My Lords, I declare my interests as chairman, president or vice-president of a broad range of environmental NGOs. I too welcome the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, and look forward to his responses.
I support Amendment 10, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, on excluding the habitats and species regulations from the sunset clause. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, the habitats and species regulations are fundamental to protecting sites and biodiversity in this country and environmental protection generally, and cannot be put at risk at any price.
Protected sites under the habitats regulations are the special areas of conservation and special protection areas. They are really the jewels in the crown of nature conservation in this country. They cover a tiny proportion of the land surface, less than 5%. I would be of the view that the jewels in the crown deserve a high level of protection. The regulations have been very effective in reducing loss and damage to protected sites over the last 20 years. It used to be that on average 17% of our protected sites were damaged every year. We are now down to 0.17%, which is admirable.
Those regulations were developed by Brits in the EU. The RSPB, BirdLife International, the WWF and Stanley Johnson, the former Prime Minister’s father, all worked with the Dutch and other member states. This is not unwelcome EU regulation that was forced on us but proper, welcome protections that were crafted by Brits, and rightly so, for those important sites.
Proper protection for that small number of ultimate sites and species is vital, because they make what we care about in the countryside, and what is special in the countryside, safe. If all noble Lords think of the natural and wild places that they cherish, many of them will be special areas for conservation or special protection areas under the habitats regulations.
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Over the last 20 years, these regulations have been interpreted through case law to a point where they are now pretty well understood as a tool to enable planning authorities, developers, conservation bodies and the public to safeguard these important sites. So it is doubly distressing to get the famous letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, today, telling us that even regulations that are preserved will lose their case law underpinning and their “interpretive effects”. Can the Minister explain the implications of this for the operability of the habitats regulations, if they are preserved?
The habitats and species regulations are pretty vital for the Government to meet their 25-year environment plan targets, their environmental improvement programme
and, most recently, the 30 by 30 commitment made at COP 15, where the UK played a leadership role in persuading other nations to agree to protect 30% of land and sea for biodiversity and the environment by 2030. Is the Minister concerned about achieving 30 by 30 without the bulwark that the habitats and species regulations represent?
I will touch briefly on two points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. First, the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, is on record as saying that the default position is to retain regulation. That is commendable, but it is not actually what the Bill says, where the default position is to sunset. Perhaps he could confirm for the record which is actually the default position. Secondly, the noble Baroness raised certainty for business and British exporters. For eight happy years, I was the chief executive of the Environment Agency and, for four years, chairman of English Nature—the two environmental regulators. All through that time, businesses were clear about what they wanted from regulation. They wanted clear regulation and, if there was going to be change, they wanted long lead times to enable them to adjust their business model and find a cost-effective way of achieving the objectives of regulation. Most of all, they wanted stability and to be able to plan for the future. The Bill, alas, provides none of these things.
The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, has previously said that some alternative arrangements to the habitats regulations are already in place, as a result of the Environment Act, or are about to be put in place by the levelling-up Bill. That is still a Bill and is uncertain, but what is not clear is how comprehensive the changes are, these combined provisions, in new legislation and what elements of the habitats regulations have not yet been covered and would be let go. Do the Government intend to come forward with more legislation to take all the habitats regulations provisions safely through to the UK statute book? At the very least, will the Minister undertake to map the individual provisions of the habitats regulations against these new and emerging provisions in other legislation, so that we can see what is safely transferred over and what is still in abeyance and may never be transferred over?
I also support Amendment 37, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock, which excludes environmental protection legislation from the sunset clause. It is a very admirable list. However, exempting this list of environmental provisions from the sunset is kind of a last-ditch attempt to salvage something from a pretty appalling Bill. The regulations listed in this amendment represent some of the most prominent environmental protections, but many important but less well-known protections would remain at risk. There are other risks to sensible environmental regulation in the Bill that would remain, from Clauses 3, 15 and 16, in the lack of consultation on any changes and in the whole issue of taking powers from Parliament, which the noble Lord, Lord Deben, so eloquently outlined.
I feel that the sunset clause has got to go. It very much plays to the right wing of the Conservative Party and it is not going to do what I hope not only conservationists but the public, from every poll that I have seen of public commitment to the environment, want from a Bill of this sort.