Earl Russell (LD)

My Lords, I speak to my Amendment 304 in this group on the payment of the NRF levy and appeals. This amendment seeks to ensure that “the cost of works for nature restoration and enhancement are covered by the developer, in accordance with the Polluter Pays Principle. The setting of the Levy schedule should act as a deterrent to developments that would have an outsized impact on the natural environment, redirecting them to locations with lower environmental impacts”. This is an amendment to Clause 67 aiming to define the fundamental purpose of the nature restoration levy and to embed a core principle of environmental justice into the legislation. In this way, the amendment is quite different from the others in this group, and it is important. It proposes that the Bill explicitly states that the Secretary of State, in making regulations for the levy, “must ensure that the overall purpose of the nature restoration levy is to ensure that costs incurred in maintaining and improving the conservation status of environmental features are funded by the developer”. It further clarifies: “The setting of the Levy schedule should act as a deterrent to developments that would have an outsized impact”, thereby redirecting them. This is important to make sure that we are not just permitting this kind of damage. I thank the Ministers for their letter earlier today. I was in Committee this morning, so I have not managed to go through it fully, but there are still concerns about the nature restoration fund and developers paying to offset and the potential impacts that exist in the Bill. My amendment seeks to change this by requiring the Secretary of State to ensure that the overall purpose of the levy regulations is that developments remain economically viable. The approach in the Bill has been identified by the Office for Environmental Protection as risking leaving the process open to economic compromise. The Wildlife Trusts, similarly, has articulated that it is essential that it is not the case and that achieving overall environmental improvement should be an absolute priority within the new system. It argues that that would “correct the oddity of clauses which are meant to be environmental in character having an economic viability overall purpose”. The amendment directly addresses this flaw by placing nature restoration, funded by the developer, as a primary overarching purpose of the levy. In so doing, it does three things. As I said, it upholds the “polluter pays” principle. It prioritises nature recovery; it ensures that the nature restoration levy is a tool for delivering genuine ecological improvements rather than a mechanism designed primarily to facilitate development viability at nature’s expense, and it directs the levy to act as a deterrent. A robust levy set appropriately will incentivise developers to choose sites with lower environmental impacts, thereby proactively safeguarding our natural environment and preventing irreversible harm. This is a sensible amendment. I welcome the other amendments in this group, which I read as probing amendments, so I am interested to see what the Minister says in response to those. This is an important matter. I look forward to having further discussions with the Minister prior to Report and to her response.