Nitrogen Reduction, Recycling and Reuse (Environment and Climate Change Committee Report)
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Baroness Sheehan
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the Environment and Climate Change Committee Nitrogen: time to reduce, recycle, reuse (2nd Report, HL Paper 161).
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, it is my pleasure as chair of the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee to open this debate on its report Nitrogen: Time to Reduce, Recycle, Reuse. I convey my thanks to our committee clerk Andrea Ninomiya, our policy analyst Lily Paulson and the operations officers Farhan Riaz and, latterly, Hanna Ghufoor. As any chair of a Select Committee will acknowledge, such reports would not be possible without the expert guidance of the clerk’s team, so thanks to them all once again.
Thanks are also due to the expert witnesses whose depth and breadth of knowledge informed this report, as well as to the six schools that took part in our youth engagement programme: Ellesmere College, Mary Immaculate High School, Shipley College, Skinners’ Academy, The Holt School and The Thomas Hardye School. We are also grateful to our specialist adviser, Professor Mark Sutton of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, for his valuable support in a complex and sometimes highly technical inquiry.
Climate change, nature loss and public health are often treated as separate challenges. The committee’s report on nitrogen shows that, in truth, they are deeply and dangerously intertwined. Our inquiry heard clear, consistent evidence that nitrogen, in its many reactive forms, pollutes our waters, fuelling dead zones that devastate aquatic life. In the air, ammonia and nitrogen oxide contribute to PM2.5 fine particulates, causing an estimated 30,000 premature deaths in the UK. It accumulates in soils and ecosystems, undermining habitats that should be the backbone of our nature recovery ambitions. Nitrous oxide is both a powerful greenhouse gas and now the leading cause of the ozone hole. These impacts are not abstract. They are underpinned by hard data, measured in lost species, polluted stretches of river, hospital admissions and lives cut short.
Unless the Government take our report as a clarion call for action, we will not meet major biodiversity targets either in the UK or globally. For example, we will not meet our commitments under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to halve nutrient waste, including reactive nitrogen, by 2030. This is central to achieving the goal of halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030 and protecting 30% of land and sea—the 30 by 30 target. UK habitat objectives for protected areas—SSSIs and special areas of conservation—cannot be met while over 57% of nitrogen-sensitive habitats receive nitrogen deposition above critical loads and most nitrogen-sensitive woodland and peat habitats remain overloaded. Some 93% of monitored English estuaries and 47% of coastal waters exceed nitrogen standards. I could go on, but I think noble Lords get the picture.
The financial cost to hard-pressed farmers is estimated to be £420 million per annum in unnecessary overuse of artificial fertilisers. Figures from WWF and the Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance also refer to broader inefficiencies across full-chain nitrogen use efficiency, NUE. That includes from fertiliser and manure inputs to food output, and I assume it would also include food waste. NUE across the full chain is estimated as being only about 11%, with 89% wasted as emissions or run-off, equivalent to a £2.3 billion annual replacement cost.
In England, the total cost of nitrogen dioxide to the NHS and social care is estimated to be £230 million by 2035. That is why our report calls for a national nitrogen strategy rooted in robust data and a clear-eyed assessment of trade-offs. We recommend a UK nitrogen balance sheet, providing for nitrogen what the carbon budget provides for greenhouse gases—a transparent, accountable framework to understand where nitrogen comes from, where it goes and what damage or benefit it brings along the way. Only with such a framework can policy be coherent rather than piecemeal. The Government’s response acknowledges the problem but shies away from that necessary step. Warm words on existing initiatives are not a substitute for a cross-government strategy with measurable objectives and timelines.
Agriculture sits at the heart of the nitrogen challenge. Farmers are essential partners in the solution but they cannot be expected to transform practices in the absence of clear standards, fair incentives and practical support. Our report identifies major shortcomings in nitrogen regulation and enforcement, defined by piecemeal rules—for example, overlapping regulations such as farming rules for water, nitrate-vulnerable zones and silage and slurry regulations.
This confusing picture is further undermined by poor enforcement by the Environment Agency, which inspects under 2% of England’s 105,000 farms yearly. For example, checks were carried out on 2,213 farms in 2020-21. Breaches were found in about 50%, but sanctions were issued in just 0.1% of cases. That is more carte blanche than enforcement, which is a shame because, as we heard, if properly enforced, the farming rules for water have the potential to be effective in improving water quality as well as air and soil quality.
A key recommendation in our report was simplification of the regulatory system and toughening of enforcement action. There are some low-hanging solutions, such as improving manure management, mandating low-emission slurry spreading and covers by 2027, and extending permitting to large cattle and dairy farms within two years. We saw examples of this on our visit to an experimental farm in the Netherlands.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
Before democracy so rudely interrupted us, we were hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, I repeat that a key recommendation in our report was simplification of the regulatory system and toughening of enforcement. There are some low-hanging solutions, such as reducing inputs of nitrogen and optimising their application, improving manure management, mandating low-emission slurry spreading and slurry covers by 2027 and extending permitting to large cattle and dairy farms within two years. The Government’s response nods to these issues but opts to postpone real decisions. They prefer to wait for further pilots, reviews or consultations, rather than commit to the clear direction of travel that farmers themselves say they need. I would be interested to know why the Government are not showing greater urgency.
On water, our report highlighted that water companies alone cannot solve nutrient pollution. Upgrades to wastewater treatment are necessary but not sufficient. Upstream collaboration with land managers, catchment-based solutions and innovations in nutrient recovery must all play a part. We called for clearer expectations on integrated catchment planning and a regulatory framework that rewards pollution prevention, not merely end-of-pipe treatment. Yet the Government’s response is, again, too timid. It reiterates existing programmes but does not set out how regulations will drive the system towards joined-up catchment outcomes or how innovation in nutrient recycling will be scaled beyond a handful of projects.
Before concluding, I would like to put just two questions to the Minister. Can she confirm whether the Government will embed the holistic approach to nitrogen to which they have committed across related Defra priorities, including the farming road map, the land use framework, the food strategy, the water White Paper and the water reform Bill? Secondly, in the light of the delay to the circular economy strategy and its reframing as the circular economy growth plan, can the Minister provide assurance that nutrient circularity, including for nitrogen, will still form part of the circular economy road map for the agri-food sector?
Our report argues for aligning air quality, climate and agricultural policy so that measures reinforce, rather than undermine, one another. Moving nitrogen towards a circular economy—reduce, recycle, reuse—should be a unifying objective, but it is disappointing that the Government do not recognise that a circular economy approach to reducing nitrogen emissions is not deliverable without a national nitrogen strategy. I beg to move.
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
My Lords, the Environment and Climate Change Committee’s report on nitrogen raises many issues, including the effects of nitrogen emissions on the climate, on the air that we breathe and on the water that we drink. However, I shall confine my attention to the role of nitrogen fertilisers in agriculture.
Plants are created largely from air and water. The process of photosynthesis, which occurs in all green plants, combines carbon dioxide, which is present in the air in small quantities, with water, which is essential to all forms of life, in order to create carbohydrates— the structural elements of plants are formed from carbohydrates. The process of photosynthesis, which is powered by sunlight and requires chlorophyll to catalyse it, splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is released into the atmosphere and the hydrogen is combined with carbon dioxide to form sugars and carbohydrates.
Plants require other elements in small quantities for their sustenance. These include phosphorus, potassium, calcium, sulphur, magnesium and iron. More crucially, they require compounds of nitrogen in order to form the amino acids and proteins that are involved in all biological processes, which we may describe as their functional elements. Nitrogen is present in chlorophyll and is contained in the four nitrogen-rich compounds that are the building blocks of DNA—namely, adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine—but plants cannot obtain their nitrogen directly from the atmosphere. They must absorb it from the ground in the form of nitrogen compounds.
Some of the nitrogen is subducted from the atmosphere when nitric oxide and ammonia are formed by lightning and ultraviolet rays and are washed down by the rain. In a natural environment, this source accounts for approximately 10% of the nitrogen compounds in the soil. The remainder is fixed in the soil as ammonia and nitrates, which are the NO3 radical, and nitrites, which are the NO2 radical, by microorganisms that take nitrogen directly from the air.
Some of these nitrogen-fixing organisms are free-living bacteria, whereas others typically live in a symbiotic relationship with certain plants within their roots; leguminous crops are examples of such plants. In their root modules, the bacteria convert free nitrogen into nitrates, which the host plant utilises for its development. In return, the bacteria receive a supply of carbohydrates for their sustenance. When plants die and decay, they release nitrogen compounds that are available for uptake by other plants and crops.
The rapid growth of the population of Britain in the 18th century raised the threat of famine and starvation. After years of stagnation in European agriculture, an agricultural revolution occurred that proceeded in step with the Industrial Revolution, and Britain led the way.
The principal innovation in farming methods concerned the adoption of new crops and a new system of crop rotation. In the Norfolk system, which in fact originated in Holland, a four-field rotation of crops was adopted, which involved the successive planting of wheat, turnips, barley and clover. The effect of the turnips and clover was to enhance the fixation of nitrogen, thereby stimulating the growth of the cereal crops. As the nitrogen supply was improved, other nutrients, particularly phosphorus and potassium, became limiting factors. The only available supply of phosphorus compounds would have been via calcium phosphate from bonemeal.
Additional fertilisation of the soil would have come from farmyard manure and from roughage and litter collected from forests and meadows. By the middle of the 19th century, much of the farmland was already in intensive use and further supplies of foodstuffs could be obtained only by increasing the addition of fertilisers that were exogenous to the farming system. The requirement for fertilisers was met from a variety of sources; these included Peruvian guano, which has its origin in the droppings of sea-birds, of which supplies were virtually exhausted by 1875. Another source of fertilisers was the Atacama Desert, which spans Chile, Bolivia and Peru. When the production of sodium nitrate began in 1804, the nitrates were leached out of the soil by hot water and then purified and dried. The supply reached its peak in maybe 1930. The coking process that is associated with steel-making, which was used to produce town gas for domestic heating and lighting, was a source of ammonium sulphate fertiliser.
Given the increasing demand for nitrates, in view of the rapid depletion of the sources of mineral nitrates, it was inevitable that, at the end of the 19th century, industrial chemists should turn their attention to the business of creating synthetic nitrates. Without some new source of nitrogen fertilisers, there would have been widespread famine within two or three decades. Some intensive research ensued.
