Contribution
My Lords, it is my pleasure as chair of the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee to open this debate on its report Nitrogen: Time to Reduce, Recycle, Reuse. I convey my thanks to our committee clerk Andrea Ninomiya, our policy analyst Lily Paulson and the operations officers Farhan Riaz and, latterly, Hanna Ghufoor. As any chair of a Select Committee will acknowledge, such reports would not be possible without the expert guidance of the clerk’s team, so thanks to them all once again.
Thanks are also due to the expert witnesses whose depth and breadth of knowledge informed this report, as well as to the six schools that took part in our youth engagement programme: Ellesmere College, Mary Immaculate High School, Shipley College, Skinners’ Academy, The Holt School and The Thomas Hardye School. We are also grateful to our specialist adviser, Professor Mark Sutton of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, for his valuable support in a complex and sometimes highly technical inquiry.
Climate change, nature loss and public health are often treated as separate challenges. The committee’s report on nitrogen shows that, in truth, they are deeply and dangerously intertwined. Our inquiry heard clear, consistent evidence that nitrogen, in its many reactive forms, pollutes our waters, fuelling dead zones that devastate aquatic life. In the air, ammonia and nitrogen oxide contribute to PM2.5 fine particulates, causing an estimated 30,000 premature deaths in the UK. It accumulates in soils and ecosystems, undermining habitats that should be the backbone of our nature recovery ambitions. Nitrous oxide is both a powerful greenhouse gas and now the leading cause of the ozone hole. These impacts are not abstract. They are underpinned by hard data, measured in lost species, polluted stretches of river, hospital admissions and lives cut short.
Unless the Government take our report as a clarion call for action, we will not meet major biodiversity targets either in the UK or globally. For example, we will not meet our commitments under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to halve nutrient waste, including reactive nitrogen, by 2030. This is central to achieving the goal of halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030 and protecting 30% of land and sea—the 30 by 30 target. UK habitat objectives for protected areas—SSSIs and special areas of conservation—cannot be met while over 57% of nitrogen-sensitive habitats receive nitrogen deposition above critical loads and most nitrogen-sensitive woodland and peat habitats remain overloaded. Some 93% of monitored English estuaries and 47% of coastal waters exceed nitrogen standards. I could go on, but I think noble Lords get the picture.
The financial cost to hard-pressed farmers is estimated to be £420 million per annum in unnecessary overuse of artificial fertilisers. Figures from WWF and the Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance also refer to broader inefficiencies across full-chain nitrogen use efficiency, NUE. That includes from fertiliser and manure inputs to food output, and I assume it would also include food waste. NUE across the full chain is estimated as being only about 11%, with 89% wasted as emissions or run-off, equivalent to a £2.3 billion annual replacement cost.
In England, the total cost of nitrogen dioxide to the NHS and social care is estimated to be £230 million by 2035. That is why our report calls for a national nitrogen strategy rooted in robust data and a clear-eyed assessment of trade-offs. We recommend a UK nitrogen balance sheet, providing for nitrogen what the carbon budget provides for greenhouse gases—a transparent, accountable framework to understand where nitrogen comes from, where it goes and what damage or benefit it brings along the way. Only with such a framework can policy be coherent rather than piecemeal. The Government’s response acknowledges the problem but shies away from that necessary step. Warm words on existing initiatives are not a substitute for a cross-government strategy with measurable objectives and timelines.
Agriculture sits at the heart of the nitrogen challenge. Farmers are essential partners in the solution but they cannot be expected to transform practices in the absence of clear standards, fair incentives and practical support. Our report identifies major shortcomings in nitrogen regulation and enforcement, defined by piecemeal rules—for example, overlapping regulations such as farming rules for water, nitrate-vulnerable zones and silage and slurry regulations.
This confusing picture is further undermined by poor enforcement by the Environment Agency, which inspects under 2% of England’s 105,000 farms yearly. For example, checks were carried out on 2,213 farms in 2020-21. Breaches were found in about 50%, but sanctions were issued in just 0.1% of cases. That is more carte blanche than enforcement, which is a shame because, as we heard, if properly enforced, the farming rules for water have the potential to be effective in improving water quality as well as air and soil quality.
A key recommendation in our report was simplification of the regulatory system and toughening of enforcement action. There are some low-hanging solutions, such as improving manure management, mandating low-emission slurry spreading and covers by 2027, and extending permitting to large cattle and dairy farms within two years. We saw examples of this on our visit to an experimental farm in the Netherlands.