Clean Water Bill: Chalk Streams

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

We are very aware that chalk streams are an important ecological resource and we are doing a number of things that will make a difference, which is what we have to do. We are holding water companies to account. We are working within the environmental land management scheme to provide incentives for farmers; for example, six of the ELMS-funded landscape recovery projects are being developed in chalk stream catchments. The Environment Agency is working, as I said, to tackle the impacts of harmful abstraction. We made a number of changes to the then Planning and Infrastructure Bill to ensure that chalk streams feature in local nature recovery strategies so that they can be embedded into any legislation. There are also actions embedded in the water White Paper, which we will discuss as we take forward the legislation.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

One of the opportunities we have to protect our chalk streams is to prevent off-flow from farms. One way of doing that is to create a biodiversity break between a chalk stream and farming activity. When the Minister looks at these issues, will she examine whether financial support could be provided to farmers through the existing schemes to encourage the creation of that kind of biodiversity margin to protect chalk streams?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

As I just mentioned, there are encouragements through the existing ELMS, but I take the noble Lord’s point. As we develop our support for farmers going forward, it is important that important ecological parts of our environment, such as chalk streams, are fully supported.

Water Companies

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I sincerely hope that I will see that first reservoir built and that I will not be a late Member, and I hope the same for the noble Lord. As I said, part of the reason for the Planning and Infrastructure Act was to tackle that issue of planning. It is not just reservoirs; there are many other important nationally significant infrastructure projects. Look at Hinkley Point C for nuclear, for example, and how many years that has taken. That is why we needed to change the planning system: to be able to move these projects on in good time.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

On these issues, and further to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, one thing the Government could do, which would be simple and quick, would be to give farmers and landowners permitted development rights to build small ponds and small reservoirs on their land. That would be beneficial on water and beneficial on biodiversity. It is something the Government could do now. Why will they not?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

We are not telling farmers and landowners that they cannot do that. There are ways in which we can work with farmers and landowners to allow the building of small water-holding areas. I will discuss this further with the Farming Minister, but it is something that we are already looking at.

Global Biodiversity Loss and National Security

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I am starting to get a bit alarmed about the number of questions referring to World War III, but the noble Lord is right: food security is of critical importance. I am sure that right across every department we will do everything we can to ensure that, should World War III come anytime soon, we will have good food security in our country.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister is well aware of the challenge that we face around our marine biodiversity. One thing we have been able to do since we left the European Union is improve some of the protections, particularly around marine protected areas. What steps are she and Defra taking to ensure that the Government’s reset with the European Union does not end up compromising those standards and taking us back to where we were before?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I am sure the noble Lord will appreciate that I cannot comment on the ongoing discussions that are taking place with the EU regarding the reset. However, we have been discussing with the EU the importance of not reducing any of our current standards.

Biodiversity and the Countryside

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Thursday 13th November 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Grayling]

That this House takes note of the impact of the Government’s policies on biodiversity and the countryside.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, when this Government took office 18 months ago, they did so promising environmental recovery, but I have to say that, instead, we have seen a series of steps which, in my view, simultaneously weakened protections, tightened budgets for nature-friendly farming and put development first.

Of course, my colleagues and I want to see growth and an end to our housing shortages, and I accept that we will need to build on open land as well as in our towns and cities, but development has to be managed in a way that manages and maximises the protections for nature, the countryside and, crucially, our food supply.

It cannot make sense to reduce new housing targets in city areas while increasing them in the countryside, to build large-scale solar farms on our most productive agricultural land, and to have so much uncertainty for farmers around just how much support they will get for nature-friendly agriculture or, frankly, question marks about the budgets available.

This matters, because if farmers no longer have financially viable routes to invest in wildlife-friendly habitat—hedgerows, wildflower margins and wetland creations—biodiversity loss will simply accelerate. The uncertainty over the SFI and the grant structure for farmers looking to do the right thing for nature has to stop.

We are clearly where we are on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, but this is by no means the end of the debate. In my view, this House has made some pretty sensible amendments to the legislation. I would love to think that Ministers will accept them, although I fear the Treasury may have a different view on that. The risk is that we end up, still, with a measure that has few friends in the environmental world. I have to say to the Minister that the jury remains firmly out on the planned environmental development plans and, crucially, on the ability of Natural England to deliver the kinds of promises with actions that Ministers are saying will happen.

