Environment Bill

Debate between Earl of Devon and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, is not here, so I call the next speaker, the noble Earl, Lord Devon.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, it is a regret that we have to group so many important amendments together due to the shortness of time and the Government’s self-imposed deadline of November for the passage of this Bill. This group of amendments raises a lot of very interesting issues, particularly the Government’s well-received extension of biodiversity net gain to nationally significant infrastructure projects, of which I too am greatly supportive.

I am equally sympathetic to the suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, to extend biodiversity net gain requirements to other major infrastructure projects. I note, however, that the detail of how the Government’s extension of biodiversity net gain is to be delivered remains to be worked out. It does not appear that we will know details of that for some time, so we are legislating once again in something of a vacuum.

I raised this issue of uncertainty at Second Reading and was not afforded a clear response. It would be helpful if the Minister were able to explain in his response the impact he expects his amendment to have on land use within England. How much land will be required to offset biodiversity loss by nationally significant infrastructure projects, for example, in the 10 years from 2025? It will also be interesting to know how much land the Secretary of State will require to deliver the biodiversity credits to be made available under Clause 94, particularly subsection (6)(b).

The reason why this is relevant is that we have an ever-increasing demand on land use from rewilding and wildlife corridors to trees, species abundance, nature recovery and conservation strategies—the three tiers of environmental land management—as well as surging demand for housing and renewable energy, including biomass, all of which sit alongside the basic and ever-increasing needs to feed the nation on healthy and nutritious food without further degrading our environment. I am concerned that we are layering worthy environmental ambition upon ambition with the view to parading some world-leading ecological credentials to COP 26, but without giving enough thought to how we practically will deliver these targets with the very limited amount of land within our beloved island.

As to specifics, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in welcoming the application of biodiversity net gain to the marine environment. This is of particular interest to the south-west of England, which offers such prospects for large-scale offshore ecosystem services, including wind, tide and wave energy, together with considerable natural capital assets within our inshore waters, foreshores and estuaries.

I would resist the efforts of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, to introduce a perpetuity requirement to biodiversity gains. Perpetuity is a very long time and, given the pressure on land use, of which I have already spoken, we will do ourselves no favours to be tying up particular areas of land with well-intentioned obligations born at the beginning of the 21st century, when we transparently still know so little about what we need to achieve and the means by which we will get there. The only thing we can be confident about now is how little we know of the wondrous workings of nature. We should not commit ourselves to perpetual land use policies now. Rather, we will, as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, noted, need the flexibility of properly drafted conservation covenants, one hopes executed by deed, to which we will return in the coming days.

Finally, as always, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, proposes a series of helpful and clarificatory amendments to Clause 93. I hope that the Minister will consider adopting them on Report. Measurable standards are going to be key to the success of biodiversity net gain.