Brexit: Agriculture and Farm Animal Welfare (European Union Committee Report)

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Teverson and his committee for producing two very thought-provoking reports. I am very much looking forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden.

I would like to concentrate my remarks on conclusion 153 of the committee’s report on agriculture, which states:

“It may be hard to reconcile the Government’s wish for the UK to become a global leader in free trade with its desire to maintain high … standards for agri-food products”.


I think it will be not just hard but impossible. Besides the quality of our food, we can reach the same conclusion about our countryside, biodiversity, farm animal welfare, workers’ standards and almost every aspect of farming. The choice is between keeping what makes our landscape and food special or opening the door to free trade agreements that will force low food prices to determine everything. I remind your Lordships that cheap food is cheap because the environmental cost, the health cost and every other cost of producing it are hidden.

I was very pleased to hear Michael Gove say that we are,

“determined to be global leaders in protecting unique landscapes and habitats”.

To achieve that he will need to speed up the environmental plan so that there is a policy base for negotiations. I thank the Minister very much for chairing such an interesting round-table discussion on the plan last week in your Lordships’ House. I hope that it will be the first of several. Michael Gove also said:

“Our new agricultural policy will recognise the importance of improving production as well as protecting our strong food and animal welfare standards”.


However, he gives no clue as to the policies that will make this happen. I suggest a few policies that could help our farmers maintain their place in a global marketplace. I think that New Zealand has been mentioned at least twice this evening. The fact is that our farmers will not be able to compete with mass-scale, low-standard production scenarios. Britain has 700 people to the square mile and New Zealand just 46. We are a small, intensely populated island so we must plan for an agriculture that is closely and sensitively related to our communities and recognises that the health of our ecosystems is fundamentally related to the health of our cities, towns and villages. We are a relatively small-scale producer in global terms but other countries buy from us because of the outstanding quality of British beef, lamb and other products. That is a good niche to be in and is one we can expand.

I hope that post Brexit the EU will still be an important market for us. Therefore, will we try to conform to the same standards? Two current examples are neonicotinoids—I know that the Minister is responsible for the national pollinator strategy—and glyphosate, both of which are being increasingly restricted and possibly phased out in the EU. Will our Government move in parallel?

To keep and develop our quality agriculture, it is clear that we must encourage bright young people to go into farming. At the moment, scenarios of halving incomes, such as that in the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board report, are frankly very off-putting to them—realistic but off-putting—and so are the nigh impossible economics of getting a foot on the ladder because of the diminishing number of small farms, which was so eloquently laid out in the recent CPRE report. That report shows why small farms of under 20 hectares are very important. Can the Minister confirm that the Government are already thinking that public money should reward farmers for public goods rather than the size of their landholding?

Animal welfare has been mentioned this evening. I maintain that animal welfare is definitely a public good because well-kept animals, besides that being ethically important, are healthier. That is a very important public good when it comes to antibiotic usage. Other important policy areas to develop a vibrant food production sector include continuing to follow the precautionary principle with regard to pesticides and hormone-treated meat and improving food labelling schemes, which was also mentioned this evening. It is necessary to maintain country of origin labelling but expand that to include production methods, as advocated by the Labelling Matters coalition, and for all the reasons so eloquently laid out by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. We need to be more open to farming methods such as agroforestry which deliver multiple benefits and multiple incomes for farmers. What are we going to do to recognise diversity of breeds and seeds? For example, diversity in seed varieties is very important. What will happen with the registration and intellectual property rights of EU-registered varieties?

Finally, there are two issues in the Brexit debate that are Defra’s responsibility but have not been mentioned recently. If Brexit happens, pets and pet owners face a sad choice: take holidays apart or do not travel. Pets will have to be left in kennels rather than enjoying France or Spain with their owners when the EU pet passport scheme stops applying to the UK, as the UK leaves the EU. Will owners returning from the EU with pets face months of quarantine? Can the Minister give any reassurance that reciprocal arrangements for pets will be reached such as those that will apply to people?

Finally, animal passports will also affect the multibillion-pound horseracing industry. Currently, Irish, British and French counterparts can, under EU law, move tens of thousands of horses a year freely in and out of each other’s countries without hindrance. What will happen if that tripartite passport scheme were to end? What discussions have been held about this issue, and is there a solution within sight?

