State of Climate and Nature

Lord Whitehead Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, we welcome this Statement. The science is absolutely certain that human-induced climate change is beyond doubt. What has changed is how fast the impacts are arriving on our very own doorsteps. This summer’s heatwaves in May and June caused as many as 2,700 excess deaths; transport systems were strained; over a thousand schools closed; and the London Ambulance Service endured its busiest ever day.

We are on our third heatwave of 2026, and 2026 is the first year the UK has reached 35 degrees in May, June and July consecutively. Excessive heat is putting a strain on every individual citizen, on our economy, on our schools and on our health systems. Europe is now confirmed as the fastest-warming continent on Earth, warming at more than twice the global average.

This Government have been genuinely good on the energy transition, approving renewable projects to power the equivalent of more than 19 million homes. But nature has been the poor relation. Not a single new site of special scientific interest has been designated in England since 2023, and our tree-planting rate remains less than half the annual target. Labour’s messaging on nature has been muddled, its green mission too often undermined from within. Climate and nature are not separate; they are codependent. A Government strong on one and weak on the other will ultimately fail at both.

Our climate is changing more quickly than our policies. The Climate Change Committee’s fourth independent assessment of UK climate risk was stark: on adaption, not a single delivery pathway was rated good. Inaction cannot continue. Three of our five worst harvests on record have occurred since 2020; our food security is threatened. The Green Alliance has today written to Ministers to warn:

“The UK was built for a climate that no longer exists”,


and emergency action is needed. We must do far more, more quickly, on adaption. It is the vulnerable, the elderly, the sick, the poor and the workers who will suffer the most.

These matters are hard when we co-operate, and they become almost impossible when we do not. So, I say with real regret that the Conservative Party’s ever-continuing retreat from reality, rejecting the 2050 net-zero target and now reportedly barring prospective candidates who continue to support it, is a betrayal of its own history and the consensus that this country requires.

To those who say the UK emits only 1% of global emissions so why bother: every major economy could say the same. To those who say net zero is impossible, I ask: what is possible instead? British leadership works only if Britain leads.

The wildfire risks this summer are at extreme levels, endangering lives and devastating habitats, yet the Government’s wildfire strategy is still not ready and we remain completely reliant on commercial aircraft to fight fires. We have had one mega wildfire already last year, and we are not prepared for the next. That must change before next year’s El Niño impacts are felt.

On tipping points, will the Minister say what more the Government will do to strengthen monitoring of the AMOC system? The Government’s nature security assessment warns that every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse. If that is true, as I believe it is, the public and this House deserve to see the full assessment, not merely a summary. I ask the Minister to commit to its publication in full. The 30by30 on Land: Delivery Plan, published yesterday, is welcome but insufficient. It leans too heavily on farmers and land managers volunteering, with no statutory backstop and no guarantee that voluntary schemes will deliver at the scale required.

Labour must stop doing things to people and start doing things with them. Give communities real opportunities to protect nature, launch a national campaign and provide an emergency briefing, because misinformation is filling the gap left by government silence. Fear alone will not sustain the public throughout this crisis. We must offer hope and invest in the young people who will live the longest with the consequences of what we decide.

Finally, our climate and nature laws are out of date. Can the Minister say whether the Government will finally match strong words on climate with equally strong action for nature?

[The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Whitehead) (Lab)]

I thank noble Lords for their valuable contributions in responding to this Statement made yesterday in the other place. As noble Lords know, the Statement was about climate and nature, and particularly the extent to which—as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, repeatedly reminds us—you cannot disentangle one from the other. Climate change drives nature loss and nature loss drives climate change. If you tackle one but not the other, you will not succeed in tackling the first thing. Making sure that our environment is liveable—that it is a thriving environment for the purposes of both nature extension and recovery—is completely wound up with the actions we take against climate change in general. The Statement set out what actions the Government are taking on that clear link.

