Queen’s Speech

Earl of Devon Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Devon (CB) [V]]

My Lords, as we have heard from many erudite speeches, including two excellent maidens, this is a time like no other. It is an unprecedented year for environmental policy; for the sake of the natural world, I can only wish the Government and the Minister success and offer my support. With the G7, COP 26 and COP 15, there are many global stages on which to parade. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, noted, if we cannot get our own house in order, we cannot lead that parade. There is much to do.

As if to emphasise the vagaries of our climate, a tornado ripped down our valley in Devon last week, littering trees and timber buildings for over a mile. I currently join your Lordships from my in-laws’, having been evacuated from home due to wildfires in May—I am not in Devon.

Of course, ecological catastrophe is not new. Alexander von Humboldt, the father of modern environmentalism, visited Latin America in 1800 to witness the devastation wreaked by empire and resource-hungry capitalism. His words could describe Bolsonaro’s Brazil today:

“When forests are destroyed, as they are everywhere … The beds of the rivers … are converted into torrents, whenever great rains fall … The sward and moss disappearing from the brush-wood on the sides of the mountains, the waters falling in rain are no longer impeded … and instead of slowly augmenting the level of the rivers by progressive filtrations, they furrow during heavy showers the sides of the hills, bear down the loose soil, and form those sudden inundations that devastate the country”.


This was written over 200 years ago, and yet still we rape the Amazon of its natural capital with ever more mechanised efficiency—then for coffee and sugar, now for soya too. Our problem is not awareness—von Humboldt was the star of Napoleonic Europe, feted across the continent—but simply that the drive for profit has always overcome the fear of environmental Armageddon, which impacts those in hotter, poorer countries before us. This must change.

Her Majesty’s Treasury took a bold step commissioning the Dasgupta Review into the economics of biodiversity. His conclusions, which we debated recently, could not have been clearer, yet the Government have yet to publish their response. Can we expect that before we see the Environment Bill? Principal among the Dasgupta recommendations is that natural capital must be priced. What steps are the Government taking to price ecosystem services? Similarly, Professor Dasgupta extolled increased access to nature and mandatory nature studies. While ELMS addresses access, it is an optional scheme, and farmers’ fear of unregulated access will discourage its adoption unless the policy is sympathetic. As for mandatory nature studies, the Government have simply ignored this recommendation. I am in agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin: please think again, or else another generation will move yet further away from our mother Earth.

Is it right that the Government expect to pass the Environment Bill by November’s COP 26? If so, will the Minister assure us that sufficient time will be made available? Rushing to meet a false deadline is not to the environment’s benefit. Noting my interests as a Devon farmer and a lawyer active in the space, the costs of well-intentioned environmental regulation must not fall unduly on those managing land so as to drive them out of business just as BPS is withdrawn. Abandoned farmland will not help the environment or our production of locally produced food.

On food, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, in championing the national food strategy, but we must do more for our health and environment. Noting my interest as a board member of the South West Food Hub, I ask that the Government support efforts for public procurement to be locally sourced, building a direct link for healthy food to flow from farm to fork.

There is a massive hole in the Environment Bill where heritage sits. Given that our island’s natural environment reflects millennia of human interaction, it is a mockery to think that we can manage our natural capital without a mind to its heritage. We will replace environmental degradation with cultural degradation and wipe out the wisdom of ages. As an example of this, we see planning and EPC rules that render 400 year-old cob cottages built of local mud and straw dismissed as carbon non-compliant. This cannot be right.

I look forward to more detail on our national tree strategy and to understanding how we will plant the millions of broadleaf trees desired despite the current unchecked assault of pests and diseases. Also, as a former property barrister who contributed to Lexis’ Commonhold: Law and Practice in 2002, I look forward to debating leasehold reform—not only might someone finally buy the book, but we might ensure an increased supply of affordable homes.

Finally, as chair of a forthcoming APPG inquiry into the role of social enterprise during the pandemic, I hope that the Government will acknowledge and support the vital role of social enterprise within our communities.