The demand was met, eventually, by the Haber-Bosch process, which deploys high temperature and high pressure to synthesise ammonia by combining hydrogen and nitrogen. A successful implementation was achieved in 1908, which was in time to provide Germany with wartime explosives.
Nowadays, the process is the basis for the supply of ammonium nitrate and urea, which are the fertilisers that sustain the worldwide production of food. It has been suggested that, in the absence of these fertilisers, only half the world’s population could be fed and at a starvation level. The combination of nitrate fertilisers, mechanisation, irrigation and the development of high-yield cereals has been responsible, since the 1960s, for what has been described as a green revolution. It is notable that the production of nitrate fertilisers has increased ninefold since the 1960s.
The gains of this revolution are now being lost through farming practices that threaten the fertility of the soil. A significant cause of the declining fertility is the salination of soils that occurs in irrigated lands that are subject to high rates of water evaporation. The salts that are carried by the irrigating waters are liable to be deposited in the soil, to the detriment of the crops. There has also been a massive overuse of nitrate fertilisers that can scorch the seeds of the crops. The rotation of crops that would otherwise serve to restore nutrients to the soil has ceased and been replaced by cereal monocultures sustained by fertilisers and pesticides.
Recent studies show that yields of corn and rice grown on saline soil in the Indus Valley of Pakistan have declined on average by 32% and 48% respectively, compared with the yields of crops grown on non-saline soil. The overuse of nitrate fertilisers is also a feature of agriculture in temperate climates. The effects of the misuse of nitrogen fertilisers are clearly apparent in the United Kingdom. The loose spreading of the fertilisers makes them liable to be washed away. When they reach the rivers, they enrich the water with nutrients that cause excessive growth of algal blooms that block sunlight and deplete dissolved oxygen. This harms and destroys aquatic life.
The availability of chemical fertilisers has encouraged farmers to neglect systems of crop rotation that can be used to maintain the quality of the soils. Farmers neglect to sow cover crops that would restore the nutrients and prevent soil erosion. Ploughed fields are left bare while sterile soil awaits further applications of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. A report from 2019 by the Environment Agency found that, within 60 million hectares of crop-land in England and Wales, almost 40 million hectares of soil are at risk of compaction, over 20 million hectares of soil are at risk of erosion, and intensive agriculture has caused arable soils to lose about 40% to 60% of their organic carbon.
The report of the committee reveals that the UK is lagging behind other European countries in its effort to redress the problems arising out of the intensification of agriculture. A visit to the Netherlands revealed a stark contrast in the relative efficacy of its regulatory systems and those of the UK. The Dutch have made significant progress in limiting the overuse of nitrate fertilisers and in preventing them leaching into water- courses. The report testifies to a confusing mass of UK legislative measures that are overseen by agencies that fail adequately to enforce them.
This state of affairs must surprise anyone who is familiar with the strict controls of farming practices and farm produce that occurred throughout the years of the Second World War and for an equal period thereafter. The Ministry of Food, in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, exercised considerable control over farm production and farming methods. Such control was gradually ceded in post-war years under Conservative Governments. The lack of effective regulation and guidance of agriculture in the UK has been an inevitable accompaniment of the decline of the Civil Service during the periods of Conservative Governments. One is reminded of the period from 2014 to 2016 when Liz Truss was Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. During that time, she was an advocate of all manner of unreasoned acts of deregulation.
I believe that the problems besetting agriculture in the UK need to be addressed by a reconstituted department of agriculture that would be active in imposing regulations and offering firm guidance to farmers.
The Earl of Leicester (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords on the committee for agreeing to undertake this inquiry into nitrogen. Although it was my suggestion, I can take no credit for it; that must go to two scientists who worked with me on the charity SongBird Survival’s scientific sub-committee. Incidentally, I came off its board last year. After one of our meetings, as an afterthought I asked the scientists present whether they might have any suggestions for the committee’s next inquiry. Paul Dolman, professor of conservation ecology at UEA, and Dr Alex Lees of Manchester Metropolitan University exclaimed, almost in unison, “Nitrogen pollution—it’s the big elephant in the room that no one is talking about”.
This is echoed by the opening remarks of the Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance’s briefing: that nitrogen pollution is one of the most urgent but overlooked environmental challenges. A year and a half ago, it too gave an illuminating briefing that our chair and I attended. It is important to note the word “sustainable” in the title of the Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance.
While my initial suggestion for the name of this inquiry was “nitrogen pollution”, it is encouraging that throughout the year-long evidence-gathering process and inquiry, it gradually became clear that we should retitle the inquiry as “Nitrogen: Time to Reduce, Recycle, Reuse”, because it is such an important resource for us humans and our planet. It is essential for life and food production, but mismanagement makes it a major pollutant. I also add my thanks to our committee staff. They are absolute stars, going above and beyond, and continually produce excellent research papers for us.
The subject of nitrogen is so huge that, as a farmer, I shall try to limit my contribution to that subject alone—indeed, to arable farming. By some happy happenstance, I am sitting next to my noble friend Lord Ashcombe, who tells me he is going to talk about slurry, so I shall talk about arable. I shall leave other colleagues to speak more knowledgeably on the many other aspects of nitrogen. Here I should declare my interests as laid out in the register as a large-scale mixed farmer in North Norfolk, albeit following the principles of regenerative agriculture, which aim to regenerate and nurture our greatest asset—our soil.
As our debate in Grand Committee unfolds, it will reveal that farming is one of the greatest culprits with regard to nitrogen pollution. Some £420 million of fertiliser is wasted annually, as our chair said, through inefficient farming practices. The inefficient and unsustainable use of artificial nitrogen, and indeed farmyard manure, leads to large reactive nitrogen losses to the atmosphere and to terrestrial and aquatic systems. Undoubtedly, excess nitrogen use has a deleterious effect on biodiversity. It is this point that the two scientist friends I mentioned at the beginning of my speech were making. The area of nitrogen-sensitive habitats in the UK with exceedance of nutrient nitrogen-critical loads was 57.6% in 2017 and is probably more now. That represents just over 42,000 square kilometres. The area of acid-sensitive habitats of soil and forest ecosystems in the UK that exceed acidity-critical loads was 38.8% or 27,250 square kilometres.
There is a way that farming can also be a provider of one of the solutions. I am afraid that organic farming, although it clearly could be a solution to nitrogen pollution if overwhelmingly adopted, would lead to mass starvation throughout the world. Currently, only 2% of land in the UK is farmed organically.
Although I say I am a farmer, my degree was in history of art. So while I understand my businesses, I do not necessarily comprehend the detail and spend a lot of time asking silly questions of my team—and they are often the best questions. In 2019 I set our farm management team a challenge to see whether they could farm without agricultural chemicals and artificial nitrogen by 2030. It was an 11-year target. There was a sharp intake of breath but they accepted the challenge. Two years later, the broad acres manager came to me to say that he had stopped using insecticides —indeed, we have barely used them since 2021 except on some seed dressings—but he also told me that if we were to stop using nitrogen, our yields would plummet.
To illustrate this, from time to time this team experiments with applying varying degrees of nitrogen to the same crop in the same field. We have had a number of groups from the World Wildlife Fund, Nestlé and Marks & Spencer visit our fields. Some individuals express a preference for organic farming. When we show them our cereal trial plots, that usually convinces them that organic farming is not going to feed the world. The crop with no nitrogen at all looks markedly sparse when compared with those with 60%, 80% or 100% of the recommended fertiliser application. Financially we would not survive—although, granted, we have not built up experience in organic farming.
The farm manager says that he is now using his grey matter much more as he figures out how to make regen farming work, learning from mistakes, having an independent agronomist who is not attached to an ag-chem firm—who of course may want to sell you a little more product—and, when he sees insects in a crop, not immediately reaching for the spray can. He recognises that predator insects such as ladybirds, lacewings, parasitic wasps and hoverflies that attack swarms of aphids do the work for free.
Similarly, our potato enterprise manager took my aspiration to heart and reduced the recommended nitrogen application by 10%. The crop still looked well, and the yield was as expected. He did the same thing the following year, with similar results. In the third year—this is important because it demonstrates how improved technology also plays a part—we bought new precision potato planters that place the nitrogen fertiliser next to the seed. This yielded a further saving of 22% in the amount of nitrogen applied. Over three years he had achieved a compound cost saving of 37%, which goes straight to the bottom line, with no discernible diminution of yield. Importantly for this debate, he had also achieved a saving for the environment, with reduced run-off of unused nitrogen into watercourses or the atmosphere.
The Earl of Leicester (Con)
My Lords, I mentioned varying the 60% or 80% rate of nitrogen application but, sadly, it is not as easy as that. No simple rule of thumb can be followed by all farmers since geography, soil type and climatic conditions such as lack of rainfall, excess rainfall, rain at the wrong time, lack of sun and heat, and the timing of nitrogen application all play their part to vary yield. This is where the guesswork comes in.
If we could predict the weather months out, huge amounts of nitrogen could be saved. Generally, in drier conditions a farmer would, could or should apply 70% of what might be recommended, whereas nitrogen use efficiency or NUE—here I glance nervously at my friend, the professor and noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who took issue with this term, despite it being commonly used by farmers and agronomists—is poor in wet weather. At best, a farmer applying less nitrogen in optimum conditions might achieve NUE of 80% to 90% on potatoes, with the rest of the nitrogen, up to 20%, either lost to the atmosphere or leached to rivers. Some would hopefully be retained in the soil. This progressive approach requires thought, but it comes with more risk.
Many farmers are putting too much nitrogen on their crop and therefore are achieving only 50% to 60% NUE, with 50% of the nitrogen being lost. It is here that the Government could gain some big wins on nitrogen usage reduction by ensuring well-tailored training for farmers and perhaps a few pertinent questions addressed to ag-chem companies and their agronomists—here I glance nervously at my noble friend Lord Fuller—to demonstrate that less can mean more.
To carry on what the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, mentioned, 80% of our potato crops follow cover or catch crops which, as he explained, convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil. This too has therefore significantly reduced the amount of artificial nitrogen needed. The noble Viscount also mentioned wide rotations and not having a monoculture of wheat year after year. Of course, a wide six-course rotation makes a huge difference.
I take issue with the noble Viscount saying that these innovations first came in the Netherlands. If I can be a little immodest, my four-greats grandfather, Coke of Norfolk, along with Turnip Townshend, were very much involved in the agricultural revolution in Britain. The agrarian revolution of course facilitated the Industrial Revolution, which also happened first in Britain. Although the Dutch are jolly good at what they do, I take issue with the noble Viscount; maybe I will raise it with him afterwards and we can discuss where the agricultural revolution started.
