Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate Environment Bill (Second sitting).
14:10 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)
Q Thank you very much for attending—it is much appreciated. The Government are committed to funding all new burdens on local authorities through the Bill, so I want to get your view quickly on that. I would also be interested to know, in the light of that, what opportunities the Bill offers local authorities, perhaps particularly referencing the fact that lots of local authorities have committed to their own climate and environmental standards, and to tackling the climate crisis. How do you think it might help you to deliver those?
Mayor Glanville: It is a positive Bill in the sense that we all share its ambitions to respond to the climate emergency, uphold the principle of “polluter pays” when we are talking about waste and recycling, and embed high standards for air quality in domestic legislation. Local government shares all those ambitions.
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14:13 Rebecca Pow
Mayor Glanville: Absolutely. As I said, we all face a tremendous amount of challenge from residents, consumers and activists. We all want to play our part in responding to the climate emergency. We as the Local Government Association have been doing a lot of peer-to-peer work. My board has created a climate change emergency action plan, and we are keen to continue that work. Where we would value a greater voice is at the political and officer level, if there is a taskforce linked to the Bill, especially on climate change emergency and action. I am told that there are still some details there to work through in terms of leading that full sector-led response.
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14:17 Robbie Moore (Conservative)
Q Many local authorities have declared climate emergencies. How will the Bill help local authorities to address those self-declared climate emergencies?
Mayor Glanville: Local authorities across the country from Hackney to Hull have declared climate emergencies. The Local Government Association itself has. Local authorities are doing a lot of work outside the scope of the Bill on energy, and there is some detailed work going on at the LGA. The challenge with air pollution and some of the aspirations in the Bill is that many of the elements are reliant on industry and consumer change. There is a lot of work on clean air zones in local government. There is experimentation in places around Nottingham on levying parking charges in workplaces. Wider investment in sustainable and public transport is needed to ensure that our aspirations on air pollution can be met.
We are very keen, as local government, to ensure that we do our part in responding to the climate emergency. There are some of those upstream, “producer pays” principles around waste and recycling—for example, the car industry switching to a more electric fleet, and I know there have been announcements on bus funding—but if we are talking about the types of shift that we are going to need in consumer behaviour in the way that we travel, further work will need to be done together on that.
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14:25 Abena Oppong-Asare (Labour)
There were questions earlier about how local government is rising to the challenge of the climate emergency. We, and many local authorities like Hackney, are investing in our agriculturalists and in the people who work in our parks. We have ambitious targets around planting trees and green infrastructure. We are resourcing that through our planning gain, within the existing planning system, and using policies around section 106 and the community infrastructure levy.
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14:50 Alex Sobel (Labour)
The Committee may want to consider the kinds of issues with trade deals that are being raised at the moment with the Agriculture Bill. They apply in exactly the same way to the need to ensure that we do not get imports that are produced at much lower standards of environmental protection—and, indeed, climate change action—than would be allowed here. That is an element of the Bill on which there could be some really useful reflection.
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15:16 Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
Q In your view, is there sufficient clarity in the Bill regarding the OEP and its role, particularly its relationship with environmental governance bodies, including Natural England, the Environment Agency, the Committee on Climate Change and so on? If you do not think there is sufficient clarity, what would you suggest might be included to make that happen?
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15:27 Robbie Moore (Conservative)
Alan Law: Yes, to be absolutely clear, not all wildlife will be in a nature recovery network or a nature recovery strategy, but what we are looking for in the nature recovery network and local expressions of those plans are the skeleton and vital organs of a healthy organism. We would still expect, of course, to see wildlife and other environmental features beyond that, outwith the nature recovery network itself, but we are trying to design something on a scale that can be healthy and resilient—that can deal with pressures, variation, pollution, climate change and so on—and that cannot be done on a small scale on its own. However, that is not at all to say that we are designing everything into this network and that everything outside the network does not need to be worried about.
