Water (Special Measures) Bill [HL]

Baroness Willis of Summertown Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 20th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to government Amendment 48. I am extremely grateful to the Government for bringing forward this amendment, which reflects the substance of the amendment that I and others brought forward in Committee, and I am happy to support it by putting my name to it. That debate showed that there was a clear case for Ofwat doing more on environmental issues, and I thank the Minister and her officials for their extremely productive approach, openness in meetings and willingness to work together to address these concerns. I am really pleased that we now have on the face of the Bill a new duty for Ofwat to have regard to the need to contribute to our climate change and environmental targets when exercising its functions. It is so critical that this is factored into decision-making, so that opportunities to contribute to these targets are not missed or deprioritised.

While I am grateful for the progress we have made in seeking to redress the imbalance, it would have been preferable to have a stronger duty than “have regard to”. I know the reasons for using this language, but my previous wording, which would have obligated Ofwat to

“take all reasonable steps to contribute to”

our climate and nature targets, would have provided a stronger obligation without caveats. Therefore, I very much hope that the progress we have made today is just the start of wider changes to ensure better environmental outcomes in our water industry. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that the question of how Ofwat will balance environmental duties and deal with the related trade-offs with other economic and consumer objectives will be looked at in detail as part of the water commission’s work.

I also want to raise the important issue of adaptation. My original amendment contained an additional limb which was intended to ensure that adapting to the current or predicted impacts of climate change, as identified in the most recent report of the Climate Change Committee, would also be part of Ofwat’s remit when exercising its functions. In discussions, the Minister said that adaptation is covered by the resilience strategic priority. However, this does not directly link back to current Adaptation Committee reports. I hope this too will be examined by the water commission, because in spite of having the resilience objective, this has not so far led to the new reservoirs we urgently need for housing and drought resilience. More clearly does need to happen, and I would be grateful for any assurances the Minister can give regarding adaptation.

I also welcome government Amendment 42. I hope that this will be a step forward in increasing the use of and spend on nature-based solutions, and lead to their greater and more systematic use to address adaptation issues such as flooding and drought.

Amendment 44, in the name of my noble friend Lady Boycott—who sends her apologies—is the same as the one tabled in Committee. It addresses the very real issue of water companies not being transparent with environmental data, and specifically does three things. First, subsection (1) would provide statutory underpinning to the Fish Legal case, making it beyond challenge that water companies are, and will remain, public authorities for the purposes of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. This is necessary because, if it is not in legislation, its overturning by a future ruling remains a distinct possibility.

Secondly, proposed new subsection (2) would cut through the delaying tactics and refusals by water companies to make it clear that effluent and wastewater treatment data must, as a minimum, be proactively published by water companies. The water companies will be required by law to publish it up front, without anyone having to ask. This would be consistent with the expectation of transparency that we are setting though the Bill.

Thirdly, proposed new subsection (3) would amend the appeal and enforcement provisions in the 2004 regulations to allow members of the public to complain directly to the Information Commissioner about data not being proactively published—which they cannot at present.

In Committee, in response to this amendment, the Minister said that, while the Government supported the principle of transparency, these

“specific proposals duplicate pre-existing provisions and would create practical difficulties”.—[Official Report, 30/10/24; col. 1186.]

However, we have looked, we cannot find these pre-existing provisions and we do not understand what the practical difficulties would be. All we are asking is for sewerage undertakers to publish data that they hold and which, under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, they are meant to publish but do not because the regulations are effectively unenforceable.

Noble Lords and the Minister may have seen over the weekend an article in the Observer, which has already been mentioned, about precisely this issue. United Utilities has been fighting a legal challenge that has been brought upon it to not give the public access to environmental data on its—to be generous—“potential” pollution of Lake Windermere. First, it claimed that the phosphorus data was not environmental information, then that it was internal communication. Obviously, this is environmental. ICO agrees and has said that it should be published—but still it has not been.

In this example, we can see that some sewerage companies will not behave in the public interest unless forced to do so. In this amendment, we have an opportunity to address these refusals to be transparent. It would go some way to removing their supposed legal defence, forcing them to co-operate. I really hope that the Minister can get behind this today, as the only thing that will help here is words in statute. If there are specific concerns with the drafting, we would welcome her amending it at Third Reading.

In conclusion, I reiterate my thanks to the Minister and her team. We have made important progress for climate and nature in this Bill and we will start to see delivery of better outcomes for our precious river and coastal ecosystems.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, my Amendment 49 puts a clear and unambiguous environmental duty on Ofwat. It gives the authority a primary duty to protect the environment. I am well aware that the Government probably will come round to the Greens’ way of thinking in 10 or 15 years and that perhaps this side of the Chamber might come round to our way of thinking in 25 or 30 years, but we have to care now about our environment and our planet. What we have passed so far, although very welcome, is just not enough.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, said, natural flood management is proving to be a cost-effective way of reducing flood risk, far cheaper than traditional construction involving lots of concrete. Water companies should be investing in these nature-based solutions to reduce the infrastructure cost of handling service water run-off, because every litre of water that soaks into the ground is a litre of water that does not flood into the water treatment system.

