Baroness Parminter (LD)

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Young of Old Scone, and the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for supporting me in this amendment, which would give a statutory duty to local authorities to promote climate change and nature recovery targets. It would specifically ensure that planning decisions actively supported climate adaptation, mitigation and nature recovery, thereby helping us to deliver our legally binding targets for net zero and the restoration of biodiversity. We know that local authorities play a fundamentally important role in meeting our net-zero and nature restoration targets, because planning decisions fundamentally determine where infrastructure goes. We have to think not just about houses but about transport, which is responsible for half of our climate change emissions in the UK. Our land use determines whether we are providing the necessary homes for nature. It is not just us making this case: the Climate Change Committee in its report to Parliament last year argued strongly that net-zero objectives should be consistently prioritised in planning decisions. Many businesses have been arguing for some time for a statutory duty in this regard, in order to provide policy certainty and encourage the necessary investment in net-zero and nature recovery objectives. When the Government produced its Statement on the climate and nature crisis on 14 July, Ed Miliband said that “the actions we need are not just about Government, we are also determined to help communities take climate and nature action in their own area … supporting mayors and local government to accelerate action”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/7/25; col. 31.]  This amendment would do just that.