Autumn Budget 2026

Baroness Teather Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Teather (LD)]

My Lords, what a privilege it is to speak after the thoughtful maiden speech by my noble friend Lady Kitching of Penistone and to have the opportunity to say a few words about her. Her speech today showed the warmth, humour and practical determination she has, which will make her such a valued colleague. I know that she will be a real asset to these Benches and to the whole House. I must confess that I was made up to hear her surprising admission that, behind all that Yorkshire pride, my noble friend is in fact, like me, a Leicestershire lass; I knew she was a sound appointment.

My noble friend Lady Kitching of Penistone brings huge experience to the House after a decade working as an NHS physio specialising in adult neurology; I wonder whether she might even be the only physio in this House. She went on to work in the NHS workforce in organisational development roles. Alongside raising her two daughters and local politics, she then supported the family’s steel manufacturing business, giving her valuable insight.

My noble friend built a formidable reputation in Barnsley as a political leader and campaigner, and as a voice for young people, not just in her beloved hometown of Penistone but across South Yorkshire. She has given tireless service, too, to the Liberal Democrats, as an opposition leader on Barnsley Council and as chair of the Yorkshire regional party. I asked whether this proved that she had the ability to handle warring factions, to which I was told that my noble friend did not permit factions—so be warned.

My noble friend remains a town councillor, as she said, and is currently town mayor of Penistone. I know she will bring passion and pragmatism to this House, alongside a real commitment to championing the importance of local government. I hugely look forward to her future contributions.

There were also outstanding and very classy maiden speeches earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Ussher, the noble Lord, Lord Neri, and my noble friend Lady Aglionby. My noble friend Lady Aglionby addressed the need to support famers to invest in land, rivers and nature. It is to these themes that I return in my contribution.

I will speak about the need to put nature and the environment at the heart of our economic strategy. The natural world is the foundation of a flourishing, sustainable economy and vital for national security. Yet nature featured very little in the Budget Statement. Government strategy to support nature is fragmented, contradictory and poorly aligned across departments. There is a paucity of ambition. So much more would be possible by integrating support for nature recovery with the devolution agenda, spatial planning and public health, but nature is absent from cross-government decision-making and missing from economic forecasts.

Research over the last decade shows our economy is embedded in nature, including in the Dasgupta review in 2021, commissioned by the Treasury itself. In 2024, the Green Finance Institute highlighted that nature-related risks are as significant a factor for the economy as climate change. Yet although the potential impact of climate change is now included within long-term OBR forecasts, there is no similar assessment about the impact of nature depletion, soil health or biodiversity.

Environmental damage is already slowing the UK economy. Estimates from the Green Finance Institute suggest that it could lead to a reduction in GDP of 12% in coming years, more than the impact of Covid or the global financial crisis, potentially hitting agriculture, manufacturing, utilities and the financial sector. Furthermore, the Joint Intelligence Committee has warned of the risk of ecosystem collapse by 2030, with impacts so serious they have national security implications.

In the face of such apocalyptic warnings, there are still plenty of success stories that demonstrate that nature recovery projects can support wildlife, drive economic growth, boost jobs, enhance public health, mitigate climate change risks, and promote resilience and biosecurity. New research by the RSPB finds that £5 billion to £6 billion a year of investment for nature recovery would yield £80 billion of new economic output over 10 years, creating 80,000 long-term skilled jobs, most in rural communities, and a further £1 trillion of benefit to society through public health and climate change mitigation.

There is growing interest in how to value so-called natural capital in decision-making but, frustratingly, the Government’s response has so far been limited to Defra’s supplementary guidance, which has very little clout. Current fiscal rules do not allow the Government to borrow to invest in nature-based green capital projects, just grey infrastructure, so even if restoring peatland or creating a wetland would be an effective local solution to flooding, concrete barriers are the only solution that would satisfy Treasury borrowing rules. However, projects like the Medmerry coastal realignment scheme in West Sussex show that nature-based solutions can tackle flooding and produce many wider benefits.

Polling tells us that people want to live close to green space. We instinctively grasp that contact with the natural world has health benefits, yet it is the poorest urban communities that have the least access. In that context, it is hard to see how changes announced in the Budget to biodiversity net gain rules for developments on smaller brownfield sites would not just make this even worse. The scale of the finance gap to restore nature in the UK is very significant indeed. We need a coherent green finance strategy that sets out the ambition, the scale of the challenge and a road map to attract the mix of public and private investment needed.

The Office for Investment published an independent report last week on how to scale investment in natural capital. It highlighted the need to think holistically. I spoke to one of the authors of the report, who said that the UK is actually very well placed to lead on investing in nature, and that there is increasing interest from institutional investors. But government needs to put nature at the heart of regional economic development, using new spatial development strategies alongside local nature recovery strategies, so that housing plans, infrastructure, energy, water and nature are considered together at scale. Government should encourage regional authorities to bring together infrastructure, spending and private capital, using good growth funds and fiscal devolution measures to drive investment in nature recovery and regional growth.

What is needed from this Government now is ambition, urgency and lateral thinking. The risks of not acting to support nature are huge, but the potential rewards are also real.