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Environmental Improvement Plan 2025

My Lords, I am quite tight for time. I shall do my best to answer all the many questions, but if there is anything that I do not cover, I will make sure I write to noble Lords with responses. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on securing this debate. I welcome the opportunity to respond and to discuss how the environmental improvement plan will deliver the targets of the Environment Act.

The EIP, as noble Lords are aware, sets out the Government’s commitment to the ambitious statutory Environment Act targets. It is our road map on how we are going to improve the natural environment and people’s enjoyment of it. It ensures that nature’s recovery is a key priority for this Government and is fundamental to our general approach, including growth, because we know that growth is not possible without a healthy and resilient natural environment.

Our EIP goes further than the previous one. It is a credible, clear plan with clear, prioritised actions to deliver the environmental outcomes of restoring nature, improving environmental quality, creating a circular economy, protecting environmental security and improving people’s access to nature. It sets out who is responsible for these actions across government and our wider society.

The EIP sets ambitious yet achievable interim targets. It is essential to have those as staging posts on our journey in order to deliver the targets that have been

rightly described today as challenging. Each interim target will make an appropriate contribution to corresponding statutory targets over the next five years. We have increased the ambition of some of the interim targets since the Government’s last plan, including for air quality and to restore and create wildlife-rich habitats. We have also introduced new targets on farm wildlife and on invasive non-native species. We are maintaining our delivery trajectories for other targets and have adjusted others to ensure that they remain deliverable and credible.

On other targets, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked about the MPAs and whether the 5% flex was watering down that target. The flex is introduced largely to account for adverse impacts of offshore wind developments that have been consented to because they pass the habitats regulations or MCZ derogation tests. We think it is the best option to set an interim target that contributes towards the statutory target while aligning it with the changing MPA network that supports the Government’s clean energy mission. I hope that explains why we have done that.

Of course, setting clear targets and goals is simply not enough; we need to know exactly how we are going to reach them. I hope noble Lords will be reassured to know that for the first time we have published delivery plans for those targets. They clearly set out how actions contribute, who will deliver them and how progress will be measured. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked which actions will make the largest contribution to halting the decline of biodiversity. The delivery plans will set that out on a strong evidence footing so that we know exactly what is happening.

Driving environmental change and understanding the impact of actions being taken will obviously be complex and take time, so the delivery plans are designed to remain live and can be refined over time in response to emerging evidence, to policy evaluation and to any feedback that we get from stakeholders carrying out the delivery. We believe that this transparent and collaborative approach to communicating and adapting our plans is a major step forward. It is also central to our monitoring and our reporting of progress, which, again, is essential to keeping any delivery on track.

The EIP sets out more than 90 commitments. Each is associated with a delivery metric, and we will report on changes to those metrics in our annual progress reports, along with the latest evidence and changes to trends in our environmental indicator framework. The framework, which is also published online, objectively measures how the environment is changing across the 10 EIP goals.

Together, such approaches better enable external appraisal and will ensure that we learn and adapt appropriately as we move towards the targets. I am already very grateful to stakeholders, including the OEP, whose scrutiny and recommendations are helping to shape this improved approach. We have a clear plan and process, but we also know the scale of the challenge and are trying to match this with the right actions to get where we need to go.

SFI was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, so I am sure he will be pleased to hear that, just this morning at the Oxford Farming

Conference, the Secretary of State set out how we are reforming SFI to make it simpler and fairer and to enable as many farmers as possible to benefit and help nature thrive. As someone who has a smallholding, I was particularly pleased to see that this is also targeted now at smaller farmers. At that conference, the Secretary of State also made clear that protecting the environmental foundations of farming is not separate from productivity but an essential part of it. All this will help us to meet our EIP targets, including doubling the number of farms delivering for wildlife. This follows the most nature-friendly farming Budget we have seen, to give farmers the support they need to produce food sustainably while protecting soil, water and wildlife.

Last year we had the highest amount of tree planting in 20 years, as I am sure my noble friend will be pleased to hear—over 10 million trees—and we have started planting the first of the three new national forests. We recently implemented the Water (Special Measures) Act. I have been asked about the water White Paper, and I confirm that it will be published very soon; watch this space.

The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked about PFAS. The EIP includes a commitment to publish a PFAS plan in 2026, and that will set out how the Government are taking action to protect people and the environment from the particular harms and risks that this relates to. We are acting decisively to improve air quality. A circular economy is an important part of this. We are further reducing environmental harm by turning waste into opportunity and creating green jobs across the country—I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is particularly interested in this. We are boosting opportunities and, as the Minister for access to nature, I am pleased that we have a chapter in the EIP on how we will do this. I was pleased that we launched the first of the nine new river walks on Boxing Day.

A number of noble Lords mentioned the importance of working together. It is important that we do this, as we will not make progress unless we have cross-government contributions in achieving these targets. That includes the land use framework, the farming road map and what we are doing across the department as well as across government. This is important. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, particularly talked about the importance of working with stakeholders and people who have to deliver. Only by government working hand in hand with communities, businesses, farmers, the public sector and the third sector can we achieve our target delivery.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked a number of questions, and I will try to fit those in. If there is anyone else, I will come back to them. He asked what aspects of the new plan give me confidence around SSSIs —in fact, there were a few questions around SSSIs. I have an SSSI on my land, so I completely understand the challenges of site management. Natural England has improved its understanding of SSSI condition and the pressures and actions needed to restore SSSIs. It is making progress: it has a more strategic focus than previously and, over the spending review, it is looking to improve the evidence from each site. It is looking at a strategic landscape scale, with a greater focus on what happens on the land outside the site boundary as well as just within it, and at those implications.

The noble Lord asked how many SSSIs are on agricultural land covered by agri-environment contracts. It is approximately 40% at the moment. Additionally, Natural England has developed a conservation enhancement scheme to fund actions on SSSI land that is not eligible for environmental stewardship schemes. We want to continue to build on that work.

On national landscapes, we know we need to go further and faster in protected landscapes to meet our national targets, and we will ensure that protected landscape bodies, landowners and land managers have the tools and resources to achieve that. We will continue to work closely.

The PMB was excellent and very much in line with government ambition. The principles of it—to drive and strengthen action towards meeting natural environment and climate targets and objectives from both local and other public authorities—are absolutely at the heart of what we will achieve. I hope we can continue to talk to the noble Lord and bring in his expertise around that.

I seem to have run out of time. I am really sorry; I had lots of lovely answers to all of the questions posed by noble Lords.