Speeches by Creagh.

“It is about increasing demand, isn’t it? It is about giving farmers and landowners the confidence that this is an activity that they can have confidence in doing. It is about making sure, for the people who are purchasing that—whether that is house builders, pension funds or whatever—that it is a genuine, sustainable a…”

“Absolutely, yes.”

“I think it was incredibly important, and I really welcome the fact that several members of this Committee were present, including yourself, Chair, and Ms Gelderd, Mr Thomas, Ms Heylings and Mr Gardiner, because that sends a signal about where we, as a Government, put nature and biodiversity. I think we had the biggest …”

“I am trying to remember the timings of it, but maybe we had DEFRA questions a week or two later. I do not know why. There was a written ministerial statement, but no oral statement; you are right.”

“Dr Will Lockhart is sitting to the right of me. At the request of the secretariat, he had really been in the driving seat around the adoption of the agreement on digital sequence information, or DSI. We set up a new fund at Cali—the Cali Fund—and there were really complicated negotiations, which came after two years. D…”

“It felt pretty massive, from where we were sitting. It is a big deal. Setting up a new fund for nature that channels private sector capital is a world first. Allied to that, for the first time ever, is a new permanent body for indigenous peoples and local communities. It was created to recognise their role and integrat…”

“I think we need to look now at the modalities of how that fund will be set up and established. We obviously have to wait for the COP to conclude, but we are thinking about how we can take it forward. It is always challenging to get agreements between 196 countries. Another thing that happened is that we launched an upd…”

“Perhaps I can ask Dr Lockhart to respond. He was in the thick of it all.”

“We were disappointed that agreements were not concluded on mobilising quality and accessible nature finance, nor on agreeing the final details of the monitoring, reporting and review framework. There was a big agenda, and the meeting became inquorate at about quarter to 8 Cali time on Saturday morning. Even on the outs…”

“The four nations of the UK, the overseas territories and Crown dependencies have been working collaboratively to produce a UK-wide NBSAP. We did submit our national targets to the convention on 1 August, which commit us to meeting all 23 of the GBF targets at home. That contribution was part of the first global assessm…”

“Oh my—oh no: I was thinking you were going to say in Armenia in two years’ time; it will definitely be before then. Before Rome, I cannot say.”

“I think we are going to have a new statutory plan to protect and restore our natural environment, and we will have delivery information to help to meet each of the Environment Act targets. We are working with civil society, business and local government to do that. That will play its part in framing how we will meet ou…”

“We have set out that at least 7% of England’s land has already met that criteria. We are going to confirm with you the key delivery levers, like how we are going to do that, and set out the pathways and our action plan to meeting these targets. We hope to finalise and publish the strategy next year. At sea—because of c…”

“I would say yes. The question is what are the protections within them? Given that 94% of the UK’s biodiversity is in our overseas territories, the overseas territory work is very important—those protections are incredibly important. It is about making sure that we have proper protections within those MPAs. There has be…”

“We had a stakeholder event on the UK’s NBSAP, which was hosted by JNCC—our Joint Nature Conservation Committee—with participation from the four UK nations, in November 2023. So that has happened. We are working with civil society, business and local government in the review of the environmental improvement plan. It is …”

“We have a new cross-sector stakeholder strategic advisory group set up to ensure that DEFRA sectors can collaborate with DEFRA on key strategic questions, and co-create that EIP revision, so we are trying to bring other people in. It is dependent on the EIP, and as you rightly say, on the land use framework, which I be…”

“I hope so.”

“On all these philosophical questions, I am going to hand over to Dr Lockhart.”

“Was the was the response from me or Minister Hardy?”

“Ah, well, I had not seen the question, so I was genuinely thinking, “Did I answer that?”, because I had no memory of that. That does not mean it did not happen. On the MMO, marine regulators have assessed all fishing activities on the protected species and habitats in our MPAs, and they have identified bottom-towed fis…”