With the leave of the House, I will also speak to Motions B, B1, C, C1, D and D1. This historic legislation is now not only within sight; it is within reach. I thank Members for their conversations with me and my officials and for the debates that have taken place in this House.
I begin with Amendment 1, on biodiversity and the climate emergency, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and I thank him very much for the meetings he has had with me. I hope he noticed that last week, the Prime Minister pledged that:
“We will meet the global climate emergency but not with panicked, short-term or self-destructive measures as some have urged”,
but with the actions he set out in the net-zero strategy, and indeed through actions in this Bill.
We introduced in your Lordships’ House a duty to set an additional legally binding target to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030—a clear and significant response to the biodiversity emergency we face. However, as I have said previously, addressing these twin challenges requires action, which this Government are taking.
The net-zero strategy builds on the action from the 10-point plan, the energy White Paper, the transport decarbonisation plan, the hydrogen strategy and the heat and buildings strategy. It sets out ambitious plans to reach net zero across all the key sectors of the economy. The net-zero strategy outlines measures to transition to a green and sustainable future, helping businesses and consumers to move to clean power, supporting up to 190,000 jobs in the mid-2020s and up to 440,000 jobs in 2030, and leveraging up to £90 billion of private investment by 2030. It includes £3.9 billion of new funding over the next three years for decarbonising heat and buildings so that homes and buildings are warmer and healthier. We will boost the existing £640 million Nature for Climate Fund with a further £124 million of new money, ensuring total spend of more than £750 million by 2025 on woodland creation and management, peat restoration and so on. This will enable more opportunities for farmers and landowners to support net zero through land use change. Furthermore, the Bill’s powerful package of measures, including biodiversity net gain, local nature recovery strategies and a strengthened biodiversity duty on public authorities, will drive action towards our biodiversity targets and objectives.
We are playing a leading role in pressing for an ambitious post-2020 global biodiversity framework, to be adopted at CBD COP 15. This is my number one international priority, but it is also the Government’s. Putting the declaration in Amendment 1 into law is therefore not necessary. However, I hope noble Lords are reassured that the Government are taking action at pace to deal with these crises, and that calls from a number of noble Lords to hear the phrase “climate emergency” from the Prime Minister’s mouth have now been answered.
Turning to Amendments 2 and 2B, on soil health, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, first, let me first make it clear that the Government take soil health seriously. As Minister Pow said in the other place:
“It is the stuff of life.”—[Official Report, Commons, 20/10/21; col. 793.]
It is a priority, and I do not think anyone doubts that. This is why we are currently working with technical experts to develop the appropriate means of measuring soil health, which could be used to inform a future soils target.
However, an amendment to make soil health or soil quality a listed priority area would require us to bring forward an objectively measurable target by October 2022, and I am afraid we do not yet have the data to do that. Until baseline data and a metric to measure success are developed, we cannot commit to setting a robust soil target at this time. However, as I have also said, that is not to say that it is not a priority for us. Defra is working with partners right now to develop the baseline data and metric needed to set that target.
As I announced on Report, we will deliver a new soil health action plan for England. Noble Lords will find more detail on this action plan in the Written Ministerial Statement published last week, but I highlight that it will provide clear strategic direction to develop a heathy soil indicator, soil structure methodology and a soil health monitoring scheme to support the delivery of a future potential soil target.
We refer to the use of “soil health” over “soil quality” because soil quality sometimes refers to a measurement of the current status of a soil while soil health more accurately captures how well the soil is functioning. The soil health action plan aims to help soil to function better to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services and wider benefits and outcomes, such as increased biodiversity, carbon storage, food production and flood mitigation.
I recognise the compelling arguments of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and commend their very successful efforts to raise this issue up the agenda. I hope that the action I have set out, and the new soil health action plan for England, demonstrate our commitment to this critical aspect of our natural environment. This includes our commitment to improve the health of our precious peat soils, in line with the England Peat Action Plan published earlier this year and supported by the extra funding I mentioned earlier.
On Amendments 3 and 3B, on air quality, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, I thank her for her time spent meeting with me on multiple
occasions. I recognise the strength of feeling on this issue both in this House and in the other place; it is a feeling I share. The two targets we are currently developing—a concentration target and a population exposure reduction target—will work together to both reduce PM2.5 in areas with the highest levels and drive continuous improvement across the country. This unique, dual-target approach is strongly supported by our expert committees, the Air Quality Expert Group and the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants. They will be an important part of our commitment to drive forward tangible and long-lasting improvements to the air that we breathe.
Colleagues in the other place last Wednesday rightly called for urgency in tackling air pollution. I emphasise that we are not waiting for these targets to be set before taking the necessary action. We already have legally binding national emission reduction targets for five key air pollutants for 2030. Our Clean Air Strategy was praised by the World Health Organization as
“an example for the rest of the world to follow”,
and sets out the actions we are taking to deliver on these targets. For example, legislation to phase out the sale of house coal and deal with wet wood, and to introduce emission standards for manufactured solid fuels for domestic burning across England, came into force from 1 May 2021. We are also delivering a £3.8 billion plan to clean up transport and tackle nitrogen dioxide pollution.
