Tag Archives: climate and nature bill

The Independent View: Nature-friendly farming cut

By Paul Behrens and Simon Oldridge | Thu 20th March 2025 - 3:52 pm

Farmers hung out to dry while fossil fuels cash in—more bad news for climate and nature

The Government’s outdated climate and nature targets, coupled with a lack of joined-up decision-making, have delivered yet another disastrous policy blunder. Last week, the Government announced a pause in payments to farmers under the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI).

SFI is one of the key Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes designed to support farmers in working in harmony with nature—to restore ecosystems, lock up carbon, cut pollution in our rivers, and help to protect communities from downstream flooding. Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Tim Farron MP, rightly said that the closure of the SFI was a “betrayal” that will “outrage everyone who cares for our environment”.

This reckless decision strikes a blow to the very work needed to stabilise our environment for a liveable and prosperous future. It also betrays hardworking farmers who, despite their crucial role in ensuring food security and environmental sustainability, struggle to make ends meet in an unfair food industry. Most farming household income is well below the national average, contrary to the image portrayed by wealthy hobbyists like Jeremy Clarkson. In horticulture—whose products we need more of for a healthy diet and planet —average incomes are even lower.

This abrupt pause to the SFI puts vital nature-friendly farming at risk and adds further financial strain to farmers’ wafer-thin margins.

A failure of joined-up government

The Government’s approach in tackling the climate and nature crisis, which Liberal Democrats MPs have been challenging, undermines support for a just transition to an environmentally friendly future.

On one hand, DEFRA is pulling the rug out from under farmers striving to adopt sustainable practices, who will have to wait “a year without support” as Sarah Dyke MP correctly points out. On the other, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is pouring tens of billions of public funding into the oil industry, using the fig leaf of unproven, costly carbon capture technology to justify a new wave of gas power stations and polluting blue hydrogen plants.

Labour was given the chance to fix this systemic failure in January when Liberal Democrat MP, Roz Savage, proposed the Climate and Nature Bill. The Bill offered a joined-up approach to tackling the climate and nature crisis that would lock the UK’s international commitments into domestic law.

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Caron Lindsay

Lib Dems call on Starmer to back landmark climate bill

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 15th January 2025 - 11:01 am

A group of Liberal Democrats have called on Keir Starmer to back Lib Dem MP Roz Savage’s Climate and Nature Bill when it comes up in Parliament on 24 January. In a letter signed by 58 MPs and Peers they say:

We, Liberal Democrats, commend your and the Government’s determination to elevate the UK’s global climate and nature leadership. However, without legislation that unites our climate and nature plans, they will continue to be developed in isolation. This means your clean energy and nature restoration ambitions may fail—and, equally worryingly—may make both crises worse.

There is, however, a golden opportunity for you and the Government to showcase cross-party consensus on the need for an integrated approach to the climate-nature crisis. The CAN Bill would deliver a joined-up framework, ensuring that Britain meets its international commitments for climate and nature, as part of expediting your plans to build a nature positive, net zero economy.

Roz’s Bill should have a five hour debating slot on 24th January.

The Climate and Nature Bill is guaranteed a five-hour Parliamentary debate during its second reading on 24 January 2025.  It already has the backing of some 250 Parliamentarians, including Sir Ed Davey, Carla Denyer, and Zac Goldsmith. It enjoys the support of 10,000s of members of the public, more than 1,100 businesses and organisations, as well as 1,000 climate and health experts

High-profile endorsers include Co-Operative Bank, The Body Shop, Oxfam, Save British Farming, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Ecotricity, The Wildlife Trusts and Triodos Bank.

Unless this Bill gets Government time, it is unlikely to become law. This would be a very easy win for Starmer and Labour so let’s hope they see sense.

The letter in full is published below:

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Pippa Heylings MP

Pippa Heylings MP writes… We can, and we will, make Roz Savage’s Climate and Nature Bill a reality

By Pippa Heylings MP | Wed 4th December 2024 - 4:55 pm

Last month, I had the privilege of attending COP29 in Baku and COP16 in Cali, where I took part in global negotiations on climate and nature. It’s clear to see that the global response to climate change is, at best, underwhelming. Climate change is the greatest threat we face—not only to world economies—but also to nature, which is our greatest ally in limiting its impact. And yet, we are still not acting swiftly enough to reduce carbon emissions.

For many, especially younger people, the process of COPs and their lack of concrete action gives a sense of anxiety. As it’s their futures that face the greatest risk, it’s more than understandable. Yet, I am, and continue to be, filled with hope. 

