---

Financial Services and Markets Bill

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 69A in my name and briefly express my support for all the other amendments in this group. They have been very ably and clearly introduced.

I had something of a flashback to the Pension Schemes Bill, which was the first time I spoke in this Room. I believe that that was the first time that climate had ever appeared in any finance Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, did a great job of supporting me through that: I had no idea when to speak so she gave me a nudge with her elbow. That was three years ago. We have now got to the point where we are trying to get nature to join climate, which is so obviously necessary.

As you might expect from a Green, my Amendment 69A goes further. I do not know whether the Minister can respond to this but the fact is that the economy and financial system are complete subsets of the environment. There is no financial system on a dead planet, to amend a phrase. All the amendments on climate and nature are clearly essential but we know that they do not fully cover the way in which we are breaking the limits of this planet.

7.15 pm

This amendment refers to the planetary limits so well established by the Stockholm Environment Institute. There are nine planetary limits. I have made specific references to four of them: climate, biosphere integrity, novel entities and biochemical flows. Novel entities is one of those phrases that do not trip off the tongue and are perhaps not very clear. I am thinking of calling it “the three Ps”—plastics, pesticides and pharmaceuticals—which does not entirely cover all the ground but at least gives a sense of what it is talking about. Last year, a peer-reviewed journal published by the acclaimed Stockholm Environment Institute stated that we have massively exceeded the planet’s capacity to deal with all those things that our financial sector is ultimately funding: plastics, pharmaceuticals, pesticides and related substances. Biochemical flows are essentially nitrogen fertilisers, phosphorus and all the things we know and focus so much on about the River Wye. Again, the finance sector is funding destruction exceeding those planetary limits.

I can well imagine people asking, “How are we going to measure this?” What I am putting forward in the way that this amendment is written is that companies have to show that they are operating within the limits of the planet. If you want money, if the finance sector is going to fund things, then it has to operate within the limits, because we all know now on climate, nature and so many other things that companies’ operations and activities that have been financed are destroying the planet on which we are all absolutely dependent. As a country, like every other country in the world, we have agreed to the sustainable development goals. They are seven years away. We are not on track within our own boundaries. No country is on track to meet

those sustainable development goals. If some miracle were to occur and an amendment something like this were put in, that would take the UK financial sector significantly towards being compliant with the sustainable development goals, to which it is signed up.

I am of course not expecting that to happen, but I said on our first day in Committee that I was in the genetic technology Bill and I was talking about how many scientists are coming to me and asking how they get their understanding through to the Government. We have to join up science and economics. This is the kind of systems thinking we need to have if we are going to have a sustainable world.

I have a saying that Greens lead and other follow, and I invite the Committee to think back about to when your Lordships’ House started talking about climate and nature. It was those radical Greens with their radical ideas. Now, this has come into the mainstream. I put to the Committee that the issues that I am putting on the table today will very quickly be mainstream, and if the UK wants to be world-leading, as we so often hear, bringing the planetary limits within the framework of our financial sector would truly be extraordinarily world-leading.