I have two requests of the Minister. Will the government amendments now provide a baseline so the Minister can take forward a piece of work to expand the use of natural flood management, especially where it is significantly cheaper than other methods? Secondly, will the Government please put these climate and nature amendments on the face of their Bills at drafting stage, rather than having to amend them down the line?

Water (Special Measures) Bill [HL]

Baroness Willis of Summertown Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 28th October 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Willis of Summertown]

1: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Purpose(1) The purpose of this Act is to put in place measures to address river pollution by water companies and water and sewerage companies.(2) The Secretary of State and, as the case may be, the Water Services Regulation Authority must have regard to the purpose set out in subsection (1) in implementing the provisions of this Act, and in doing so must also have regard to—(a) the need to meet the biodiversity targets set under sections 1 (environmental targets) and 3 (environmental targets: species abundance) of the Environment Act 2021, and(b) the current or predicted impacts of climate change identified in the most recent report under section 56 of the Climate Change Act 2008 (report on impact of climate change).”

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I will also speak to Amendment 91 in my name. These amendments seek to set a strategic direction for the Bill and, crucially, to apply a new duty on the water regulator to take account of—and take all reasonable steps to ensure that Ofwat and, by extension, the water companies that it regulates, contribute to—our targets under the Climate Change Act and the Environment Act. It would have immediate effect outside the price review process by applying climate and nature considerations into yearly in-period determinations. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Young of Old Scone, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, as well as the Blueprint Coalition, for their support.

As the first speaker in Committee, and conscious that I was not here at Second Reading, I will quickly say that I fully support the general intent of the Bill and note that this is just one stage of the Government’s wider plans for tackling water pollution. While I do not have major issues with what is in the Bill, it presents us with a legislative opportunity to strengthen the regulator to ensure that Ofwat has the duty to contribute to the delivery of our climate change and nature targets. This is a key chance to modernise Ofwat’s remit and ensure that it is fit for purpose.

As we all know and hear daily, the water industry has a huge impact on our natural environment. Its shortcomings and their effects are well documented—I will not repeat them here—but it is not just the shortcomings of the water industry. It is hard to imagine that these shortcomings would have been possible with a regulator which had a remit that also ensured it took these issues seriously. But the fault, or reason, does not lie simply with Ofwat. It lies with the duties it has—or, more importantly, does not have—which have been legislated by this Parliament over the past three decades. In short, there is a misbalance between what Ofwat currently does and prioritises and what the Government and the public would like us to do: ensure that industry cleans up its act.

In Ofwat’s duties there is no mention of climate change—which is going to make its job harder as we experience more erratic weather events—or biodiversity, on which we have binding targets that will be impossible to achieve without putting an end to sewage pollution in our rivers. We can all acknowledge that the regulators are busy and, without these targets on their list of things to do, this will continue to fall by the wayside or be deprioritised, as it so obviously has been in recent years. That is why I have tabled Amendment 91, which would help the Government and the public to ensure that a greater contribution is made by the sector. With a clear duty, it would mean that the regulator has to further two of the Government’s core aims.

Amendment 91 would amend the Water Industry Act 1991, which established Ofwat, to require it to take all reasonable steps, in exercising its powers, to contribute to the achievement of our biodiversity targets under the Environment Act and our net-zero targets under the Climate Change Act, and to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Such a duty is currently missing from Ofwat’s governance.

Ofwat’s current primary duty, set under Section 2 of the Water Industry Act in 1991, is

“to further the consumer objective … to protect the interests of consumers, wherever appropriate by promoting effective competition”.

Section 3 goes on to state that Ofwat’s work to further the conservation of flora and fauna should be undertaken only as far as is consistent with the primary consumer objective. This clear subordination of environmental considerations to economic ones was not corrected by the introduction of a rather muddled resilience objective in 2014 and was actively exacerbated by the 2024 imposition of a new statutory growth duty on Ofwat

“to have regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth”.

In a speech in the other place last Wednesday, the Secretary of State announced an independent water commission that

“will ensure that we have the robust regulatory framework that we need to attract the significant investment that is required to clean up our waterways”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/10/24; col. 279.]

That is good and welcome, as is the text in the notes that it must consider alignment with net-zero objectives. However, I went back through it and did a word search. Nature is mentioned once in the notes and there is no mention at all of biodiversity or of consideration of alignment with our mandatory targets for biodiversity, as outlined in the Environment Act and associated secondary legislation.

Is it relevant that we are asking Ofwat and, through it, our water companies to look at the biodiversity and water targets? Over the weekend, I went back and looked at the 2030 species abundance target, which was one of the biodiversity targets that was published as a statutory instrument in January 2023. I counted the list of species that will contribute to this target; included are 244 freshwater invertebrate species, which absolutely require clean water; 40 species of birds that forage and nest in riverine environments—that is 25% of the total list of bird species; and 48 plant species associated with, or growing in, rivers, streams or marshy freshwater environments, which is 22% of the plant list. By the most basic calculation, almost a quarter of the plants and birds on our species abundance list—the list that will be used to check whether we meet those targets—and 100% of our freshwater invertebrates rely on clean, unpolluted rivers to thrive, yet we have no statutory purpose or duty for Ofwat to look at this. Many of those species will not recover unless we improve the quality of our rivers, so this is a fundamental part of what we should be looking at. We urgently need every water company to acknowledge the Environment Act targets and for Ofwat to measure their performance against them.

