My Lords, in the spirit of brevity, I will not speak to the amendments to which I have given my name. However, I would like to address the amendments that the Government have brought forward, which, if accepted, will be a profound change in how we regulate for the environment in this country. To be clear, we are not talking about all water catchments or all houses. We are talking about the most environmentally sensitive sites: those which are home to our curlews, lapwings, and shelducks. These are our internationally and globally significant chalk streams—sites of greatest environmental sensitivity. That is what we are talking about, not the whole country and not all homes.
Here on these Benches, as on other Benches, we recognise the need for more homes. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I took slight exception to what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Best. The current situation around nutrient neutrality is not a ban on housebuilding. There is a system whereby, if you wish to build houses in a particular sensitive fresh-water area, you can do so if you buy credits to mitigate the damage you will cause. For example, in Poole harbour, one of our most magnificent sites for wildlife and wetland birds in this country, a proposal came forward to build homes. In 2021, a site of 420 acres was built in Bere Regis to mitigate the damage that would have been caused, and 2,111 homes were built. There is not a ban; there is a system of mitigation where the developers must pay—I will return to this point in a moment—to mitigate the environmental damage they are going to cause.
There may well be problems. It is a system that has been in existence for six years; all of us would accept that it is not perfect. Mitigation credits are not, perhaps, coming on as quickly as they need to. The guidance to local authorities about what is acceptable for mitigation may not be as clear as it needs to be. However, that does not mean that, at the 11th hour, the Government can suddenly throw in an amendment to a Bill. You collaborate; you consult with all the parties; you give adequate parliamentary scrutiny. Then, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, I am sure Parliament would accept that.
We have heard a lot this afternoon already about a report which we are going to get from the Built Environment Committee. I will give you something from a report we have already had: the report of my committee, the Environment and Climate Change Committee, which has looked this year at how we will meet our 30 by 30 target, to protect our nature which
is in such a dire state. We looked at the habitats regulations, which are what the government amendments will amend. We concluded, on a balance of the evidence, that those habitats regulations should be retained. However, we said that if they were going to be subject to amendment, because there were clearly some teething issues with this scheme, then any changes should not be
“subject to amendment without an appropriate degree of parliamentary scrutiny or where the protections afforded by the regulations are weakened”.
We can hardly call this process today an appropriate degree of parliamentary scrutiny. The Office for Environmental Protection has been clear: these government proposals will weaken regulations. Like the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I am distraught—I think that is the word I would choose—at how the Government have responded to the clear communication by the OEP, which was set up to be the watchdog for the environment in this country.
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I have talked about why I think this process today is not the right one. However, there are other people who are being affected: not just local authorities, who are asked to live in an Alice in Wonderland world where, on this in particular, they must ignore the evidence. I want to talk about farmers, because many of us in this Chamber today were with the NFU this morning. It is Back British Farming Day. As BPS is being taken away from farmers, they have been told by this Government to find alternative sources of private income, to undertake environmental work and to keep their incomes up. If the current scheme is lost, whereby farmers bring forward mitigation offerings for which they get paid, then they lose another source of income at a time when BPS is going. To me, that seems wrong, when we must support British farming at this critical time as they move from BPS to the new system of environmental land management schemes—I think the whole House supports that, but we recognise that it will be a tricky time. These amendments will take that money away from farmers now.
Before I finish, I will make another point on polluter pays. I am in 100% agreement with what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, says on this. This is a Government which have backed the polluter pays. We sat through the Environment Act, and the Government have proposed that, in November, all Ministers will need to have due regard for the environmental principles policy statement. This gives six principles that Ministers must look at before they bring forward a policy; one of those is the impact of polluter pays. I wonder whether the reason why we have this here today is because it is September, and they did not want to consider something like this further down the line, when the EPPS and the obligation on Ministers to consider polluter pays—which the Government have signed up to—comes into effect.
I am not making a party-political point, but in many respects, what is being proposed here today is not a conservative approach. For many reasons, and certainly on these Benches, we will do all that we can to support affordable housing in the right places, and to support our environment, which desperately needs protection. We will try to vote down these retrograde amendments.