Circuses: Wild Animals

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, these are all matters that local authorities are required to ensure are enforced under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act. Clearly, if there were any issues, Defra would want to work with local authorities because it is absolutely essential that suitable animal welfare provisions are in place. I will take back what has been said about primates—I am very conscious of that—and if I have anything further to add, I will report back to your Lordships.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, a lot of the wild creatures kept in people’s homes as pets, whether birds or any other creature, have been smuggled into this country. Is the Minister confident that the National Wildlife Crime Unit has sufficient capacity to deal with the level of smuggling?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

The noble Baroness raises a very important issue. The answer is that we believe that there are sufficient resources at the border, but clearly we need to be ever more rigorous. There are all sorts of schemes under many directives. From an animal welfare point of view, it is hugely inappropriate to smuggle in animals, whether they are domesticated or wild, and this is one area I will very much look at addressing.

Brexit: Environmental Standards

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they will put in place following Brexit to safeguard environmental standards and biodiversity.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)]

My Lords, we already have domestic law that safeguards the environment. The great repeal Bill to be introduced in the next parliamentary Session will incorporate EU law relating to environment and biodiversity into domestic UK law. The UK is also a party to around 30 international environmental agreements and treaties in its own right. We are bound by the obligations that they contain; this will not change on exit from the EU.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. I am sure that he appreciates how much the farming policies of this country have an influence on our environment—everything from the quality of water to the state of our wildlife and our soil fertility. At the worst, can he envisage a point where we have a trade deal with the US, with all its implications for food production, and a farming scenario where we would have a countryside of prairies interspersed with feed-lots? Will the Government therefore combine their 25-year farming strategy with their 25-year environmental strategy? We have only one land area, and it would make great sense for those two to be combined.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is absolutely right that agriculture plays a crucial role in our environmental policy: 70% of our land is farmed, so it is very important. That is why the two forthcoming Green Papers for consultation, to which we look forward to many responses, are about enhancing and handing over a better environment than the one we have inherited, including a vibrant agricultural system. As I have said before to your Lordships, I believe that both are compatible.

Brexit: Environmental and Climate Change Policy

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Parminter on her absolutely excellent introduction to this debate, which she secured. Unsurprisingly, there has been great consensus in this Chamber on what we do not want to see happen as a result of Brexit.

We do not want to return to our pre-EU membership status as the “dirty man of Europe”; nor do we want to allow the dramatic decline in our biodiversity to continue. It was very speedy in the latter half of the 20th century but it is continuing due to loss of habitat. Nor, quite honestly, can we afford a continuing decline in the number of foods in which we are self-sufficient, which is coupled with a poor-quality national diet that sees too much of the population obese, unhealthy and at risk of heart disease. The noble Earl, Lord Selborne, reminded us that often farmers have not been doing so well under that regime either, with low commodity prices and volatility. We have a food system that in some ways is pretty broken and a land-use system that leaves a lot of room for improvement. It is a moment of opportunity but also a moment of danger. There is one more thing I should mention before I leave what we do not want to return to: a point where low animal-welfare standards are the price paid, by the animals, for a cut-throat free-trade regime.

If we are to have Brexit, which it seems will be forced upon us, it will at least be an opportunity to redesign our policies and strategies so that we can deal with the challenges and grasp other opportunities. What sort of strategy should we aim for? We should aim for one that makes the most of our climate, rich grasslands, varied soils, temperate lowlands and dramatic uplands. We need to bear in mind the gains made under EU directives, such as otters returning to our rivers, red kites to our uplands and bitterns to our wetlands.

We will not achieve the sort of future that your Lordships have talked about this afternoon if we heed the siren calls suggesting that we should have a division in our land use. I have heard of all sorts of divisions being called different things by Defra and various NGOs. There is nature-sharing and nature-sparing, where you have intensive agriculture and then set aside some land for nature. By others it is called rewilding—a slightly different concept, where you allow dramatic areas of the landscape to rewild. It is not quite plain to me whether the public will still be allowed access to those areas. It would mean rewilding in some areas, with forest growth and so on, and intensive agriculture in others. I do not believe that is the sort of future we are trying to design because we are a relatively small island, whose centres of population like to go out into the countryside to walk and see the farmed landscape. They enjoy that as a really important part of their lives. At the same time, we need a form of agriculture that will allow our biodiversity to thrive.

