Climate and Nature Bill

Claire Young Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I do agree. We are looking for a legislative vehicle to enable us to ratify the biodiversity beyond national jurisdictions treaty, or BBNJ. I am name-dropping here, but from my conversations with President Emmanuel Macron—sorry about that—whom I had the privilege of meeting at the United Nations General Assembly, I know that this is an issue on which he is very keen for us to show leadership. People around the world are looking to our country to show leadership. We must not fail. We have the Ramsar wetlands COP15 in Zimbabwe next July; I could wax very lyrical about wetlands, but I will make some progress.

The four nations of the UK, the overseas territories and the Crown dependencies have been working collaboratively to produce a UK-wide national biodiversity strategy and action plan, NBSAP. We submitted our targets to the convention on 1 August and will meet all those targets at home. We will publish the full action plan in due course, as I know my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) will be pleased to hear. [Interruption.] Let me move on, very quickly, to parts of the Bill, because I can hear coughing. It is a shame, because there is so much more to say.

We are proud to have set legally binding targets through the Climate Change Act to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. We are committed to 13 legally binding environmental targets under the Environment Act, and halting the decline in species by 2030 is certainly very ambitious.

In the proposed Bill, the hon. Member for South Cotswolds notes that environmental improvement plans are not accessible to all, and proposes the establishment of a climate and nature assembly. We agree that engagement with and access to nature provides clear benefits, and we want to help drive action for the environment, including through volunteering, citizen science, and building the innate connection and care that we all have in respect of the natural world. We will design our plan with users, and we have agreed to look forward further with young people and get them engaged in this process, as we did during the climate COP.

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mary Creagh]

No, I will not. I am going to make some progress.

We agree that engagement with bodies such as the Climate Change Committee, the Office for Environmental Protection and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee is key to our achievement of these targets. We also agree that non-governmental partners have a huge role to play in monitoring, advising, and scrutinising progress and plans. I look forward to meeting with the Minister for Climate, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East, and the hon. Member for South Cotswolds next week to discuss further how to take this work forward.

Let me compliment the hon. Lady on her work and that of NGOs, academics and partners across the climate and nature space, and on the impressive campaign that they have driven to get a joined-up approach across both policy areas. This will be a great opportunity to discuss the environmental improvement plan review, and to demonstrate that we are taking our targets very seriously. I can also tell the hon. Lady that we are going to strengthen the relationship between the JNCC, the CCC and the special representatives, because the siloed approach to climate and nature respectively is dividing work, and the work happening at an international level should be reflected here as well. We will look at strengthening data reporting on our consumption emissions, and at narratives concerning the imported emissions to which the Bill refers.

It is often said that this is the decade to clean up our planet. We have a Prime Minister who is determined to make the UK a clean energy superpower and reclaim our status as global climate leaders, a Foreign Secretary who knows that international climate and nature action is fundamental to global security and prosperity, an Energy Secretary who is working in overdrive to achieve clean power by 2030, and an Environment Secretary who has wasted no time in taking bold steps to restore our natural environment. We have a Government who recognise the need for collaboration across the House and wider society, and recognise the foundation that nature and climate provide for reaching our national clean growth mission.

We are truly blessed on this island, with natural landscapes, abundant energy resources, cutting-edge innovation, globally leading science, and the power of people and partnership. While we are under no illusions about the scale and urgency of the challenge, we are confident that it can, must and will be met. We will create a safer, more secure, more sustainable and more prosperous future.

Once again, I thank the hon. Member for South Cotswolds for bringing this issue to the House, and for working—with her colleagues and across the House—to deliver on our climate and nature targets.

Motion made, and Question put, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Christian Wakeford.)

Flooding

Claire Young Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Emma Hardy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman; that was another interesting and thoughtful question. I am happy to look into this in more detail for him, because if there are rules and regulations that are not working, as a new Government we do not need to keep them. If they are not working, let us change things and make things better. The hon. Member should send me the information and I can have a proper look at it.

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

Returning to the issue of wider infrastructure in surface water flooding, recent examples in my constituency include a householder who has been affected by water running from an incomplete major housing development who has been told nothing can be enforced until the development is finished, and another where a road safety scheme is funnelling water into their property. What action will the Government take to ensure that infrastructure is being designed with surface water flooding in mind and to ensure that developers have to provide appropriate drainage right the way through the build-out of major developments?

[Emma Hardy]

I am really sorry to hear about the hon. Lady’s constituents facing such an incredibly unfair situation for anybody to have to deal with. That is why the fact that sustainable drainage systems and schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 that we brought in were never enacted is so important, and that is why we are looking at that now, because there need to be adequate drainage systems in new designs. That should have been in place since 2010, but the previous Government did not enact it. This Government are serious about getting on with it.

Budget: Implications for Farming Communities

Claire Young Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner]

The hon. Lady will know that many things impact food prices. I gently suggest to the Conservatives that they might want to look more closely at food price rises over the past few years before giving us any lectures on how to manage things. I am confident about this, because I have looked at the figures issued by the Treasury on the number of claims made in the past few years, and our figures stack up.

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

I have previously raised in departmental questions that the farmers I speak to are reluctant to sign up for ELMS due to the complexity, and because they do not want to get locked into a deal when a better one might be around the corner. That may account for the £200 million underspend last year. In the Budget, the Government committed to maintaining the funding at the current level, including the underspend, but said that it would be reviewed in 2025-26 to ensure it is “affordable”. Does the Minister agree that that leaves farmers even more in the dark about their future, at a time when they are struggling to get by?

[Daniel Zeichner]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. I suspect that in the months ahead it will come out that, actually, over the last few months there has been a big uptick in the number of people making sustainable farming incentive claims. That says to me that we are now on track to make these systems work for people. I do not disagree with her that under the previous Government it was a very long painful process, but we are now making progress and we need to make it work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Claire Young Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

I share the right hon. Member’s interest in the need for effective regulation. I will soon make an announcement about our intentions to review regulation to ensure that it is fit for purpose across the Department and helps to achieve the priority objectives that we have set out as a new Government and ministerial team.

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

2. What steps his Department is taking to increase uptake of environmental land management schemes.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)]

I echo the good wishes of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to your chaplain, Mr Speaker, and to Terry, who have nourished us in mind, body and spirit.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her election to the House. This Labour Government are fully committed to environmental land management schemes. We will optimise the schemes so that they produce the right outcomes for all farmers, including small, grassland, upland and tenant farmers who have been too often ignored, while delivering food security and nature recovery in a just and equitable way.

[Claire Young]

On a visit to a local farm this summer with the National Farmers Union, it was raised with me that some farmers are not signing up for one of the Government’s sustainable farming initiatives, because they fear being locked in when a better deal may be just around the corner. If we want farmers to farm more sustainably, we need to ensure that they are getting the support they need to do so. With that in mind, will the Minister clarify whether farmers who sign up for an SFI will be able to transition to an alternative one, and if not, whether the rules will be reviewed so that they can do so?

[Mary Creagh]

I believe a cow was very interested in the hon. Lady’s coat on one of her recent visits—I hope both the cow and the coat have recovered.

We encourage all farmers to apply for the sustainable farm initiative, and we are actively looking at how we can achieve stability going forward.