Biodiversity: Dasgupta Review

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is correct in his assessment of the importance of the Dasgupta review. I reassure him that some of the measures in the review touch on areas where the Government are already taking action. We will consider the findings of the review carefully. The Environment Bill already contains world-leading proposals, including for mandatory biodiversity net gain for development, and I believe we will be taking it forward this year.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, if we are to value nature in all that we do, then nature needs to be part of our education system. Will my noble friend therefore ask her friends in numbers 11 and 10 Downing Street whether they will encourage the Department for Education to give a fair wind to the very well worked out proposal from OCR for a natural history GCSE, and will she let me know what they say in response?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will be very happy to undertake to make those representations and will let the noble Lord know the response.