Anyway, many agricultural research institutes, such as the John Innes Centre in my part of the world, Rothamsted Research and indeed UEA, have departments monitoring these reductions in nitrogen use without a deleterious effect to crop yields. The Government need to help to promulgate these well-researched messages from such august institutions across to the farming industry. Many progressive farmers are already taking advantage of financial savings achieved by reduced inputs and are proud of their resultant improved environmental credentials. Farm shows such as Groundswell, a regenerative farming conference started by the Cherry family in Hertfordshire, are championing these rediscovered wisdoms and, encouragingly, grow in size each year at the expense of more conventional shows.
While there are undoubtedly rogue farmers who need enforcement action taken against them, the vast majority are hard-working, honest people, many of them, in current economic and legislative conditions, grinding out a living. In my experience in life it is the carrot, not the stick, that works more effectively in a democracy such as ours, so I ask the Minister to advocate that training be prioritised rather than enforcement.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, I thank our chair for her excellent leadership in this inquiry, our clerk and our policy analyst for their excellent work and our specialist adviser, Professor Mark Sutton, for keeping us on the straight and narrow.
Our chair’s introduction was so excellent that I am tempted to simply say two words, “I agree”, and sit down. On the other hand, now that I am standing, the temptation to carry on speaking is too great. I am going to talk about agriculture. The noble Earl, Lord Leicester, having glanced nervously at me, I am glancing very nervously at him because he actually is a farmer while I have experienced farming only at second or third hand.
Agriculture, as we have heard, is the biggest source of nitrogen pollution, accounting for 87% of ammonia and 69% of nitrous oxide released into the atmosphere and 70% of nitrate leaching into water. The evidence that we heard, as has been said, suggested that nitrogen use in agriculture is inefficient and wasteful and creates unnecessary pollution, although of course that does not apply to the noble Earl, Lord Leicester. According to one estimate we heard, 45% of fertiliser added to crops is lost to the environment.
On our visit to the Netherlands, we saw that there are simple ways to reduce nitrogen pollution from farms. For example, farmers there showed us that dairy cattle can be fed on a diet with less nitrogen in it, which does not affect milk yield but reduces ammonia emissions to the atmosphere. We were also shown how the precision application of slurry, which is mandatory in the Netherlands but not here, reduces the leaching of nitrate into fresh water. In the Netherlands, research results from Wageningen University on how to reduce nitrogen pollution are disseminated to farmers via a peer-to-peer network. For some inexplicable reason, these and other equally effective and inexpensive measures are not mandated or widely adopted in this country. I therefore ask the Minister whether she agrees that we could learn lessons from, and indeed follow, the Dutch example.
We were told that farmers pay a price for their inefficient use of fertiliser. We have already heard some of the figures—Natural England estimated the cost as between £21 and £52 per hectare, totalling about £397 million per year for the agricultural sector, while the Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance, as we have heard from others, quoted a figure of £420 million of fertiliser wasted annually—but there are also much bigger costs to society and to the economy that are not paid for by farmers, the so-called externalities. As our chair mentioned, nitrogen pollution is damaging our ecosystems and the services they provide. According to the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, about 30% of the loss of biodiversity in the UK is attributable to nitrogen pollution, and 99.9% of sensitive habitats exceed the critical load for nitrogen deposition.
Secondly, nitrogen pollution is causing global warming, with all the costs and risks that result. Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas that is 270 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. As I have said, 69% of atmospheric nitrous oxide in this country comes from agriculture.
Thirdly, nitrogen pollution damages our health. Many of our city streets exceed WHO safety limits for fine particulate matter that arises in part from agricultural nitrogen pollution. When you step outside the Palace of Westminster and breathe in these fine particles, remember that it is estimated that between a third and a half of them result from ammonia pollution from agriculture; also remember that they will increase your chances of developing various forms of cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, cancer and dementia.
All these impacts of nitrogen pollution impose costs on our economy. As a nation, we would be wealthier, as well as healthier, if we got a grip on the problem. Estimates of the total cost of nitrogen pollution from all sources vary widely, but the WWF quoted a central estimate of around £11 billion per year; agriculture contributes a significant fraction of this. To get a fix on what that looks like, I checked: it is about a sixth of our annual expenditure on secondary education in this country.
Having heard the evidence, I was puzzled. If farmers are generating unnecessary nitrogen pollution that is costly to themselves and even more costly to society in general, why do they carry on doing it? The puzzle is even greater when you learn, as we did, that applying less fertiliser appears not to reduce crop yields; this is described in box 1 of our report. Over the past 40 years, crop yields have tended to increase irrespective of the amount of fertiliser applied. Perhaps, as the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, said, many other factors—rainfall, temperature and so on—affect variation in crop yield. But when fertiliser application went down because of the price increase following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, crop yields were apparently unaffected.
This suggests that factors other than fertiliser use are limiting productivity and, therefore, that farmers are applying too much fertiliser. Why would they do this? We were told by several witnesses that at least part of the problem may be that farmers do not have easy access to appropriate and trusted advice on nitrogen management. The Government agree with this conclusion that clearer advice for farmers is needed. In their reply to our report, they say:
“Defra are developing an online, free-to-use, nutrient management planning tool for Great Britain (NMPT-GB)”—
catchy title. They go on:
“NMPT-GB will be designed to help farmers and land managers in England, Wales, and Scotland to plan and manage nutrient use on their land”.
The tool, which was launched in a public beta version last month, sounds very good but, as far as I could ascertain, it does not contain any new information about fertiliser application. Instead, it uses the pre-existing Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board’s Nutrient Management Guide (RB209). This guide has been available since 2017, but I was not able to find out whether it has been successful in persuading farmers to reduce nitrogen pollution from fertiliser application. I therefore ask the Minister: has there been an assessment of the impact of the AHDB guide so far?
The guide does, however, provide clear advice on how much fertiliser to apply. This is set out on page 16 of the document in a section entitled “Principles of nutrient management and fertiliser use”. The guide states the following:
“The crop nitrogen requirement is the amount of nitrogen that should be applied to give the on-farm economic optimum yield”;
this is the point at which the marginal financial cost of adding more fertiliser would not pay for itself in the marginal financial returns of increased crop yield. In other words, the advice from the AHDB is to maximise net financial gain per hectare; of course, this ignores the other costs of producing the crops, such as machinery and labour. The detailed guidance also provides recommended inputs of nitrogen and other nutrients according to crop type, soil type and rainfall. So the information is out there; it is the just the case that, apparently, farmers either do not use it or do not know about it.
However—I return to the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Leicester—when we heard evidence from the fertiliser industry, it suggested an alternative metric: nitrogen use efficiency. This is the ratio of nitrogen input to nitrogen output. For me—this is the reason why I debated this measure with the committee—the problem with this measure is that it does not tell you about profitability per hectare, which is the thing in which I would have expected farmers to be interested and on which the AHDB guidance is based. Does the Minister agree with me that maximising net financial gain per hectare, as in the AHDB guidance, is a more appropriate guidance metric than maximising nitrogen use efficiency, as claimed by the fertiliser industry?
However, this is not the end of the story. As I have already mentioned, the societal cost of nitrogen pollution is borne not only by the farmer but by the rest of us. The “polluter pays” principle, which is one of the five environmental principles that Ministers should consider when making policy, suggests that these costs should be borne by those who produce the pollution. I therefore ask the Minister whether it would be appropriate to amend the guidance on fertiliser use in future to reflect not just the direct costs of the fertiliser to the farmer but the total cost to the country. Perhaps, if the costs of nitrogen pollution and fertiliser use reflected its true impact and cost to society, as well as the specific cost to farmers, we would see more judicious management of nitrogen and less damaging nitrogen pollution. I look forward to the Minister’s reply and to other contributions to this debate.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I sincerely thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the committee for forcing to the forefront an issue on which it has long been evident that action is urgently needed in the UK and around the world. I join the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, in saying that we have had a comprehensive introduction to a comprehensive report. But because I am a Green, I am going to go further and get into some broader systematic and international issues before coming back to some of the key points, which have already been raised but need to be stressed.
I thank the Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance for its excellent briefing on this issue, which starts by describing the nitrogen paradox: something so essential to life and food production is also a major pollutant. It is a threat to the life and well-being of humans in the UK, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, just set out, and to the health and well-being of the ecosystems on which we are all ultimately dependent. Nitrogen makes a perfect case study for the current broken state of our food system—indeed, our current broken economic system. It shows the disastrous outcome of producing more, selling more and consequently dumping more into the environment.
Noble Lords may be aware of the brilliant little video “The Story of Stuff”. You could make a similar, if perhaps for some tastes a little too excrement-filled, video about nitrogen. It goes right through to the adverts that noble Lords in the Committee have almost certainly seen today, plugging ultra-processed food-like substances sold wrapped in plastic and shouting in large letters “high protein” as though they were health foods. This is despite the fact that protein consumption in the UK is around 1.5 times our dietary needs, with the resultant nitrogen-rich waste flowing into the sewage system, into wastewater treatment plants and, all too often, directly into our rivers and seas. We know that these products and advertisements for them are damaging our public environmental health, yet away they blaze. As comprehensive and informed as the committee’s report is, that may be stretching beyond the direct topic of today, although it is essential to it.
I will go back to what noble Lords might call “the other end”, and something that has already been raised several times: the Haber-Bosch process. The so-called miracle that enabled the “green revolution”—I am putting that in scare quotes as it used vast quantities of fossil fuels to produce nitrogen fertiliser that would further heat the planet, destroy soil ecosystems and enable the development of industrial food systems disastrous for human health—was anything but green.
With the greatest respect, I have to respond directly to the contribution of the noble Earl, Lord Leicester. He said—of course, he is right—that, if you put the same crop in the same field in the same farming system and you put more or less nitrogen on it, you get differences in yield. Of course you do, because that is the primitive system of outdated 20th-century science behind our current arable farming systems. The noble Earl also spoke about crop rotations but we need far broader rotations. We are going to need many different crops in the climate change world that we are in now.
We need agro-ecological systems that work with nature instead of trying to turn it into a factory. I point the Committee to a single book that sets this direction of travel out very clearly: Miraculous Abundance, whose subtitle is One Quarter Acre, Two French Farmers, and Enough Food to Feed the World. It uses the fact that plants have evolved on land over some 500 million years to get their nitrogen and other essential nutrients by working co-operatively with fungi and bacteria in immensely complex systems. What we have done is throw nitrogen and other chemicals on those soils and destroyed those systems—then we have nutrient-deficient plants.
