Queen’s Speech

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Woodland Trust and president or vice-president of a range of environmental organisations. Your Lordships have heard a lot about global economics, social justice and business needs tonight, and at this time of night I want to talk to you about trees. This is probably one of the most important Queen’s Speeches for the environment—perhaps more important than any other. That is not immediately obvious from reading the Queen’s Speech, but practically every provision in it will have an environmental impact. However, before I touch on those environmental impacts, I will say that I wish that I was making the brilliant and humane speech that the noble Lord, Lord Low, made right at the beginning of this debate.

To focus on the environment and the gracious Speech, I will make three points. The first is about the repeal Bill. It is interesting that it is no longer called the great repeal Bill— I wonder why. Some 80% of the legislation that affects Defra’s responsibilities in the environmental sphere comes from the European Union, so there is a huge opportunity in transposing European law into UK law for the Government to make good on their manifesto commitment to be the first generation to leave the environment in a better state than when they inherited it. A third of these European legislation regulations that Defra enforces in this country cannot simply be dragged and dropped into the new legislation, so we need a commitment from government to ensure that these pieces of legislation are not watered down either by design or by error when they are transposed and tweaked to make them relevant in a post-EU world. I hope that we can get a guarantee from government that where substantive changes are proposed, that should be by primary rather than secondary legislation. In this House we have all had many long debates about how adequate the scrutiny of secondary legislation is.

We also seek assurances from Ministers that not only the laws and regulations will be transferred but some of the principles of the EU environmental legislation, including things like the precautionary principle and the principle that the polluter should pay. Also, what will take the place of EU enforcement processes and the whole infraction procedure? The big question is: do we now need an environmental court?

My second point is on agriculture. We all hated the common agricultural policy, and it is a bit like being a kid in a sweet shop to be—still with £3 billion in our hands, we hope—able to drive the train set ourselves, and indeed to design the tracks on which it runs. However, the proposals in the gracious Speech seem very much focused on farmers and food, with the environment coming a poor third. We need to look at an integrated process of land management which delivers a whole range of public benefits, and the public payment should be only for where farmers are rewarded for genuine public goods. These should include environmental services, such as delivering on biodiversity, reducing flood risk, helping with carbon sequestration, and dealing with water and soil protection. Scotland has a rather good integrated land management strategy. Perhaps we could just rub “Scotland” out at the top and put “England” there instead.

The issue in which I would be particularly interested is the integration of farming and forestry. At the moment their relationship is hugely dysfunctional, with the grant systems preventing farmers taking part in good forestry practice. We would also like to see the new agricultural Bill—whatever its terms might be—enabling a turnaround in the poor performance of this country’s planting rates in the future. At the moment, the Government’s target is 5,000 hectares per year but last year we planted less than 1,100.

The third issue that I want to touch on is a non-legislative one, and I have talked about it previously in this House. I greatly welcome the government commitment on better protection for ancient woodland. There is a proposal in the housing White Paper and we would very much like that to be taken forward. Unfortunately, the way in which it is currently framed would not be adequate. It is an urgent issue because the Woodland Trust is already aware of 700 cases where ancient woodland is threatened with damage. Indeed, HS2 managed to put a route through 63 of them in phase 1 and it will be putting the train tracks through 24 more in phase 2. Therefore, there is a real need to improve the protection of ancient woodland to the same level afforded to ancient buildings. I hope that the Minister can reassure me and encourage CLG Ministers to make sure that the tweaks to the proposals happen.

On balance, the European Union was good for the environment. In throwing out Europe, let us not compromise environmental protection. Can the Minister tell us how the gracious Speech will fulfil the very admirable government commitment to this being the first generation to leave the environment in a better state than it was found in?

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 166 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. I apologise that I was not present for this item when it was dealt with in Committee because I was abroad, but I have read carefully the discussion that happened at that point.

I, too, am a member of the Science and Technology Committee, which looked at this issue recently. I share the concern that was raised by a number of witnesses that Innovate UK would be hijacked by the research councils and become the commercialisation and innovation arm of the research councils, and that that would usurp the hugely valuable role that Innovate UK currently has in being business facing and supporting innovation, especially by small businesses and especially at very early stages, when an entrepreneur has a bright idea but no backers and no proof of concept. I share the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, that the membership and chairmanship of the committee for Innovate UK need to be very much business focused and to include a predominance of business-focused people.

I recognise that the Government have gone some way in Amendment 183 and I welcome that. Indeed, I welcome the meetings that I have had with Ministers here and Sir John Kingman and with the Minister of State for Universities and Science in the other place—who is not here today, although he regularly is—but it is probably my conversations with Jo Johnson that have made me the most alarmed, I am afraid, because although he gives assurances throughout about the business-facing role of Innovate UK, every time I have heard him describe it unprompted, he immediately describes it as being the innovation arm of the research councils.

I hope the Minister will recognise that the role of Innovate UK needs further strengthening and that to give it a business-based chairman and a predominance of business-based members on the committee would do that.

[The Earl of Selborne (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome government Amendment 183, which addresses the issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has just referred to. As chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, I can confirm that we were indeed concerned at the original proposals, some months back now, that Innovate UK should be put together with Research England into a research council, because it was clearly absolutely essential that the business community should have confidence that it had Innovate UK very much at its disposal as its organisation, and it was not somehow going to be subsumed by the research councils to be the commercial arm of Research Councils UK.

I accept that the concerns expressed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Brown and Lady Young, have validity, but I recognise that the government amendments, particularly paragraphs (a) and (b) in Amendment 183, requiring arrangements to have regard to,

“persons engaged in business activities”,

and,

“the need to promote innovation by persons carrying on business”,

go a very long way from where we were some months ago. I, for one, am content to accept these as meeting most of my original concerns.

Solar Panels: Business Rate Exemption

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

We are looking at this, and, in particular, this change to microgeneration, which has had these anomalous effects. In the past, schools have been totally exempt; now, as I have said, the rate system is coming in and biting in a way that perhaps was not intended in the first place. We are looking seriously at the impacts against this background of some doing better out of the system than others. We look forward to making some progress in this area.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

Can the noble Baroness tell the House how many more changes of policy impacting on renewable energy and carbon reduction will come from the Government? We seem to have had quite a string of them, all of them rather unexpected. Perhaps they are in response to the cheaper generation issue that the noble Baroness raised, but they have certainly reduced confidence both among domestic and commercial investors and in the renewables industry. Are there many more changes to come?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I think the noble Baroness should take comfort from the signing of the agreement in Paris, the statements we have made and the comments I have made about the carbon budgets that will be put forward in due course. This Government and the last one have made enormous investments in renewables, but nobody could fault us now for looking properly at affordability and at where things can be affordable. Innovation—for instance, on solar—is making things less expensive, and then the subsidy regimes should change. However, of course we understand the need for investor confidence.