Environmental Targets (Public Authorities) Bill [HL]

Earl Russell Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I too support the Bill. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for bringing it and for his well-worded explanation of it. I am also grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Willis, for lending their support and for the speeches they have given.

The Bill requires specified public bodies to contribute to the delivery of statutory targets established under the Environment Act 2021 and the Climate Change Act 2008. As it stands, our climate change and nature protection legislation has a gaping hole at its heart in that no statutory duty is applied to the many public bodies on whose everyday decisions and actions we depend in order to meet the targets. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, put it very well: the Government have all the levers on their desks, but the trouble is that the levers are not connected to anything. So far, our ad hoc efforts in this area have not worked. The state is already in possession of all the obligations but it does not have the statutory powers required to fulfil them.

The Bill is carefully crafted so as to be effective but, equally, not to be overly burdensome. Its thoughtful application includes regulators such as Ofwat, Ofgem and the Environment Agency; local authorities; key bodies such as Natural England, the Forestry Commission and National Highways; and some other 40 specified public bodies. It also contains an option for Ministers to include national parks in England and Wales by secondary legislation; I think this should be done.

The Bill uses well-versed legal language, saying that each of the identified bodies

“must, in the exercise of its functions, take all reasonable steps to meet the environmental recovery”

obligations. This duty is specific and active. It provides a clever means of aligning the functions of many organisations around a single shared goal. The Bill is careful not to define how the obligations should be met. Equally, it does not introduce a significant extra cost; indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, it may induce cost savings from cost implications avoided, bringing longer-term cost savings. Importantly, my understanding is that the Local Government Association has signalled its support for the Bill. The simple and sad truth is that, as a country, we do not assign a fair value to nature. Our statutory powers are inadequate and do not provide the required levels of protection.

The Bill updates many bits of individual legislation that were written long before the nature and climate change crisis. One example is that for the Forestry Commission, which is over 100 years old. Often, they do not have clear environmental goals. This Bill also saves all of us, as parliamentarians, a job of putting down multiple amendments to lots of Bills that simply waste precious parliamentary time.

The UK has many key targets in place, but without statutory obligations such as these we will just not meet them. The Labour manifesto states that the UK faces a nature crisis, accelerated by climate change, and argued that the UK has become

“one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world”.

Labour committed in the King’s Speech to improve access and I hope that this Government do that. We face an interlinked and conjoined nature and climate crisis, and we must work at pace and scale to meet it. That manifesto also included a clear commitment that Labour would take

“action to meet our Environment Act targets”.

Here is a clear and effective way to do that at pace and scale. I hope the Minister agrees and can lend government support to the passage of this Bill.