The Earl of Leicester (Con)
I just make the point that the whole point of regenerative agriculture is to regenerate those mycorrhizal fungi and the soil. If the noble Baroness is saying that we cannot and should not use artificial nitrogen—I am advocating for using less of it—half the world will starve.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
There is a whole other debate there, but I go back to an Italian proverb from the 1930s: “Artificial fertiliser is good for the father and bad for the son”. I entirely agree with the noble Earl that we have to restore those systems, but they cannot work with the application of artificial nitrogen.
I shall now agree with the noble Earl to balance things out. He spoke about nitrogen as the elephant in the room. I agree with that, although I would use a different metaphor: the idea of a nitrogen bomb. We have to fit within the world’s planetary limits. We need to be fixing only 62 million tonnes of nitrogen on land a year; here, I am of course talking on a global scale. That is the process by which atmospheric nitrogen is converted into nitrogen as compounds by either microbes or human industrial processes. We cannot do more than 62 million tonnes but we are currently fixing at least 300 million tonnes—five times as much as the world can bear.
This is where I come to a question for the Minister; indeed, let me make a constructive suggestion. The International Nitrogen Management System project was set up by the UN to do, in essence, what the IPPC did for carbon emissions: set global targets. It set out targets in the Colombo Declaration, which the UK has not signed. We are operating in a global environment in which we are seeing massive cuts in international aid and development support. One area in which the UK could show real leadership and support is acting on a diplomatic scale, with very modest spending, to encourage that international effort. I know and understand that the committee was focused on the UK, but it is important to look at this on a global scale.
I draw noble Lords’ attention to that awful single graphic of planetary boundaries from the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Seven of the nine boundaries it has identified have been exceeded. Biogeochemical flows are where the dark orange for danger extends, with the “N” as far beyond the safe operating space as the other screaming graphical element, “Novel entities”, for which, again, the so-called green revolution bears significant blame.
I have said slightly more than I intended; I have focused on the big picture. I shall finish by focusing on some of the specifics in this report. I hope that we will hear some good news from the Minister. We have already heard from other noble Lords that we expect from the Minister today a cross-government, holistic nitrogen strategy across sectors; that is obviously needed. I note the fact that Scotland is using the national nitrogen balance sheet approach, which seems to be working. Surely that would add value for England. Can the Minister update the Committee on what assessment the Government have made of the Scottish approach? Do they intend to pilot or adopt a similar framework in England? What timetable is there for considering that?
We have heard clearly—credit where it is due—that the Government plan to include nutrient circularity in their circular economy strategy, although I note that that is apparently turning into a circular economy growth plan. I refer back to where I started: we are creating a problem whereby growing the whole system is only going to grow the problem. None the less, I should like to hear from the Minister today, whether it is called a growth plan or a strategy, whether the Government plan to apply the waste hierarchy to this work so that reduction is given overwhelming priority in what is happening with nitrogen in this system.
Also, do the Government plan to apply the strongest possible controls to prevent so-called pollution swapping, thereby ensuring that solutions applied to one sector of the economy do not drive environmental harm in another? There is a particular concern here around energy recovery from manure incineration, which means burning a useful nutrient and rich resource for energy recovery and means that those nutrients are not then going into agriculture or nature; you are generating air pollution, carbon dioxide emissions and a phosphorous-rich ash that needs another outlet.
Noble Lords may think that I have been controversial up to now, but I am going back to controversy because I return to that issue of growth. We are soon going to hear some more about slurry and the issues of intensive animal agriculture. We are in the nation of England, where the number of large, intensive livestock mega farms is continuing to grow despite the unsustainable pollution impacts of those units. I note that the Environmental Audit Committee has said that there should be a presumption against expansion, at least in polluted catchments.
This inquiry supports the Corry and Cunliffe reviews’ recommendations for gap analysis of the existing regulations on agricultural water pollution and for the current rules for other intensive livestock farms to be extended to intensive beef and dairy units. That is a step but, ultimately, I put it to the Minister that we must acknowledge that the factory farming of animals is a nitrogen problem, a huge pollution problem, an antimicrobial resistance problem and, of course, a huge animal welfare problem—although I acknowledge that the Government put out before Christmas some good animal welfare provisions, which were somewhat buried in the Christmas rush; I look forward to seeing them be put into force at speed.
I have probably spoken for long enough but I want to add one final point; it picks up points made powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, about the human health impacts of all this. As others have already said, this issue causes 30,000 deaths a year in the UK. Those people are someone’s grandmother or child. We have long known about the impacts on asthma of nitrogen dioxide pollution, in particular PM2.5; we are also increasingly coming to understand just how important this is in terms of cardiovascular, respiratory and even musculoskeletal diseases. All of the evidence regarding the human health impacts is there—and is growing fast. We are taking steps, particularly in reducing the burning of fossil fuels. We are going to see a reduction in the sources of other forms of this pollution, which will only mean that the issues we are addressing here around agricultural emissions are going to rise up the agenda and rise in terms of their percentage impact on human health.
Lord Ashcombe (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to serve as a member of the Environment and Climate Change Committee and to speak in this debate. I place on record my thanks to the excellent staff who supported us throughout the nitrogen inquiry.
Nitrogen pollution is a vast subject and it is impossible to cover it fully in the time available. I will focus briefly on the agricultural sector and the regulatory framework surrounding nitrogen pollution. There are four major sources of reactive nitrogen released into the air, land or water. Agriculture is the dominant contributor to three of these: ammonia and nitrous oxides to the air and nitrates to water. Agriculture accounts for around 70% or more of these emissions. The fourth source is nitrogen oxides, regularly referred to as NOx, arising mainly from road transport and industrial processes.
We are considering the damage and potential damage to the ecosystems and biodiversity. Agricultural nitrogen pollution arises largely from animal husbandry, particularly manure and slurry, and separately from the application of artificial fertilisers. To feed the growing population in the United Kingdom and globally, soils require nutrients. Fertilisers, natural or artificial, can enhance plant growth, providing food for both livestock and people.
The difficulty lies in managing the waste products—manure and slurry—and fertiliser applications in ways that reduce run-off and emissions. In England, most manure is produced in the west, while nutrient demand is greatest in the east, where arable crops dominate. In theory, manure can be transported across the country, but in practice the cost and energy required to process and move it are prohibitive, particularly for smaller farms. Farmers must be able to make a living within the system, and this creates a difficult dilemma.
There are national and international targets for reducing excess reactive nitrogen. As the report states:
“The UK aims to halve nutrient pollution from all sources by 2030, as part of the … Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework”.
However, the Office for Environmental Protection’s 2025 assessment shows that, aside from NOx emissions, which have fallen by 73% and are on track, all other forms of nitrogen pollution are only partially on track or largely off track of the targets. There is clearly much to do.
The inquiry heard encouraging evidence from, among others, my noble friend Lord Fuller, who will speak later today, that fertiliser application rates are slowly but consistently falling. Soil-testing is becoming more widespread, enabling nutrients to be applied more precisely, technology is helping farmers target fertiliser more accurately and expert advice is becoming more available and, I believe, accepted by farmers. My noble friend Lord Leicester is a demonstration of such. These measures reduce run-off and lower costs, benefiting both the environment and farm businesses.
Livestock farming presents a greater challenge: the quantities involved are significant and the reductions in emissions since 1990 have been modest at best, yet the urgency is clear. Some members of the committee visited the Netherlands, where we saw an example of the damaging effects of nitrogen pollution, including harm to oak trees in the De Hoge Veluwe National Park. I believe that such impacts are not yet seen in the UK, but we should do everything possible to prevent similar outcomes. That situation would have to be deemed a catastrophic failure should it occur here.
The Dutch achieved a reduction of around 60% in ammonia emissions between 1990 and 2017, largely through covering slurry stores and requiring slurry to be injected into the soil rather than spread on the surface. Even so, they are now seeking further measures to reduce nitrogen pollution. They are struggling to find the next effective measure to reduce emissions by another significant amount. There appears to be no easy solution—and they are trying.
The inquiry also highlighted the weakness in governance. Responsibility for nitrogen pollution is spread across numerous government departments and agencies, resulting in what witnesses described as a “piecemeal and fragmented” policy landscape. As acknowledged by the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs, there is a real challenge in how departments and agencies work together. Unsurprisingly, therefore, compliance with existing regulations is inconsistent and enforcement often inadequate.
The report identifies three priorities for government action. The first is simplifying the regulatory system and strengthening enforcement. Although this has been accepted, I remain, I am afraid, sceptical about whether the Environment Agency has the capacity and the resources to deliver the necessary improvements.
Secondly, the report calls for a circular approach to nitrogen management. The Government have merely noted this recommendation, yet this approach lies at the heart of the report and its title, “Reduce, Recycle, Reuse”. The experience of the Netherlands shows the consequences of failing to act decisively and early enough; I urge the Minister to give this recommendation further consideration.
Thirdly, the report recommends a more strategic approach to nitrogen pollution. Although the Government have partially agreed to this, they have rejected the use of a nitrogen balance sheet to quantify nitrogen flows and their economic and environmental impacts. Scotland’s experience demonstrates that a tool can clarify the scale of the problem and help prioritise action. I seldom agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, but in this case I do—and strongly.
From an agricultural perspective, the report also recommends reducing nitrogen inputs, maximising efficiency through best practice and prioritising low-hanging fruit measures, such as covering slurry stores and adopting low-emission spreading techniques. The Government have only partially agreed to these recommendations. In my view, that is totally insufficient. Clear targets and realistic timelines are needed. I therefore ask the Minister to comment further on this lack of commitment.
Finally, the difficult position of the farming community is well understood. Farmers are increasingly aware of the impact on their industry, their ecosystems and their biodiversity, yet margins are tight and returns are low. It is unclear how they are expected to navigate an increasingly complex regulatory environment while funding the significant investment that would be required. Meaningful progress will, I fear, require sustained and practical government participation and support.
Lord Trees (CB)
My Lords, I am pleased to say that it is a great pleasure and privilege to sit on this committee. I thank our chair for her huge amount of hard work and excellence in chairing; I also thank the clerking team, our policy analyst and Mark Sutton, our expert adviser.
