Environment (Local Nature Recovery Strategies) (Procedure) Regulations 2023

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my interests in the register. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, for introducing this Motion and the other noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I too recognise the expertise of the noble Baroness; it is wonderful to have that kind of expertise. I so much enjoy how this end of the building attracts people with real knowledge, and I absolutely bow to the noble Baroness’s knowledge and experience on these matters.

I, my Secretary of State and others feel passionately that, in a way, we are lucky to be making policy on this issue. We have the chance to really make a difference, to reverse the declines in species and to address the greatest challenge that mankind has ever faced in climate change. I am grateful for her comments, but I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that this Government not only are proud of our record on climate change and our leadership on issues such as this around the world but are determined to fix this at home. We cannot tell people abroad to put 30% of their land and sea into protection if we are not doing it properly at home and following the advice of experts.

Declines in nature have far-reaching impacts and implications, and reversing them is something that both I and this Government are committed to doing. Local nature recovery strategies are a key part of how we plan to reverse these declines and meet the ambitious targets set out in the Environment Act.

The development of these strategies builds on lessons learned from previous initiatives, which go all the way back to the national ecosystems assessment that the last Labour Government instigated and the natural environment White Paper that we introduced in 2011. That was clearly informed by the work of Sir John Lawton’s seminal Making Space for Nature report, which was fundamental to the kinds of policies we are now bringing forward.

To the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I say this: I have a more positive view of humanity and certainly of the people drawing up these strategies. If they are not working across boundaries with their neighbours, I, as a member of the Wildlife Trusts, want to know why the Wildlife Trusts are not ensuring that they are. People will be writing to their local MPs. In this respect, civil society has an enormous job to do, quite apart from the guidance that we are giving to these LNRSs to make sure that they are working in a connected way.

I want to see from this a resurgence of the ambition that, for example, we saw with Big Chalk, which was an attempt to draw a degree of Lawton-esque connectivity between the North Wessex Downs and the Ridgeway, right through Wiltshire, over Salisbury Plain, across the downlands of Cranborne Chase to the Jurassic Coast. Cranborne Chase AONB has worked to map areas of species-rich grassland in the downlands—tiny pinpricks of different retained high-biodiversity grasslands. Joining them all up is exactly what this is about. It cannot be done just in Dorset or Cranborne Chase AONB; it has to be done by working across borders.

There is a requirement in LNRS regulations to share information and engage at strategic points in the process. Natural England, as the supporting authority for LNRSs, also has a lay role in making sure that happens.

Local nature recovery strategies will be a powerful new tool for helping public, private and voluntary sectors work together to decide where to focus nature recovery efforts to improve co-ordination, spatial coherence, efficiency and impact. The legal foundations provided by the Environment Act ensure that local nature recovery strategies will cover the whole of England and be locally led and supported by the best data that government has to offer. There is a difference of nuance here, a difference of opinion, and I entirely understand where the noble Baroness is coming from. I also understand what my noble friend says when he talks about the importance of this having a local heft, and that has to be the way forward—with some national guidance and sharing of data.

The regulations and guidance that form the backdrop to this evening’s debate ensure that the strategies will be prepared to a consistent high standard and properly involve key local partners in decision-making. As we have heard from Members of this House, there is real urgency in the need for action and, since the regulations and guidance were laid in March, we have continued to make rapid progress. At the end of last month, we announced the formal appointment of the 48 responsible authorities that will lead preparation of the strategies across the country and the £14 million the Government are providing so that they can do so.

We are committed to providing further guidance on links to the planning system and the national objectives we want local nature recovery strategies to contribute to, which will make even clearer the important role that we see these strategies fulfilling. I am really grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Jones, and others who are leading on the amendment in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill.

I know that we all want the same outcome. It is just a question of whether we have the right wording in the Bill that can deliver it. I cannot give the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, an answer as to whether we are going to find accommodation in the wording of the amendment or in an alternative form of words, or whether we can find some other way of giving reassurance. I absolutely understand the sincerity of those who are asking for these measures.

The connection with the planning system is vital. I know that this is an issue of great and considerable interest to a number of noble Lords and I anticipate another passionate and informed debate when the amendment is considered on Report, which, as has been said, will happen very slowly.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Very soon—it will not happen slowly. While local nature recovery strategies should consider both habitats and species, this guidance refers more often to habitats. This is because habitat types give a helpful indication of an area’s general environmental characteristics, including which species it is likely to support and what environmental benefits it may provide.

