Environment Bill

Debate between Catherine West and Luke Pollard

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

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Two years ago this month, it was Parliament that declared a climate and an ecological emergency. We were the first Parliament in the world to do so in what was a truly landmark moment in the fight against the climate and ecological crisis. I was proud to work on that declaration and proud that it was a Labour motion. We need more landmark moments such as that if we are to tackle the climate and ecological emergency in a meaningful way. We were promised that the Environment Bill would be a landmark Bill.

“Landmark” is what the Government kept saying, seemingly until England’s rolling hills were littered with press releases as far as the eye could see, but, sadly, it is not a landmark Bill.

Let us be clear about what the climate crisis means. If we do not take the bold action now that is required, the freak weather, the destruction of homes, job losses, food shortages, habitat loss and species extinction will only get worse. Since Parliament declared that climate emergency, the Department for Food and Rural Affairs has issued 508 press releases about the environment. The group plural for a set of press releases evades me. It could be a discombobulation, a tedium, or a wafer. None the less, the Government seem to have been more focused on the spin than the substance of the matter. The press releases, ambitions, targets and soundbites are no substitute for the bold action that we need on the climate.

[Catherine West]

What does my hon. Friend make of the World Wildlife Fund’s statement that the Bill does not go far enough to protect the world’s forests and oceans? Specifically, I know that there is interest across the House in what is happening in neighbourhoods and suburbs. In my own constituency of Muswell Hill, Highgate and Stroud Green, there is a lot of concern about trees coming down unnecessarily. How can we make that vision a reality?

[Luke Pollard]

Both my hon. Friend and the WWF are right that we need to see bolder action on forests and the oceans. It is a shocking indictment of this Bill that there is barely a mention of the oceans, which is a really important part of our environment.

Ministers must act in a quicker and more decisive way on the environment than we have seen to date. I hoped that the delay in the Bill would have given Ministers that time to be bolder, but I am afraid that they have not used their time as wisely as I would have liked. I welcome the steps forward that the Minister has announced, but they are not enough. The pace and urgency seem to be absent. Our rivers are polluted. There is not a single river in England safe to swim in. More species face extinction at home and abroad; more bees are dying from bee-killing pesticides, the use of which is legitimised by this Government; more plastics are entering our oceans; and dangerous particulates are entering the lungs of some of our most vulnerable. Where is the vision? Where is the landmark boldness that we were promised? Where is the rock-the-boat carbon cutting innovation? Where is the determination to push harder and harder to clean our air, protect our species, plant more trees and get us back on a course for nature recovery? Where is the World Health Organisation’s air quality targets in the Bill? Where is the boldness on ocean protection? We need that bold action not only to cut carbon, but to step up and protect our natural environment as well. If we have this approach that we can either solve a carbon crisis or an ecological crisis, we will solve neither. We need to solve both of them together, or neither of them at all.