(1 day, 19 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Krebs
To ask His Majesty’s Government how the Environmental Improvement Plan 2025 will deliver the targets of the Environment Act 2021.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, the environmental improvement plan sets out how the Government will meet the legally binding targets in Sections 1 to 3 of the Environment Act 2021. These targets cover air quality, biodiversity, water quality, resource efficiency and waste, woodland and trees, and marine protected areas. I will not attempt to cover all these areas in my eight minutes, and equally I will not rehearse the debate we had on Tuesday concerning nitrogen pollution, which was highly relevant.
The urgent need for an improved EIP was highlighted last year by the Office for Environmental Protection in its January 2025 progress report. Only nine of 43 targets for the environment were on track, and 20 were largely off track, including targets that covered most of the areas in the EIP. The report said that the new environmental improvement plan
“must show real intent, and focus. It needs to front load efforts to catch up and to set out clearly to all, what has to be done, by whom and by when”.
The report of the OEP covered the year up to March 2024 and therefore reflected the actions of the previous Government. Today’s Question is about whether the current Government’s plans and the new EIP will improve prospects for our environment.
The new environmental improvement plan is distinctly better than its predecessor. It sets out the specific actions that will contribute to achieving the targets and who is responsible. I very much welcome this and congratulate the Government on their intent. However, the contribution of individual actions towards the delivery of targets is not quantified, and I will return to this point later.
In the end, it is not just the targets and the processes but the actual outcomes for the environment that will be the measure of success or failure. Take, for example, sites of special scientific interest. The 4,100 SSSIs in England, covering 4,200 square miles, are among our most precious habitats. They are supposed to enjoy special protection. However, the OEP’s report of 4 December last year concludes that only a third of them are in favourable condition and that many SSSIs have not been monitored for years. This is not new news; it was highlighted more than 30 years ago by Peter Marren, and the data for the past decade suggest that there has been no substantial change—and if anything a steady decrease—in the proportion of SSSIs in favourable condition.
Does the new EIP say anything to convince us that the next decade will be different? Far from pressing its foot down on the accelerator to restore SSSIs, the new EIP delays progress. The commitment in the 2023 environmental improvement plan to have 50% of SSSIs with actions on track to achieve favourable condition by 2028 has been delayed to 2030. The target for all SSSIs to have an up-to-date condition assessment by 2028 has been deferred until 2032. I assume that these delays reflect the reality of what is achievable. Even if we accept this point that there will be delays, I would like to know what is going to change that will deliver the required improvements, given that no improvement has been achieved in the past.
The delivery plan for protected sites was published last month. It includes 10 delivery measures and a monitoring plan. I assume that there must be something in the plan that has convinced Ministers that it will work when previous plans have failed. Can the Minister tell us specifically what aspects of the new plan give her confidence that it will deliver improvements in the condition of SSSIs? For example, does the delivery plan address the four key concerns highlighted by the OEP’s recent report? How many SSSIs are on agricultural land covered by agri-environment contracts, and how many more would be needed by 2030 for the plan to be on track? About half of SSSIs are within national landscapes. Can the Minister confirm that the Government will maintain the biodiversity duty for national landscapes, bearing in mind the recommendations of the Fingleton review?
I now turn to the question of who will deliver the outcomes. Although the EIP sets out clear plans and processes, the actual delivery of the outcomes will often depend on bodies outside government. I am pleased, therefore, that the new EIP recognises that the Government cannot achieve their targets without the actions of others. As the Minister will recall, my Private Member’s Bill was designed to formalise this by placing a statutory duty on public authorities, including landowners and regulators, to contribute to the Environment Act’s targets. Because public authorities such as local councils have many competing demands on their resources, without a statutory duty, this matter will inevitably move to the back of the queue. Would the Minister therefore consider adopting my Private Member’s Bill in support of the delivery of the new EIP? If not, how will public authorities that play a key role be persuaded to prioritise this objective?
I return to the contribution of different actions to delivering the targets. One of the key targets of the Environment Act is halting the decline of species by 2030. This is part of goal 1 in the EIP: restoring nature. That goal is supported by 33 actions, four of which contain the word “deliver”; some of the others include softer actions such as “publish”, “introduce”, “build” and “review”. I would welcome clarification from the Minister on which actions in the EIP will make the largest contribution to halting the decline of biodiversity in the next four years. This is especially relevant given that the latest official biodiversity statistics for England show that many indicators are moving in the wrong direction.
