Plant Health and Trade in Animals and Related Products (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Grand Committee

I realise that this SI deals with a broad-brush approach to plant health and puts in place legal measures to ensure plants and animal products are protected. However, it provides us with an opportunity to have a debate, albeit somewhat curtailed, on the effects on our trees, which are under attack from all quarters through disease and need constant protection. I support this SI, which is really important, and look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I confirm that we also support the SI and note that the Minister said it is urgent. Our main concern, however, comes from the fact that the 18th report of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments has once again drawn the attention of both Houses of Parliament to our having a defectively drafted SI in front of us, so we are once again tidying up some mistakes that have come through from previous instruments.

Section 3 of the Explanatory Memorandum notes that the instrument corrects various errors in bits of retained EU law and cites a previous JCSI report. Our concern is really: what is Defra’s resource, since this seems to happen time and again? Are there concerns about the level of resources Defra has to deliver well-drafted SIs? We know that the department will have to accurately review all retained EU law by the end of this year, as envisaged by the retained EU law Bill, so it would be good to have confidence in its resources and ability to do this without errors.

Other noble Lords have talked about paragraph 3.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which refers to the pest outbreak on the Wales/England border. The Minister knows of my concern about trees, ash dieback and the terrible impact of larches being felled; I have mentioned it before. It would be helpful to understand the reaction to this outbreak. What work is being undertaken to ensure that these kinds of outbreaks are brought under control? As we continue to debate EU law, what powers are needed to ensure that we do not have constant new pest outbreaks in this country? The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, talked about ash seeds. It would also be useful to have clarification about this.

Section 7 of the Explanatory Memorandum talks about how previous amendments to retained EU law failed to provide for the new demarcated area system. I would be interested if the Minister could go into a bit more detail on the policy background. I am trying to ascertain whether this would have been possible under the original regulation before it was amended to take account of our departure from EU, or has the power not existed previously? I am trying to understand that better.

I will not go into detail about the Lebanon potatoes. Other noble Lords talked about that.

I appreciate that many of the SIs which Defra has had to deal with following our departure from the EU, of which there are a very large number, are really complicated. I do not want to undermine the officials’ confidence, because I know that there has been an enormous amount of work involved. We have the REUL Bill coming forward. It is important for us to be confident that the Minister and his officials have the resources and ability to function properly in all the work that they have to do.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. They have raised some very good and important points. I will start by addressing those raised by my noble friend Lady McIntosh and emphasised by other noble Lords about the risks we face.

At the moment, the main areas of concern which come up at my regular biosecurity meetings with the Defra group include Phytophthora pluvialis. This is an emerging concern. Phytophthora ramorum has been here a little longer. My noble friend mentioned ash dieback, which continues to be a real concern. I see a glimmer of hope there, but I do not want to raise expectations. The horrendous way in which it galloped through our woodlands in recent years seems to have slowed a little. This may be for a variety of reasons. We are working hard to find resistant strains. I recently visited a Forestry Commission site, where we have taken plants from the most resistant species in the eastern areas of England where the disease first hit landfall. We are trying to develop a real understanding of what makes certain ash trees more resistant than others. You can find a relatively healthy tree standing next to one that is practically dead. We are trying to understand the genetics and pathology of this really serious problem in our landscape. We are dealing with a number of different agencies. Fera certainly has a part to play.

We have just published our biosecurity strategy for Great Britain for the next five years. It has been a comprehensive, collaborative piece of work with devolved Governments and a variety of stakeholders across the piece. I think it is one of the most impressive biosecurity strategies you can find anywhere in the world. As I have said in other fora, we can no longer rely on the fact that we are an island. We have to consider ourselves just as much at risk as countries that share land borders in Europe. The globalised economy is moving plant and animal diseases at alarming rates. If there is one that keeps me awake at night it is Xylella, which is absolutely devastating in parts of southern Europe and is moving north.

Of all the plants sold in this country from nurseries, 92% come from overseas. We have to be absolutely clear that we are promoting homegrown products. Our Plant Healthy strategy, which really tackles this, and Grown in Britain—another really good initiative that the Government support—are supporting nurseries to produce more homegrown products. Where they are imported, we are making absolutely sure that they come here in a way that is safe.

My noble friend asked about the Lebanon issue. Changes are being made to specify the relevant labels that should be in English and reference the relevant testing standards that we felt were omitted. These amendments are merely technical. Certain official controls are inserted in one of the intermediate stages of testing for the pest potato ring rot. It is a very small volume of trade—only 20 kilograms have come from Lebanon since 2018—but sometimes a very small amount is all you need to create a massive problem.

A number of issues were raised around the retained EU law Bill. I want to make absolutely clear that our default position is to retain. In no way can we hit our targets for reversing the declines of species, or meet our international commitments and our determination to see our seas and oceans recover to health and many other commitments to support nature and biodiversity, if we just dump regulations that we need. What we need is good regulations, and that is what industry wants—it does not want a bonfire of regulation that could see the wrong kind of people prosper.

I was talking to the Horticultural Trades Association conference this morning, making the point that we really value good, responsible businesses and see them as a key partner, because they are the connection with the customer. There are 30 million gardeners and a great many professional growers, and we need to know that what they are getting is safe and secure and will not pass on diseases in this country. That is a key part of our determined effort to create a proper regulatory regime.

Noble Lords are right: the dashboard has been amended. A great many of the nearly 1,800 regulations that exist for Defra will be retained. A great many of them have nothing to do with the United Kingdom whatever; they are about the export of olives, or relationships between certain countries and their fishing arrangements with other third countries, and have no relevance to the United Kingdom at all. They will obviously go. A number can be reformed and made better, and we see this as an opportunity to do that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, rightly questioned us about our resources. In this Parliament, we have had a Fisheries Act, an Agriculture Act, an Environment Act, a sentience Act, a gene technology Bill, soon to become an Act—and a great many provisions that lie within those Acts have been debated in this Room—and other pieces of legislation. So, yes, we have been running hot in terms of legislation. I would not be so arrogant as to try to pretend we always get this right. Sometimes we need to tweak regulations, and that is what we are doing today, but we need to tweak them for a very good purpose.

Pollution: Rivers and Beaches

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate is right to raise this issue. We are seeing more extremes of climate, and that is resulting in a lot of runoff into our rivers at particular times. That is why, for example, we are introducing in our environmental land management schemes a determination to use soil more effectively by binding it together with green cover crops, thus preventing it going into the rivers. I am keen to have a conversation with the Church Commissioners, one of the biggest landowners in the country, about how they are interacting with their farmers and supporting them in taking up these schemes, and about how we can work together with large and small landowners and farmers to ensure that we are improving the quality of our environment, particularly our rivers.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, on Thursday the Leader of the House of Commons said that in 2010, only 6% of storm overflows were monitored but the figure is now 100%. However, it is not true that all overflows are monitored, so can the Minister confirm the actual figure today? Can he also confirm whether the department or the regulator collects data on the number of monitors that are offline and the reasons for them being unavailable? My noble friend Lord Watson mentioned Thames Water. According to its map, some two dozen of its monitors were out of action this morning.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The statistic is absolutely right—I can remember seeing it and being stunned that the Government prior to the coalition Government had no idea about this. They knew about only 5% of the storm overflows, so we set about getting that data. If the person quoted in the other place said 100%, it is not quite that but it is nearly there: we are in the 90s, and by the end of this year the figure will be 100%. If the telemetry we require to measure the quality is not working, I am happy to take any cases up with the Environment Agency and make sure that we are applying this.

Environmental Targets (Fine Particulate Matter) (England) Regulations 2022

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

At the end insert “but that this House regrets the lack of ambition and urgency in the Regulations in relation to the target for annual average concentration of PM2.5 in ambient air; notes that the target of 10μg/m3 by 2040 is both less ambitious than current World Health Organization guidelines, which specify an annual average concentration of 5μg/m3, and less urgent than proposals from the European Commission, which seeks to achieve the target by 2030; and therefore calls on His Majesty’s Government to bring forward, as soon as practicable, a revised PM2.5 target which better reflects (1) the dangers posed by toxic air, and (2) the significant public support for improving air pollution”.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to the statutory instrument. As he said, the SI seeks to put in place regulations to set targets for the maximum annual mean concentration and population exposure reduction for fine particulate matter, or PM2.5. As he said, this is legally required by the Environment Act 2020. I also thank the Healthy Air Coalition for its time and its very helpful briefing.

As we know, the SI also relates to matters of very high public interest. PM2.5 is the name given to the tiny particles of dust and dirt in the air that, when breathed in, can get deep into our lungs and bloodstream. We know that exposure to PM2.5 has been linked to worsening respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and likely has a link to cognitive decline and dementia. The Minister himself just said that there is no safe limit. We also know that it played a key part in the tragic death of nine year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah in 2013. As the Minister did, I pay tribute to her mother, Rosamund, and her family, who, as he said, have campaigned tirelessly on this issue.

We know that Public Health England has estimated that the health and social care costs of conditions caused by unhealthy air and air pollution, both PM2.5 and nitrogen oxide, could reach £18.6 billion by 2035. The Minister talked about the economy; I say to him that dealing with this issue will save the economy a huge amount.

As we have heard, the annual mean concentration target, or the AMCT, proposed in the SI is 10 micrograms per cubic metre, to be met by 2040. The proposed population exposure reduction target, or PERT, would reduce PM2.5 levels across England by at least 35% by the end of 2040, compared with the baseline year of 2018. It is also worth noting that these targets relate only to England, as air quality is a devolved policy area.

