DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL TARGETS (BIODIVERSITY) (ENGLAND) REGULATIONS 2022 DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL TARGETS (WOODLAND AND TREES OUTSIDE WOODLAND) (ENGLAND) REGULATIONS 2022 DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL TARGETS (WATER) (ENGLAND) REGULATIONS 2022 DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL TARGETS (MARINE PROTECTED AREAS) REGULATIONS 2022 DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL TARGETS (FINE PARTICULATE MATTER) (ENGLAND) REGULATIONS 2022 DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL TARGETS (RESIDUAL WASTE) (ENGLAND) REGULATIONS 2022

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 General Committees

[The Chair]

I would like to make two points before we start the debate. There is a choice about whether all the instruments are debated together or taken separately. If any Member objects to them being taken together, they will be taken separately. Does any Member object?

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am sorry to hold the Committee up; as you know, Mr Stringer, I am only an observer. When you ask, “Does anyone object to taking them together?”, I do not know if I am allowed to object. That is what I am trying to find out.

[The Chair]

Let me explain. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has notified me that she wishes to speak in the debate. She is not a member of the Committee, but debates on statutory instruments allow contributions from any right hon. or hon. Member, even if they are not a member of the Committee. However, they cannot vote, which takes us to the crux of the matter; the hon. Member would have to be a member of the Committee to object. [Interruption.] I was wrong; I have been corrected. Any Member of Parliament can object to the statutory instruments being taken together. If the hon. Lady objects to them being taken together, we will take them separately.

[Caroline Lucas]

At the risk of annoying the Committee gravely, I would like to take them separately.

[The Chair]

We will take them separately then. Let me get to the right point in my notes and we will begin. For the information of the Committee, debate on each instrument can last up to one and a half hours.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I rise to make three small points. The first overriding point, which has already been made, is about the urgency we need to move much faster towards targets. The Office of Environmental Protections has already said how far off we are on halting the decline in species abundance by 2030. This debate really does matter.

In particular, I point out the proposed target of a 10% increase in species abundance by 2042 relative to 2030 levels. DEFRA describes that as highly ambitious, but it has been pointed out that it could result in lower levels of abundance than we have today since there is no incentive to address the current rate of decline between now and the proposed 2030 baseline. That is a massive hole in the legislation and the target, particularly since the UK is one of the most nature and wildlife-depleted countries in the world.

There is also no proposed target on habitat quality and connectivity. That really matters if the coverage-based targets, such as the proposed 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitats, are not sufficient or if the habitat that is created or restored is not of high enough quality to benefit biodiversity. In other words, it is not simply a question of designating a certain coverage of hectares—it has to be about the quality of that land, and, crucially, the connectivity between that land and other areas of corridors so that wildlife can thrive. The targets included should be based on the 25-year environment plan, on indicator D1, which is precisely about habitat quantity and connectivity, to be able to quantify changes in habitat quality and to improve that all-important connectivity.

Finally, as we have heard, there is also no target to improve the condition of protected nature sites, despite calls for 75% of those protected wildlife sites to be in favourable condition by 2042. There is a huge hole in the targets in this area and I urge the Government to look again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I want to make one point. The worry about the target is that it proposes a metric that would see all trees and woodland cover being counted equally, and that is a problem because not all trees are equal in terms of the contribution they make to biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Not only should we see a more ambitious target overall, but the focus should be on expanding priority habitat woodlands specifically as that is what is needed to contribute to biodiversity targets, which non-priority habitat woodland might not, as well as towards net zero through carbon sequestration and providing climate adaptation benefits.

The proposed metric, which sees all trees and woodland cover being counted equally, would not value the different benefits provided by different types of trees and woodland. It is those benefits that are highly variable. Increased conifer planting, for example, may well not help natural habitat and wildlife at all, especially if the conifers are also chopped down and burnt as biofuel, so that they do not even help us with carbon sequestration either. We needed a more nuanced approach to woodland, and I am disappointed that the Government did not take that approach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I want to make a few comments on this statutory instrument—essentially, to point to the gap between targets and the actual behaviour that is necessary to meet them. I want to underline some of the comments already made about overfishing. The Government have already made numerous commitments to ending overfishing, including through the Fisheries Act 2020 and the EU-UK trade and co-operation agreement of 2021, and yet during COP15 they reached an agreement with the EU to continue overfishing a substantial proportion of UK fish stocks. The Government’s intention to reopen a UK fishery for spurdog shark—a species listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list because of its significant vulnerability to fishing pressures—is inconsistent with serious efforts to halt species decline. Rather than the specific target on designated features put forward in the regulations, we need targets to improve marine protected areas in their entirety, particularly from the most destructive forms of fishing, such as bottom trawling.

If we are serious about MPAs meaning anything, they have to be protected from bottom trawling. However, although the UK’s MPA network covers 38% of our waters on paper, destructive bottom trawling is banned from just 5% of them, and that is extraordinary. Continued bottom trawling in MPAs is devastating marine life and linked to substantial carbon emissions, and it has to stop if we are serious about meeting our targets.

