Climate Change: Nature-based Solutions (STC Report)

Baroness Blake of Leeds Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to contribute to this excellent debate about this extremely timely and important report. I join others in thanking the members of the Science and Technology Committee for their contributions today and for all the work that they have done over a significant time. I thank in particular the former chair, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, for her excellent introduction to the report.

Timing is everything in these debates, and it is particularly worth noting that this report is being debated in a week when Whitehall has seen a significant change in the arrangement of departments. We hope that separating energy policy and net zero from the former BEIS is a reflection of the Government’s recognition of the urgency, expressed so much today, of this agenda. I hope that the Minister will be able to indicate to us that that message around urgency has been heard and how it will translate into practice. What we need to hear is that the change will lead to more policy output, but Defra’s recent suite of environmental targets has given some of us the impression that the Government do not fully appreciate the urgency of the matters we are discussing today.

The contributions today have been striking, with the noble Baronesses, Lady Brown and Lady Sheehan, each coming in on this agenda. Of course, the discussion has focused inevitably on the areas of uncertainty. I pay tribute to the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, and my noble friend Lady Warwick. There is little doubt that nature-based solutions are recognised as having an important role to play in the transition to a cleaner, greener future.

My noble friend Lady Warwick stressed, as have others, the importance of the skills agenda. In so many of the areas that I speak on, the skills shortages that this country is facing are reaching crisis point. In acknowledging the lack of skills in this area, I will pick a specific example. The Government recently announced the Forestry Training Fund, offering free training to those who want to move into the forestry industry. Of course we welcome the initiative, but where is the follow-up? Why has it taken so long for Ministers to bring it forward? How many people do the Government expect to come forward, and do they think that it will generate more interest than their failed Pick for Britain campaign of several years ago?

We have discussed the other major concern about land use, an area which the House explored at length during the passage of the Environment Bill, with the Government unfortunately resisting calls from my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone for the publication of a dedicated land use strategy. We will not scale up nature-based solutions without buy-in from the private sector, whether in the form of finance or delivery capacity. That is why, during the Lords stages of the UK Infrastructure Bank Bill, Labour supported an amendment to expand that legislation’s definition of infrastructure to include nature-based solutions. If the Government are so keen to ensure private sector involvement in important projects, why did they overturn that sensible amendment in the House of Commons?

Finally, the committee drew attention to the need for landowners and farmers to have certainty about future funding arrangements, including, as we have heard, through the Government’s ELMS. Could we ask again—I hope we will get a response to the Minister—how the Government aim to settle the important question from the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, about competing demands on land use? It is now several years since the Agriculture Act was passed and, although there have been announcements on ELMS in recent weeks, the process has been fraught with delays, miscommunications and other difficulties.

We have so much consensus in this area. The questions that we are all asking is why there is so much delay and why so much opportunity is being missed. We understand the need for research programmes. As we have highlighted today, the uncertainty is there, and more research and more funding are required to make sure that that takes place. We understand the need for extensive consultation when so many key players are involved, but the clock is ticking. Can I borrow the report’s excellent title and say that we need to turn rhetoric into reality?