Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Henig and Lord Randall of Uxbridge

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 23rd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge [V]]

My Lords, I thoroughly support these two amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. He and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, have expressed everything I wanted to say. We have talked about the need to look after biodiversity and the environment, but what could be more important than the health of fellow human beings? I support these amendments.

[Baroness Henig (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 221, to which I have also put my name. This is my first contribution in Committee, and I have listened and learned an awful lot from the debates thus far. I have long-held concerns about the pollution and contamination caused by the widespread use of pesticides and chemical treatments across increasingly large parts of our agricultural land.

I am no expert on the effects of pesticides on human health and our wildlife, but the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, most definitely are. The House heard them talk in detail on a previous group of amendments about how exposure to agricultural pesticides is linked with many diseases and conditions. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, emphasised that in moving the amendment. It is obvious that those living near crop fields are particularly vulnerable to exposure.

The Government have had in place a national action plan looking into this problem since 2013, but little seems to have resulted and unsurprisingly, it has been described as “woefully weak”. I read the Minister’s letters to Peers after Second Reading, in which he said that the Government will develop their policy in a revised national action plan on the sustainable use of pesticides, and that they will consult in coming months. This is not an adequate response to what is a serious, well-documented and ongoing health hazard.

We have all agreed that the Agriculture Bill is a landmark piece of legislation. It is going to provide the foundation for our agricultural and environmental policies for decades to come. The Minister in the other place described it as an ambitious Bill. But it is not ambitious in this area. What is our strategy regarding the use of pesticides? Are we going to have a target to reduce their use to, say, half, as the EU has adopted? Or, is our strategy to aim to remove them completely from our food and farming system, as at least one Chief Scientific Adviser has advocated? We need to hear about more concrete action and a clearer strategy than that revealed thus far.