Beyond the debates on that piece of legislation, we on this side of the House will be watching very carefully what comes in secondary legislation and whether promises made in this House and the other House turn into reality. Then, on the horizon, there are reports of a further Bill that may emerge from the Treasury to try to drive growth; of course, the worry is that that will happen with scant regard for the impact on nature. That must not be allowed to happen.

Beyond this, most immediately in the Minister’s department, I am particularly concerned about the proposed changes to biodiversity net gain. It is certainly the case that some aspects of the way BNG is working make no sense. I had a case close to where I live, where the local tennis club had to get BNG processes to cover the merging of two tennis courts about a metre apart—that makes no sense at all. But the problem is that, if you get rid of BNG for small sites altogether, it removes one of its key benefits. As a Member of Parliament, I too often saw occasions when a developer would take a site, knock down a house, bulldoze everything that was there and kill all the nature before even applying for planning consent, so BNG on small sites does have a role to play, and I think the Office for Environmental Protection is right to have expressed real concerns about what is proposed. I urge the Minister to make sure that the outcome of the consultations on BNG do not remove its key benefits and leave small site developers free to do whatever they want on the sites they plan to develop. Ministers also need to be clear about how they expect BNG to operate alongside environmental development plans and the planned nature restoration fund, because I assure the Minister that it is not clear yet how that is going to work.

Next on her department’s list to bring forward is its land use strategy. In some respects, I have misgivings about how such a strategy is applied. The danger is that it becomes a series of Stalinistic diktats about how a landowner can use his or her land. However, if it provides a broad framework—and I stress “broad”—towards the target of 2030 for biodiversity in the UK and how we accommodate housing and infrastructure needs alongside meeting that target, then it has a role to play. It is about getting that balance right. There need to be clear guidelines for planning authorities and government departments that are taking over some local authority decision-making so that we do not take daft decisions in this country, such as, for example, building on our most important and productive agricultural land. We have to ensure that that does not happen.

I welcome the fact that the Government have taken on board most of the environmental and biodiversity targets set in place by the previous Government. That is good, but there is a big difference between accepting targets and delivering a strategy that will achieve them. So far, the jury is firmly out on whether this Government can deliver for nature and our countryside. While I note that the Minister shares many of our aspirations in this area, what has to happen now is tangible action that takes real steps towards 2030 and towards restoring the loss in biodiversity that we have experienced, turning round the issue of so many endangered species. In the growth agenda, the development agenda and the energy agenda, there has got to be a proper balance between the interests of the economy and taking this country forward and ensuring that we do not do further damage to our natural world at the same time. There has got to be equal priority between the two.

I turn to my other big biodiversity concern in this country. The Minister knows that I have for years been seeking to persuade this Government and their predecessors to speed up the process of banning bottom trawling in marine protected areas around our coasts. It is a practice that is disastrous for our marine biodiversity. Huge industrial trawlers dragging massive nets scour the bottom of the ocean doing untold damage to all kinds of marine life, and they do so over vast areas. These are enormous vessels with enormous nets. The idea that this practice is allowed in marine protected areas makes a complete nonsense of the concept of marine protected areas. If they are protected, we should not be allowing this kind of damaging practice.

I have to say that we can now do things about it. When people ask me about the Brexit benefits to the UK, I put pretty high on my list a practice which would have been impossible to ban under the common fisheries policy. We are now free to do something about it. I was pleased that the previous Government made a start in the Dogger Bank in the face of huge hostility from many EU countries who want to scour it for sand eels to turn into fish food. It is an important area for biodiversity, and this country has done the right thing to provide it with extra protections. Sometimes the environment does have to come first.

I did not think that my party moved fast enough in government on this, and I am increasingly disappointed by the steps taken by this Administration. When last June they announced a consultation on banning bottom trawling in another 41 marine protected areas, I thought that was a good step forward, but for me that positivity was completely reversed by the subsequent policy statement that Ministers do not intend to go further and ban the practice across all MPAs in UK offshore waters, nor, apparently, will the changes to the 41 they are consulting on happen quickly either. The fact is that that decision does not command support in Parliament. It was noticeable that it was criticised by the Environmental Audit Committee, which I was part of in the last Parliament and which is now chaired by the party in power.

