Queen’s Speech

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, it would be hard to argue that this Queen’s Speech has sufficient urgency to deal with the climate crisis and the nature crisis that we are facing. We need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 50% within the next decade and we are among the most nature-depleted countries in the world.

That is not to say there are not things in this Queen’s Speech that we welcome. It is quite clear that the transport Bill and the energy Bill could bring much-needed green investment to support our net-zero goals, but Members right around this House—the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Bennett, the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Moynihan—have all said that there is a gaping hole in the energy Bill around energy efficiency, helping people to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels at the same time as cutting costs and helping them address the cost of living crisis. It is a major gap. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that the Government seem pathologically determined not to go anywhere near anything to do with behaviour change in order to tackle the climate crisis. The Climate Change Committee has said we cannot get to net zero purely by technological innovation; we have to address behaviour change as well. Therefore, I am sure this is something that Members in this House will wish to address when we see the energy Bill in due course.

I welcome that the UK Infrastructure Bank has a mandate not just to support economic growth but to meet net-zero goals. That is a welcome step, and therefore it is a disappointment that the financial services and markets Bill does not have that dual mandate. There is no alignment, request or even an obligation on the regulator to align the financial services markets with our net-zero and nature goals. That is a major oversight. As is the fact that, somewhere along the line, we seem to have lost the sustainable disclosure regulations, trumpeted loudly by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last year as a means to be ground-breaking globally and bring our companies forward on the move towards net zero. They seem to have disappeared into the ether. That is a very retrograde step which shows that, when push comes to shove with this Government, they will put minimising regulation ahead of meeting net-zero obligations, which is very worrying.

One Bill in particular is not just insufficiently fast-paced but a significant threat to our nature in future—the planning Bill. I am delighted to see that the Government have seen sense and removed the zoning requirements. I credit the Liberal Democrats a little, with our by-election victory in Chesham and Amersham, for helping push them gently that way, but I know that plenty on the Back Benches opposite feel as strongly as many on these Benches do that zoning is completely detrimental to our future as a sustainable country and would have been a developers’ charter. It is good to see that that has disappeared. However, what remains is the rather nebulous phrase “a new approach” to environmental assessments. As I have said, we are one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and it is the regulatory framework in the planning system that has protected so many habitats, wildlife areas, green spaces and trees—coming soon after the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, I ought to get in the word “trees”. Environmental assessments have done so much to protect all those valued habitats and landscapes in the past.

If he were to reply to this point, I am sure the Minister would say, “Of course, you always look on the bleak side.” I think I have due cause to do so when it comes in the same Queen’s Speech that contains the Brexit freedoms Bill, which seeks—for no apparent reason—to rip up the regulations we have had from the European Union in recent decades, 80% of which were environmental. Some of them, such as the habitats directive, have been the cornerstone of environmental protection for our nightingales and bitterns and all our most precious wildlife. Noble Lords can see why I am concerned, with a Queen’s Speech that has both a planning Bill and a Brexit freedoms Bill, about what that might mean for our planning.

In the last couple of seconds before I sit down, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, there is nothing in that Bill on animal welfare, removing foie gras or banning fur. We have a genetic precision technology Bill, which people in this country have consistently said they do not want. In opening, the Minister said the reason for doing this was to ally with other major economies. Our biggest market for food is the European Union, which has banned this completely, so I presume she means America. I for one do not want to take animal welfare lessons from a country which has growth hormones in its meat and chlorine-washes its chicken. We can do better than that.