State of Climate and Nature
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 14 Jul 2026 · 44 speeches · Official Report
Statement
The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 13 July.
“With permission, I would like to make a Statement about the nature and climate crisis. Nature is the monopoly provider of everything we need to live. We are living through the Anthropocene, an age where human activity is now the dominant influence on our planet’s climate and ecosystems. We are seeing its consequences: pollution, climate change and mass extinction. Last year, the Energy Secretary gave the first ever Statement to this House on the crisis. One year on, I am here to set out the Government’s commitment to tackle those challenges.
Climate change drives nature loss, and nature loss drives climate change. We must tackle both. Droughts and floods are disrupting harvests, straining supply chains, and pushing up costs. Our nature security assessment published in January shows that if the current rate of biodiversity loss continues, every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse, from the coral reefs that protect our coastlines to the peatlands that store carbon and prevent floods.
The UK’s climate is getting hotter and wetter, with more extreme events-2025 was the UK’s hottest year since records began. In the heatwaves in May and June this year, the Met Office reported that as many as 2,700 people may have died, railway tracks buckled, over 1,000 schools closed, and the London ambulance service had its busiest day on record. Since 1901, the UK’s sea level has risen by about 20 centimetres, but that rate is accelerating, because two-thirds of this rise has happened in just the last 30 years. That is why this Labour Government are stepping up, leading globally on nature recovery, climate mitigation and adaptation. In the UK, we are working in partnership with local communities, businesses, conservationists and farmers. Before the Paris Agreement, the world was on track for around 4 degrees of warming; now, national commitments put us on course for around 2.5 degrees. There is so much more to do, but this represents real progress.
In December, we launched our environmental improvement plan, which, for the first time, set out delivery plans to underpin our targets to restore nature, boost our recycling rates and protect our environmental security. Since then, we have published the land use framework, the water White Paper and the farming road map. We have invested a record £2.65 billion in flood resilience, invested in new food waste collection services and invested £1 billion in our national biosecurity infrastructure in Weybridge. Over the next three years, we will invest more than £7 billion in nature-the largest investment in nature ever. That includes £5.9 billion for environmental farming schemes, £816 million for tree planting and £85 million for peatland restoration.
Last October, we published the carbon budget and growth delivery plan to set out how the UK will continue to reduce emissions in order to lower bills for consumers and secure good jobs for British people. Last month, the majority of Members in this place voted to cut emissions by almost 87% from 1990 levels for the carbon budget 7 period, which runs from 2038 to 2042. Under this Government, more than £100 billion of private investment in the net-zero economy has been announced.
We have done much on mitigation. However, following advice from the Climate Change Committee, we are setting stronger objectives for climate adaptation. We are building our resilience for a minimum of 2 degrees of warming by 2050 and supporting combined authorities to increase their resilience to climate change, too.
In 2024, we saw a single year exceed 1.5 degrees of warming, which is why we are committed to working with our domestic and international partners to keep the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperatures to a rise of 1.5 degrees. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5 degrees in around 2030, but 1.5 degrees is and will remain the right limit. Every fraction of a degree of warming reduces the severity of impacts on people and nature worldwide. Every species saved reduces the risk of losses to the ecosystems we rely on-pollination, disease prevention, and food and climate regulation.
The key to delivering our nature and climate goals is how we use our land and seas. Our land use framework shows that we have enough land to achieve our priorities across economic growth, housing, food production, climate and nature recovery. However, we must make better decisions about how we use our land. We are moving from paper-based systems to making land digital and opening up the Land Registry free for all. Today, we have published an interactive story map of our spatial evidence to support decision-makers to use their land more effectively.
The UK has also committed to protect and conserve 30% of our land and seas for nature by 2030. Today, we are publishing the 30 by 30 delivery plan for land in England and guidance to land managers on how to implement it. In May, we announced the £30 million wildlife-rich habitat fund, and today we are providing an additional £37 million a year for the next three years for national parks and national landscapes.
This is a whole-of-government effort. This weekend, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office ratified the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction agreement to create marine protected areas on the high seas, covering nearly two-thirds of the world’s oceans. Funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency is investing £81 million in its forecasting tipping points programme. The Ministry of Defence is developing climate security analysis and critical emerging technologies to support energy resilience for the UK and our Armed Forces. The Department for Education is investing £710 million out to 2030 to improve the condition of school and college buildings, reducing their emissions and bills, and increasing their resilience to climate change so that they last for decades to come.
I am delighted that in my constituency of Coventry East, Richard Lee Primary School and Potters Green Primary School are installing new solar panels. At Courthouse Green Primary School, I opened a sensory garden built by the pupils’ eco team to bring nature closer to children.