The reason for my regret amendment is that we believe the Government have failed to meet their own policy ambition. Back in 2019, the Government said that they would put world-leading and ambitious air quality targets in place, including for PM2.5. They also pledged

“a green Brexit, where environmental standards are not only maintained but enhanced.”

We look forward to debates on that on the REUL Bill.

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If the noble Baroness were able to get the Government of the day to stop a particular activity that was polluting at PM2.5, those behind that activity would be able to take that Government to court and say, “You are not obeying the law. The law says your targets should be achievable”. As these targets are not achievable, we do not want to create a feeding frenzy for lawyers. The target, alongside the suite of Environment Act targets, will ensure that we meet our commitment and leave the environment in a better state than we found it. I commend these draft regulations to the House.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, very briefly, I remind the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, that it is the Government who actually set the policy and targets. I would be very happy to swap places with the Minister, sit where he sits and set the policy on this matter in the very near future.

On the Minister’s response, I am not asking him or anybody else to break the law; I am just asking for more ambition, because this is a serious health problem—I do not want the Minister to break the law at all. As he said, this has been a fairly long debate, so I thank everybody who has supported my amendment. I really appreciate the support and the important comments on, and reminders of, the serious health implications we are talking about. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

HL Mencken said something along the lines of, “Every complex problem has a solution which is simple, direct, plausible and wrong”. We really have to stop reaching for the wrong solutions, which is what this Bill does. My Amendments 1 and 2 at least slow down that outreach. I beg to move Amendment 1.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall introduce my amendments in this group, Amendments 11, 27, 29 and 30. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and my noble friend Lord Winston for their support. I declare my interest as laid out in the register as president of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.

During our Committee debate, the Minister stated that the Government’s intention was to take a step-by-step approach, particularly around the introduction of animals, and that the Bill had the ability to do so. Our concern is that we have heard no clarification as to how this will actually work. By what means do the Government intend to introduce provisions related to distinct species, rather than the “relevant animals” as a class, under the Bill as currently drafted? Despite the Minister’s assurances, we still have no guarantee that this step-by-step approach will actually happen.

My Amendment 11 would set this expectation on the face of the Bill. Combined with my Amendments 27, 29 and 30, the effect would be to prevent a precision-bred animal being released until it had met the date condition provided by my new clause, which would follow Clause 47. This proposes that, for farm animals, the date is no earlier than 1 January 2026, and for other animals, no earlier than 1 January 2028. Also scientific evidence must support this extension: if it does not, the date could be put back further. I just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that this is not an automatic introduction at that date; it is just putting the step-by-step approach on the face of the Bill.

The reason I have tabled these amendments is that, whether we agree that animals should be included or not, clear concerns were expressed during our Committee debates as to when they should be included, how quickly they should be included, and whether all animals should be included at the same time. We believe there is insufficient detail in the Bill regarding concrete provisions around timeframes: many of them are vague and noncommittal. Much of the preparation that we believe is necessary for a regulatory framework for animals has not yet been properly carried out.

When this issue was debated in Committee, the noble Lord the Minister said:

“All I can do is assure noble Lords that nothing will happen before we are in the right position to do it … The priority will be to try to do this for farmed animals first, and we want to make sure that we are operating a step-by-step approach. If we put it in the Bill, it may be too prescriptive, because we are in a fast-moving area of science, and it may constrain the ability of the scientific community to progress this if we do it in the wrong way.”—[Official Report, 12/12/22; col.503.]


We listened to the Minister’s words and, in order not to tie the Government’s hands or constrain the scientific community if there is clear evidence, for example, of a scientific breakthrough in tackling bird flu, the amendment allows for flexibility. An accelerated timetable should come in only if scientific opinion supported this. So we have not set these dates in stone in either direction.

I hope the Minister can see that we are taking a constructive approach to trying to put step-by-step on the face of the Bill. However, if he is not prepared to accept our amendments, I intend to seek the opinion of the House.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for her courtesy in giving way. I will make only two brief comments. The first addresses the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, raised, particularly the reference to the workshop that I helped to organise last Friday, where we had a number of experts giving us their take on the science. It is very often—in fact, usually—the case that scientists do not absolutely agree on everything; that is just the way that science is. When you go as a scientist to a conference, you do not expect everybody to say, “Fantastic, your research is absolutely superb”. People criticise it and challenge you and say, “Why are you doing that in this way and not some other way?” But there is sometimes a centre of gravity of opinion. Science goes through different phases. There may be no agreed position and gradually over time it is possible that a position consolidates in a particular way.

I think it is fair to say that Dr Michael Antoniou, to whom the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, referred, is probably not in the centre of gravity of current opinion on the safety issues and other technical aspects of gene editing. So while I absolutely applaud the noble Baroness’s point which raised the diversity of opinions in the scientific community, I do not think your Lordships should be too swayed by a particular individual’s point of view, because I do not think it is the centre of gravity of scientific opinion.

My second, very brief point concerns timescales and is related to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. One can see this in two ways, as her introduction to her amendments implied. You could see it as putting the brakes on—do not rush too quickly before you are sure—as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, would wish us to do. On the other hand, towards the end of her speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, “We don’t want to hold things back”. On the one hand we do not want to rush, and on the other hand we do not want to have the brakes applied too sharply.

I am trying to anchor that in a bit of reality. As far as I am aware—I was told this at the meeting last Friday by Professor Bruce Whitelaw, director of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, which is the UK’s leading centre for this sort of technology in animals—in the US, the Food and Drug Administration is already reviewing a licence application for gene-edited pigs. The animal genetics company, Genus, in collaboration with the University of Missouri, has developed a pig that is totally resistant to the virus that causes porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome—PRRS for short. So the question in assessing the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, is, would that amendment hold up the commercialisation of this pig, if the FDA and the relevant bodies in the UK approved it?

Given that it would improve pig welfare, because PRRS is not a pleasant disease, and save the pig industry a very large amount of money—an estimated $2.5 billion a year in Europe and the US alone—do we want accidentally to place a barrier on that kind of development through timescale limits? I do not land on one side or the other; I just think it is useful to have a real-life example of what is going on. My question to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, is this: if this PRRS-resistant pig came to market before 2026, would that count as an example of where the 2026 hurdle should be removed, because it is ready to go, or would she want to keep it in place? The question on the other side is whether it will realistically go from FDA approval to commercialisation in about three years. I am not trying to land on one side or the other, just to anchor this in a specific example which may help us think through our response to the proposed amendments.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Just to come back on that, proposed new subsection (4) in my amendment says:

“The Secretary of State may, by regulations, amend the dates listed in subsection (2)”—


the dates I read out—

“if the requirement under subsection (3)”,

which is the evidence condition the noble Lord is talking about,

“is met before the dates”.

There is flexibility in the amendment to bring those dates forward if that scientific evidence is there.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I will intervene briefly on a point of information. I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has helped his cause, although he is very knowledgeable in this area and I pay tribute to him in that regard, in mentioning that a particular academic is not deemed to be at the centre of gravity on these issues. Who are we to judge? This is a fast-moving and complicated field. We are leaving what has been a highly regulated area, where our farm products have moved very freely between here and the European Union; if we go down this path of very light regulation in the Bill, how do we know that the EU will accept our food products? I shall listen very carefully to my noble friend’s response, in particular to the amendments from the Opposition Front Bench.

I feel that there is an uneasiness and lack of understanding among the public about this, which I share. I am in awe of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh; it is my alma mater, although I studied law rather than science or veterinary science. I realise that cloning is different, but the very fact that we do not seem to be going down that path, which was first brought up with Dolly the sheep, raises issues. I am very uneasy about moving to light-touch regulation when the science is not at one on this issue.

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Moved by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

11: Clause 3, page 3, line 24, after “unless” insert “, in relation to a precision bred animal, the date condition in section (Entry into force of provisions relating to animals) has been met, and unless”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would prevent a precision bred animal from being released unless the date condition in a later Clause in the name of Baroness Hayman of Ullock has been met. Taken collectively, these amendments would ensure a phasing in of the animal provisions in the Bill.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his response to my amendment and I am pleased that he reaffirmed the Government’s ambition to phase in different species. The problem is that it is not actually in the Bill, so there is no guarantee that it will happen. I would also like to come back to him on this: the amendment is not designed to restrict. If scientific evidence supports this application, it will not restrict it. I thought I had made that clear. Also, if the Minister believes that the introduction of animals is likely to be later than the date in my amendment, I really do not understand the reluctance to accept this and have it in the Bill. On that note, I would like to test the opinion of the House on my Amendment 11.

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[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, this group of amendments deals with technical scientific issues and moving whole or parts of clauses from the negative procedure to the affirmative. Your Lordships will know that I am not a scientist so I shall, I hope, avoid digging a hole for myself or getting caught in the crossfire.

Amendment 12, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, would require the details of genome sequencing to be recorded in a publicly available register. If the processes outlined in this Bill are to be carried forward successfully, it will be necessary for farmers, producers and the public especially to have confidence in the process. Ensuring that there is transparency and visibility through a publicly available register can only help this process. The DPRRC was strongly in favour of such a register in its report of 2 December.

Amendment 13, also from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, seeks to make the whole regulation in Clause 3 affirmative. Currently, the Bill is silent on whether Clause 3 is affirmative or negative. I suspect that, as it currently stands, Clause 4(6) applies to the whole of the section headed “Release”.

I am grateful to the Minister for his amendments in this group. At Second Reading and in Committee, concerns were raised at the number of negative procedures in the Bill. The Minister has tabled government Amendments 14 and 15 to Clause 4, which would qualify the section on marketing and keep subsection (1)(b) as negative while the rest of this clause will be moved to the affirmative procedure. This is welcome and gives the opportunity for debate on the notification requirements if necessary. Perhaps the Minister can clarify in his response whether Clauses 3 and 4 are covered by his Amendments 14 and 15. If not, can he say what process is applied for Clause 3? I am sorry; I may have misunderstood what this is all about.

