My Lords, I support Amendment 129 in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch. It would require the Secretary of State to take into account the current environmental improvement plan in agreeing priorities for incentives. It is about a big concern of mine at the moment, which is that we start to join up some of
these silos that are growing—environment, forestry, other land management purposes and agriculture. There are myriad schemes that are going to be coming towards farmers that will affect land, agriculture, forestry and the environment. There is the ELM scheme itself, as enshrined in this Bill, the 25-year environment plan, the provisions of the Environment Bill, the climate guarantee scheme, the Nature4Climate fund, the biodiversity net gain provisions and nature recovery networks. It feels more overheated than I have experienced for a long time in this area, which is great, because it means that everyone is putting effort, energy and funding into those sorts of issues—but it would be quite nice if we could join them up a bit.
Way back, I had a pious hope that we could have one Bill—a joint agriculture and environment Bill. I thought it would be a good idea. But in view of the pace at which this Bill is going through the House—and despite the aspirations of previous speakers that the Minister stay in his post for ever—I think that if we had had a joint agriculture and environment Bill, the Minister would probably have done a runner at that stage.
We need to find a way to bring all these initiatives together. Amendment 129 would at least be a modest start in joining up the environmental and agricultural agenda, as it should be.