Indeed, in the most recent spending round, the Government put aside unprecedented sums for nature development, recovery and restitution. For example, altogether they put forward over £7 billion at the spending review, including £5.9 billion for environmental farming schemes. ELMS began to take place under the previous Government and have been very successful in developing sustainable and low-carbon farming practices and in making sure that farming is about not just production but enhancing and sustaining that production for the future through changes in farming practices. In addition, £816 million has been put aside for tree-planting, with the planting of three large national forests under way, and £85 million pounds for peatland restoration. Those are practical things that tackle some of the key issues around nature degradation in this country. I suggest that the Government are matching their words with a substantial amount of investment in making sure that nature can live and survive in the right way in the future.

I anticipated that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, might concentrate rather more on particular energy and climate change issues. Those areas are very much tied to the balance between nature and climate change. What you absolutely need for a thriving background for nature is clean air, clean energy and clean environmental circumstances under which that energy is produced, as well as an environment that allows nature to thrive. I suggest that solar power, for example, absolutely offers those things, so I do not recognise the noble Lord’s characterisation of the apparently inherent dirtiness of solar panels. The carbon payback of a solar panel is estimated to be just 1.05 years. I agree with the noble Lord that, where a solar panel is made under circumstances in which the production arrangements are a little, shall we say, browner than they are in Europe, the payback will be marginally greater, but it is still only 1.18 years. So I do not recognise the characterisation of solar put forward by the noble Lord. It is an integral part of bringing energy and nature together in how we produce clean energy and clean air at the same time.

The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, asked whether, in advance of the new Government being in place, I will predict a number of things they are about to do—which of course I will not do. However, I remind the noble Lord that the Jackdaw field is not a field that has not been explored but a field on which Ministers are presently deciding whether to proceed. I should not pre-empt that decision process, but he can be assured that the decision process is under way.

My final point on the noble Lord’s points about this area is that the production of clean energy and low carbon is not about deindustrialisation. As he will know, the Government have recently invested something like £61 billion and crowded in more than £100 billion of clean, green, low-carbon investment in the process. It is actually value added as much as it is investment. It is reindustrialising the country, albeit on a different level of carbon output, in a way that we can see before us in the British-based requirements for a lot of offshore wind, nuclear and various other such things. That means that a lot of this activity is taking place as industrial processes in the UK and is creating green, low-carbon jobs to replace those brown, high-carbon jobs as a result.

The noble Earl, Lord Russell, rightly talks about what is quite evident around us outside this Chamber. This Chamber, mercifully, is reasonably cooled, but outside we are experiencing the hottest year in history, as we will undoubtedly break last year’s records if we go on as we are. We are in an absolute emergency as far as adaptation is concerned. We cannot just think about mitigation for the future. I agree that there is a long way to go in getting that adaptation right for the future, but the Government are on the case. We need to look, for example, at the record sums that have been put in place for flood protection and flood relief and the work that the Government are doing to ensure that building regulations and various other such things are climate change-proof rather than lagging behind—as much of our society is at the moment. I agree that there is a long way to go and I am sure that we will debate how that process is going in the near future. I thank him for his general support for the measures that the Government are taking on climate change and nature and look forward to his continued support in future.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement and for giving us the opportunity to raise issues in this regard. I associate myself with the comments made from the Front Bench. Will the Minister reply to the question about taking productive land out of production? The wheat harvest is expected to be devastated this year because of the lack of rain and drought conditions. North Yorkshire is being covered by BES, these big battery energy storage and solar farm projects, which are highly flammable, highly combustible and highly dangerous. How can he square that with nature and environmental benefits? They are diametrically opposed.

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

I did indeed not provide a complete answer to the thought put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on farming. He concentrated mainly on energy and climate change, which is what I responded to particularly. As the noble Baroness will know, we have recently produced the farming road map, a comprehensive road map informed substantially by farmers in the first instance on how we can develop more sustainable farming. Contrary to what the noble Lord says, that does not involve, for example, removing a lot of livestock from farming practices. It involves more sustainable practices in general.