There is an argument that says a blanket ban in each MPA does not work, because each MPA is different and has different conservation needs. I understand that there may be variations, and I always argued that some freedom should be left for local fishing fleets still to operate, but we are not talking about local fishing fleets coming out of small ports in the United Kingdom; we are talking about giant industrial trawlers coming from other countries and tearing up the seabed. Surely, the scale of that is so vast that it has to be time for MPAs to do what they are supposed to do and provide blanket protection.

So, I ask the Minister to revisit the MPA policy and consider going much further and much faster to provide those wide-ranging protections in MPAs. Also—and this is clearly not something that lies at her desk— I would be grateful for her reassurance that the Government are not taking their decision to avoid a blanket ban because of the new deal on fisheries with the European Union. It would be a complete travesty to give away something we have gained from Brexit even though it will deliver genuine environmental benefits in our coastal waters.

I am grateful to those who have stayed to participate in this debate late on a Thursday. It is an important area. There are issues for us to address around farming, around biodiversity in the countryside, around water and around issues in our coastal waters. The Minister and I, and a number of people here today, have exchanged views on this before, and we will do so again, because I see it as my job, as somebody who feels passionately about this, to keep asking the Government these questions. I reiterate that we all want to see growth in this country and government policies that deliver prosperity, but it cannot be at the expense of what I thought were very good policies put in place by the last Government, which I hope this one will build on, that look after biodiversity and accept what we have done wrong as a country and that we need to turn the tide back.

I have three specific requests for the Minister today. The first is about progress towards the 30% commitment by 2030. We need credible time-bound proposals, transparent monitoring and adequate funding. We cannot have any more of the classic distraction that Governments of all persuasions come up with: “We will have another consultation”, while the destruction carries on in the meantime. It is now 2025, nearly 2026—four years away from that 2030 target—so it is time to see some real changes that make a real difference.

Secondly, nature recovery must be on an equal footing with housing infrastructure and food production in land-use frameworks. If nature is a secondary concern, biodiversity will be the loser. Budgets for nature must match the Government’s stated intention, and in particular, the support provided to farmers must enable them, landowners and rural communities to deliver for wildlife.

And finally, marine protected areas must be real marine protected areas. Where habitats are fragile and vulnerable, whole-site prohibitions on enormous, destructive fishing gear must be adopted without delay. As a country, we cannot claim leadership on biodiversity if 90% of our marine protected areas are still open to bottom trawling.

I do not doubt the Minister’s personal commitment in this area, but she also knows there are powerful forces in government pulling in different directions. My message to her is: please, fight the good fight. This House will be behind her, and we feel passionately about this agenda. Will she please deliver for us?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a very good debate and I say again that I am grateful to noble Lords who have remained here late on a Thursday because we all view this as such an important issue. There are not many issues that can command near-unanimity across a Chamber of Parliament. This is clearly one of them. I know that that unanimity in reality that extends to the Minister, although I have to say I share the concerns voiced on this side about the way the Government more broadly have treated the farming community. That really has to change.

I have two final points. I add my support to what the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, said about regenerative farming. If we are going to achieve the 2030 target, regenerative farming has got to be at the heart of that and what the Government do has to support it. The other point is that we all know that government moves slowly, regardless of who is in power, but 2030 is pretty close. Frankly, the need now is for the Minister and her colleagues to put rocket boosters behind the government machine, whether it is civil servants, the MMO or Natural England, because this all has to happen very quickly indeed. There is clear unanimity in Parliament that we want this to happen and we want it to work, but now the task is delivering it and that is what falls on her desk. So I am grateful to her for listening to all the points this afternoon, but my message is, “Please can we get on with it?”

Motion agreed.

Animals (Low-Welfare Activities Abroad) Act 2023

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, there is a pattern emerging from the Minister’s department, in that we continue to have a similar situation around the regulations on deforestation and forest risk products. What can she do to ensure her department turns the will of Parliament into legislation rather more quickly than seems to be happening at the moment?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I am aware of what the noble Lord is talking about regarding deforestation. I have been working with Minister Creagh from the other place on this and we are looking at the best way to take it forward.