There is a notable irony to the issues around nitrogen—sometimes referred to as “the nitrogen paradox”, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said—in that nitrogen is an important chemical element that comprises nearly 80% of the atmosphere, is harmless and is essential for many biological functions, but too much of it in the wrong form, in the wrong place, at the wrong time is deleterious to the health of humans and the environment, is economically wasteful and exacerbates climate change. It can become a pollutant to be dealt with, yet it is a potentially valuable resource.
Although there are a number of other sources of nitrogen derivatives, I want to concentrate on agriculture, since the majority of ammonia and nitrous oxide in the air—as well as the majority of nitrate pollution in water—comes from agriculture, as my noble friend Lord Krebs pointed out. We expend time, money and much energy on capturing innocuous nitrogen from the atmosphere and then turning it into fertiliser, which we sometimes apply excessively, leading to derivative nitrogen compounds creating problems.
Nitrogen cycles are complex, and nitrogen balance sheets can be constructed to understand the sources, flows and sinks of nitrogen and its derived compounds in order to prioritise actions. That has been done by the Scottish Government but the UK Government did not accept our report’s recommendations to create a nitrogen balance sheet for England. I find it difficult to understand how a Government can then assess the most cost-effective interventions that can be advocated or supported without such a balance sheet. However, I note that His Majesty’s Government acknowledged the need to consider how the nitrogen balance sheet is working in Scotland. Have the Government reached a conclusion yet about this since the Scottish nitrogen balance sheet has been operating for some four years and a considerable amount of data is now available to assess it?
Notwithstanding that, many witnesses to our report have advocated for a circular economy approach. The Government acknowledge such an approach and that it is essential to have a holistic systems approach in order to achieve that. However, His Majesty’s Government have argued that the Circular Economy Taskforce, which will produce what I think is now called the circular economy growth plan, will address nitrogen pollution. Can the Minister tell us what progress has been made in developing approaches to include the nitrogen problem in agriculture and to develop a specific roadmap for farming, which has been promised for 2026?
There are several key challenges facing the agriculture sector to address nitrogen pollution. The first is how to reduce the excessive application of synthetic fertiliser while increasing the use of low-emission applications; as has been said, 45% of fertiliser applied to land is lost to the environment. Secondly, though, there is a need to better store, use and refine livestock waste as fertiliser. Meeting these challenges partly requires the consolidation of policy regulations regarding air and water pollutants, but I will leave that for others to discuss. The noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, has touched upon that issue.
I want to concentrate on technical applications and solutions that could be encouraged and partly enabled by the Government and communicated to and by farmers. Precision farming methods provide a means of determining appropriate amounts of fertiliser to be applied to relevant crops and soils. An application by injection can reduce leakage to the environment. Low-emission spreading technologies are critical in this respect. Covering slurry tanks substantially reduces emissions of both nitrogen pollutants and other greenhouse gases such as methane. However, covering slurry tanks should be coupled with low-emission spreading for optimum effect.
Additionally, new design standards for livestock housing can reduce airborne pollutants, as we saw in our visit to Netherlands. We also saw there that the requirements that I have just described have been implemented successfully, which has led to a reduction in ammonia emissions by 64%.
In the UK, while funding to cover slurry tanks is available for new slurry stores, it is not available, as I understand it, for existing stores. Covering all slurry stores could bring immediate effects in reducing nitrogen and other greenhouse gas emissions. The revised Environment Improvement Plan stated that the Government would support farmers to invest in low-emission equipment and infrastructure, such as slurry covers, through capital grants. I ask the Minister what progress has been made in that respect.
A better, more circular use of nitrogen is complicated in the UK by the geography of agricultural land use in Britain, as the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, referred to. Fertilisers are needed particularly for arable crops in the south and east, and synthetic fertilisers are applied in large quantities there, whereas much of our manure is produced in the west of England, where the majority of livestock are, although the distribution is less marked for pigs and poultry.
Making better use of animal waste is compromised by its sheer bulk, which is mainly water, because this makes mass transport challenging and costly. In 2014 in the Netherlands, legislation was introduced to require the separation and drying of slurry. The creation of dry pelleted animal-derived fertiliser has created a new economic activity, which enables organic fertilisers to be easily and economically transported from their source to the point of need. This reduces imports of synthetic fertiliser and mitigates the insecurity in the supply volatility of international fertiliser.
It is encouraging that, in the UK in 2024, 8% of farms were concentrating and drying slurry. In our inquiry, we heard about encouraging innovative commercial developments, notably from one UK company which makes pellets from organic fertiliser and expects to produce its product at the same cost as synthetic fertiliser within a year. Use of this capital-intensive technology will require the collaboration of multiple primary sources of manure or slurry and commercial plants. The downscaling of such plants, as is being developed and looked at in the Netherlands, could make the production of pelleted organic fertiliser viable by single large enterprises or co-operatives of a few farms. What measures have the Government introduced —or are they considering introducing—to encourage these practices in the UK? They would be a game-changer in facilitating a circular economy for nitrogen.
In conclusion, a comprehensive nitrogen strategy should be an important part of farming, environmental and water strategies and should link up these entities. It is regrettable that His Majesty’s Government are not inclined to develop this. The farming road map due in 2026 will be significant in defining tactics to derive a more circular economy in the agri sector. We look forward to His Majesty’s Government’s considerations of the effectiveness of the national nitrogen balance sheet in Scotland. What are the Government doing to facilitate information, knowledge exchange and best practice to advise farmers how to reduce nitrogen pollution and to address some of the low-hanging fruit issues?
Finally, recognising the old adage “where there is muck, there is money”, with imagination, enterprise, commercial initiatives and appropriate government incentives, real progress could be made in creating an environmentally and economically successful circular economy for nitrogen in the agriculture sector.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of Brineflow Ltd and a director of farming company Sentry Ltd. I have spent over 30 years in the fertiliser industry. In the last 12 months, I have participated in some of the highest-rated fertiliser-related videos on YouTube. They are not mucky videos; they are very educational. I encourage noble Lords to look at them.
I congratulate the committee on this valuable report and note the Government’s response. It has been nearly 40 years since your Lordships published the Nitrate in Water report. It was the 16th report in 1989. I will not go further as I know the Companion says that I should not use visual aids, but I remember the report well, as I was an agriculture student at Reading whose dissertation was on nitrogen. The report featured on “The Week in Westminster”, so I wrote to the chairman, Lord Middleton, and he kindly sent me a copy.
I tell the story because it demonstrates the historical as well as the current importance of this issue. It shows how little has changed in some respects, but in others plenty has—including the media’s interest in this subject. As we heard earlier in this debate, life without nitrogen is not just unsustainable; it is impossible. It comprises 80% of the air we breathe. It is almost paradoxical that we need to reduce, recycle and reuse something that is so ubiquitous and abundant. That is why the committee was wise to use the term “reactive nitrogen” rather than risk confusion with the somewhat inert gaseous form.
Looking back to 1989, that report came at a time when the applications of nitrogen fertilisers were coming off record usage peaks. More than 1.5 million tonnes of elemental nitrogen were applied, much of it from four UK-based factories, before set-aside and other modulations such as nitrate vulnerable zones had been introduced. Back then, noble Lords were concerned about levels of nitrates in water; the consequences of ploughing up grassland or ploughing in vegetables; the use of winter cover crops; and limiting applications of fertilisers and manures with controls on livestock. Forty years on, the team of the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, is now familiar with all of these issues.
Back then, it was natural that artificial fertilisers were looked at. The fertiliser regulations that we use even today date from 1990, the year after Lord Middleton’s report was published. This new report highlights the same issues but they are joined by other concerns around, for example, diffuse pollution. This is implicated in eutrophication, which is when algae combine nitrogen with phosphates to bloom into impenetrable blanket weed. If I may say so, it is this important interaction with phosphates from detergents that causes the greening of the rivers that causes so much concern. The report might have made more of that because it is not just about animal waste, important though that is.
NOx in the air is also highlighted, although it comes mainly from exhaust pollution and intensive livestock production—something that the Government’s response accepts. We welcome the recommendation to cover slurry lagoons even though this Government have cancelled the grants that would have made doing so easier. I will return to the release of ammonia from urea fertilisers later. The adverse consequences of the application of sewage sludges to land are now appreciated much more fully.
I have declared my interest but—unfairly, in my view—artificial fertilisers often cop the blame for this. The truth is more complicated than it seems. The industry of which I am a part has made great strides in getting its house in order; indeed, the fertiliser industry is totally committed to increasing nutrient use efficiency by 1% a year for each of the next 20 years by using better husbandry techniques and emerging technologies to keep crops greener for longer and using things such as urease inhibitors, biological signalling compounds, new application practices and new technologies including abatement.
There is an increase in the use of liquid fertiliser, with lower emission profiles and nothing rattling in the hedges, combined with better advisory training and prescription-based approaches—that is, focusing much less on what father and grandad did. There is a system of industry-led FACTS advisers with a level 5 qualification. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Trees, about precision application. There is a FIAS scheme. There are also detonation resistance rests and, yes, the Fertilisers Regulations 1990. We hear that those regulations will be reviewed to bring organics, slurries, sludges and digestates into scope, which is to be welcomed.
I am pleased that the committee recognised that the use of artificial fertiliser has fallen by 33% since 1989 to less than 1 million tonnes of elemental nitrogen. Land taken out of production is one explanation for that, but it is only part of the story. Our four domestic fertiliser factories have all closed and we no longer have a domestic primary production industry at all. The report correctly tells us that this has reduced the industrial emissions of NOx gasses here in the UK. However, without the Haber-Bosch process, which captures the nitrogen from the air we breathe, the world could sustain perhaps only 3 billion or 4 billion people—and there are 10 billion of us currently. The reality and trade-off is that, without mineral nitrogen, six or seven people in 10—the equivalent of 16 people in this Room—would have to go if we did not have artificial fertilisers. That is a sobering thought.
The report enumerates well the problems of excess nitrogen but, if I may say so, it might have missed an opportunity to tell the positive story: in aggregate, nitrogen makes cultivated land work harder, driving food security and sustaining the population. So you do not need as much land under the plough, leaving much more of it for amenity and nature uses. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that that is why RB209 is still largely correct, because it optimises the economic response while allowing more land to be left for nature.