This week, I am visiting the Great North Bog to see successful peatland restoration in action, and later in the week I will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the first four national parks-a legacy of the great 1945 Labour Government. Tomorrow, we launch a competition for young people to join our new youth climate and nature panel. These young people will offer their expert insight to government as we deliver for climate and nature action through outreach.
From introducing wild beavers to planting three new national forests and creating nine new river walks, this Labour Government are bringing nature closer to people. We will all benefit from a more resilient, more prosperous and greener country. As my right honourable friend the Energy Secretary said in his Statement last year:
‘We have been at our best in the House when we have worked across parties on these issues ’.-[ Official Report , Commons, 14/7/25; col. 31.]
By preparing our country and our citizens for the climate and nature crises, we are showing leadership internationally. This Government are acting now to protect the world in which we live, which we pass on to future generations. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, I declare my interests as the chair of Amey, the chair of Acteon and the chair of Buckthorn Partners, which are all involved, in different ways, with energy transition both in the UK and around the world. I am grateful to the Minister for answering questions on the Statement made in another place yesterday. There the Defra Minister read the Statement, and the exchanges focused on her responsibility. Today it is the turn of the Minister for DESNZ in this House, so I will concentrate my questions on the aspects of the Statement that focus on the Starmer Government’s record on meeting the objectives set out in the Statement-or, more precisely, the consequences of the tenure of the Secretary of State, Ed Miliband, who is rumoured to be heading to the Treasury at the end of the week. We all recognise the importance of protecting our climate and restoring nature. The key question is whether the Government have been capable of making progress on both. The Statement notes the introduction of carbon budget 7 and praises it, despite it being regretted in your Lordships’ House. The Government claim to be “working in partnership with local communities, businesses, conservationists and farmers”. The Climate Change Committee suggested a 35% reduction in meat and dairy consumption by 2050, a 50% reduction in the number of cattle and sheep, a doubling of tree planting rates by 2030 and a doubling of peatland restoration by 2040. Does the Minister agree with those representing the...
My Lords, we welcome this Statement. The science is absolutely certain that human-induced climate change is beyond doubt. What has changed is how fast the impacts are arriving on our very own doorsteps. This summer’s heatwaves in May and June caused as many as 2,700 excess deaths; transport systems were strained; over a thousand schools closed; and the London Ambulance Service endured its busiest ever day. We are on our third heatwave of 2026, and 2026 is the first year the UK has reached 35 degrees in May, June and July consecutively. Excessive heat is putting a strain on every individual citizen, on our economy, on our schools and on our health systems. Europe is now confirmed as the fastest-warming continent on Earth, warming at more than twice the global average. This Government have been genuinely good on the energy transition, approving renewable projects to power the equivalent of more than 19 million homes. But nature has been the poor relation. Not a single new site of special scientific interest has been designated in England since 2023, and our tree-planting rate remains less than half the annual target. Labour’s messaging on nature has been muddled, its green mission too often undermined from within. Climate and nature are not separate; they are codependent. A Government strong on one and weak on the other will ultimately fail at both. Our climate is changing more quickly than our policies. The Climate Change Committee’s fourth independent assessment of UK...
I thank noble Lords for their valuable contributions in responding to this Statement made yesterday in the other place. As noble Lords know, the Statement was about climate and nature, and particularly the extent to which-as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, repeatedly reminds us-you cannot disentangle one from the other. Climate change drives nature loss and nature loss drives climate change. If you tackle one but not the other, you will not succeed in tackling the first thing. Making sure that our environment is liveable-that it is a thriving environment for the purposes of both nature extension and recovery-is completely wound up with the actions we take against climate change in general. The Statement set out what actions the Government are taking on that clear link. Indeed, in the most recent spending round, the Government put aside unprecedented sums for nature development, recovery and restitution. For example, altogether they put forward over £7 billion at the spending review, including £5.9 billion for environmental farming schemes. ELMS began to take place under the previous Government and have been very successful in developing sustainable and low-carbon farming practices and in making sure that farming is about not just production but enhancing and sustaining that production for the future through changes in farming practices. In addition, £816 million has been put aside for tree-planting, with the planting of three large national forests under way,...
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement and for giving us the opportunity to raise issues in this regard. I associate myself with the comments made from the Front Bench. Will the Minister reply to the question about taking productive land out of production? The wheat harvest is expected to be devastated this year because of the lack of rain and drought conditions. North Yorkshire is being covered by BES, these big battery energy storage and solar farm projects, which are highly flammable, highly combustible and highly dangerous. How can he square that with nature and environmental benefits? They are diametrically opposed.
