Environmental Targets (Biodiversity) (England) Regulations 2022

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

I hope that the Minister can commit to bringing forward as soon as possible a new target for the condition of terrestrial protected sites—our precious SSSIs. Let us not forget that the crisis of biodiversity decline is as existential as the climate change crisis. Every extinction foreshadows our own. We need to do better than this. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to be taking part in this debate, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, for her introduction to her amendment.

The environmental target on biodiversity is extremely important. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, of which I am member, reviewed these instruments on 17 January. The committee has commented fully on each of the targets and on the overarching legislation under which they hang. The consultation that Defra conducted from 16 March to 27 June last year received 181,000 responses, and Defra seemed surprised at the number.

As the consultation response document indicates, there was an overwhelming number of responses from campaigns, organisations and petitions. There were also 660 individual responses. Given the number of campaign responses, it is surprising that Defra gave the huge number of responses as the reason for not being able to meet the deadline of 31 October 2022 to set the environmental targets, as required by the Environment Act, especially since there was only minimal, if any, alteration to the targets after considering the consultation responses.

In terms of biodiversity, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee found that between 91% and 99% of respondents disagreed with the proposed targets, feeling they indicated a lack of ambition. Concern has been expressed as to how the red list indicator will be interpreted. A very small change in one species from “critically endangered” to “endangered” could be interpreted as meeting the target. This would clearly be nonsense. The Government said in their response to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s concern about the absence of a favourable condition target that they do not feel a more ambitious target is necessary. Can the Minister say why?

Wildlife and Countryside Link and Greener UK had three criteria for a successful biodiversity target package. First, there should be high ambition, which sadly is not the case with these targets. Secondly, it should be comprehensive, which again is not the case. Thirdly, it should include sites of special scientific interest, which are totally absent from the targets. We are lucky in England that we have a large number of SSSIs over a very wide range of habitats, from lowland peat moors to uplands, coastal waters and woodlands. Some are managed extremely effectively, but others are in a very sad state and in need of radical attention in order to increase the species they should be supporting.

The UK’s agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity post-2020 framework strengthens the case for a protected sites target to:

“Ensure that by 2030 at least 30 per cent of areas of degraded terrestrial, inland water, and coastal and marine ecosystems are under effective restoration”.


Defra’s target to

“ensure that species abundance in 2042 is greater than in 2022, and at least 10% greater than 2030”

could be met by restoring 1% of the moth, 3% of the butterfly and 5% of the bird abundance lost since 1970. This in itself would not be an accurate indicator that biodiversity is healthy or resilient.

I have confidence in the Minister and in his passion to deliver against these targets, but I regret that I have no such confidence in Defra as a whole. Defra was unable to publish the environmental targets by 31 October; these were delayed until 16 December. Defra was overwhelmed by the number of consultation responses. It is due to publish the environmental improvement plan by the end of January, which is next Tuesday. Defra has the largest number of all pieces of legislation due to be reviewed under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. Further, according to the green business paper for today, Defra has 22 of the 34 questions not answered after 10 working days—with one going back to November.