Climate and Ecology Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and to thank the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, for introducing this Bill, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Oates, said, is very similar to one introduced by my honourable friend Caroline Lucas in the other place. I join others in congratulating so many people who have been campaigning so long and hard on this Bill. I remember getting an email from someone in Oxford saying “I just got this leaflet through my door about this Bill. What’s it all about? I’m not used to getting leaflets about Bills coming through my door.” So, I congratulate everyone who has been working so hard. I say to them that they are making politics what you do, not what you have done to you. I fear that this is a process that does not necessarily work very quickly, but it is crucial.

I will start by talking about rivers, which the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, just mentioned, because when we talk about the climate and ecological emergency, we often talk very abstractly. I want to be really concrete, and on this Friday afternoon, I will be really kind to noble Lords and those who have joined us and put you all beside a lovely river in Norfolk. The water is flowing, you are under the shade of a lovely big tree and you have your toes in the water. It looks idyllic, but what is actually happening in that river? Let us say that this is on Sunday, when the heatwave that others have referred to has hit. The water is getting warmer and warmer, which means there is less oxygen for the animals that live in it. Once the water temperature gets past 20 degrees centigrade, it is actually hostile to the life of those animals. As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, referred to, there are huge, unbearable levels of pollution in that river already, but with the evaporation that comes from the high temperatures, the water disappears, and the pollution becomes even more concentrated. There might be bullhead fish and white-clawed crayfish in that river—both red-listed species.

We need to have joined-up thinking, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said. The climate and ecological crises, the way we have poisoned our planet with pesticides, artificial fertilisers and all kinds of other novel entities—all of these things together are making our planet unliveable. This Bill seeks to create a response that is fit for the Anthropocene.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, is doing great Sherpa work for a number of departments today, so I do not necessarily expect a response from her to this right now, but I ask her to take it back to Defra. I hope that we will get a response on the National Farmers’ Union report, The Foundation of Food, out this week, which is focused on the importance of soil and how the government policy of the sustainable farming initiative is simply not doing enough. This picks up the points made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans.

When we think about biodiversity and ecology, we do not really think about soil. We still far too often think about soil as dirt. But a square metre of healthy soil will have hundreds of thousands of small animals in it, and 90% of those species have yet to be named. We do not even understand in any meaningful sense what is there. There will also be kilometres of fungal filaments, and all those systems will be working together in a healthy soil with the plants. The plants will take up to 40% of the energy they create from photosynthesis to feed into those species. It is a whole ecological system. So, the next time you look out of a train window and see a field—level, neat and tidy, ploughed—think about how much has been destroyed by the passage of the plough through that soil. We should also look at the fact that the National Farmers’ Union is saying that we need to do much better to protect that life.

Finally, I will briefly consider the really important provision in this Bill for a climate and nature assembly. In terms of deliberative democracy, the climate assembly—which, sadly, was rather disrupted by the arrival of the Covid pandemic, itself related to the global ecological emergency—produced excellent, practical and democratic proposals. If you ask me what we should do about any of the multiple crises facing us now, my answer will always be that we need democracy. The people of the UK know that where we are now is profoundly unsustainable—economically, socially, environmentally, politically and educationally—and they have so many brilliant ideas and plans for ways forward.

I will just mention an excellent report from Natural England, Facilitating Dynamic and Inclusive Biodiversity Conservation in Britain, again out this week, which focuses on listening to people and working with communities, using a place-based approach to solve our climate and ecological emergencies. This Bill shows the Government a way forward. Another noble Lord said that maybe the Government do not like the people’s assembly approach. I suggest that the Minister talks to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, because I know that in a different departmental role, she was involved in overseeing those and seeing them work very successfully.