Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, said, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed all the clause stand part elements in this group, which essentially aim to delete Part 3. Unlike the noble Lord, we in the Green group think that Part 3 is not as bad as it was, but we would still be better off without it. That is the view of many NGOs, campaign groups and experts who have been in contact with me. Indeed, although there is a bit of competition at the moment, the mailbag I have had on this issue is one of the bigger mailbags that I have encountered. My noble friend majored on this in her Second Reading speech and asked why the Government had it in for bats, newts and frogs. It appeared that perhaps some members of the Government were scared by some of them as small children and were bearing the scars. It is encouraging to see that we have seen some back-pedalling in their apparent attitude to harmless small mammals and amphibians, but none the less there are still grave concerns about Part 3. We have already debated this in a number of groups, and it is a pity that we are getting to this so late and in such an incoherent manner, given the importance in this hugely nature-depleted country of the issues covered by Part 3. I will not run through all the amendments, but I want to highlight the response of the Office for Environmental Protection, which published an analysis of the Government’s amendments. It states that, “even after the material amendments the government proposes, the Bill would, in some respects, lower environmental protections on the face of the law.” I will raise four big issues and I hope that we might hear some reassurance from the Minister. We have had some reassurances in statements from the Government, but that is not the same as on the Floor of the House. The first issue is the safeguarding of the mitigation hierarchy, ensuring that the developer has taken reasonable steps to appropriately apply it, including by seeking to avoid harm whenever possible to our most important biodiversity assets. We are still nowhere near where we need to be on that. Secondly, there is the overall improvement test so that conservation measures must significantly and measurably outweigh the negative impacts. We are talking about biodiversity net gain, but we are also talking about the conservation status of identified features, given the absence of European protected species legal tests. Thirdly, this is all about environmental delivery plans, and there needs to be an implementation schedule to provide the guarantees that the conservation measures will deliver the benefits, prior to the damage being done. Once valuable biodiversity is lost, it is gone, and promises to fix something up later, I am afraid, just do not crack it. Finally, something I feel very passionate about is the irreplaceable habitats. I have stood at the foot of oak trees that were many hundreds of years old and thought about all the species and biodiversity that are dependent on them. There is no way of replacing that once it is lost and we have lost so much that we cannot afford to lose more. I am afraid that the Green position remains that we are nowhere near where we should be, and we are still heading in the wrong direction. I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate; I can see many noble Lords have stayed late with the intention of delivering a forceful message, I am confident. I look forward to the Minister’s response.