When I look back to when the UK passed the monumental Climate Change Act in 2008, I feel proud of the example it set all around the world. A lot has changed since 2008, and the impacts of our changing climate are no longer a distant story that we see on the news. They’re at home, in the UK, and are already having devastating impacts on our livelihoods—from more frequent and intense heat waves, storms, floods, droughts, coastal erosion, food supply disruption and expensive energy bills.

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The Voice

Roz Savage to introduce Climate and Nature Bill

By The Voice | Fri 11th October 2024 - 10:15 am

We have an extraordinary group of new MPs, bringing a wide range of experience to our Parliamentary team. But one of them is truly unique. Dr Roz Savage, MP for South Cotswolds, is the only woman in the world who has rowed solo across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. She holds four Guinness World Records.

And Roz is also very lucky because she drew the third ticket in the private members bill ballot. Not surprisingly she is very interested in environmental issues, so she will be reviving the Climate and Nature Bill, which had previously been proposed on two separate occasions by Caroline Lucas (Green) and by Olivia Blake and Alex Sobel (both Labour). She believes that the time is now ripe to gain wide support in the Commons.

Roz said:

It’s a great honour to have been drawn third in the private members’ bill ballot, but it’s also been a huge challenge to choose the subject of my bill. My postbag and inbox have been bursting with hundreds of messages from constituents asking me to support important and worthwhile causes.

However, the largest number of letters urged me to champion the Climate and Nature Bill, which is also a subject dear to my heart, having been an environmental campaigner for the last twenty years, and having pledged my support for the CAN Bill back in April. Given that a great number of my constituents clearly care deeply about the climate and ecological crisis, as do I, my choice was clear. I am delighted to have this opportunity to potentially get the CAN Bill passed into law.

When rowing across the ocean, I came face to face with the immensity of the natural world—and the vulnerability of our human race. To stand the strongest chance of tackling the interconnected climate and ecological emergency, the UK needs a joined-up, science-led strategy. A bold, new, long-term plan to restore our depleted wildlife, and deliver the just transition we need. That means green jobs, clean air and rivers, cheaper bills, and a nature-rich UK.

I’m proud to be leading the campaign for the ‘CAN Act’ and I’m looking forward to working with MPs from across the Commons to pass this Bill, and put climate and nature at the centre of cross-government missions.

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Wera Hobhouse MP and Daisy Cooper MP

Creating a fairer, greener future for all

By Wera Hobhouse MP and Daisy Cooper MP | Wed 31st July 2024 - 11:55 am

The climate-nature crisis remains an existential threat to the future prosperity, wellbeing and security of the UK. We can see its effects all around us—from last Monday being the hottest day ever recorded, to the deafening silence of birds and butterflies across our once wild isles. The recent Climate Change Committee report shows that the UK Government is off track to meet its 2030 target (to cut emissions by 68%) and that only a third of current plans are credible.

Our natural environment is being destroyed at pace. The last State of Nature report set out the drastic declines in our native biodiversity, stark reductions in our woodland cover, and the collapse of many of our precious species. Nature is deeply intertwined with our climate. They’re two sides of the same coin. When viewed holistically, it’s clear that we cannot solve the climate crisis without also solving the nature crisis, and vice versa. 

The science is crystal clear. We’re now operating on a knife edge of breaching our Paris Agreement obligations to do all we can to limit “global boiling”. With June marking the twelfth consecutive month of global temperatures of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, it’s clearer than ever that the (already small) window for action is rapidly closing. We must act as fast and as fairly as possible to get the world on track for a liveable future.

The new Labour Government has inherited one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. A country where 75% of our rivers pose a serious risk to human health—a country where an ever changing climate is damaging our health, prosperity and security. But the mandate given by the British public on 4 July is clear. We need a new approach that puts climate-nature action at the heart of our decision-making. We Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for a fairer, greener future; a UK where everyone can benefit from—and help shape—the huge opportunities of the just transition to a zero carbon, nature positive future. 

Crucially, we recognise that our once world leading legislation no longer meets the challenges of today. The Climate Change Act was passed seven years before the 2015 Paris Agreement was agreed—and our biodiversity targets don’t align with the 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework agreed in Montreal. As internationalists, we believe that the UK now needs to lock these global commitments into law. 

As MPs, we have a duty to send a strong message to the public, civil society and businesses that we’re serious about improving their lives and livelihoods. In the years ahead to 2030, we must reverse biodiversity loss and we must rapidly reduce our emissions via a new, joined-up approach. Small, incremental changes won’t cut it; especially given the last Government’s inaction, delays and U-turns.

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