15:10 Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)

Here we are, back in the House and back discussing the Environment Bill, 629 days after it received its First Reading. I am grateful to the Lords for their careful consideration of the Bill, and for succeeding where this House was unable to do so and making it fit for purpose. As we approach COP26 in Glasgow, a Bill fit for purpose has never been more needed. The world is watching, and the world is waiting for leadership from the British Government. The Bill could and should be stronger, it could have passed through the House much sooner, and it had the scope for real cross-party involvement; but alas, thanks to this Secretary of State and this Prime Minister, it was not to be.

I thank Lord Teverson for Lords amendment 1, which requires the Government to declare a biodiversity and climate emergency. How can anyone disagree with that? I also thank Baroness Bennett for Lords amendment 2, which seeks to ensure that soil health and quality remains a priority area for environmental improvement; and, of course, I welcome Lords amendment 28 from Baroness Parminter. This amendment removes the exceptions in the Bill for policy making on defence and security, tax, spending and resource allocation from the requirement to have due regard to the policy statement on environmental principles. If the Bill is going to mean anything and if Ministers are serious about tackling the climate emergency, they will support those amendments today.

At every stage of this Bill, Labour has proposed fair, balanced and objective amendments that seek to make the Bill fit for purpose and, moreover, actually help us tackle the climate emergency and set out a real place to protect our environment and preserve our planet. I have said to the House before that we do not have time to waste: the climate crisis worsens each day, and real action is necessary. But that requires a strong Bill, not a half-hearted attempt that does not recognise, or match, the seriousness of the challenge in front of us.

This is a very quick one. The hon. Gentleman and I share this passion, and he knows that a number of our towns are trying to make themselves sustainable under the United Nations sustainable development goals. Many councils now have a climate change emergency resolution and climate change commissions, but they do not quite know what to do. Does he agree that, given that we have all these groups in these towns and cities, we should go for 500 towns and cities in this country, such as Huddersfield, that are committed to becoming truly sustainable under the UN sustainable development goals?

Setting an ambitious air pollution target can also help to drive action to meet the Government’s commitment to net zero by 2050. Pollution from road transport, as well as from domestic and industrial burning, is also a cause of greenhouse gas emissions. We have an opportunity to tackle both climate change and air pollution at the same time, and we can help the planet and protect people’s health. I support a binding commitment to publishing a target after a full consultation, but I make it clear that this is an urgent issue and I will continue to hold the Government to account. October 2022 must be the absolute last point at which we set a proper target on reducing PM 2.5 in law.

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15:30 Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)

The urgent drumbeats accompanying the global crisis that faces us have become near deafening. We all pin our hopes on COP26 and the possibility, even now, of real commitments and agreements on the dramatic actions that we all, as politicians and as people, have to face up to, but increasingly the mood music is not as positive as we would all like to see. Sadly I hae ma doots, as they say.

Consequently, although I will mainly be speaking to Lords amendment 29, I must highlight once again my disappointment at the sheer length of time this Bill has taken to get near the statute book. It is pretty shameful that it likely will not receive Royal Assent before COP26, the largest and most important conference of its kind in the world, and the largest and most important conference that the UK has ever hosted. There are still too many areas in which the Government continue to drag their heels. Here we are, scrambling to get this Bill through Parliament a few days before hosting the most important climate conference to date. What a way to show the rest of the world that the UK Government have their priorities in order.

The Government have taken a very relaxed attitude to the extensive number of munitions dumps scattered around our shores, which apparently do not need to be regularly checked. I point hon. Members to the decades it took to get the MOD to accept responsibility for the clean up of radioactive particles from the beach at Dalgety Bay in Fife for a further understanding of why we in Scotland do not think those exemptions should continue. As I understand it, exemptions were not part of the Climate Change Act 2008, so why are they part of this legislation?