It may well be argued that this would be covered by the independent water commission review, but there is an issue of timing as well. Even if these biodiversity targets are included as part of the consultation outlined by the Secretary of State last week in the other place, it will not, as stated, have any findings until the first half of 2025; and because of the current price review processes, changes will likely not come into effect until 2029 to 2030, which, if I have understood correctly, means they would be implemented after the biodiversity target to halt species decline in 2030 has come and gone. Perhaps the Minister can clarify on this.

A review is not legislation—I do not need to remind people in this Committee of that. Legislating for a climate and nature duty for Ofwat early in this Parliament would allow benefits to accrue ahead of the looming environmental deadlines falling at the end of Parliament, including the previously stated 2030 biodiversity targets. If we do this now, with a duty that will come into force in 2025, we can build these environmental objectives into work on the next price review from the start, as well as applying climate and nature considerations into yearly in-period determinations and everyday decision-making.

In summary, it would be counterproductive not to take this opportunity to give Ofwat a new duty to help ensure that we meet our climate and, crucially, Environment Act habitat and species targets. I hope we can find some agreement there.

The public were clear at the election that they expected change and that protecting and restoring our environment, including biodiversity, is a priority. This amendment would be a simple, proportionate, pragmatic and positive change that we could make today. I beg to move.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I will be brief because the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, has set out clearly the case for a duty for Ofwat to deliver on the Government’s biodiversity and climate change objectives. I just want to pick up on the point about the review, because I think the Minister will say, “This is a fantastic amendment, but we just need to wait for the review”, and there are three reasons why this Committee will find that response unsatisfactory.

The first point is that made by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, which is around the timing of the review, which we all welcome, but we do not know when exactly it is going to finish. Of course, by the time it is in legislation, and we do not know when there is going to be a slot, we could have missed our biodiversity targets, let alone our climate target.

Secondly, there is nothing in this amendment which is not already Government-stated policy. It is Government-stated policy to deliver on our biodiversity objectives, to move towards our climate change objectives, and to adapt to respond to those. So why do we need to wait for the review? There is nothing about putting this in legislation now which is counter to the Government’s position and therefore there is no barrier.

Thirdly, the wording is rather clever. It does not say “Ofwat”; it talks about “the Authority”. So, whatever the review decides, it is relevant. It is also clever because it says that it must “take all reasonable steps”. Again, it is not precluding or being prescriptive about that future authority; it is just setting the parameters.

It is a very well-crafted amendment and I think the Committee will be deeply disappointed if the Minister comes back and just says we should wait for the review. It would also make us question what the point of the review is, and we would not wish to do that because we have the highest regard for the Minister. If the Government are not prepared at this stage to put in the Bill that part of the review is to ensure that we deliver on our environmental and climate targets, then how can we be sure the review is going off on the right foot?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, for her interest in and general support for the Bill. I am sure that, despite missing Second Reading, she will make a very valuable contribution to Committee.

As I set out at Second Reading, the purpose of this Bill is deliberately narrow in order to improve water industry performance as an urgent priority. On her Amendment 1, I agree with the noble Baroness that addressing the wider issue of river pollution arising from water and sewerage companies’ operations is of critical importance, as of course is meeting our biodiversity targets. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said that she hoped I was not going to just refer to the review, and I am sure she will be delighted to know that I am not.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, made the important point that we already have commitments in law on this; we already have targets that we need to be meeting on biodiversity and the wider environment. It is important to stress that we must have regard to the Climate Change Act in this space. The Government are already required to meet the legally binding targets under the Environment Act 2021 and the Climate Change Act 2008, and to set out their plans to adapt to the impacts of the changing climate.

As the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, just mentioned, we are doing a rapid review of the environmental improvement plan. This is because we are serious about meeting the Environment Act’s biodiversity targets. We did not feel that it was fit for purpose to meet those targets, which is why we are doing this review—to protect and restore our natural environment and come up with a delivery focus to help meet very ambitious targets.

Ofwat—I think the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, mentioned this—has a core duty under Section 2A of the Water Industry Act 1991 to work towards strengthening resilience. This duty ensures that Ofwat is already required to promote long-term planning for water companies to adapt to environmental pressures, including climate change. I take on board the comments of my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone, who felt that Ofwat at some point lost the plot. This is why we need to look at the role of regulators through the review—I am afraid I will be mentioning the review from time to time today.

I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, is reassured that the Government share her ambition to tackle the wider issues of river pollution, biodiversity and climate change. I hope she understands that, because we feel we are already acting in this space through legislation that is in place, we will not accept Amendment 1.

