Health Bill

Debate between Baroness Boycott and Baroness Hayman

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the support for my Amendment 52 from the noble Baronesses, Lady Sheehan and Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, and the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. I shall listen with interest to the debate on, and particularly the Minister’s response to, Amendment 248, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, which is a very practical way forward.

I did not take part in Second Reading on the Bill. Actually, I had a self-denying ordinance. I decided, having had my first involvement with the NHS in 1980, having seen so many reorganisations and, I am afraid, having become a little jaundiced about the effectiveness of those reorganisations in transforming patient care rather than changing administrative structures, that I would not say anything. My mother always said that if you cannot say something nice, do not say anything at all. However, here I am, and I am here because of the recent history of legislation on the NHS, in particular, the NHS Health and Care Act 2022.

I was involved in the debate on issues relating to climate in that Bill. After cross-party pressure on the issue, the Conservative Government of the time tabled amendments which became part of the Act, and which are mirrored in Amendment 52 in my name today. They were described thus by the then Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn:

“They place a duty on NHS trusts, foundation trusts, ICBs and NHS England to have regard to the Government’s key ambitions on climate change and the natural environment in everything they do. This could mean preparing thousands of NHS buildings to adapt to climate impacts, protecting and enhancing biodiversity across 25 million square metres of trust estate, or decarbonising the millions of kilowatts of energy used by trusts every year”.—[Official Report, 1/3/22; col. 729.]


That, of course, saves money for the trusts involved. The amendments were warmly welcomed by the then Opposition, with the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, saying:

“I thank the Minister and welcome these government amendments in response to the key concerns raised in Committee about the crucial importance of including the NHS’s duties on climate change and working towards net-zero emissions in the Bill”.—[Official Report, 1/3/22; col. 733.]


My amendments, which mirror those amendments, are trying to maintain the status quo. They are essentially Conservative in the sense that it was a Conservative Government who introduced them.

Therefore, I ask the Minister to help me understand why, when NHS England’s functions transfer to the Secretary of State along with responsibilities to consider the impacts of climate change on our health services and public health and the significant role the NHS has to play in helping the UK to meet its national climate and environmental targets and to provide leadership—we saw that at COP 28 in Glasgow, with other countries’ health services actually responding—the Bill before us omits the NHSE’s statutory duty to publish guidance on what it regards as the best way for ICBs and the organisation itself to meet those duties and how it is fulfilling them, along with an established framework for reporting details of progress on reducing emissions in its annual report and accounts. There is no in-kind replacement for these requirements on the Health Secretary, meaning that without legislative change and amendments of this sort, there will be no obligation on DHSC to continue driving progress, specifically on the health service’s carbon emissions reduction work.

Ministers may say that they will have powers to issue fresh guidance if they choose to, but whether it is issued and how robust its contents are will be contingent on the priorities of the Government of the day, and we have an example before us of how those can change. That outcome does not bring the same level of certainty or direction that the NHS needs to maintain regular accountability and long-term national momentum towards its targets. I hope that the Government will not try to argue that, because the Climate Change Act 2008 applies to all government departments, this amendment is unnecessary. It is clear that the powers that were put in the 2022 Act are much more specific to the NHS and the health system and essentially provide accountability and transparency. The NHS itself says that the duties supported the health service’s own ambition to become the world’s first health system to embed net zero in legislation. The 2022 Act requires commissioners and providers of NHS services specifically to address the UK net-zero emissions target and environmental targets and to adapt to any current or predicted impacts of climate change identified within the Climate Change Act 2008. We saw quite a few of those this summer and quite a few of the effects on the health service.

