Natural England: Gamebird Release Licensing
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(1 week ago)
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Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
First, we have not been culling ponies. A lot was written about that, but I am not aware of any ponies that were culled or that are going to be culled. The Dartmoor pony is an important species in that part of the country. As for the other issues, we will obviously be looking at the judgment and analysing it, and we will respond to it in due course.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I am sure that the Minister will recall the report of September last year from the coalition of wildlife organisations which noted how wildlife habitats around England are continuing to decline. The Government have a legal obligation to protect 30% of land and sea in the UK for nature by 2030, a pledge made in 2020 by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, yet only 2.83% of England is well protected for nature, and that is a decline year on year. As Natural England has said, it plans to appeal this court ruling. However that turns out, will the Government ensure that there is an adequate legal framework for Natural England and other bodies to meet the protection for nature that the Government are legally bound to provide?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
As the noble Baroness said, that target was put in place some time ago, which is why, since we came into government, we have tried to make changes and crack on, because it has become more and more challenging to meet every year that passes. It is why we revised the Environmental Improvement Plan and why we have been investing more in sustainable farming and small farming. If we are genuinely going to meet these targets, we will have to be very ambitious in what we are doing.
Farming Road Map and Profitability Review
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I do not have time to find the exact page, but I know that somewhere in this lovely document is a whole section on procurement and trying to achieve exactly what the noble Lord is talking about. We have talked about the importance of “buy British”—all Governments do that—but we need to look at how to make that happen. I urge the noble Lord to read that section; if he has not, it is great. I see that he has it in front of him—excellent. He is right: this is critical. If we are going to become more sustainable for the future, we need to look at how we support our farmers through public procurement.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, under the heading “Government actions and commitments”, the road map says that the Government will work with industries to
“co-develop horticulture and poultry Sector Growth Plans”.
Given that we are only 17% self-sufficient in fruit and 55% in vegetables, I hope that no one in your Lordships’ House would disagree with the need for a large and urgent growth plan in the horticulture space. However, I question the inclusion of poultry. We already kill 1 billion chickens a year in the UK. Particularly in the hotspots in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Shropshire and Herefordshire, we have huge environmental and public health problems from highly concentrated nitrogen and phosphate waste, problems with air pollution from ammonia and, of course, huge animal welfare issues. Are the Government planning to further concentrate the poultry industry in those areas or are they going to spread the problem more widely?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
It is not for the Government to decide where poultry farmers want to farm. I will say that we are working closely with the poultry industry to improve animal welfare, because there are some issues around that. I am sure noble Lords who have been on the Tube have seen the posters about fast-growing chickens; again, that is something we are discussing with the industry. We are keen to promote the better chicken commitment, and we are very disappointed that certain restaurant chains decided to renege on their commitments on that—Nando’s was the key one. We are looking to improve things with the poultry industry and are working closely with it to make that kind of progress.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, the word “agroecology” and its grammatical variants appear three times in this road map. It is rather swamped by references to technology and things such as gene editing. On this poisoned planet and on these poisoned islands, we have exceeded the planetary boundary for novel entities, of which pesticides are a significant part. Does the Minister see that healthy soils, healthy water and healthy air have to be at the core of delivering both food security and a healthy environment for people to live in?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Absolutely. The word “agroecology” may be used only three times, but sustainability—improving water, air and soil quality—runs all the way through the document. Just because it does not say the word, that does not mean this is not a key part of what the document intends to deliver. As I said earlier, environmental degradation leads to poor farm profitability: the Batters review was about farming profitability. That is also what the farming road map is designed to improve, because we need to improve our farming profitability.
Legal Protections for Ancient Trees
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
It is the turn of the Lib Dem Benches.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
It is the turn of the Cross Benches, then the noble Baroness.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
As I mentioned previously, we are looking to bring out the new recommendations on trees by the end of the year. The review is really important. I think it is particularly important for oaks, because our native oaks are threatened by climate change and we really need to think about how we are going to protect them better for the future, but also to look at what oak species we need to consider planting if our temperatures are going to continue to rise, as we have all experienced this week.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, that plan will of course be too late for the Major oak in Sherwood Forest, a 1,200 year-old tree that it was announced just this week has died. That was put down to a mixture of tourism, climate change and historic bad management. It is too late for that tree, which is as old as the Greensted church in Essex—it was a sapling when that church was being built. The church has grade 1 listing, enormous protection. Should we not afford these so rare and important ancient trees a similar level of protection as buildings of the same kind of age?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes a very important point, but I think one of the reasons that tree sadly died was because it was so very, very, very, very old. Trees do not live for ever, but I take her point about protections.
