Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall, and indeed everyone who has spoken in this group. I will be very brief, starting with Amendment 246, to which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, said, I have attached my name. I heard some expressions of shock around me when the noble Baroness said that there were 30 million bird strikes a year. That is 30 million deaths. This is from the British Trust for Ornithology. The estimate is 100 million bird strikes—the 30 million is the immediate deaths. Some of the strikes are where the birds suffer the fate the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, set out, where they get trapped and who knows what happens to them in the longer term. Flying at full speed into a window is not good for you, even if it does not kill you. Around the world the figures on this are in the billions. We are as a species “care-less”—and yes, Hansard, I am putting a hyphen in there. We are not taking care. Yet, as the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, said, lots of countries are at least doing much better than us. We often hear Britain talked about as a nation of animal lovers and bird lovers. We have the twitchers out there chasing some rare species that has turned up. Surely we can take this modest measure of Amendment 246. The noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, has listened to what the Government have said and adapted it accordingly. This is what we are supposed to do. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecomb has attached her name to Amendment 140. I had a much stronger amendment in Committee which I did not bring back because I was leaving all the small, modest ones that the Government could agree to for Report. I suggested that we should be building the entire fabric of buildings to care for nature. I spoke about a museum exhibit that is working in that direction. I have no doubt that we will have to get to that, but how bad will the state of nature be before we get to that point, and how hard will the recovery be? I very much support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, but pick up on what she said about new ponds. We are seeing in some parts of the country, in a limited way, the restoration of “ghost ponds”, which can be up to 1,000 years old. If you carefully excavate them, knowing what you are doing and having done the lidar survey, you can get seeds that are 1,000 years old germinating in the original pond conditions when it has been restored. In East Anglia, there are 22 ponds where this has been done, and 136 species, all thought to be from historic seeds, have come up in those ponds. Making this a way in which we can let these ponds free is a win-win.