My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who is dedicated to these issues. I want to speak to Amendment 34, which I put my name to. First, I offer my support to my noble friend Lord Addington, who constantly fights against silo management within government and makes sure that the health aspect is always included in these debates. I also want to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, whose comments I found particularly interesting. As he so eloquently said, the recent meeting between the secretariats of the United Nations climate change organisation and the biodiversity secretariats was a landmark one from which very important lessons can be learned.
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However, to be honest, my answer to that is that we have the wrong architecture in the Bill altogether, as I said at Second Reading. If I was writing it myself, I would—given the great reputation of the Climate Change Committee and its work—give all the advisory side of biodiversity to that body and increase its remit, while making sure that the OEP remains and concentrates on environmental protection and enforcement, with regard to biodiversity as well as climate change. That is clearly the right way to go forward but I accept that that is impossible at this stage. I was very interested in the noble Lord’s parallel thoughts around carbon leakage in the climate change area and the threat to British industry and how we might have biodiversity leakage. That is probably the strongest argument I have heard so far against the UK-Australia trade deal, so it is an interesting way to put that.
For me, Amendment 34 states the obvious: that the Government must under these circumstances consult the office for environmental protection. What else is it there for? It specifically has this role as part of its remit. The Government might say, “We have the ability to consult the OEP, therefore we are most likely to do that.” However, that is not good enough. The OEP needs to be independent, and at times it will be in conflict with the Government. If it is not, it will not be doing its job properly. For that reason, I believe it is very important that that consultation is mandatory.