The Bill before us does not require the Health Secretary, when making decisions about the NHS, to consider how the organisation is contributing to carbon targets, to regularly report on its performance or to prepare it for the climate risks it faces. That is what we risk losing if we do not amend the Bill. I know the Government are trying to clear provisions and responsibilities out of the way and do not want to put extra bureaucratic requirements on the NHS, but my amendment recognises this. Because it is already in the 2022 Act, it does not widen the requirements in any way. It is simply trying to restore the status of the existing duties. The need to co-ordinate and steer responses to climate change and nature loss at the national level ought not to be treated as unnecessary paperwork. These duties have been quietly working as intended in the face of rising climate challenges. NHSE appears to have been getting on with them and setting emissions reductions targets that now have a statutory basis. It reports that direct emissions were reduced by 14% in the years 2020-25 and that the NHS is on track to meet its 2032 and 2040 goals.

Within the last four years, the evidence points to climate change increasingly becoming a major challenge for health and health services. The Parliamentarians’ Guide to Health and Climate Change, developed by Peers for the Planet—in which I declare a past interest—and the Wellcome Trust is insightful reading and shows why climate change is already a UK public health issue. A number of organisations, such as the Wellcome Trust and the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, have expressed concerns that failing to replace these obligations once NHSE functions are transferred to the Secretary of State will mean that there is no obligation for Ministers to report annually on progress towards NHS net-zero commitments, to publish sustainability guidance or to account to Parliament for this work. This will leave future transparency and oversight reliant to an unacceptably large degree on ministerial discretion, and it will undermine co-ordination of national objectives. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us how, if these duties for the DHSC are not replaced, we can ensure that our national health services have appropriate regard to the challenges of climate change. I beg to move.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I will speak to Amendment 248, but first I want to say that that was a terrific introduction by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, who is such a long-term, amazing campaigner for climate change. I would be horrifically surprised if the Minister does not reply completely in the affirmative towards this amendment, because, especially following the summer we have had, I do not see how anyone could continue to have their head in the sand about this risk. Climate change is not a hypothetical threat. There were 2,877 health-related deaths in May and June alone in the heatwaves—and this is not going to get better. This is not a one-off thing. In the climate emergency film there is a memorable line which says, “This is the best weather you are going to get in your lifetime”. That is truly scary. It may not happen next year, but it sure as hell will happen within the next two or three years.

The effects of this heat are not spread evenly over the population. It affects vulnerable people, children, the elderly, people living with chronic conditions, those in poor-quality housing and pregnant women. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, mentioned our work with the Wellcome Trust. I am vice-chair of Peers for the Planet. We have examined the effects of heat on pregnancy and maternal health, and it is not about being somewhere super-hot, which is what I have always thought. It is about being somewhere where your normal temperature condition changes. You are just as vulnerable if you are in Bristol as if you are in a field in southern India. It is about temperature change rather than extremes of temperature. It is important that we understand that, because that is going to hurt us. The climate and environmental impacts are also adding strain, as we have heard, to a service under pressure. The NHS said that this summer’s heatwaves piled pressure on its services and the NHS showed that A&E bore the brunt. We have just heard the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the other amendments about the emergency services. This is just going to make it worse.

Heat-related A&E attendances already account for 6% of average daily total attendances across the UK on extreme heat days, and the impact is estimated to cost £538 million a year. This cost could rise by 144% by the 2030s. That is almost tomorrow, really, when you come to thinking about putting a new building together. It is welcome that the NHS trusts will retain their current “have regards” to climate change, but we really need to do more. We are not ramping up enough. The climate itself is not standing still. The Climate Change Committee warned that our health service remains chronically underprepared to deal with the risks, and there remains a lack of resilience for the physical NHS estate to cope with extreme weather.

High Seas Treaty

Debate between Baroness Boycott and Baroness Hayman

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I thank the noble Baroness very much for that Answer. It is very good news to hear that we are limiting bottom trawling in MPAs, but the point of my Question was to ask whether we have a Bill going through the noble Baroness’s department—or, indeed, the FCDO—which will ratify the global ocean treaty. The UN conference will happen in June. If we have not ratified our treaties, as I understand it, we will not have a seat at the first ocean COP.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The UK will continue to be proactive in preparing for implementation and entry. We are committed to partnering with others, in particular the global South and the Commonwealth Secretariat, to ratify and implement the agreement. We are actively engaging in that. The first meeting will take place at the UN in New York this April. We very much support this, and we are working with others to move forward.

