My Lords, we have had an excellent start to our debates and consideration of the Bill, which helpfully sets the scene for the weeks ahead and underlines the scale of the challenge before us. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that you will also hear a great deal more from the Labour Front Benches on these issues.
We have become accustomed to accepting that there is a climate emergency, but it is now clear that the decline in biodiversity is having an equally devastating impact on the planet. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, they are inextricably linked. This is why I was pleased to add my name to his Amendment 2.
It is two years since Parliament declared a climate and ecological emergency, on 1 May 2019. Since then, the need for more urgent action on the environment has only increased. The RSPB State of Nature report records that 41% of UK species are declining and one in 10 is threatened with extinction. It documented how the UK has failed to reach 17 of the 20 UN biodiversity targets agreed 10 years ago. The WWF’s Living Planet Report 2020 shows an average 68% decline in the populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, globally, since 1970. Yet we rely on these species to keep our planet’s complex ecological systems in balance.
Noble Lords have spoken eloquently today about the consequences of our neglect of nature both domestically and globally. This need for urgent action has been echoed by a number of noble Lords. As the Dasgupta report drives home, the message that flourishing biodiversity across the planet is crucial for our economies, as well as for our well-being and for life itself, is all too apparent. I recommend that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, reads that report, if she has not already done so, because it underlines the crisis that confronts us now and certainly justifies us calling it an emergency.
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I was pleased that, in his Second Reading speech, the Minister acknowledged the importance of the Dasgupta report. He described it as
“a powerful piece of work—a call to arms”.—[Official Report, 7/6/21; col. 1301.]
However, the Government’s formal response to that report has been less than inspiring. Therein lies the problem: lots of rhetoric but a lack of clear policy decisions and hard choices to deliver the changes that we need.
Sadly, the Government’s record on delivery leaves much to be desired. Progress on implementing the 25-year environment plan is mixed, with as many targets going backwards as forwards in the last report. The Natural Capital Committee’s 2020 report warns that there is a real danger that it will
“go the way of so many bold initiatives that have punctuated the decline of England’s natural environment over the previous generations.”
Meanwhile, the Climate Change Committee reports that we will not meet our fourth or fifth carbon budgets, while the latest report of the Adaptation Committee is scathing about the Government’s lack of action in a number of key policy areas necessary to meet the sixth. So I hope the Minister will understand our scepticism about the previous promises made, and why we want to use the Bill to deliver a different sort
of future. Step one would be supporting Amendment 2, which would enshrine in the Bill the emergency and the need for urgent action.
I welcome the amendments in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, which highlight the lack of coherence between the environmental principles, environmental targets and environmental improvement plans. As several noble Lords have said, including my noble friends Lord Rooker and Lord Young of Norwood Green, business and the wider community need certainty. I agree with the many noble Lords who have said that that applies to the farming community as well, which is facing massive disruption from the transition to the new ELM system. I particularly welcome the noble Earl’s intention in Amendments 54 and 74 to firm up the obligations on the Secretary of State to make a “significant contribution” and then to “achieve” the environmental objectives, rather than the more woolly aspirations in the original text in the Bill. I hope the Minister will look favourably on those proposals.
These are early days in our consideration of the Bill. We have begun to identify the principles that will underpin the legislation based on an urgency for action, a clarity about the change needed and a robust mechanism to hold the Government to account on delivery. I look forward to the many debates ahead as we pursue those objectives line by line, and hope that together we can indeed deliver a different future for our planet.