I am sure the noble Lord will agree that the agriculture and land use sector needs to make sure that its emissions go down substantially, as it is one of the two sectors that have flatlined on emissions in recent years. The question is how you do it, rather than simply saying that there are things you must do which are detrimental to the interests of farming. I have already mentioned what is happening with the ELMS arrangements. There are all sorts of other things associated with that, such as low-methane feedstuffs for cattle, which are getting a lot of traction and interest in farming circles. These can reduce emissions substantially without having to cull any livestock or causing people to change their eating patterns or farmers to do things other than farm in a more sustainable way. That is the key to what we are trying to do on farming. I hope the noble Lord and the noble Baroness will support it.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his kind words earlier about my contributions—I think they were kind words. I also welcome the Statement from the Minister in the other place, because it was a good Statement. The spending plans sound great, but it is not only about how much you spend but about how you spend it. I often have doubts that Labour really understands that the environment and nature are integral to everything that comes through here, as again and again we see legislation that barely mentions climate change. We are at a point when we have heatwaves, people are dying, “Boris buses” are unbearable and workplaces are too hot to work. Yet this Labour Government have not put climate change into the Sporting Events Bill, the civil aviation Bill or almost any other Bill. Would the Minister suggest to the Government that I can set up some seminars with climatologists so that they understand the importance of putting climate change into all legislation?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

Among other things, the actions that the Government have taken—for example, with the Energising Britain plan—are making sure that the question of climate change is not just an issue for one or two areas of government but one that all areas of government have to contribute to. Those different departments will be judged very substantially on their contributions. As this Government have shown already, there is a real sense of joint working, for example in how the National Health Service and the Ministry of Defence are decarbonising and in how various departments are working together to make sure that that overall goal is achieved. I cannot say that I could guarantee a large attendance at seminars that the noble Baroness might put on for that purpose, but she is very welcome to do so. I would certainly come along to a seminar if she wanted to set one up. The point underlining what she says is that nature is essential to the whole process. As I have said, if we neglect one element against the other in our climate change actions, we will not succeed in either.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on the very welcome Statement on how the Government will deal with the interlinked issues of climate change and nature, because there is no doubt that both are interlinked and one drives the other. We have already seen examples of nature loss in our wider countryside. Reference has been made to reports issued quite recently that more than 2,700 people may have died in the May and June heatwaves this year. What further steps will our Government take to adapt UK buildings to the impact of climate change, including energy efficiency measures through the use of sustainable timber and modular buildings?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right to draw attention to what is sadly likely to be a large number of deaths directly attributable to the recent heatwave we have had in this country. Those deaths can quite possibly be attributed to the lack of readiness that we have in our building fabric and our homes for the consequences of climate change and what will happen with temperatures in future. I hope she can take some comfort from the fact that the Government are actively reviewing how we make sure that building standards are fully compliant with climate change resilience for the future. If we build our buildings so that they can undertake those future climate shocks rather than be victims of them, we will have done a good deed for the future.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, the Statement in another place said that reducing emissions would lower bills. This country has reduced emissions by more than any other country, yet our bills are now higher than any other OECD country, nearly all of which rely on gas like us. Can the Minister explain this? If he is going to say that, in future, renewables will be cheaper than fossil fuels, then why do they need subsidies, and, if they need subsidies, how can he say that they are basically cheaper?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

The noble Lord is substantially but not entirely correct about OECD prices; however, he is not entirely correct that other OECD countries are reliant on gas to the extent that we are in this country. A very substantial driver of electricity prices is the volatile price of gas, as he will know, and the reliance that we still have in this country on gas as a market-maker for electricity very substantially leads to those high prices. Therefore, on the idea of getting off that wheel we are on, of volatile gas prices leading to volatile electricity prices and to high energy prices, it is quite right that we resolve that by making sure that our energy arrangements are as low carbon—and, hence, not gas based—as they can be.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement, but does the Minister agree that marine areas are very important both in terms of climate change, as a carbon sink, and in terms of biodiversity? Does he therefore agree that it is an urgent issue for the Government to make the decision to end bottom trawling in marine protected areas? It destroys vast areas of kelp beds and sea grass, both of which absorb carbon, and it is very destructive.

