The Earl of Caithness (Con)

My Lords, I would like to look forward to the Government’s Amendment 346E and in particular subsection (2) of the proposed new clause, which says: “Natural England or the Secretary of State must take account of the best available scientific evidence”. I ask the Minister whether that is going to comprise part of the EDP. In explaining the reason I ask that, I will refer to some of the conversations I had with the Minister on Monday’s debate and, in particular, to the email that I wrote this morning asking for a more detailed reply. In reply to my contribution, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said that she had already spoken about getting scrutiny of the EDP. She said: “I want to clarify that, before the EDP comes to the Secretary of State, it will be subject to proper scrutiny through public consultation”.—[Official Report, 15/9/25; col. 2003.] It is helpful to have that, but could today’s Minister please enlighten the House about how that consultation will take place? Unless the information is cited in the EDP, it is going to be very hard to challenge. One of the complaints that I have about Natural England is how hard it is to challenge it when it comes to scientific evidence, because it hides behind the legal situation and says it is a precautionary principle: “Lump it, all of you”. On my noble friend Lord Lucas’s amendment, I wonder if the Minister is satisfied about the present position with regard to Natural England and nutrients. My noble friend wants to limit the EDP to nutrient mitigation, and I think that is sensible and that the current situation is working well. Natural England’s nutrient mitigation scheme was set up in 2022 using £33.5 million of public money. This was based on its proposals to the Secretary of State. Since then, Natural England has spent £17.54 million setting up its off-setting scheme to generate 10,097 nutrient credits by removing 704 hectares of farmland from food production. When a new company in the private sector put forward a proposal to provide nutrient credits without taking farmland out of production, Natural England initially said yes; it then reversed its decision, as I explained on Monday. Natural England claims that it does not make a profit from the sale of nutrient credits as they are priced at cost recovery. However, if one examines the figures, one can contradict this, because its internal costings show that a credit in Dorset costs £1,685 and that, when administration fees are accounted for, it would cost £1,938. However, it has been selling nutrient credits on the market at a significant mark-up of £3,250, plus a 10% administration fee. This suggests to me that Natural England is making a profit of up to £1,637 per nutrient credit, representing a profit margin of 45.8%. In the letter that I received from the Ministers this morning, to which reference has already been made— I must say I am grateful for it; I wish we had had it before we began our proceedings on Monday—the last sentence of the third-from-last paragraph says: “Once EDPs are made, we expect them to be delivered on a cost-recovery basis, while ensuring good value for money for developers by ensuring competition and innovation in the procurement of conservation measures”. I have just shown that the nutrient market is not being operated at cost recovery by Natural England and that it is excluding the competition. How, when you have that existing situation, does the Minister really expect the EDPs to be offered on a different basis?