Environmental Programme: COP 26

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park]

This Government are introducing genuinely ground-breaking legislation this year. The Environment Bill introduces world-leading environmental commitments based on environmental principles and with a new organisation for environmental protection to hold the Government to account. The Fisheries Bill puts sustainable fishing at the heart of government policy and the Agriculture Bill scraps the old land-use subsidy system, which many people believe was entirely destructive—I am sure the noble Baroness agrees—and replaces it with a system conditional on land managers delivering some kind of public good, not least environmental protection. That is just the start of what this Government are doing this year. In hosting COP, they have enabled the Prime Minister, whose commitment to tackling climate change is in my view unquestionable, to convene the Government to ensure that we have a whole-government approach to honouring the commitment that this country made to achieve net zero by 2050.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that action on the environment is not just an issue internal to the UK? We also have to tackle our global environmental footprint. For example, we continue to import food and other goods that are causing the loss of the Amazon and other forests. Will our COP 26 commitment include legislation to control UK commodity supply chains, which often go across the globe, causing environmental damage?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park]

The noble Baroness is right that it is not just about what we do domestically. There is a big question about what the UK brings to the world in this super-year for nature. We have already brought a great deal. We are world leaders in marine protection; our blue-belt scheme is on track to protect an area of ocean the size of India. We have doubled our climate funding to £11.6 billion, and much of that uplift will be invested in protecting and restoring nature on an unprecedented scale. She is right also to talk about supply chains. In a few weeks’ time we will hear back from the GRI—the Global Resource Initiative—which was established by a former Secretary of State. It will report back at the end of this month, and I imagine one of its headline commitments will be to clean deforestation out of our supply chain. We will respond as soon as we hear that report.