Fortunately, we have some great examples of how we can achieve the sort of future that we all want, which combine a successful farming business with careful stewardship of the countryside and its biodiversity. I was extremely pleased that yesterday the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, managed to spare such a generous amount of his time to attend the event hosted by the All-Party Group on Agro-Ecology. I declare an interest as co-chair of that group. I was very grateful for the time he spent in coming to meet the farmers and NGOs at that event because, with that approach to farming and food production, we have a design of the future that we are trying to get to. I know that agroecology is a difficult word; it really means trying to work with nature, rather than suppressing it. It is not about trying to corral nature into one area and food production into another. Nature’s principal strategy is one of diversity—a healthy and diverse ecosystem—which in agriculture tends to mean mixed farms.

One example I want to ask the Minister about is that of agroforestry, which the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, touched on in her contribution. Growing trees on land that is used for livestock or, for example, horticulture can have many benefits but Defra has so far resisted that system. I believe that it could have had support under either Pillar 1 or Pillar 2 but Defra has resisted it. It integrates trees into farming systems so that they offer or help with shade, windbreaks, pollution management, pollinator opportunities, homes for a diverse range of wildlife, integrated pest management and product diversification. That one small example of an agroecological system is one that we should aim towards. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, laid her finger on it in her very thoughtful contribution: we need a comprehensive land-use strategy that integrates farming into our land use.

I shall mention a couple of other things. One is that, as we redesign our systems, I would like the Minister to bear in mind the benefits of the healthy diet that is so often talked about in debates on health. Fruit and vegetables were the poor relations under CAP support. In a post-CAP world, horticulture needs to get a much better deal for the benefit of our population’s health.

Overall, public subsidy for farmers in a post-Brexit world must be based on the output of public goods. Farming businesses produce a commodity and sell it, which is their basic business, and beyond that any public money is conditional on their producing public goods that the market cannot deliver or cannot fully deliver. Otherwise, in the longer term our urban populations will have no inclination for their taxes to support the lifestyles of those in the countryside who are not delivering for public benefit.

Finally, my noble friend Lady Parminter mentioned the EU directive on the circular economy. In a farming context, it is particularly important because we should not be growing bioenergy crops, such as maize, for feedstock for our digesters. We should be moving to a scheme where farm waste is the resource and the Government encourage small, rural anaerobic plants. That feeds into the question of energy.

We could design a very exciting future for our rural areas and for our population’s diet if we make the right linkages, but unless we join farming up with the environment and do not keep the two strategies separate, which the Government were inclined to do before, we shall never make that more positive future.

Farming: Impact of Brexit

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, not only on securing the debate but on managing to cover such a lot of crucial questions in her excellent introduction. I must say I am relieved that we will continue to benefit from having the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, as our Farming Minister in this House, with all his long experience and his dedication to giving us proper answers to the questions we ask. I am very pleased that he is still the Minister in this House.

I would find it ironic if the remnants of the Britain that all Brexiteers so nostalgically seem to yearn for were actually exterminated for ever by Brexit. I see that as a very real danger. Think of our rural fabric. There could be no more vibrant villages with pubs, bellringers or cow-filled meadows. There could be no more bluebell woods, larks ascending, hedgerows or footpaths up to sheep-grazed uplands, which I am sure my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford will talk about. I see a very real threat not only to the agricultural sector but to rural life, our countryside and the wider environment. That is because the £3 billion that flows into our rural areas from the EU is not something that I believe the Treasury will naturally want to continue; I think it will look to that £3 billion pot to start funding its other priorities. That is a threat to the very fabric of rural Britain, not only to our home-grown food production capacity, which as we know we should be increasing, not decreasing, but to the environment, the landscape and the wildlife.

However, it is not all doom and gloom. There could be a new settlement for farmers and for our environment. It will require a total redesign of both the legislation around the environment—80% of it has come from the EU, and it has helped to preserve much of the fabric of rural Britain to date—and a new rural settlement with farmers. Quite rightly, the British taxpaying public will expect to see much more for their money. Gone will be the days of subsidies based on landholding size, no matter how few public benefits that land produces or, worse, how many long-term costs occur—for example, in soil degradation, biodiversity loss or water pollution.

Given what a relatively small and densely populated island we are, we really cannot afford to separate agriculture from wildlife and landscape. That is the first real challenge to Defra in considering what strategies it should be employing for a post-Brexit scenario. So far it has produced separate strategies for food, farming and biodiversity. That is not going to be acceptable; it is going to have to produce a whole rural Britain strategy.