Amendment 91 was also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis. In addition to the duty under Section 2A, Ofwat has a core duty under the Water Industry Act to work to ensure the long-term resilience of water companies’ supply and sewerage systems. Furthermore, on 23 October the Government announced the independent commission into the water sector and its regulation. This is intended to be the largest review of the industry since it was privatised, and part of the development of further legislation, not just a review. We want it to have a positive end in tackling the problems we see in our water industry. The objectives of this independent commission will include ensuring that the water industry regulatory framework delivers long-term stability to restore our rivers, lakes and seas to good health, to meet the challenges of the future and drive economic growth.

I hope the disappointment of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, will be replaced with excitement when he sees that these will form the basis of this further legislation to attract long-term investment and set out recommendations to deliver a collaborative, strategic and, importantly, catchment approach to managing water, tackling pollution and restoring nature.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, made a specific point about the impact assessment. I do not have the assessment in front of me, so I am not entirely sure what section she was referring to. I hope she and I can catch up following Committee and discuss this, so I can answer her questions in more detail.

The commission’s terms of reference do include environmental aspects. The commission’s objectives include to “support best value delivery” of environmental outcomes, and to:

“Rationalise and clarify requirements on water companies”


to achieve better environmental outcomes. Furthermore, under “approach and deliverables”, it says that the chair

“will invite views from an advisory group of nominated experts, covering areas including the environment”,

and

“will also seek views from wider groups of stakeholders, including environmental campaigners”.

Therefore, we are trying to make sure that, as well as meeting the targets already in legislation, we put the environment at the heart of what we are doing.

I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, is reassured that these two new Clauses are unnecessary as they overlap with existing government requirements, Ofwat’s core duties and our ambitions for the future. I hope she will take an active part in what we are trying to achieve with the commission, and I thank noble Lords for their engagement on these important matters.

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

I thank the Minister and everybody else who has contributed to this discussion on my amendment. I am not going to repeat the valid and important points that have been made, but I will respond to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, on the term “caution on costs”. There is a lot of debate about costs, and nature-based solutions can often be much cheaper while also elevating biodiversity. For the last 20 years we have been told to be cautious about costs and on-costs, and as a result our species targets have gone down and down. The time has come to redress that balance, and I look forward to debating this another time.

On the commission, I appreciate the Minister’s comment that we already have commitments to the environment in the Environment Act and the Climate Change Act. However, I was shocked when I discovered over the weekend that, according to the list of protected species that we want to stop the decline of by 2030—not 2035—25% of plants and birds and 100% of freshwater invertebrate species rely on clean rivers. Therefore, while I am delighted about the commission and will absolutely get behind it and join in, it is going to be too slow and too late to achieve the biodiversity targets we set out in the Environment Act. I look forward to picking up this issue on Report, but for now I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

Environmental Targets (Public Authorities) Bill [HL]

Baroness Willis of Summertown Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in full support of my noble friend Lord Krebs’ Environmental Targets Bill, specifically the need for public authorities’ duties to be aligned with climate and nature recovery targets.

My noble friend has already eloquently explained many of the reasons why we need the Bill, but I want to give another two important ones. First, the Environment Act targets as set out in secondary legislation have so far proved insufficient to improve the slow pace of delivery on our overarching nature recovery and climate aims, because some of the interim targets are not binding. In addition, some are far from perfect. They are set far into the future and are not easy for those responsible for delivery to interpret.

I will illustrate this with an example target from secondary legislation for marine protected areas:

“Before the … 31st December 2042 the number of protected features”


which

“… are in ‘favourable condition’ is … not less than 70% of the total number of”

all

“protected features within”

a marine protected area. After 35 years as an ecological scientist, I would not know where to begin on this target, and I do not think I would be alone in that.

Secondly, a point very relevant to the Bill, to which my noble friend alluded, is that most public bodies were established well before climate change and nature became national priorities. Many of these public bodies —for example, National Parks England—have solely economic objectives, which is why the Bill is needed to bring them up to date.

Can we do that on a piecemeal basis? It has been tried, often via amendments in this House, and has sometimes met resistance. One such effort, on the Crown Estate Bill, was dismissed as unnecessary earlier this week; I hope that the Minister will look kindly on the amendment I tabled yesterday to the water Bill.

Let me give noble Lords a specific example of this approach not working. At the end of last year, when the protected landscapes amendment to the then levelling-up Bill came into force, a requirement was placed on public bodies to further the objectives of protected landscapes; this included mitigating and adapting to climate change. Yet nothing has happened since then. We are still at a point where only 6% of national parks are managed effectively for nature and only a quarter of the SSSIs in national parks are in a favourable state, compared with the national average of 33%.

Can the measures proposed in the Bill work, or will this be just another set of hollow targets? We have some evidence suggesting that they can work. My noble friend Lord Krebs mentioned Climate Emergency UK, which publishes council climate action scorecards to rate local authorities’ progress towards climate targets. The Scottish councils, which have a statutory duty on climate action, score the highest of any councils in the country—well above the 52 councils in England and Northern Ireland, which have no statutory duty and are failing miserably on these climate targets. Once it becomes a statutory duty, it absolutely focuses attention and leads to action. Ensuring that all public bodies have an environmental recovery objective as part of their remits would be co-ordinated and impactful and would drive progress towards the various environmental targets. This Private Member’s Bill has my full support.

