My Lords, I join all other speakers in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, on securing this Committee for his Private Member’s Bill today and on continuing
to highlight this vitally important issue. I particularly welcomed his comments on red squirrels. When I was a Member of the European Parliament for the north-east, I was a proud member of the European Squirrel Initiative—that major NGO at the forefront of the debate—and of course, Northumberland is on the front line of the battle to preserve red squirrels, which persist primarily in Scotland; the greys have managed to eradicate them for most of England. In my view, we need to pursue an eradication policy of the greys—my noble friend Lord Randall also mentioned that important issue.
We do not have to shy away from the fact that nature is in decline around the world. That is exactly why we are setting a legally binding target in England to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030. This ecology Bill deems “species abundance” too limited and seeks to widen this to include habitats and ecosystems. However, in our view, species abundance is a good proxy for the health of the wider ecosystem. The indicator we will use to track progress includes over 1,000 representative species for which we have robust data. Between them, these species depend on the majority of habitats found in England. Action to achieve the species abundance target will necessarily require the creation and restoration of wider habitats and ecosystems.
This target is an ambitious one—indeed, it is world-leading. We will take determined actions to halt the decline of nature, but those actions will not stop once we meet that target. We know that halting the decline in nature is not enough and we will continue to take action naturally leading to a reversal of that decline. That is why we have consulted on long-term targets to increase species abundance, improve the red list index for species extinction risk, and create or restore more habitat—all by 2042. Five-yearly interim targets will help the Government to stay on track.
Furthermore, the overall suite of targets, including on water and air quality, will put nature at the centre of all government policy-making for generations to come. We will confirm all our long-term environmental targets as soon as practicable and will set out our approach to meeting them in our revised environmental improvement plan in 2023.
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The package of new policies introduced by the Environment Act, alongside wider investment and action, including environmental land management schemes, will help us to reach our ambitious targets and, in so doing, tackle climate change and biodiversity loss together. They will lay the foundation for the nature recovery network, a network of places that are richer in wildlife, more able to capture carbon, resilient to climate change and able to provide wider environmental and recreational benefits. Biodiversity net gain, local nature recovery strategies and a strengthened biodiversity duty on public authorities will all work together to restore and to create habitats that enable wildlife to recover and to thrive, while conservation covenants will help secure habitat for the long term.
Global biodiversity loss is as urgent as climate change. It is absolutely critical that we achieve success at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity COP 15 next month. The UK is committed to securing an
ambitious outcome at COP 15 to halt and to reverse biodiversity loss globally by 2030. We will continue to champion the protection of at least 30% of land and ocean globally, and we recognise that significantly increasing finance from all sources is needed to halt nature loss.
I thank the noble Lord for bringing the Bill to the House and enabling this very useful and informative debate. I assure noble Lords that we remain firmly committed to tackling the twin challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change, and we will continue to implement the measures required to do so.