My final point concerns cross-government co-ordination. The new EIP recognises that the delivery of the targets will require concerted action across government departments. This co-ordination will be achieved through a new EIP delivery board. Some activity is already under way. For example, ARIA—the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, which is a non-departmental public body of DSIT—recently launched a research programme called Engineering Ecosystem Resilience, which includes the option of gene-editing ecosystems. What role does Defra assume gene editing in ecosystems will have in restoring nature?
I look forward to the contributions of other noble Lords—we have a small but select band with us this afternoon—and to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, both for giving us this opportunity to talk about a very important issue and for his excellent introduction. I, too, welcome the EIP, in particular the concept of delivery plans. However, some of the delivery plans are delivering more than others.
I turn to a subject close to my heart for an example. There is no specificity—it is good to be able to say that on a Thursday afternoon—on the timing of the ban on peat in horticultural products. I remember that, when I joined the RSPB as chief executive back in 1990—35 years ago, in case your maths is not very good—we were campaigning for a ban on peat products. I used to go to the local garden centre and insist that its staff took all the peat-free or reduced-peat products out from the back of their compost displays and put them at the front. I did that for nine months until I was banned from that garden centre. I subsequently went around all the garden centres in Bedfordshire and was systematically banned from one after the other. We have waited for this for quite a long time—and that is just one example. We do not really have any clear targets as yet; across the piece, we need to go through this EIP systematically and see what more needs to be done to get targeting into it.
The second point I want to make is that some of the targets, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has said, are pretty immediate: the biodiversity ones, particularly on species abundance by 2030, and the 30 by 30 targets. The whole issue of ending nature declines by 2030 was always very ambitious. I am a great believer in ambitious targets, but we have not yet had confirmation of whether the delivery plans will actually deliver the target. It is work in progress and there is not long to go, so I hope that work can be expedited. Across the whole enterprise, there needs to be renewed pace and vigour.
The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, also talked about cross-government commitment and this is incredibly important. Defra obviously has to be the cheerleader and the thinker in this, but it needs help right across government to be able to deliver. For example, SSSI condition can be delivered only by a huge variety of different landowners and land managers, yet we still have—I have spoken about this before—an outbreak of newt bashing in certain parts of government. We really have to get away from the nature versus growth dichotomy, which is unreal, and towards a system where we are talking about the real benefits to growth that nature recovery can produce.
Important in that whole process of getting cross-government commitment, apart from moving hearts and minds, will be implementing the legal duty on all Ministers to pay due regard to the environmental principles when proposing or revising policy. What is the implementation plan for making sure that the environmental principles are actively used across government departments? What training is there for civil servants, and indeed perhaps even for Ministers, in thinking about the environmental principles in their daily work, and what monitoring of their implementation will take place? I would say this, of course—I am on record as having said it before—but the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was absolutely splendid and should be adopted by the Government.
The fourth point I want to make is about land. Noble Lords cannot really expect me to talk on this issue without talking about the land use framework and the farming road map. It is slightly unnerving that, to my understanding, the farming road map will not actually have a map in it. It seems a bit strange that everybody else in various government departments is busy drawing up spatial plans and strategies but the farming road map will not necessarily have a map.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
I am glad to have identified something that the Minister will have to find out about. The whole business of the contribution of agri-environment schemes and the farming road map to the EIP is huge. Nature-friendly farming is fundamental: it will be key, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, to delivering goal 1, the restoration of nature, as will a proper land use framework. Goal 3, clean, resilient and plentiful water and nature-based solutions to those, will be fundamental. I know that water is a very important government priority: we really have to get the EIP to focus on that and get the land use framework and nature-friendly farming solutions implemented.
The land use framework should help the Government in their prioritisation of their own spend on biodiversity. I know that the latest timetable is for March, which is terribly close to local government and Scottish and Welsh elections. We can anticipate that there might be a little turbulence after those. I would hate there to be another Minister who wants to pore over the land use framework all over again when, in fact, in many government departments, spatial strategies are progressing apace.
I was going to talk about trees, but I am getting a bit close to the end, so I shall finish with farming and the farming road map. We really have to set out how the three environmental land management schemes we have currently will balance. How much will we see invested in each of them? What contribution will each make? We need to give surety to people who are going to put their heads above the parapet and take up these schemes that they will be there for the future—that they will be maintained and developed, and have predictable application windows—so that we can get landowners of all sorts, large and small, investing in these very sensible schemes, with the surety that they will not find them disappearing from under their feet. My last words, before I get cut off in my prime, are, in summary, to commend energy and pace to the Minister, because that is absolutely what we need in this important area.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. Although the Environmental Improvement Plan 2025 applies only to England, as we all know, nature does not understand county, country or political lines. I therefore declare my farming and land management interests in Wales.