State of Climate and Nature

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The Government are absolutely serious about tackling climate change. I really hope that that has come across both in the Statement and the answers I have given. We are also absolutely determined to ensure that nature and development can work together, that one does not have to be at the expense of the other, which is the challenge we have in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, and why, following the discussions in the other place, we have brought forward amendments to try to acknowledge some of the concerns that have been raised also by the OEP and certain NGOs. The important thing for me is that, whatever proposals and Bills we put forward in the future, we have to look at the impact on climate change as we go forward. We have to look at the impact on biodiversity and nature, and that is what the Government are working to do.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I do not doubt the Minister’s personal commitment, on biodiversity in particular, but, given that there are still serious misgivings about elements of Part 3 of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, notwithstanding the amendments last week, given the fact that there is still a serious question mark over the future of biodiversity net gain, how can we be confident that the Government are actually going to pursue properly, and in a committed way, that 2030 target? It is there in law and is fundamentally important.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

All I can say is that we are absolutely determined to do so, and I look forward to debating it with him during Part 3 of the Bill.

Plastic Pollution

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

As I have said, we really need to move away from this. Many members of the public, me included, put their plastic into recycling bins in very good faith and expect it to be recycled—I buy things made out of recycled plastic—but we have to look at how we can stop plastic that should be recycled just being offshored and dumped. We have seen too many photographs of the appalling outcomes of that. That is why we want to get this treaty finalised, why we are really determined to move forward and why we are also concentrating on having a genuinely effective circular economy strategy within Defra.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, I commend the Minister on the work being done on plastics. One other major threat to marine life is illegal and unauthorised fishing around the world. What steps are being taken by the international community to address that problem?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Absolutely. I think that anyone who has been to a beach will have seen abandoned fishing gear on the beach, particularly the rope stuff—the blue twine that fishermen use. Rope stuff is the technical term; you can tell that I am not a fisherman. Abandoned, lost and otherwise discarded fishing gear is one form of plastic that causes the greatest harm to the environment. The UK has been looking at ways that we can use alternatives—alternatives are being explored—so that we do not constantly end up with blue bits of plastic scattered over every single beach that we see in this country.

Farming and Rural Communities

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, and to very much agree with what she said about food security. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Roborough on securing this debate.

Underpinning what the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, said about the need for food security is the need to see a clearer strategy for our countryside, our farmers and our rural communities. We have seen none of that so far since this Government took office, and we desperately need it right now because, as the Chancellor rightly said last week—one of the few sensible things she has said recently—the world has changed. We cannot be certain that we will always be able to import all the food that we need. We cannot be certain that we will not see a further period of geopolitical instability. Therefore, the need to protect in particular our most productive land in this country is of paramount importance.

Right now, we are trying to grow our food, generate our electricity, protect our nature and build our houses all in the same land spaces. We cannot do it in a haphazard way; it has to be done carefully, strategically and thoughtfully. So the first thing I say to the Minister is: please can she and her colleagues in government work this through in a much more careful way than has happened up to now? There are some very practical examples. We should not, for example, be building solar farms on our most productive agricultural land. There is clearly a place for solar power in this country, and there is a lot of land that is of second-degree or third-degree usefulness, where there is a genuine opportunity to do more with it. But we should not use our most productive land for this purpose.

Likewise, there is a need to build more housing, but the easy option for housing development is always just to build new houses on greenfields, which is by far the easiest option for developers—but we should not be taking the easy option. There are plenty of avenues in this country for us to pursue smarter urban development. It is a matter of great regret to me that this Government do not seem to believe in urban development as a core part of meeting the housing needs of the future. The targets for our big city areas have not risen in anything like the same way as the rural areas, the areas on the fringes of our cities and the areas of green-belt land. I saw this in my former constituency, where there is a real opportunity to build on brownfield land and to densify the developments already there—not just to build on the green spaces.

There is also the very important task of restoring our biodiversity, which I believe the current Government, like the last one, want. We have to be smart about how we do that as well. There are disappointments in the Government’s approach to our farmers. The previous Government were right—although they did not get the detail right—to try to empower our farmers to do more to protect the countryside of which they are stewards. I do not see the way in which the current Government are approaching things such as the SFI as reflecting an understanding of the role that farmers can play. There really has to be a more holistic, more strategic and more thoughtful approach to how all this happens.

