Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his introduction to this already improved Bill, which I welcome in principle. However, I am not as optimistic as he is that this is the silver bullet needed to save our natural environment; we have been here many times before with legislation that has been touted as the answer to our problems. The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 was enacted to reflect the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, and that on the protection of migratory species. I remember my noble friend, the late Lord Bellwin, introducing the Bill on 16 December 1980, nearly 41 years ago, and saying that the Government recognised the

“awakening awareness, both nationally and internationally, of the need for conservation of our wildlife resources”.—[Official Report, 16/12/1980; col. 983.]

Since then, as your Lordships will know, there have been numerous pieces of additional legislation, including the habitats directive in 1992 and the birds directive in 2009. However, on recent evidence, we have failed miserably to stop the decline in nature and our natural environment; we must ask ourselves why.

Two major contributions to that failure have been the lack of practical wildlife management, which has been overlooked, and the fact that the current rules are often impractical and ineffective. This Bill is just one part of jigsaw legislation and supporting policy statements. Thus, the way this Bill and the Agriculture Act, strategies on tree planting, peatland, food and biodiversity and the industrial strategy work together is key to ensuring that there are no unintended consequences or voids. Looking to the future, the rather feared planning reform Bill will probably undo quite a lot of the good that this Bill will do.

Compliance involves more than just regulation and sanction; it involves understanding motive, incentive, encouragement and soft governance. The latter is part of ELMS, found in the Agriculture Act, while this Bill provides the legal and statutory aspects of environmental governance. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, the two need to marry to deliver the ambition of a very high take-up of ELMS; but is that enough to achieve an improvement in our environment? I am concerned that the long-term environmental target priority areas in Clause 1 are not fully aligned with the policy ambition

“for significantly improving the natural environment”,

given, for example, the goals that the Government have identified in their 25-year environment plan. Just as the Agriculture Act was amended to reflect the value of healthy soil to society, so this Bill needs to address the environmental damage caused by soil loss, such as the impact on riverine and estuarial habitats through sedimentation and eutrophication, flooding due to sediment build-up in watercourses, and loss of organic carbon from the soil bank due to erosion. My noble friend said that he would introduce amendments on this; I will read them with care.

Furthermore, environmental hazard mitigation, such as for the increasingly common and damaging wildfires, is not sufficiently addressed by the priority areas. While I welcome the ambition of setting targets in law to provide a means of holding government to account, these need to be complemented by a robust review framework to provide suitable accountability and ensure that targets are not simply reset as, for example, in the case of the biodiversity 2020 targets. There is justifiable concern that many of the key environmental indicators do not have relevant or robust metrics, a point made by the National Audit Office report, which stated:

“There remains a patchwork of sets of metrics that do not align clearly with government’s overall objectives or with each other.”


It also said that there are “some important gaps”, such as soil health.

It is essential that advice in setting these targets, which will come from those who are independent and have relevant experience, must include practitioners and not just theorists. Like many others, I am concerned that the role and status of the office for environmental protection is much too weak and a significant step back from the situation that we were in as members of the EU. Picking up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has my noble friend seen the evidence from the analysis of the Bill by the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and, if so, what is his response?

Another area of concern is waste. Although it is right to improve how we handle it, I will be tabling amendments on trying to reduce the amount we produce in the first place, as prevention is just as important as cure.

In the forthcoming stages, I will focus on trying to ensure that the Bill really will provide adequate—rather than just nominal—protection for plant species and our natural environment, which are at risk.

Biodiversity Emergency

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, for biodiversity to be diverse and flourish in the UK, it needs habitat, species protection where appropriate, the provision of winter food for birds and animals and sensible predator control. Given all the protection and proscription that we have enacted over many years for habitats and species, one must ask why biodiversity is still in decline. Clearly our policy has failed. We are not good at providing winter food due to farming methods and efficient modern farm machinery. Hopefully ELMS will help with that. More importantly, we are increasingly bad at management, including sensible and humane predator control.

Mankind has changed the environment in which all species live. There has been the removal of apex predators, the introduction of alien species, the loss, degradation and fragmentation of habitats and pollution. Nature will always find a balance but, often, it is not the balance that we want and leads to a reduction in biodiversity, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said.

Take, for example, Auchnerran farm in Aberdeenshire, owned by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust and managed for biodiversity. This year alone, two-thirds of the lapwing nests have already been destroyed by badgers. This is a property that is farmed for biodiversity. Similarly, at the trust’s property in Allerton, Leicestershire, there have been no hedgehogs for seven years and no waders for 10 years because of predators.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, mentioned trees. Of course, trees are suffering hugely from a deer problem. Deer are notorious browsers and are bad for coppicing. They reduce the understory, which is bad for nightingales, primroses, primulas, nesting birds, butterflies and other species. Of course, it suffers from grey squirrels too.

