Climate Change: Nature-based Solutions (STC Report)

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to start the wind-up speeches in this debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, and all involved in producing this report. It was an honour and a pleasure to serve on the committee. The evidence we heard was compelling—sometimes shocking, in particular on bottom-trawling—and the recommendations that we made are important.

Our findings gave us much cause for concern. We heard about major gaps in the research and data needed to give confidence to the decisions and measures that we need to take to reduce emissions and sequester more carbon in our land and marine environments. For example, we wanted to see more on-farm trials and more research on sequestration in marine environments. However, we found that there is enormous potential in the UK to do better and to take full advantage of the potential of nature-based solutions to help us to reach net zero. While we wait for more evidence, it should not stop us taking action; the precautionary principle must apply.

We heard that we do not have enough people with the appropriate skills and knowledge to do the science, design the programmes and put them into practice. Neither is there a plan in place to achieve the skilled workforce that we need in the numbers that we need when we need them.

We heard about many problems related to farming and land use. The various government land management schemes have been too late for farmers and land managers to plan for the future of their business, and there has too little information and help on eligibility for and accessibility to the schemes, too little advice for farmers and very serious issues for tenant farmers. We heard that, although there is growing interest in investing in natural assets and environment schemes, these need to be properly regulated, on the one hand, and give greater certainty to investors about returns on the other.

Finally, we heard that there is currently no effective plan to resolve the competing demands on land. Indeed, a recent report suggested that to honour all the demands on land, we would need double the land mass we have.

Let me look at some of our recommendations, the Government’s response and ask some questions. There are many players and organisations involved in this massive mission. Two of the key ones are Natural England and the Environment Agency. We recommended that, given the growing demand for their services to fulfil government policies, they need more funding. In response, the Government tell us that they have given an uplift of £1.4 million to Defra over three years—less than £500,000 per year. How much of that will go to those two agencies? They will need more funding as the need for mitigation rises due to the increased number of extreme weather events we are seeing. I refer particularly to flood risk.

We asked for a coherent plan for skills training. The Government established a task force whose work informed the net-zero strategy of October 2021. We are told that there is £40 million in the Green Recovery Challenge Fund, of which £10 million comes from the nature recovery fund and £30 million from Nature for Climate funding. There is also a £10 million in the Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund. All this has to be applied for and is allocated competitively. I have three questions for the Minister. How much of that will go into relevant skills training? How much of it is new money? How are all the recipients of these pots of money being co-ordinated to ensure that a coherent plan for skills is developed and delivered?

We also recommended that a direct and independent expert advisory service be created to assist farmers to apply for schemes, reduce their emissions, produce food more efficiently and sustainably, sequester more carbon in their soils and protect biodiversity. The answer was another fund. It is the Future Farming Resilience Fund of £9 million, and it goes to organisations that will give free advice to farmers and support their transition towards net zero. How will farmers themselves be involved in the design of this support? Have they been asked if they want the workshops which are to be funded? Given that all farms are different, would they not find one-to-one advice more useful, based on information about their particular land, soil and business plan? Although land sparing such as tree planting can sequester more carbon, there are many effective land-sharing approaches, such as silvopasture and hedge planting. When can we expect to see the results of the relevant research on these systems?

We also recommended that the Government should be clear about what companies must do to claim that they are net zero. There seems to be a lot of greenwashing about, but there must always be additionality. Some companies claim that they have reduced the emissions from how they produce their goods or deliver their services but are allowed to ignore what happens to those goods afterwards. I am thinking of plastic goods or fossil-fuel producers such as coal mines. Offsets cannot be a substitute for reducing emissions. When can we expect to see the strong framework of standards and rules for investment in ecosystem services promised in the Government’s response? When will we see flexibility for aggregating multiple projects and combining public and private funding?

Finally, two big things stand out for me. First, we recommended that the Government produce a land use strategy. I accept that that is very difficult, given the competing demands, but someone has to do it and I should like to know from the Minister who that will be and on what scientific and policy basis. Will the Government be implementing the recommendation of the Committee on Land Use in England to create a land use commission?

The other big thing was the issue of tenant farmers. So many witnesses outlined the barriers to tenants participating in schemes to reduce their emissions and increase biodiversity that we became very concerned about their role in reaching net zero. Rents are rising, as is the cost of inputs; the security of basic payments is being withdrawn with too little certainty about what is replacing them, and tenant farmers are being asked to deliver more for the environment without impacting food security.

Tenant farmers are a large and important part of the farming community, so the Government set up a working group, under our committee colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, to review the issues and make recommendations. I was surprised by some of the figures on the very first page of her report. Sixty-four per cent of the total farmable area in England is either wholly or partly rented, a very large part of the whole. Secondly, the average length of new farm business tenancies in 2021 was three years. With a tenancy as short as that, how does anyone expect a tenant to invest in the long-term health of his soil and the productivity and biodiversity of his land?

The noble Baroness, Lady Rock, unfortunately is unable to speak today. However, her report made many excellent recommendations about how government schemes should be designed to make them “tenant proof”, to involve tenant farmers and to enable both tenants and landowners to benefit from schemes designed to fulfil government’s environmental policies. Unless those things happen, participation will be poor, farmers will go out of business and government policies will not be achieved. Could the Minister outline the Government’s response to the Rock report? The noble Baroness asked for

“an open and collaborative approach between tenants and landlords”.

This exists in some places, but by no means all. What can the Government do to make schemes fair for all and encourage this collaborative approach?