I welcome the plan’s ambition and the Government’s stated commitment to delivering the statutory targets of the Environment Act. The direction of travel is right, but ambition alone will not restore nature unless it is matched by delivery, accountability and, above all, coherence across government. I will focus on three issues: delivery on the ground, policy contradiction and accountability when targets are missed.
First, the plan rightly acknowledges that land managers are central to nature recovery, but acknowledgment is not the same as empowerment. Many actions in the plan remain expressed in aspirational terms, dependent on future consultations or lacking long-term funding certainty. If we want farmers and landowners to commit to landscape-scale change, they need stability, trust and confidence that policies will endure beyond a spending round or a change of emphasis.
The second and more serious point is policy contradiction. The plan speaks of restoring habitats, reconnecting landscapes and reversing species decline, yet at the same time other government policies are pulling hard in the opposite direction. Nowhere is that clearer than in land use. We are allowing large-scale solar developments on grade 1 agricultural land, the most productive biologically rich soils we have. These are landscapes that support food production, soil biodiversity, farmland birds and ecological connectivity. Converting them to industrial land uses may serve a narrow interpretation of net zero, but it often does so at the direct expense of nature recovery and food security. Some net-zero policies are therefore not merely neutral to biodiversity; they are actively harmful.
This is not an argument against renewable energy. It is an argument against poor siting and the absence of a coherent land use framework. Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, I sat on the Land Use in England Committee, which in 2022 reported that a framework was essential. As a Defra Minister, I listened to repeated calls from all parties—including from the Minister, then in opposition—for a land use framework. The Government’s consultation closed in April 2025, so I join in asking when we will see some progress there.
I am afraid that government policy contradiction is not confined to energy. Housing and infrastructure policy continues to fragment land at large scale while biodiversity requirements are weakened or made more flexible in the name of growth, all in contrast with goal 1 of the plan. Conservation organisations, including wildlife trusts, have warned that nature is increasingly being treated as an obstacle to development, and even scapegoated, rather than as the foundation for long-term resilience and prosperity. That rhetoric is deeply damaging and entirely at odds with the plan’s stated objectives. Once a habitat, a hedgerow or an ancient woodland is gone, it is gone for ever, and no amount of biodiversity net gain or carbon credits will bring it back. Brownfield sites must be prioritised for housing development and greenfield sites used only as a last resort, not an easy land grab by DESNZ or MHCLG.
There is also a tendency to rely on designation and access as proxies for recovery. Drawing lines on maps or increasing public access—this is where I may lose the Committee—does not restore ecosystems. Many species require quiet, undisturbed space. Wild animals do not thrive under human pressure. If we conflate access with recovery, we risk creating landscapes that are busy, accessible and even more biologically impoverished.
The Environment Act targets are legally binding, but what happens if they are missed? At present the consequences are largely procedural: reporting, explanation and future adjustment. The OEP can scrutinise but it cannot compel corrective action or force alignment across government departments. That is a central weakness of the current framework.
My questions to the Minister are as follows. When Environment Act targets are missed, what concrete, enforceable action will follow? How will the Government ensure that net-zero, planning, housing and energy policies, including solar development on grade 1 farmland, are brought into alignment rather than continuing to undermine nature recovery?
The environmental improvement plan does not lack vision. What it risks lacking is honesty about trade-offs, courage in land use decisions and mechanisms to resolve contradictions at the heart of government policy.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Harlech. I do not have any farming interests to declare, but I have two allotments that take a lot of time and energy.
It might not seem like it, but I want this Government to succeed, particularly in their environmental aims. The problem I have is that again and again we see that this Government do not understand the countryside, rural areas, farming, green space, newts, frogs, beavers or anything that actually contributes to the environment. That is going to be a huge barrier to this Government achieving what they say they want to achieve.
What are the headline changes in the plan that will reverse the decline in species? I cannot see a wholesale shift in our farming practices or a clamp-down on people shooting birds of prey—no names here. Of course, there is more money to improve peat-lands, but where is the peat ban that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has been seeking for 35 years? I like the promise to grow more trees, but what about stopping cutting down ancient woodland? You cannot grow new trees into ancient woods. Once they have gone, they have gone.
