My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 184ZA and 242I, which are in my name and in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Willis of Summertown and Lady Young of Old Scone, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, cannot be in her place today as she has tested positive for Covid; she is sorry she cannot be here to add strength to the weight of the case.
The point of these two amendments is to do the job that local nature recovery strategies need to do—as the Government set out in their Environment Act in only 2021—which is to help restore our much-depleted nature. As the strategies currently stand, they will not be able to do that unless they are given further significant weight in the planning processes. As we all know, nature is all about place; it is a spatial matter, so we need to protect the areas where our birds, species and ecosystems are placed. For noble Lords who are not familiar with local nature recovery strategies, I explain that they are a new requirement of the Environment Act which are due to come into place next month. They are spatial plans across England that will help us to identify where places are special in terms of biodiversity and habitats, to put together policies to enable us to protect areas, and to encourage our local authorities to build protection into their plans. There are about 40 of them across England, mainly at the county level. As local authorities currently need only to have regard to them rather than take account of them, there is a real danger they will not be able to do the job we need them to do. This is a job that the Office for Environmental Protection said earlier this year was essential because the Government are not delivering at the speed and the level we need them to in order to protect our environment.
All of us in this Chamber—particularly those of us who have been local councillors—know that when push comes to shove, nature often gets pushed aside if there is a planning application for a housing development or some other form of infrastructure. We need these local nature recovery strategies, which are done principally at the county level, to have some purchase on the unitary, district and borough plans of councils, as they seek to ensure that our areas meet the needs of local
people and protect our nature at the same time. This amendment is needed because currently local authorities need only to have regard to these principally county-level plans. I think the plans will probably take a year or two to come into force, so there is time for us to get this right.
However, I acknowledge that the plans for county councils and other groups which will be drawing the local nature recovery strategies together were produced last week. For those of us who have had the chance to review that guidance to the local authorities, there are some significant concerns about what is being proposed. I know that we as a House will have our chance to say something on that, because a statutory instrument will have to come forward. This is the guidance to the county councils that will be bringing the local nature recovery strategies together. They will be bringing together different landowners and local people to pull all these elements together so that there is an agreed sense of what, on a landscape scale, our priorities for the future are. Bringing people together as part of that job is really important. It is also important that the plans are evidenced. It is extremely good news that Natural England is going to resource each one of these local nature recovery strategies with a policy officer in support so that the evidence is there, because we have to make sure that these are evidence-led.
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So what do these amendments do? They seek to say, effectively, that each of the local plans has to take full account of the local nature recovery strategies—that the local nature recovery strategies have to be a key base of the evidence for their development plans and have to be specifically referenced in them. The amendment does three things. First, it puts a responsibility on local authorities to embed and incorporate the policies and proposals in the local nature recovery strategies in their development plans, so that the objectives of the strategies can be delivered. Secondly, it says that the guidance which the Government have said they will produce for local authorities—the districts, the unitaries, the boroughs—should make it clear to them how they must deliver on the new responsibility that the amendment would put in place. Thirdly, and as importantly, it says that local authorities must report back on how they have delivered the objectives of the local nature recovery strategies. That is important, because we know that, in anything, what is measured matters. So it is important that there is clear feedback about what has been incorporated.
Equally, as I said earlier, these local nature recovery strategies are not just about bringing stakeholders such as landowners and local authorities together; they are about bringing local people together. If the local people put all this work in to produce these strategies and are then ignored, it will further undermine confidence in local government and its ability to deliver for local environments, which all of us know is really important. So the second of the two amendments makes it absolutely clear that there must be a report back on how local authorities have delivered on the local nature recovery strategies. That is important for nature and for people.
I hope the Government think that these are helpful amendments. In the Environment Act, the Government were very clear. They have brought forward a number of new mechanisms—biodiversity net gain, local nature recovery strategies and ELMS—to start finding new ways to ensure that we can start to reverse the tide of decline in nature and bring it forward. As it stands, because local authorities need only to “have regard to” local nature recovery strategies, this is not strong enough. It does not give that purchase on the local plans. These two amendments do just that job, so I hope the Government will see them as a helpful way to help them do the job they have said they want to do and deliver their targets. If we do not agree these amendments, I really do not see how we are going to achieve the Government’s targets for nature, which all of us in this Chamber know we have to do. I beg to move.