I will make one point in particular to the Minister. It drives to the heart of the question of how planning goes forward in our rural areas, whether it is about housing or onshore wind—I am not a great fan of onshore wind, but the Government have taken the decision to pursue it—and how all that fits with the challenge of restoring biodiversity. It is the issue of corridors for nature. We have to understand that whether it is wildlife on the ground or birds in the air, putting development in the wrong places has a materially negative impact on nature’s ability to recover. So my final point is: as the Minister works with her colleagues in MHCLG and across government, as they set guidance for local authorities and as they put in place all the different measures they are looking at to drive growth in energy and housing, it is of paramount importance that they also reflect the realities of local nature recovery. If we do these things in the wrong places—if we erect wind farms in the middle of bird migratory routes or if we build housing estates in the middle of migratory routes for species on the ground—we will go backwards, not forwards. What we need from this Government is a holistic strategy. So far, sadly, we have not seen it. I hope the Minister can deliver it pretty soon.

Biodiversity and Conservation

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Grayling]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what is their strategy for biodiversity and conservation.

[Lord Grayling (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to launch this debate today. I am going to bring together a number of themes that I followed when I was in the other place, and which I have been very committed to continuing here. I hope that the number of noble Lords here this afternoon indicates to the Minister and her colleagues just how passionately many of us feel about getting biodiversity and conservation right.

I want to start by pushing the Minister on a subject that I worked pretty hard on in the last Parliament. Some progress had been made, but not enough, on bottom trawling in marine protected areas. Bottom trawling is a way of fishing that is devastating to the creatures and ecology of the seabed. It does immense damage, and it is extraordinary that it is still permitted in many of our marine protected areas. The public would expect those areas to be protected but they are not; they are hugely exposed to some of the most industrial fishing techniques. Boats come from other countries with vast nets that drag along the seabed, causing damage to fish, other sea creatures and the ecology of seabed, whether it is plants or corals. We were not able to address this while we were a member of the European Union, but we have been able to since we left, freed from the rules of the common fisheries policy. It is an issue on which we had started to make progress. The Dogger Bank, for example, was one of the first marine protected areas to see a proper ban on bottom trawling, and I very much believe that that work needs to continue.

That work needs to continue carefully, because I am acutely aware that there are a number of communities around the United Kingdom that use small fishing boats—local people with local livelihoods—and I would not want to see those damaged or destroyed. But of course, a small trawler coming out of a port in Devon, for example, does not do anything like the damage that is done by a huge industrial trawler, so it is very possible to shape rules that leave smaller boats the flexibility to operate as they always have done in local fisheries. Frankly, in reality, those communities have always wanted to protect their surrounding marine ecology, because that is what delivers their livelihoods. However, these large vessels should not be coming into our marine protected areas, and I have two requests for the Minister today.

First, the previous Government made a start, and I was pleased with it, but they did not move fast enough, and I challenged them on a number of occasions to get a move on and extend this ban to the other marine protected areas. I very much hope that the Minister and her colleagues will do that expeditiously, because it is fundamental to our marine ecology.

I turn now to an issue that I hope the Minister will take up with her colleagues in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. There is no doubt that, as part of the Government’s much-advocated reset of relations with the European Union, we will come under pressure to grant back substantial fishing rights to other countries. Without judging the rights or wrongs of that, it should not include rolling back environmental protections. I know there are those who wish to fish for sand-eels in the Dogger Bank, but to go back to that kind of fishing would do huge damage to what is a very precious ecology. I do not believe that any of us, whether a Brexiteer or a remainer, want to take a step back on environmental standards. To walk away from the protections that have begun to be put in place as part of that negotiation would, in my judgment, be a huge mistake. I urge the Minister to work with her colleagues to make sure that that does not happen.

