Environmental Targets (Public Authorities) Bill [HL]

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Friday 13th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I apologise that I was unable to be present for the Second Reading of this valuable Bill.

I am a bit confused by the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, because it seems that he leaves intact in the Bill the very targets that he is against. In fact, the amendment appears to focus on something equally important, however, which is that it would remove the requirement for the listed public bodies to contribute to the

“delivery of the programme for adaptation to climate change under section 58 of the Climate Change Act 2008”.

The Government have a statutory responsibility to deliver the adaptation programme, and the Adaptation Committee of the Climate Change Committee in its successive assessments has reviewed whether we as a nation are doing what is required to make sure that nationally, including with regard to infrastructure, we are more resilient to climate-related floods, droughts, intense weather events, heatwaves and increased storminess, and all the things that we are increasingly seeing.

We are seeing households go through horrors of floods and rocketing insurance costs. We are seeing the Government having to pay out £60 million in recovery payments to farmers for the excessive rainfall in summer 2024 having a huge impact on their livelihoods. Farmers, of course, also suffer from not having enough water on occasion, and that again hits their bottom line in irrigation costs or loss of crops.

There are more frequent and extreme heatwaves which cause excess deaths, particularly in elderly people. According to the Office for National Statistics, in the 2022 heatwave excess deaths associated with five heat episodes alone were up by 6.2%. Climate change-related insurance claims are steadily rising, and all the impacts that we have just heard about are serious for people and for the economy.

If the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, feels we are moving too fast because our electricity prices are high, I say that we are rapidly approaching a point when the real downstream costs of not doing enough to combat climate change are going to start hitting the economy, if they have not already done so. The Adaptation Committee has been clear that we are not making enough progress. Its progress report on the third national adaptation programme was very blunt:

“The UK’s preparations for climate change are inadequate ... The Government has yet to change the UK’s inadequate approach to tackling climate risks … The Government must”—


among other actions—

“Improve coordination across government … Integrate adaptation into all relevant policies … strategies and plans. Implement monitoring, evaluation and learning across all sectors”.


Clause 1(1)(c) is fundamental to that to ensure that public assets and critical public services are resilient to climate impacts now, avoiding the costs of coping with emergency events and costly retrofitting. We must not lose this adaptation clause from the Bill. I cannot recall off the top of my head the exact figure calculated for the cost of taking action on the climate targets, but if my memory serves me well, it was less than 1% of GDP lost and certainly less than the impact of the term in office of Liz Truss.

I shall briefly take this opportunity to stress the importance of this Bill as whole. The Government have statutory climate change and environmental targets that they urgently need to meet. A range of public bodies needs to act in support of the Government if the Government are to have any hope of meeting the targets.

We have experience in this House of laying such requirements on public bodies. During the debates on the Great British Energy Bill and the Crown Estate Bill, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, attempted to get a similar obligation about environmental and climate change targets laid on those bodies to help achieve that government strategy commitment. That took up considerable time of the House, and of Ministers outside the Chamber, and although we did not get agreement at that point to amend the Bills, we got valuable assurances from the Dispatch Box that those bodies would be expected to meet sustainable development objectives and, by analogy, climate and environment objectives as outlined in the two pieces of legislation that laid those requirements on government.

We could theoretically carry on trying to insert those obligations into public bodies one by one as suitable legislation comes past that would provide opportunities. Indeed, during 2000s, I proposed a sustainable development duty for every relevant public body as an opportune Bill came through your Lordships’ House, and I won the day on several public bodies that still have their sustainable development duties, but I can tell the Committee one thing: Ministers came to hate me. It would be much more efficient to get the Government to recognise that they will need all the help they can get to deliver the targets and to adopt the approach suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, of a single Bill doing all relevant public bodies in a job lot. Can the Minister delight us by telling us that he is seriously considering this or, at the very least, could he tell us how much progress has been made since commitment made at Second Reading by the Minister, the other noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that the imminent revision of the environment improvement plan provides the best vehicle to consider the principles that this Bill is promoting and their practical implementation?

We are due to get the environment improvement plan revision before the summer—late spring is the technical term, I think. Can the Minister confirm that it will include specific measures to align public bodies’ action with delivery of the statutory climate change and environment targets, including the adaptation programme, despite the wish of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, to remove it?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I express my concern about this amendment. I completely understand where my noble friend Lord Hamilton is coming from with his wider concerns about some of these policies. I echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, about adaptation for climate change in particular. Although it was criticised by the sub-committee of the Climate Change Committee—I was actually responsible for publishing it—and there may be disagreement about how far it would go and the connectivity, it was still important to make sure that we got it in place so that government departments knew what they should be doing. We had made that commitment to do so.

In particular, Clause 1(2) is a concern, as it says:

“The environmental recovery objective is a principal objective for the public bodies”.


I say to my noble friend that these bodies, which are by and large but not solely Defra bodies, are either Ministers or bodies that are accountable to Parliament, to Ministers or, indeed, to the electorate more widely when we get into local government. I realise I should have tabled an amendment here to consider mayoral authorities and mayors. It is vital that we recognise that there is already in law an enhanced biodiversity duty on all the public authorities.

I am also conscious that the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, pointed out to me, I think in a different meeting, that when the Environment Bill went through this House the Government at the time resisted directly linking the local nature recovery strategies into this. I was not a Minister in Defra at that time so I must admit I was not aware of that detail, but I genuinely believe that the local nature recovery strategies are critical to making sure we achieve these targets, which is why I broadly support this Bill.

I have tabled a fresh Question for Written Answer, bearing in mind what the Minister, Mary Creagh, said, I think last November in response to somebody in the House of Commons, that she expected all the local nature recovery strategies to be published by the end of the first half of June. Clearly, that has not happened, but incentives are supposed to be given towards that, so I have tabled a Question for Written Answer to see what the progress has been on that.

I know that my noble friend adores our countryside, but our country will be very different if we do not protect our natural environment. On the targets referred to in Clauses 1(1)(a) and (b), for too long nature has been the Cinderella in thinking about climate change. The climate adaptation element is also key when it starts to come together in real action and not just saying, “We’re pleading with you to look after nature”. It can be difficult to explain why it matters to keep alive a species of bat in Colombia, but it starts to come together when we think about adaptation.

I am conscious that it is important that we continue to do whatever we can to honour our obligations. It was a Conservative Government who did the negotiations for the global biodiversity framework. I believe that it is vital that every sinew of government is working towards achieving that. It matters not just because we led the way in the negotiations and it took a lot of courage—I paid a lot of tribute at the time to our brilliant civil servants who were leading the day-to-day negotiations and working with Ministers to make them happen—but because we matter and nature matters. That is why I encourage my noble friend to consider whether he wants to press this again on Report, because, if he did, I am afraid that I would find myself in a different Lobby from him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I understand what the noble Lord says on that, recognising that this was covering every single bit of government. The guidance that was attached to the production of local nature recovery strategies was actually very much stronger and more specific.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

I thank the noble Baroness for pointing that out, and I accept her comment.

To summarise, my three asks of the Government are: first, to tighten the guidance where appropriate, following the interjection of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, on the existing initiatives aimed at protecting nature and tackling climate change; secondly, to ensure that the environmental improvement plan includes the role of public authorities in meeting the specific time-bound targets in the Environment Act and the Climate Change Act, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone; and, thirdly, in line with Corry and Cunliffe, to modernise and simplify the legislation, as proposed by my Bill. In the meantime, I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, having had a good debate about his amendment, will agree to withdraw it.