Environment (Local Nature Recovery Strategies) (Procedure) Regulations 2023

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, who has made an excellent case today as to why the omissions in these regulations need to be urgently addressed.

Throughout the development of local nature recovery strategies, we have been hugely supportive of the concept. There is no doubt that they have the potential to be an important vehicle for the delivery of many of our environmental ambitions set out in the Environment Act. Already, around the country, councils are coming together at county level to address the challenges of meeting our environmental targets locally, and they want to make the process work. However, as the Minister knows, we already have concerns about the status of those local nature recovery strategies once they are produced. Without the right legislative underpinning, there is a risk that much of their work will go to waste and we will lose the enthusiasm and good will of those involved in the process.

Under the current wording of the Environment Act, planning authorities are required only to have regard to the LNRS as part of a general biodiversity duty. That is why the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and I have tabled an amendment to the levelling-up Bill which would require local planning authorities to deliver the objectives of the relevant local nature recovery strategy in their development plans. We will debate this further when the amendment comes up on Report, and I hope that we can make some progress at that point in resolving the issue. I am very grateful to the Minister for meeting us to discuss this last week. I hope that he is able to come back with a little more information—we were rather hoping for some alternative proposals. Given that the amendment is potentially due next week, we are running out of time. I just say that as a general nudge. I mention it also because it is symptomatic of a very narrow interpretation of the role of local nature recovery strategies, combined with overreliance on guidance notes rather than the formal statutory underpinning which can deliver real change.

I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, made a very powerful case for the combined local nature recovery strategies to connect up and form a national nature recovery network. This could provide the essence of the well-known Lawton ambition of “bigger, better and more joined up”, which everyone understands to be the holy grail of nature recovery. But nowhere in these regulations is this spelled out as an objective. There is no requirement for county-based representatives to look over the border to see what approach their neighbours are taking. There is no overarching objective of joined-up corridors across the country which could facilitate the spread of flora and fauna across wide landscapes. There is no requirement to look at the wider geographic challenges or to use the opportunities that the current protected landscapes such as national parks and AONBs could provide.

While there is a role for Natural England in advising on the habitat and species priorities, there is no obligation for wider collaboration between local nature recovery partnerships or for a national map to be produced. Why has Defra largely omitted the need for such national connectivity from the regulations and guidance, which the noble Baroness has been a great champion of and has made a powerful case for today?

There is a further obstacle to the development of a national nature recovery plan in that each local authority is required to publish its recovery strategy on its website. That is good, but there is no requirement for these websites to be on a shared platform. There is a danger that we will end up with 48 individual proposals, with artificial political boundaries, that bear no relation to one other in the language used, impact on habitat and species revival, and other deliverables towards the targets. Equally, there is no requirement for quality control, so the local nature recovery strategies may well vary in scope, evidence and ambition.

Can the Minister explain whether a national online platform for LNRSs is being considered, and how we can be assured that a quality assurance programme will be enacted to ensure that the objectives set out in the Environment Act really are being delivered? I look forward to his response.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I take a much more optimistic view of these regulations, although I expect to be in the lists with the noble Baronesses opposite when it comes to their status in terms of planning regulations. These are local nature recovery strategies, whereas both noble Baronesses appear to want a national nature recovery strategy, imposed from the top down. I think that 30 by 30 will work only if it becomes an intensely personal local thing, if it exists in every community and is worked out locally in a way that suits local people within the context of an overarching national objective that is not set out not as obligations but ambitions. I am dead certain that local wildlife trusts and many other locally based nature organisations will support what is going on and be part of it, but I see no reason to despair that these things are not centrally specified. It is their great strength that they are local.

There is a general question for all the nature-related organisations as to how they gather data so that it is synchronised. I hope that Defra is talking to the Natural History Museum about that so that we have a common structure and that the data each of us gathers in all the organisations we are involved in can find a common use. Why should Sussex have to express its local nature recovery strategy in the same framework as central London? It is just daft. This is local—we should be expressing our local convictions and ambitions.

There is provision in this for the consultation draft to be given to neighbouring authorities, which will doubtless result in some co-ordination, but surely the key to this is being local. If it is to be effective, that means local people in the driving seat.