I thank noble Lords for their contributions and welcome their engagement with this area of the Bill.
Turning first to Amendment 43, I respectfully ask the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and other noble Lords, to consider the potential effect of this amendment and how it could undermine the long-term nature of the targets framework, which we have purposely designed to look beyond the political cycle of any one Government. No one disputes that there is a logic in having long-term targets. Long-term targets will provide much-needed certainty to businesses and society, enabling us to invest confidently in the innovation required to achieve our ambitions. However, at the same time, we need some flexibility to adapt the interim targets, while keeping the long-term fixed targets, so that we can reflect on what is and what is not working.
With huge respect, I am not sure that the characterisation by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, of the arguments of my colleague, Rebecca Pow, is completely fair. It is not so much about the unpredictability of nature. There may be times when we will want to take actions that are more ambitious but which might not bear fruit in a few years. We must be able to avoid
rushed policy-making just to score a quick win, which we would have to do if there were shorter-term legal targets.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, I say that there is always a natural temptation for any Government on a five-yearly target-setting process to set eye-catching short-term measures in their manifesto, but everything that we know about the complexity of these environmental targets shows that they transcend any one Administration, or five-year period. We are, after all, talking about living, non-linear systems, and there will be plenty of measures the effects of which will take many years to bear out. For example, in response to my noble friend Lord Caithness, for certain habitats, such as peat bog, native woodland and elements of the marine environment, significant change is unlikely to occur within a five-year period. We would not want to deprioritise key areas of the environment with longer recovery times in order to meet those five-year targets.
There are actions we can take on air quality, particularly those requiring new infrastructure, which may temporarily increase PM2.5 concentrations but nevertheless have significant long-term benefits. For example, building significant cycling and walking infrastructure would deliver long-term benefits through the modal shift from polluting modes of transport such as motor cars, but the construction work to deliver that infrastructure would increase PM2.5 concentrations in the short term, as well as congestion while people get used to a different flow of traffic. All the evidence backs both those contentions.
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Requiring the Government to achieve complex targets in five years would discourage these types of large-scale changes, and instead focus action on simple, quick wins. We need some flexibility if we are to innovate to tackle the greatest environmental challenges of our time. I believe that this amendment risks curtailing that necessary flexibility, inadvertently reducing overall ambition and detracting from our critical long-term targets.
However, I reassure noble Lords that every year we will be required to report on progress in meeting the interim and long-term targets in our annual progress reports, covered in Clause 8. This will be a visible, transparent and accountable process. The Government will be held to account on those reports and progress by the OEP. I know that the noble Baroness has put forward this amendment because she wants, unsurprisingly, to be confident that we will deliver results, but with transparency, regular reporting and scrutiny by the OEP, I assure her that we will unlock significant environmental improvement.
Moving on to Amendment 18, from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, I stress that 15 years is just a minimum. Given the scale of the challenges, our targets need to be ambitious and able to deliver long-term sustainable results. We also need to give businesses and the public sufficient time to make whatever changes are necessary to help us get there. Limiting target duration to 20 years would provide an arbitrary cap that would constrain our ability to set the most appropriate and impactful targets.
We want to develop targets that are driven by taking action in areas that matter most and which drive environmental outcomes that benefit future generations. There could be valid reasons for delivering environmental outcomes in a period that spanned longer than 20 years—for example, for habitats which require a longer period to recover, such as native woodland and so on.
Moreover, regarding her Amendment 16, I reassure the noble Baroness that setting interim targets for up to five years’ duration will provide a sufficiently regular check on progress and allow for alignment with the five-yearly environmental improvement plan review cycle, where necessary and appropriate.
Regarding my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 15, I hope that he and my noble friend Lord Caithness will be reassured to know that we expect to publish a public consultation in early 2022 on the proposed targets. This will include a rationale for the proposed targets, proposals for their deadlines and a summary of the evidence used to inform them. An impact assessment will accompany the consultation and consider the environmental and socioeconomic considerations associated with each target.
I hope that I have at least gone some way towards reassuring noble Lords, and I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.