Environmental Protection and Biodiversity

Pippa Heylings Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I commend, as we all do, the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this important debate—it could not be more timely.

I start by asking the Minister why this Government refused to publish the full national security report on global biodiversity loss. The reason for that refusal is pertinent to today’s debate; it seems to be a refusal to be honest with the public about the inextricable links between nature, climate change and our national security, and how vulnerable it makes our country and society when we do not act on the evidence. That evidence states that biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse have severe consequences for food and water insecurity, crop failures, fisheries collapse and intensified natural disasters. That is cause for alarm and action.

Instead of responding with urgency, however, the Office for Environmental Protection has confirmed that not only do the Government remain largely off track to meet their environmental commitments, but, worryingly, they have committed to

“doing little that is new or different”

to change that. The latest State of Nature data shows decline, with one in six species at risk of extinction. We have heard that just 14% of England’s rivers are in good ecological health. Action on nature loss and climate breakdown cannot be dealt with in silos. That is why the Liberal Democrats, led by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage), have pushed for an annual climate and nature statement from Government.

The Conservatives and Reform, meanwhile, refuse to accept that climate change is one of the greatest drivers of nature loss and propose the rolling back of climate legislation. There seems to be a similar siloed approach from this Labour Government—this time a nature-blind approach. While we commend the Government’s drive towards decarbonisation, the loss of nature is also accelerating climate change by disrupting habitats that capture and store carbon, such as peatlands and woodlands.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that habitat loss will not be helped if the Government accept recommendation 19 of the Fingleton review, which will weaken the duty to support our national parks? Our national parks did not stop the building of Sellafield, or of Trawsfynydd in Snowdonia national park; the Quantocks national landscape did not stop the building of Hinkley. We need to protect our national parks and landscapes.

[Pippa Heylings]

More than 20 leading nature organisations, including the Wildlife Trust, the National Trust and the RSPB, have warned that the changes my hon. Friend mentions would weaken environmental law by effectively allowing developers to pay to destroy protected wildlife.

I would like the Minister to respond on proposed recommendations 11, 12 and 19 of the Fingleton nuclear regulatory review. We do not want any more of the damaging framing of nature as a blocker to growth, or any more actions such as the weakening of key biodiversity safeguards in the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025. As my hon. Friend said, the proposed exemptions to biodiversity net gain risk hollowing out one of the most important tools for nature recovery. That is not just the case with nuclear energy; the Prime Minister has said that he also wants environmental deregulation across the entire industrial strategy, which would risk breaching level playing field provisions in the EU-UK trade and co-operation agreement.

Liberal Democrats take a different view. We would accelerate environmental land management schemes with an extra £1 billion a year to support nature-friendly farming, as my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne) said. We would halt and reverse nature’s decline by 2030 and double nature by 2050. We would strengthen the Office for Environmental Protection, and properly fund Natural England and the Environment Agency.

We have heard much about chalk streams, the jewel of our natural heritage, which is why I brought forward legislation with cross-party support to nominate the UK’s chalk streams as UNESCO natural world heritage sites. I hope the Minister will support that legislation. Nature is our joy and our pride, and it underpins our economy, our health, our food security and our safety.