We have a severe problem, not an emergency, but we can solve that problem if we and the Government get our policies right.

Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge on introducing this very important piece of legislation. It is a two-clause Bill, but a worthy one. I hope that it gets on to the statute book quickly.

I think the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, put her finger on the key issue: education for pet owners. We have seen and witnessed far too many situations where owners have behaved irresponsibly for various reasons, but one of the main reasons is a lack of knowledge. The consequences for animals and the way that their pets have attacked and destroyed other animals, such as sheep, is a cause for great concern. I think that concern will increase as we move out of the pandemic, because—as other noble Lords have rightly said—a number of dogs and cats have been purchased. When life returns to normal, I think that a lot of these animals will be treated badly and not be supervised in the way that they should. That is a concern.

The RSPCA did research into how long dogs should be left alone for, and 20% of dog owners got the figure wrong. SongBird Survival has done a huge amount of research with Exeter University into how cats behave; owners could do a lot to prevent the destruction of songbirds and the way cats behave by simple measures, using a little common sense and some education.

The noble Lord who just spoke was absolutely right to mention that this is not in itself an answer to the problem; there are other measures. I hope my noble friend is ensuring that the best possible measures are available to the judiciary and the judiciary use them. One measure that should be used, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge, is that any pet owner who treats that pet badly, or whose pet behaves badly, should not be allowed to own a pet in the future. That would be a deterrent but, again, it needs enforcement. I hope my noble friend will review that situation, particularly as the Agriculture Act we just passed encourages a great deal more access to the countryside.

Domestic Animals

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con) [V]]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is actually up to the owners of animals to behave better towards them, which would be the best way to go forward, and that those who do not look after animals should be prohibited from owning them? Has my noble friend seen the SongBird Survival research into how cat owners can improve the mental and physical well-being of their cats, as well as reducing the number of wild birds that cats take each year, which is many millions?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

I am not aware of the research cited by my noble friend, but I will certainly look out for it. The difficulty for the Government is that our job in a sense is to ensure that the minimum standard is acceptable and that owners are not able easily to sink beneath acceptable standards. It is therefore really a baseline that we set. But my noble friend is absolutely right that this is a country of animal lovers and most owners are inspired to look after their pets with great care, and we should of course be doing everything we can to raise standards across the board and encourage everyone to apply the same level of attention, care and love to the pets that they own.

Heather and Grass etc. Burning (England) Regulations 2021

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about where she wants to get to, but I think that her regret Motion is like driving down the wrong side of a motorway.

The regret Motion talks about peatland, but the statutory instrument does not even mention it. Peatland is not defined anywhere, but what definitions one can find of it do include peat. Nobody is talking about burning peat; they are talking only about the vegetation on top of the peat.

The regret Motion goes on to say that peatland should be “a haven for wildlife”. It can be a haven for wildlife only if it is properly managed. I have lived on blanket bog, or beside blanket bog, for many years in my life, and the best biodiversity was found on the managed peatlands.

My main concern is wildfires. One can talk about the amount of carbon that is produced from cool burns—managed burns—on hillsides, but they produce about 1% to 5% of the carbon emissions from peatlands; 95% of the carbon emissions come from lowland peat, which is not covered by this statutory instrument.

I want to talk about the Flow Country in Caithness and Sutherland, which is the biggest blanket bog in Europe. In 2019, there was a fire there. Every day that fire burned, and it burned for six days, it doubled the amount of Scotland’s CO₂ emissions—700,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent—because it got out of control. With climate change advancing, we need to manage peat so that we minimise the chance of any fire spreading.

Circular Economy and Elimination of Waste

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con) [V]]

My Lords, given that prevention is better than cure and to achieve food waste elimination ambitions recommended in the CCC’s sixth carbon budget, what steps is my noble friend taking to prevent household waste, beyond awareness campaigns, and to explore novel ways in which to make reducing food waste easier for households?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend raises a really important point. The UK is fully signed up to meeting the UN sustainable development goal 12.3 target, which seeks to halve global food waste at consumer and retail level by 2030. Our resource and waste strategy committed us to better redistributing food to those in need before it gets thrown away, and we have put £15 million into that. We are consulting on mandatory food waste prevention targets for businesses and publishing a food surplus and waste hierarchy to support businesses to prevent food waste. Around 3 million tonnes of waste has been prevented since 2013 and, of that, around 2.7 million tonnes is food waste.