Amendment 16, to Clause 6(4), moves regulations on the precision bred confirmation from negative to affirmative. We welcome the Minister’s movement on this point. This is a sensible way forward and, again, gives the opportunity for further debate.

Government Amendments 24 and 25 are somewhat confusing. Amendment 24 indicates that the regulations under Clause 18(1) are to be affirmative, and Amendment 25 deletes “this section” and inserts “subsection (6)”. I think this means that Clause 18(1) is affirmative while the rest of the clause is negative, as Clause 18(7) has not been amended. I would be grateful for the Minister’s clarification. It is important for when we come to debate these things later to know whether it is affirmative or negative. Although these are technical amendments, they are very important and provide transparency in the Bill, which is to be welcomed.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has tabled two amendments. Amendment 12 concerns the publicly available register. Clearly, transparency and information for the public will be important if we are to carry people with us, so we need to look at how we develop registers and information to reassure people and to give them the information that they need to have confidence in the legislation.

In Committee, my noble friend Lord Winston and the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, drew attention to the parallel piece of legislation, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, in which there is a requirement for the surrender of ongoing records containing the information about the impacts, both the positive and the adverse outcomes, on individuals used under the terms of that Act. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, read out an opinion which emphasised the importance of an audit trail, so there is a general feeling in this House that information and a public register are important.

Amendment 13 is also in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I thank the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for its report on the Bill, which was very helpful. I reassure the Minister, who knows that we support the Bill, that what concerns us is that so much is left to an unknown number of SIs over an unspecified timescale. If the regulations in Clause 3 are under the affirmative procedure, Parliament will rightly have a formal role in improving the finer details of the release and marketing notices, crucially ensuring that we have proper political consensus on this. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, the Government have moved a number of clauses from the negative to the affirmative procedure. I will not go into all the detail, as she covered everything that I was going to ask about on this, since some of it is not crystal clear. We know that the Government can see that there is merit in moving from the negative to affirmative. Can the Minister clarify why not this clause as well if that is not the case, as this is important?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for her Amendment 12, which would require details of the specific gene editing event and the whole-genome sequence of a qualifying precision-bred organism to be made publicly available for its release into the environment. The noble Baroness’s Amendment 13 to Clause 3 would require that regulations made under this clause to establish a public register containing this information are subject to the affirmative procedure.

It is not our intention to require breeders to include sequence data as part of their release or marketing notices. I have discussed this previously following an amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, in Committee. We have since had a very useful meeting with the noble Lord and our scientific advisors, ACRE, to explore why whole- genome sequencing information has limited value in most cases, and the noble Lord has not retabled his amendment on Report.

This type of information has limited value because there is a significant degree of genetic variation between individual plants and animals within a species, which is more or less the point that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was making. This amount of background noise means that the value in requiring whole-genome sequences is limited in terms of addressing regulatory questions; for example, questions about the precision-bred status of a plant or animal. Additionally, the release notice that researchers are required to submit to Defra will be in line with the requirements of the Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022, which were agreed by the affirmative procedure.

Our intention is that information provided in release notices will be published on the precision breeding register and will include the relevant and necessary information about the precision-bred organism in it. We also intend to require developers to confirm that the organisms that they intend to release in research trials meet the criteria in the Bill. The technical details of this notice will be prescribed by regulations, prepared with input from the advisory committee appointed to advise the Secretary of State on the regulatory status of these organisms and, in accordance with the amendments to Clause 4 that I have tabled, our intention is that such regulations will be scrutinised using the affirmative procedure before they are made.

I hope that this reassures noble Lords and that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is persuaded to withdraw this amendment and not move her additional amendment to Clause 3, which would specify the parliamentary procedure for the delegated power that her substantive amendment would insert.

I always pay particular attention to points raised on secondary legislation by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. As a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, she is very good at holding me to account on these. I did not quite understand her point about Clause 3 because there are no regulations in Clause 3 and therefore no requirement for it to be affirmative or negative.

We remain of the belief that the matters to be set out in the regulations under the powers in Clauses 4(3) and 6(2) are administrative in nature. However, the Government acknowledge that these provisions are of significant public interest. We have heard this previously in the House and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has raised this as well. We have considered these matters closely and have decided to change the procedure from negative to affirmative for both powers. These changes will increase the scrutiny when these powers are used to prescribe the information which must be provided to the Secretary of State by a person who wishes to release or market a precision-bred organism. I hope that noble Lords feel that I was serious in Committee when I said that I had listened to them. I hope that they feel that this improves the Bill. Regulations under Clause 4(1)(b) would be administrative in nature, not of significant public interest, and will remain subject to the negative procedure. I hope that this reassures noble Lords.

Amendments 24 and 25 will increase the level of scrutiny when powers are used to prescribe information that must be included in the precision breeding register. The Government acknowledge that these provisions are of significant public interest. We accept noble Lords’ concerns about the level of scrutiny for such provisions. Therefore, we will change the parliamentary procedure from negative to affirmative for the power in Clause 18(1). Regulations under Clause 18(6) regarding the keeping of the register, which is an administrative matter and, again, not of significant public interest, will remain under the negative procedure.

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[Baroness Rock (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a tenant farmer and as chairman of the Rock review into England’s agricultural tenancies.

The Government’s procedural amendments will increase parliamentary oversight of the design and future development of the animal welfare provisions. The Government recognise that there is a need to safeguard animal welfare, and that is why we need a step-by-step approach by bringing legislation into effect for precision-bred plants first and then for animals. Research in farmed animals is already leading to the development of animals that have increased resistance to some devastating diseases that, as farmers, we all see, and it thereby enhances the health and welfare of animals.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the government amendments that move the regulations to the affirmative procedure; they are extremely welcome.

I thank my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch for her thorough introduction to her Amendments 19 to 21. I am sure noble Lords will remember that in Committee I tabled a number of amendments relating to the welfare advisory body, so we are very pleased to see my noble friend Lady Jones tabling similar amendments today. I spoke at length on this issue in Committee, my noble friend has introduced her concerns and we have heard from across the House, so I shall be brief.

Amendment 19 makes it clear that, in addition to considering information submitted by the notifier, the welfare advisory body should satisfy itself that the notifier has a record of acting in a manner that is consistent with research and animal welfare requirements across other Acts of Parliament. That really should be part of the body’s role. We do not want any confusion or different decision-making across different bodies.

I may have this recollection wrong, but I thought that in an earlier meeting a flow chart was mentioned showing how different animal welfare bodies, in Defra and the Home Office, would interact. I had been hoping to receive a copy of that to get some clarification about precedence and how this was all going to work together. It may have gone into my spam folder and I may have missed it, but if the Minister could check on that, that would be very helpful.

Currently, the Bill states that the welfare advisory body has to determine whether in the animal welfare declaration the notifier has paid regard to the risks to an animal. One of my concerns has always been that it is the notifier who is driving the process and is in the driving seat, rather than the welfare advisory body, which is why we were all very concerned about more checks and balances. We know the Bill says that the notifier has to take reasonable steps to assess those risks, but we do not believe that is a strong enough protection for animals in the Bill.

My noble friend’s amendment would mean that the welfare advisory body had to assess the impact on animals where a precision-bred trait was developed, with the aim, as she said, of achieving fast growth, high yields or other increases in productivity. As we have heard, we have seen that too often in traditional breeding methods, so we need to bring in these protections. We have heard many examples of traditional selective breeding producing animals that were highly efficient but this was often at the expense of animal welfare, and we need to ensure that that is not an unfortunate consequence of the Bill. The RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming have raised serious concerns about the lack of safeguards in the Bill to prevent that happening. In addition, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics has drawn our attention to the fact that many of the effects of selective breeding have been unintended.

We agree with our noble friend that it is reasonable that welfare impacts should be assessed here. Without the amendment, it is not clear exactly how that would be part of that process with the advisory body, particularly in relation to other bodies that already exist. So we strongly support my noble friend and believe that her amendments should be in the Bill.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for another useful debate. I assure the noble Baroness that we sent her a copy of my flow chart, so it must have ended up in her spam folder. I hope none of my other correspondence to her will be rejected into the ether. It sets out in five clear steps the process of taking something through to authorisation.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that I am not one of those people who repel all boarders when it comes to amendments; we have actually moved considerably on the scrutiny of the Bill, and we want to ensure that there is as much agreement as possible. I concede that we might have a problem on Amendment 19, but I will come on to that.

I repeat that the welfare declaration and the welfare advisory body’s assessment will be based on the principle that precision-bred relevant animals will need to be kept in conditions that satisfy existing requirements in the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and, where relevant, the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007. So existing animal welfare legislation is in place, and the Bill is intended to work alongside it to enable responsible innovation.

An accusation was made, although I cannot remember who by, that this was an enabling Bill and was somehow a forest of Henry VIII clauses. I reject that. It is not a skeleton Bill. We have set out our substantive policy proposals in the Bill and have included appropriate delegated powers to supplement those provisions. Delegated powers serve a valuable purpose and it is always important to assess them in context. Simply counting up the number of powers in a given Bill is not necessarily always meaningful, but I hope we have shifted the balance in terms of those that are affirmative and those that are negative.

There has been talk of belt and braces. I think you can overdo caution in these circumstances, and you can clog up the system. I really feel it would be difficult to accept Amendment 19 as it would pre-empt the Scottish royal college research project. The Bill already outlines a regulatory framework to safeguard animal welfare that goes beyond existing requirements in traditional breeding.