I want to talk about some of the targets, because some of them are clearly failing. Target 1 is on thriving plants and wildlife. The Planning and Infrastructure Act has wrecked any chance of meeting that target. Labour’s manifesto pledge of 30% of land and sea protected, connected and managed for nature recovery by 2030 is now an unreachable promise. The targets for marine protected areas, which I will mention again, are delayed by another couple of years, and there is no wholesale site protection for marine areas, just the safeguarding of a few high-profile species. The Government do not even try to pretend they care about reaching good environmental status for our seas and ocean and have not bothered to set a target. I wish the Office for Environmental Protection good luck in its investigation of the Government, because I think they will probably fail. There is a target to restore salt marsh, sea-grass and oyster reefs, but a 15% increase by 2043 is ridiculously modest, given that we have lost 85% to 95% of these habitats historically.
Target 3 is on clean and plentiful water. That is a sore point for many of us here. Labour inherited a mess, and its refusal to take water into public hands has just deepened the mess it is in, especially as it goes into the next election. People will remember, and they are not happy. I will remind them, obviously.
The Minister has pledged to halve sewage dumping by 2030. So in another four years, I can stand here and thank Labour for there being only 2.5 million hours of sewage being pumped into UK waters in 2030. Bathers on beaches will have another five years before they can go swimming without drowning in human excrement. Meanwhile, it is the water bill payers who are funding all the work and shareholders who still make a profit.
Target 5 is on maximising resources and minimising waste. The aim of creating a circular economy based on reuse, recycling and repair is a worthy goal. But instead, we have a country full of oil-burning chimneys. The number of incinerators has gone up, and the material we should be recycling has been shoved into furnaces. Plastic production has increased along with oil company profits, and we have taken the easy option of burning plastic instead of recycling it or, even better, not producing it in the first place. Some councils have got locked into 25-year contracts with various incinerator companies, and that means that sometimes they take the refuse out of recycling and throw it into incinerators.
Target 7 is on minimising and adapting to climate change. The whole world is switching to renewable energy, but where is the big investment here in the UK in energy storage schemes? Producing the batteries and local energy storage schemes is where the innovation is. Instead of that, the Government have put £22 billion into carbon capture and storage. The biggest system of carbon capture and storage on the planet is the ocean, and the Government have not taken that seriously.
I will get back to my speech now. There is no guarantee with carbon capture and storage that the money—taxpayers’ money—will not go to oil and gas companies that have already spent decades profiting from pollution. The Government are also supporting airport expansions and adding millions of extra flights every year. That is not minimising climate change.
Target 8 concerns reducing the risk of harm from environmental hazards. It took more than seven months for the authorities to deal with a mountain of fly-tipping near the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire—a pile of rubbish 20 feet high and as long as the Lords half of the Palace of Westminster. That is broken Britain. Also, why have the Government not adopted Zane’s law to deal with hazardous waste? When seven year-old Zane died and his father fell ill, the Environment Agency had already commissioned a study showing that the ex-landfill site near his home posed a high risk to life. Yet it did nothing to warn residents before, during or after the 2014 flooding. Further, to this day, it has adamantly refused to test the land, which has flooded again this year, fully. We need a law to ensure that the Environment Agency protects people and wildlife rather than profits and secrets.
Finally, I wanted to read out the Marine Conservation Society’s ideas on how to protect our waters, rivers and seas, but I have run out of time. I shall instead give the document to the Minister and encourage her to read it because it is full of ideas, such as setting up a marine litter strategy for England to clean up the debris that we have on our shores.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on securing this timely debate. I welcome the revised EIP published by the Government. I declare my interests as a co-chair of the Water All-Party Parliamentary Group and a vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities.
I am sure that the Minister will accept, in the spirit in which it is intended, that there is a growing list of unfinished business from the department, such as—this has already been referred to—the land use framework, for which we have been waiting for some time, and the water White Paper, which we were promised before the end of last year. Questions arise from the EIP. What will the relationship between the environmental improvement plan and the land use framework be? At what stage will that be set out? There is still a lot of detail left unclear in the EIP. For example, how will it be funded? Can the Minister elaborate on the success that the Government have established with private partners, farmers and others to progress the targets that they have set out in the land use framework?
More generally, having grown up in the countryside and having represented deeply rural areas in both the European Parliament and the other place, I yield to no one in my admiration of the work that farmers do in nurturing nature. How will the EIP as revised help promote domestic food production, boost self-sufficiency in food and increase food security? Farmers have faced three major shocks in recent years: Brexit, Covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I recognise that farmers have a role to play in nature recovery but they have also been battling the elements. As my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, set out, we have seen major flooding of farmland in recent years. Last year, we had a major wildfire on the North Yorkshire moors—it lasted for a long time—and faced severe water shortages that also affected farming. Clarity and certainty need urgently to be set out in the sustainable farming incentive to enable farmers to have the tools they need to grow our food and boost domestic farm production.