Environment (Local Nature Recovery Strategies) (Procedure) Regulations 2023

Baroness Willis of Summertown Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Willis of Summertown]

That this House regrets that the Environment (Local Nature Recovery Strategies) (Procedure) Regulations 2023 and accompanying guidance give insufficient clarity of purpose and, combined with the approach taken by the Government, will impact on the practical implementation of the guidance and the achievement of the Government’s environmental targets.

Relevant document: 36th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, formally, this is a Motion to Regret on the instrument, but really it is a Motion to Regret the lost opportunity to halt the decline of biodiversity in the UK. We are now one of the most species-depauperate countries in the world. The UK not only comes at the bottom of the list of G7 countries in terms of the amount of biodiversity retained—it is also third from the bottom of the list of all European countries, ahead of only Ireland and Malta.

This really serious situation that we face as a country in terms of declining biodiversity has been stated many times in this House and in the other place, and ambitious targets to restore nature have been most recently outlined in the Environment Act. For example, in January we had secondary legislation laid on environmental targets, which contained legally binding targets for restoration of certain species in areas with important habitats. These legally binding targets include protecting and restoring at least 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitats by 31 December 2042; ending species decline by 2030; and our 30 by 30 target, which the Minister knows as well as I do, to protect 30% of our land and ocean by 2030. So we should all be really heartened by these ambitious targets—I certainly was—but they do not describe the specific mechanisms by which these targets are to be delivered on the ground. For this, we were promised secondary legislation, such as the instrument that we have before us today, on the local nature recovery strategies.

The point of this statutory instrument is to enable the delivery of a consensual process whereby 48 local nature partnerships across England will map out what remains of the important habitats in their county and then develop a plan for nature recovery. The intention is that these spatial plans for biodiversity recovery will then influence critical land-use decisions and be used alongside strategic planning for food, infrastructure and other land uses. So far, so good—but when it was published in May, a couple of months ago, I and many others were really dismayed by the content of these local nature recovery strategies and the regulations delivered by the secondary legislation. I would go so far as to say that I simply do not believe that what we have in front of us in secondary legislation will achieve the purpose that it is set out to deliver, which is to reverse England’s biodiversity loss.

I want to express my regret for three missed opportunities in this legislation. First, I regret the fact that in the guidance there is no mention of the specific legally binding targets, which I have just mentioned, set out in the environment targets regulations, published in January. Instead, the guidance refers to the vague sentence that strategies

“should also reflect what contribution the strategy area can make to national environmental objectives, commitments and targets”.

It does go on to say

“including those legally binding targets established by the Act”,

but what that means in practice is that each of the 48 partnerships, which in themselves will have another 30 or 40 members, will have to come up with their own individual targets and priorities of recovering and enhancing biodiversity and hopefully—I am not sure how—they are all going to add up to meet the Government’s legally binding targets.

I simply cannot understand how this will work without some overarching centralised co-ordination and specifically determined species and habitat targets provided, as a starting point if nothing else, for each county. In effect, we are asking all 48 authorities to work in the dark. Equally problematic under this heading is the fact that there is almost no guidance given to identifying or creating corridors for nature. Without enabling wildlife to move across landscapes, we end up with a series of islands surrounded by a desert of agricultural land or a desert of an urban area. The islands become smaller and smaller, and that is an absolutely guaranteed way to lose species, for species to go extinct.

I know the Minister understands the importance of nature recovery and corridors, which we have discussed many times, but how can he be sure that the local nature recovery strategies we have in front of us will actually add up to these overall targets, which are legally binding? Because there is no mention of it in any of this statutory guidance.

Closely linked to this is my second regret, which is that the local nature recovery strategy guidance is totally silent on output format and the development of a centralised platforms. All we have is regulation 19, which requires that local authorities publish their local nature recovery strategies on their own council websites or, if they cannot do that, they can create their own website and put a link back to the council website. In practice, this means the creation of 48 different websites and, very likely, 48 different formats for the local nature recovery strategies of each of the 48 partnerships.

There is also no guidance or requirement for a centralised data deposition, so the data could all be in completely different formats and we would have no idea how it all added up to meet the legally binding targets we agreed in January. Again, I simply cannot understand how this will work. It will make it even more difficult to determine a transparent overall picture across England and to know how we are doing on reaching these legally binding targets. So I would appreciate it if the Minister would explain how his department will support a regularly updated digital platform for local nature recovery strategies that is transparent, digital and consistent, so that everyone is starting with a level playing field, both the public and developers alike. I sincerely hope that this is an area that we can make some progress on.

Probably the most worrying, and my third and final regret, is that the statutory guidance does not set out how the strategies, once developed, will actually inform decision-making. There is a duty for public bodies to “have regard” for local nature recovery strategies. This, quite frankly, is feeble. We know that it will not change decisions on planning, licensing or incentives for better land management. There is one phrase that I find it equally worrying in terms of governance in the accompanying guidance for landowners:

“The strategies do not force the owners or managers of the land identified to make any changes. Instead, the government is encouraging action through, for example, opportunities for funding and investment”.


So, in effect, there is no requirement for owners or managers of land on which potentially important habitats are located to do anything if they do not wish to, nor is there any clarification on incentives to take part—for example, through payments via the Environmental Land Management Scheme.

