World Species Congress

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

It is an absolute pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Charles, because I know you are interested in areas such as these and have done much work on them yourself. I must also thank the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for tabling the debate. She, too, has done valuable work with the zoos and aquariums all-party parliamentary group. I was very pleased to hear that referenced, and in particular to hear the reference to the work on cotoneaster going on at Chester zoo. Projects like that are so valuable to our plants and animals, given the stress they are under.

I believe there is clear synergy in the room: despite some conflicting views, we are all moving in the same direction in understanding the importance of having healthy and sustainable nature, how that links to climate change, and why we need to do something about it. It has never been more important to restore biodiversity, and the 24-hour, non-stop World Species Congress presents such a good opportunity for all the experts, volunteers and other people involved to come together to share their knowledge and ideas. These events are very important. More than half of the global economy is dependent in some way or another on the ecosystem services provided by nature. Our global GDP is intrinsically linked to that. Around 75% of all food crops are dependent in some way on pollinators—we have heard pollinators mentioned. That is why this issue is so important.

We have all heard about the alarming depletion of nature, but I want to focus on how we are leading the way. I want to take issue with some of the things we have heard from the other Front Benchers. The critical thing that this Government have done, which no other Government have done so far, is put in place the framework we need. We know there is a problem; we have set the framework, and it is backed up by legislation. As the Opposition know, the Environment Act was not a quick thing to do. I steered that through the House—many Members present were on the Bill Committee—before it went through the House of Lords, and it took two years. It is globally leading and sets the whole framework of targets. Targets are very important, and they were not set without a great deal of expert advice. One of the major targets we set was the globally leading apex target to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030—I will give some more detail about that—and then reverse it by 2040.

Just last Friday, our species abundance indicator, a new official statistic that is still in development, reported back to tell us how we are doing. We have all been waiting for that, which has been an enormous piece of work. While there is a real problem and it is very complicated, the indicator gives us some encouragement, and I urge hon. Members to have a look at it. It shows that some of the historic declines may be beginning to level out. However, there is still so much to do, a lot of which is embedded in our environmental improvement plan annual review, which will be published again this summer and will show progress. The first one was published after a very short time, but now the plan has been going for two years.

[Mr Perkins]

The Minister may be touching on the point I was going to raise. There is cross-party agreement that the targets were a welcome step forward, but she cannot ignore the OEP’s critique that we are not on target. If she is saying that she thinks the next update will show that we are making progress, I very much look forward to seeing it.

[Rebecca Pow]

I think the hon. Gentleman would respect that we are the party that set up the OEP. We actually set up a body that would challenge us to make sure that we are on target. That was a bold thing to do, but we have done it, and it is necessary. He will see a change as the years go on and the policies start to have effect. For example, we have already turbocharged peatland restoration. We set a target of restoring 35,000 hectares by 2030 and we have already done 28,000. We also have our huge nature for climate fund, which is funding so many projects.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned what Labour might do with national parks. He obviously has not noticed that we have already strengthened the legislation for our national parks and national landscapes. They will play a very important part in achieving our targets.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Sir Bill Wiggin) made a good point about the importance of habitat management. There are some huge landscape recovery projects going on, particularly in protected landscapes. There is a good example on Bucklebury Common, where heathland has been restored, which has managed to get back adders and nightjars. He also made a good point about major landowning groups. I have started to chair a body of those groups, which include the Church, the National Trust, the duchy and the Crown, in order to discuss what contribution they can make towards our biodiversity targets. As everyone here is agreed, we all have to work together on this. Everyone has to play their part, and this Government have put in place the strategies and frameworks so we can start to deliver on the targets.

One useful thing will be the biodiversity net gain, which will add to the sum total of our nature. My right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) referenced the forest risk legislation, which I hope to introduce later this month—the Secretary of State referenced it just last week at DEFRA questions—so that we can make it illegal for large regulated businesses to use soya, palm oil, cocoa and cattle products if they have contravened any of the laws in the source country. That is the way we think we can make that very important move, and I was talking to manufacturers of cattle feed in this country who want that legislation because it will set the agenda for investment.

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

Will the Minister look at simple things we can do in the UK in that legislation, such as not insisting on a bat survey in the planning process, but insisting that bats get the mitigating changes to building regulations that they require automatically, thus saving developers and getting on with saving species?

[Rebecca Pow]

We have done a lot of work with DLUHC on improving and speeding up site strategies. We have a new method for site strategies, which is particularly working for newts, and certainly bats are being looked at.

Oceans were referenced. We have 178 marine protected areas and three highly protected marine areas, and because we have left the common fisheries policy, we are now in charge of our own policies and have brought in byelaws to stop the damaging bottom trawling that was referenced. We have also banned the fishing of sand eels on Dogger Bank—a huge step that we were able to take because we are now independent. Through that, we are saving our seabirds. Sand eels are their main source of food, yet other countries were going there with their supertrawlers to catch them in order to feed their fish farms.

We are doing so much at home, including the environmental land management and sustainable farming incentive schemes, that is feeding into reaching our targets. We have integrated pest management to help our pollinators and a raft of other measures that farmers are putting in place to help us hit the targets and recover nature. We are also doing so much work internationally. We have all our international conventions. We adhere to the convention on the conservation of migratory species and we have the convention on biological diversity, which will be so important at COP16. As everyone knows, the UK was at the forefront of the negotiations at COP15 to set the global biodiversity framework, which we are adhering to.

The UK national biodiversity action plans were mentioned in detail. We have been working very hard to prepare those and will publish them imminently. I remind the shadow Ministers and other colleagues that all the devolved Administrations have to take part in that, so we urge them to make sure they are doing their bit to feed into it. That is in addition to our UK overseas territories and Crown dependencies. In fact, I have just come from chairing a meeting with the OTs. They are so important to the sum total of our nature because they hold 94% of it. They are working with our funds—our Darwin funds and our other funds—so that we can help them to nurture and save that wonderful wildlife.

Importantly, we cannot do any of this without mobilising finance on a large scale across the globe to help us protect and conserve nature. The UK is again leading the international efforts on that, with our international climate finance commitment. We have committed huge amounts: £3 billion from 2025 to 2026, and £11.6 billion overall.

I hope I have demonstrated just how much we are doing. I could talk for hours on this subject. I feel that with the experts and the advice that we have, including all the people working in DEFRA and in other Departments, we genuinely understand that there is a big crisis. The critical thing is getting the framework in place so that we can drive the action. Of course, our policies have to do that, which is why what farmers do, while also producing sustainable and secure food supplies, is so important. We understand that, and those two things can work together, as our Farm to Fork event today showcased.

I thank everyone for their contributions to this important debate and the hon. Member for Rotherham for securing it. I wish the congress all the best with its 24-hour marathon. Let me finish by saying that there is more to come.