Baroness Coffey (Con)

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 335, tabled by my noble friends Lord Grayling and Lord Randall of Uxbridge. As I mentioned earlier, unfortunately they cannot be here at this stage. Their Amendments 335 and 336 are somewhat self-explanatory. It is important to have audits and that there is consideration of the baseline. I know we have had considerable debate on this—it seems it is just the nature of how debates happen in this place, depending on the groupings—so I do not wish to detain the Committee excessively by covering old ground. My noble friends put a significant amount of detail into what qualifications anyone should have to undertake the audit and on having a recognised methodology. I think this is intended to make sure that we have consistency right across how audits are done. It has been a long-standing criticism of this part of the Bill that, if you do not know where you start, how do you know where you are going? The Government have sought to address some of those criticisms, but these amendments, in particular Amendment 335, are trying to put in the Bill a common starting point so that the overall improvement test of being significant or material, wherever we end up, can be achieved. On Amendment 336, again, there are some technical elements in here. For the first time I have seen the phrase in an amendment, in proposed new subsection (4), “in an accessible manner”. Of course, all documentation from the Government and arm’s-length bodies should be published in an accessible manner, but this would ensure that the details of the biodiversity mitigation decisions are made very public, for everyone to see. That recognises how difficult it sometimes is and how often FoIs get rejected by a number of government bodies, and so having this in the Bill has merit. Amendment 341, which I have tabled, is rather straightforward: it is about allowing ponds. I am conscious that over two-thirds of ponds that existed in England in the 19th century have now disappeared. Ponds support two-thirds of freshwater species, providing an ideal habitat for invertebrates such as whirligig beetles, damselflies and dragonflies, and they are a key hunting ground for flycatchers, warblers and many other birds which rely on insects for prey—including swifts, which we have debated at some length. Ponds are also a vital habitat for amphibians, including natterjack toads, common frogs and smooth newts, and the decline in pond habitats therefore has had a negative impact on UK species abundance, with one in six species currently at risk of extinction. Ponds are also a nature-based solution to the growing risks of flooding and drought. They help to hold water on the land. They slow the flow of water during periods of heavy rainfall, thereby helping to prevent flooding downstream. In periods of drought, ponds can act as a natural reservoir, storing water on the land when it is scarce.