Contribution
My Lords, responding to the noble Lord opposite, I draw the attention of the House to paragraph 4.31 of the Companion. Committee stage is a conversation; it is a free for all. Members may speak when they want and as often as they want. The point is to get to the root of the issues that we are discussing. We are here to do a job, not to stick to a timetable. If that takes us again past midnight, that is what we are here for. The point is to get through it, so that we conclude the arguments and can be much briefer and more formal on Report. This phrase “before the Minister sits down” is not a Committee phrase. We have the right to speak at any time. We must hold to that right, because that is the core of us doing our job well in this place.
The amendment proposes that we take the question of environmental delivery plans at a gentler pace, and that we start by applying them in circumstances where the concept obviously works. Things that operate on a large scale, nutrient neutrality, water problems and other such issues are landscape-scale problems that need landscape-scale solutions. However, as we heard on the last day of debate, matters such as species are much more difficult to deal with.
We have a huge amount of uncertainty at the moment. From talking to the developer community and listening to them, I know that they see the Bill as paralysing development for the next five years. The Bill is meant to accelerate development, but as we have it at the moment it does the exact opposite. It creates so much uncertainty on how Part 3 will work, what it will feel like and how it will develop. Natural England has huge powers, and there are lots of big sums of money going this way and the other, but no one knows how it will happen. No one really understands how Natural England has the capacity to manage something of this scale—or even of this type—and what sets of behaviours to expect from it. We are setting ourselves up for five years of stasis, five years of not getting anywhere, because it will take that long for the system to settle in.
There is a better way to do this: to pace things, pilot things and do the easy bits first, and to make an early announcement of where the pilot EDPs will be, so that people can get their heads around it, and have large and open discussions about this. The provision that we are looking at is supposed to last a long time. There is no point in this being done in a constricted and partisan way—it will just break open the next time we have a change in Government. Everybody who wants to be involved in this is being asked to commit over long timescales. We politicians must adjust ourselves to that; we must run this in a way that allows people to have confidence in the politics over a long time.
The Government’s behaviour on biodiversity net gain is not a good sign of where they are in this space. I urge them to have wide discussions and involve people who are of obvious quality and depth, and who are likely to be there and involved in the discussion in years to come. In particular, I urge them to involve people from opposition parties; it should not be the Conservatives’ choice of who to involve but the Government’s, rather like how my noble friend Lord Gove appointed the current chair of Natural England. They are not a natural Conservative supporter but someone who, because they were not a natural Conservative supporter, has lasted and commanded the respect of this Government. We want something that will run through—long-term thinking, long-term commitments and long-term relationships to build confidence. Amendment 242B says, “Let’s take it that way. Let’s take it slowly and carefully, let’s take people with us, rather than have some big and uncontrolled explosion.” I beg to move.