Environment Bill

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 13th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, very briefly, I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has said. This Bill has not been damaged or impaired during its passage through your Lordships’ House.

I endorse everything that has been said in the way of compliments to my noble friend Lord Goldsmith and what he himself has said about participation across the Floor of the House. This is not in any sense a party-political Bill. It is a Bill that concerns each and every one of us, and our families, for generations to come. Therefore, we do not want to engage in ping-pong.

If my noble friend is to achieve his ambition of getting this on the statute book before Glasgow, which I entirely support, it is important that the House of Commons does not attempt unnecessarily to delete amendments that do not damage but rather enhance the basic principles and objectives of the Bill. It would be a great pity if in a fortnight, on the virtual eve of the conference, we began to indulge in a battle between the two Houses.

This House has an enormous amount—a great wealth—of experience and expertise, and that was perhaps more evident on this Bill than on most others. I know my noble friend the Minister would agree that everybody who spoke did so in a constructive and supportive spirit, so I implore him to use all his powers of persuasion with his ministerial colleagues and others to ensure that the Bill, as it now stands, survives as near intact as possible. Then our Ministers and the president of the conference can go to Glasgow knowing that there is a perhaps unprecedented degree of cross-party support and agreement for a Bill that does indeed, as I said at the beginning, affect us all and our families.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, it is appropriate that we have the Third Reading today as we see the close of the high-level segment of COP 15 and the publication of the Kunming Declaration, which makes it clear that setting nature

“on a path to recovery is a defining challenge of this decade”.

This House has done its usual proper job of scrutiny of the Bill and has proposed measures to strengthen it that are definitely needed. I thank the ministerial team and the Minister’s colleagues for accepting some of those amendments, including the legally binding target for species abundance for 2030, and for including major infrastructure projects in the biodiversity net gain regime. Those are welcome measures that the Government have accepted. While we are thanking people, those on these Benches, like others, thank the ministerial Front-Bench team and the Bill team for their unfailing good humour, clear commitment and engagement with us throughout this process.

But, as others have said, many outstanding amendments remain. As we send this Bill down to our colleagues at the other end, be assured that we will work with them and with others around this House, as we have done so constructively through this process, to ensure that it is strengthened, in the way we all know it needs to be, for the future of our country, our people and our environment.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I too add my thanks to the Bill team for its patience and courtesy in responding to our concerns and for facilitating so many meetings over the summer. We have all been on a steep learning curve, and it has certainly helped to put us more in tune with the facts behind the thinking on the Bill.

I very much thank the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, for staying the course. I am sure there were times when he wished to be somewhere else, perhaps even somewhere sunnier. Despite occasionally giving the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, kittens when he went walkabout, he was assiduous in being here, doing the heavy lifting on the Bill and giving us all his attention and his very detailed and thoughtful contributions. On that basis, I thank the Minister for listening, because we received a number of concessions along the way and we are really very appreciative of that.

As other noble Lords have said, of course, we do not think that is quite enough. I hope the Minister recognises that the 15 amendments which we have passed make serious and important improvements to the Bill—and, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and others have said, they have widespread support across the Chamber. I hope this is not the end of the road for the Bill. I hope that the Government have used the recess to reflect on our amendments and will feel able to support their key principles when the Bill goes back to the Commons next week.

We are of course aware that COP 26 is looming but, as we have always said, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us to put the environment on the right course for the future. We still hope that we can reach consensus with the Government to achieve the ambition that I know we all share on this, so that we can reach agreement in the very near future on the final outcome for the Bill.