I welcome the focus in the EIP on nature-based solutions to water management. I pay tribute to the work performed by Pickering’s Slow the Flow scheme in saving the town of Pickering from a major flood. Its strength has been tested since its inception; I hope the Government will look to other such schemes to be rolled out in due course.
I make a plea—I know the Minister would be disappointed if I did not—and once again press her on the implementation of Schedule 3 to implement SUDS as a mandatory scheme for all major new housing developments, as set out in the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. That one instrument alone will protect many future and existing housing developments from future floods. Is the Minister able to set out today a firm date for the water White Paper to be published and an idea of the timetable for the legislation that will follow that White Paper and the excellent Cunliffe report?
I turn to species recovery and review of species. I am grateful for a briefing from Chester Zoo, which I understand is at the forefront of global conservation. It highlighted a number of threatened species on the priority list in England alone, of which 940 are in need of urgent recovery work. It is working specifically on the disappearance, surprisingly, of the harvest mouse, which it reintroduced successfully in Cheshire; the yellow sally stone-fly, a rare insect; the cotoneaster cambricus, a rare tree; and the large heath butterfly. I pay tribute to its excellent global work with its partners, and I hope the Government will be able to say today what plans the department has to work in this area of global conservation to reintroduce these species.
I am mindful of our work on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in the other place, looking at the numbers of species in this country that were at one time under threat, such as badgers, after the dreadful episode of badger baiting, outlawed in 1968. To what extent does the Minister’s department keep under review species such as badgers, bats and newts, which might not be as rare as we think and could be holding up development where it is needed? That goes to the heart of the Government’s growth programme.
Finally, I invite the Minister to complete the unfinished business I have set out, to work closely with farmers and others developing nature recovery to the best of their ability, and to give farmers and landowners the tools they need to increase food production, increase food security and boost self-sufficiency for food in this country.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and all other noble Lords for this timely debate on precisely how the Environmental Improvement Plan 2025 intends to deliver the legally binding targets set out in the Environment Act 2021. Given the alarming trajectory of nature decline in this country, such scrutiny is critical. In the Liberal Democrats, we acknowledge that the revised EIP offers structural improvements compared to its predecessor, showing clearer responsibility for some actions and providing delivery plans. Yet, as we have heard from so many other speakers, if we are honest about the scale of the climate and nature crisis, the EIP 25 remains profoundly underwhelming and fundamentally lacking the necessary ambition, pace and long-term funding certainty required to haul the Government back on track to meet their 2030 legal obligations.
As we have heard, the Office for Environmental Protection has repeatedly cautioned that the Government are largely off track to achieve their environmental commitments, stressing that
“the window of opportunity is closing fast”.
This plan, presented late last year, should have been a transformative response to that warning. Instead, in too many critical areas, we see weakness, delay and backsliding on previous commitments, when what is needed is urgent delivery and real-world change.
Nowhere is this inertia more evident than in the marine environment and I thank the Marine Conservation Society for its briefing, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. The plan risks entrenching managed decline, instead of enabling genuine recovery. The commitment to achieve good environmental status for our seas, originally targeted for 2020 under the marine strategy framework, has seen its date pushed back and effectively faded from view. This is despite the UK previously meeting only a fraction of the indicators for healthy seas. Targets for marine protected areas are now effectively folded into a broader 30% by 2030 headline, while the conspicuous absence of the promised marine net gain framework means we have removed a vital mechanism to catalyse and encourage private investment into marine restoration and recovery.
I turn to land. The core statutory target to halt the decline of species abundance by 2030 is, as other speakers have mentioned, under immense pressure. While we welcome the target to restore or create 250,000 hectares of habitat outside protected sites by 2030, rising to 500,000 hectares by 2042, this cumulative target does not account for nature lost or degraded in the meantime. To deliver the scale of habitat creation needed, we must empower and properly fund our farmers, who are the true stewards of our land and are already grappling with climate impacts and volatile markets. Can the Minister say, in modelling for the farmland wildlife delivery plan, what assumptions are made of the proportion of ELM funds dedicated to Countryside Stewardship and landscape recovery?
The Government’s current approach to funding leaves too many farmers unsure whether they can commit to long-term schemes. We note the headline announcement of £500 million for landscape recovery projects over the coming decades, but this averages a relatively modest annual sum set against the scale of change being asked of land managers. There is genuine concern that without a clearer vision and greater certainty, this will not be enough to shift the dial for the many farmers being asked to do more.
