16:28 Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case and I thank him for securing the debate. I have tried to get one for ages, so many congratulations to him. On trees helping with pollution, soil is brilliant at combating climate change because it can hold so much carbon. Although we are talking about how soil management should be better, soil health is not listed as a headline indicator in the 25-year environment plan. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should try to get it in there as an indicator because the payback to society would be considerable, given that we pay £1.2 billion a year to combat soil erosion?

My hon. Friend is making important points about natural capital and health, and I agree with all that he has said so far. However, does he agree that the real elephant in the room is the issue of climate change and its impact on human health not only in this country, but globally? Would he like to see the Government go further and faster in planning for the long-term goals on carbon reduction targets? Although we are currently meeting our carbon budget for this period, we will not meet it for the fourth and fifth carbon budget.

I am concerned now, because people have clearly read my speech. I was about to move on to that subject. I have the great honour of being a Cornish MP, as Members might have noticed. The Duchy of Cornwall was first to proclaim a climate change emergency. On Friday, my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) and I worked with the council on its plans to be carbon-free by 2030.

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. The 25-year plan is tremendous and wonderful, and I think everyone in the Chamber would applaud it, but as yet it has no teeth and no sense of urgency about climate change, the degradation of the environment or how we get young people to visit the natural world and fall in love with it. If they do not love it, they will not protect it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

That is all part of the agenda on climate change and caring for our environment, so that we can all enjoy it. I am glad that schoolchildren who care about our planet can take action by planting trees and clearing our beaches and seas of the plastics that threaten to suffocate the health of our oceans.

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16:51 Mary Creagh (Labour)

As the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) said, this has to do with climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report entitled “Global Warming of 1.5°C”, published last October, warned that we have just 12 years to avoid catastrophic climate change. It warned that the rate of biodiversity loss will be twice as severe in a 2° warmed world as it will be in a 1.5° world. The difference that that makes is that in a 1.5° world, 90% of the coral reefs will be lost, so our children will be able to see the remaining 10% of coral reefs, whereas in a 2° warmed world, our children will never see a coral reef. That includes the cold-water coral reefs on the southern border of the UK as well.

Another inquiry that our Committee did was on heatwaves. We have warned that a 2° rise in temperature could see the average number of heat-related deaths in the UK more than triple, to 7,000 a year by 2050. The Environment Agency has warned that within 25 years England will not have enough water to meet demand, and that problem is particularly acute in the south-east and east of England. We have rehearsed the dangers of air pollution over and over again, and I welcome the Mayor of London’s introduction of the ultra low emission zone. As I cycled in yesterday and cycled home last night, there was a notable drop in the number of cars and vans that were circulating. Perhaps that was to do with the Easter holidays, or perhaps it was all in my imagination, but it certainly felt a lot cleaner. We await the Committee on Climate Change’s review of how we cap emissions at a 1.5° rise.

To finish, I will briefly talk about the Government’s 25-year environment plan. That plan is necessary because of the decision to leave the European Union—a decision that I profoundly regret and that many of my constituents also profoundly regret. A tricky third of environment legislation on air, waste, water and chemicals cannot simply be cut and pasted through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. We need to put into practice the environmental principles that we have signed up to in international law. We want our climate change commitments to be actionable and measured by any new Office for Environmental Protection, and we want an architecture of long-term, legally binding environmental targets that is supported by a five-year planning cycle and takes the Climate Change Act 2008 as its model. I welcome the plan, but I am worried about the lack of targets.

I am also worried about the lack of measurable targets to increase our green space. We on the Committee recommended that we should get urban green space back to 2001 levels to reduce the urban heat island effect. These issues are not just for DEFRA; they need to be dealt with across every Department. Great work is being done in my constituency. We are getting a new garden at the Hepworth gallery, and we have some brilliant groups, such as Friends of CHaT Parks. That group helps to run the nurseries at Thornes Park, working with adults with learning disabilities. I was also proud to plant some trees to mark the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy locally. However, achieving net zero emissions simply cannot wait. We need action across Government. We need greener cities, greener cars, greener diets, greener finance and greener Government if we are to meet that challenge. I look forward to working with the many people of good will across all parties, and of course with the Minister—who I know is working hard on these issues—to make that a reality.

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17:02 Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)

As I mentioned earlier, it is so important to get the biodiversity and health of our soil right. I reiterate my call to make it an indicator in the 25-year plan and give it the credit it needs as a public good in the Agriculture Bill, because without it we cannot have healthy food. It holds our carbon. We can achieve all our climate change commitments because of that property of soil—its ability to hold carbon. If we get the management of that right, we have ticked a massive box on the way to meeting our net zero targets. I am optimistic on climate change; this Government are making huge strides on the issue, for which they are not getting enough credit. I am optimistic, having had many meetings about this, that we are going in the right direction, and I believe that we will meet our net zero targets sooner than we think.

I have to wind up, so I will say that we need to get climate change sorted. I understand how important it is. As part and parcel of that, we need to get biodiversity sorted. We owe it to the nation. I am pleased that the Chancellor mentioned all that in his spring statement, and I am pleased that we have a Minister who understands this.

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17:08 John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)

As the Scottish National party spokesman on the environment, I will take this opportunity to speak on Scotland’s role in planetary health. All political parties in Scotland have placed the environment at the heart of the Government’s plans. Indeed, other countries are now looking to Scotland for a lead. For example, our progress on climate change was praised as “exemplary” by the United Nations climate change secretary; for your information, Chair, the Scottish Government are on course to smash our goal to reduce emissions by 42% come 2020.

