UK Infrastructure Bank Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-14
Topic: Environment
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, in moving Amendment 10 I am rather aware from the Minister’s response to the previous group that this may have been grouped differently in her list compared to mine. I am just going to proceed anyway and if she says "I refer you to my previous answer" at the end, I will understand Amendment 10 refers to reducing "to sustainable levels" the UK’s "use of natural resources and emissions of non-greenhouse pollutants" and to securing "the interests of future generations." To address the second part first, I am sure many noble Lords will recognise the language there, which is very much inspired by the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, about protecting the well-being of future generations—and indeed by the progress made in Wales, with its future generations Act. It is perhaps another way of getting towards first do no harm, as we discussed in the previous group of amendments. But more than that, it is making a larger claim: we know that the natural world in the UK is in a parlous state with air pollution, water pollution, et cetera. It is saying that if we are looking after the well-being of future generations, the bank should be investing to improve the state of things, not just to make sure that they do not get any worse The first part of this amendment addresses something that your Lordships’ House and the Government really need to get more focused on, which is planetary limits. In the previous group, we started to talk about how we need to add attention to biodiversity, the state of nature and nature-based solutions, tying together those planetary limits which the world is crossing over. Actually, academics are telling us that we have now broken five of the nine planetary boundaries. Three of those are climate, biodiversity and land system change, which we have already covered to some degree, but we have also come to the other two broken planetary limits. These are biogeochemical flows and what is generally known as pollution from novel entities—in general terminology, we might talk there about chemicals. About 350,000 of these are used in the world, which includes pesticides, antibiotics, plastics, industrial chemicals in mining and pharmaceuticals The reason for this amendment adding an objective to the bank, so that it starts to address these issues and reduces the harm done by these chemicals is that we—globally and in the UK—are very much exceeding our share of the limits of these things. This amendment is thus supposed to address both biogeochemical flows and the novel chemicals Coming briefly to the biogeochemical flows, the rates of nitrate and phosphate use in the UK are both well above the global average and, according to a global footprint report, we must "Reduce nitrogen and phosphorus use by at least 80%" —yes, I did say 80. If we are to have a bank that is investing in the kind of economy we have to live within in future, given the planetary limits, it needs to be thinking about not just climate and nature but the damage being done. Here we get to our farming systems, which is why my previous amendment referred to infrastructure that deals with food production. This is overwhelmingly related to that when we come to phosphorus and nitrogen—although sewage plants have their place. We have to look at this as a whole and see that the bank is essentially investing, for shorthand, in a sustainable economy The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, had in the previous group an amendment on the circular economy. That is a necessary and essential step forward but it is not a sufficient step, because we have to make sure not only that we are not treating the planet as a dumping ground—mining materials out of the earth and just dumping them—but that we stop mining those materials, or at least vastly reduce the amount we are mining. That is what my first amendment seeks to achieve. If anyone wants to know where my research, particularly around novel entities, comes from, it is from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, published earlier this year in the journal Environmental Science & Technology I will address one other point, which very much goes back—as I think we will do several times in this group—to our debates on the Environment Act: reducing resource use. I refer noble Lords to a report that the WWF put out when we were debating the then Environment Bill on the UK’s overseas land-use footprint. That showed that "between 2016 and 2018, an average annual area of 21.3 million hectares … was required to supply the UK’s demand for the seven commodities" When thinking about what the bank is investing in, we cannot be putting further pressure on other parts of the world through that. This is an attempt to bring in a systems-thinking approach I come now to the other amendments in my name in this group, which noble Lords may be pleased to hear are both simpler and shorter. The first is Amendment 18. When we look at the way this Bill is written, it is quite surprising that on infrastructure it says "roads or other forms of transport" This seems a rather odd way round for a Bill that is supposed to be addressing the climate emergency. My amendment seeks to take out the word "roads". I do not believe that the UK Infrastructure Bank should be investing in any new roads. We know that new roads generate more traffic. For the foreseeable future, on the crucial point of keeping the rise in world temperature below 1.5 degrees, roads and traffic are going to generate significant amounts of greenhouse gases, not to mention all the other impacts such as air and noise pollution. If this investment is going into disadvantaged areas, the last thing they need is more air and noise pollution. Electric vehicles also produce air pollution, with a large amount of the pollution they produce being particulate matter pollution from tyres and brakes. Building new roads in disadvantaged areas makes no environmental, social, economic or well-being sense. I have simply sought to take out the word "roads" and insert "mass" transport. That is obviously what the bank should be investing in, for both environmental and social reasons My final point is on my Amendment 25, on something that a number of noble Lords raised at Second Reading. The activities of the bank cover a large number of utilities, obviously including electricity and water, et cetera. The Bill talks about "services" but it is not clear whether "services" includes demand reduction and efficiency. The cleanest, greenest energy we can possibly have is the energy we do not need to use. The UK Infrastructure Bank surely has to be investing in reducing the demand for electricity, heating and water use—in these islands water stress is becoming an increasing issue with the reality of climate change and the adaptation issues we were discussing earlier. The Minister may say that the Bill already covers these demand reduction issues, but I feel that it should say explicitly that the bank should be investing in demand reduction of that which it is investing in the generation of. I beg to move.