King’s Speech (4th Day)

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my various environmental interests and as chair of the Royal Veterinary College, which runs the London BioScience Innovation Centre, the first bioscience innovation centre London has ever had.

I decided not to speak in the environment section of the King’s Speech debate because I thought it was more important to say environmental things to Ministers for the economy, for growth and for infrastructure. Climate change, the environment, biodiversity and nature recovery are all central to the UK’s future economic growth.

I have three things to say. First, clean energy technology and other environmental technologies will be vital to the UK’s response to climate change. But that is not all they are: they are also key industries for the future in which we can compete internationally and create jobs and growth. My noble friend Lord Vallance said, quite rightly, that the UK’s science base was world class, but over the past few years we have lagged seriously behind in bringing innovation to market. Investment in green innovation technology and jobs can reverse that and I welcome those elements of the King’s Speech that talk about investment measures.

We need to take seriously, as part of this process, the concerns that have been raised by Universities UK and all our universities about the ongoing financial viability of the important university sector in delivering both science and skills for growth. Our UK growth potential is about technologies not just for carbon reduction and climate change mitigation but for adapting to the impacts of climate change that are so clearly already happening worldwide. Basically, it is getting hotter and wetter. The global insurance industry has been warning about this for a long time, saying that huge costs lie down the road. But huge costs mean huge market opportunities, so the UK should use its science excellence to devise solutions to the impacts of climate change globally, not only helping international communities but developing new UK international businesses and promoting growth.

Secondly, we should not throw the baby out with the bath water. The Government were right to identify that changes are needed to the way we do things if we are to achieve a step change in growth and I welcome the enhancements to the Crown Estate’s powers and the planning and infrastructure Bill—although much will lie in the detail.

Nationally important infrastructure and new housing and energy developments need to happen faster, but they also need to maintain the ecosystems on which a thriving economy depends. They also have to embrace nature-based solutions. Although I hesitate to use any American phraseology when it is clear that US politics cannot currently walk, talk and chew gum simultaneously, we need to learn to be able to do just that, in order to deliver for both growth and the environment at the same time. It is not either/or but both/and.

The third thing I will talk about is the potential for stoking up conflict. Infrastructure and other planning decisions may well need to be made centrally to ensure that they do not get mired in local opposition, but we must not assume that that central decision-making will make the opposition go away. Government needs tools and mechanisms to enable local engagement and dialogue if we are not to feel the flames from umpteen disgruntled local communities. In my experience, that is a very quick way to lose a majority.

This is where my oft-touted land use framework comes in—I have actually got to three minutes and thirty-nine seconds before mentioning it. The heated debate over the location of infrastructure and housing is just one element of a multiply heated debate about wider competing priorities for land use—not just infrastructure and housing but land for food security, flood risk management, carbon reduction, nature-based solutions and protecting our water supplies and rivers for recreation and health. A land use framework, to which I understand the Government are committed—I would like that confirmed—should develop principles that would allow us, as a nation and locally, to optimise the use of the scarce resources that land represents and make more rational decisions about what goes where. Vitally, it would also offer a conflict resolution process, promoting national and local engagement and dialogue around competing land uses and enabling stakeholders and communities to feel “done with” rather than “done to”. That is vital for economic growth.

I will give one example before the wrath of the Chief Whip falls on me. Communities offered starter homes for their kids, community energy schemes with cheaper electricity and local nature-rich areas can see a benefit to themselves of housing developments or solar and wind farms—or even nuclear power stations—but they need to be given that rounded picture of what land is for and where they lie in the beneficiary tree. So “doing with” and not “doing to” is vital for growth.

I will also incur the wrath of the Chief Whip by saying that I want a land use commission to run this process and, ideally, I would like to chair it.