King’s Speech

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be speaking in this first day of debate of this new Government. Like all noble Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. to their new jobs. We are in good hands.

There was so much to welcome in the gracious Speech, especially hearing that the Government recognise the climate crisis that we face and are taking legislation forward on improving water and our energy. This is a serious Government who will govern seriously. What a relief.

However, I have a few points. Chatham House says in a new report on the global food system that the primary driver of biodiversity is our global food system, which will continue to accelerate unless we change the way we produce food. Further destruction of our ecosystems and habitats will not just weaken out ability to grow food but increase emissions, as we continue to turn land into a carbon emitter rather than a carbon sink. We do not need to look far to see that, globally, subsidised systems support monocultures, deforestation and the use of chemicals, all of which weaken soils and destroy nature, while producing increasingly unhealthy foods that have led to diet-related illness becoming the number one cause of ill health and premature death across the world.

In the UK, we are doing better. In fact, the only benefit I can see from Brexit is that we have a new way of rewarding farmers. Instead of just a blanket payment for the amount of land that you own, that payment now goes to compensate farmers for their efforts and successes in restoring wildlife and nature. This is great stuff, and I hope that the new Government get to grips with many of the problems currently plaguing the system, as many Peers have mentioned.

However, when the Environment Act was originally debated, I argued, and I still remain of the view, that growing food sustainably is also of massive benefit to nature. I understand the arguments that growing wildflowers down a strip by a field does not make you actual money, whereas any food has a market price. Sustainable farming enhances the natural ability of soil to regenerate, to remain compact in the face of floods and to sequester carbon, as its roots systems and mycorrhizal fungi grow strongly underground. However, it can take time and money to transition, which is why too many farmers are still nervous about doing it and so continue to farm in old-fashioned ways. Can the Government help with this transition, especially if we now have a goal of 50% of our food being grown here. We want it grown properly.

Just as challenging in the years to come will be not just what we eat but where we grow it. As the world warms and places from which we now routinely import food start to get too hot or too dry, we must look at our own food security and using our own land more efficiently. So I am a little concerned about the mention of a Bill on “sustainable aviation fuel”. Although some if this might be needed, and knowing that this is in response to previous recommendations by the CCC, I hope that as part of the debates we can have a serious conversation about aviation demand, because another CCC recommendation is an end to all airport expansion.

The CCC said just today in its progress report that, while emissions fell due to the pandemic—not surprising as we could not go anywhere—

“demand continues to grow quickly, presenting a risk that it may increase beyond pre-pandemic levels in the next year”.

It is clear that it cannot be left to grow exponentially; this risks putting land in direct competition. It also raises the issue of fairness: financing ought not to come from general taxation. Those who pollute—those who choose to fly the most—should pay.

Tom Heap, the producer of “39 Ways to Save the Planet” on Radio 4, as well as being a regular “Countryfile” presenter, has been working on this. He told me the other day that, if one wanted to run the current aviation industry on biofuels, it would require the annual harvest of a forest five times the size of Egypt every year.

To illustrate quite how inefficient some of these fuels are in terms of land use, biodiesel, which comes from rapeseed oil, requires 884 square metres to produce a megawatt hour of energy, whereas concentrating solar photovoltaic panels demand only 22 square metres when installed on towers, 19 when installed on the ground and three when on roofs. Even the much-hyped miscanthus, which at least has the benefit of regrowing after we chop it down, produces only 158 megawatt hours for every 158 square metres. It is important to remember that all these crops are monocrops; they do not encourage biodiversity. The CEO of Rolls-Royce told Sky News recently that the creation of liquid hydrocarbon fuel from biofuels was impossible to scale, due to its extraordinary land-take and the huge biodiversity challenge.

By contrast, solar or wind—I strongly welcome the end of the de facto onshore wind ban—are very good users of land. New energy generators can make the land provide not one service but two or three. Animals can graze near solar panels and around wind turbines, biodiversity can flourish and horticulture can happen. It need not be one or the other; in fact, it must cease to be one or the other. I urge the Government to stop looking at this wasteful use of our money and look at using land in a much more creative way.

I happened to bump into our new Science Minister, the wonderful noble Lord, Lord Vallance, in the Lobby this morning, when he was coming in. I voiced my concerns about aviation fuel and he said, “New technologies are on the way”. I would be glad to think that but, for very long, we have thought that technology will always get us out of the mess we are in. How about also considering flying less, frequent fliers paying more and public transport stepping up several gears to get us to, say, Edinburgh?

Finally, I turn to an area that was not specifically mentioned in the Speech: community energy. This sector has been somewhat strangled by government policies lately but, last year, I tabled two amendments to the now Energy Act, which were supported across this House and in another place—in fact, we passed them here twice—which would have unlocked the barriers that the sector currently faces. They were supported by the Labour Front Bench and the now Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero went so far as to table similarly worded amendments, so I am super hopeful that progress can be made here.

In my time serving on the Environment and Climate Change Committee we looked at how well we were encouraging people to change from traditional boilers to heat pumps and ground source heating. It seemed completely ridiculous that the Government were not actively encouraging, say, a group of households living in a terrace, as lots of us do, to pool their individual grants and, between them, create a single, affordable source to which everybody was connected. It seems easy to do, so I hope the Government will.