Environment: 25-year Plan

Lord Oxburgh Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oxburgh (CB)]

My Lords, I too welcome this 25-year plan for the environment. It is nothing if not ambitious. It is clearly a first step in making the country more liveable, both for us and for the plants and animals with which we share it and on which we depend. The plan contains a great deal that is good, but success will really depend on it securing continuing cross-party support. We cannot have wavering if the political climate of the country changes. This is something that we need to stick to.

Defra is proposed as the owner on behalf of the Government. That seems appropriate, but active co-operation will be needed from other departments as well. Defra will need strong support from the Cabinet Office to ensure that others give the plan sufficient priority. The plan must be shared government-wide and feature in the forward-look plans of every government department. It is proposed to establish a new independent body to monitor progress against a series of metrics and to hold the Government to account. As various noble Lords have suggested, it is entirely appropriate that the Committee on Climate Change could be taken as a model for this.

The plan places heavy emphasis on natural capital. That concept is not without its critics, as we have heard today, but it also carries advantages. The beneficial practical applications were mentioned in the plan itself. But although there are difficulties in applying or assessing clear and fixed values for particular assets, the importance of the approach is the focus that it brings to assessing the real value that we derive from every aspect of our environment.

One of our most valuable natural capital assets, and one of the most neglected, is fresh air. Fresh air in crowded cities is all too often polluted by vehicle emissions. In that connection, the plan offers the opportunity to make two quite distinct points. First, it proposes ending the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2040. That is understandable, but it is wrong. The emissions from vehicles should be banned with performance standards, not the technology itself. In the future, a super-diesel operating on a synthetic fuel might turn out to be the greenest means of local transport. Secondly, clean air is an asset to which we can attribute value. A recent study carried out by the British Lung Foundation estimated the direct costs of respiratory conditions to the NHS at around £11 billion a year. If as little as a quarter of that is attributable to vehicle emissions, on cost grounds alone we should act decisively to restore this element of our natural capital—not to mention the persistent ill health and premature deaths associated with it. This is an urgent and solvable problem and the mayoral initiatives in London are to be applauded.

However, there is one area to which the plan devotes too little attention. It is the major decline in numbers of the most undervalued and admittedly, for us, least charismatic animal group on earth—the insects. Reputable studies in the UK and elsewhere demonstrate population declines of over 75% during the last three decades. We know that from our own experience if we compare driving 20 years ago with today. Twenty years ago, we had to clean the summer insects off the windscreen with every fill-up. Today, that is a rarity. Similar declines are recorded in mainland Europe and in Canada.

Apart from the honey bees, should we be concerned? The answer is an emphatic yes. Insects have an unobtrusive but key role to play in our environmental system. Aside from their most obvious part in the animal food chain for birds, small mammals and others, they are very important as pollinators of crops. Although largely unseen, insects are important for breaking down waste products within the soil and conditioning it for plant growth. If the decline continues, the consequences for the human food supply look bad. Although the general trends are not clear, it is worrying that the records are insufficient for detailed analysis and the declines are not properly understood. I am prompted by the relatively low profile of insects in the plan to ask the Minister to review the environmental monitoring work of his department and to take advice on whether it is really sufficient to support this 25-year plan. The same point has been made by various other noble Lords. Long-time series of observations made in the same way under the same controlled conditions are not popular with those seeking quick results from science, but they are essential to support the science we need to understand and manage the environmental problems we face.

To conclude, this plan is a good first step, but we need better observational records. We should make sure that we regulate outcomes, not technologies, and recognise that the real challenge will be implementing the plan.