State of Climate and Nature

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

The hon. Member asked about a range of policies. I will talk about natural flood management. We will invest £300 million in natural flood management over the next 10 years—the highest ever figure for floods programming, and that is the minimum level. We will be supporting projects that reduce flood risk and deliver wider benefits to communities and nature.

On the concrete flood barriers and dried rivers that the hon. Gentleman spoke about, we must do more to enable farmers to hold water in their land. When they are building their reservoirs, we do not want concrete bowls or buckets; what we need are natural scrapes and areas where they can hold on to water. They can help with that natural aspiration by planting trees and experimenting with agroforestry, as we are doing with the western forest around Bristol and Gloucester. We are acutely aware of the challenges that farmers face from extreme weather events. In some areas in the east of England, the wheat harvest is already being brought in.

We are committed to maintaining food production and supporting thriving farm businesses. But, as I said earlier, land managers and farmers have an increasingly important role in reducing the risk of flooding and coastal erosion as we adapt to climate changes, and eligibility criteria for natural flood management funding has widened to include them for the first time. We want them to do more on soils, so that they can hold the water as well, buffer strips, to slow the flow, and run-off attenuation features to store and release water.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for including land use and food systems within this outline. It is so important that that is included as part of the triple challenge of climate, nature and food.

We know that we can meet our climate and nature goals only if we catalyse and incentivise private sector investment. I point to the example of Bristol, where through our strategic energy partnership city leap we have mobilised finance for city decarbonisation, and where the West of England combined authority has just launched a £5 million nature fund to help kick-start nature markets. What more are we doing at a national level to support nature and carbon markets and to incentivise that private sector investment?

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. It was clear at London climate action week that the energy and climate transition is already well under way. With the British Standards Institution, we have worked to set nature standards so that when nature projects and large financial funds want to invest in nature, they have the confidence to do so and are not accused of greenwashing as they have been in the past. We also want to learn from some of the issues about investing in carbon markets so that companies feel comfortable insetting carbon and nature losses in their own supply chains, where the first rule is to do no harm. A huge amount of money is going into nature projects and I am excited to see how that will develop in the future.