Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)

My Lords, given the time, I will be brief. I support Amendment 130 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis; that is because I went to some of the very useful briefings on how EDPs will be prepared. A couple of things stood out to me. One is that Natural England proposes to base its EDP preparations on modelling much more than on actual monitoring and measuring on the ground; it will not require demonstration of the success of EDPs before the destruction of habitats is allowed. The other is that, given the voluntary nature of EDPs, the proposal is that the scale of the conservation measures will expand or contract in proportion to how much is paid into the relevant restoration fund. Relying on modelling is hard when it comes to species. Modelling physics, such as on the flow of nutrients or the spread of air pollution, is complex but it is nothing like as complex as modelling ecology. We can measure for the presence or absence of chemicals much more easily and reliably than we can for species. Further, models are only as good as the data you base them on, but we just do not have the biological records to support really precise, accurate modelling. I cite the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, which says: “It should be emphasised that biodiversity datasets are, by their nature, incomplete … access to private land to collect such information is frequently difficult or impossible”. Just imagine how much private land has never been properly surveyed, even for notable species. I turn to my second concern: the scalability of EDPs depending on the money paid in. When we heard from experts at a briefing for Peers, it became clear that the intention is that, if only a few developers paid to use an EDP, the provisions would be scaled accordingly. This relies on the fact that the ecological requirements—and, therefore, the benefits—would scale by the same proportion, as well as the money, but that is very unlikely to be true. Ecology does not scale linearly. If you halve the size of a habitat, you degrade it by more than half, and you often hit thresholds below which things are not viable. That is one of the reasons why this kind of strategic, joined-up planning can help, but the lack of detail on exactly how this measure will work makes me fear that it has not been fully thought through. All in all, it seems very risky to try to undertake using EDPs, as I understand them, as part of the planned work for species because the consequences of us being wrong are so high. By the time we know something might not be working, it will be too late to do anything about it because we will have lost the habitat and the animals and plants in it. Restricting EDPs to physical modelling, where we can have a lot more confidence in our accuracy, precision and scalability, seems a much more sensible way to progress.