Biodiversity

First, I want to echo the formidable words of the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner). I do not think that there is anything in his speech that I disagree with. On the contrary, I wholeheartedly support everything that he said. Without wanting to repeat what he said, I want to add my support. It is more or less a given that we all recognise that nature provides very valuable—some would say non-negotiable—benefits, but we have not yet developed the tools to measure those benefits. We have heard today and in previous debates about the value of wetlands, mangroves and forests, and no one could even begin to argue about their benefits. Despite that, we attach a formal or recognised value to those things only as we cash them in, so a forest is worth virtually nothing to us until we have converted it into toilet paper. We are destroying unavoidably and unarguably priceless, non-negotiable, valuable natural assets, simply because we have not yet designed tools sophisticated enough to value them. That is the ultimate example—the most defining example—of market failure. The situation is beginning to change. Just as we all recognise—a child would recognise—that without healthy fisheries, we would have no fish, people are beginning to realise now that as we lose our bee colonies, our agriculture will be affected. We are beginning to realise that as we continue to pave over and destroy our flood plains, we shall have to invest more and more in defences, as the speed of surface water continues to increase. In fact, as a result, water companies are beginning to pay farmers to manage their farms in such a way that they take into account the value of slowing down the speed of water. In other examples, water companies are paying farmers to avoid contaminating the water near their farms. As a result of farming in a different way, they are seeing returns of up to 65 times the cost of capital investment. That train of thought is beginning to become more mainstream, but not yet in Government. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has signalled its intention of beginning the process of embedding the value of the natural world in the decision-making process. That is hugely welcome. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on taking that agenda so much further than it has been taken before, certainly in my political experience—and although I have been an MP for only four months, I was involved in politics for many years before that. It is the best possible news. I echo the words of the hon. Member for Brent North and encourage the Minister to use whatever influence he has to take the message to the Treasury, because without cross-departmental acceptance of the need to value natural capital, we will not see anything more than a synthetic change in the way in which decisions are made. I shall finish on that point, and by again congratulating the Minister on taking the agenda so much further forward in a very short time.