That is why we made the case in our own manifesto for an extra £1 billion a year for the farming budget, focused on nature-friendly farming schemes that support both sustainable food security and nature recovery, particularly for smaller family farms and tenanted holdings. Fundamental reforms are needed, including establishing upland reward schemes to remunerate those who cultivate some of our toughest landscapes—that point will be no stranger to the Minister, given where she lives—for their public good outputs, from carbon and biodiversity to flood mitigation and access.
The revised EIP claims to be a flagship delivery plan, yet it often defers definitive actions through consultations and sometimes vague commitments. We must move beyond this cycle of promised and not delivered, particularly when communities are already living with polluted rivers, depleted soils and declining local wildlife. That is why we call for decisive action: urgent implementation of a truly comprehensive national food strategy; the creation of a new, strengthened water regulator to enforce the clean-up of our waterways; and a renewed commitment to fund and quantify the actions needed now to meet the 2030 deadlines. As others have mentioned, we were promised a White Paper by Ministers on water by the end of last year—with a clear understanding of the urgency, for instance, about chalk streams—when we discussed this on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Where is that urgency now? We really need to see that White Paper.
If the EIP 2025 is genuinely intended to deliver the targets of the Environment Act it requires immediate, quantifiable and bold action.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to participate in a debate led by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who made a very good point about the condition of our SSSIs. The Government’s 2025 plan speaks with confidence about restoring nature and becoming a clean energy superpower. That confidence must be matched by clarity. Where the plan allows trade-offs, we need rules that protect the natural systems we depend on. The Environmental Improvement Plan 2025 sets out ambitions we can all support: cleaner water, richer soils, healthier wildlife and a transition to cleaner energy. Those ambitions are necessary, but a plan’s rhetoric is only as strong as the targets, timelines and delivery mechanisms that underpin it.
Today, I will focus on two areas where the gap between rhetoric and delivery is most worrying—our seas and our farms. On the marine side, the plan introduces recovery targets for marine protected areas, yet it also explicitly allows up to 5% of MPA features to be left in neither favourable nor recovering condition to “accommodate net-zero ambitions”. That is not a technical tweak; it institutionalises a trade-off.
Everyone knows that the Secretary of State for Energy, Mr Miliband, is obsessed with net zero, and his fanaticism will countenance any damage to our economy and cost to the public by driving up the cost of UK energy to be the highest in the world. Now he is damaging our seas as well. When we write a carve-out into a national plan, we change the default from recovery to compromise. Offshore wind and other infrastructure can contribute to our climate goals, but they must not become a standing excuse to delay or dilute recovery in protected areas. Any deviation from recovery must be time limited, independently scrutinised and accompanied by mandatory like-for-like enhancement measures that restore what has been lost. The real tragedy of this carve-out is that our seas will be damaged by wind turbines that will be switched off for about half the time. Billions will be paid to the operators not to produce electricity, as we read in the press yesterday.
We welcome ambition on this side, but ambition without detail is a promise unkept. Allowing a formal carve-out for marine protected areas to accommodate energy projects, delaying a marine litter strategy and failing to commit to PFAS consumer bans are not small omissions; they are structural weaknesses that will determine whether our seas recover or continue to decline.
As has already been said by noble Lords, marine litter is another glaring omission. It cannot be left to a general circular plan scheduled for next year. We need a dedicated marine litter strategy now, with measurable interim targets, funding for deposit return schemes, fishing gear management, improved port reception facilities and coastal clean-ups. These are practical measures that reduce harm to wildlife, protect coastal economies and cut the cost of clean-up for local communities. The marine recovery fund has currently framed this as becoming a mechanism that enables development rather than driving restoration. Compensation must be like-for-like by default, and there must be a separate ring-fenced enhancement fund to finance proactive habitat creation and ecosystem recovery at scale. Without that, we will see payments in place of genuine ecological outcomes.
On farming, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said that there is no Minister in the Government who understands the countryside. I say to her that there is one—she is winding up this debate, and it is a pity that she is not the Secretary of State for Defra. The plan’s target to double the number of farms providing sufficient year-round resources for wildlife by 2030 is welcome in principle but underspecified in practice. Farmers need certainty. They need clear definitions of what “sufficient resources” means. They need published payment rates, long-term contracts and technical support. The sustainable farming incentive must be reformed and published with predictable payments so that farmers can plan investments without risking their livelihoods or domestic food production. Sequencing matters. Biosecurity targets and invasive species scanning must be timed so that there is adequate opportunity to respond before deadlines arrive. If we are serious about the rhetoric, we must strengthen the EIP now, remove the carve-outs, ban non-essential PFAS, fund enhancement—not just compensation—and give farmers and fishers the certainty and support they need to deliver. That is how we turn a plan into recovery.