South East Water: Disruption of Supply
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, 84% of proposed UK data centres are in areas already in water stress or projected to be so by 2040, and water bills for households are expected to rise because of the construction of data centres. Does the Minister agree that we should not be building data centres where there is not enough water and that households should not be paying for this construction by tech companies?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
It is quite a challenge, is it not? How do we get that balance right? It is really challenging: we know in this country that we need more infrastructure, but how do we balance the needs of infrastructure with the water requirements that go along with that? The noble Baroness talked about data companies, but you could say the same for housing and other industries that use a lot of water, because we all do. We are looking at data companies in particular because we need to ensure that we have sufficient water supply without impacting on other areas.
PFAS
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The simple answer is that we are carrying out a lot of stakeholder engagement. We are working very closely with industry and business. As I said, the textiles industry is moving that way voluntarily. We need to work with other sections of industry in the private sector to encourage them to do so, because the more we can do now voluntarily, the better, while we bring in our more detailed plans.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, the Minister may have seen in the Financial Times this week a large article about the concerns about PFAS in sportswear. If you are wearing sportswear, sweating and moving very fast, there is a large area of concern in terms of off-gassing and absorption through the skin. Given there is so much public concern with sportswear—particularly for children, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said—surely the Government need to address this far more rapidly than they are doing now.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
As I said, this is very much the starting point. We are in negotiations with the EU. The EU is looking at what it wants to do in this space. We wanted to lay out a plan that demonstrated that government was serious about doing something in this area, because it is important. It is also important that we work with industry and educate consumers along the way. It is important, too, that we continue to work constructively with the EU, because we want eventually—as I said, this is the starting point—to get to a place where PFAS chemicals are dealt with effectively.
Forest-Risk Commodities
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I shall take the noble Baroness’s concerns back to Defra because they are fair. But the issue is that we must make sure that we get the best regulatory approach to address deforestation in our supply chains. There are a number of factors we are considering, and I will just mention a couple. First is the compatibility of the forest-risk commodities approach which is enshrined in Schedule 17 to the Environment Act 2021 and the EU’s deforestation regulations. The issue is the differences between them—the EU approach introduces a strict deforestation-free standard and customs controls, whereas the Environment Act addresses illegal deforestation. The Government’s ongoing review of the UK’s approach to responsible business conduct that I just mentioned, led by the Department for Business and Trade, is also looking at the effectiveness of the UK’s approach to preventing human rights harms and environmental harms in supply chains. We must tie all this together if we are going to get it right and make it effective.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, returning to palm oil, global production affects at least 193 threatened species, with potential impacts on 54% of all threatened mammals and 64% of all threatened birds. It is the leading cause of orangutan decline: eight orangutans are lost every day. Do the Government not need to take urgent action on the deeply problematic product of palm oil?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
As I have already mentioned, we are absolutely committed to delivering this and ensuring that any regulatory framework we bring in that will affect any kind of product, such as palm oil and the UK trade in it, is going to be robust and effective, because there is no point in doing it if it is not going to make a difference.
Construction Industry: Timber
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
We need some standardised pattern books. We need a fairly extensive housebuilding programme and we must ensure that those houses are built to a minimum standard of quality. However, I take the noble Lord’s point about the importance of vernacular building in certain places. It is my understanding that, within its planning advice, the MHCLG is looking at how it can best train planning officers as well.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, the Minister referred to our high reliance on imports of timber, for both construction and furniture. We have certification schemes that are supposed to mean that timber meets environmental standards and does not abuse the human rights of indigenous people. However, it is often regarded as a tick-box exercise that is just not delivering. Are the Government going to improve those standards and make sure they are actually delivered?
