My Lords, I support the green grouping, as it has been classed; as we are in coalition with a Green group in my local borough of Waverley, I am keen to do some cross-party supporting of this. It goes slightly broader than the Bill, but there is nothing wrong with that to me. I would not wish to suggest what was in the minds of the two noble Baronesses, but I have a strong sense of the frustration that we are facing this ecological crisis and getting to the end of the Bill, but are we using every single tool in the toolbox to make sure that we address this issue? I commend the ambition, and I am grateful to them for bringing this forward.
The noble Baronesses are right that the first amendment, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, focuses on economics. As we all know, it is always a case of “follow the money,” and it is right that we should put on more pressure to ensure that the Treasury embeds the climate and environmental goals into our future national accounting structures. It would be fantastic if we were standing here today and by now had seen the net-zero strategy and had an idea of the Government’s thinking on this.
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We have not mentioned Dasgupta for a while, so I thought I would slip in his name. We have had the response to the Dasgupta review, but it is absolutely clear that there needs to be far more embedding of approaches
to natural capital and environmental protection in our national accounts. I hope that the Minister will be able to say a few things about how his department will be working very closely with the Treasury over the coming months to deliver further progress on embedding those environmental considerations into our national accounts.
I want to make a slightly broader point. The amendment focuses on the economy, but we know that we need the Government to use other tools if we are to deliver on the Bill in particular, and if we are to embed the environment right across government. If the Minister is not able to accept these amendments—I do not know his views—I hope he might be able to say a bit more about some of the other mechanisms that the Government will use to ensure that their ambition is embedded right across government.
We have heard a lot, first, about targets, which are a key way of getting the whole of government to take the environmental ambitions forward. We have seen that with climate change. But here we have been debating the state of nature targets, which are not ambitious enough, and we hope the Government may look again to strengthen those targets. But it is not just targets; we know we also need to think, secondly, about overseeing bodies. We have the Climate Change Committee for the climate, but the Government have heard from noble Lords right across the House that the office for environmental protection needs its independence protected and its enforcement mandate strengthened. Thirdly, the Government need to move very quickly to get the statement on environmental principles right, because that is what is going to take the environment throughout all government departments.
In this House, we clearly said there were two major exemptions around the MoD and the Treasury—loopholes that needed to be closed. Last week, the office for environmental protection gave the Government its advice, saying that the guidance to government departments needs to be strengthened and clarified to ensure it is robustly taken through all the departments.
This first amendment talks about economics, and it is right to do that. I hope the Government will take the opportunity today to say a bit more about those other mechanisms to deliver environmental protection right throughout the Government—the targets, the overseeing bodies and the environmental principles. If the Minister is not able to accept quite everything in these amendments, I hope that he will at least accept the spirit in which they were tabled, because we all in this House want to ensure that the Government use every tool in their toolbox to help us tackle this ecological crisis we face, which we are grateful to both the noble Baronesses for highlighting at this late stage of the Bill.