Campaigners from the National Trust came to Parliament this week to promote their campaign Nature=Future. Local MP Toby Perkins, who is also Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, met with the campaigners to discuss the importance of a healthy natural environment and showed his support for this important campaign.
The campaign highlights the importance of restoring nature to protect our future and create growth and resilience. It calls on the Government to take urgent action to meet the Environment Act targets to halt and reverse the decline of nature.
Chesterfield MP Toby Perkins, as Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, is spearheading a new investigation into the importance of nature restoration to the UK, following a Government national security assessment. This report, published earlier this year, found that global ecosystem degradation and collapse is highly likely and threatens UK national security and prosperity.
The Environmental Audit Committee is a cross-party group of MPs which hold the Government to account on its environmental targets and policies. Toby was first elected Chair of the Committee in September 2024 and has conducted several investigations since, including on marine protection, improving England’s resilience to flooding, and on the risks of extreme heat.
Next, Toby and the Environmental Audit Committee will question Government Ministers later this month on the importance of nature restoration to UK national security and prosperity.
The findings of the national security assessment were so stark that it should have dominated our news. Despite the efforts of campaigners, and Toby himself in an op-ed for the New Statesman, there was little cut-through in the news agenda.
Toby also attended the National Emergency Briefing on climate and nature last November in Westminster, where ten of the UK’s leading experts briefed an invited audience of over 1,200 politicians and leaders from business, culture, faith, sport and the media. The briefing set out the implications of climate and nature breakdown for health, food systems, national security and the economy.
There is a screening of the National Emergency Briefing by Chesterfield Climate Alliance during Great Big Green Week this Saturday 13 June at Chesterfield Library. You can find more details about the event here- https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/peoples-emergency-briefing-film-screening-tickets-1987670562158.
Toby Perkins MP said, “Protecting our natural world for the future is of the utmost importance to me, and I know from the many letters I receive, that it is also one of the most important issues to my constituents.
For any interested constituents, the National Emergency Briefing makes for a worrying but important watch and it is being screened this weekend in Chesterfield.
I have been urging the Government to champion nature and scrutinising the progress to date towards achieving the Government’s legally-binding nature recovery targets.
I will continue my work, including through the Environmental Audit Committee, to press the Government for more environmental action and I am delighted to show my support today for the Nature=Future campaign.”
Notes:
- Government’s national security risk assessment on global biodiversity- https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nature-security-assessment-on-global-biodiversity-loss-ecosystem-collapse-and-national-security
- Toby’s op-ed in the New Statesman can be read here- https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/sustainability/biodiversity-nature/2026/05/averting-the-path-to-disaster
- You can watch the Environmental Audit Committee’s evidence session into national security and nature here- https://committees.parliament.uk/event/27258/formal-meeting-oral-evidence-session/
- More information about the National Emergency Briefing here- https://www.nebriefing.org/