Water White Paper
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(6 months ago)
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Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I think that much of what the noble Lord has talked about is what I need to feed back to the department. Obviously, this is a White Paper; it is not the final version of what any Bill must look like. The noble Lord makes some very important points, particularly on citizen science. I have a personal interest in this because before I ever came to this place, I was part of the Consultation Institute, which has worked in citizen science, so I appreciate what he is saying.
We have talked about working regionally. We have talked about working with stakeholders. We have talked about the importance of that local connection if we are to succeed in making the changes that we want. Citizen science—the noble Lord is absolutely right—can play a role in that.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, in responding to the Front-Bench questions, the Minister said the Government are not opposed “in principle” to mutual or co-operative ownership. I am sure that will be delightful news to the Co-operative Party, which of course has been in an electoral partnership with the Labour Party since 1927.
That question of ownership is one we keep coming back to. The Minister also said that we will get a regulator with a tighter grip. But will that grip not be resisted and see coming against it the force of the damage of private ownership that the noble Lord opposite just referred to? The legal responsibility for the managers of private companies is to maximise returns to shareholders. That is going to come up against, as the Statement says, this reform being for customers and the environment, but those are set in opposition to the profit motive. Surely the only way we are going to get a water system that does indeed work for customers and the environment is if we have a public organisation managed for the public good.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, talked about science and there not being a lot of it. One thing we are going to do is bring in a new chief engineer to bring more technical scientific expertise to the new regulator, which, just to come back on his point, is important.
On the modelling, the difficulty in moving away is how you are going to do it, because any new model needs to work. The evidence has shown that where there have been problems around the globe, the model has not been the problem; it has been the way that the owners have managed and dealt with the company and any problems that arise from that. I do not think we can just blame the model. We can blame the behaviour of the companies, the fact that there was not enough done to stop that behaviour sooner, and the way that the regulator has been set up—these are the problems we now want to tackle. Rather than just focusing on the model, we should focus on how we can restore confidence to consumers, how we can improve the environment and how we can set up a new system that makes sure this kind of behaviour can never happen again.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his comments. It would be useful for me to perhaps have a cup of tea with him and understand specifically which resources he is referring to, because it could be very wide-ranging.
As I have said, we want to ensure that the new regulator is set up with the sufficient funding and resources to ensure that the water companies deliver what they are supposed to be delivering—what their contracts expect them to deliver.
As the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, pointed out, this is about a balance between proper consumer support, decent water and the environment, because consumers have been treated very badly by water companies over the years, as has the environment. We need to get that that right, and if those are the resources the noble Lord is talking about, that is absolutely what we are fixed on delivering.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, since there is time, following on from the question from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, about science and citizen science, one thing that some of that sampling is starting to expose is the level of contamination from new areas of concern, such as PFAS, pesticide contamination and microplastics and nanoplastics. My reading of this report is that it does not seem to focus on the way in which new science is uncovering new concerns for public health and environmental health from those kinds of contamination. Is that something the Government are going to look at as they go forward with the new plans?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I can completely assure the noble Baroness that these issues are being looked at outwith these proposals. These are concerns that we are taking very seriously in the department.
Nitrogen Reduction, Recycling and Reuse (Environment and Climate Change Committee Report)
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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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.
Environmental Protection (Wet Wipes Containing Plastic) (England) Regulations 2025
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Coffey (Con)
I am delighted to see these regulations, but I agree with my noble friend Lady Redfern that it is sad to see that they will not come into effect until May 2027 at the earliest. It has been a while since the original consultation happened. To give a bit of history, when I introduced the consultation, we were chided for not getting on with it and asked why we needed another consultation. The reality is that the law required one. Admittedly, the response to the consultation given on 22 April 2024 said that there would be an 18-month transition period from when the legislation happened, but it was expected at the time that the legislation would come in before the end of 2024. Given that manufacturers have known since before 2023 that both the previous Government and the current Government when they were in opposition were minded to ban these wet wipes as quickly as possible, why are we not seeing this come into effect until 2027?