To be concrete, I conclude by calling for six immediate actions. First, remove or tightly condition the 5% MPA carve-out. Any deviation from recovery must be demonstrably unavoidable, time limited and independently scrutinised, and require mandatory like-for-like enhancement. Secondly, ban PFAS in non-essential consumer products and publish a clear phase-out timetable for other uses, applying group-based controls to prevent substitution. Thirdly, please publish a dedicated marine litter strategy immediately, with measurable interim targets and funding for ports, coastal clean-ups and fishing gear management. Fourthly, redesign the marine recovery fund with two streams, mandatory like-for-like compensation and a separate enhancement fund for proactive restoration. Fifthly, accelerate SFI reform and publish payment rates and transition support so that farmers can plan, with explicit safeguards for food production and farm viability. Sixthly, strengthen fisheries management plans with binding spatial and gear measures, and fund a just transition package for fishers to adopt low-impact methods.
We can be a clean energy leader and a world leader in nature recovery, but only if we stop treating nature as negotiable. Strengthen the rules, fund the delivery and give those who steward our land and sea the certainty they need. Do that, and the rhetoric of the plan will become the recovery that our communities and our children expect.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I am quite tight for time. I shall do my best to answer all the many questions, but if there is anything that I do not cover, I will make sure I write to noble Lords with responses. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on securing this debate. I welcome the opportunity to respond and to discuss how the environmental improvement plan will deliver the targets of the Environment Act.
The EIP, as noble Lords are aware, sets out the Government’s commitment to the ambitious statutory Environment Act targets. It is our road map on how we are going to improve the natural environment and people’s enjoyment of it. It ensures that nature’s recovery is a key priority for this Government and is fundamental to our general approach, including growth, because we know that growth is not possible without a healthy and resilient natural environment.
Our EIP goes further than the previous one. It is a credible, clear plan with clear, prioritised actions to deliver the environmental outcomes of restoring nature, improving environmental quality, creating a circular economy, protecting environmental security and improving people’s access to nature. It sets out who is responsible for these actions across government and our wider society.
The EIP sets ambitious yet achievable interim targets. It is essential to have those as staging posts on our journey in order to deliver the targets that have been rightly described today as challenging. Each interim target will make an appropriate contribution to corresponding statutory targets over the next five years. We have increased the ambition of some of the interim targets since the Government’s last plan, including for air quality and to restore and create wildlife-rich habitats. We have also introduced new targets on farm wildlife and on invasive non-native species. We are maintaining our delivery trajectories for other targets and have adjusted others to ensure that they remain deliverable and credible.
On other targets, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked about the MPAs and whether the 5% flex was watering down that target. The flex is introduced largely to account for adverse impacts of offshore wind developments that have been consented to because they pass the habitats regulations or MCZ derogation tests. We think it is the best option to set an interim target that contributes towards the statutory target while aligning it with the changing MPA network that supports the Government’s clean energy mission. I hope that explains why we have done that.
Of course, setting clear targets and goals is simply not enough; we need to know exactly how we are going to reach them. I hope noble Lords will be reassured to know that for the first time we have published delivery plans for those targets. They clearly set out how actions contribute, who will deliver them and how progress will be measured. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked which actions will make the largest contribution to halting the decline of biodiversity. The delivery plans will set that out on a strong evidence footing so that we know exactly what is happening.
Driving environmental change and understanding the impact of actions being taken will obviously be complex and take time, so the delivery plans are designed to remain live and can be refined over time in response to emerging evidence, to policy evaluation and to any feedback that we get from stakeholders carrying out the delivery. We believe that this transparent and collaborative approach to communicating and adapting our plans is a major step forward. It is also central to our monitoring and our reporting of progress, which, again, is essential to keeping any delivery on track.
The EIP sets out more than 90 commitments. Each is associated with a delivery metric, and we will report on changes to those metrics in our annual progress reports, along with the latest evidence and changes to trends in our environmental indicator framework. The framework, which is also published online, objectively measures how the environment is changing across the 10 EIP goals.
Together, such approaches better enable external appraisal and will ensure that we learn and adapt appropriately as we move towards the targets. I am already very grateful to stakeholders, including the OEP, whose scrutiny and recommendations are helping to shape this improved approach. We have a clear plan and process, but we also know the scale of the challenge and are trying to match this with the right actions to get where we need to go.