One big change since 1988-89 is that there are many more sources of organic manures, aggravated by the time of year their nutrients are released to the environment. In contrast with the 1 million tonnes of elemental nitrogen used today, there are 4 million tonnes of sewage sludge, over 200 million tonnes of farmyard manure and slurries applied to land and, increasingly, 20 million tonnes of new nitrogen and phosphate-rich digestates. This is rocket fuel for algae, with the paradox that these anaerobic digestion plants—so-called green energy—are turning our rivers green with unmanageable volumes of slop. The report could have said a little more about this shift—not necessarily about the absolute quantities of organic manure, slurries, digestates and sewage waste, but about the consequences of getting it wrong in terms of timing and seasonality.
Many of these organic manures are applied to the soil by regulation at a time when, on account of cold soils, mostly at field capacity in the winter, there are no growing crops to absorb the excess nutrients so they go through the soil profile like a hot knife through butter into the groundwater and run off into rivers. If ever there was an example of unintended consequence, this is it.
I welcome the committee’s recognition that having too many environmental advisers from so many departments and agencies, parroting ever more complex and conflicting advice, makes the situation worse and makes it harder to extract value from these products, which are a resource and not waste. The committee has correctly highlighted the complicated “piecemeal and fragmented” policy and regulatory landscape, which has contributed to creating more perverse incentives that go against the Environment Act objectives of purer water, cleaner air and less waste. It is no wonder that the regulations need to be reformed and the committee has done a valuable service in highlighting this in a most timely manner, as the Government accepted in their response.
Time prevents me going down the rabbit hole of nutrient neutrality—one of my specialist subjects—but, in a slight change of tack, now is probably a good moment to warn of the ultimate perverse incentive that threatens materially to undo the progress that has been made, and which the committee seeks to make use of, in the pursuit of cleaner air to breathe. We have the prospect of a misdirected introduction of new carbon border adjustment mechanism taxes on 1 January next year, ostensibly to “reduce carbon leakage” in the UK. There is no UK fertiliser production any more so it will do nothing to reduce global carbon emissions.
These taxes, driven by the Treasury—which did not feature in the committee’s regulator list in paragraph 180 on page 76, but should now do so—and DESNZ, have constructed an unmanageable scheme that creates a bizarre fiscal incentive to use the most polluting urea fertilisers, which are restricted by Defra’s option 4 on account of their adverse effects on NOx and ammonia. It is madness. Not only will they make the farmer’s most expensive input about a quarter more expensive but they will push up the price of food that every family consumes every day in an inflationary spiral, in a direct assault on the cost of living by a Prime Minister who says that that is what he wants to focus on.
No wonder farmers cannot make sense of the rules when even the Government cannot get their story straight. On the one hand they are trying to reduce NOx emissions while on the other making it more fiscally attractive to use the most polluting kind of fertilisers that drive particulates and respiratory problems. I am bound to say that the good work done by this report will be undone if the astonishing failure of His Majesty’s Treasury, Defra, DESNZ and, to a lesser extent, MHCLG to talk to each other on this point is not addressed. It is the classic case of the Government’s left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
Worst of all, they are penalising the greenest producers such as Proman in Trinidad, which captures all the CO2 from the steam reformation of natural gas—the precursor to the Haber-Bosch process—and turns it into valuable economic products including clean-burning methanol to power the latest generation of cargo ships. No CO2 is released there. None of this is the fault of the committee, because CBAM is so new, but I wonder whether, with its new-found expertise, the committee might be minded to reconvene to cover this narrow point before we make a terrible mistake that takes our environmental air quality backwards through perverse taxes. It could do the economy and the environment a valuable service by looking at these consequences before it is too late.
In conclusion, this is one of my specialist subjects and, possibly with a few minor changes in emphasis, the committee has masterfully collated the various technical, environmental, commercial and regulatory issues that transcend so many different specialisms. I congratulate the committee and am only disappointed that its important report did not feature on “The Week in Westminster” as its forebears’ did nearly 40 years ago.
Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, who gave such excellent evidence to our committee. It is a pleasure to serve on the Environment and Climate Change Committee under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and my thanks go to our clerks.
All on the committee are all too conscious of the impact that action on climate change now—or, alas, inadequate action now—will have on the environment of the United Kingdom and the environment more widely over the next 50 years or so. But how encouraging and compelling is the focus on and concern about the environment from the young? That is regularly brought home to those of us who attend the committee’s meetings with secondary school children. It is, after all, the young who will live through the consequences of our action or inaction today.
As a number of noble Lords have said already, some of us saw the potential effects of excess nitrogen when we visited the De Hoge Veluwe National Park in the Netherlands during our inquiry. The park was lovely but nitrogen leeching from waterways had killed the grasslands. There were reeds waving but there was no green. Circumstances here are different but that was a clear warning of why action is necessary now. We do not want that to happen here.
Partly with that in mind, during our inquiry, I invited Professor Jeremy Biggs, the CEO of the Freshwater Habitats Trust, following the evidence he gave to our committee, to visit the chalk stream pond in Ewelme, where I live. Children were present there to watch. Fortunately, the nitrogen levels, though high, were not disastrously so. But when I asked Professor Biggs how long it would be before the nitrogen levels in the chalk stream pond reverted to a satisfactory level, even if all the agricultural run-off from the catchment area stopped today, he said, “decades”.
Nitrogen pollution in much of the country, particularly the Wye Valley, is suffering from the run-off from chicken farms. That is far more serious for water quality, fish life and biodiversity more widely—hence our report and the need for urgent, properly co-ordinated action. Like others, I am grateful for the Government’s reply to our report. I have also read the Environmental Improvement Plan and been impressed by the Cunliffe and Corry reports, and I look forward to the various reports still to come.
However, I have two main concerns. The first is that reports may well be needed, and many of them are good, but they must lead to action and not be a substitute for action. I am sure that the Minister will assure me that that will not be the case, but I hope that she will focus in her closing remarks on the actions the Government are taking to respond to the urgent need for improved water quality and more effective advice to farmers on the right level of nitrous and other fertilisers. I hope, too—this my second point—that the Minister can tell us what action is planned or, better, is under way to simplify the regulatory landscape.
As the Government’s response to our report says, the Corry report
“found the current system to be complex and duplicative”.
The Government’s response to our report says that:
“Work is underway to implement or consider next steps”.
I hope that the Minister can tell us that implementation is now under way and not about yet more consideration.
I end where I started. I have been reading Lord Sumption’s excellent series of essays on the challenges of democracy. In one essay, he says:
“The major challenge to democracy in the coming years will, I believe, be climate change”.
He says:
“This is because although all humanity has a common interest in dealing with climate change, they do not have a common interest in the measures necessary to do it”.
He is right in his diagnosis. I profoundly hope that he is wrong in his conclusions. I am encouraged by the report in today’s Guardian of a survey that suggests that far more people today accept the need for action on climate change than politicians realise. However—and I know this goes wider than nitrogen—could the Minister assure us that the Government will not only take the measures needed in the United Kingdom to combat climate change but will continue to impress on other countries, difficult though that may be, the need to do so too? The next generations need to know that.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, I apologise for speaking in the gap on this important report. I, too, thank the committee, the clerks and our policy analyst.
For too long, nitrogen has remained the invisible pollutant, a silent driver of environmental degradation. While nitrogen is fundamental to life and food production, our mismanagement has transferred it into the nitrogen octopus, as one of our witnesses put it, whose damaging tentacles harm our air, soil and water. It is clearly time for a more innovative approach so we can escape the nitrogen paradox. Nitrogen is essential for life, yet it is also a super-pollutant, driving damage to human health, biodiversity loss, river pollution and climate change. In agriculture, nitrogen losses account for nearly two-thirds of water pollution, and three-quarters of the emissions of nitrous oxide—a greenhouse gas almost 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. This is not just an environmental crisis; it is an economic one as well. As we have heard, we waste some £420 million of fertiliser every year, while the total cost of nitrogen mismanagement has very serious economic costs and consequences for human health.
We offer the Government a transformative approach, moving us away from excess use and degradation towards a circular economy, whereby nitrogen is valued rather than wasted. Simple ideas, such as a regional nitrogen-spreading weather forecast, letting farmers know when and when not to spread fertiliser to reduce run-off, could produce tangible benefits—both financial savings and environmental gains. We must also recover nitrogen from sewage sludge, food waste and animal manure.
Agricultural nitrogen use efficiency is low, dropping to 11% in some cases, depending on circumstances. This is a resource that farmers are wasting. I welcome the Government’s initial response and recent progress, including doubling the Environment Agency’s farm inspections to 6,000 per year by 2029. I also welcome the consultation on extending environmental permitting to intensive beef and dairy units, and including nutrient circularity in the forthcoming circular economy strategy. However, the Government’s response lacks the urgency and innovation needed to meet our statutory obligations.
We are off-track on nitrogen pollution goals and a piecemeal approach will not suffice. More must be done. Critically, the Government rejected our core recommendation for a holistic national nitrogen strategy, claiming not to see the value in it. I ask the Minister to reconsider. Nitrogen moves fluidly between air, land and water. Treating these in departmental silos is exactly why we have failed to treat this problem to date. We need an integrated policy, connecting transport and the water industry under one coherent policy framework. The nitrogen octopus travels freely through our environment, causing damage, while policy remains contained within its silos.
Central to this must be a UK nitrogen balance sheet, which is another of our core recommendations. As we have heard, Scotland has acted, mapping flows across its economies to identify where interventions have the greatest impact. Without a balance sheet, policy efforts are like managing the national budget without a balance of payments. Its value is clear and data is essential for prioritising actions, so I ask the Minister to monitor the Scottish experience and to look firmly at the need to bring in the balance sheet.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, I too am grateful for the chance to speak in the gap. I concur with all the thanks given to such expert and helpful colleagues. My focus is on the impact of nitrogen dioxide on the indoor environment, as this has been less fully considered than the impact of nitrogen on the outside environment.
We noted the lack of precise standards for these emissions from gas cookers, domestic boilers and wood-burning stoves, and the lack of statutory underpinning for national and international guidelines. We had evidence from academic experts and local authorities of the effect on respiratory and cardiac health, in particular on the incidence and severity of asthma among adults as well as children. Our national limits are four times higher than the WHO guidelines, but we saw a reference to 4,000 premature deaths and 16,000 cases of asthma from nitrogen dioxide emanating from gas cookers. Further research and incentives for changing to electricity were sought. Over half of households cook with gas in this country, and it is widely used in commercial kitchens and schools, where there is no monitoring. The Government acknowledged the increased risks, and we are grateful for the tone of Minister Hardy’s replies to our letters. She also described commissioned research which established that there was not enough data to set standards but that there were grounds for encouraging electrification. The solution was to wait for the revised clean air strategy in 2028.