Financial Services and Markets Bill

Debate between Baroness Boycott and Baroness Hayman

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st March 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 199 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Randall, who unfortunately is absent today, which is supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and me.

This amendment would simply extend the same due diligence system that has already been introduced for large companies under Schedule 17 to the Environment Act, which looks at products in terms of deforestation, to UK financial institutions. The purpose of such due diligence is to prevent British banks knowingly financing deals that lead to deforestation worldwide. Sir Ian Cheshire, the former chair of Barclays and head of the Global Resource Initiative task force, has already written to the Minister saying that our regulations should now ensure that financial institutions do not directly or indirectly fund or support deforestation linked to forest commodities.

Between 90% and 99% of all deforestation is driven by agriculture, chiefly to produce soy, beef and palm oil—the big commodities—but on the whole that clearance is completely unnecessary to produce the food we eat. New research from the Stockholm Environment Institute shows that a vast proportion of all deforestation is speculative and does not in fact lead to any agricultural production. Sadly, corruption, fraud and labour abuses are the norm in the global agriculture sector. At least 69% of forest clearance for agricultural purposes between 2013 and 2019 is considered to have been illegal. Our existing regulations are practically an open invitation to banks to launder the proceeds and profits of forest crime.

Evidence from the charity Global Witness shows that, in the five-year period between the Paris COP and our own Glasgow COP, British banks and financiers made deals worth $16.6 billion, with just 20 agribusinesses implicated in these transactions. WWF calculates that the UK financial sector faces up to £200 billion in risk exposure to Brazilian beef and soy supply chains and Indonesian palm oil supply chains alone. This clearly exposes the UK economy as a whole and individual financial institutions to significant material risk. Globally, agribusinesses are expected to lose an average of 7% in value by 2030 due to unpriced nature and climate risk, with some companies losing up to 26% of their value.

Bringing an end to deforestation is one of our most imminent climate targets. At COP 27, the UN high-level working group on net zero made clear that this means an end to the financing of all deforestation. We do not need to do it; we should not do it any more. Fortunately for the Government and the Minister, Schedule 17 to the Environment Act has laid the necessary foundations by reducing the import market in the UK for commodities grown on illegally deforested land from places such as the Amazon. Under that Act, businesses will need to conduct due diligence to ensure that they have no deforestation anywhere in their supply chains. All this amendment would do is ensure that the already available information travels one step further to the banks and finance institutions.

I know that the Minister will reply that this is all in hand because of something called the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosure, TNFD, but this is yet another voluntary reporting scheme designed to help companies identify how biodiversity loss threatens their profitability. We must wake up to the fact that just identifying it is not the same as reducing it. Indeed, a lack of data is not at all the problem. Satellite technology enables real-time monitoring, and images can be mapped against suppliers’ farms. We have already accepted that such due diligence is made possible by passing the Environment Act.

If charities such as Global Witness can do it, so can the banks. The TNFD is shaping up to be the

“next frontier in corporate greenwashing”

unless we pass an amendment such as this one. Voluntary schemes have already tried and failed to deliver on similar objectives. The Soft Commodities Compact signed by British banks failed, and so has the New York Declaration on Forests. Financial institutions signed up to the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, spearheaded by our Government, but they have barely decreased their deforestation investments since signing up to that scheme at COP 26. Many members have in fact increased their exposure to notorious deforesters in that time.

We cannot waste any more time with more voluntary initiatives if we are to meet the 2025 deadline for ending deforestation. We have a plan and a blueprint, with mandatory due diligence at the core. Without this reform to our financial regulations, there may well be no forests left to save and the British public will be left holding the bill for this unnecessary race to the bottom.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, with this group we return to the issues of how this legislation can support the ambition of the now Prime Minister—then Chancellor—to be the leading net-zero financial centre.