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

Yes, the noble Baroness is quite right about bottom trawling, how destructive it is and how it completely destroys the ecology of shallow to medium deep-sea areas as a result. It is very important that, among other things, those practices are not carried out in marine protected areas. She will know that the Government have a great record of developing marine protected areas around the UK’s coast and internationally in the Crown dependencies. Those will all be areas in which practices such as bottom trawling will not be tolerated.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement, and I very much agree with the noble Earl, Lord Russell, on much of what he said about the issues that face us. We have some enormously difficult issues to face. We have seen some of the immediate ones in in our hospitals, schools and workplaces and in the death rates we have seen. I think the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, agreed on the threat—to use his word—in terms of both climate and nature. We have immediate problems, and we have some very difficult problems—

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[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My question to the Minister is this: does he share my concern that, instead of pooling our joint knowledge and energy into solving those problems when faced with a global crisis, we seem to be creating a more and more polarised and unproductive debate on all these issues?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

I certainly agree with the noble Baroness on the extent to which we will make far greater progress by acting in consensus and agreement together, working out how we do things jointly, than by having an often very sterile debate about whether particular things work particularly well or otherwise. As far as I am concerned, we remain in a climate emergency and in circumstances where, as I have said, we have to consider urgent adaptation at the same time as urgent mitigation. Those are very difficult things to do, and I for one am proud that the Government have not resiled from that difficult debate, particularly on issues such as mineral fuels, but have instead tried to move forward on a broad basis of support. I reflect on the fact that, when I was in the House of Commons, we had a high degree of consensus on climate change; now, we do not, and that is a sorry state of affairs. We need to get back to that as soon as possible in order that we make the progress that we all know is absolutely necessary in the end.

[Lord Barber of Chittlehampton (Lab)]

My Lords, I had the privilege of chairing the Devon land use pilot a few years ago. We learned that people think in silos but the solutions are in combinations. On Exmoor, you have water challenges and energy challenges, and challenges relating to tourism, mental health, exercise, housing, transport, wind energy and biodiversity. We have introduced white-tailed sea eagles and pine martens on Exmoor, and you can see the change happening. The real risk in this debate is that it is not sophisticated enough and falls into a set of false dichotomies, which will frustrate us—

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[Lord Barber of Chittlehampton (Lab)]

My question to the Minister is: in taking through the agenda set out in the Statement, will the Government think in the sophisticated way I have described about broad areas of land as our population grows and the challenges of every acre of land become greater and greater? I have not even mentioned food and farming, which set up the pilot that I chaired. These are important and difficult issues, and we will not get there by simply debating false dichotomies.

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

My noble friend sets the question for us all: how can we work across all the different sectors of government to get to our goal? The goal is not that action on climate change is a last-ditch attempt to try to produce a less miserable outcome for the future by mitigating, by a small amount, what is happening with global warming; it is finding a way to bring about a much better life for everybody in the context of the farming and industrial environments in which we live and the enjoyment of our personal and private lives. Joint action on adaptation and mitigation is a method of bringing about that better society. It is the most important thing we need to do to bring about a society that is not only bearable in the future but is instead a big improvement on what we have at the moment.

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

Why cut back and close jobs at home, shutting down oil and gas, food production and our factories when it increases world CO₂? This is self-harm on a crazy scale. Why do the Government want to lose jobs and investment?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

I am not sure I recognise much of the noble Lord’s intervention. As I have said, it is not the case that the Government are bent on a process of deindustrialisation and losing jobs. Jobs are transferring from the high-carbon economy to the low- carbon economy, and one of the duties of government, which this Government are carrying out, is to make sure there are good jobs in both the low-carbon and high-carbon economies, and that skills are transferred from the high-carbon economy to inform the low-carbon economy. That is exactly what is happening at the moment, so I really do not recognise the assertions the noble Lord makes about the future of society. Quite the opposite is taking place.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, 10 of the 48 designated areas have still not produced their local nature recovery strategies. When will the Government issue directions to those councils and give them a deadline to do it by? Will there be a modest amount of money to help those councils that are clearly struggling?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

I do not know the answer to the question the noble Baroness has put to me. I am happy to write to her. I know that many councils are working hard on this. It is a question of looking at the outliers rather than at people who have taken this issue seriously at a local level and are getting on with the plans that they should be getting on with as far as future environmental concerns go.