The CAP did a lot of good in enabling family farms to survive. That will be another big challenge for Defra: to ensure that the sort of incentives it produces in future will encourage young entrants into farming and enable them to access the finance in order to share some of the machinery and capital investments necessary, particularly for some of those smaller family farms. We cannot expect farmers to manage, say, footpaths, dry stone walls and hedges for nothing. The public enjoy the benefits of the countryside and they will want to continue, so we must pay our land managers—the farmers—properly for that.

Lastly, there are issues such as flood risk. A very good publication came out on Wednesday, the Wildlife and Wetland Trust report Rich in Nature, which was about making space for nature, which also brings enormous other benefits and a great return on investment. The report’s introduction explains that for every £1 invested you can expect at least £6 in return. If the Treasury plans on a post-2020 investment in rural Britain of £3 billion, with the right policies and strategies in place it could expect a return of £18 billion and an enviable level of food security.

British Agriculture

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, in his opening remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, reminded me that we have often debated these issues in this House, even in the 16 years I have been here. We always seem to come to the same conclusions. I respectfully suggest to him that the reason for that is nothing to do with Europe. It is more to do with the fact that our food system has been so broken over those years. I shall lay out a few reasons for that before turning to the question of the EU.

The food system in the UK is not working for farmers or consumers. We produce some world-famous items, such as beef, lamb, potatoes and apples, and some others that are not so often thought of, such as watercress, pears and trout. They are fabulous, health-giving food. At the other end of the scale, we have consumers who are malnourished or obese. What are they living on? They are living on processed food saturated with sugar, palm oil and salt, which is doing no good to their health. That has nothing to do with the EU; that has to do with the food system, which has broken down. That is what we have to mend. In this country, we need an overarching food strategy that covers the spectrum from what Defra covers to what the Department of Health covers. Not since the Second World War have we had that.

From the EU, as the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, mentioned, we have lots of good regulation. We have had regulation about water pollution, air pollution and all sorts of other things without which we would probably have never had the incentives to make those steps forward. Of course, we have also had overregulation, and the noble Earl has cut short what I had to say about that, because I, too, was going to mention my hope from what the new commissioner has said about deregulation.

I remember that a few years ago the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, was championing the cause of honest meat. With that, he had a point: it is about labelling meat so that consumers here can really see what they are buying. If, like me, he had been at the meeting of the All-Party Group on Agroecology yesterday—I must declare my interest in that I chair it—he would have heard from John Turner, who initiated the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association. It is a vibrant and growing association which ensures that we are using grass, which grows so well in the UK—probably better than anywhere else—to produce the absolute highest quality meat. The results of studies show that meat from pasture-fed animals has a higher nutritional quality than meat from animals fed on other things. That group did not mention that it is suffering from EU regulation, but it is suffering from the lack of proper, open labelling, which would make it much easier for consumers to see what they are buying.

One effect of the tabling of this debate was to make me look at UKIP’s agricultural policies. I was most surprised to see that number one on its agricultural policy list is to impose stronger controls on bush meat. Controlling bush meat, with all its health implications, is clearly very important, but that is not really a British agricultural issue. It is not in competition with beef or lamb. To mix my metaphors, it is a total red herring. That is an issue for the Home Office and border controls. The second top policy of UKIP is to support the trial culling of badgers for the control of bovine TB if veterinary opinion substantiates it. That is not original. It is common to all sides of the House so there is nothing to disagree with there. The third is that UKIP supports the principle of science before emotion on any agricultural topic. Who does not?

There is the issue of how strong the precautionary principle should be. Noble Lords have today raised the issue of neonicotinoids, which is highly important. We cannot do nothing about our pollinators dying out. There is a good argument for trying different approaches and not just allowing the continued use of neonicotinoids as a blanket solution to pests without seeing whether their use is what is causing such a dramatic fall in the number of our pollinators.

I contend that UKIP’s proposals would be an environmental disaster for farmers themselves because they suggest that pollution does not matter. Not only that, they would be a disaster for the wider community and for the food-buying public. The noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, made fun of the fact that the policy defines what a farmer is, but there is good reason for that. Why should CAP public money go to support the so-called slipper farmers? People who put their feet up and do nothing should not be receiving public money. It is understandable that the Commission is to try to define what a farmer is. The UK Government would join it in being anxious to ensure that public money does not go to people who should not be receiving it.