SFI was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, so I am sure he will be pleased to hear that, just this morning at the Oxford Farming Conference, the Secretary of State set out how we are reforming SFI to make it simpler and fairer and to enable as many farmers as possible to benefit and help nature thrive. As someone who has a smallholding, I was particularly pleased to see that this is also targeted now at smaller farmers. At that conference, the Secretary of State also made clear that protecting the environmental foundations of farming is not separate from productivity but an essential part of it. All this will help us to meet our EIP targets, including doubling the number of farms delivering for wildlife. This follows the most nature-friendly farming Budget we have seen, to give farmers the support they need to produce food sustainably while protecting soil, water and wildlife.
Last year we had the highest amount of tree planting in 20 years, as I am sure my noble friend will be pleased to hear—over 10 million trees—and we have started planting the first of the three new national forests. We recently implemented the Water (Special Measures) Act. I have been asked about the water White Paper, and I confirm that it will be published very soon; watch this space.
The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked about PFAS. The EIP includes a commitment to publish a PFAS plan in 2026, and that will set out how the Government are taking action to protect people and the environment from the particular harms and risks that this relates to. We are acting decisively to improve air quality. A circular economy is an important part of this. We are further reducing environmental harm by turning waste into opportunity and creating green jobs across the country—I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is particularly interested in this. We are boosting opportunities and, as the Minister for access to nature, I am pleased that we have a chapter in the EIP on how we will do this. I was pleased that we launched the first of the nine new river walks on Boxing Day.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the importance of working together. It is important that we do this, as we will not make progress unless we have cross-government contributions in achieving these targets. That includes the land use framework, the farming road map and what we are doing across the department as well as across government. This is important. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, particularly talked about the importance of working with stakeholders and people who have to deliver. Only by government working hand in hand with communities, businesses, farmers, the public sector and the third sector can we achieve our target delivery.
The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked a number of questions, and I will try to fit those in. If there is anyone else, I will come back to them. He asked what aspects of the new plan give me confidence around SSSIs —in fact, there were a few questions around SSSIs. I have an SSSI on my land, so I completely understand the challenges of site management. Natural England has improved its understanding of SSSI condition and the pressures and actions needed to restore SSSIs. It is making progress: it has a more strategic focus than previously and, over the spending review, it is looking to improve the evidence from each site. It is looking at a strategic landscape scale, with a greater focus on what happens on the land outside the site boundary as well as just within it, and at those implications.
The noble Lord asked how many SSSIs are on agricultural land covered by agri-environment contracts. It is approximately 40% at the moment. Additionally, Natural England has developed a conservation enhancement scheme to fund actions on SSSI land that is not eligible for environmental stewardship schemes. We want to continue to build on that work.
On national landscapes, we know we need to go further and faster in protected landscapes to meet our national targets, and we will ensure that protected landscape bodies, landowners and land managers have the tools and resources to achieve that. We will continue to work closely.
The PMB was excellent and very much in line with government ambition. The principles of it—to drive and strengthen action towards meeting natural environment and climate targets and objectives from both local and other public authorities—are absolutely at the heart of what we will achieve. I hope we can continue to talk to the noble Lord and bring in his expertise around that.
I seem to have run out of time. I am really sorry; I had lots of lovely answers to all of the questions posed by noble Lords.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
Would it be possible for the Minister to tell us about peat?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I have just been told that I can carry on because I have another five minutes; my officials will tell me when I need to stop.
I turn to the gene editing of ecosystems. We are supportive of that innovation. We have agreed the parameters for the new SPS agreement with the EU. The EU has accepted that there are a number of areas where it will have to look at our laws. This is something that we are discussing with the EU.
I turn to peat. To confirm, we are committed to ending the sale of horticultural peat and peat-containing products by the end of this Parliament. That is part of our ambition for this Parliament. We are working very closely with the sector to look at how we can make that transition.
The noble Baroness knows that I am very sympathetic to SUDS. It is worth reminding the Committee that we made immediate changes to the National Planning Policy Framework to support the increased delivery of SUDS. Clearly, we need to continue to discuss that.
My noble friend Lady Young talked about the environmental principles and asked whether people, particularly officials, have training. The answer is yes. Our recent report on the implementation of the environmental principles, which was published in November, recognised that our tools are valuable and that we do provide training.
Is there anything else that I have forgotten? I thank noble Lords very much for their contributions to the debate and assure them that we are committed to delivering the environmental improvement plan and to meeting the environmental targets.