Environmental Policies: Timeliness and Effectiveness

Lord Watts Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The Environment Act requires the Government to respond within 12 months, and we will respond considerably more quickly than that. I know that the noble Earl is asking me a question, but does he agree with me that this is without any measure of doubt the greenest Government ever? I am proud of that and happy to be held accountable for all these measures. We brought in a landmark piece of legislation in the Environment Act. We have brought in so many other measures that have addressed long-awaited needs in this environment, and without doubt we have the greenest Government ever.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Government not using the wrong benchmark? If they were to benchmark to, say, 13 years ago, and look at the improvements, that would be a different matter from looking at the last couple of years.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not understand the noble Lord’s position. Working off a baseline, we have to make sure that we are sharing data. We are publishing 800 pages of data so that the noble Lord, NGOs, parliamentarians and others can hold us to account on this. We use an accepted baseline in order to show an improvement. No net loss by 2030 and 10% improvement on that by 2042—those are pushing targets.