To summarise, even though the Government have just announced a really welcome £14 million pot to fund local nature recovery strategies, all the effort and expenditure could be wasted if they do not actually influence what is happening on the ground due to this vague guidance on targets, lack of centralised co-ordination and extremely weak governance on their delivery. I would go as far as to say that, while the legal link between local nature recovery strategies and decisions by public authorities is weak, I actually regret that no amount of guidance can fill the gap, even if it were significantly better guidance than we have today, due to this very weak governance. I look forward to the Minister’s response and just note that we could make progress on this issue in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, where noble Lords across the House are supporting amendments to fix the legal weaknesses at the heart of the problem.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, who has made an excellent case today as to why the omissions in these regulations need to be urgently addressed.

Throughout the development of local nature recovery strategies, we have been hugely supportive of the concept. There is no doubt that they have the potential to be an important vehicle for the delivery of many of our environmental ambitions set out in the Environment Act. Already, around the country, councils are coming together at county level to address the challenges of meeting our environmental targets locally, and they want to make the process work. However, as the Minister knows, we already have concerns about the status of those local nature recovery strategies once they are produced. Without the right legislative underpinning, there is a risk that much of their work will go to waste and we will lose the enthusiasm and good will of those involved in the process.

Under the current wording of the Environment Act, planning authorities are required only to have regard to the LNRS as part of a general biodiversity duty. That is why the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and I have tabled an amendment to the levelling-up Bill which would require local planning authorities to deliver the objectives of the relevant local nature recovery strategy in their development plans. We will debate this further when the amendment comes up on Report, and I hope that we can make some progress at that point in resolving the issue. I am very grateful to the Minister for meeting us to discuss this last week. I hope that he is able to come back with a little more information—we were rather hoping for some alternative proposals. Given that the amendment is potentially due next week, we are running out of time. I just say that as a general nudge. I mention it also because it is symptomatic of a very narrow interpretation of the role of local nature recovery strategies, combined with overreliance on guidance notes rather than the formal statutory underpinning which can deliver real change.

I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, made a very powerful case for the combined local nature recovery strategies to connect up and form a national nature recovery network. This could provide the essence of the well-known Lawton ambition of “bigger, better and more joined up”, which everyone understands to be the holy grail of nature recovery. But nowhere in these regulations is this spelled out as an objective. There is no requirement for county-based representatives to look over the border to see what approach their neighbours are taking. There is no overarching objective of joined-up corridors across the country which could facilitate the spread of flora and fauna across wide landscapes. There is no requirement to look at the wider geographic challenges or to use the opportunities that the current protected landscapes such as national parks and AONBs could provide.

While there is a role for Natural England in advising on the habitat and species priorities, there is no obligation for wider collaboration between local nature recovery partnerships or for a national map to be produced. Why has Defra largely omitted the need for such national connectivity from the regulations and guidance, which the noble Baroness has been a great champion of and has made a powerful case for today?

There is a further obstacle to the development of a national nature recovery plan in that each local authority is required to publish its recovery strategy on its website. That is good, but there is no requirement for these websites to be on a shared platform. There is a danger that we will end up with 48 individual proposals, with artificial political boundaries, that bear no relation to one other in the language used, impact on habitat and species revival, and other deliverables towards the targets. Equally, there is no requirement for quality control, so the local nature recovery strategies may well vary in scope, evidence and ambition.

Can the Minister explain whether a national online platform for LNRSs is being considered, and how we can be assured that a quality assurance programme will be enacted to ensure that the objectives set out in the Environment Act really are being delivered? I look forward to his response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Very soon—it will not happen slowly. While local nature recovery strategies should consider both habitats and species, this guidance refers more often to habitats. This is because habitat types give a helpful indication of an area’s general environmental characteristics, including which species it is likely to support and what environmental benefits it may provide.

Responsible authorities should refer to habitat types throughout their statement of biodiversity priorities to help them link together and connect the statement to the local habitat map. This is not in any way suggesting that habitats are more important than species. The importance of species is repeatedly highlighted throughout the guidance. I take the noble Baroness’s point, but I hope that we are moving in the right direction.

For nature to recover we need people to work together and, crucially, the people who decide how land is used and managed to be involved in identifying nature recovery proposals. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is right that farmers are pivotal in this. The best available data and the insights of experts such as the noble Baroness are hugely important too. We know that we need to target our efforts where they will achieve the most. Understanding this requires expertise and evidence, and the need for local nature recovery strategies to be evidence based is stated clearly in the statutory guidance. Our experts in Natural England have a crucial role to play.

The local nature recovery strategy regulations make Natural England a “supporting authority” in the preparation of all strategies. This gives it a strong say in what each strategy includes and in providing further guidance and advice if needed. We are keen that other experts also engage with the preparation of strategies in areas that they are interested in, to help strengthen and improve them, and they will have the opportunity to do so. As a Berkshire boy, I will be very upset if they are not talking to Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and any other surrounding areas producing these. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, made the point about getting people from Cornwall and Devon to get on and talk to each other. That will be an achievement that he will be able to look back on as something that is good not only for those two counties but for nature.

