Environment Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I support both these amendments: Amendment 1, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and backed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, to which I am pleased to have attached my name; and Amendment 21 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.

In introducing his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, looked at what happened in the timeframe from when we last debated the Bill to today. I will take a different timeframe and go back to when the Bill was first introduced on 15 October 2019. A lot has happened since then. Obviously, we have had, and still have, a global pandemic, which is related to our biodiversity and climate crises, but in reaction to it we have seen enormous, massive and rapid change. We have seen the invention from scratch of highly effective new vaccines from a range of technologies. We have seen billions of doses of those vaccines already delivered. We have seen transformation on an almost daily scale of our entire way of life. The previously obscure word “lockdown” has become daily currency. International travel has almost stopped. “Zoom” has become a verb.

What has happened to the climate in those two years? Emissions fell in 2020, chiefly because of the pandemic, but a lot less than people expected. They then started to rise again. We have seen Extinction Rebellion out on our streets regularly and the climate strikers have become part of the national life of countries all around the world. But we have yet to see the scale of reaction that is needed to these emergencies, which are on the same scale as the pandemic. Just look at the contrast between those two scales of reaction and the fact that the Bill was written two years ago. In the age of shocks, with time moving so fast, that is an age. Amendment 1 would update the Bill to be fit for today, as it must be, and create the frame for it to be fit for the future.

I will briefly address Amendment 21. It is particularly important because we are starting to see the word “resilience” in news coverage, which was once an extremely rare occurrence. It is starting to rise up the news agenda. I speak as a former journalist. Amendment 21 seeks to address the risks, identify them and report on them.

I will focus in particular on proposed new subsection (2)(c), which would ensure that the views of 11 to 25 year-olds in the United Kingdom are continuously engaged in debating these risks. I reflect on that because yesterday I was in Sheffield, where I joined the Young Christian Climate Network, which is on a deliberately very slow pilgrimage from Truro to Glasgow, stopping in as many communities up and down the land as it possibly can to engage communities, particularly young people, on this issue. Climate strikers, young pilgrims and Extinction Rebellion are leading. The amendment would ensure that the Government and the Bill are at least in the right place to catch up.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 1, to which I added my name. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for his helpful amendment. We agree that assessing long-term environmental risk should be an essential part of setting environmental targets and improvement plans.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, very much for setting out why recognising our climate and biodiversity emergency is so important. He and other noble Lords set out the case with clarity, passion and commitment. As he said, this is indeed code red for humanity.

We had a number of excellent contributions in Committee which all strengthened the importance of having Amendment 1 underpin the Bill. It has of course become commonplace for government and civic society to acknowledge that we have a climate change emergency. The recent global evidence that the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott and Lady Bennett, referred to reinforces this view. Quite frankly, it has made a mockery of the dwindling band of climate sceptics.

However, we still have some way to go to put the biodiversity crisis on an equal footing with the climate crisis, with comparable attention and resources. As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said, biodiversity is seen as the poor relation, yet, as we have heard, the evidence of a biodiversity emergency is all around us. At a UK level, the RSPB’s State of Nature report showed that 41% of our species are declining and one in 10 threatened with extinction. We are one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. At a global level, the WWF has documented the international failure to meet the UN biodiversity targets, with an average 68% of species decline across the world. We see the impact of this decline in our gardens, countryside and waterways. For many of us, it is personally heartbreaking to see nature suffering and declining in this way.

We now understand more than ever that nature is not just a “nice to have”; it underpins our very existence and regulates the earth’s climate. As the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee’s report concludes:

“Biodiversity and well-functioning ecosystems are critical for human existence, economic prosperity, and a good quality of life.”


Of course, this echoes the previous conclusions of the much-quoted and seminal Dasgupta report.

That is why Amendment 1 is so important. A government declaration of a climate and biodiversity emergency would be more than symbolic. It would make it clear that the two issues are inextricably linked and that both require action on an urgent scale. In Committee, the Minister acknowledged these arguments. He said:

“We absolutely recognise the extent of the crisis”


that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and I had relayed. He went on to say:

“There is no doubt that the facts on the ground tell us that we are in crisis territory”,


but he also acknowledged that international action on climate change is well ahead of any comparable action on biodiversity. As he said:

“It remains the case … that of all international climate finance, only 2.5% to 3% is spent on nature-based solutions.”—[Official Report, 21/6/21; col. 37.]


This lies at the heart of the problem. A group of us were involved in debates on the Financial Services Bill earlier in the year. It was clear then that banking and businesses in the UK are slowly waking up to their climate change commitments, but I do not recall much mention of biodiversity in their strategies for the future. So far, it seems that biodiversity and nature-based solutions are seen as Defra issues, not government-wide issues. I do not doubt the Minister’s sincerity or commitment on this issue, but the evidence seems to show that the department is struggling to get other government departments to take this issue seriously. This is why it is important that the Government as a whole recognise the joint emergency of climate change and biodiversity, and why the Prime Minister needs to recognise the emergencies and put action on both issues at the heart of government policy for the future.

Nature will not wait. We are spiralling into levels of extinction that cannot be reversed. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, this is the right time to make this declaration. I therefore hope that noble Lords will heed our call and support our amendment if it is put to a vote.