Baroness Coffey (Con)

My Lords, I express my concern about this amendment. I completely understand where my noble friend Lord Hamilton is coming from with his wider concerns about some of these policies. I echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, about adaptation for climate change in particular. Although it was criticised by the sub-committee of the Climate Change Committee—I was actually responsible for publishing it—and there may be disagreement about how far it would go and the connectivity, it was still important to make sure that we got it in place so that government departments knew what they should be doing. We had made that commitment to do so. In particular, Clause 1(2) is a concern, as it says: “The environmental recovery objective is a principal objective for the public bodies”. I say to my noble friend that these bodies, which are by and large but not solely Defra bodies, are either Ministers or bodies that are accountable to Parliament, to Ministers or, indeed, to the electorate more widely when we get into local government. I realise I should have tabled an amendment here to consider mayoral authorities and mayors. It is vital that we recognise that there is already in law an enhanced biodiversity duty on all the public authorities. I am also conscious that the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, pointed out to me, I think in a different meeting, that when the Environment Bill went through this House the Government at the time resisted directly linking the local nature recovery strategies into this. I was not a Minister in Defra at that time so I must admit I was not aware of that detail, but I genuinely believe that the local nature recovery strategies are critical to making sure we achieve these targets, which is why I broadly support this Bill. I have tabled a fresh Question for Written Answer, bearing in mind what the Minister, Mary Creagh, said, I think last November in response to somebody in the House of Commons, that she expected all the local nature recovery strategies to be published by the end of the first half of June. Clearly, that has not happened, but incentives are supposed to be given towards that, so I have tabled a Question for Written Answer to see what the progress has been on that. I know that my noble friend adores our countryside, but our country will be very different if we do not protect our natural environment. On the targets referred to in Clauses 1(1)(a) and (b), for too long nature has been the Cinderella in thinking about climate change. The climate adaptation element is also key when it starts to come together in real action and not just saying, “We’re pleading with you to look after nature”. It can be difficult to explain why it matters to keep alive a species of bat in Colombia, but it starts to come together when we think about adaptation. I am conscious that it is important that we continue to do whatever we can to honour our obligations. It was a Conservative Government who did the negotiations for the global biodiversity framework. I believe that it is vital that every sinew of government is working towards achieving that. It matters not just because we led the way in the negotiations and it took a lot of courage—I paid a lot of tribute at the time to our brilliant civil servants who were leading the day-to-day negotiations and working with Ministers to make them happen—but because we matter and nature matters. That is why I encourage my noble friend to consider whether he wants to press this again on Report, because, if he did, I am afraid that I would find myself in a different Lobby from him.