State of Climate and Nature

Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

As I am sure the noble Baroness is aware, we do a lot of work on farming in Defra through the pathway to better welfare conditions for farmed animals. Clearly, the important thing is animal welfare, the conditions and a farm doing the best job it can in the best conditions. I do think the emissions implications for huge farms are something that we need to address and we are looking at that extremely closely. I hope she will be interested in the animal welfare strategy when we publish it later this autumn, because that will have a section on how we are going to improve farmed animal welfare, which will have a knock-on effect on exactly the kinds of situations that she is talking about.

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords, I am surprised at some Members holding up Scotland as a bastion of good practice. I understand that Scotland has had to reduce, or at least review, some aspects of its climate targets, so I am a wee bit surprised. But my main question is on China. Imports from China to the UK were worth almost £70 billion last year, but I am not impressed to hear that China’s fossil fuel production will peak by 2030. Will we continue to buy products from China or is there a process or mechanism to force, or at least attempt to force, China to get into line? If it is allowed to peak by 2030, goodness knows where the level will be at that stage.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The question of China is important, because if we are to tackle climate change globally and meet net zero, we have to look at those countries that have high emissions. Until very recently, China was very dependent on fossil fuels, but we also know that it is making moves away from that. It has been investing a lot in nuclear, for example. It is important to get this into perspective, because a huge country cannot change overnight. However, this country can provide global leadership in working with other countries as they move to the change they need to move to. I welcome that China is looking to invest in non-fossil fuels and move forwards and that it has set targets. That is very important, because it was not the case a few years ago. We need to have it within the global bubble if we are to continue to make progress.