I did indeed not provide a complete answer to the thought put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on farming. He concentrated mainly on energy and climate change, which is what I responded to particularly. As the noble Baroness will know, we have recently produced the farming road map, a comprehensive road map informed substantially by farmers in the first instance on how we can develop more sustainable farming. Contrary to what the noble Lord says, that does not involve, for example, removing a lot of livestock from farming practices. It involves more sustainable practices in general. I am sure the noble Lord will agree that the agriculture and land use sector needs to make sure that its emissions go down substantially, as it is one of the two sectors that have flatlined on emissions in recent years. The question is how you do it, rather than simply saying that there are things you must do which are detrimental to the interests of farming. I have already mentioned what is happening with the ELMS arrangements. There are all sorts of other things associated with that, such as low-methane feedstuffs for cattle, which are getting a lot of traction and interest in farming circles. These can reduce emissions substantially without having to cull any livestock or causing people to change their eating patterns or farmers to do things other than farm in a more sustainable way. That is the key to what we are trying to do on farming. I hope the noble Lord and the noble Baroness...
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his kind words earlier about my contributions-I think they were kind words. I also welcome the Statement from the Minister in the other place, because it was a good Statement. The spending plans sound great, but it is not only about how much you spend but about how you spend it. I often have doubts that Labour really understands that the environment and nature are integral to everything that comes through here, as again and again we see legislation that barely mentions climate change. We are at a point when we have heatwaves, people are dying, “Boris buses” are unbearable and workplaces are too hot to work. Yet this Labour Government have not put climate change into the Sporting Events Bill, the civil aviation Bill or almost any other Bill. Would the Minister suggest to the Government that I can set up some seminars with climatologists so that they understand the importance of putting climate change into all legislation?
Among other things, the actions that the Government have taken-for example, with the Energising Britain plan-are making sure that the question of climate change is not just an issue for one or two areas of government but one that all areas of government have to contribute to. Those different departments will be judged very substantially on their contributions. As this Government have shown already, there is a real sense of joint working, for example in how the National Health Service and the Ministry of Defence are decarbonising and in how various departments are working together to make sure that that overall goal is achieved. I cannot say that I could guarantee a large attendance at seminars that the noble Baroness might put on for that purpose, but she is very welcome to do so. I would certainly come along to a seminar if she wanted to set one up. The point underlining what she says is that nature is essential to the whole process. As I have said, if we neglect one element against the other in our climate change actions, we will not succeed in either.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on the very welcome Statement on how the Government will deal with the interlinked issues of climate change and nature, because there is no doubt that both are interlinked and one drives the other. We have already seen examples of nature loss in our wider countryside. Reference has been made to reports issued quite recently that more than 2,700 people may have died in the May and June heatwaves this year. What further steps will our Government take to adapt UK buildings to the impact of climate change, including energy efficiency measures through the use of sustainable timber and modular buildings?
My noble friend is absolutely right to draw attention to what is sadly likely to be a large number of deaths directly attributable to the recent heatwave we have had in this country. Those deaths can quite possibly be attributed to the lack of readiness that we have in our building fabric and our homes for the consequences of climate change and what will happen with temperatures in future. I hope she can take some comfort from the fact that the Government are actively reviewing how we make sure that building standards are fully compliant with climate change resilience for the future. If we build our buildings so that they can undertake those future climate shocks rather than be victims of them, we will have done a good deed for the future.
My Lords, the Statement in another place said that reducing emissions would lower bills. This country has reduced emissions by more than any other country, yet our bills are now higher than any other OECD country, nearly all of which rely on gas like us. Can the Minister explain this? If he is going to say that, in future, renewables will be cheaper than fossil fuels, then why do they need subsidies, and, if they need subsidies, how can he say that they are basically cheaper?
The noble Lord is substantially but not entirely correct about OECD prices; however, he is not entirely correct that other OECD countries are reliant on gas to the extent that we are in this country. A very substantial driver of electricity prices is the volatile price of gas, as he will know, and the reliance that we still have in this country on gas as a market-maker for electricity very substantially leads to those high prices. Therefore, on the idea of getting off that wheel we are on, of volatile gas prices leading to volatile electricity prices and to high energy prices, it is quite right that we resolve that by making sure that our energy arrangements are as low carbon-and, hence, not gas based-as they can be.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
My Lords, I welcome the Statement, but does the Minister agree that marine areas are very important both in terms of climate change, as a carbon sink, and in terms of biodiversity? Does he therefore agree that it is an urgent issue for the Government to make the decision to end bottom trawling in marine protected areas? It destroys vast areas of kelp beds and sea grass, both of which absorb carbon, and it is very destructive.