We are really strong supporters of the Bill, but if there is one thing that is probably missing from it in comparison with what is in the 25-year environment plan, it is any reference to heritage. I mention that now because for me it is part of thinking about land issues in the round and not just looking at nature, climate change or other things. Heritage is the sixth goal in the 25-year environment plan, but it does not appear anywhere in the Bill. If you think about it, heritage is part of the natural environment; it contributes to making places distinctive and has a lot to do with wellbeing and people’s enjoyment of the natural environment, but things that do not have an obvious economic use are not necessarily paid for.
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16:19 Richard Graham
There are outstanding exceptions to that. For example, a housing association called Rooftop based in Evesham has done some things in my constituency that are largely social and affordable housing that have solar panels and electric charging points. However, it is not always the norm and the Bill seems to me to open the way for house builders and developers to think proactively about what sort of contribution they can make to a net zero carbon future. How do you think this Bill might help house builders and developers adopt that approach and come up with creative ideas that deliver the homes we want while boosting the goals of this Bill to protect and improve the environment?
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16:27 Saqib Bhatti (Conservative)
A lot of innovation comes from the bottom. Berkeley Homes is a great example of a company that really pushes to innovate. However, look at—I mentioned part L earlier—the use of air source heat pumps, which is a great way to decarbonise our grid. The majority of people using them are small and medium-sized developers. Many of our members use them. They have perhaps historically not been used as much on the very large sites.
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16:51 Robbie Moore (Conservative)
Q I want to turn the conversation back to the OEP. Can you explain why the Committee on Climate Change and the Equality and Human Rights Commission have similar independence, if not slightly weaker, to the OEP? Have those bodies not clearly shown that the independence of the OEP set out in the Bill is credible?
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16:54 Kerry McCarthy (Labour)
Q Could I ask about the global footprint issues? As you may have noticed, I have tabled a couple of amendments: 76 and 77. There are two aspects to this. One is our consumption—the consumption of commodities, how they are produced overseas and the fact that we are contributing to climate change, environmental degradation and deforestation as a result. The other side of the coin is that we are financing, British companies are financing or UK Export Finance is financing quite a lot of this work as well. Do you think that there is a case for going global in terms of this Bill? I am trying not to ask too leading questions, but my view would be that there is not much point in putting your own house in order at home and talking about planting trees here if the Amazon is being razed to the ground because of British consumption or British financing. I think that Greenpeace put something about this in its note to the Committee.
The way to deal with this issue is twofold: first, reduce how much meat and dairy we are consuming in the UK, because we need to be freeing up agricultural land globally to give back to nature and allow abundance to be restored. We know the Government are very keen on nature-based solutions for climate change, and a key part of the puzzle is giving land back to nature. That requires a shift in our consumption habits. A global footprint provision in the Environment Bill to allow targets for this would enable that to happen.
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17:00 Bim Afolami
Ruth Chambers: To my mind—again, it is an important question—the clarity and shape of the future delivery landscape are very important. That seems beyond the scope of the Bill and the provisions that we are talking about. The Bill does include how the OEP can and should relate to some of the bodies in the existing landscape. There are provisions relating to how the OEP and the Committee on Climate Change should co-operate to ensure that there is no duplication and overlap, so that they operate seamlessly. We welcome the Government amendments in that space, too.
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17:22 Rebecca Pow
We are looking to build some of that Government intent into the Bill. We then have certainty and clarity that not just this Government but successive Governments will continue that intent and make sure that the Bill is going in that direction—in particular, on the advisory function, making sure the Government have access to good-quality expert advice. It follows more of the model we see in the Climate Change Act 2008, where there is a “comply or explain” mechanism built in. The Government can take this expert advice, which is public, transparent and clear, and comply with it, or give a good, clear explanation why not. Those are the sorts of things we are looking for. As Ruth reiterated earlier, I think we are as one on this. We totally recognise the Government intent. We are looking for a Bill that will make sure that successive Governments hold that intent. That open dialogue, where we can all have a genuine conversation about what we need to put in place to tackle these issues, is welcome.
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