Climate and Nature Bill

Debate between Greg Smith and Luke Taylor

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

All too often in this place and in politics at large, what divides us is not necessarily the end result—in this case reducing emissions, halting the decline of nature and supporting nature’s recovery—but the means by which we get there.

I have some serious issues with the Bill. I say clearly and categorically for the record that I spend most of my time in this place and in my constituency arguing against the very things that cause nature’s decline in the beautiful Buckinghamshire countryside. I spend most of my time arguing against the unnecessary greenfield housing developments that concrete over our countryside and destroy nature. I argue against the massive industrial solar installations, battery storage facilities and substation upgrades that take away the farms next door and have fencing around them that disrupts the deer runs and is harmful and dangerous to nature. So many in this House have argued that those things are the solution to some of the challenges we face, but I do not accept that at all, and I do not accept that the Bill will help us get to the end goal that I think the vast majority of people want to see.

I am grateful to constituents who have lobbied me in favour of the Bill, such as the Speen Environmental Action Group. I sat down with them over the summer and we had a good discussion. I do not think we agreed on everything, but we absolutely agreed on the need for the right sort of action and measures that will get us to where we want to go.

From a legislative perspective, I would argue, as the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), did in his excellent speech, that we already have a legislative framework in which we can work. We have the Environment Act 2021. Almost five years ago to this day, in the previous Parliament, I stood somewhere on the other side of the Chamber and delivered my maiden speech on the Environment Bill. It is now an Act of Parliament, and it has a section explicitly about halting the decline in species populations by 2030 and increasing populations by at least 10% to exceed current levels by 2042.

We have the legislative framework. We now have to allow our great innovators to come up with the real solutions—ones that do not bring about the destruction of our countryside and nature. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), who has left his place, give an impassioned defence of an ancient woodland. It is, in fact, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew), but it was a good defence none the less. I thought to myself, “It’s quite rare that I agree with him, but I agree with him on this point.” But then I thought about my own constituency, and I thought, “Hang on.” There is a project that has destroyed many ancient woodlands, not just in Buckinghamshire but up and down the entirety of phase 1: High Speed 2. The vast majority of Members of the 2017 Parliament—the Labour Members, the Liberal Democrat Members, although there were not so many of them then, and the Members of other parties—all went through the voting Lobby to vote for the destruction of ancient woodland in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire. It is a position that we all have to reflect upon. As I said at the start, we can disagree with the means of getting somewhere, but I invite every right hon. and hon. Member to reflect on what they themselves have proposed or supported in the past, and the impact that has had on the nature challenges we face.

I will touch briefly on some of the issues with the targets in the Bill, which would have severe unintended consequences. My hon. Friend the shadow Minister set out many of them in detail, but it is worth double underlining that if British industry is forced too far, too fast towards targets it cannot meet, that will simply drive those businesses, those jobs and those innovators overseas. It will not combat any global challenge; it will just move it somewhere else in the world. I cannot believe that the sponsors of the Bill, or anyone else, actually want to see that happen.

Fossil fuels will be needed for decades to come. I have been a vocal advocate of de-fossilisation, both in my time on the Transport Committee in the last Parliament and in this Parliament. My argument is that we have the technology out there, but Government regulation, not just in our own country but worldwide, is preventing us from enabling it to grow. We will need fossil fuels. We will need something to power the 1.4 billion internal combustion engine vehicles that will still be on the roads worldwide after the ban on new petrol and diesel engines in this country. I put it to the House that the solution is the synthetic fuel industry: making fuel literally out of air and water, using the Fischer-Tropsch process.

[Luke Taylor]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the number of Liberal Democrats in this place; I think that we were a very effective method of de-fossilisation on 4 July. On the point about synthetic fuels, does he agree that the measures in the Bill, particularly the ones to encourage sustainable aviation fuels and alternatives for internal combustion engines, will spur investment in those technologies exactly as he wants to see?

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. On his first point, all I will say is: not in Mid Buckinghamshire. They tried, but they got 25% of the vote.

To answer the hon. Gentleman’s serious point, I do not see anything in the Bill that challenges the zero emission vehicle mandate. The ZEV mandate is obsessed with testing at tailpipe rather than whole-system analysis, which gets in the way of developing synthetic fuels and greenlighting the great innovators in this country and worldwide to get on with developing that technology. If we put a synthetic fuel through an internal combustion engine, there is still carbon at tailpipe, but it is the same volume of carbon that will be recaptured through atmospheric carbon capture to make the next lot of fuel. It is carbon neutral. It is one volume of carbon in a perpetual circle, yet I see nothing in the Bill that will enable those great innovators to move ahead and get—as some of them claim they can—cost parity with the fossil fuel equivalent within a decade.