Under the Environment Act 2021, we are required to set evidence-based and achievable targets to ensure lasting improvement to public health, but 2028 is a long way off for those children whose asthma risk will be increased by their gas cookers. Should we not emulate the progress in London’s outdoor air quality, now for the first time with legal limits for nitrogen oxide, and establish proper data to set standards and devise their implementation, rather than waiting for examples of ill health to accumulate? What consideration can be given to providing incentives to change gas for electric cookers?
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Environment and Climate Change Committee for its excellent work in producing this report. I thank its members for their contributions to this debate, as well as those who submitted valuable evidence to help assess ways in which we can reduce nitrogen pollution.
I am pleased to highlight that the 2023 data shows that we met our commitment to reduce annual emissions of nitrogen oxide by 55%, based on 2005 levels, under the Gothenburg protocol to the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution.
Before I continue, I draw the Committee’s attention to my registered interests as a dairy and livestock farmer and as an investor in the soil-testing company Agricarbon and the nature finance companies Karner and Cecil.
This report’s recommendations affect a range of sectors, including agriculture, wastewater and transport, which are identified as the main contributors to nitrogen pollution in England. To take into account the holistic nature of this issue, we welcome the report’s recommendation for a cross-departmental, circular approach to nitrogen pollution; this will help deliver better outcomes for farmers, public health, nature, wildlife and the climate. We also agree that, at present, there is a lack of a clear policy direction from the Government to give businesses the certainty they need. We strongly endorse the report’s recommendation to simplify the regulatory system.
The Government’s response does not reject any of the report’s conclusions, but it does not fully agree with each of them. As Conservatives, we welcome the Government’s emphasis on the need for value for money and on streamlining different outputs where possible, such as by merging the recommended nitrogen strategy into the upcoming circular economy strategy for England. However, I express concern about the approach towards the agricultural sector in particular. Throughout their response to the report, the Government highlight their existing commitment to increase over three years funding for the Environment Agency to conduct farm inspections, with a target of 6,000 by 2029. Although we recognise that farms must adhere to the rules, we are concerned that this approach uses a stick rather than offering a carrot to hard-working farmers. The Government must ensure that these inspections are led by advice—for example, in increasing farmers’ awareness of the potential profitability benefits of regenerative farming practices; improving soil structure and fertility; and supporting yields while reducing reliance on manufactured fertiliser.
I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Leicester for his pioneering role in regenerative farming in this country—perhaps the new Norfolk system. I should also draw attention to another of my interests: I am an investor in SLC Agrícola, a Brazilian farming company on 2 million acres that is, surprisingly, already regenerative. It is very much its own scale and access to technology, as well as the best advice, that enables it to be so.
When it comes to incentivising transitions to greener practices, we should recognise that farmers already use nitrogen fertiliser judiciously and that its use has fallen by 50% since 1990, as highlighted in the evidence given by Tom Bradshaw. Moreover, we are still awaiting details on the reformed sustainable farming incentive offer. Can the Minister confirm whether the Government are considering compensating farmers for reductions in fertiliser use through the SFIs that are yet to be published? Can she also indicate the role of existing and new market-based nutrient neutrality schemes in helping to meet these targets, while also providing financial incentives to land managers?
Industry contacts have informed me that the inclusion of support for nature-based solutions in the Water (Special Measures) Act has already had tangible benefits in activity levels. What further contribution to nitrogen reductions can be achieved through the implementation of the Cunliffe review? As the Minister has already been asked when we should expect the White Paper on water strategy, I will not ask again, but, if there is any more information on its timing and legislation on the back of that, it would be helpful.
The committee’s report rightly expresses concern about the low levels of understanding of farm regulations and identifies the
“lack of a trusted source”
for guidance amid the number of sources available. The Government have agreed with this conclusion, but their response goes on to list a number of sources: the catchment-sensitive farming scheme; a planned new nutrient management tool; the amended farming rules for water statutory guidance; and the catalogue of compliance that is currently under review. This demonstrates the existing problem. Will the Government commit to creating a simplified source for these schemes that ensures that farmers are made aware of their existence and are promptly kept updated of any changes?
To tackle ammonia emissions, the Government have said that they are considering an extension of environmental permitting for dairy and intensive beef farms, but concerns have recently been raised that some farmers may not be able to afford the investments necessary to remain compliant. We hold our farmers to higher standards than those against whom they are competing overseas; that carries greater costs, undermining competitiveness. What concrete actions are the Government planning to support profitability for our farmers while they bear these higher costs? Will the same environmental standards be extended to imported food products in order to protect British farmers from unfair competition?
Further, will the Environment Agency or its successors provide assistance to farmers and recommendations to planning officers in relation to planning applications for the infrastructure that is needed to reduce pollution? Too many necessary infrastructure developments are held up in the planning system; I have experience of this myself, I am afraid. As the noble Baroness, Lady Batters, highlighted in her excellent report, farming profitability is on its knees, and loading more regulation and cost on to the industry is potentially disastrous.
Later this year, the Government are due to announce a new farming road map for 2050. Could the Minister commit that they will listen to stakeholders in advance of policies being announced so that businesses can plan ahead effectively, as the first step of rebuilding trust? I am sure that, across this Committee, we want to help businesses to reduce, recycle and reuse, but the Government must allow for businesses’ financial models to be sustainable in the first place. By 2030, the Government hope to deliver a 73% reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions against a 2005 baseline level, and to reduce ammonia emissions by 16% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. Will they commit to keeping this target under review to ensure that a focus on fixed end-point targets does not create viability issues for businesses or excessive costs for consumers?
We challenge the Government to seek to understand how private businesses work in the farming industry as well as in the wider economy. Businesses are being crippled by increasing costs of employment through national insurance contributions and minimum wages, through less flexibility in employment through the Employment Rights Act and through the unique challenges to the farming industry from the unreliability of environmental land management schemes under this Government. Creating greater investment and compliance burdens through regulation undermines our farming industry. Compliance with statutory requirements must be incentivised and guided by the appropriate timelines and easily accessible information, not just enforced by an empowered arm’s-length body. I look forward to engaging constructively with the Government on this matter and I am very grateful for other noble Lords’ contributions to this debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, on securing this debate. I thank the whole committee, chaired by the noble Baroness, for its thorough inquiry into a very complex environmental challenge that touches on so many aspects of our society.
I confirm that the Government very much welcome this report and the recommendations it contains and are grateful to all those who provided evidence and contributed to the vital discussion that we have had today. Having carefully considered the committee’s findings, I also welcome the opportunity to be able to respond and to explain the Government’s approach to addressing nitrogen pollution, while maintaining our commitment to economic growth and supporting our farming communities.
It is important at the start to acknowledge the scale of the challenge that we face. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, talked about the witness who described nitrogen pollution as an octopus. That was really quite striking; it is a complex multifaceted issue that spans agriculture, transport, industry and so on.
The committee rightly highlighted that excessive reactive nitrogen damages our ecosystems through direct toxic effects, soil acidification and eutrophication. It also contributes to climate change through nitrous oxide emissions and impacts public health through air pollution. The Government fully recognise these impacts. We understand that there are significant economic costs from the inefficient use of nitrogen resources. These are costs borne by farmers, often through their fertiliser bills. They are borne by our health service through the impacts of air pollution, by our water bills as we look to clean up pollution and by our environment through the ecosystem damage it causes. These are not abstract policy challenges but real issues that we are facing every day in our communities.
I accept that the regulatory framework, which has evolved over a number of years, has become fragmented, especially as new technologies and practices have been more widely adopted. We agree that effective nitrogen management must be embedded within our broader environmental and economic strategies, not isolated in separate silos. This is why the Government are looking to address the issue by taking a comprehensive and integrated approach to reforming our existing policy frameworks, rather than just creating additional bureaucratic structures.
I turn to a few of the questions. I was interested to hear the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, talk about how he has been farming to manage nitrogen and nutrients, because managing farm nutrients such as nitrogen better is clearly an important way that farmers and land managers can help reduce their environmental footprint, cut costs and improve profitability. I reassure him that this is very much in line with the Government’s food strategy, which seeks a food system that is more environmentally sustainable and resilient. It is likely to be the kind of activity that the farming road map, which will be published later this year, will seek to encourage. I am sure noble Lords are aware that this road map will be our response to the farming profitability review by the noble Baroness, Lady Batters, which will bring together a lot of work that the department has been doing. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, that we will of course work with and listen to stakeholders as we develop that road map going forward.
The current regulatory framework for fertilisers in the UK covers only limited organic fertilisers and soil improvers. The noble Lord, Lord Trees, talked about this. There are no requirements for recycled nutrients, including nitrogen, or newer types of fertilising products or materials such as biostimulants. Defra is planning to launch a consultation and call for evidence on this in order better to understand the regulatory options that we can take forward in this space.
I want to confirm that nutrient pollution from our agricultural targets is part of the analysis that we plan to publish in the land use framework, which will come out later this year. Hopefully, that answers part of the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, about how we are joining up our thinking on this. We are very much looking to do that.
There were a number of questions around whether Defra supports the development of a national nitrogen budget similar to the one being developed by the Scottish Government. The noble Lord, Lord Trees, in particular mentioned that the Government have said we will consider the national nitrogen balance sheet approach, how it is working in Scotland and whether a similar system would add value in England. We are looking to work with the Scottish Government to better understand how well this nitrogen budget system is working to drive change as we look to move forward in this space.
At the moment, we do not see value in producing a separate nitrogen strategy when nitrogen considerations are integrated across multiple policy areas. The revised Environmental Improvement Plan was mentioned by noble Lords; it was published last December and serves as our overarching framework for achieving environmental outcomes, including those related to nitrogen management. We want to bring in an approach that avoids duplication while bringing proper co-ordination across departments and sectors. We heard about the circular economy growth plan, which we will also publish soon. It will support the transition and systemic changes so that resources are kept in use for longer and waste is designed out. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked about the waste hierarchy; this is part of that.
Agriculture was discussed a lot in the debate, obviously, and the committee rightly identified it as a significant source of nitrogen pollution. Our approach is looking to balance environmental protection with support for farming communities. We recognise that there are gaps in regulation and that a more coherent approach is needed to improve effectiveness. However, we also very much recognise that effective change requires farmer engagement and support, not just regulation.