This input from technical experts needs to be part of a wider open and collaborative approach—this will ensure that each strategy also benefits from local knowledge and understanding of the conditions on the ground—and to help build support for the action to be delivered. This is because local nature recovery strategies are designed to encourage and incentivise landowners and managers into making positive changes, not to force them to do so. Biodiversity net gain, the biodiversity duty on public authorities, planning policy, and private and public funding will work together to encourage action to be taken, with progress reviewed every few years and plans updated to reflect what has been done and what still needs to be done.

I know from previous conversations that the noble Baroness has concerns about biodiversity net gain. However, we are starting to see, through our early-stage pilot programmes, some really exciting connectivity being delivered in places such as London. The London Wildlife Trust is delivering biodiversity net gain in south-east London, with a development which will include 4,800 new homes over the next 20 years, alongside 20 hectares of parkland, connecting it to nature reserves at Kidbrooke Green and Birdbrook Road. This is an example of the sort of project that we want to see emerging out of a variety of different things that have come from the Environment Act.

Involving the landowners and managers in the preparation process and helping them to understand both the evidence base and the support from local communities for what changes are proposed can work alongside these other measures to persuade and enable changes to be made. Part of how we encourage this engagement is by being sparing in our use of technical language. However, I assure the noble Baroness that each strategy will still have a strong technical underpinning. How many strategies have sat on local government officials’ shelves and not been accessed by the public—people who mind about their local nature reserve and mind about their little piece of England, which they want to see restored? This must be, in the words and delivery, accessible, but it must also have that technical heft. Again, the role of Natural England in supporting every responsible authority is key, explaining the importance of increasing habitat connectivity and extent in planning for nature’s recovery.

With local nature recovery strategy preparation under way across England, we are at a critical point on the road towards reversing nature’s decline. Groups such as the RSPB have responded to the progress we have made to endorse the crucial role that strategies have to play, through ensuring that local action can deliver national progress for nature’s recovery. For them to truly succeed, we need to work together and to lend our support to encouraging others to do this. I urge the noble Baroness to add her considerable expertise to this common cause, which I know that she does, and for this House to provide their clear support.

Those words that politicians say but usually do not mean, about their door always being open, I really do mean. I am very keen for the noble Baroness and others who are greatly exercised that we get this right to meet me and my officials and to ensure that they are conveying their inevitable concerns about different parts of this very important work that we are doing, so that we can get this right.

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

I thank the Minister for his response. We have had a good debate. I am mindful of time, so I will keep it short. I just say to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that I do not disagree; I think these need to be locally delivered. If you do not have local buy-in, it will not happen. All I am asking is that we also have scientific data underpinning those local delivery plans so that, at the end of the day, we can all say “Ah, species declines have stopped. Things are going up”. Without co-ordinating that centrally, I still struggle to see how we are going to add everything up.

Environmental Targets

Baroness Willis of Summertown Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That would be an absolutely extraordinary thing to do. The United Kingdom is a global leader on the environment. We are one of the leaders of the High Ambition Coalition, which is seeking to get countries right across the world to fulfil really demanding targets to protect nature, which has suffered depletion of such staggering quantity in recent decades. It is absolutely right that we continue to do this. I can tell the noble Baroness that the United Kingdom is revered abroad for the leadership we took at Glasgow and the leadership we are taking in the CBD. To diminish what we are trying to do internationally is quite extraordinary.

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, will the Government commit to not repeating the missing of dates when it comes to the 557 pieces of environmental legislation that are about to disappear next year under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I think there is a collective clunk of realisation of what it would actually take to replace that. That legislation was created for an environment that goes from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. I am sure she understands, being the expert that she is, that it is a bit clunky when it comes to dealing with the bespoke environment of these islands. It can be improved, but in a way that is at least no worse for nature, and which preferably improves it.

Environment Act 2021: Targets

Baroness Willis of Summertown Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I will not sneer at any environmentalists. I sat on the board of several NGOs before I took on this role, and I mind desperately that we continue to be a leading country in how we protect the environment. We have consulted on those targets and had 180,000 responses, which are taking some time to go through. We will produce targets that are science-based, evidence-based and cover a range of issues which were of great concern to noble Lords as we took through the Environment Act. We will honour those commitments.

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that the biodiversity targets are not just for the abundance of above-ground species but for biodiversity in the soil? Soils are a critical part of the ecosystem. They are essential for farming and for wildlife to thrive, as we heard in the previous Question. They are mentioned multiple times in the Environment Act, yet I currently see no targets for soils in the targets set by the Government.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Soils are a fundamental part of our environmental land management schemes. The soil standard in the sustainable farming incentive is key to getting those ecological systems functioning properly and to their not being viewed, as they have too often been in recent decades, as just a medium into which you can add synthetic products to produce crops or grow stock. Soils are absolutely fundamental, as is our peat standard. There will be targets to restore peatland and ensure that soils are properly functioning ecosystems. The noble Baroness is absolutely right to raise this issue.

