My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, and his eloquent advocacy for chalk streams. I will speak primarily to Amendment 235, in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Jones of Whitchurch. The aim of our amendment is to ensure that the primary purpose of species conservation strategies is to support the recovery of nature rather than to facilitate development.
At first sight, Clause 102 looks very good. It requires Natural England to publish a strategy for improving the conservation status of any species. It must do this for a “strategy area”, which could be as large as the whole of England. The strategy has to spell out which habitat features are important for the species in question and how they may be improved. Natural England must also give an opinion on any consents or approvals that could adversely affect the conservation status of a species, as well as measures that could be taken to compensate for any adverse effects. Planning authorities must co-operate with Natural England in preparing and implementing any conservation strategy, and “have regard to” the strategy.
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That looks good, but when you kick the tyres you find that the protections for nature are not quite as strong as they might have appeared at first sight. The clause would enable an approach that allows individual specimens and populations of a protected species to be harmed, in return for a contribution to their conservation on a wider scale, for example by creating new habitat.
The great crested newt has become a cautionary tale for this approach. District-level licensing schemes for the great crested newt are not comprehensive conservation strategies that address all the conservation needs of this species: they are mechanisms designed solely to address the interface between newts and development in areas to which the schemes are applied. Experience of district licensing has been mixed, with varying degrees of success in the different programmes around the country. Overall, the jury is still out on whether it is an effective conservation approach.
It is also far from clear that this kind of policy would work for many other species. For example, many species of bat are long-lived, have low reproductive rates and rely on a complex mixture of habitat features. Many are faithful to site-specific roosts and would not
simply move down the road to a new roost in a habitat-compensation arrangement. I would therefore be interested to hear from the Minister which species he thinks would benefit most from a species conservation strategy, and why. It is possible for a good strategic approach to play an important role in conservation, but, for that to happen, the priorities need to change. The strategies must be led by the interests of nature, not commercial interests.
Amendment 235 seeks to strengthen the protection of nature and to ensure that the strategies are used primarily to benefit species in need of help, not developers in need of land. First, it includes reference to the mitigation hierarchy proposed in Amendment 168A by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. Secondly, it narrows and clarifies the objective of a species conservation strategy to ensure that it is about protecting nature and not about achieving an ill-defined balance between conservation and planning approval. Thirdly, it ensures that, unlike district licensing, species conservation strategies are about more than the crunch point between species and houses. It requires a strategy to define favourable conservation status for the relevant species, and the barriers and opportunities for ensuring that that species can thrive.
As with other parts of this Bill, there is a balance to be struck between the protection of nature and the commercial interests of developers. Amendment 235 aims to ensure that the balance is not weighted against nature. As Sir Partha Dasgupta said on Radio 4 this morning, in a slightly different context:
“In this small, densely populated island, we need to make a special effort to ensure that the interests of commerce don’t continue, as they have in the past, to override the interests of nature.”
I look forward to the Minister’s response on this amendment.
However, while I am standing up, I will refer briefly to Amendment 293A in this group, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and the noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury. I am not quite sure why this amendment is in this group, but, according to my list, it is, and it is all about the prohibition of lead ammunition in the killing of wild birds and other wild beasts.
I first became aware of this issue about eight years ago, when I was asked to chair a research conference at Oxford University on the scientific evidence pertaining to the harms of lead shot, not just to wildlife but to humans. It is literally a no-brainer, in the sense that we now know with strong scientific evidence that the brains of our children can be damaged by consumption of lead shot through shot game. The scientific estimate is that somewhere between 4,000 and 48,000 children in this country are suffering a lower IQ as a result of consuming lead shot.
I support the intention behind the amendment because, despite clear advice from their expert advisory group, the Government adopted a voluntary approach, and we know from a paper published by Rhys Green and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge in February this year that no progress whatever has been made since nine hunting and shooting organisations said that they would aim to reduce the use of lead shot.
Equally, retailers—I have spoken to two of our major food retailers about this over the past few years—are still selling game killed with lead shot. A very small warning says, “May contain lead shot”, rather than, “May reduce the IQ of your children”. I shall not speak any further on this, because I am sure others will speak at greater length, but I support that amendment.