I hope that my words, and the government amendments to increase the degree of parliamentary scrutiny on the animal welfare provisions in the Bill, provide noble Lords with sufficient reassurance not to press their amendments.

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[Lord Trees (CB)]

I am grateful for the excellent introduction of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, which carries my name and those of two other noble Baronesses. I am also very grateful to the Minister for our meetings. As he and others in the House will be aware, I strongly support the Bill, and I commend the Government on including animals in it. Alongside existing animal welfare legislation, the new breeding technologies promise great benefits to animal health and welfare by reducing the burden of disease, thereby maintaining food production with potentially fewer animals, and reducing land use, the use of drugs and chemicals, the carbon dioxide footprint and greenhouse gas emissions.

I will expand on the productivity issue. Productivity goes both ways: you improve productivity by producing the same amount from fewer animals. Reducing the disease burden will enable us to produce the same amount with fewer animals, with concomitant advantages.

I thank the Minister for the amendments he introduced earlier. Although I have great enthusiasm for the modern technologies and for this Bill, which will facilitate the uptake of those technologies, this enthusiasm—and I note that in Committee the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, referred to mine as “gung-ho”, which I take as a compliment—is not shared by everyone. If we want these technologies to be applied and the benefits to be realised, it is going to be essential to take the public with us and ensure public confidence so that they take them up and accept them. This amendment, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, has elegantly said, basically makes it mandatory in the Bill that there shall be a reporting process for potential adverse effects post marketing. So it differs in that respect from Clause 14, but much of the rest of our amendment is copied from Clause 14.

What we are suggesting is also a two-tier reporting system. The first tier is a voluntary system, proposed for individuals such as farmers, keepers of animals, veterinary surgeons and animal health professionals. But for the commercial bodies that hold a marketing authorisation, there should be a mandatory requirement to collect data about the possible adverse effects on PB animals’ health and welfare and to submit that data at periodic intervals.

I will make a number of key points on the amendments. First, they mirror precisely current regulations with regard to possible adverse effects of drugs marketed for veterinary use, and indeed for human use, both of which have voluntary as well as mandatory reporting systems in place.

Secondly, we submit—and I reinforce the points the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, made—that we do not feel that what we are asking is disproportionate, in that only the commercial sellers of these animals, the people making money, have the legal obligation to collect adverse effects reports and notify of them. But there is a provision for others to do so voluntarily, which could be a sort of check that the notifiers are not ignoring potential problems.

Thirdly, surely it is in the interests of the developers of a new product to safeguard the reputation of that product by seeking and surveying and monitoring the possible outcomes of the development when used in the real world.

Fourthly, the definition of an adverse effect can be made in regulations, and indeed that is already provided for in Clause 25. But I suggest it should refer to issues over and above the expected health issues that might affect any conventionally bred animals but might reasonably be associated with a particular breeding technology. But this requirement can be time-limited under regulation for any given precision-breeding method.

Fifthly, this can be quite a light-touch system. For example, the reporting of adverse effects of veterinary medicines requires an online pro forma which can be sent in digitally to the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, which assesses it. That directorate, of course, already exists. The marketing authorisation holders could also submit their reports in the first place to something like the VMD, which could triage them and then pass them to the Secretary of State for consideration by the animal welfare advisory body, which is already set up —we are not asking for new bodies to be set up.

Sixthly, and perhaps most importantly, the public acceptance of precision-bred animals is hugely important if the Bill is ultimately to be of value, and I submit that it will be a considerable reassurance for the public to know that the sale and commercial breeding of precision-bred animals will be monitored for unforeseen negative effects post-marketing to complement the pre-marketing reporting requirements under Clause 12.

Seventhly, such post-marketing monitoring will also provide both the animal welfare advisory body and the marketeers with essential feedback on the robustness, validity and safety of their pre-marketing assessments. That would be important to inform them and help them develop, if necessary, better systems.

Eighthly and finally, the Minister has assured us that the use in animals will be phased in. Surely, if one is phasing in, one would want to monitor what was happening to the first group in the real world when it is being sold and used by farmers. Only then, by collecting that information, could you be assured, at the end of whatever length of time that phase is, that it is safe and appropriate to proceed to subsequent phases. I would argue that phasing in automatically suggests that one needs to be monitoring what is happening in that first phase, which will involve thousands of animals but will be a real-world experiment to prove or disprove the safety of the system. I do not expect there to be major problems, but it will give assurance to the public. On these collective grounds, I support Amendments 22 and 23.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for her thorough introduction to her two amendments, to which I am very pleased to have added my name. We strongly support what she is trying to achieve. We believe that there does need to be a reporting process for the adverse effects on the health and welfare of animals and, of course, their progeny. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, talked about the importance of evidence being retained to inform future research, as did the noble Lord, Lord Trees. This is also about public benefit; we discussed public benefit a lot in Committee, and it does need to be central to the Bill.

As the noble Baroness also said, we need to understand any lessons that can be learned. The noble Lord, Lord Trees, put it very clearly and succinctly when he talked about “robust” feedback. When we look at the first tranche of animals, we need to have the confidence that the industry is acting appropriately, that the outcomes are what we would hope to see and that we can catch anything that perhaps is not what we hoped for.

The noble Lord, Lord Trees, talked, importantly, about public confidence, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. If we are to carry the public with us, the future monitoring of animal health and welfare, consequences and outcomes is really important. Understanding adverse events is therefore terribly important. The noble Lord talked about drug introductions in the veterinary field, and we should have the same principles here, I believe, if we are to carry the public with us.

It does not seem to me that this amendment is disproportionate in any way. Instead, it would bring in some really important checks and balances and underpin what the Government are trying to achieve. I urge the Minister to consider very carefully what noble Lords have said. If the noble Baroness wishes to test the opinion of the House, she will have our support.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I repeat, again, that I am a very strong supporter of this Bill and everything it stands for. However, again, as I have said at every stage and indeed a moment ago on the previous grouping, the one weakness of the Bill is around animal welfare. Anyone reading the Hansard of the passage of this Bill through the Commons will note that it was the greatest concern of MPs too, but they failed to make even a dent in the Government’s protective carapace on this issue.

In Committee, many noble Lords from all sides of the House—myself included—put down amendments to try to minimise the possibility of any genetic change being proposed or implemented that could result in the future suffering or discomfort of, or distress to, animals or their progeny involved in the process. However, none of these amendments was put to the vote. We now have a well-thought-out amendment—or two—which precisely covers the worries that we all had and attempts to avoid them. The Government should think seriously before they reject them.

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[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to Amendment 28 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, who has spoken at length on why she feels it is necessary to delay the implementation of the Bill. The Bill sets in train a considerable step towards precision engineering and a move away from traditional practices. Great care is needed to ensure that all unintended consequences are avoided. The extra protections that the noble Baroness proposes are therefore necessary and I look forward to the Minister’s response and reassurance on this matter.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for her thorough introduction to her amendment. I completely understand why she is bringing it forward. There are areas of the Bill around implementation, oversight and the step-by-step process that we have discussed time and time again that people are still concerned about. The requirement of the amendment for a report to be published that identifies any gaps in scientific evidence is an interesting one. It will be good to hear the Minister’s thoughts on this.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for this amendment. I am keen to have a much wider conversation with people. My learning curve has been incredibly steep as I have gone through this—the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, is nodding as well. It is an area of science which is not understood by an awful lot of people. While I have sought to bring in as many safeguards as possible, there is a continuing job to do for all sorts of parties, not just the Government, to explain the benefits of this technology and the safeguards that the Government are introducing. However, I do not think that a priority setting partnership should be established in or under this Bill.

The Bill places science at its core. ACRE advised that precision-bred organisms pose no greater risk than traditionally-bred counterparts. As I said earlier, its advice is supported by the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Biology, the Roslin Institute and a wealth of peer-reviewed literature. The Royal Society stated that

“these are no more likely to pose a risk to human health or the environment than non-editing derived mutations, which occur spontaneously in each new generation”.

In earlier debates, I have sought to make it clear that if we inserted regulatory measures or language into the Bill that somehow elevated this technology beyond where it is, we risk misleading the public and we have to be really careful about that.

ACRE’s expertise in precision-breeding technologies is considerable, having first advised on them in 2013. We used this as a basis for our intervention in a pivotal European Court of Justice case in 2018 and for our consultation on genetic technologies in 2021.

The Secretary of State will be required to make decisions based on the advice of expert committees. As part of its current role as adviser on genetically modified organisms, ACRE will also advise the Secretary of State on whether an organism is precision bred. A comprehensive understanding of the underlying science is essential for this process and ACRE members have a wealth of experience in the regulation of genetic technologies. Moreover, this Bill will sit alongside existing legislation that deals with human, animal, and environmental health.

I understand the noble Baroness’s reservations. However, where we have identified evidence is incomplete, we have taken steps to address this. The regulations under the Bill will not come forward until the relevant measures are in place, and Parliament will have the opportunity to further scrutinise them.

Environmental Targets (Water) (England) Regulations 2022

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

At the end insert “but that this House regrets the lack of ambition and urgency contained in the Regulations; notes that in relation to the department’s consultation, an overwhelming majority of respondents supported more stringent targets than those in these Regulations; further notes that these targets must be considered in the context of the Environment Agency’s decision to postpone the deadline for improving the quality of England’s rivers, lakes and coastal waters to 2063; therefore calls on His Majesty’s Government to bring forward revised targets by the end of 2023”.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, along with many others, we have for some time expressed our concerns about the Government’s lack of ambition in tackling the huge challenges facing our environment. We argued strongly during the passage of the Environment Act for the need to set targets to bring about transformative change, and were told that ambitious targets would be announced by 31 October of last year. That is a full year after the Act came into law—so hardly urgent. It was only after interventions from the Office for Environmental Protection, fellow parliamentarians and environmental groups that eventually they were laid—late—on 19 December.

