State of Climate and Nature

Lord Barber of Chittlehampton Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

I certainly agree with the noble Baroness on the extent to which we will make far greater progress by acting in consensus and agreement together, working out how we do things jointly, than by having an often very sterile debate about whether particular things work particularly well or otherwise. As far as I am concerned, we remain in a climate emergency and in circumstances where, as I have said, we have to consider urgent adaptation at the same time as urgent mitigation. Those are very difficult things to do, and I for one am proud that the Government have not resiled from that difficult debate, particularly on issues such as mineral fuels, but have instead tried to move forward on a broad basis of support. I reflect on the fact that, when I was in the House of Commons, we had a high degree of consensus on climate change; now, we do not, and that is a sorry state of affairs. We need to get back to that as soon as possible in order that we make the progress that we all know is absolutely necessary in the end.

[Lord Barber of Chittlehampton (Lab)]

My Lords, I had the privilege of chairing the Devon land use pilot a few years ago. We learned that people think in silos but the solutions are in combinations. On Exmoor, you have water challenges and energy challenges, and challenges relating to tourism, mental health, exercise, housing, transport, wind energy and biodiversity. We have introduced white-tailed sea eagles and pine martens on Exmoor, and you can see the change happening. The real risk in this debate is that it is not sophisticated enough and falls into a set of false dichotomies, which will frustrate us—

[A noble Lord]

Question!

[Lord Barber of Chittlehampton (Lab)]

My question to the Minister is: in taking through the agenda set out in the Statement, will the Government think in the sophisticated way I have described about broad areas of land as our population grows and the challenges of every acre of land become greater and greater? I have not even mentioned food and farming, which set up the pilot that I chaired. These are important and difficult issues, and we will not get there by simply debating false dichotomies.

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

My noble friend sets the question for us all: how can we work across all the different sectors of government to get to our goal? The goal is not that action on climate change is a last-ditch attempt to try to produce a less miserable outcome for the future by mitigating, by a small amount, what is happening with global warming; it is finding a way to bring about a much better life for everybody in the context of the farming and industrial environments in which we live and the enjoyment of our personal and private lives. Joint action on adaptation and mitigation is a method of bringing about that better society. It is the most important thing we need to do to bring about a society that is not only bearable in the future but is instead a big improvement on what we have at the moment.