, rather than having to wait another year and potentially being closed out again?
This Government, and indeed previous Governments, are not providing the answers that biodiversity and the countryside need. The Government must incentivise private investment in nature recovery and other natural capital markets. Farms are businesses, not just producing food but sequestering carbon, protecting and enhancing nature and looking after our landscapes.
The Minister accepted the importance of water companies investing in nature-based solutions in the Water (Special Measures) Act, and at Third Reading of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, her colleague made helpful and clear commitments about the role of private land managers in delivering environmental goods in these EDPs. I hope that this is part of a progression towards functioning natural capital markets that will replace the burden on taxpayers with investment by the private sector. That could be the underpinning of a more prosperous future for the countryside, delivering even more biodiversity and nature restoration, which we are debating today. The £3 billion forecast for BNG alone is larger than Defra’s farming budget.
Businesses, as the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, mentioned, are also good citizens that see the value in protecting all our futures. That is why many are already buying voluntary carbon units and investing in carbon insetting in their supply chains to reduce their overall carbon footprints. They are also evaluating what they can do under the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures’ recommendations to improve the natural environment and their reporting. While I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, that it would be welcome to see this become more widely used in the UK, I would also be cautious about the reporting obligations and costs that this might place on smaller and medium-sized businesses.
Can the Minister inform your Lordships what the result has been of the consultation on including woodland carbon units in the UK Emissions Trading Scheme? The consultation closed 15 months ago. This could be a valuable step towards incentivising much more tree planting, a healthier rural economy and greater biodiversity. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, has already mentioned the disappointing performance of tree planting in the UK versus, frankly, unambitious tree-planting targets. Steps such as this could incentivise much larger-scale planting.
My noble friend Lord Grayling made important points about the restrictions we still operate under in our coastal waters. The Government chose, unnecessarily, to allow our European friends to continue to have access to 40% of our fishing rights, when we could have recovered them all in June next year. The one-off coastal recovery fund of £360 million is a pretty disappointing attempt to buy off our coastal communities, when the full value of our fishing rights would have delivered an extra £600 million a year of revenue. In addition to responding to my noble friends’ questions, can the Minister be clear that the Government have the power to revisit the policy on marine protected areas without consulting and deferring to our European friends?
Lastly, I agree with my noble friends Lord Harlech and Lady Shephard and the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, that farmers need to be allowed to make a return on their land and to help prevent food security being undermined by the loss of the best and most versatile land to energy production. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, for tabling today’s debate. It has been a very interesting debate, and I thank everyone for their contributions. I reassure noble Lords that the Government are committed to restoring and protecting nature, but we recognise the challenges that we face. I will talk about the progress that we are making and some of the actions that we are currently taking to deliver change.
In England, we are committed to delivering the Environmental Act targets, which have been mentioned during the debate, to improve species abundance, reduce species extinction risk and restore or create more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat. Alongside this, we are also determined to deliver on our international commitment to protect 30% of the UK’s land and sea by 2030, but, clearly, this is a challenge. The programme is adaptive, so we can update it and make changes as we get more information and evidence on the progress that we are making. We simply cannot be the generation that lets nature slip away. We need to allow our children to inherit a wild and beautiful Britain that is richer in nature than it has been before.
The 2025 spending review announced the largest investment into nature in history, with over £7 billion directed towards nature recovery. This includes £5.9 billion for environmental farming schemes, £816 million for tree planting and £86 million for peatland restoration. These investments are designed to improve water and air quality, and to create spaces where biodiversity can thrive. The environmental improvement plan was mentioned by noble Lords, and I am very much looking forward to its publication. This will be our long-term plan for improving the natural environment and people’s enjoyment of it.
Obviously, farming was mentioned a lot in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Grayling, talked about the importance of nature-friendly farming, for example. Farming is central to our ambitions for nature. The sustainable farming incentive and Countryside Stewardship were mentioned; we are looking to evolve those schemes so that they work for both farmers and nature. The noble Lord, Lord Harlech, and others asked about the next round of Countryside Stewardship. Applications will be by invitation from Natural England and the Forestry Commission. We are currently working with farmers and land managers to develop the application. It will include some farmers and land managers who are in existing agreements, as well as those who will have new agreements.
The noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, was clear about the importance of certainty in farming. Farmers need to know how to plan for the future, and I fully understand that; it is something that I talk about in the department. As noble Lords mentioned, we have announced a one-year extension for more than 5,000 Countryside Stewardship agreements to help farmers deliver vital environmental work, including managing hedgerows. The noble Lord, Lord Roborough, talked about that.
The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, asked about the review being carried out by the noble Baroness, Lady Batters, and when we are likely to see it. The Secretary of State for Defra confirmed this week that it will be published before Christmas, so noble Lords should look out for that.
The landscape recovery programme is one of the most ambitious parts of our farming programme. It aims to deliver large-scale nature restoration. We have two landscape recovery projects—Boothby in Lincolnshire and Upper Duddon in Cumbria—which are restoring habitat and boosting species abundance now.
The noble Lord, Lord Grayling, asked specifically about action on and delivery of habitat targets. We are starting to see encouraging signs of progress in nature recovery. Since January 2023, action has been taken to create or restore more than 38,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat, for example.
My noble friend Lady Young asked about tree planting; it is now at its highest recorded rate in over 20 years and we are delivering our manifesto commitment to create three new national forests. The Western Forest, which we announced in March, is the first new national forest in 30 years. Last week, we also confirmed the second national forest, which will be between Oxford and Cambridge. Early next year, we will launch a competition to decide the location of the third forest. They will see millions of trees planted in the years ahead, as part of our wide commitment to allocate over £1 billion in this Parliament to tree planting and to support the forestry sector.
We are also taking action to protect and restore peatland. We have invested £85 million in peatland restoration and lowland peat management, which will take us through to 2030.
We are also supporting the recovery of threatened and declining species. The noble Lord, Lord Hart of Tenby, talked about declining species such as the curlew. We recognise the importance of stopping those species further declining and we need to look at how best to restore them. We have a species recovery programme, which works in partnership with organisations across the country, as it is absolutely right to respect those who are already working to re-establish species to support that recovery.
We think that such partnership working is essential. We need to work with farmers, as the noble Lord, Roborough, said; the private sector, which is a really important investor; civil society; and landowners. We have established the National Estate for Nature—the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, might be interested in this—which is a group of major public, private and third sector landowners which collectively manage around 10% of England’s land.
The local nature recovery strategies are also supporting local partnerships to identify the priority places for nature recovery. Last November, the first ever local nature recovery strategy was published. We now have 16 more, and the remaining 31 are expected soon, over the coming months. The idea is that they will cover the whole of England.
A number of noble Lords talked about the land use framework. The noble Lord, Lord Grayling, talked about the competing pressures on land use, and that is what it is designed to do: to deliver for nature recovery alongside housing, infrastructure and food security. All these have been discussed in the debate, and we recognise that England’s land is limited and the demands on it are growing. My noble friend Lady Young and others have asked about the timing on the land use framework for England. We are currently looking at the consultation that ran earlier this year and are working across government to see how best we can use the responses from that to develop the appropriate proposals through it. I cannot give an exact date, but we are actively working on it at the moment.
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill was obviously mentioned by quite a few noble Lords, and there has been a lot of interest in it. I think it is important to remind noble Lords that we did table a number of amendments in your Lordships’ House to better protect nature and the environment and for it to work better with development. As the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, asked, we are still actively in discussions around further concerns that noble Lords have on that. I also agree with my noble friend Lady Young that development and the environment do not have to be in conflict, and I am certainly not a fan of nature bashing.
I remind noble Lords that we also have a clear role for green finance, which is why we are working to strengthen private finance for nature recovery. We have a natural environment investment readiness fund that actively works in that space.
I have a few minutes to go through some of the specific questions. The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, asked some pretty detailed questions—which are important questions to ask—around how land is managed, who owns it, and incentives and support for recovery. I would suggest that these matters really need to be dug into more deeply. I would be very happy to sit down and go through them with her, because she is far more experienced on this—and my maths is dreadful. It would be really good to have a bit of time with her if she is happy to do that.
