Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness Willis of Summertown

Tuesday 30th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and refer to my declaration of interests in the register.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government remain a big supporter and funder of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures. At COP 26, the UK backed the International Sustainability Standards Board to bring much-needed harmonisation to global sustainability reporting. I am pleased that the ISSB recently confirmed that it will explore a nature standard, drawing on the work of the TNFD. The Government have established a framework for once that standard is developed to assess the ISSB’s standards for suitability in the UK context.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

I thank the Minister for his response, but I worry that we are just not moving fast enough. For example, last week the Green Finance Institute published a report that found that UK firms are now highly exposed to nature risk and that nature degradation could slow down our GDP, with an estimated 12% loss in the near term. Putting that into context, that is a greater drop than we saw during the Covid pandemic. Does the Minister agree that ambitious policy is urgently needed on this, as well as mandatory disclosures against the TNFD, to enable UK companies to understand better their impacts on and risks from the environment, particularly nature and the ecosystem services that it provides?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. Assessing the Materiality of Nature-Related Financial Risks for the UK is an outstanding report, which needs to be read by chairmen of risk companies all over the world. It identifies precisely that this problem is not just about the environment but about risk. The net-zero economy grew by 9% last year. The value of net-zero technologies is now £74 billion, and the same will happen for nature. Therefore, there is an economic imperative as well as one that should drive us because we need to do the right thing for nature.

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

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness Willis of Summertown

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[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

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness Willis of Summertown

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

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness Willis of Summertown

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.