Environmental Policies: Timeliness and Effectiveness

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2024 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the tone adopted by the Minister is in stark contrast—180 degrees opposite—to that of the OEP report. That talks of Britain being locked in an irreversible spiral of decline of nature. We have what the Minister calls landmark pieces of legislation. Can he put his hand on his heart and say that Defra has adequate capacity to deliver the absolute flood of material that needs to be done to get anywhere near delivering what he is suggesting is needed?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I think we can. We have put more resources into our agencies, particularly Natural England. We have a sense of complete determination to hit this, which comes from Ministers and goes down to the Natural England or Environment Agency individual who is dealing with a particular group of farmers. But for all the resources that we could put into government, we would fail if we doubled them. What is important is that we weaponise land managers and people who really know about this on the ground. That is why clusters of farmers working together—for example, in environmental farming groups—are the way forward to deliver an increase in abundance of species and protection of nature, which is not just an environmental or societal matter. It is an economic one as well, as the Dasgupta report proved.