Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Harlech. I do not have any farming interests to declare, but I have two allotments that take a lot of time and energy. It might not seem like it, but I want this Government to succeed, particularly in their environmental aims. The problem I have is that again and again we see that this Government do not understand the countryside, rural areas, farming, green space, newts, frogs, beavers or anything that actually contributes to the environment. That is going to be a huge barrier to this Government achieving what they say they want to achieve. What are the headline changes in the plan that will reverse the decline in species? I cannot see a wholesale shift in our farming practices or a clamp-down on people shooting birds of prey—no names here. Of course, there is more money to improve peat-lands, but where is the peat ban that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has been seeking for 35 years? I like the promise to grow more trees, but what about stopping cutting down ancient woodland? You cannot grow new trees into ancient woods. Once they have gone, they have gone. I want to talk about some of the targets, because some of them are clearly failing. Target 1 is on thriving plants and wildlife. The Planning and Infrastructure Act has wrecked any chance of meeting that target. Labour’s manifesto pledge of 30% of land and sea protected, connected and managed for nature recovery by 2030 is now an unreachable promise. The targets for marine protected areas, which I will mention again, are delayed by another couple of years, and there is no wholesale site protection for marine areas, just the safeguarding of a few high-profile species. The Government do not even try to pretend they care about reaching good environmental status for our seas and ocean and have not bothered to set a target. I wish the Office for Environmental Protection good luck in its investigation of the Government, because I think they will probably fail. There is a target to restore salt marsh, sea-grass and oyster reefs, but a 15% increase by 2043 is ridiculously modest, given that we have lost 85% to 95% of these habitats historically. Target 3 is on clean and plentiful water. That is a sore point for many of us here. Labour inherited a mess, and its refusal to take water into public hands has just deepened the mess it is in, especially as it goes into the next election. People will remember, and they are not happy. I will remind them, obviously. The Minister has pledged to halve sewage dumping by 2030. So in another four years, I can stand here and thank Labour for there being only 2.5 million hours of sewage being pumped into UK waters in 2030. Bathers on beaches will have another five years before they can go swimming without drowning in human excrement. Meanwhile, it is the water bill payers who are funding all the work and shareholders who still make a profit. Target 5 is on maximising resources and minimising waste. The aim of creating a circular economy based on reuse, recycling and repair is a worthy goal. But instead, we have a country full of oil-burning chimneys. The number of incinerators has gone up, and the material we should be recycling has been shoved into furnaces. Plastic production has increased along with oil company profits, and we have taken the easy option of burning plastic instead of recycling it or, even better, not producing it in the first place. Some councils have got locked into 25-year contracts with various incinerator companies, and that means that sometimes they take the refuse out of recycling and throw it into incinerators. Target 7 is on minimising and adapting to climate change. The whole world is switching to renewable energy, but where is the big investment here in the UK in energy storage schemes? Producing the batteries and local energy storage schemes is where the innovation is. Instead of that, the Government have put £22 billion into carbon capture and storage. The biggest system of carbon capture and storage on the planet is the ocean, and the Government have not taken that seriously. I will get back to my speech now. There is no guarantee with carbon capture and storage that the money—taxpayers’ money—will not go to oil and gas companies that have already spent decades profiting from pollution. The Government are also supporting airport expansions and adding millions of extra flights every year. That is not minimising climate change. Target 8 concerns reducing the risk of harm from environmental hazards. It took more than seven months for the authorities to deal with a mountain of fly-tipping near the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire—a pile of rubbish 20 feet high and as long as the Lords half of the Palace of Westminster. That is broken Britain. Also, why have the Government not adopted Zane’s law to deal with hazardous waste? When seven year-old Zane died and his father fell ill, the Environment Agency had already commissioned a study showing that the ex-landfill site near his home posed a high risk to life. Yet it did nothing to warn residents before, during or after the 2014 flooding. Further, to this day, it has adamantly refused to test the land, which has flooded again this year, fully. We need a law to ensure that the Environment Agency protects people and wildlife rather than profits and secrets. Finally, I wanted to read out the Marine Conservation Society’s ideas on how to protect our waters, rivers and seas, but I have run out of time. I shall instead give the document to the Minister and encourage her to read it because it is full of ideas, such as setting up a marine litter strategy for England to clean up the debris that we have on our shores.