State of Climate and Nature

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Mary Creagh

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.

Environmental Protection

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Mary Creagh

Monday 6th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. The idea that we can send Environment Agency officials to deal—in some cases—with serious organised crime groups is simply for the birds. People say, “There aren’t prosecutions” or “The penalties are too light”, but the waste is often one part of a multifaceted criminal enterprise—it is just another wing of a business empire. We need to get better at looking upstream, looking at tax checks and looking at the web of companies behind the business, and basically doing the Al Capone method—getting them on tax evasion—and prosecuting them under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

There is a wider point here: we cannot expect council officials who have been denuded and stripped of funds over the last 14 years to suddenly become waste crime enforcers. There may be only one or two trading standards and compliance officers in post in a local council, but this sort of sophisticated crime requires a lot of multi-agency work. Someone from the National Police Chiefs’ Council is now tasked with doing that work; we are doing a review, particularly of local authority competence in this area.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The Minister has touched on organised crime. As I am sure she is aware, modern slavery can be a real issue within the waste crime sector; we have had some powerful debates on that issue in the Chamber. The waste crime action plan sets out that people will be held to account and given community service, but we need to reach further up the chain, because often the people who are caught in the act are the ones being exploited or forced to carry out such activities. I am reassured by what she says, but does she agree that we need to go further up the chain?

[Mary Creagh]

We need to take action at every level. For example, the person who does a weekend job for their friend, transporting half a skip of old kitchen waste that suddenly ends up on a lay-by, in a farmer’s field or blocking a lane, will now face up to nine penalty points on their licence; that should make them think twice before doing that job for their friend. They may only be on the periphery of the criminality, but in order to stop it, we have to look right the way along the chain. Anecdotally, I often hear that when these small-time crooks are apprehended, they are only too pleased to pay the fixed penalty notices to the council and to be let away with it, because they can be the front end of a much, much larger serious and organised crime group.

So what does this all mean? The Environment Agency is finally going to be effectively resourced to undertake the compliance work. The move to permitting means that the agency can suspend and ultimate revoke permits where conditions are breached. It can also prosecute, and those found guilty will face fines or up to five years’ imprisonment. The regulations will mean that the public should have more trust in the people they hand their waste to. We will require waste controllers and transporters to include their permit number on advertising, whether that is a Facebook ad or a branded van.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Mary Creagh

Thursday 4th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I have not seen the report that the hon. Gentleman is talking about, but I believe my hon. Friend the Minister for farming has seen it. In December, we published the 2025 environmental improvement plan, which sets out our ambition over the next five years to accelerate progress towards our targets under the Environment Act 2021. Those include ecosystem protection, wildlife reintroductions, species abundance, reducing species extinction risk, and creating more than half a million hectares of wildlife-rich habitat, which will provide critical ecosystem services. We are also delivering our international commitment to protect 30% of the UK’s land and sea by 2030, and we will make more announcements this summer about that.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am sure the Department is already gearing up for the biodiversity COP in Armenia later this year, but what discussions will the Department be having with the Foreign Office about the equally important desertification COP that is taking place in Mongolia, where important issues such as water shortages, the degradation of land and much more will be on the agenda?

[Mary Creagh]

I know that there will be attendance from Foreign Office officials on that, and I agree with my hon. Friend that the Mongolian COP in August is equally important. It is important with these COPs that we do not look at climate, desertification and nature separately. We need to bring the three Rio conventions much closer together so that we get the synergies. Desertification has not traditionally been seen as a problem in this country but, as the planet warms and our climate changes, we need to take the issue seriously.