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

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, one of the 48 we have in England—I had forgotten the number. If this is reported in Cornwall, I will be told off for referring to Cornwall as part of England; in the Isles of Scilly, it will not be as bad.

Earlier, I was at a reception in this House held by Natural England. It was one of the best I have been to. There were four speakers and they were all really good. They were short and to the point but also humorous. The key message that its chief executive, Marian Spain, put over as the mission of Natural England was deliverability. Exactly as the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, has said, this secondary legislation does not ensure that.

I have some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I quite like the local nature of the strategies and think it is quite important. It is easy for us in Cornwall because, apart from the Republic of Ireland and Wales, we have only Devon to deal with; we have an area of outstanding natural beauty called Tamar that straddles both, so we are solving the issue of connectivity across borders. It is quite something for Cornwall and Devon to co-operate—normally, we disagree over where we put cream and jam on our scones, as noble Lords know, and over even more important things.

At the latest board meeting of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, I laid down to our supporters—including Cornwall Council, which does an excellent job for us—that we had to look at deliverability and how to make this strategy into something that works, because I do not fully understand that. The trouble is how to get the people whom we quite successfully communicated with and consulted during our pilot study—we were one of five that did those pilot studies and enjoyed it very much—to really contribute if they do not believe it will lead to something that works and is important and transformative, as I am sure the majority of our stakeholders do.

As we all know, our most important community terrestrially is farming and land management and our most important community for marine is our fishing industries, which are understated in these strategies but are very important and should not be forgotten. I do not understand how we can work effectively with the farming and landowner sector through schemes such as ELMS, which it seems to me does not co-ordinate with this at all, to make sure that we have a way to drive these strategies forward so that everyone, both the farming sector and nature, can benefit.

The other area, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, is planning. I cannot see how these strategies will be effectively deliverable without being embedded in some way into the planning system and planning decisions. For me, the litmus test is whether local authorities feel empowered enough to take them into consideration, and will have to do so, when they make real planning decisions about land use management locally. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has asked him, where we will get in terms of that amendment in the levelling-up Bill.

One other thing that I found totally depressing, which no one else has mentioned, is on page 12 of the SI under the guidance, where it says, quite boldly:

“A full impact assessment has not been prepared for this instrument as no, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sectors is foreseen”.


Well, why are we doing it? I rest my case, and I am interested to hear the reply from the Minister.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I will be brief, given the steer that was given that there was only half an hour for the dinner break, and there are other speakers to come after me. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, for bringing forward this debate. Not only is she right to highlight the inadequacies in the statutory guidance; it also provides a vital opportunity to raise the issue which has been referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and my noble friend Lord Teverson. It is that unless local nature recovery strategies have a sufficiently strong statutory underpinning, when the rubber hits the road and they actually come into contact with local planning authorities, they are not going to be able to do the job that we all want them to do.

I was at the same reception as my noble friend Lord Teverson. The Secretary of State there made it clear that she thought that LNRSs were a critical means of delivering on the ambition to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030. She is absolutely right. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, we all agree on this. We really congratulate the Government on bringing forward local nature recovery strategies, but we need to do all we can now, at this critical juncture, to make sure they work.

I am not an expert on whether we need one single data format or not. I will take advice from the expert, the noble Baroness, Lady Willis. All I would say is that our committee has been looking at the issue of protected areas. I do not think it would be breaking confidence to say that the paucity of monitoring information out there and the lack of standardisation is already a problem; so let us not add to that but instead create mechanisms so that local planning authorities, farm managers and local developers can see what is important.

I want to ram home this point. I know it is a point that the Minister understands, and I am grateful, like the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that he did agree to meet us to talk about why the wording in the Environment Act in the moment, “have regard to”, is not sufficient. The noble Baroness, Lady Willis, also referred to it. It does not matter if the Government transpose it into the LUR Bill; it has got to be much stronger than that. There has to be a significant strengthening to ensure that local planning authorities, as opposed to just the upper tiers, really take this forward. We need a stronger steer on them and we need reporting back.

I urge the Minister to carry on having discussions with noble Lords around the Chamber who are with him in his intentions. We need to make sure that the opportunities in the LUR Bill are taken.