I also want to come back on something that the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, said. She suggested that the Government are postponing action to simplify the regulatory framework for farming. That is not what we are looking to do; we are looking to work more effectively with the farming community to move forward. As I have said, in the EIP, we are looking to improve the regulatory approach more broadly. We are developing options for consultation on the expansion of environmental permitting to dairy and intensive beef farms; that approach is going to build on and learn from the successful application of permitting in the pig and poultry sectors, where high compliance rates have been achieved.
We are also reviewing the regulatory framework for sewage sludge spreading to agricultural land in order to ensure that it effectively manages risks to human and environmental health. In parallel, we in Defra are already working with the farming sector and environmental organisations to explore how we can make the agricultural water regulations clearer and more effective. Our statutory reviews of the Nitrate Pollution Prevention Regulations and the farming rules for water are both informing that piece of work.
Compliance also needs improvement; that has been mentioned, in particular by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. One thing that we need to do is make requirements and expectations clearer. Certain noble Lords mentioned this. We have amended the farming rules for water guidance in order to have more clarity on enforcement regulations; enforcement was mentioned by, again, the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, in her introduction. On that, we are doubling the funding for the Environment Agency’s farm inspection team, raising the number of inspections to more than 6,000.
The noble Lord, Lord Roborough, expressed concerns about this. The idea is to help farmers improve standards. We know that most farmers do the right thing. This is not out to get people; it is about improving standards and working with farmers. However, if farmers do not heed advice and there are problems, the EA will not hesitate to enforce the regulations—including by moving to sanctions, if necessary. Last year, there were some 4,500 inspections at, I stress, high-risk farms. Those resulted in 6,500 improvement actions being issued, with 6,000 of them being achieved. So the regulations are being looked at in order to make a genuine difference here.
Training was mentioned, particularly by the noble Earl, Lord Leicester. We recognise the important role that farm advice and training can play in helping farmers manage nutrients. We are exploring the potential for future support regarding advice and farmer collaboration. My noble friend Lord Hanworth talked about how farming has changed over the years and how the intensiveness of farming has caused a number of problems. It is important that we work with farmers because we are talking about changes in culture, to a certain extent, in how farms have operated for many years.
We recognise that farmers need access to training, advice and planning tools. It is important to know how to plan going forward. There are grants available through the ADOPT—Accelerating Development of Practices and Technologies—Fund, which was launched in April last year to support farmer-led, on-farm trials to develop and test new solutions to farming challenges. We also support the Fertiliser Advisers Certification and Training Scheme, which is an independent accreditation scheme. There is a lot of work going forward in trying to support farmers in this space. Some 3,000 advisors have been accredited to improve standards on nutrient management in farms, which is a significant number.
The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked whether we would assess the effectiveness of the AHDB nutrient management guide and asked why we think that ours would be more effective. The tool that we are introducing is designed to build on existing work—for example, the guide that currently exists through the AHDB. The idea is to make it easier for farmers to create a nutrient management plan that will optimise crop yield while reducing costs to the farmer and the environment. That is what we are trying to achieve going forward.
The noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord Ashcombe, both referred to the Netherlands. As we discussed, the Dutch have substantially reduced nitrogen losses, particularly ammonia to air, through a combination of measures, including investment in research and knowledge transfer, which has been referred to in the debate, as well as funding and regulations. We want to learn from different approaches as they have done in the Netherlands to see how that can inform our approach.
The noble Lord, Lord Trees, also asked about encouraging low-emission spreading and slurry stores. We have seen a good uptake of low-emission spreaders from the farm equipment and technology fund. In 2024, 66% of farms that spread slurry on crop-land used low-emission methods. Last year, just under £50 million was made available for farmers, growers, foresters and contractors, and £30 million of that was for productivity and slurry. Grant funding for slurry covers includes existing stores, not just new stores.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked about the waste hierarchy, which I mentioned briefly. The circular economy growth plan explicitly aims to support the transition, focusing on increasing resource efficiency and supply chain security through policy interventions aimed higher up the waste hierarchy. That is what we are trying to achieve there.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and others talked about the circular economy. The Government strongly support the committee’s emphasis on circular economy approaches to nitrogen management. We are effectively promoting the three key principles: reducing inputs, efficient use that minimises losses and reusing what remains. There was some discussion around the enormous potential of technology and innovation to make more efficient use of nutrients generated and used on farms. We believe that the Government’s role is to provide the policy framework and support to enable those markets to develop. We are working to revise fertiliser product regulations to ensure that products derived from quality recycled organic materials can be classified as high-value products based on quality rather than source.
Ofwat’s price review came out in 2024 and led to us allocating £6 billion for nutrient pollution reduction programmes, including improvements at wastewater treatment works, protecting 15,000 kilometres of rivers. That is a huge investment into the sector.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, referred to the committee’s recommendations on catchment-based approaches to water quality. Sir Jon Cunliffe’s Independent Water Commission made similar recommendations and the Secretary of State is already committed to including a regional element for water system planning. The idea is to tackle all pollution sources more effectively and rapidly.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, referred to air quality. We have made substantial progress in reducing nitrogen emissions from transport, but there are clearly some challenges remaining. Clean air zones and ultra-low emission zones have been effective in securing compliance with statutory nitrogen dioxide limits at urban roadsides. However, we recognise that a lot more needs to be done and continue to support local authorities with the highest emissions. We have been looking to see how we can more quickly deliver electric buses, for example. We are also committed to phasing out the sale of new cars relying solely on internal combustion engines by 2030.
My noble friend Lady Whitaker raised important points about indoor air quality, particularly nitrogen dioxide from gas appliances. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is considering these impacts as part of broader decarbonisation work, including the electrification of heating and cooking. We will look at that evidence in our policy development, and we will continue to work across departments. So much of this is cross-departmental work.
We also recognise the importance of robust data for effective nitrogen management and are working to improve nitrogen flow data within our existing monitoring and reporting frameworks. We also understand concerns about monitoring costs for local authorities and are exploring how we can better support them.
The committee called for urgent regulatory reform, which we are looking at through the Corry review recommendations, which have been mentioned during the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, particularly asked about this issue, and I assure him that work is under way to implement next steps as well as to consider them. We are looking at how we implement the recommendations for enforcement approaches, regulatory guidance and sanctions for environmental regulations. We need to improve clarity, consistency and effectiveness right across the regulatory system.
It is important that our approach maintains that environmental protection and economic growth are not mutually exclusive. We know that effective nitrogen management can reduce costs for farmers—we have heard examples of that today—and that it can create new private markets for both recovered nutrients and nutrient pollution reductions. The noble Lord, Lord Fuller, talked about some of the ways that we can work effectively with industry and create economic opportunities at the same time as protecting public health and restoring nature.
We take nitrogen pollution very seriously. We are committed to addressing it through integrated, evidence-based policies that support our communities while protecting our environment, and we want to continue to work proactively with stakeholders and noble Lords in order to look at how we can deliver these benefits.
The Independent Water Commission was mentioned. We are responding to the recommendations for water sector reform. As I was asked about earlier today, we will be looking to produce the White Paper on water very soon.
On the recommendations from the committee, we genuinely recognise and appreciate their valuable input to the work that the Government are doing in this area. While we do not agree with every specific proposal, we share the ultimate objectives in the committee’s report. The Government are absolutely committed to delivery and to action, not just to strategy documents and reports. Through our existing frameworks and cross-government co-ordination, we will continue making progress on nitrogen management as part of our broader environmental and economic objectives.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
I thank the Minister for her response, which has finished bang on the dot of 20 minutes. I take this opportunity to thank all colleagues who have participated in the debate. The contributions have been fantastic and reaffirm yet again the breadth and depth of knowledge that runs deep through Members of this House.
The time is late so I will not keep the Committee long, but I have a couple of points—I have made lots of notes, but I shall mention just a couple before we close this debate. I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, for his contribution and for reminding us that there was a time when inert dinitrogen gas, N2, was in equilibrium with bioavailable, more reactive nitrogen in the soil, so things do not have to be like this. Modern society and our burning of fossil fuels have contributed to reactive nitrogen, but the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process has led to the mass production of cheap fertilisers that are being overused—and abused, really.
I am not going to run through everything, but I will try to pick up a couple of points made by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller. All I will say is that a 1% per annum reduction in artificial fertiliser inputs, which is the aim of the company that he represents, pales in comparison with the experience of the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, with regenerative farming. The noble Earl achieved a 20% reduction in two years, while a rate of 1% will take 20 years—I just wanted to point that out. At the same time, I congratulate the noble Earl on his fantastic work in this field. It will make a real difference to have someone of his stature and capacity leading regenerative farming. If he were to throw his weight behind this, that would be a game-changer, so I welcome his input.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, mentioned a 39% reduction in fertiliser input since 1989. Quite a lot of that came at the same time as the reduction in livestock numbers. We know that food grown to feed cattle and other livestock takes up a lot of our inputs, which may well explain the large numbers since 1989.
I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, who mentioned roads. We deliberately chose not to look at nitrogen emissions from roads because they have fallen quite a lot, by 70%. The committee recently did a report on the uptake of EVs—we can see in today’s media that we had a record year for electric vehicles last year—so we felt we should concentrate on agriculture and wastewater, where reductions in nitrogen emissions have been much more stubborn. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for her work in making sure that we do not lose sight of indoor nitrogen pollution from cookers and domestic boilers. She will do us all a service if she stays with that issue and makes sure that we do not lose sight of it.
I will wrap up. The Minister commands respect around the House, certainly from me, so I really welcome her words. However, I received an email recently about a meeting in October of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. The email says that, at that meeting, the UK succeeded in having struck from the meeting record that there are any cost-effective low-hanging fruit for ammonia mitigation. That was a pity, since reaching agreement on that point was the centrepiece of the evidence that the Task Force on Reactive Nitrogen provided to the meeting. I am sure that these discussions will continue, but that fills me with trepidation. I look forward to the Minister writing to me to verify that email or otherwise. I have to say, it comes from an extremely reputable source—otherwise I would not have brought it up. I apologise to the Minister for bringing it up, but it is crucial to this debate.
Our report was undertaken in response to the widely perceived failure of successive Governments to effectively manage nitrogen pollution. I am sorry to say that the Government’s response to date and the information I have just relayed do not inspire confidence that their response matches the scale of the problem or the opportunities available. However, I look forward to further discussions. I beg to move.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I just confirm that I will look into the issue the noble Baroness raises in that email and will write to her.