One reason for the delay is that Defra did not begin the consultation on the proposed targets until March 2022 and the publication of evidence documents to support responses was also delayed. Over 180,000 consultation responses were received, with most people asking for higher levels of ambition. We know this carries a high level of public interest and support. Instead, as the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee says in its highly critical report, most of the targets have not been strengthened, none has been strengthened significantly, and some have been weakened, with key gaps remaining in some areas where there was strong public and expert support for additional targets.

In addition, the Government are further undermining nature recovery by threatening hundreds, if not thousands, of environmental laws under the retained EU law Bill. Can the Minister tell me what is the point in the Government having a 25-year environment plan if it ends up being nothing but rhetoric?

I turn to the SI in front of us today on the water targets. The date of 2063 was mentioned by the Minister. Until Brexit, the UK Government were signed up to the water framework directive, requiring countries to make sure that all their waters achieved good chemical and ecological status by 2027 at the latest. The UK Government later reduced this to 75% of waterways reaching a single test of good ecological status by 2027 at the latest. The target for the majority of waterways to achieve good status in both chemical and ecological tests has now been pushed back to 2063 according to an analysis by the Wildlife Trusts of the new river basin management plans.

It is not amusing. The latest state of rivers and lakes report released by the Environment Agency shows that only 16% meet the criteria for good ecological status and that no water bodies are deemed to meet the criteria for achieving good chemical status. This is appalling. The Government have set targets to reduce pollution from agriculture, abandoned metal mines and wastewater, and to reduce water demand. That is commendable—of course we support pollution reduction. Nitrogen and phosphorus run-off from agriculture lead to freshwater ecosystems being starved of oxygen, causing harm to wildlife. In fact, agriculture and wastewater nutrient pollution carry most responsibility for the failure of our lakes and waterways to meet good ecological standards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this debate.

The water targets put forward in this statutory instrument meet the requirements under the Environment Act to set at least one target in the area of water. As the Act requires, the Secretary of State has sought appropriate advice from independent experts and is satisfied that these targets can be met. The targets set out in this instrument will complement our existing water regulatory framework and the actions that the Government are taking on multiple fronts to address specific pollutions in the water environment.

For example, and to clarify my previous statement, we are driving Ofwat to challenge water companies to achieve zero serious pollution incidents by 2030. This includes the amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill to reduce phosphorus discharges from treated wastewater and reducing nutrient pollution from agriculture by doubling funding for advice and support to farmers through the catchment-sensitive farming scheme and our new slurry infrastructure grant. That grant addresses precisely the point that the noble Baroness made in relation to slurry lagoons. We are putting money into this area, where there is a specific point-source pollution problem, because we want to solve these problems.

I have not mentioned environment land management schemes—

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I talked about that part of the levelling-up Bill because I am slightly confused. Departments usually are not brilliant at talking to each other. How will this work and who takes precedence on this? Does DLUHC take that bit? I do not understand the set-up.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I hope that I can reassure the noble Baroness. I spend a lot of time talking to other departments on this. Part of the problem on the River Wye is a planning issue. The customer said they wanted free-range eggs, the market responded, but the planning system was not in place. I know this from a previous role that I had. Perhaps I should declare an interest: I was a campaigner on trying to clean up the River Wye. That is the angle that I come from in this debate. The problem over decades has been the mismatch between the demand of the customer and the planning, which has not addressed it. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that these matters need to be controlled. Not only do we deal with DLUHC every day but they are in the same building. We spend our time, at an official and a ministerial level, working very closely with colleagues.

Without these actions, we will see shortfalls in water supply across England and significant strain on the water environment from nutrient and metal pollution. This target, alongside the suite of Environmental Act targets, will ensure that we meet our commitments to leave the environment in a better place than we found it.

I hope that this will clarify the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking. There is a mistake in the amendment to the Motion, which the noble Baroness did not touch on. It notes that

“these targets must be considered in the context of the Environment Agency’s decision to postpone the deadline for improving the quality of England’s rivers, lakes and coastal waters to 2063”.

No, we are not. That simply refers—and it also addresses the point made by the noble Baroness on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench—to existing measures that are within the water framework directive. If we were still in the EU, these would apply. These are persistent toxic metals and chemicals that cannot be removed by any action that the Government can take now.

These matters will have to be dealt with over the coming months, years and decades to be resolved. They cannot be within the targets we want, because our ambitions are very high. These waste metals are in the environment, and you cannot remove them. That is why they are in the water framework directive. If we were still in the European Union, we would be abiding by this. I absolutely reject the line that we have somehow reduced our ambition since leaving the European Union. That is not true. The 75% figure that was quoted was decided before we left the EU and is an EU target. We are compliant with the water framework directive and, in other ways, we are more ambitious.

Through the way we support farmers in environmental land management, we are trying to give them incentives to change the way they treat soil. In preventing run-off of chemicals, pollutants and soil into our rivers, soil can be our friend. You only have to look at photographs from space, or with your own eyes when standing beside a river: when you see a river in a time of flood, it is very often brown because of the water that is flowing into it.

On the question of environmental laws and the rule Bill, there is no way we will get rid of regulations and measures that will help us hit our targets to reverse the decline in biodiversity by 2030. Many of those species exist in and around our waterways and rivers. There is no way we are going to get rid of regulations that help us to achieve our 25-year environment plan; and there is no way we are going to get rid of regulations that help us fulfil our international obligations, achieved with great effort at the CBD COP 15 in Montreal, with the United Kingdom Government at the heart of that process. There is no way we can do what we want to achieve while getting rid of regulations. So I hope that noble Lords will be reassured on that.

My noble friend Lady McIntosh made a good point about the impact of housing on rivers. A large part of the pollution problems we face comes from individual households that may have poor connections, or from the sheer number of houses that have been built in communities without the infrastructure to support them. That is why, with these targets, we will see hundreds of improvements to sewage treatment plants up and down rivers in this country.

My noble friend will be pleased that we are taking forward the, I grant her, long-delayed SUDS provisions in the Flood and Water Management Act. I am very happy to give her more details on that. She is also right to point out that sewage, if handled in the right way, is a resource. I refer her to emerging technologies around sustainable fertilisers, which can use waste products such as treated sewage to create prilled fertiliser that farmers can put on their land in the certain knowledge of its quality. It stands up against the inorganic, synthetically produced fertilisers that have been part of the problem with pollution, run-off, damage to the environment and the farming sector’s inability to hit its target of achieving net zero by 2040. So, technology is our friend in this field.

I was very interested to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talk about the River Colne, which I was beside this weekend. It is beautiful. If amounts of sewage are being released into it and it is illegal, some of the environmental enforcement agencies, including the new ones we have created with the extra investment we have put into the Environment Agency, will be able to take that water company to court and issue fines, as we have on many occasions, some of which were very large fines indeed.

One of the reasons that £1.3 billion is being spent on a new sewer a few feet from where we are standing is the failure of a previous Government to hit the urban wastewater treatment directive targets. Those targets still exist, and we are cleaning up rivers such as the Thames not only in order to comply but because we want to achieve that.

I turn to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on COP 15. Water and biodiversity targets go hand in hand. Our new legally binding targets to halt the decline in species abundance is a good proxy for the health of wider ecosystems. These targets will drive domestic action. She asked about weakening the water framework target. I hope that I have covered that. It is categorically untrue that the Government have reduced in any way the water framework directive regulations since Brexit. All EU nations have exempted some water bodies from the target where it is neither practically nor technically feasible to meet it, and I have covered that. The 75% target was set before we left the EU, and we remain committed to it.

Turning to the baseline issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, the water targets do have different baseline years. This simply represents the latest years for which we have robust data. It reflects the different reporting cycles for these targets and it is important to use the most recent data. That is why, on occasions, there are different baselines. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, also raised issues regarding the OEP. The OEP commended several of the targets, including on waste reduction, agricultural water pollution and particulate matter pollution.

We all want to do things as quickly as possible. If I was on any side of the House, but not on the Front Bench, I too would be pushing the Minister of the day. I do not resile from, or have any less respect for, any Member of this House who pushes the Government on this. I want things to be done as quickly as possible, but let us do it on the right basis. The way this 2063 target has been used in this regret Motion is totally inaccurate, and I hope that noble Lords understand that.

We have been consistently clear with water companies that they must act rapidly to prioritise action on sewage-overflow pollution. Water companies are investing £3.1 billion to improve storm overflows between 2020 and 2025. Our storm overflows plan balances ambition and pace with the impact on consumer bills. Our plan will see £56 billion of capital investment and an estimated £12 average increase in customer water bills between 2025 and 2030. To promote sustainable solutions, green infrastructure projects, started before 2027 and delivered as quickly as possible, will count towards the completion of targets. This is a huge opportunity for the natural environment to see large amounts of private sector money being put into the environment. I will add, on enforcement, that, since 2015, the Environment Agency has concluded 59 prosecutions against water and sewerage companies, securing fines of more than £144 million.

I will now address the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on our targets and ambitions on water use. We want to be serious about this and we want to be effective in reducing it. A cultural change needs to take place. We use potable drinking water to water our plants and wash our cars, as well as for household needs. I am not suggesting that there is an easy cure for this, but, in a changing climate, where there are real pressures, we want to make sure that we are driving down water use, helping those on low incomes to understand that this is a way they can save money—not in a preachy, patronising way but with real assistance. I have seen this at first hand, where a water company shows people how, through small additions to their households, sometimes provided free, they are able to achieve this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I would like to thank the Minister before he sits down—although he has completed that act—for his very clear exposition over my concern about the postponement date of 2063. I offer my gratitude to the Minister.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has taken part in this short debate. Regarding the date of 2063, which the Minister has got so exercised about, I reiterate that this came from the Wildlife Trusts, an organisation that I greatly respect. I also greatly respect the Minister. I thank him for his time in going through the different parts of the regulations that we have been discussing today.

