Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I rise to support the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, with great pleasure. I am happy that if this amendment was agreed to, we would not be able to pass Amendment No. 278, because I find the noble Lord’s amendment much more satisfactory than my own. He has spoken eloquently of all the reasons why this public duty needs strengthening. I must declare an interest as a vice-president of Wildlife Link and a member of both Devon and Somerset Wildlife Trusts. The noble Lord is right when he talks of the important role local authorities can play. In my experience, as he mentioned, they often have landholdings, county farms and country parks. They also play a critical role in development control. Often what is needed even more than resources is an attitude of mind that questions all the time: ““If we changed this policy, if we did things differently, how would it improve things?””. In my time as a Somerset county councillor, our partnership with Somerset Wildlife Trust was one of the joys of that job, and one of the strengths in helping to move forward much of our work on the wetter holdings we had, because of the strength of the trust’s experience with wetlands. I should also mention the RSPB, who played a big role in developing a whole new way of working around land, water management and so on. I support the noble Lord’s Amendment No. 277, but I must speak to Amendment No. 279 at the same time; in particular, to paragraph (b). To interpret this a little more for noble Lords, my amendment talks of,"““ensuring resources to gather sufficient scientific knowledge to maintain a basis on which to achieve the objectives of paragraph (a)””," which are:"““restoring or enhancing a population or habitat””." The purpose of this amendment is to enable a short debate on the sad news that the three elements of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology are to be closed, and to find out what the Government’s thinking is about that. The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology is run under the Natural Environment Research Council, which controls the funding and has decided to cut its budget in this particular direction. However, the buck stops with the Government, because the Government provide funding to the NERC, so they cannot simply say, ““The NERC has made the decision in the best way it can as to where the cuts will fall””. It is also a government responsibility. My amendment is intended to make it clear that it should be a government responsibility. At a time of climate change, when what is happening to each individual species or habitat cannot be viewed as standalone, it has become evident that a database cutting across all that knowledge about individual populations, be they amphibians, butterflies, mammals or plants, goes to build an entire picture. That is why the collection of this information by such a body as the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology is so critical, because it brings together the leading research establishments and gathers that information together. Just when we are realising how critical it is to have the information which enables us not only to say, ““This is what’s happening as a result of climate change””, but to learn how to adapt to climate change and how best to protect habitats and enable species to survive some of these changes, we need the best knowledge we can get. It is for that reason in particular that this seems such a strange time for the Government to allow these centres to close. I am glad to say that both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats felt equally strongly about this matter and a strong statement was made on it by the Conservative MP, Mr Peter Ainsworth, and the Liberal Democrat MP, Mr Norman Baker. I hope that, having heard the strong feelings that have been expressed, the Minister will say that the Government are looking into the matter. This has been a very fortuitous discussion on public authorities’ duty to conserve biodiversity. It is the Government’s prime duty to conserve biodiversity. That duty must start with the Government as they are at the head of all public authorities. Therefore, they should set an example in this regard. I cannot accept that the Government will lay this duty on all local authorities but then renege on it themselves, as the withdrawal of the relevant funding seems to suggest.