In this Lords amendment, we see the UK Government simply not being able to help themselves. Instead of Ministers doing their jobs, focusing on the climate crisis and getting this Bill through in an appropriately urgent fashion, they have taken time out to undermine the powers of the Scottish Parliament. The UK Government could have simply included Scottish Ministers in decision making, but we are forced to go through this rigmarole instead, because, it appears, of nothing more than petty point scoring.

If this UK Government’s post-Brexit leadership hints at what is to come, I do not feel positive about environmental protections. I cannot put it better than the Institute for Public Policy Research report, which called the UK Government’s commitments to environmental standards “considerably weaker than expected”. The EU is one of the world’s leading bodies in the fight against climate change and our departure from it leaves us open to backsliding on environmental policy. As a member of the EU, the UK Government were being held to account and forced to match the EU’s high standards. Brexit threatens that. This Bill, unlike the Scottish Government’s EU continuity Act, does not include a non-regression clause.

That is not good enough. The climate crisis is too critical an issue for us to rely on the whims of one parliamentarian alone and keep our fingers crossed that they do the right thing. One Minister’s idea of a significant development may well not be another’s. It is also worth reminding ourselves that if the UK Government fail to match EU environmental standards and this affects trade or investment, the EU would legally be well within its rights to introduce proportionate measures, including tariffs, in response. The UK Government claim that they do not need to formally maintain EU rules because they will going even bigger and better, but can they be trusted to maintain EU standards now that no one is looking over their shoulder? When I was reading through the record of the debates in the other place, I was struck by what seemed a pretty obvious mistrust of Government assurances that extensive parliamentary scrutiny in itself would be sufficient to address the clear misgivings on the Government’s intentions in regard to this Bill. We all have bitter experience of the promises made by this Government about, for example, the scrutiny of trade deals, with the promised permanent Trade and Agriculture Commission still to be formed, despite trade deals apparently being under discussion around the world. It was therefore interesting to note the suspicion expressed by their lords and ladyships, which led them to vote on and agree the large number of amendments we are considering.

Scotland has the strongest climate targets in the UK and we lead the way in tree planting, the decarbonisation of public transport and, as I mentioned, matching WHO standards on air pollution. Environmental policy is all-encompassing and must be a chief consideration when we make energy, transport, investment and planning policies. It cannot be treated as an afterthought, with us working out merely how to implement the bare minimum of standards. The Scottish Government lead the way in environmental action in the UK and are truly committed to fighting climate change and environmental damage. I urge the House to consider this matter and vote for the removal of Lords amendment 29 from the Bill.

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16:00 Geraint Davies (Slough) (Lab)

We know that 64,000 people are dying a year. We know that globally it is 8.7 million. We know we are hosting COP26. We profess to be global Britain. My view is that this measure ticks all the Government’s ambitions and boxes. The Government talk about NHS prevention and limiting the amount of money spent on the NHS. The Royal College of Physicians says that the cost of air pollution is £20 billion a year. The World Health Organisation says it costs £60 billion a year in lost productivity and NHS costs. If we are serious about increasing productivity, we should improve air quality standards. In terms of value, if we saved even £3 billion of the £20 billion—on the lower number—we could invest that in a stream that would generate an investment of about £300 billion in capital for green infrastructure to head towards net zero.

The Bill has a very long history: it was first proposed in 2018, has been repeatedly delayed and, last year, was absent from Parliament for more than 200 days. I urge the Government not to now create further delays and to accept these crucial amendments from the other place to make the Bill law before COP26. That is the kind of leadership that people are looking for from the country that will host that key meeting.

“declare that there is a biodiversity and climate emergency domestically and globally”,

I am utterly dumbfounded that the Government cannot agree to it. They may argue that it does not meaningfully change the Bill, which may be the case, but it is none the less incredibly symbolically important. With the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report spelling a “code red for humanity” with 1 million species now threatened with extinction, we know that an emergency is upon us.

I therefore urge the Government to rethink their position and to listen to the scientists raising the alarm, to the young people on the streets worried for their future, and to the parliamentarians in this House. There are now less than two weeks until COP26 and if the UK is serious about demonstrating leadership, rejecting this amendment just seems so contrary to what we need to see—so perverse.

