My Lords, I thank those who assisted me in getting the chance to speak after the accidental omission of my name from the original list. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and welcome his front and centring of the climate emergency and nature crisis. I thank the noble Lord for his expression of support for Amendment 169 in my name. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for his expression of support.
Before I get to that, I wish to briefly speak in support of Amendments 132, 167 and 168 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. It is notable that in the EU there are rules about the funds allocated for the alleviation of poverty and inequality—something that has been entirely lacking from UK practice and procedure, under which the Government have been able to direct money for electoral advantage without rules or oversight. The Americans have a word for that, “pork-barrelling”, and the practice is as unattractive as the metaphor.
I share the concerns expressed by other noble Lords speaking in this group about devolution issues, which other amendments seek to address, but as I have addressed those in other speeches I now speak chiefly to Amendment 169. It seeks to ensure that those who receive financial assistance, provided under the provisions of the internal market, can receive it only if a climate and nature emergency impact statement is undertaken first. This would ensure public money is granted only to development consistent with net climate, nature and environmental targets.
Amendment 169, and my argument for it, build on the comments of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb on the previous group, who reflected on the damage done by massive and continuing fossil fuel subsidies. As others have noted, my amendment has much in common with Amendment 166 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, to which my noble friend has already spoken, but my amendment extends further, calling for a detailed mechanism for each project, rather than the overview included in Amendment 166.
I must remind the Committee, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, did, that the UK is the chair of the COP 26 climate talks. We have a responsibility to be the world leader the Government often proclaim they want to be. Green finance is an issue of great interest to a wide range of international bodies and commercial organisations. All new and continuing financial schemes, whatever their sources, have to be green, given the urgency of our climate emergency and nature crisis.
I note that on 25 June, the Committee on Climate Change made a progress report to Parliament, although we are yet to hear the Government’s response. The report showed how far our current policies are from meeting our existing commitments and the future, larger commitments we must surely make to live up to
our enhanced ambition, beyond that of Paris 2015—something we have recently seen China taking a clear global leadership role in.
I refer to an Answer I received today from the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, to a Written Question on the green homes fund. I asked whether the programme would be extended and the funding enhanced. In his Answer, the noble Lord helpfully told me that £65 billion of investment will be needed for housing retrofit across the 2020s—£65 billion in nine years versus £2 billion of current funding. We clearly need to see some of the funding covered by this Bill directed towards this area, not nature-destroying, planet-trashing options.
Since the Government are very keen to look at league tables for education, we might look at two published in the last fortnight on the environment. One showed per capita contribution to plastic waste production. In this, we are, unfortunately, world-leading. We are second behind the United States on this plastic-choked planet—a huge and terrible responsibility. We have to use regulatory tools and funding to promote ways of cutting back on this. Secondly, the European Environment Agency reported that the UK has the third-greatest proportion of marine and land areas in bad conservation status; we are close behind Belgium and Denmark. More than 70% of our habitats
“exhibit overwhelmingly bad conservation status.”
Again, we must not only make sure we do not fund further damage but, as a matter of extreme urgency, direct funding in ways that start to repair the centuries of damage that has been turbocharged by our economic structure in recent decades.
These are not abstract, environmental, “nice to have” issues. They are about human survival. I ask your Lordships to think about the people of Nicaragua and Honduras seeking shelter and safety. To quote an NBC headline:
“Eta forecast to make landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, a rare occurrence in November.”
If noble Lords think that is an odd name for a hurricane, we are using the Greek alphabet now, because the normal alphabet has been exhausted this year.
The Committee might think about the people living now in low-lying areas around the world, including in the UK—we had a reference to flooding earlier. There have been reports from the Arctic of the failure of sea ice to form by the end of last month. That month broke the record for the lowest extent of sea ice in October. Its extent was more than 1.5 million square miles less than the 1980s average. That is an area larger than India, if noble Lords can envisage that.
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The proposal in Amendment 169 is modest. Anyone asking for financial assistance needs to prove how their requests measure up to the climate, nature and environmental goals and targets, and the Government need to check to ensure that they are not boosting future hurricanes or ice melt, further treating our planet as a dumping ground or killing our wildlife. If those individual requests are put together it will enable Governments across the UK better to understand the aggregate impacts of the financial assistance—the state aid, as others have called it—and to measure them
against the goals and targets to which they are already committed. Impact statements would be not an additional burden, but a necessity to reach shared goals. I conclude by noting that the Conservative Party manifesto last year promised
“the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on earth.”
How could any Government elected on that platform decline to include this amendment in the Bill?