In this group I have Amendments 201 and 235 to 237, and I am grateful for the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Sheehan, Lady Wheatcroft, Lady Northover, Lady Drake and Lady Altmann, on those amendments. It is not a monstrous regiment; I think it is a rather impressive regiment of women who will put forward amendments in this group. We have already heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington; I very much support her words and the argument just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.

Investment in deforestation will undermine financial firms’ transition plans and sustainability impact reporting. It needs to be underpinned by real action. Bringing mandatory due diligence into law is supported by the Government’s own expert body, the GRI task force, and the UN Secretary-General at COP 27. It is not sufficient that UK firms stop importing deforestation risk commodities, as the Environment Act requires; UK financial firms must stop funding them too. This amendment would achieve that.

I have also added my name to Amendment 233, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, on sustainability disclosure requirements. I will leave it to her to explain the amendment in detail but, fundamentally, there is little dispute over the importance of sustainable disclosure requirements, but equally little progress being made, and the legal basis for those requirements is unsure. Those issues would be addressed by this amendment, and I support it.

I turn to my Amendments 201 and 237, which relate to fiduciary duties and would require the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the FCA to publish guidance—to which occupational pension schemes and FCA-regulated firms must have regard—considering the long-term consequences of decisions and the impacts of their investments on society, climate and nature. This reflects duties applicable to companies under the Companies Act, but those provisions apply to financial services companies only in relation to their shareholders, not their clients, and they do not apply to pension funds at all. I very much welcome the work to date of the DWP and FCA on fiduciary duty. However, research by the Principles for Responsible Investment, a UN-founded body with 3,000 signatories and $100 trillion in assets, found that investor understanding of their duties was discouraging them from pursuing—or even considering—positive sustainability impacts, and recommended further guidance from the UK Government and regulators. Similarly, a study by the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association reported that

“We continue to see a common lack of understanding within financial services on the extent to which ESG”—


Environmental Social and Governance—

“factors form part of investors’ fiduciary duties. This area needs urgent clarification for finance to reach net-zero.”

UKSIF also recommended that guidance that both risks and impacts should be considered a core component of fiduciary duties.

My amendments do not overturn existing fiduciary responsibility. They would merely result in guidance on how impacts and long-term matters are considered when acting in investors’ financial interests. They are not prescriptive about the content of the guidance, which would not be legally binding. The Government have made much of their desire for more productive investment by the financial sector, but confusion about fiduciary duty has been raised as a key barrier. This amendment could help to end that confusion.

Amendment 235 on green taxonomy relates to commitments dating back to 2019 and reiterated in October 2021 to at least match the ambition of the key objectives in the EU’s sustainable finance action plans. They follow through on the commitments made for the Treasury to publish the taxonomy and for the FCA and government departments to make the necessary changes to implement it.

I must say that the Government’s approach to taxonomy is somewhat confusing. The Green Technical Advisory Group—or GTAG—was established in June 2021 and delivered advice to the Treasury in October 2022. The Minister reconfirmed a commitment to the taxonomy in the House of Lords in November. However, this was followed in December 2022 by a Statement seeming to back away from producing a green taxonomy, describing it as a “complex, technical exercise”. Although the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, stated in Committee on 30 January:

“The Government are committed to implementing a green taxonomy as part of their sustainable finance agenda”—[Official Report, 30/1/23; col. GC 170.],


I fear that what the Government have in mind is a voluntary model, which would be fragmented and incomplete, rather than robust and comprehensive. I should be grateful for clarity and reassurance from the Minister.

The delay is frustrating for the many parts of the industry that have directly and indirectly assisted the development of a green taxonomy. More than a dozen other jurisdictions have brought forward their own green taxonomies, seemingly without insuperable difficulties. The Government need to restate a clear timeline for implementation. The Skidmore review agreed, and proposed a “transition taxonomy”. This amendment makes provision for that.