King’s Speech

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, at this late stage in the debate, I will merely add my voice to the cacophony of congratulations to the new Front Bench and Government at this important time in our country’s history for those of us who are concerned about the environment and nature.

We have heard from other noble Peers about the announcements today by the Climate Change Committee that we are off-track on net zero, which go alongside the announcements in the recent past by the Office for Environmental Protection that we are also off-track on our nature targets. Time is not on our side. We have a new Government, who are already showing commitment in this space, and therefore we welcome them to the job. Although I do not wish to sow dissent with my new partners on the Opposition Benches, I slightly took issue with the comments by the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, that he saw the previous Government as the greenest Government ever. I merely respond that he should have gone to Specsavers.

I welcome a number of Bills in the gracious Speech, the first of which is the new Great British Energy Bill, which has been mentioned by a number of colleagues. We need to move at pace to get the renewable energy our country so desperately needs. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned, it is fantastic to see the appointment of Chris Stark. He is focused on delivery and has a good reputation in the business and political spheres. That can only be to the good, so we welcome that Bill and look forward to it coming before the House.

The other Bill that I particularly welcome, which will come as no surprise to colleagues around the House, is of course the water Bill. For those of us here and elsewhere who have focused for so long on the quality of our rivers, lakes and seas, it is important and good to see the Government picking up this issue. However, like the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, I think that the Bill might need to go a little further. I look forward to playing my part in ensuring that that job is done; we will be constructive in our role in opposition on that.

In the time I have here today—I do not want to take up my nine minutes because noble Lords are getting fed up—I will focus on three issues. The first is about building nature restoration into the Government’s welcome plans to build new homes and infrastructure. On these Benches, we know that we need new homes in this country and people need places to live. However, if we are to meet our nature targets, nature needs places to live, feed and breed—which means space. We can do that by clever building specifications—in the same way that we can have zero-carbon specifications to move towards our net-zero goals—and we can have swift boxes and hedgerow highways, but we also need space. So it is encouraging to see that the Government have committed to this new mechanism for developers to fund nature restoration.

Unlike some other noble Peers who have spoken today—including the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, with whom I rarely disagree—I was pleased that this House stood up so strongly to defend the nutrient neutrality position last year, in the face of the proposals that the previous Government were bringing forward to water it down. We were right to do that, and I am pleased to see that this Government are committed to the idea that developers need to look to paying towards nature restoration at the same time as building much-needed homes. I am pleased that they are also looking to consult with wildlife delivery groups as they look to possible alternatives. The old system is not perfect—we all said that when it came before us—and needs amending, but we must be careful that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater and that, if we are to replace it, we really deliver for nature. As a party, we look forward to being part of that discussion.

In the spirit of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, who said that as a party in opposition we will be only too delighted for the Government to nick good ideas that we have, one of the good ideas we have is around biodiversity net gain, which was introduced by the last Government—and welcomed—but which had its ambitions viciously curbed in that major infrastructure projects were excluded from having to abide by the biodiversity net gain obligations. That is a missed opportunity. Equally, our party believes that the 10% requirements on biodiversity net gain need to be ratcheted up. Therefore, for larger housing developments, over 25 homes, there should be a sliding scale upwards with an increasing percentage of biodiversity net gain. I urge the new Government to look at our proposal around biodiversity net gain, which will help deliver the homes we need but also ensure that developers pay their rightful amount.

Secondly, there is plenty in the gracious Speech on improving public transport, which is extremely welcome both for economic growth and delivering on our net-zero targets. However, given the contribution of transport to our emissions, if we are going to meet our net-zero targets we must also look at passenger cars, which means speeding up fast now on EVs. Although the Government had some very welcome commitments in their manifesto around EVs, as we move from the early adopter phase to mass market there is a glaring omission around fairness.

I note with great pleasure that one of the three principles in the King’s Speech was that issue of fairness. However, I urge the Government, as they look to scale up the country, and as we have to move towards more electric vehicles, to look at the VAT disparity on the costs of charging your electric vehicle. If you live, as I do, in a home with a garage, you can charge your EV with a 5% VAT rate. People on a lower income are charged on the streets at a 20% rate. We know how individuals and political parties will stoke up these issues to create division, and I can see this as an issue coming down the track when more people are buying EVs and realising that they pay a higher rate for their EV charging compared with those people who have the luxury of doing it at home. This is a real issue of fairness and I hope that the Government, who I think are genuinely committed, will look at it and do it quickly before people in other places start using it as a means to create division on the whole net-zero agenda.

Thirdly and finally, on something that I hope this Government will do, it was fantastic to see the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, in his place a moment ago because this was an issue he raised when he came before the House of Lords Select Committee on Environment and Climate Change when we did an inquiry into mobilising behaviour change for net zero. We were looking at the whole issue of how we get people to change behaviour and do things that they are not used to doing, picking up new technologies, changing the way they live their lives and buying new products. Yes, you can do that through introducing new Bills, as the Government are doing here today, and through fiscal incentives, but you also have to tell people what they need to do. The words to the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, were, “We need to tell people what they need to do”.

This Government, at the start of their mandate, have a very clear vision about net zero—unlike the previous Government, I am sad to say. They are on one track and they are moving us forward in the right direction. However, we need to take the public with us. They need to be informed and there needs to be consensus. That requires a public engagement strategy by this Government now, at the start of their term, making it clear to people that we are all in this together, all government departments are singing from the same hymn sheet, and we will help people overcome the barriers, but we will get there. If we do not do that, we will miss a major opportunity and we risk not getting to where we need to be on net zero.