Yes, the noble Baroness is quite right about bottom trawling, how destructive it is and how it completely destroys the ecology of shallow to medium deep-sea areas as a result. It is very important that, among other things, those practices are not carried out in marine protected areas. She will know that the Government have a great record of developing marine protected areas around the UK’s coast and internationally in the Crown dependencies. Those will all be areas in which practices such as bottom trawling will not be tolerated.
My Lords, I welcome the Statement, and I very much agree with the noble Earl, Lord Russell, on much of what he said about the issues that face us. We have some enormously difficult issues to face. We have seen some of the immediate ones in in our hospitals, schools and workplaces and in the death rates we have seen. I think the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, agreed on the threat-to use his word-in terms of both climate and nature. We have immediate problems, and we have some very difficult problems-
A noble Lord
Question!
I am going to ask a question in just a minute or two. We have some very difficult decisions to make on issues such as the North Sea, employment, how we get the new skills in, how we get the modular reactors in, what the pace of change is and how we make the transition.
A noble Lord
Question!
My question to the Minister is this: does he share my concern that, instead of pooling our joint knowledge and energy into solving those problems when faced with a global crisis, we seem to be creating a more and more polarised and unproductive debate on all these issues?
I certainly agree with the noble Baroness on the extent to which we will make far greater progress by acting in consensus and agreement together, working out how we do things jointly, than by having an often very sterile debate about whether particular things work particularly well or otherwise. As far as I am concerned, we remain in a climate emergency and in circumstances where, as I have said, we have to consider urgent adaptation at the same time as urgent mitigation. Those are very difficult things to do, and I for one am proud that the Government have not resiled from that difficult debate, particularly on issues such as mineral fuels, but have instead tried to move forward on a broad basis of support. I reflect on the fact that, when I was in the House of Commons, we had a high degree of consensus on climate change; now, we do not, and that is a sorry state of affairs. We need to get back to that as soon as possible in order that we make the progress that we all know is absolutely necessary in the end.
My Lords, I had the privilege of chairing the Devon land use pilot a few years ago. We learned that people think in silos but the solutions are in combinations. On Exmoor, you have water challenges and energy challenges, and challenges relating to tourism, mental health, exercise, housing, transport, wind energy and biodiversity. We have introduced white-tailed sea eagles and pine martens on Exmoor, and you can see the change happening. The real risk in this debate is that it is not sophisticated enough and falls into a set of false dichotomies, which will frustrate us-
A noble Lord
Question!
My question to the Minister is: in taking through the agenda set out in the Statement, will the Government think in the sophisticated way I have described about broad areas of land as our population grows and the challenges of every acre of land become greater and greater? I have not even mentioned food and farming, which set up the pilot that I chaired. These are important and difficult issues, and we will not get there by simply debating false dichotomies.
My noble friend sets the question for us all: how can we work across all the different sectors of government to get to our goal? The goal is not that action on climate change is a last-ditch attempt to try to produce a less miserable outcome for the future by mitigating, by a small amount, what is happening with global warming; it is finding a way to bring about a much better life for everybody in the context of the farming and industrial environments in which we live and the enjoyment of our personal and private lives. Joint action on adaptation and mitigation is a method of bringing about that better society. It is the most important thing we need to do to bring about a society that is not only bearable in the future but is instead a big improvement on what we have at the moment.
Why cut back and close jobs at home, shutting down oil and gas, food production and our factories when it increases world CO 2 ? This is self-harm on a crazy scale. Why do the Government want to lose jobs and investment?
I am not sure I recognise much of the noble Lord’s intervention. As I have said, it is not the case that the Government are bent on a process of deindustrialisation and losing jobs. Jobs are transferring from the high-carbon economy to the low- carbon economy, and one of the duties of government, which this Government are carrying out, is to make sure there are good jobs in both the low-carbon and high-carbon economies, and that skills are transferred from the high-carbon economy to inform the low-carbon economy. That is exactly what is happening at the moment, so I really do not recognise the assertions the noble Lord makes about the future of society. Quite the opposite is taking place.
My Lords, 10 of the 48 designated areas have still not produced their local nature recovery strategies. When will the Government issue directions to those councils and give them a deadline to do it by? Will there be a modest amount of money to help those councils that are clearly struggling?
I do not know the answer to the question the noble Baroness has put to me. I am happy to write to her. I know that many councils are working hard on this. It is a question of looking at the outliers rather than at people who have taken this issue seriously at a local level and are getting on with the plans that they should be getting on with as far as future environmental concerns go.