Environment and Climate Change Committee Report: An Extraordinary Challenge: Restoring 30 per cent of our Land and Sea by 2030

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, this is the first opportunity I have to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Harlech, on her ministerial role; I wish her well in that. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and her committee for their work, and particularly the noble Baroness for so skilfully arranging this debate on Back British Farming Day.

I support the ambition behind the 30 by 30 policy in its aim to increase the spatial scale and connectivity of habitats, as these are key components of the nature recovery that this country needs. The criteria for contributing to 30 by 30 in England is based on three pillars: purpose, protection and management. As the report points out, while these are laudable, greater clarity is urgently needed in what these mean in practice.

Some people are calling for more land to be designated. I am not a great fan of designations. Protection should not be conflated with designation. This concern was reflected in the report, at paragraph 56:

“As the Committee heard in oral evidence: ‘just because [the area is] an SSSI, that does not automatically stop the decline in rare and threatened species we have on the site’”.


Indeed, the very designation of some land as an SSSI has caused its deterioration, because academic theory supplanted the practical land management that helped to create it. Experience shows that bottom-up, farmer-led and land manager-led projects are more successful than top-down directives in protecting and recovering nature.

So 30 by 30 is a huge opportunity for Defra to engage with environmental farmers groups. This would involve engagement with land managers and farmers across different management systems both in the lowlands and uplands. Good management practices would also extend the focus of nature recovery across a wider scale of catchment and landscapes than currently provided by the focus on designated areas alone. Every bit of the country can and should play its part—yes, even urban areas. It is good news that the Victoria Tower, part of this Palace, hosts a nest of peregrine falcons.

However, farmers face great difficulties at present. In paragraph 114, the committee states that:

“We heard that farmers in protected areas could struggle to find the time and resources to develop an understanding of what natural capital options are available on their land and that this may lead many to disengage with the process.”


How sad that would be. Does the Minister agree that using organisations such as the Peakland Environmental Farmers, co-ordinated by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, is an example of where such a collaboration could help farmers achieve these outcomes? Will the Government follow recently produced guidelines by the IUCN on human-wildlife conflict and co-existence, to help formulate strategies where different valid views are held?

I turn to what I consider an important omission from the report. How does 30 by 30 sit alongside the importance of food security, which is one of Defra’s five strategic priorities? This could be enhanced, and a lot of land could be made available for benefitting nature, if the Government would give their full support to the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023. The Minister of State for Food Security and Rural Affairs, in a recent letter wrote:

“We are now considering how to take forward the regulatory framework outlined in the Act and will share our plans with key interested parties soon”.


Can the Minister give us a more definitive timescale, as this has so much potential to help food security and biodiversity?

On the marine side, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, in asking why the Government do not stop fishing vessels from damaging our marine environment and wildlife. Free of the EU common fisheries policy, we have the power to prevent damaging fishing activity taking place in offshore marine protected areas. This power has already been deployed in a number of MPAs around England, but harmful practices, such as bottom trawling, are still allowed to take place in most of them.

Last year, fishing vessels equipped with bottom-towed gear were active in the UK’s offshore marine protected areas for over 33,000 hours, adding up to nearly four years. Oceana tells us that just 10 vessels, none of which were UK vessels, were responsible for over one-quarter of this damaging activity. EU legal challenges over the existing bottom trawling restrictions and the closure of the sand eel fisheries should be faced down. There is a genuine risk that the Government, as they seek a closer relationship with the EU, will use the sand eel win as a concession. Furthermore, the ban on mostly EU-registered bottom trawlers operating in all protected waters should be completed, and vessels of all sizes restricted from fishing forage species that local wildlife depend on.

This will also have significant benefits for climate action, with evidence showing that, globally, bottom trawling contributes roughly the same amount of emissions as the aviation sector. My view of the marine designations is similar to my critique of the terrestrial ones: protection is offered to a specific species or characteristic, rather than management of the whole water column. This can lead to a situation in which, for example, an animal is protected but its habitat is not, so the latter is able to be bottom-trawled, ruining the habitat for the animal being protected. Our current approach might explain why we are not getting the recovery outcomes that we want or expect to see in the marine environment.

At this morning’s National Farmers’ Union breakfast for “Back British Farming Day”, the Secretary of State had warm and encouraging words for farming and the environment. We will soon find out whether he can transform these into action. It is unsurprising, given the transition to a new farming scheme, with initially poor communication around its rollout and apprehension among farmers, that there is an underspend of over £350 million in Defra’s budget. Can the Minister confirm that HMT is trying to claw back at least £100 million of this? Research by the RSPB has estimated that this would mean 239,000 fewer hectares of nature-friendly farmland funded in England.

The ELMS budget has already experienced real-term cuts because it was not tied to inflation. The NFU and environmental NGOs have been calling for it to be almost doubled. Can the Minister confirm that Defra is also being asked to plan for cuts of up to 25% to meet the new Chancellor’s spending cuts? The opposition to the Secretary of State’s promises will not be from farmers but from his own Chancellor. Without sufficient resources at this critical time, there will be no chance of meeting the ambitions not only of 30 by 30 but of the legally binding targets set up by the Climate Change and Environment Acts. That is a much more serious problem for farming, the environment and food security.