Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-07-14
Topic: Macroeconomics
Zac Goldsmith (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome Amendment 286 and the thoughtful and interesting speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. The challenge is that GDP has been used by Governments pretty much everywhere as a proxy for well-being ever since it was developed half a century ago, but GDP was never designed to be an all-encompassing measure of welfare. In basic terms, it simply measures economic activity, indiscriminately—it cannot distinguish between growth that is or is not sustainable, or even good. GDP measures what we produce, but it ignores the cost of what we destroy to make it. It can add, but it cannot subtract It is possible to imagine that you could empty the oceans of all fish, chop down every last tree, fill our rivers with poison, pollute every last breath of air that we take, and all the time, GDP could still be rising and the economy still be growing. Ironically, the man who helped develop the concept of GDP in the first place, Nobel Prize economist Simon Kuznets, never anticipated its use as a comprehensive measure of progress. In 1934, he wrote: "The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income." Robert Kennedy said something similar: that GDP "does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile." The problem is that numerous organisations have over the years attempted to develop alternative indicators. I worked for one myself—it feels like many decades ago. The results of their work have often been overly complicated metrics that Governments would struggle to use in a practical way, but we need to find additional ways to measure the health of our economies. It is surely madness that the Amazon rainforest, on which the world fundamentally depends—each and every one of us—and without which the world would be thrown into chaos and turmoil, has no real recognised value until it is cashed in for commodities and throwaway goods. That just does not make sense That is something that the Government understand and are grappling with. For example, we are aligning our economic objectives and decision-making processes with our net-zero commitments; we are moving towards nature-proofing our decisions as well, and this Bill is a part of that The Treasury’s Green Book, which the noble Baroness mentioned, requires that all impacts on society as a whole, including environmental impacts, are assessed when policy is developed, and that includes monetised and non-monetised climate environmental impacts. The Treasury is currently conducting a review into the application of the discount rate for future environmental impacts, to try to ensure that decision-making probably accounts for the value of the environment. In their response to the Treasury-commissioned Dasgupta review, the Government have committed to ensuring that their economic and financial decision-making and the systems and institutions that underpin it support the delivery of a nature-positive future As all speakers so far in this debate have acknowledged, we have a very long way to go. It is not easy, but it needs to be done. Without that, we will fail to reconcile lives and the economy, nature and the economy, in the way that we will need to if we want a sustainable future Moving on to Amendment 288, I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that, as the Environment Secretary set out in his response to her Private Member’s Bill on this subject, the Government take their air quality obligations extremely seriously. In this Bill, we have committed to setting ambitious, legally binding targets on air quality, to drive further emissions reductions, which will deliver significant benefits to the environment and human health. Specifically, the Secretary of State, will be required to set a new target on PM 2.5 to act as a minimum standard across the country, and an additional long-term exposure-reduction target to drive continuous improvement, including in areas that meet the new minimum standard for PM 2.5. This novel, dual-target approach is strongly supported by the experts and will deliver significant public health benefits by reducing our exposure to this pollutant in all areas of the country The Bill also includes measures to require regular refreshers of the national air quality strategy. The first review will be published in 2023, and we will be looking to develop a stronger support and capability-building framework, so that local authorities have the necessary tools to take the action needed locally to reduce people’s exposure to air pollutants Alongside that, the Bill changes the local authority air quality management framework to promote co-operation at all tiers of local government and with relevant public authorities. This will ensure that central and local government and public authorities work together towards achieving cleaner air and a healthier environment for us all. The Government continue to work closely with the Department for Health and Social Care, the Department for Transport, the Air Quality Expert Group, the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants and a wide range of other sector experts to drive concerted action to improve air quality However, not all air pollution is under the control of government, either nationally or locally. Significant contributions to UK air pollution can come from other countries, depending on the weather. For example, up to a third of the UK’s current levels of particulate matter pollution comes from other European countries. UK air quality can be affected by distant volcanoes and dust flowing in from as far away as the Sahara. The transboundary and transnational nature of air pollution therefore makes it ill-suited to be a general or formalised human right I thank noble Lords for their contributions on these important matters, and hope that they will not press their amendments.