That is my first priority: that we get on with the protections that are needed for our marine protected areas and make sure we do not step back from them. The second point—which is very topical this week—is around the issue of biodiversity and development. This is always a difficult balance to find. There are safeguards that have been put in place. One of the things I pushed for in the last Government, and which I am glad was put in place and would ask the Minister to make sure is protected, was a safeguard against the ability of a developer to clear a site before they apply for planning consent. I suspect those of us who have been in the House of Commons have all experienced this—a developer buys a small plot, completely bulldozes it and gets rid of any nature on the site before they even get planning consent. There have been very real examples of serious ecological damage being done. There was a case in the south-west—I used to be the hedgehog species champion in the other place—of a large number of hedgehogs that were killed by industrial strimming of a site to clear it ahead of development before planning consent could even be granted. So, whatever comes out of the planning Bill, I ask the Minister not to compromise on that.

There is another particularly worrying concern in the planning Bill. Departments do not always read across what others are doing, as I know, so I want to draw it to the Minister’s attention. I cannot believe it is an intentional consequence of what has been brought forward this week, but it is a real consequence. In a system in which each developer has to pay a fixed tariff into a nature restoration fund for a particular type of site, with no flexibility in it, a developer with a good record of trying to look after the environment, who would spend money on a nicely landscaped pond, wooded areas and amenities among the housing, has to pay the same tariff as somebody who comes and bulldozes the site and builds over everything. That makes no sense at all. Every developer would then have the incentive just to bulldoze. I am sure that is not what the Government intend, but as the measure comes forward, I would ask her to talk to her colleagues and officials and see whether that can be addressed. None of us would want that situation; we want developers to behave in the most responsible way possible. We want to see a proper balance, so that we see proper investment in nature and developers treating nature sensitively.

There is one other big question around conservation that emerges from this week. None of us really understands where biodiversity net gain fits alongside the new systems being put in place. Biodiversity net gain was one of the things that I felt was a positive step forward taken by the last Government. It takes away from the developer to ignore the nature side of things. There are now established structures in place that not only put money into compensation funds—that is one avenue—but invest in specific projects around the country. I do not think it is clear yet—and it is certainly causing anxiety—what the role of biodiversity net gain is alongside the new funds that are being put in place. We have legally binding targets for 2030. The Government’s idea of having funds that can be reinvested in nature and facilitate development without ignoring the nature issues is potentially beneficial. We will debate the detail of that as the legislation comes through the other House and this House. But it is important to explain early on precisely how that fits together with what is already there.

There are two or three points to wrap up with. On the farming front, there is obviously a significant question around the changes we have seen this week. We must not see a situation where farmers lose the incentive to look after their land in the most nature-positive way. Clearly, we want them to grow food successfully and effectively. I am a passionate believer in regenerative farming, for example. The Minister’s department needs to take great care that, in dealing with some of the funding challenges that I know it has, it does not disincentivise or halt investments that would otherwise take place.

There are also issues in the planning system that could be smoothed out. For example, at the end of the previous Parliament, we heard a lot from farmers who said, “I’d quite like to address my water issue by building a small reservoir on my farm”, but the planning complexities in doing something like that—even though it could help solve some of the pollution problems in nearby rivers—are enormously difficult.

Finally, I have two quick requests of the Minister. First, the work on deforestation and forest risk products has not yet been completed and finished properly. We very much want to see that happen quickly. Secondly, there is a piece of unfinished work on ensuring that the due diligence principle also applies to financial institutions that invest in forest risk areas. I would be grateful if the Minister and her colleagues in the Government could make sure that that happens as well.

World Species Congress

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing this debate and I agree with much of what she said. This issue unites us across the House. The two co-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on global deforestation—the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) and I—are sitting on either side of the Chamber. We disagree on a huge amount, but on this issue we are absolutely on the same page.

I gently challenge the hon. Member for Rotherham, because I think she has been a bit hard on the Government, who have done more than their predecessors of either persuasion to address the issue. In my view, that is a good start, but there is a long way to go. She touched on a whole range of issues and organisations. I share her congratulations on the work done by people at Chester zoo; I have been to talk to them about their work on elephants in India. She talked about the UK, but the zoo has a global footprint and an enormously important role.

On the NGO sector, I sit on the board of the African Wildlife Foundation, which is an NGO based in Nairobi that does excellent work in protected areas across Africa. The voluntary sector is also enormously important in all its different guises. Some fantastic work is being done around the world that is genuinely making a difference. Recent academic research shows that the tide is beginning to turn. There is a long way to go and there are still some very big problems—with deforestation, for example—but there is a global understanding now that we cannot go on like this. A huge amount of effort from individuals, corporates, Governments and NGOs is beginning to turn the tide. That turning of the tide just has to accelerate, and the good work that the hon. Member for Rotherham described is an important part of that.

