Contribution
My Lords, since the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred to my amendments, I will talk to them briefly. First, I welcome the Government’s amendments in this group, which improve Part 3 processes in response to the pressures in the other place on the Bill and the OEP verdict of significant environmental regression.
My Amendment 240A is a bit nerdy at this time of night but noble Lords should pay attention because there will be an examination at the end. It replaces “may” with “must”, in that
“environmental features identified in an EDP must”—
not may—
“be either a protected feature of a protected site, or a protected species”.
I think the clause as drafted could result in unintended consequences. For example, Natural England might identify an assemblage of species rather than a single species as the environmental feature covered by the EDP, such as the entire bat assemblage of a particular area—I use the word “bat” advisedly.
If this were done, the overall improvement in that feature could be said to occur if, say, half the species in that assemblage were expected to benefit, even if one or two of the rarest and most important species in the assemblage were to be driven to local extinction. It would risk this trade-off within a sort of bulk buy of species, and would definitely risk that species that are more difficult to make alternative provision for would be sacrificed in exchange for benefits being delivered to the easier species. My amendment would require EDPs to address species and features individually, not as part of an EDP bulk purchase.
Amendment 251A in my name is a separate amendment, which raises an issue that I do not think has been raised elsewhere. It seeks to establish what happens with the ongoing protection of habitats that are created by way of compensation under an EDP. It cannot be right that compensation habitats are created under an EDP to replace species and habitat features that currently have the highest level of protection when the habitat that is there to compensate for them has no level of protection whatever. That cannot be the right outcome but, from the way I read the Bill, after the EDP’s end date, there is no clarity about their conservation status.
In the past, there have been pretty notorious examples of compensation habitat subsequently being trashed, often by successive development, neglect or land-use change. When the extension of the M4 across the Gwent Levels was being proposed, we had the distressing consequence that the habitat that was created to compensate for the road extension was promptly put back up for grabs when the next road extension took place. That was fought off, mercifully, but the further road extension was going to go through the very compensated habitat that was put in place for the first road extension.
I was involved in the creation of the new village of Cambourne, just outside Cambridge, which had compensatory habitat designed into the development. The developers worked very successfully with Natural England and the local wildlife trust. I declare an interest as a former president of that wildlife trust. The habitat that was created was very valuable for wildlife and it offset the development impacts. It is now much loved by residents but, lo and behold, 20 years later, East West Rail is going right through one of the major wildlife sites that was created. That cannot be right: we cannot be providing compensation for it then to be up for grabs for any use.
So my Amendment 251A seeks protection in perpetuity. I cannot think of any other length of time with any logic to it, because the reality is that the sites being destroyed or damaged have protection in perpetuity, so the sites that are created in compensation for them should have protection in perpetuity.
I thank the Minister for taking an interest in this at her drop-in session last week, when I think I heard her give an undertaking to look seriously into what needed to happen on this as yet unaddressed issue.