Climate and Nature Bill

Roger Gale Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I am happy to agree with my hon. Friend and will say that the era of grown-up government is thoroughly back in town.

We are showing our support for nature-friendly farming by introducing a new deal for farmers, supported by £5 billion of funding that will boost Britain’s food security, restore nature and support rural economic growth.

On flooding—the greatest risk our country faces from climate change—we have invested £2.5 billion over two years. It is not just about building the defences, because once built, they have to be looked after. Maintenance under the previous Government fell behind, leaving 80,000 properties at risk. In York, the Foss flood defence barrier gave way; it is just not acceptable to have flood defences that can be overtopped in a severe weather event. We have set up a flood resilience taskforce to deal with the increasing challenge of flood defence problems.

[Sir Roger Gale]

As one of few who can remember when the dinosaurs became extinct, I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her generous remarks earlier.

Is this not about the future of our children and our grandchildren, and about the kind of world we grow up in? Let me take her back to her remarks about farming, as the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is present. We will not save our agriculture if we smother our fields in so-called solar farms and things such as the converter station that the National Grid wants to build on farmland in east Kent. We must strike a balance between the need to get to net zero and protecting our natural environment. It is quite clear that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are not talking to each other properly.

[Mary Creagh]

Having had an outbreak of consensus, I am afraid I have to gently disagree with the right hon. Gentleman. Across Government we are in the process of putting together a land use framework—something long promised by his Government, but sadly not delivered. According to the most ambitious estimates of solar energy, less than 1% of current farmland would be used for electricity. Of course, for many farmers who are suffering the effects of climate change, solar farms are an important alternative income stream. The land use framework will set out our approach and be part of a national consultation on how we measure the competing pressures on our land and environment.

We have pledged up to £400 million across the next two years for tree planting and peatland restoration, and £70 million to support nature’s recovery while delivering much-needed infrastructure and housing. We have finalised the criteria for land to contribute to 30by30 in England, and we are developing a strategy to accelerate progress towards that target.

In the area of circular economy, we are taking a number of steps to make recycling easier and to ban single-use vapes, as has been mentioned. This week, the Conservative party voted against the deposit return scheme, which they formulated when in government—what an extraordinary position to find themselves in. We will continue to work at pace to restore and protect our natural world, achieve clean power by 2030, boost our energy security, and create jobs and sustainable, clean growth across the country. But we cannot do it alone. Nature, birds, fish and weather systems go where they want, as do diseases, viruses and pollution. We saw that with ash dieback and we see it with global plastic pollution, where we are negotiating to get an ambitious global plastic pollution treaty.

I attended the COP16 conference on biodiversity in Colombia and the climate COP29 in Azerbaijan. There, we set out a range of new commitments, including £45 million for the global biodiversity framework fund. We set up the Cali fund, a new international fund for nature, which will give businesses using online genetic sequence data from plants and animals the opportunity to contribute to global nature recovery. I encourage people to work with businesses in their constituencies and to spread the word on that.

We are looking at innovative funding mechanisms for nature, such as the independent advisory panel on biodiversity credits, co-sponsored by the UK and France, which wants to scale up high-integrity credit markets and generate more finance for nature. At COP29, the Prime Minister confirmed that our nationally determined contribution would be an 81% reduction on 1990 carbon emissions by 2035. That excludes international aviation and shipping, but, following the advice of the Climate Change Committee, I believe that those two areas will be introduced into our sixth carbon budget from 2033. We confirmed at the conference that at least £3 billion between 2020-21 and 2025-26 will be spent on nature.

I am also pleased to inform the House that the UK has been selected to host the next meeting of IPBES, the intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services. This is the science panel for nature—the IPCC for nature. IPBES 12, in early 2026, will focus on the agreement and publication of a business and biodiversity assessment. We will maximise that moment in our calendar to have a national conversation about the UK’s leadership on the science in this area. It is a real joy for me and my hon. Friend the Climate Minister to work alongside our special international representatives for nature, Ruth Davis, and for climate, Rachel Kyte, who are driving leadership, ambition and delivery on nature and climate internationally as we move towards COP30 in Brazil this year.