I have a couple of nudges for the Government, but I will also mention some things that are being done well. The new support structure for farming in the countryside needs some tweaks and changes—it is not a perfect system yet—but the principle of supporting farmers to protect nature is absolutely right. Equally, the introduction of biodiversity net gain can be only transformational in the UK. The requirements for building companies to ensure that their impact on nature is counterbalanced by improvements to habitats elsewhere are absolutely right, and some of the most important things that this Government have introduced.

The Government have taken important steps on marine protected areas, which I have been pushing for, because they are about species not just on the land, but in our seas, where there are some serious issues. There is still more to do and I encourage the Minister to get on with finishing the task, but it is an important step that we have started to ban bottom trawling in marine protected areas, which will make a significant difference.

I am outraged, to be frank, that various European Union nations are now trying to stop us putting in place protections for the sand eels on Dogger Bank that provide essential food for puffins and other species. We cannot have it both ways: we cannot all say that we want to protect nature globally but then, when one country takes a step to protect nature as the UK is doing, impose the full force of international law and threaten to tear up or revisit international agreements. That cannot be the right thing to do. I very much hope that the European Union will back off, because the protections are right for nature.

I will nudge the Minister on deforestation and the secondary legislation needed to extend the good work done in the Environment Act 2021 to tackle the issue of illegal deforestation and forest risk products coming to the UK. I know that that work has not been straightforward and there have been various governance issues, but the reality is that it needs to get done before the election.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Member, alongside myself, does a great job of co-chairing the APPG on global deforestation, and he is absolutely right about the legislation. Does he agree that the Government also need to be mindful of the issue when undertaking trade deal negotiations? We need the legislation, but we also need the Department for Business and Trade to have sight of the issue as well.

[Chris Grayling]

I absolutely agree, and indeed I am on record as saying—before the Brazilian election—that I would not countenance supporting a trade deal with Brazil until the deforestation in the Amazon had been addressed. There is significant progress there now, although there are still issues in Peru. However we manage this issue internationally, and whatever we do in terms of financial support for the developing world, we cannot go on chopping down forests around the world—we have to stop. It is hugely damaging to ecosystems and we cannot afford to carry on.

I ask the Minister: can we see the secondary legislation for forest risk products? There will then be two debates to be had: one around whether we should extend the legislation to legal deforestation in the way that the European Union has done, and another around the principle of due diligence, which should also apply to the financial services sector. I do not think that that will happen before the election, but I say to Members on both Front Benches that it needs to be done after the election, as has been recommended by senior business figures.

My recent ten-minute rule Bill on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing would extend the principles in the Environment Act for forest risk products to fisheries around the world. Too much fish is coming into the UK and the European Union from totally unsustainable fisheries and from illegal fishing around the world. Huge fleets of vessels, many from China, are sailing around the world and hoovering up the oceans, without any reference at all to sustainability or the endangered nature of the species concerned. We must talk about species on a world basis: we could all come together and deal with the issue by applying tough international rules about trade in IUU fish, by clamping down on licensing and monitoring, and by preventing IUU fishing from happening. I ask the Minister and, indeed, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), to put that issue more firmly on their agenda. It needs to happen.

The Government have done a lot, which is definitely a tick in the box compared with many previous Governments, but nobody should be under any illusions about the extent of the work that remains. Fantastic work is being done by NGOs and, increasingly, by individuals and private foundations, as well as by more and more Governments. However, to reverse what has happened both here and in other parts of the world, as well as to protect what we still have, a huge amount still needs to be done.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Alex Sobel, you have seven minutes. I want everybody to have a turn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Thank you, Sir Charles. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing the debate, and on her contribution.

The contributions today encourage us to focus on not only stemming the tide of species lost, but actively taking steps to promote nature’s recovery. I welcome the Reverse the Red coalition’s hosting a day of reflection about how we help promote species diversity and growth. It is fantastic that such a broad intersection of activities and initiatives will be on offer. It is precisely the kind of collaborative action that will be required, from the classroom to the United Nations General Assembly hall, if the world is to halt decline and restore nature.

