Biodiversity

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to support England’s biodiversity and to promote farming methods that help ensure a healthy ecosystem that includes pollinators, butterflies and farmland birds.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I warmly thank all noble Lords who are to take part in this debate today. With your Lordships’ expertise in key areas, I am sure that we will cover a lot of what makes up a healthy ecosystem, including water and soil. I also pay tribute at the start of this debate to all the farmers who, besides producing quality food, manage to contribute to enhancing biodiversity, landscape and public access, despite the downward pressures on produce prices.

I want today to look at specific actions which the Government could choose to take to improve England’s crashing biodiversity on farmland and, at the same time, to help those farmers who I have just mentioned. Across the board, the worst-affected categories of wildlife are those dependent on farmland, such as farmland birds. The RSPB/BTO figures show that in 35 years we have lost well over half our farmland birds and, despite some good initiatives, the post-2012 figures show further overall declines. If we look at flowers, of the 1,556 flowers in the British flora 37% are considered threatened or rare in England, and of these 97% grow within the productive environment. Despite this, as Plantlife points out, 80% of threatened lowland meadow flowers are not supported by the entry-level stewardship options, nor are 72% of threatened upland meadow flowers, so that scheme really does not seem to be answering the issue. Butterfly Conservation’s most recent big study also shows a significant decline in the total numbers of wider countryside butterflies, which have fallen by 24% over 10 years.

I think all those who are speaking today know the problem: a massive, sustained and relentless intensification of agriculture. There have been a plethora of excellent studies and strategies on ways to improve the situation but no matching suite of policy changes from successive Governments. However, I welcome one current and very important example of government action with regard to pollinators: the Government’s stand on the continuing moratorium on the use of neonicotinoids. Pollinators are a very good example of just how closely food production and biodiversity are intertwined. The fate of pollinators is largely driven by what happens on farmland, and the fate of insect-pollinated crops is of course driven by what happens to those pollinators. The Government are quite right to continue with the moratorium because the oilseed rape crop is not in an emergency situation. The figures given in a Written Answer by George Eustice on 13 July this year showed that the crop saw a 16% increase last year.

The UK is far from alone is these concerns. The latest place to join in this ban is Ontario, in Canada. Its Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change has said that:

“A growing body of scientific evidence shows that neonicotinoid insecticides are highly toxic to honey bees and other beneficial insects”.

Another particularly good action of the previous coalition Government was to establish the Natural Capital Committee. Methodically and with hard data, the NCC linked economic well-being to environmental well-being. In its third and last report, it gave a clear recommendation about farming:

“Farming is an important sector of the economy but its impacts on natural capital are substantial. Addressing these impacts would deliver significant benefits for society. Channelling subsidies towards environmental schemes that demonstrate good economic returns would be very worthwhile. Also, investing in measures to connect wildlife areas across farming landscapes, as set out in the Lawton Review, will significantly increase net benefits to wildlife from these areas”.

Yet these advances are about to be undermined because, strangely, the Government appear to be going in the opposite direction: they are launching separate 25-year strategies for farming and biodiversity. Indeed, the farming strategy was launched this morning but I have not had a chance to look at it. No doubt it builds on the Conservative manifesto commitment to,

“grow more, buy more and sell more British food”.

The Natural Capital Committee is quite clear that increases in yields have been driven largely by the increased use of fertilisers and herbicides. As it says, those are severely affecting the wider environmental systems, including water and wildlife.

The NCC correctly analysed that part of the solution lies in new technology, such as real-time crop scanners, in a move towards more “precision farming” and more efficient use of agricultural inputs. However, the other part of the solution lies in supporting farmers who are trying to do the right thing. In the previous Parliament, the Government failed to deliver the maximum transfer from Pillar 1 production subsidy to Pillar 2 agri-environment subsidy. Every taxpayer in this country is paying £200 a year to support the CAP but it does not deliver on public benefits. There will be another opportunity in 2017 and I hope that the Government will make that essential change then, because farmers must be rewarded if they spend a great deal of time producing public goods and benefits to wildlife.

The NCC further stated:

“Government has missed many chances to line up farm support with public goods like flood prevention or farming that supports biodiversity. Continued support for maize farming, for example, was granted an exemption from strict cross-compliance rules on soil management, despite the fact that maize is a ‘high risk’ crop for soil compaction and erosion”.

I make no apologies for quoting so widely from its third report, which was excellent.

I hope the Minister will reinforce with evidence that the Government are committed to supporting farmers who are doing and trying to do the right thing. The Government’s own figures show that less land is being managed under the schemes they brought in to help improve environmental outcomes. In 2013-14, 450,000 hectares of land were managed under the Campaign for the Farmed Environment scheme, but in 2014-15 I understand that it is only 250,000 hectares. Why does the Minister think there has been such a big drop-off?

The most encouraging development in efforts to improve the chances for England’s wildlife is the part played by the public—those thousands and thousands of volunteers who, along with the scientists and NGOs, map what is happening on the ground. They map whether certain initiatives are producing the beneficial results we hope for, and changes in bird and butterfly populations. They have become a vital part of building a picture of what is in decline and where declining populations of a species is reversed by specific land management techniques. This connects all those people intimately with their food production.

Last month, in Westminster, we held the first meeting of this Parliament of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology. We held a “meet the farmer day”, where farmers with a range of best practices met MPs and Peers. Deborah Meaden, the impressive businesswoman from “Dragons’ Den”, spoke about people knowing where their food comes from, how it is produced and the impact of that production. As she put it so succinctly,

“if they don’t know, they can’t care”.

However, more and more people are interested in connecting with how their food is produced.

One of my questions for the Minister is: how will the Government interpret the fact that more than 180,000 people have responded to the public consultation on the regulatory fitness check of the EU birds and habitats directive, to which the Government will have to respond? It would be a tragic mistake if that directive were undermined in any way. Some species—for example, migrating birds—are not static and need EU-wide protection. I hope that the Government will put their every effort behind the EU birds and habitats directives.

Further, can the Minister tell me the Government’s intentions for publishing their 25-year plan to restore diversity? When will it be published? Will that be quite soon after the farming strategy, and will it be cross-departmental rather than focused just on Defra? Will the Government urgently step up action to ensure that the Office for National Statistics and Defra meet the target of incorporating natural capital into the national accounts by 2020, as recommended by the NCC?

Finally, will he confirm that it remains the Government’s intention to transfer a full 15% of funds from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2 of the CAP so that the public and wildlife can get the most for the money?