My amendment says that I regret the lack of ambition and urgency contained in the regulations. I am afraid the Minister has not reassured me on that—I am sure that he is not surprised to hear it—but I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment withdrawn.

National Parks

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I might have to write to the right reverend Prelate on that. As we look as implementing the recommendations of the Landscapes Review, and through the biodiversity duty that we are imposing on public bodies through the Environment Act, I think we will address that. I hope we are seeing the determination of this Government to tackle issues which simply did not exist when national parks were created 70 years ago. Climate change was not talked about then and biodiversity was stable or rising; those emergencies need to be reflected in the policies they take forward.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, national parks across the country are losing thousands of trees because of disease. In the Lake District, Forestry England is cutting down large trees in the Ennerdale valley and Whinlatter, across many hectares of land. What assessment has been made as to the impact on wildlife from this loss of trees, including red squirrel populations, and what plans are in place, including the timescales for replanting with native species?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I cannot give the noble Baroness an accurate assessment of what impact tree disease has had, or indeed Storm Arwen in Northumberland, which saw probably millions of trees blown down. Undoubtedly, that has an effect on wildlife, but wildlife can benefit from different ages of woodland being in a landscape. I hope the replanting schemes that are happening, whether because of disease such as ash die- back or events such as Storm Arwen, will see those areas planted as quickly as possible. It is not the national park doing that; it is the landowners and land managers within those areas, and Forestry England will be assisting them and giving grants for that to happen.

Avian Influenza: Game Birds

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

What is happening to shore birds is a tragedy. There is a slightly different strain affecting shore birds and poultry—and pheasants I class with the latter. It is a tragedy that is apparent when you look at Bass Rock, which for centuries has been white and is now black, because there are not the sea-birds on it. We are working across government to make sure that we address the disease in wild as well as domestic birds.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, following on from the question about vaccination, we know that researchers are confident that they will make progress down this route—potentially through gene-editing techniques. Obviously, that is going to take some time, so in the interim the disease is going to continue to mutate, with all the risks that that brings for animals and, potentially, even humans. Given the cross-border nature of the problem, what steps are the Government taking to ensure an international research effort similar to that which we saw during the Covid pandemic?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I can absolutely assure the noble Baroness that this is happening. As she says, this is a global issue, and there are many forums in which we deal with it. The World Organisation for Animal Health is one of them, and our chief vet and her team are completely embedded in this. If we can find a vaccination solution that is both effective and practical, I assure her that we will take every measure to see it implemented here, and we are working hard to achieve that.

Environmental Principles Policy Statement

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

To ask His Majesty’s Government when they expect to lay their final environmental principles policy statement before Parliament; and why this process has been subject to delay.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, we hope to agree the final policy statement across government in the coming weeks and publish it early this year. This has taken longer than initially expected but it is important to get it right. Once the final policy statement is published, there will be an implementation period before the duty comes into force. We remain committed to embedding environmental considerations into cross-government policy-making.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response, but the fact remains that Defra keeps missing important deadlines. Long-term targets under the Environment Act came well after the statutory deadline and were pretty underwhelming. The deposit return scheme for plastics was supposed to be operational next year, but Defra has not even responded to the March 2021 consultation. We still lack crucial detail on new agricultural and biodiversity schemes. In wishing the Minister a very happy new year, can I ask that he make a new year’s resolution to deliver on these supposed priorities?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I wish the noble Baroness a very happy new year and a continued position on the Benches opposite in future. We recognise the urgency of the challenges that we face, from the threats posed by climate change to the pressures on nature both at home and abroad. Defra is working at pace to deliver on this across a wide range of areas where we are trying to implement the most progressive environmental policy that this country has ever seen. Progress is being made in the area of this policy statement. We have now started the final stage of consultation with colleagues across government to ensure that all departments play their part in these policies, which will be presented to Parliament in the next few weeks.

Traffic-related Air Pollution

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not have a figure with which to answer my noble friend, but she is absolutely right to point out the value of trees. We have stretching targets for new woodland planting, which not only will help to reverse the declines in biodiversity and to lock up more carbon but will improve people’s health through both the air they breathe and the quality of their lives. We want to ensure that this is understood, not just by land managers but by local authorities and government departments which own a large amount of land. We want to ensure that everybody is part of the great national effort to improve our biodiversity and quality of life.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, in June the National Audit Office released a report on tackling local breaches of air quality. One of its conclusions was that the Government publish a lot of air quality data, but not in a way that gives the public accessible information about air quality problems and action in their area. It said:

“There has been little public engagement … and … a lack of transparency”.


What progress have the Government made to address those issues?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We are driving down emissions across all sectors in the economy, including through the nitrogen dioxide plan, which has seen emissions from road transport decrease over 52% in the last decade, and the environmental permitting of agriculture and industry, which has seen sulphur dioxide emissions from energy production decrease 87% over the last decade, and by regulating the most harmful fuels in domestic burning to reduce emissions by 2030. That is what we are achieving. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that we need to help people to make decisions about their lives, so part of our support for local authorities is to help the whole health disparity problem by making sure that people have more information about how they can minimise the impact of poor air quality in their lives. Some people cannot do that—for example, you cannot expect people to move away from traffic hotspots—so the driver is to try to reduce poor air quality and to improve the lives of those people. Trying to ensure that we are limiting those issues is an absolutely core part of the national policy.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I did not mean to speak on this group, but it deals with delegated powers and the powers the Government take upon themselves in relation to other bodies—in this case the national Parliament.

Since we met on Monday, there has been a development concerning the state of the Bill in the country more broadly about which I wanted to ask the Minister, and I think this is the best place to do it. Since Monday, when the Minister referred to the ongoing discussions with Scotland, Scotland has tabled a memorandum to withhold consent to this Bill when it becomes an Act. Although it has only so far been tabled, clearly, with the SNP in a majority in the Scottish Parliament, it will pass. The Minister talked about ongoing discussions. Can he tell the Committee what the Government’s strategy is with regard to Scotland? Do they intend to try to reach consensus through the common framework, or to force the Bill through using the internal market Act?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for tabling her amendments in this group. They all seek to upgrade certain regulation-making powers in the Bill from the negative procedure to the affirmative. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for bringing forward her concerns about the Henry VIII powers which could be used in this Bill and to which other noble Lords have referred during our discussions.

The main thing for us to raise here is that, once again, we are concerned about the sheer amount of work being left for the months and years after the Bill makes it on to the statute book, and the lack of parliamentary involvement when these instruments are eventually brought forward. During Monday’s debate, the Minister made it clear that it would take years to put the core regulatory structures in place and extend the regime beyond its original focus on crop plants. During this time, there could be significant changes such as new scientific analysis, changes in market conditions, developments in other jurisdictions and shifts in public perception.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, talked about the use of the negative procedure. The question then is, would making certain regulations subject to the affirmative procedure guard against all possibilities? It would not, but it would at least provide MPs and Peers with regular opportunities to share their views.

We have already had discussions about the welfare advisory body, including the form it may take and the functions it will fulfil. We know that colleagues across the Committee are understandably anxious about getting this right, yet the proposal is for the Secretary of State to designate key animal welfare responsibilities to an as yet unidentified committee or body through a negative SI.

I will listen to the Minister’s response to these amendments with great interest and hope that, at the very least, we can have more information about this ahead of Report. The power to make consequential provision is a standard inclusion in legislation, but we also accept that drafting often makes the power appear unnecessarily broad. It would be helpful if the Minister could provide any examples of what would or would not be permitted.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to those who have tabled these amendments. Before I reply to them, may I clarify a point I made earlier, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, is in his place? When referring to CRISPR-Cas9, I was trying to respond to a point the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, made. That technology is fundamental to this Bill, and he was referring to where it took place. Of course, I meant to say that CRISPR will not be used on the farm. It is important to this Bill and will be used in laboratories that will have to be licensed under this mechanism.

Turning to the amendments tabled concerning changes to the parliamentary procedure for making regulations under certain powers in this Bill, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for them, and I reassure her that these powers are administrative in nature and therefore do not require an increased level of parliamentary scrutiny.

Taking Amendment 26 first, the intended purpose of the power in Clause 4 is to prescribe details which are administrative in nature—for example, the types of persons who can be specified in a release notice, or the form such a notice needs to be given in. This is an important function as it will allow the Bill to operate as intended. Unnecessary scrutiny being applied to these administrative regulations through an affirmative procedure could delay the implementation of the Bill and reduce our ability to move quickly towards gaining the significant benefits the Bill has to offer. It would also make it more cumbersome for us to make technical adjustments to the requirements as to the form and content of the release notice and any accompanying information, to reflect developments in technology and industry practice. We do not believe that debating such technical and administrative details would be a beneficial use of parliamentary time.

Turning to Amendment 33, Clause 11 is clear that an application will be required to include

“a declaration that the notifier does not expect the health or welfare of the relevant animal or its qualifying progeny to be adversely affected … by any precision bred trait”.

It is also clear in this clause that the application will have to be accompanied by

“an assessment of the risks to the health or welfare of the relevant animal or its qualifying progeny”

and an explanation of the steps taken to identify these risks. These key requirements are set out on the face of the Bill. The delegated powers merely allow Ministers to prescribe further details in relation to these applications, which will be more administrative or technical in nature.