My noble friend Lady Redfern referred to medical exemptions. I am conscious that there will be detailed explanations of why particular kinds of machinery need them, business-to-business exemptions and some other characteristics, but the NHS continually relies on plastic and there seems to be very little incentive for the NHS to get off it. We need to consider disincentives for the NHS to continue its use of this multitude of products—wet wipes being one—where it seems to get an exemption time after time. Instead, we should consider a further levy on these products to incentivise take-up of and research into other products to do the jobs they are designed to do.
For what it is worth, I disagree with the RPC being dismissive about why Parliament is not being asked to exempt small businesses. It is absolutely right that we are not; there is absolutely no reason for these products to be in circulation, apart from what the Minister has already explained about some technical exemptions being required at the moment. I would be grateful if she would help me understand why—I am not criticising; I know there is a busy legislative timetable—recognising that notice had been well and truly given to manufacturers, we are not banning them until May 2027, in effect. Otherwise, I am supportive.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her clear introduction to this SI. I join the noble Baronesses, Lady Redfern and Lady Coffey, in expressing disappointment about the slow pace at which this measure is being brought in; of course, Wales is ahead of us. I also join them in welcoming what is, I am afraid, a modest step forward.
It is worth noting that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, said, this is what the previous Government were planning to do anyway. It is disappointing that this new Government are not going any further. We had a Government who came in promising change and environmental measures; we might have expected to be going further than this statutory instrument is going now. We have to think about where we are now. We are all aware of the island that appeared on Google Earth and was, significantly, the result of wet wipes. I have seen different figures but at least two-thirds—perhaps more—of the wet wipes being sold now do not contain plastic. This is not going to solve the sewage problem; that is terribly clear.
What does that sewage problem mean? It is not just about things that happen in London and get lots of coverage. In September, the BBC reported that Northumbrian Water was finding under its coverage areas that were severely affected by sewer flooding. Effluent was being pushed back up through sinks, showers and toilets. One of the staff members dealing with the people affected spoke about how this really impacted on people’s lives and well-being. Wet wipes are a serious problem—not just a financial problem or an environmental problem but a problem in people’s lives.
The noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, referred to the fact that terms such as “biodegradable” and “compostable” are used inappropriately by manufacturers. If you look at the packaging, you see “99% water”, “plant-based” or a lovely symbol of two hands cradling the earth. That may not be illegal, but we have to ask: how do we get the packaging right so that people understand that they should never go in the toilet? I note that, here in your Lordships’ House—at least in some of the facilities I have been in—there are clear labels saying, “This is a problem, please don’t do it”. If the message is not getting through in the Houses of Parliament, it is perhaps not surprising that it is not getting through in the rest of the country. There is real concern that, as this statutory instrument comes into effect and people hear, “Oh, it’s all right. Isn’t it good that they’ve banned plastic?”, people are more likely to feel that they are able to flush these items.
What do you need to biodegrade one of these products? It works best in temperatures of about 30 degrees Celsius; I think I can safely say that we do not have a lot of sewers at 30 degrees Celsius. A 2023 paper by scientists from Cardiff University concluded that most flushed, so-called biodegradable, wipes do not really degrade. Most of them are made from cotton-based or wood-based cellulose fibres. There is a further problem here in that, when they are put into water, it changes the balance of nutrients, takes oxygen out of the water and increases the risk of fish suffocating. These wipes are a problem in so many different ways.
Can the Minister say what further measures the Government are considering? I know that there is a three-year review under this SI, but that is three years more of the kind of damage and human and environmental suffering that I have been talking about. On the figures, I am looking now at a graph of the expected sale of wet wipes from 2024 to 2032. It is a steep upward curve. Are the Government considering whether we really need all those wet wipes? Perhaps parents have become used to using wet wipes—we can all feel sympathy for new parents and the challenges they face—but what about make-up wet wipes or household cleaning wet wipes? Are these things that we really need to be selling in the UK? Are the Government considering further action sooner than in three years’ time? The Minister referred to the extended producer responsibility scheme; surely we could include all wet wipes in that now.
I have a specific question. I note that the impact assessment refers to plastic using the UK REACH definition, but the Marine Conservation Society has a specific question about whether lyocell and viscose are recognised as a form of plastic under that definition. The Marine Conservation Society says very clearly that they should be recognised as such because that is how they behave.