Climate Change and Biodiversity: Food Security

Baroness Willis of Summertown Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is a great honour to address this House for the first time. I start by thanking all the staff in the Chamber of your Lordships’ House, as well as my fellow Peers, for the very warm and helpful welcome that I have received. I also commend the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for securing this debate.

I started my academic life as a palaeoecologist, which is one of those terms that makes people look very puzzled when I mention it. For the benefit of the Convenor and others who might not know, this is the study of fossil pollen, plant macrofossils and leaves contained in lake sediments over thousands of years, which you can then use to reconstruct vegetational responses to external perturbations such as climate change. This is particularly important for larger organisms, including one of our most important, our trees. If you think about it, the average generation time of most trees is 50 years. You need these longer-term records to understand how trees will respond.

This research was looking predominantly at dead plant parts, but this all changed when I went on secondment to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew for five years as its first director of science. Suddenly I was surrounded by this incredible biodiversity of plants. In fact, in a single lunchtime I could see the world in plants. When at Kew, I was responsible for around 360 scientists. Many people do not realise how many scientists there are at Kew. I was also responsible for the incredible collections in the Millennium Seed Bank, the Herbarium and the Fungarium. Since returning to Oxford from Kew, I have held a professorship in biodiversity in the department of biology, and I am also head of one of the oldest colleges in Oxford, St Edmund Hall.

Today’s debate—

“that this House takes note of the impact of climate change and bio-diversity loss on food security”—

therefore links very closely to my current and past roles. In terms of understanding the scale of biodiversity loss, some of the most startling evidence I have ever come across as an academic was when I co-led a team of scientists from all over the world to assess biodiversity trends in the last 50 years. This was as part of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. We examined thousands of records. It was incredibly depressing, because plants, animals, fungi, species, communities and genetic diversity have all declined significantly in the last 50 years. Two main drivers emerged from this biodiversity loss: land-use change and climate change.

But why should we be concerned about the impact of global biodiversity loss on food security? Often when we look at global biodiversity, we think about David Attenborough programmes and beautiful landscapes, but there is actually something much more critical here, which is its impact overall on food security. This is why: of the nearly 420,000 vascular plant species that we know about on the earth to date, just nine supply over 75% of our plant-derived calories in human diets, with wheat, rice and corn alone providing almost half of the world’s calorie intake.

These crops have been selected for decades, if not hundreds of years, for the high yields that we heard about earlier. This has resulted in high yields and the very good-tasting food that we want to eat, to buy and to feed ourselves and livestock, but as a result we have less and less genetic diversity and smaller and smaller species numbers. The loss of that genetic diversity means that in these crops we have lost our resilience to climate change.

A lot of modelling is going on, and it indicates alarmingly that with global warming of even 2 degrees Celsius, there will be a 20% to 40% reduction in cereal grain production, particularly in Asia and Africa but also in the UK. So we urgently need to restore the genetic diversity of our crops or find alternative, more climate-resilient crops, and this is where there is a critical link back to biodiversity.

Work by scientists at Kew and other institutions, notably the Crop Trust, have identified around 320 species of wild relatives of crops and more than 7,000 wild and semi-domesticated plants used by societies all over the world that are not in major production. The vast majority of these crop wild relatives and underutilised plants grow in much more extreme climates than their highly domesticated versions and, crucially, have genes that allow them to do so. They are effectively climate-resilient. We need to breed that kind of resilience back into our crops. This work is already going on. Some notable institutions, including the John Innes Centre in East Anglia, are breeding climate-resilient crops from the crop wild relatives. The species being looked at are rice, durum wheat, legumes and potatoes.

In line with United Nations sustainable development goal 2, we need to be conserving these crop wild relatives and underutilised crops, yet this is where the problem comes in. These wild relatives of crops and underutilised plants grow in the same biodiverse landscapes where we are seeing the most dramatic declines. Biodiversity loss, including of these crop wild relatives and underutilised crops, is removing in many ways our get-out-of-jail card when it comes to creating create climate-resilient crops, and we should be deeply concerned by that.

However, it is not just the impact of climate change and biodiversity above ground that we need to worry about—we have already heard some of this—it is also about the impact below ground and, in particular, the mycorrhizal fungi that are attached to 80% of terrestrial plants across the world. It is a symbiotic relationship, which means that the fungi get food from the plant and in exchange there is a network across the soil that greatly enhances the uptake of nutrients and minerals and water retention by those plants. Many plants, and many of our economic crops, have very specific mycorrhizal assemblages associated with them.

Application of mycorrhizal fungi to crops has already shown that it can increase grain yields by 16% in crops such as corn, rice, sorghum and wheat. There is now clear scientific evidence to show that this is one of the ways forward to get climate-resilient crops. However, increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, temperature and pH significantly alter the composition of fungi in the soil and affect their ability to function, so I would go as far as to say that the hidden impact below the ground of climate change and biodiversity loss might be even more significant than the impact above ground. Without the right fungi in the soils, some crops will simply not grow.

To conclude, the combination of climate change and biodiversity loss poses an extremely serious risk to global food security and, in particular, to our ability to grow high-yielding, climate-smart crops. I therefore strongly commend this Motion and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for bringing this critically important topic to the attention of your Lordships’ House.