She has committed to bringing forward new legislation, as part of the Circular Economy Bill, to tackle that avoidable national embarrassment. Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform not only says what she means, but means what she says.

Scotland’s rich and diverse natural environment continues to offer fantastic opportunities to our economy. The Scottish Government recognise the link between access to quality natural spaces and the benefit to health and wellbeing. Scotland accepts its responsibility for leaving a better planet to future generations and is taking a leading role in reducing carbon emissions by setting the most ambitious statutory climate change targets of any country in the world for 2020, 2030 and 2040. That means that Scotland will be carbon neutral by 2050.

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17:27 Luke Pollard (Labour)

At the last DEFRA questions on 28 March the shadow Environment Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Sue Hayman), declared a climate and environment emergency, on behalf of the Opposition, at column 534. She challenged the Minister to join us in cross-party working to jointly declare a climate crisis. Ministers did not agree to do that, but I hope that the Minister will recognise the importance of cross-party working in relation to declaring a climate crisis. In local government up and down the country, Conservative, Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat councillors, and others besides, have been working in collaboration to declare local climate crises. The public and the young people whom the right hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) spoke about expect politicians in this place to do something similar and declare a climate crisis at national level. We can then take cross-party action against it.

The 25-year environment plan is a good start, but we need much more besides. My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) spoke with passion about the need for action and that is something I want to impress on the Minister. Since the Environment Secretary took office there have been 76 DEFRA consultations, but only one piece of primary legislation. It is not good enough to be the Secretary of State for consultations. We need to tackle climate change properly, which means that we need proper action. I implore the Minister to tell the House when the Agriculture Bill and the Fisheries Bill will make a comeback, and when the environment Bill, for which the hon. Member for St Ives made a good case, will be seen. We need action, not just warm words.

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17:32 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)

The 25-year environment plan sets out how we will deliver our commitment to pass our planet on to the next generation in a better condition than it was in when we inherited it. As I said last week to the Environmental Audit Committee, during its inquiry into planetary health, the 25-year environment plan is one of a growing set of strategies intended to have a positive impact on the health of humans and the planet that sustains us. It may be a plan for England, but its ambition extends to the world beyond. It commits us to taking on an even more prominent international role in protecting the planet, whether by pushing the agenda on climate change, tackling biodiversity loss, or leading by example through the development of innovative approaches such as natural capital accounting.

Hon. Members have referred to climate change. There are many stressors on planetary health, which have already been referred to—human population growth and climate change being the most significant. As climate change affects the environmental and social determinants of health, under future climate change scenarios impacts could intensify, increasing existing disease burdens and widening health inequalities if no interventions are made. Mitigating and adapting to climate change is one of the fundamental goals of the 25-year environment plan. Once we leave the EU, we will introduce an environmental land management system that will be the cornerstone of that intervention, changing the way farmers and land managers manage their land to deliver this crucial goal. Although I do not know when the Agriculture Bill will complete its stages, that will of course be part of it. Environmental land management will be supported by other interventions related to waste management, soils, agriculture and forestry—each playing a critical role—as set out in the plan.

Globally, the UK played a leadership role in securing the 2015 Paris agreement and continues to work to ensure that subsequent negotiations unlock ambitious action. The Government are on track to deliver their commitment to providing at least £5.8 billion of international plant finance between April 2016 and March 2021. Through this fund, the UK has helped 47 million people cope with the effects of climate change. DEFRA’s investments alone are expected to save 70 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. This funding will go to projects such as the Blue Forest project in Madagascar and Indonesia—a £10.1 million programme that is reducing deforestation of mangrove habitat, helping to support sustainable livelihoods and community health and increasing climate resilience in coastal communities. I am pleased to say that we have also added some funding to a project to prevent mangrove deforestation in the Caribbean, focusing particularly on Belize.

Although much more progress is needed globally on the greenhouse gas emissions generated by energy and transport in particular, we need to increase substantially the focus on nature-based solutions, to reduce the pace of climate change and fulfil much climate change mitigation as well as adaptation.

Biodiversity change is intrinsically linked to climate change and is another key indicator of planetary health. It underpins many benefits enjoyed by individuals and communities, from the food we eat to clean air and water and the endurance of nature. The plan represents a step change in ambition for nature through its goal to see thriving plants and wildlife. As such, we are investing in peatland and woodland restoration, which contribute to climate change mitigation and provide important wildlife habitats. The House will know that we are establishing a nature recovery network as a key contributor to our ambition to create or restore 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat, which will provide wider benefits for people. I expect the new environment Bill, which will include a number of ambitious measures, to be the first Bill in the next Session of Parliament. Internationally, the UK is committed to playing a leading role in developing an ambitious post-2020 framework.

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17:42 Derek Thomas

I am grateful to Back-Bench Members and Front-Bench Members for their contributions. I am glad of the opportunity this afternoon to talk up the environment plan, and I am grateful to the Minister for setting out some of its benefits. I was pleased to hear her talk about the value of nature-based solutions to climate change. We were right to focus on that this afternoon. This is an urgent issue that engages people in politics—even if we have our eyes elsewhere—and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to talk about something that matters to people and in which they can engage and be part of the solution. I am pleased that we are beginning to look at how we can give equal access to the great planet that we live on and to our natural environment.

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