Responsible authorities should refer to habitat types throughout their statement of biodiversity priorities to help them link together and connect the statement to the local habitat map. This is not in any way suggesting that habitats are more important than species. The importance of species is repeatedly highlighted throughout the guidance. I take the noble Baroness’s point, but I hope that we are moving in the right direction.

For nature to recover we need people to work together and, crucially, the people who decide how land is used and managed to be involved in identifying nature recovery proposals. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is right that farmers are pivotal in this. The best available data and the insights of experts such as the noble Baroness are hugely important too. We know that we need to target our efforts where they will achieve the most. Understanding this requires expertise and evidence, and the need for local nature recovery strategies to be evidence based is stated clearly in the statutory guidance. Our experts in Natural England have a crucial role to play.

The local nature recovery strategy regulations make Natural England a “supporting authority” in the preparation of all strategies. This gives it a strong say in what each strategy includes and in providing further guidance and advice if needed. We are keen that other experts also engage with the preparation of strategies in areas that they are interested in, to help strengthen and improve them, and they will have the opportunity to do so. As a Berkshire boy, I will be very upset if they are not talking to Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and any other surrounding areas producing these. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, made the point about getting people from Cornwall and Devon to get on and talk to each other. That will be an achievement that he will be able to look back on as something that is good not only for those two counties but for nature.

This input from technical experts needs to be part of a wider open and collaborative approach—this will ensure that each strategy also benefits from local knowledge and understanding of the conditions on the ground—and to help build support for the action to be delivered. This is because local nature recovery strategies are designed to encourage and incentivise landowners and managers into making positive changes, not to force them to do so. Biodiversity net gain, the biodiversity duty on public authorities, planning policy, and private and public funding will work together to encourage action to be taken, with progress reviewed every few years and plans updated to reflect what has been done and what still needs to be done.

I know from previous conversations that the noble Baroness has concerns about biodiversity net gain. However, we are starting to see, through our early-stage pilot programmes, some really exciting connectivity being delivered in places such as London. The London Wildlife Trust is delivering biodiversity net gain in south-east London, with a development which will include 4,800 new homes over the next 20 years, alongside 20 hectares of parkland, connecting it to nature reserves at Kidbrooke Green and Birdbrook Road. This is an example of the sort of project that we want to see emerging out of a variety of different things that have come from the Environment Act.

Involving the landowners and managers in the preparation process and helping them to understand both the evidence base and the support from local communities for what changes are proposed can work alongside these other measures to persuade and enable changes to be made. Part of how we encourage this engagement is by being sparing in our use of technical language. However, I assure the noble Baroness that each strategy will still have a strong technical underpinning. How many strategies have sat on local government officials’ shelves and not been accessed by the public—people who mind about their local nature reserve and mind about their little piece of England, which they want to see restored? This must be, in the words and delivery, accessible, but it must also have that technical heft. Again, the role of Natural England in supporting every responsible authority is key, explaining the importance of increasing habitat connectivity and extent in planning for nature’s recovery.

With local nature recovery strategy preparation under way across England, we are at a critical point on the road towards reversing nature’s decline. Groups such as the RSPB have responded to the progress we have made to endorse the crucial role that strategies have to play, through ensuring that local action can deliver national progress for nature’s recovery. For them to truly succeed, we need to work together and to lend our support to encouraging others to do this. I urge the noble Baroness to add her considerable expertise to this common cause, which I know that she does, and for this House to provide their clear support.

Those words that politicians say but usually do not mean, about their door always being open, I really do mean. I am very keen for the noble Baroness and others who are greatly exercised that we get this right to meet me and my officials and to ensure that they are conveying their inevitable concerns about different parts of this very important work that we are doing, so that we can get this right.

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

I thank the Minister for his response. We have had a good debate. I am mindful of time, so I will keep it short. I just say to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that I do not disagree; I think these need to be locally delivered. If you do not have local buy-in, it will not happen. All I am asking is that we also have scientific data underpinning those local delivery plans so that, at the end of the day, we can all say “Ah, species declines have stopped. Things are going up”. Without co-ordinating that centrally, I still struggle to see how we are going to add everything up.