The noble Lord, Lord Grayling, asked about biodiversity net gain. We recognise that BNG is working as is intended but also recognise that its implementation can be challenging for SMEs. We have had a consultation to explore options for improving BNG for minor, medium and brownfield development, which is also an important part of this. The feedback we have gathered is that we want to balance environmental outcomes with their actual deliverability, and officials are looking at that at the moment.
Bottom trawling—a really important subject, also raised by the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, and mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harlech—is clearly a damaging activity. I do not think there is any doubt about that. Anyone who saw David Attenborough’s programme will be very clear about what the damage is. Our approach is to restrict fishing which is assessed as damaging to the specific protected features in each marine protected area, based on advice from the statutory nature conservation bodies. I am sure the noble Lord is aware that a consultation on the latest round of proposed fisheries by-laws, which proposes further restrictions on bottom trawling, closed at the end of September. The Marine Management Organisation—MMO—is now carefully looking at all the responses that were received. It may be that we need to pick this up together, because I know of the noble Lord’s specific interest in this area.
The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, asked about our little slogan, “food security is national security”. My understanding is that this is about our ability to feed our population and that is a fundamental pillar of our stability, safety and security. Food production and its supply chains should be considered part of our critical infrastructure. That is my understanding.
The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, talked about a number of things, but I want to comment on the important things he said about rural communities and the economy and the fact that there are challenges in the rural community around that. We are committed to improving the quality of life for people living and working in rural areas, because thriving rural communities and a prosperous rural economy make such a difference to the overall economy of the country. We need to underpin that through improvements in rural connectivity. I am not just talking about digital; I am also talking about transport, which is often a big issue. We need to ensure that affordable housing is available, that the energy supply is secure and affordable and that community services are available to rural communities. A Defra-led rural task force was set up earlier this year to gather evidence on those potential opportunities and challenges in rural areas, in order to look at how we can deliver growth and support sustainable rural communities. The noble Lord may be interested to look at that task force.
The noble Lord, Lord Harlech, talked about our energy policy. I am sure he is aware that planning for renewable energy projects, as for any project, requires extensive up-front surveying. There are important checks and balances that need to take place, because decision-makers need to ensure that statutory environmental and habitats assessments are conducted as part of the planning determination. Those assessments consider the likely impact on the environment and protected species and habitats. If significant adverse impacts are likely, developers have to put in place measures to avoid, preferably, or reduce, mitigate or compensate for those impacts. I hope that is helpful.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, asked some specific questions. She asked whether we agree with the CLA’s assessment that 3% of England’s land counts towards 30 by 30. The answer is no. The government analysis is higher. We have identified 7.1% of England’s land that already meets the 30 by 30 criteria and counts towards the target, but on the other specifics I will write to her.
I hope I have covered most of the questions that have been asked. If I have not, I will check. I thank noble Lords once again. It is important that we consider these debates in the round and I think we have done so today.
Lord Grayling (Con)
My Lords, this has been a very good debate and I say again that I am grateful to noble Lords who have remained here late on a Thursday because we all view this as such an important issue. There are not many issues that can command near-unanimity across a Chamber of Parliament. This is clearly one of them. I know that that unanimity in reality that extends to the Minister, although I have to say I share the concerns voiced on this side about the way the Government more broadly have treated the farming community. That really has to change.
I have two final points. I add my support to what the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, said about regenerative farming. If we are going to achieve the 2030 target, regenerative farming has got to be at the heart of that and what the Government do has to support it. The other point is that we all know that government moves slowly, regardless of who is in power, but 2030 is pretty close. Frankly, the need now is for the Minister and her colleagues to put rocket boosters behind the government machine, whether it is civil servants, the MMO or Natural England, because this all has to happen very quickly indeed. There is clear unanimity in Parliament that we want this to happen and we want it to work, but now the task is delivering it and that is what falls on her desk. So I am grateful to her for listening to all the points this afternoon, but my message is, “Please can we get on with it?”