As for the effects of UKIP’s proposals economically, I will simply echo the words of Ross Murray of the CLA. He said that it was a fallacy to argue that if we opted out of Europe, British farmers could survive, let alone survive well. He said:

“If we opt out of the EU our exports will be cut to shreds and we will be completely at the mercy of the supermarkets, who will always buy on price”.

I go back to where I started with this. The food system in this country is broken, but it is not the fault of the EU. One of the big steps that this Government have taken was to bring in the Groceries Code Adjudicator, which we need to do more to strengthen. We can see that from the dairy sector, but that is a different issue. Socially, UKIP’s policies would be an utter disaster. UKIP has nothing to say about young farmers, the price of land, capital machinery investment or food quality assurance and it wants to get rid of all of these border controls and regulations. What is going to happen when we have another horsemeat scandal? Finally, UKIP seems to have nothing to say on animal welfare issues, which certainly concern the Liberal Democrats and the public, and should concern the noble Lord.

Soil Quality

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the soils in England will sustain food production at current levels in the long term.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley) (Con)]

My Lords, we are committed to delivering the natural environment White Paper aspiration of ensuring sustainable management of all soils by 2030. We have introduced new cross-compliance rules to protect soils while reducing paperwork for farmers. Through our agri-tech strategy and sustainable intensification platform we will help farmers to take advantage of the latest techniques, to help them improve productivity while protecting the environment.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s commitment to this issue, because of course no soils equals no foods. He will know that 2015 was designated the International Year of Soils to help to highlight this fact and the enormous soil loss, which in the UK is 2.2 million tonnes of topsoil alone per year. He mentioned the new rules that have been introduced. Perhaps he could tell me how farmers will receive practical advice on their soil management from people who are not seeking to sell inputs. Could he also tell me—given the rate of the loss of soil and microbial health, and even the loss of soil scientists, as they are not being replaced at the rate they need to be—whether he thinks that the actions being taken are urgent and effective enough to ensure the continued and, indeed, increased production of British food?

[Lord De Mauley]

My noble friend asks a number of questions. The Farming Advice Service is a service to help farmers understand and meet the requirements of cross-compliance, greening and the European directives on both water protection and sustainable pesticide use. It has a helpline, newsletters, guidance and technical articles. During 2015 its priorities will be to give advice on the changes to the cross-compliance rules, which include the new soil standards, which go to the prevention of erosion, which she mentioned; maintaining soil cover; and the protection of organic matter.

Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2015

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley) (Con)]

My Lords, these regulations deliver one of the main measures contained in the package of policies set out in my Written Ministerial Statement of 6 February 2013 to tackle issues relating to dog welfare and irresponsible dog ownership. We have amended the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 so that its criminal provisions on dangerously out-of-control dogs are extended to private property. We have also increased the penalties available for the worst dog attacks and provided authorities with new preventative powers in the form of community protection notices. In addition, these regulations will make it compulsory for all dogs in England to be microchipped.

Over the past three years, an average of just over 100,000 stray dogs a year were passed to English local authorities and welfare organisations. Of those dogs not able to be reunited with their owners, some 38,000 dogs were re-homed and a further 8,000 were put down. The annual cost incurred by local authorities and welfare organisations in dealing with stray dogs is more than £30 million. That is not to mention the distress caused to dogs and owners.

Since we first announced our intention to introduce this requirement in February 2012, the number of dogs microchipped is estimated to have risen from 58% to 70%; but we consider that we are close to the ceiling of the number of dogs that would be microchipped if we were to maintain the voluntary approach. Microchipping a dog is a welfare measure. Increased traceability allows lost dogs to be reunited with their keepers more quickly and therefore avoids dogs having to spend unnecessary time in kennels with possible resultant welfare problems or the need to be re-homed. I expect compulsory microchipping to have the additional benefits of reducing kennelling costs to local authorities and welfare organisations and allowing abandoned and nuisance dogs to be traced back to their keepers, who may then, if appropriate, be held to account.

The regulations require that, from April 2016—unless a vet has certified that a dog should not be microchipped for reasons of its health—all keepers of dogs in England must have their dogs microchipped. The regulations define “microchipped” as both having a compliant microchip implanted in the dog and, crucially, having the keeper’s up-to-date details on a reunification database. The details of the dog and its breeder, where known, also need to be recorded. This should help to encourage more responsible breeding as breeders will be more traceable.