My final point is that to date, biological monitoring has been under-resourced, particularly in marine environments, and that has resulted in poorly thought-out site designations. We need much more resource to be put into that type of monitoring so that Government agencies can properly and effectively manage an expanded network of MPAs that mean something in fact, not just on paper.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I just want to add my voice to this particular debate because it feels tragic that we have wasted the opportunity to put in place targets that would protect far more people from the evils associated with bad air quality. I know we go through the motions of the Minister speaking in favour and the Opposition voting against the SI, but I beg the Minister to, if nothing else, look again at this directive. We have all seen the mountain of evidence showing the dangers that fine particulate matter in the air poses to our health.

I have just come from a briefing by the chief medical officer talking about his annual report on air pollution. The Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants estimates that up to 36,000 deaths each year are linked to air pollution. It causes and aggravates respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and there is a likely link to dementia. If that number of deaths was happening from anything else, there would be all kinds of inquiries set up and all kinds of urgency. However, because air pollution is invisible, we somehow think that it does not matter as much. Well, it does and if anyone is going to tell us that, it would be the mother of Ella Kissi-Debrah. Next month is the 10th anniversary of the tragic death of Ella, the first person to have air pollution recorded as the cause of death on her death certificate, and I pay tribute to Ella’s mother for all she has done to put air pollution higher up the political agenda. The truth is that the Government’s disappointing target of 10 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic metre by 2040 is nowhere near enough to prevent more people dying from air pollution.

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to tackle toxic air and protect people’s health right across England. That demands a target consistent with, as we have heard, the updated WHO standard guideline level of five micrograms per cubic metre. The CBI has estimated that bringing air quality within the old WHO guideline level of 10 micrograms per cubic metre could deliver an economic boost of £1.6 billion per annum, so the economic case for a much more ambitious Government target is clear. “Ambitious” should be the watchword. The Government claim the targets they are putting forward are stretching and ambitious. Frankly, that is stretching the English language to breaking point. There is nothing ambitious about a target of 10 micrograms by 2040.

I hope the Committee will forgive me for repeating what has already been said, but it is important. The US has had a stronger legal target than the UK since 2012 and, as we have heard, it is considering making it even more ambitious. The EU Commission has proposed a target of 10 micrograms per cubic metre by 2030. That is 10 years earlier than the UK is aiming for. It beggars belief that the Minister can stand there and pretend that the target she is putting forward is an ambitious one. It quite simply is not. As the hon. Member for Cambridge made clear, research by Imperial College London has found that the UK’s proposed target is already achievable by 2030 in 99% of the country based on existing Government commitments and recommendations from the Climate Change Committee. Scotland reached 10 micrograms per cubic metre by 2020. There is a huge ambition-shaped hole in the Government’s plans. Ministers love to stand up and tell us how the UK is being world-beating. How about actually living up to that rhetoric rather than just using words that are frankly meaningless? We have heard that the public wants more. Some 90% of those who responded to the consultation disagreed with this—I cannot even say “ambition”—particular target.

There is an even broader case for more ambition, given that the policies needed to accelerate the reduction of PM2.5, particularly cutting the use of fossil fuels for transport, have the additional benefit of supporting the delivery of net zero.

Set against all of that, the Government’s plans to improve monitoring capacity are not comprehensive enough to give a full picture of air pollution across the country. We have already heard that, by 2028, the whole of London will be legally required to have only 15 monitors to assess compliance against the targets, and the SI will clearly not deliver reductions in pollution for those who live near sources of pollution, such as main roads in cities, because compliance with the population exposure reduction target will be assessed only by using urban or suburban background sites where PM2.5 is, as we have heard, not influenced significantly by a source or sources of pollution in close proximity to the site.

If we want to make a real difference to people’s health and reduce the burden on the NHS, we need to do so much better. I urge an urgent rethink and new legal targets that are commensurate with the scale of the problem, and I beg the Minister not to stand up and try to pretend that the targets are ambitious, when they quite clearly are not.

[Trudy Harrison]

A multitude of aspects have been discovered on this particular issue, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Huddersfield for his work to improve the quality of air in areas around schools. When I was a Minister in the Department for Transport, we set up Active Travel England. One of the primary reasons for doing that was to reduce car commuter journeys and improve air quality, and an awful lot of work has gone into improving the air quality in streets around schools. We appointed Chris Boardman as the national commissioner for walking and cycling, and an awful lot of good work has been done.

Our evidence suggests that it is not practically possible to set 5 micrograms per cubic metre as a nationwide target. A study of the level being experienced by people in parts of south-east England in 2018, indicated that 6 to 8 micrograms per cubic metre came from a combination of natural sources, emissions from other countries—such as the air blown across the English channel from Europe—and shipping. The World Health Organisation guidelines are not ready-made targets for adoption. The WHO does not expect any country to adopt its guidelines without first understanding what would be required to meet the targets. While we expect that the majority of the country will meet the target of 2.5 micrograms by 2030, not all parts of the country will be able to do that.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I was only going to point out that, given that the European Commission’s target is a heck of a lot more ambitious than ours, it is a bit rich to stand there and say that the reason we cannot meet our target is because we will have dirty air coming over from people in Europe. They are cleaning up their air much quicker than we are, so that argument simply does not hold.

[Trudy Harrison]

I would like to make it absolutely clear that the EU Commission’s proposed target has yet to be accepted or, indeed, implemented. We are going further than ever before to adopt the targets, and the environmental improvement plan will set out, with even more detail and in the next few days, how we will go about that.