Regarding the amendment to Clause 18, I reassure the noble Baroness that a list of matters which could be included on the register is set out in the Bill. This list includes, but is not limited to, information relating to the release and marketing notices, reports from the advisory committees and enforcement notices.

This clause therefore enables information on a wide range of matters relating to precision-bred organisms to be made public, in the interest of transparency and public reassurance. Specific details of the information to be entered in the register are an administrative matter.

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Moved by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

56: After Clause 25, insert the following new Clause—
“Release and marketing of precision bred animalsA person may not give a release notice to the Secretary of State in relation to the release of a precision bred animal (see section 4(1)(a)), and no precision bred animal marketing authorisation may be issued (see section 13(1)), until—(a) 12 months have passed since the date of the establishment of the Animal Sentience Committee under section 1 of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, and(b) 6 months have passed since the date on which the Animal Sentience Committee has made to the Secretary of State a report on the provisions of this Act.”Member's explanatory statement
This new Clause would delay the release of precision bred animals for at least 12 months after the Animal Sentience Committee established under the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 has been established and at least 6 months after the Committee has reported on the impact of the Act on animal welfare.

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[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I have two amendments that make up this group. First, I will look at Amendment 56. Clause 10 defines a relevant animal as a vertebrate for the purposes of the welfare protection measures in Clauses 11 to 15. This is in line with the definition of an animal in the Animal Welfare Act 2006. With Amendment 56, I am interested in looking at the relationship between the Bill and the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, which some of us were involved with. I thank my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch for her support in this. That Act defines an animal as

“any vertebrate other than homo sapiens … any cephalopod mollusc, and … any decapod crustacean.”

Noble Lords may remember that during the passage of that Act, we debated the definition, particularly regarding the scientific evidence for the sentience of cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans, and eventually they were included in that definition. Our concern is that, despite that, Clause 10 continues to define animals only as vertebrates. We also note that the clause does not exclude Homo sapiens explicitly: my noble friend Lord Winston has previously made that point. Basically, what we are trying to achieve here is to align the definitions in the Bill with the most recent piece of relevant legislation that has gone through the House.

The clause also makes provision for the Bill’s definition to be extended to include invertebrates if the Animal Welfare Act 2006 is extended to include them. Therefore, we have a rather confusing situation where we have two different definitions of animal in law, one from the 2006 legislation and one from the very recent legislation. As an aside, given that the Government’s aim with the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act is to recognise the sentience of animals in law, it is kind of surprising that the Animal Welfare Act has not been extended to reflect the Government’s latest position on this. Regardless of that, we think that the Bill should use the most up-to-date definitions and allow for any new legislation to be properly established in this area.

My noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch mentioned at an earlier date the situation regarding the animal sentience committee. The Minister confirmed that it does have a chair, but it is not yet fully established, and the Minister did not adequately answer the question as to when we are likely to see it up and running. What is the point in having a chair if you have no committee?

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[Lord Harlech (Con)]

All I can say at this stage is that it will be as soon as possible.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for ploughing through that. I want to make the same kind of point the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, made. All the while we do not have anything published and we do not know about implementation periods, the whole thing is a bit pointless. How can you have “due regard” to something you do not have in front of you, and if you do not know the timescales? It is quite frustrating. The sooner we can get all of this sorted and the Minister can give us some more timescales and dates, so we know what is going on, the better. I am sure we will be returning to these issues on Report, but in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 56 withdrawn.

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In the past, we have had lots of problems of misusing feed. We are waiting for another crisis—and then of course people will take an interest. The reason why the FSA was set up is that there was a crisis that was not dealt with because the department was too involved in providing benefits to the producers and forgetting the consumers. In this case, consumers are entitled to know and trust that the food and feed produced from precision-bred organisms is safe, but how can they if we are just dealing with skeleton clauses and we have government by diktat? Of course, that was the title of a report last year and it is what we have—Government by Diktat. Could the Minister explain to us why they have decided to introduce skeleton clauses but not admit in the delegated powers memorandum that those clauses are in the Bill?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, much has been said during our debates about the strength of the food and public health measures in the Bill but also about the fact that the Food Standards Agency is going to have a role to play in ensuring that any precision-bred organisms that reach our supermarket shelves are adequately regulated.

Our concern is about the wording as it currently stands because, although it confers on the Government the option to create a provision for regulating the placing on the market of food and feed produced from precision-bred organisms, it does not make that mandatory. In other words, although the Bill makes the regulation of precision-bred food and feed a possibility, it leaves it open to the Government not to take up that power should they not desire to do so.

That is why I have added my name to Amendment 57, of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, which would change that subsection’s language from “may” to “must” so that the Government would be mandated to take up the power; it would not be an option—and likewise with her Amendment 58. I thank her for her thorough introduction to her amendments.

We also support Amendment 60, in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch. This part of the Bill proposes to introduce powers that will empower the FSA to create a proportionate framework for regulating precision-bred organisms. If approved, the framework will form the basis upon which precision-bred food and feed products are to be authorised and placed on the market in England. That is one reason why I tabled Amendment 63; I felt it was important that we understand what preparatory work has been undertaken on the planned food and feed register and whether there is likely to be any further consultation on it.

As my noble friend Lady Jones has said, the FSA is already under financial and resource pressures. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked an important question: what happens, what are the implications, if there are no new resources for the FSA? My noble friend Lord Rooker raised some serious and important points and questions that need to be answered. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to those points.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to noble Lords and I will start by answering some of the points that were raised. First, I make it clear to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and all noble Lords—I think we are all interested in this—that the precautionary principle is at the heart of the Environment Act and our desire to reverse the decline in biodiversity and the tragic loss of species, with no net loss by 2030, and our provisions in the 25-year environment plan. I am not sure that the precautionary principle in recent decades has been particularly well used in relation to what it was originally defined as, and we want to get back to making sure that we are committed to a proportionate, science- based regulation that protects people, animals and the environment.

On the question of the Food Standards Agency and its resourcing, I have had regular meetings with the chair of the FSA and other senior officials as we have progressed this Bill through both Houses, and I have been assured that precision breeding will remain an important area of work now and in future and, as such, the need to meet continuing resource requirements to support that work will be taken fully into account in future spending review bids.

On the point that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, raised about a skeleton Bill, I fear that I may excite him again, but I shall say what I believe to be the case. The delegated powers are quite specific and technical in how they are intended to be used, so I would say that this is not a skeleton Bill. It has powers to supplement the principal policy measures that are set out in the Bill. I have some experience in the other place, and in my short time here, of legislation and how it can be Christmas-treed by MPs and others. I want to make sure that this is a precise piece of legislation, with as much in the Bill as can be, and that the powers that lie within it are technical and administrative.

I turn, first, to Amendment 57. As it stands, the Bill grants the necessary power to put in place a new regulatory framework for food and feed produced from precision-bred plants and animals. This will allow the FSA to continue to ensure that the food that we eat is food that we can trust. Until this new regulatory framework is in place, food and feed produced from precision-bred plants and animals will continue to be regulated under the regulatory regime for GM food and feed. So I can assure noble Lords there would not be a regulatory gap in relation to these products as a result of this Bill.

The FSA has published key papers over the past few months, giving details of its proposals on how food and feed produced from precision-bred organisms will be regulated. Noble Lords will also be aware of the support from the FSA board for this Bill and the letters we have received from the chair of the FSA board on this matter. The FSA has commissioned independent scientific advice from the Advisory Committee for Novel Foods and Processes, the FSA’s independent scientific advisory committee, to determine the appropriate means of regulating precision-bred food and feed to ensure that measures are in place to safeguard consumers’ safety in relation to food that they eat. The advice will recommend the criteria for determining how food and feed produced from precision-bred organisms will be assessed. In addition, scientific advice will be provided on the technical information that developers will need to provide to enable assessment under the new framework by the FSA. The Bill should not pre-empt this advice or unduly restrict our ability to implement the most suitable regulatory framework for these products.

Regulations setting up the regime developed by the FSA will also be subject to the affirmative procedure and would therefore need to be debated and approved by both Houses of Parliament. The FSA is committed to food safety and to developing a system that would be put in place by the Secretary of State, using these powers in a proportionate way that both supports innovation and protects consumers. This will deliver a proportionate regulatory framework.

I turn to Amendment 58 and reassure noble Lords that there are already well-established provisions in existing general food law that secure the traceability of all food and feed throughout the supply chain and assist with its recall or withdrawal from the market when it may be proved unsafe. Businesses producing or marketing food and feed produced from precision-bred organisms will need to comply with this existing law. The Bill gives Ministers the option to impose, by regulations, specific requirements to enhance traceability of food and feed produced from precision-bred organisms beyond existing traceability requirements. This provides flexibility to make adjustments to meet any future needs that are not covered by general food law. The FSA will advise Ministers in this regard and ensure that proposals are subject to a public consultation before any such measures are implemented.

I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for Amendment 59. The primary policy objective of the Bill is to ensure that plants and animals developed using precision breeding, and food and feed produced from them, are regulated proportionately to risk. To do this, the Bill and the regulations to be made under it would remove precision-bred plants and animals, and food and feed produced from them, from the regulatory requirements applicable to genetically modified organisms. However, I take on board the noble Baroness’s concerns around thorough risk assessment and reassure her that any risk-assessment framework will be based on robust scientific advice provided by the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes.

The provisions in Part 3 of the Bill will allow the FSA to design a framework that adequately responds to the risk profile of precision-bred organisms and provide consumers with food they can trust, based on independent scientific advice. Detailed proposals for the future framework will be subject to full public consultation, as is required under food law, and the detailed scrutiny of Parliament through the affirmative process.

