Climate and Nature Bill

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Savage]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and applaud her for her work as an effective spokesperson on behalf of the farming community. Indeed, she pre-empted what I was about to say. Farmers should be properly rewarded for restoring soils, planting hedgerows and reducing pesticide use, with an expanded nature-friendly farming budget at the upcoming comprehensive spending review. They need a clear long-term strategy from the Government so that they are able to plan and invest accordingly.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this Bill forward. Does she recognise that the sustainable farming incentive is moving to rewarding farmers who are further towards the bottom of the scale, rather than at the high end of it as we would wish to see? To reward farmers for rotation of crops, for example, seems to be going back to the 18th century rather than ensuring a high level of stewardship.

[Dr Savage]

My understanding, as a non-farmer, is that crop rotation is an effective way to regenerate soil.

The second priority is to create more joined-up space for nature on land. Through the global biodiversity frame-work, the Government have committed to protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030. With less than five years to meet that target, a Wildlife and Countryside Link report states that the amount of land in England effectively protected for nature has fallen to less than 3%. The Government should put 30 by 30 at the heart of upcoming planning reforms, to ensure that all development is playing an active role in nature recovery, and expand the protected sites network by designating more significant and rare natural habitats, such as ancient woodlands and chalk streams.

My third point is about the urgency of delivery, because urgency is lacking in the implementation of positive actions. The OEP states that the rate of tree planting needs to increase substantially to achieve woodland creation goals. Meanwhile, long-awaited major initiatives such as a UK chemicals strategy and land use framework, and the national action plan on the sustainable use of pesticides, as well as the ban on the sale of horticultural peat and the reintroduction of species such as the beaver, are delayed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)]

From one old fogey to another, I presume. I have never enjoyed a speech by the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) as much as the one he has just delivered; he did not bore the House in any way.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for introducing the Bill; it has had a very long gestation, involving many Members on both sides of the House, but it is good that it has cross-party support. Indeed, the first thing I want to focus on is the importance of cross-party support. These issues had cross-party support in the House for many years following the Climate Change Act 2008, and that continued until about 2015. That was tremendously important in the progress that not only we but the world were able to make. People saw that it was possible for Parliament to come together and do things that were considered radical to tackle climate change. Latterly, unfortunately, that consensus has broken down somewhat, and it is important—it is the duty of all Members of the House—to try to repair that consensus and to build on it. Unless we do, we will face the sort of future that the hon. Lady and the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich outlined.

I am conscious that many people want to speak in the debate, so I will pick up quickly on just three issues in the Bill. First, clause 2(2) states:

“The strategy must include annual interim targets consistent with the achievement of the objectives”.

Those objectives are the climate and nature targets, and it is great that the Bill makes the link between the two; that is fundamentally important. However, I want to counsel against annual targets in this regard. As we know—it is well documented in the OEP report that the hon. Lady referred to, as well as in the Climate Change Committee’s reports—there is natural fluctuation annually in what happens around us. Sometimes that is because of the El Niño effect, and sometimes it is for other reasons—nobody in the House will be more familiar with the El Niño effect on the oceans than the hon. Lady. It is important that we understand that sometimes an annual target, to be consistent with the five-year targets and the overall long-term target, will look like it is going backwards. We need to look at that very carefully in the Bill.

Another issue I want to pick up on is clause 3, on the establishment of the climate and nature assembly. In the last Parliament, six Select Committees came together to convene a people’s assembly on the climate. That was a wonderful moment for the House, because instead of our telling the people, “This is what you have to do,” the people were telling us, “This is what we want you to do on our behalf.” It was really important that that took place, and it is great that the hon. Lady has included that measure in the Bill.

I gently point out, however, that the climate assembly disagreed with some of the things that the Committee on Climate Change told us were essential to do. The 66% figure in the clause is actually quite a low threshold. Sometimes the report from the climate assembly was clear that people were not prepared to go as far as the Committee on Climate Change and other nature organisations, such as the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, believed was imperative. On who is in charge, there is a failure to connect things up, because the clause says that if something is recommended by 66% of the assembly, it must be included in the strategy. We will need to go through those areas in serious detail.

Finally, it is important that the Bill talks about the impact of climate, biodiversity and nature on each other. I pick up on what the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich— the grandfather of the House, as he styled himself—said about Drax. We are going down the wrong road with Drax. I understand the reasons why: Drax power station provides 4% of UK electricity in the power sector. It seen as an important area, so the question is, if we take it away, how will we fill it? But we cannot allow the damage to old growth and to virgin forests that we know is happening in Canada. More than that, as has been said by the noble Lord Birt, who has also seen some of the whistleblowers’ accounts, as I have, those accounts make it clear that the Ofgem investigation was correct in saying that the sustainability of the feedstock had been not only misreported but deliberately misreported. That means that the people concerned in Drax are not fit and proper to run the company, and we should not be paying them—at the moment—£9 billion. We have now to decide whether we will subsidise that even further. The impact on biodiversity is disastrous, and although they say it is renewable, it is not within the timeframe to meet the 2050 climate target. It is salient that the previous Secretary of State, after she ceased to be the Secretary of State, said, “We knew all along that this was not sustainable.” If that is the case, perhaps she should have done something when she was Secretary of State, but it is this Government who must now act to ensure that no further subsidy is paid to Drax.