Environmental Improvement Plan 2025

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to participate in a debate led by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who made a very good point about the condition of our SSSIs. The Government’s 2025 plan speaks with confidence about restoring nature and becoming a clean energy superpower. That confidence must be matched by clarity. Where the plan allows trade-offs, we need rules that protect the natural systems we depend on. The Environmental Improvement Plan 2025 sets out ambitions we can all support: cleaner water, richer soils, healthier wildlife and a transition to cleaner energy. Those ambitions are necessary, but a plan’s rhetoric is only as strong as the targets, timelines and delivery mechanisms that underpin it.

Today, I will focus on two areas where the gap between rhetoric and delivery is most worrying—our seas and our farms. On the marine side, the plan introduces recovery targets for marine protected areas, yet it also explicitly allows up to 5% of MPA features to be left in neither favourable nor recovering condition to “accommodate net-zero ambitions”. That is not a technical tweak; it institutionalises a trade-off.

Everyone knows that the Secretary of State for Energy, Mr Miliband, is obsessed with net zero, and his fanaticism will countenance any damage to our economy and cost to the public by driving up the cost of UK energy to be the highest in the world. Now he is damaging our seas as well. When we write a carve-out into a national plan, we change the default from recovery to compromise. Offshore wind and other infrastructure can contribute to our climate goals, but they must not become a standing excuse to delay or dilute recovery in protected areas. Any deviation from recovery must be time limited, independently scrutinised and accompanied by mandatory like-for-like enhancement measures that restore what has been lost. The real tragedy of this carve-out is that our seas will be damaged by wind turbines that will be switched off for about half the time. Billions will be paid to the operators not to produce electricity, as we read in the press yesterday.

We welcome ambition on this side, but ambition without detail is a promise unkept. Allowing a formal carve-out for marine protected areas to accommodate energy projects, delaying a marine litter strategy and failing to commit to PFAS consumer bans are not small omissions; they are structural weaknesses that will determine whether our seas recover or continue to decline.

As has already been said by noble Lords, marine litter is another glaring omission. It cannot be left to a general circular plan scheduled for next year. We need a dedicated marine litter strategy now, with measurable interim targets, funding for deposit return schemes, fishing gear management, improved port reception facilities and coastal clean-ups. These are practical measures that reduce harm to wildlife, protect coastal economies and cut the cost of clean-up for local communities. The marine recovery fund has currently framed this as becoming a mechanism that enables development rather than driving restoration. Compensation must be like-for-like by default, and there must be a separate ring-fenced enhancement fund to finance proactive habitat creation and ecosystem recovery at scale. Without that, we will see payments in place of genuine ecological outcomes.

On farming, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said that there is no Minister in the Government who understands the countryside. I say to her that there is one—she is winding up this debate, and it is a pity that she is not the Secretary of State for Defra. The plan’s target to double the number of farms providing sufficient year-round resources for wildlife by 2030 is welcome in principle but underspecified in practice. Farmers need certainty. They need clear definitions of what “sufficient resources” means. They need published payment rates, long-term contracts and technical support. The sustainable farming incentive must be reformed and published with predictable payments so that farmers can plan investments without risking their livelihoods or domestic food production. Sequencing matters. Biosecurity targets and invasive species scanning must be timed so that there is adequate opportunity to respond before deadlines arrive. If we are serious about the rhetoric, we must strengthen the EIP now, remove the carve-outs, ban non-essential PFAS, fund enhancement—not just compensation—and give farmers and fishers the certainty and support they need to deliver. That is how we turn a plan into recovery.

To be concrete, I conclude by calling for six immediate actions. First, remove or tightly condition the 5% MPA carve-out. Any deviation from recovery must be demonstrably unavoidable, time limited and independently scrutinised, and require mandatory like-for-like enhancement. Secondly, ban PFAS in non-essential consumer products and publish a clear phase-out timetable for other uses, applying group-based controls to prevent substitution. Thirdly, please publish a dedicated marine litter strategy immediately, with measurable interim targets and funding for ports, coastal clean-ups and fishing gear management. Fourthly, redesign the marine recovery fund with two streams, mandatory like-for-like compensation and a separate enhancement fund for proactive restoration. Fifthly, accelerate SFI reform and publish payment rates and transition support so that farmers can plan, with explicit safeguards for food production and farm viability. Sixthly, strengthen fisheries management plans with binding spatial and gear measures, and fund a just transition package for fishers to adopt low-impact methods.

We can be a clean energy leader and a world leader in nature recovery, but only if we stop treating nature as negotiable. Strengthen the rules, fund the delivery and give those who steward our land and sea the certainty they need. Do that, and the rhetoric of the plan will become the recovery that our communities and our children expect.