I turn now to the additional amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones—Amendment 60. Following the UK’s exit from the EU, the FSA has expanded the expertise of its independent scientific advisory committees to assist with considering the range of possible food safety risks posed by new and existing technologies. This is reflected in the composition of the ACNFP and a new subgroup of that committee, which was formed to consider these issues. This committee can bring in wider experience where specific issues arise.

The FSA is committed to food safety. We have two former chairs of it in this Chamber and they can assert this. It has been active in bolstering the resources of its scientific advisory committees and I am satisfied that they have sufficient resources and expertise to fulfil their intended functions in relation to regulating the placing on the market of food and feed produced from precision-bred organisms, including undertaking risk assessments of food and feed produced by precision-breeding technologies.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, Amendment 61 is in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Parminter. I thank them for their support. Both the amendments in this group take on the issue of labelling. Traceability and labelling very much fit together. I will quote one sentence from the Soil Association’s briefing on the Bill, which makes a really important point:

“The objectives of the Bill could be achieved with the inclusion of labelling and traceability.”


It is crucial to say that these are amendments that, much as I might not like it, accept many other parts of the Bill but say that the public and industries have to be able to see what is going on.

I already referred to the FSA’s study of July 2021. To quote another of its findings:

“Most consumers felt labelling should always inform the consumer of the presence GE ingredients”.


I also note that the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, BBSRC and Sciencewise’s Public Dialogue on Genome Editing in Farmed Animals found that consumers

“wanted products from genome edited animals to be labelled as such.”

We have before us two amendments that are similar but slightly different; the second one, Amendment 62, being in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Bakewell. Either amendment would very much do the job. My Amendment 61 aims to be really clear and simple. It would give consumers information at the point of purchase, and although I fully understand the desire of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to add further information about nutritional content, allergens and environmental impact, I suspect that we should be seeing that kind of labelling on all food, rather than specifically precision-bred food.

We can imagine what a so-called precision-breeding label might look like: a sticker that says “PB” in large writing with a little explanation underneath. Keeping that separate from the nutrition and environmental impact labelling in the interests of simplicity is an argument. Plus, saying that this should be added specifically to precision-bred food items but not to others does not quite add up, as far as I can see. However, I am not hugely wedded to that position, and I will interested to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has to say in this regard.

If we were to do a survey on the public’s concerns about this Bill, labelling is probably the issue about which we would find the most concern, as is backed up by the research I have already quoted. It is very clear and understandable, and people just want to know what they are eating. That has always been true and is increasingly true, given, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, some of the many scandals, problems and issues we have had with our food supply over the years. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I think it would be helpful for me to introduce my Amendment 62 at this point. We know that the Bill is going to create a new type of food product on supermarket shelves, the precision-bred organism, and is also clear that there is a trend among consumers to want more information about their food, what it contains, where it comes from and its environmental impact. All these things are important, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, talked about traceability as well, so it is important that we have a discussion about how we achieve this, what we label, how it needs to be labelled and the impact of precision-bred organisms on future labelling.

Our Amendment 62—I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for her support—would require the Government to introduce regulations to ensure that precision-bred food and feed is labelled to provide sufficient information in certain areas. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has already said, that includes nutritional content, the potential presence of allergens and the environmental impact of the product, but it would also require the Secretary of State to consult stakeholder groups before pursuing that and to seek the advice of the Food Standards Agency. The Government have already said that they support nutritional labelling to inform consumers of any allergens or if the nutritional content of the food has been changed from its natural state. This is something we need to address in the Bill.

We are aware of the issues of coexistence with other production systems, supply chain tracing and how the legislation might have an impact on the organic sector. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has talked about the organic sector, and I am not sure we have had sufficient discussion in Committee so far about the potential impacts on that sector.

We also believe it important to consult on this issue, so that whatever labelling regime the Government decide to introduce allows for different types of food production to coexist. In the impact assessment the Government state that they oppose labelling in this instance, based particularly, I think, on the costs it would incur for businesses. I am sure the Minister can confirm those points. The impact assessment has not calculated the costs or benefits of labelling, so it would be helpful if the Minister could let your Lordships know how that judgment was reached.

I would like to draw attention to a couple of points in the impact assessment. In paragraph 114, the Government note that

“maintaining a labelling and tracing system could also have wider benefits, most notably, improved consumer confidence in food products potentially adding value across the food supply chain.”

We spoke at Second Reading and earlier in Committee about the importance of consumer confidence. The impact assessment also states:

“Given uncertainties … we have not monetised the estimated annual cost of a labelling and tracing system to business.”


This was also identified by the Regulatory Policy Committee, which stated in its report:

“The traceability and labelling costs, the primary benefit for the preferred option and which differentiates the two regulatory options considered, is not quantified. As this is the main difference between the two regulatory options, the Department needs to provide some quantification of the scale of the potential impact from this change.”


I would be very grateful if the Minister could comment on this assessment. Further to that, in its written evidence to the committee, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics noted that the Government’s present stance on labelling

“runs contrary to the findings of many public engagement initiatives that have broached this question ... in this context, not labelling amounts to the withholding of information about consumer preferences”.

The question I would ask the Minister and the Committee more broadly is: where do we go with this? How do we best provide the information consumers want in order to produce confidence in the system? It is not an easy question; there are no easy answers. But I do think we need to make progress.

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[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, has tabled this group of amendments to set up a genetic technology authority. The amendments are detailed and intended to ensure that the GTA operates effectively and transparently, and brings some measurement of results to the Bill. The noble Baroness spoke very eloquently and in depth to this group and to its purpose. For the ethos of the Bill to operate effectively, it will need a robust genetic technology authority to see it through. We have not heard just where the animal sentience committee fits in with the welfare advisory body or with ACRE. Are they to be dovetailed together or completely separate? There is a need for a properly constructed body to ensure safety and progress in outcomes.

There is little that I can add which will bring anything additional to this debate. We support the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, in these excellent amendments. Should the Minister not give a favourable response, we would be prepared to support her again on Report, should she so wish.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch for introducing these amendments. We fully support these proposals.

I would also like to comment on the amendment to Amendment 67, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. What she has done with her Amendment 68 is to aid our discussion and broaden it out. That is an important thing and we should consider it, but, as my noble friend said in her introduction, her amendments would be pretty fundamental to how we move forward with the Bill if the Minister were to accept them. It also brings forward an important way in which the Bill could be improved, and the implementation of the new technologies managed and overseen.

We know that, as my noble friend said, the genetic technology authority that she proposes is modelled on the legislation introduced to establish the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. We heard earlier from my noble friend Lord Winston how successful that has been, so we should consider this extremely seriously. We know that a number of organisations in this field have either argued for or alluded to the need for the establishment of such a body. They include the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the Royal Society of Biology and the Royal Society, as well as Doctor Madeleine Campbell of the British Veterinary Association.

There is no need for me to go into the details of why such a body is important, or how it could be set up and operated, as my noble friend has clearly and persuasively laid that out. I say to the Minister that this really seems to be a sensible, proportionate approach that would genuinely strengthen the Bill. I urge him to give it serious consideration and discuss it with his colleagues in the department as we move towards Report on the Bill.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for her considered and detailed proposal. As she says, this was raised by her colleague Daniel Zeichner in the other place. I would like to go over some of the key points on why we do not think that a new independent body should be established in the Bill.

We set out our plans for wider reform of genetic technologies regulation in last year’s public consultation and in the subsequent government response. We are taking a stepwise approach to developing a more proportionate governance framework in this area. As part of this, we intend to review how we regulate a wider range of genetic technologies and applications. This wider review is a more appropriate context for discussions on an overarching body, such as a genetic technologies authority. It is also consistent with a recommendation made by the Regulatory Horizons Council.

The Bill has a narrower but important ambition, which is to address the pressing issue of introducing more proportionate regulations for PBOs, which are currently regulated as GMOs. Science is already at the heart of this policy and the Bill rightly requires the Secretary of State to make decisions based on the advice of expert committees. ACRE, the committee that will advise the Secretary of State on whether they should confirm the status of a PBO, is also the committee that currently advises on genetically modified organisms. ACRE has considerable scientific expertise on precision-breeding technologies; indeed, it first advised on these techniques in 2013. This formed the basis for our intervention in a pivotal European Court of Justice case in 2018, and for the consultation that we held on the regulation of genetic technologies last year.

More recently, ACRE published technical guidance on the distinction between genetic changes that could have occurred naturally, or through the use of traditional breeding methods, and those that could not. This was warmly received by its target audience—that is, those planning to carry out field trials with plants developed using these technologies.

The guidance supported an SI that came into force in April. This was the first step to making regulations in this area more proportionate. This guidance and the scientific rationale behind it will be directly relevant to the advice required by the Secretary of State to confirm the precision-bred status of an organism before it can be marketed in England as laid out in the Bill.

We anticipate that ACRE may need to appoint or co-opt new members to fulfil its additional responsibilities. However, it is already populated by many scientific experts in the relevant fields. The chair of ACRE, Professor Dunwell, works closely with Defra and with the devolved Administrations to ensure that the committee has the necessary expertise to deliver the highest quality advice and guidance. Noble Lords will also see in ACRE’s framework document that many of the criteria listed in the proposed new schedule are included in it. These include publishing annual reports, advice and guidance.

I thank noble Lords for their detailed considerations on this topic, but I hope I have convincingly set out that it is not appropriate to establish a new independent body in the Bill. I hope I have reassured the noble Baroness. I thank noble Lords for their persistence and the calibre of the debate we have had on these two days. I hope I can convince the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.