Soils and air are the very substance of what the Bill is about. Lords amendment 2, tabled by my noble Friend—I do not often get to say that—Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, sets soil health and quality as a priority area for long-term target setting. Soils, as we know, are the complex ecosystems upon which all life on this beautiful planet relies. A staggering 25% of the world’s biodiversity lives in our soil. Britain’s soils alone store almost 10 billion tonnes of carbon. It is not simply dirt that can endlessly be abused and neglected; it is life itself. Its health is absolutely essential if the UK is to succeed in achieving its climate and biodiversity targets, yet we lose more than 3 million tonnes of topsoil every year in the UK. In its recent independent assessment of the UK climate risk, three of the Climate Change Committee’s eight urgent priorities relate to the impacts of the climate crisis on soils, and just today a new report was published that identifies poor soil health as a threat to national security.

On tackling air pollution, does the hon. Member not agree that, to take people off road and on to rail, it is about time the Government built the western rail link to Heathrow? It would benefit people not only in my Slough constituency, but in the south-west, Wales and the west. That is the only way because if we are serious about tackling the climate crisis, rather than just talking about it—the Government committed to it in 2012, but have still not yet dug a single spade—it is about time that we moved forward on these transport infrastructure projects.

The exclusion of the Treasury is, if anything, of even more concern. If we ever needed a lesson on that, we have seen in the last few weeks how there appears to have been a battle between No. 10 and the Treasury over some key decisions when it comes to the heat and buildings strategy or the net zero strategy. Sadly, it looks as if the Treasury has won, because we are not seeing the finance behind those plans that we should. We are seeing things such as the continuing freezing of fuel duty since 2010, which is directly responsible for emissions being up to 5% higher than they would otherwise have been. I urge the Minister to look again at including the Treasury in this provision. Again, it seems very perverse to leave it out.

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16:15 Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)

We have led the way on that in Bristol. We formally declared a climate emergency in 2018 and a biodiversity emergency in February last year. As a result, we have a wide-ranging “one city” ecological emergency strategy, which serves as a blueprint for action on that front. Really, that is what it is about—not just making the declaration, but using that declaration as a way of stressing the urgency and driving action.

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17:45 Jim Shannon (DUP)

Turning to Lords amendments 94 and 95, our world-leading due diligence measures will help to tackle illegal deforestation in supply chains by prohibiting larger businesses operating in the UK from using certain forest risk commodities, produced on land illegally occupied or used. Forest risk commodities are associated with wide-scale conversion of forest. Examples of those commodities include beef, cocoa, leather, soya, rubber and palm oil. This comes as the UK prepares to lead by example at COP26 in two weeks’ time.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Obviously, our businesses will have an obligation under what we set in our Bill, but equally, there is a whole session devoted to this at COP26, discussing exactly the issues that he raises in the wider sphere of agriculture and forestry across the globe. I urge him to follow what happens there.

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18:00 Rosie Duffield (Other)

The public want to see us protect our forests and woodlands, and they want to see us plant more trees. The Climate Change Committee, the independent body set up to advise the Government, has been clear that we need to raise our current 13% forest cover to 17% by 2050 if we are to have any chance of meeting our climate goals, but we know that the Government’s slow, pedestrian and managerial approach to tree planting means the target will not be met until 2091. Their action does not match their soundbites, as it must if we are to hit our climate goals.

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19:45 Rebecca Pow

I invite the Minister to have words with those programming Government business to see whether this Bill can be brought back before COP26. Although I would like this Bill to go much faster and further, and although there are bits that are clearly insufficient, it is a step forward. Besides, I know that the Minister has plenty of press releases saying, “Landmark Environment Bill” ready to be sent, and I would hate to think that she would not get a chance to do so before COP26. I would be grateful if she brought forward those measures beforehand, but the Opposition welcome this positive step forward to address our throwaway culture.

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