Only trained people, including vets, veterinary nurses and others who have passed an approved dog microchipping course, will be able to implant microchips. Microchips and database operators must meet certain standards, including the ability to supply information to authorised persons to enable dogs to be reunited with their owners on a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week basis.

In keeping with the Government’s wish to have light-touch enforcement of the regulations, the microchipping requirement is enforceable primarily by the issue of a notice. Any keeper of a dog found without a microchip can be handed a notice by a local authority authorised person or a police constable requiring them to get their dog microchipped within 21 days. There is then a fine on conviction, currently up to £500, for non-compliance with such a notice. Finally, all dogs must be microchipped before they can be transferred to a new keeper, unless a vet has certified otherwise.

Microchipping is a relatively simple process which a number of animal welfare groups and local authorities have been offering free for many years. Blue Cross and Battersea Dogs & Cats Home offer free microchipping at their respective centres, and the Dogs Trust has offered to meet the cost of microchips and has set aside £6 million to help ensure all unchipped dogs are microchipped ahead of April 2016. Animal welfare groups are already campaigning to raise awareness of this new obligation as well as of the benefits of microchipping. We also plan to undertake significant communications activity ahead of April 2016 to ensure breeders and keepers are aware of this new duty.

These regulations will help tackle the problem of stray dogs and help to reunite keepers with lost pets more quickly. They will also lessen the burden on animal charities and local authorities and protect the welfare of dogs by encouraging responsible ownership. I commend these regulations to the Committee. I beg to move.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on bringing these regulations forward. The Minister was right when he said that the voluntary scheme is probably reaching its upper limit and that to catch the last pool of dogs that are not chipped, compulsion is needed. At the same time as congratulating the Government, I congratulate the many animal charities he mentioned—Dogs Trust, Battersea Dogs & Cats Home and the Kennel Club—on how proactive they have been in working on this issue. I congratulate Dogs Trust on coming forward with its offer of free chipping because that makes a tremendous difference. The Minister mentioned that the saving to the public purse would be over £30 million every year, which is a significant sum.

I have three questions. First, Regulation 6 relates to the conditions to be met by a database operator. The Minister mentioned that Defra will advertise the reunification databases but, if you are dog owner, how do you know which databases are approved? The regulations state that the database must be approved and lays out all the things that have to be done for it to be approved, but how will the dog owner know which databases advertising on, say, the internet have that approval from Defra and which are just rogue databases which will not meet the conditions?

My second question relates to another detail of the conditions that have to be met by a database operator. I can see why the Minister mentioned that telephone and online requests will need to be answered at all times. Having no knowledge of who is going to be operating these databases, I am slightly concerned about whether a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week service is practical. I am sure that the Minister’s department may have done some research into this.

My last question relates to Regulation 8, which concerns a change of keeper. It is rather worryingly ambiguous that,

“where a dog is transferred to a new keeper, the new keeper must, unless the previous keeper has already done so, record their full name, address”,

and so on. The point is that the person who is giving up a dog that they do not want might say, “Well, it’s okay Fred. I’ve done all that. There’s no need to worry about it”. How would the new keeper know that the previous keeper had recorded all that information? When you transfer a car, there is a very definite document. Therefore, I wonder whether this regulation depends simply on trust or whether there will be something to back it up.

I congratulate the Government and I warmly congratulate the dog charities and all the other charities involved on all their efforts in this area. I think that this will hugely benefit not only dog owners but lost dogs too.

Natural Environment

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend, whom I congratulate on securing this debate, outlined the proposed nature Bill in her admirably comprehensive introduction. I shall concentrate my remarks on green space, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, pointed out, is not necessarily a natural environment as we might have found 2,000 years ago—that exists probably nowhere in the UK. There are wilderness areas or wilder areas, as in the national parks, but much green space is what we share with other species. With the decline in biodiversity that has tracked the whole of my lifetime, through the 20th century, there has been an increasing pressure on all the places where other species lived, to the point when they often ended up with nowhere to live and breed.

Successive Governments this century have made some very good efforts, and I commend the Labour Government, when the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, was a Minister, for the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, because there is nothing like getting the public involved in being a major part of the protection of green spaces. One of the major steps for this Government was the report from John Lawton, Making Space for Nature, which talked about protecting what we have, the SSSIs and the EU habitats, which of course we are obliged to protect. In mentioning the EU habitats, I say to noble Lords who are Eurosceptics that without the EU’s input into areas such as water pollution and protection of species we would be in a much worse place than we are in now. The EU can claim enormous credit for turning around what was a pretty grim picture in the 1960s and 1970s.

