Biodiversity

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Parminter (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for her powerful opening speech, articulating the values of this report at a time when the evidence shows that nature’s resilience is being severely eroded, yet our economy, livelihoods and well-being all rely on nature. The Government need to use the opportunities they have this year at the G7, CBD COP 15 and COP 26 to showcase the report’s findings and their framework for nature. To do that credibly, they must respond formally, before the start of these events, and show how they are using all opportunities to deliver, despite the National Audit Office’s report that there is still a long way to go before we can have confidence that the Government have the right framework to deliver on the aspirations in their 25-year environment plan.

There are a number of areas where the reality is not in step with the Government’s stated ambitions. In the short time that I have, I will raise just one: the proposed exemption for Treasury Ministers from having due regard to the Government’s policy statement on environmental principles. This policy statement is a key tool to drive delivery across government of the 25-year environment plan. The duty for Ministers to have regard to it does not give undue weight to the environment but just embeds consideration of the importance of policy on the environment in decision-making.

Professor Dasgupta argued for a new vocabulary to factor the value of the environment into our economy. This exemption shows that the Treasury is not even prepared to open the dictionary. If the Government were to remove it before the Environment Bill returns to Parliament, that would be a powerful symbol of business not as usual. Without that, there is little hope of embedding nature into decision-making and delivering the protection for the natural resources on which we all depend.