In 2022, COP15 in Montreal agreed stretching but necessary targets on nature. Those present agreed four goals and 23 targets to halt the reverse and loss of nature globally by 2030. That was groundbreaking and, let’s be honest, it was tough, but the world is now in a position where those deeply ambitious goals are necessary if the human race is to tackle the dual climate change and biodiversity crises. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) said, any plan is only as good as its implementation. We live in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, despite the Government’s setting out fairly ambitious targets on reversing nature’s decline.

The Office for Environmental Protection’s latest report, published earlier this year, showed that the Government are way off track on all their key goals related to climate and the environment, including for biodiversity loss. We also know that the global 2011-20 Aichi biodiversity targets agreed by COP10 were emphatically missed across the board. That simply cannot go on. A Labour Government would look to grow nature-rich habitats— like as wetlands, peat bogs and forests—for families to explore and wildlife to thrive. Championing unique habitats, such as wetlands, will help restore species which call them home, such as the curlew to which the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Sir Bill Wiggin) referred. Curlew numbers dropped by 64% between 1970 and 2014, and the curlew is currently on the red list for extinction risk.

The Labour party will go further and help protected areas, such as national parks, to become wilder and greener, thus ending the destruction of nature, and restoring and expanding habitats. Before this year’s COP16, in Colombia, each party that signed up to the Montreal agreement must publish national biodiversity strategies and action plans. Those plans must show how each country will individually contribute to the agreed goals. As we have seen with the failure of previous initiatives, those strategies will be crucial to making good on the warm words with which all countries have been happy to associate themselves.

We are led to believe that the UK’s plan will be split into four discrete strands for each of the devolved nations, as well as including additional plans for overseas territories and Crown dependencies. That makes sense. It is crucial that plans are sufficiently granular and specific to local context so that they can guide action on the ground, and get results.

However, there is anxiety across the sector that the plan for England will be—as my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham said—a rehash of the misfiring environmental improvement plan, which has been panned by the OEP, and is more an aspirational wish list than a real plan. What can the Minister say to contradict that verdict? Will the Government lay out a detailed road map for achieving those targets or will it be left to the next Government? Will the Government produce a bespoke, detailed plan for England that includes specific actions required to reverse species decline by 2030?

[Chris Grayling]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Mr Perkins]

I do not think I quite have time.

[Mr Perkins]

With a bit of generosity, I will give way.

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Member is talking great sense, but he is missing a couple of examples of the actual things a Labour Government would do. What, in practical terms, are we not doing that he would do?

[Mr Perkins]

There are a number of things. Let me continue and I hope I will respond to the right hon. Gentleman’s question.

The nations of the United Kingdom all play host to a rich diversity of natural life. It is our privilege to live on islands in which almost any natural life or landscape one could wish for is present. But, if Britain is to live up to the ambitious goals set at a national level, our strategies and action plans must make sure that each nation is working hand in hand, moving towards the same goals, and not working at cross purposes. Will the Minister confirm that each strategy will set out the framework for co-ordination between all nations and define the mechanisms by which the respective environmental Departments will collaborate?

In December 2023, analysis conducted by Wildlife and Countryside Link—the largest coalition of wildlife and environmental organisations in the UK—found that, a year on from COP15 in Montreal, the UK was off track on 18 of the targets to which it had signed up. Of those 18 targets, Link found that, on 11 of them, either no progress was being made or things were actively getting worse. As I have mentioned, there is a complete failure to meet the previous targets on nature, agreed at COP10. That failure is, not least, due to the lack of a serious monitoring and reporting regime to track the nation’s progress against those goals. Transparency on progress is crucial if the strategies are to be credible and effective. Will the Minister commit to embedding a real-time monitoring framework into the plans to make sure we can all see how nations are faring against these goals and allow policy to be adapted accordingly?

Although it is necessary for the Government to take the time required to develop plans with the level of detail we have requested today—not simply take the environmental improvement plan off the shelf—it is also important for us all to have sight of those plans and make sure they are up to scratch. Can the Minister please tell us when her Department intends to publish the strategies in advance of COP16? The time for action is now. The strategy must start with an acceptance that Britain is currently off track, and a renewed determination to rescue our depleted natural world.