My Lords, I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, that it has been extremely useful that she has spoken to her amendment before we all comment on it. I congratulate her on the way she did it and support a lot of what she said.
I thank my noble friend the Minister for sparing the time to have a meeting with me before we started Committee. At that meeting, I said to him that one of my main focuses was going to be how this works in practice on the ground—how it will be implemented in
reality, rather than in theory. That is what I want to start to explore with this amendment, in support of my noble friend Lord Lucas. He rightly asked why the targets have been set and how.
We all want better biodiversity—it is on that area that I shall focus in the short time for which I shall speak—but we must have a sensible and practical target for it. If my noble friend issues a target that he wants lapwing and curlew numbers to be increased by 50%, we must look at some hard evidence and facts. Here, I call in aid the work of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust. It has been researching this area for more than 20 years, combining a productive farm at Loddington in Leicestershire with benefits for wildlife. I urge my noble friend the Minister to visit that farm as soon as practicable, and certainly before Report, because he will be fascinated by the research that the trust has done.
The trust has done research into lapwing. It did a pilot study with Peak District farmers. It was backed up by Natural England. The farmers did all the right things: the grass was the right length, the vegetation was absolutely right. They got full marks, they got a lot of funding, but there was absolutely no increase in lapwing; in fact, there was a decrease. That was because other factors, in particular, predation by animals, had not been taken into account. An awful lot of money has been wasted on projects similar to this.
I back that up with the curlew project in Shropshire that it was involved with. For two years, it monitored and looked after sites, but no chicks survived. Mostly, that was due to egg predation by badgers and foxes, which has caused real problems; indeed, it got to the stage where nests were electric-fenced off to protect them. Three nests hatched but, once the chicks had got out from under the electric fence, there was no stopping the predation. Therefore, I thoroughly support the aims of my noble friend Lord Lucas’s proposal and ask my noble friend the Minister: how will these targets work in practice regarding biodiversity? Given the examples I have just mentioned—and I have a lot more to come out during later amendments—how will this work on the ground for the benefit of wildlife?