This House will have heard these points before, but I want to emphasise that delivering our ambitious reductions in PM2.5 will require co-ordinated action. The more ambitious these targets are, the greater the level of intervention that will be needed—from national and local government, as well as businesses and individual citizens. To achieve a level such as 10 micrograms in our cities would require fundamental changes in how we live our lives; for example, significant changes to farming practices to reduce ammonia, which reacts in the air to form particulate matter. This would be likely to be in addition to a total ban on solid fuel burning, including wood, and restricting traffic kilometres by as much as 50%. That would include electric vehicles, which release non-exhaust emissions from tyre and brake wear, for example.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for her further amendment, which challenges us to go further and set a target of 5 micrograms by 2040, in line with the latest recommendations from the World Health Organization. While we recognise that there is no safe level for PM2.5, it is also important to acknowledge that PM2.5 is not a pollutant that can be fully eradicated. The reasons for that are manifold. First, contributions to PM2.5 from natural sources and from outside the UK, particularly in the south-east of England, are currently modelled at around 5 to 6 micrograms. That is before we take into consideration the everyday activities of the millions of people who live in those towns and cities in the south-east. Essentially, our current evidence strongly suggests that it is not possible to achieve reductions in PM2.5 concentrations to levels as low as 5 micrograms in numerous locations in England, particularly in the south and south-east. Setting an
unrealistic target would be disingenuous, and the target would be meaningless as a result, as well as ineffective and potentially counterproductive.
Before setting targets, we need to understand what reductions are possible, the scale of measures required to achieve them and the impact and burdens that would be placed on society. Members of the public will want, and deserve, to understand the specific health benefits and then we can decide upon the fundamental changes that would be required. So we will hold a public consultation on these targets early next year. Once we have carefully considered the responses to the consultation, we will bring forward the final, statutory targets by October 2022. That is a legally required date that we cannot and will not miss.
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Our targets are being developed through a robust evidence-based process. We are collaborating with internationally renowned experts, including modelling teams at Imperial College London and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the Air Quality Expert Group, chaired by Professor Alastair Lewis of the University of York, and the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants, chaired by Professor Anna Hansell of the University of Leicester. We will also share our findings with the World Health Organization.
I assure noble Lords that we are working at pace—we are not kicking the can down the road or shying away from difficult decisions—but it is important to get this right and follow a process that is informed by science and allows for genuine engagement, in order to bring society along with us to deliver ambitious air-quality targets and cleaner air for all. The amendment would pre-empt those critical steps, so the Government cannot support it.
Turning to Amendment 12, and Amendment 12B tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, I would also like to acknowledge the work of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Parminter, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, on this issue. Introducing legally binding interim targets, as these amendments propose, is unnecessary and would be detrimental to our targets framework, as I will explain, and to our policy response to the environmental issues that we are facing. We do not want to create a system that incentivises the deprioritisation of key aspects of the environment with longer recovery times just in order to meet a target in five years.
If obliged to meet legally binding targets every five years on environmental systems that are immensely complex, the Government would be forced to prioritise achieving an interim milestone over the long-term target itself, and I believe that would undermine the long-term nature of the targets framework. As noble Lords know, in certain habitats, such as our precious temperate rainforests, significant improvement is unlikely to occur within a five-year period, but, with the immense pressure of meeting a five-year target, it is hard to believe that any Government would not choose to park that challenge to one side in order to focus on easier short-term challenges.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, for the proposed compromise that she has put forward and for her time in the numerous discussions that we
have had during the course of the Bill. The amendment in lieu, in addition to requiring that interim targets were met, would require that if interim targets were not met then the Government must consult the OEP on the steps needed to meet the interim target. It would also require the Government to prepare a report setting out the steps that it would take, and then to take those steps.
Even with that additional process, though, I am afraid that making interim targets legally binding is not a position that the Government can support. There is already a robust process in place to drive progress on interim targets without the need for the kind of perverse incentives that I have previously outlined. The OEP must monitor progress towards meeting interim and long-term targets and must prepare an annual progress report. In fact, it is expected that the OEP’s regular scrutiny will help to prevent the Government from missing those targets. If the Government are not on track to meet their interim targets, or if the interim targets are missed, the OEP’s progress report could include recommendations on how progress could be improved. The Government will have to respond to those published reports and any recommendations made, and they will be laid before Parliament.
While I recognise the concerns raised by noble Lords, it is our view that, even with the proposed additional process, the changes would have a detrimental impact on environmental enhancement. I hope I have reassured noble Lords that our position is well considered, and indeed considered in light of the contributions that have been made in this House throughout the passage of the Bill. I look forward to hearing noble Lords’ contributions today. I beg to move.