Environment Bill

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 26th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

No. 10 on the speakers’ list is not here, so we will go to Barry Gardiner.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab) [V]]

I am delighted to support new clauses 12 and 24, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones). It is vital to preserve our most effective carbon sinks. The UK’s peatlands cover only 10% of our land, yet they store about 3 billion tonnes of carbon. Sadly, we have degraded our peatlands to such an extent that only 20% are now in their natural state. Heather and grass burning regulations currently only cover upland peat in areas designated as SSSIs and special areas of conservation, so new clause 24 extends the ban on rotational burning across all upland peat habitats.

Burning vegetation on our most important natural sinks not only hinders our ability to meet our emissions targets, but impedes our biodiversity and water quality ambitions. Currently, only 40% of our peat is covered by the existing regulation. I support new clause 24 to protect the full 355,000 hectares of upland peat in England.

I also support new clause 19, tabled by the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). Land conversion to agriculture for our high-meat, high-dairy diets is a key driver of biodiversity loss. It is responsible for 14% of global emissions and for 35 million tonnes of CO₂ in the UK alone. Tackling deforestation in UK company supply chains is therefore essential, and the new clause would introduce a labelling scheme so that consumers can be assured that the food they are eating is not a driver either of biodiversity decline or the climate emergency.

The right hon. Member also spoke about new clause 12, arguing that we should permit fracking in the UK as an interim fuel as we transition to a fully renewable energy system. The problem is that the interim is too short and the return on investment demanded by the companies takes too long. That would mean that fracking companies left us with stranded assets. Some would say that is their problem, but when the Government have offered the fracking industry the most generous tax reliefs anywhere in the world and 75% capital allowances, it is not their problem, but that of taxpayers. So fracking in the UK should be prohibited and new clause 12 would do that.

The Government have now accepted the need for a statutory target to halt the decline of nature by 2030, and I welcome that, but the Minister must set out further details of the measures she proposes to deliver on the targets and how implementation will be reported to Parliament. The Minister will be aware of the work of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology on biodiversity indicators. Indicators can be used to aid policy decisions, but the difficulty of setting appropriate baselines for reference and the ambiguity of biodiversity targets are compounded by the differing sensitivity of indicators to change over time. Indicators may be about biomass, endangered species or trends of common species. The ability to obfuscate about whether targets have been reached is too great, unless the Minister is specific about the indicators that will be adopted, what the baselines are, how they will be measured and what their implications are for policy development.

POST sets out how it is possible to pursue biodiversity targets that would have a positive outcome in the UK, but would offshore far greater negative biodiversity impacts to other countries. I ask the Minister to respond to the POST note on biodiversity indicators by setting out which DEFRA will use to achieve which ends and which targets it will use. Will she adopt a coherent global perspective to ensure that we achieve a reversal of the loss of biodiversity not just in the UK, but in the overseas territories, for whose biodiversity we are responsible under the convention, and with a globally net positive outcome?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

As there have been some withdrawals and some people have not turned up, I am unusually going to put the time limit up to five minutes.