My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend prelate the Bishop of St Albans. I particularly praise his work as president of the Rural Coalition. I know that he does really good work there. I declare my own interest as co-chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership.
I will speak to Amendment 32, which was not all that popular in Committee, in that it suggested and states that the transition period from the old funding system to the new should be not seven years but five. I will go through why that is so important and why I have bothered to bring it back and take up the House’s time—although I will not be putting it to a vote at this Report stage.
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The reason is that the Bill and this programme in terms of changing the financial nature of support for agriculture are absolutely critical for England’s ecology into the future. It is really important because of the crises that the country will face in the longer term. We know very well of the climate change crisis because we hear about it every day, but we hear increasingly about the biodiversity emergency that is facing us globally and also in each of the nations of the world: it is spread across the globe. The Bill has the ability to help to correct that biodiversity crisis, along with various other initiatives that are happening as part of the 25-year environmental plan. We have to make sure not just that we get this financial system right in terms of environmental land management schemes, but that we do it quickly, with alacrity and we get on with it.
What is the evidence for that emergency? Let me give three statistical examples. First, 41% of species in the United Kingdom—we are not talking about the Brazilian rainforest, the Indonesian rainforest or the many other areas we concentrate on regularly—are in decline in terms of their population. Very few are increasing; the remainder are steady state.
The farmland bird index has gone down 57% since 1970. That is a staggering figure and is a direct index around farmland performance in terms of biodiversity in the United Kingdom. It illustrates, regrettably, that agriculture is the main reason for the decline in biodiversity and in the quantum of nature in this country. I do not blame the farming industry for that. It has practised its profession and trade in compliance with the various financial regimes there have been under the common agricultural policy and the legal framework within which it operates. We hope that that is changing because of this.
I also regret to say that in the UK’s sixth national report on its performance on the biodiversity convention in 2019, we met only six of our 20 targets in terms of what are called the Aichi biodiversity targets. In fact, the NGOs would say that our performance was even worse.
Those are statistics, but we all know from our own homes, gardens and farmland that we see fewer butterflies and moths than we did before. We have fewer bees and pollinators than before. I do not see hedgehogs any more where I live. In terms of birds, I remember that starlings and thrushes were one a penny when I was a child in suburban London. We hardly see those species at all now. That is the problem.
So I believe that it is absolutely essential that we do not stroll through seven years of changing this system and that we at least bring it down to five. This country defeated the Kaiser and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires in five years 100 years ago. We defeated the Nazi tyranny of Europe and the Japanese empire in six years. I cannot believe that we need seven years to change a system of financing that is so important to mend our biodiversity and to get the 25-year environmental plan working properly, and to make this an instrument to do it now, quickly and with alacrity.
The RSPB report that came out yesterday was called A lost decade for nature. We have an opportunity here not to lose the next decade, and I believe that we should start by making sure that that transition period is not seven years but five. For us—an advanced nation that knows what we are doing and has the experience of a good agricultural sector—surely, that has to be possible. Many, many farmers out there are already carrying out the sort of agricultural practices we want to see and that have been shown to be practical. They are there as an example and I hope that the Government will listen and reduce this period, rather than give into the temptation, as some noble Lords want, to extend it.