We should expand and join up these spaces for nature with wildlife corridors. That was Sir John Lawton’s contention. The babies that came out of that report were the nature improvement areas, of which there are currently 12—and that is a start. In their assessment of 2013, the Government found that each pound invested by the Government results in nearly £6.80 of additional support from communities, businesses and individuals. It is actually very good value. However, there is still a tremendous amount more that can be done. One area that has been overlooked until now is local wildlife sites, which are important havens, identified and selected locally for their high-nature conservation value and with great public support from the people on whose doorsteps they are. The Wildlife Trusts, which I must commend for their work, because their mission is to connect the public with wildlife and to protect that wildlife, produced a report entitled, Secret Spaces: the Status of Local Wildlife Sites 2014. It found enormous pressures on those sites. It may surprise your Lordships to know that, although they are recognised within the planning system, local wildlife sites are not protected by law. That was one of the recommendations—that greater protection should be given to them—that Professor Sir John Lawton came out with. It would be one thing at the top of my list of things to be done.

Of course, we have had lots of strategies beyond the ones that I have mentioned. We had a biodiversity strategy from Defra in 2011 and the important natural environment White Paper, as well as the work on eco- systems services, all of which are important contributions. However, I would agree that putting the work of the Natural Capital Committee on a statutory basis is one of the most important steps that we can take now, because its work values the synergies that we find between, for example, farming benefiting wildlife, clean water and more absorbent soil, as well as more interesting landscapes. We have found that there are lots of indicators of the health of an ecosystem: pollinators, for example, which is an issue that we have debated in your Lordships’ Chamber before, frogs and farmland birds. The Government are committed to reversing the long-term decline in the UK farmland bird indicator, which is made up of 19 species. Noble Lords will be aware of the different reasons for that decline, particularly different farming methods.

I would particularly like to mention one initiative from LEAF—Linking Environment and Farming—that is important in helping to reverse this decline. It is starting its big farmland bird count within the next month and will involve farmers. It is looking at what can be achieved by the adoption of simple management techniques to improve habitats and bird numbers and includes information on bird identification, because it is not a given that every land manager can identify all the species. There is much work to be done. The mistle thrush and the yellowhammer have declined enormously since the 1970s here in England, but oddly in Scotland, that decline has now reversed and the populations are becoming much healthier. Perhaps there is something that we can learn from Scotland.

To conclude, I would like to talk about bats, which are the subject of a Private Member’s Bill in the other place on Friday of this week. The Bat Habitats Regulation Bill is sadly geared toward preventing bats from living in churches. There have been many claims that bats are contributing to a health hazard—which Public Health England denies—but why do bats need special protection in the first place? It is easy to kill a whole roost of bats, and people have often had a prejudice against them. They, perhaps more than any other species, have suffered from declining habitats, with barn conversions and so on. The Bill, which perhaps will come before your Lordships’ House, refers to enhancing the protection available for bat habitats in the non-built environment. That is all very well, but then it refers to limiting the protection available for bat habitats in the built environment,

“located inside a building used for public worship”.

That is a very dangerous precedent. Anyone who does not like bats can claim that people are gathering to worship. I hope the right reverend Prelate will take this up, as I think it is a very sad comment on the churches’ attitude towards wildlife. There is a simple solution: if bat faeces are falling in an embarrassing place, you simply need to nail a board under that, as many people have learnt to do in their own homes.

Milk Production

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I am very happy to take that back.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

This side. This side.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

Order. We need less of the shouting of “This side, this side” during Question Time. If we are going to follow the convention of sides, which is not the only convention we follow at Question Time, it is the turn of the Labour Benches, so we should hear from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.

[Lord De Mauley]

Certainly, my Lords, some producers are able to produce milk at a much lower rate—I met a farmer the other day who claimed to be producing milk in the mid-teens. We do not have strong views on the size of units of farms. What matters is stockmanship.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that milk coming from grass-fed cows kept out of doors is of a superior nutritional quality? Further, will he say how important that is to the look of the countryside in all those areas dependent on tourism? Does he think that that would be answered by large industrial units?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, there is a strong case for extensive farming. We see it in this country and some farmers are practising it very profitably. It depends to a large extent on the part of the country—on the rainfall, the quality of the grass and so forth. As I have said before, we think that there is a place for various different types of farming.