Convention on Biological Diversity

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

The UK is absolutely committed to playing a leading role in developing the highest possible ambition in relation to the post-2020 global framework for biodiversity at the CBD. Our overarching ambition is targets that, as my noble friend says, will halt and reverse global biodiversity loss and, crucially, that will be underpinned by clear accountability and implementation mechanisms. Because we see no real distinction between climate change and our environmental obligations, we are committed to ensuring as clear a link as possible between those two conventions. Climate change represents perhaps the greatest threat that we face, and global biodiversity is being lost at an appalling and unprecedented rate. We cannot tackle one without a major focus on the other, and that is reflected in all our ambitions.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, the delay that my noble friend has just mentioned has improved the chances of COP being a great success next year, added to by the result of the American election and the reshuffle of people in No. 10 Downing Street. What plans does he have to meet the American team, and can he update us on the discussions with India to get it to play a positive role?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

I am afraid I am not in a position to provide details about exchanges that have been happening between the UK and the incoming presidential team. However, I can say that the incoming President has made it very clear that climate change will be a priority issue. We have also heard that there will be an increased focus by the United States on nature, which we think is crucial. We in the UK have signed up to, and indeed are running, the campaign to protect 30% of the world’s oceans and land by 2030, and we have high hopes that the US will join us in that. Another core plank of our campaign is to ensure sufficient finance for nature recovery; again, we hope to be able to work very closely with the incoming Administration in that regard.

Waste Prevention Programme

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

I can absolutely provide that assurance. The Government are seeking powers through the Environment Bill that will enable us to set standards across the board. That means resource efficiency requirements, including spare-part provision, recycled content, durability or the potential to disassemble and repair. We are addressing the waste stream—it is not so much a spectrum but all the way round the circle—of the waste ecosystem in which we live. The first product group that we will be looking at and regulating will be textiles, furniture or construction products, but we plan to expand far beyond that in the near future.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con) [V]]

My Lords, while I thank my noble friend for his encouraging Answer, what plans does he have to raise awareness among the general public about the problems of food waste, given the enormous impact that it has on climate change, ahead of COP 26 next year?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

My noble friend makes an important point. The UK is absolutely committed to meeting UN sustainable development goal target 12.3, which seeks to halve global food waste at consumer and retail levels by 2030. Our resource and waste strategy included policies such as better redistributing food to those in need before it goes to waste, for which we have provided £15 million of new funding; a consultation on the annual reporting of food surplus and waste by food businesses; and publishing a food surplus and waste hierarchy to support businesses in preventing waste. In response to the Covid-19 emergency we announced £3.25 million of additional funding to enable redistributors, big and small, to get more food to those in need, and that has been supplemented by further funding from DCMS. This is a priority issue and we have seen progress, but of course there is more to do.

Terrestrial and Freshwater Protected Sites

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

The principal tool we will use in the coming years is the transfer from the common agricultural policy subsidy system to the environmental land management system. Whereas farmers and landowners have, for decades, been incentivised to convert their land to make it farmable—in many respects grubbing out ecosystems and undermining nature—the new system will make those payments completely conditional on good environmental stewardship. It is probably the biggest bonus that nature and our environment more broadly will have experienced in the last century. Although that is not the only funding mechanism or tool at our disposal, it is undoubtedly the most powerful.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is all very well talking about new targets, but we cannot meet our existing targets? Surely enforcement of our existing targets is the thing that matters. As has already been mentioned, the water companies and some bad farmers are not meeting standards and are not being fined. Clearly, the Environment Agency is not up to the standard required to issue fines. Does he further agree that fines on big companies, such as water companies, are a waste of time, as the ultimate payer is us—the user? The directors should get fined.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

I certainly agree that the department, the Government and the Environment Agency should be using every tool at their disposal to ensure that the water companies behave responsibly and with environmental care. My colleague in Defra, Rebecca Pow, has established a new working group with the water companies to better understand, in the quickest possible timeframe, what more government can do and what the water companies should do to improve the quality of our water. I just make the point that bringing sites, whether water or land, into favourable conditions is a big challenge and takes time. Many sites were in poor condition when they were designated as protected sites. Some, such as peat bogs, can take decades to be restored to a favourable condition. The same is true for our river systems, which have had years of interference.

Water Industry (Specified Infrastructure Projects) (English Undertakers) (Amendment) Regulations 2020

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Goldsmith on his position and his promotion to the upper House. This is the first time I have been able to take part in a debate which he has been answering. Like my noble friend Lord Moynihan, I declare an interest as I, too, was heavily involved in water privatisation as Minister for Water back in the 1980s when it happened. I congratulate my noble friend on introducing this SI. He covered it very comprehensively, which will save a lot of questions. It is interesting to note that the post-implementation review was very clear that this statutory instrument should not have a sunset clause but should continue, so I am glad that my noble friend has not reinstituted a sunset clause for seven years’ time but has got rid of it altogether.

My noble friend talked about future projects. Before I come on to them, I want to ask about leaks. Does he really think that a 50% reduction in leaks by 2050 is good enough? My noble friend Lord Moynihan and I recall that leaks were a problem back in the 1980s; they are a problem now and it will be nearly 70 years before the water authorities get a grip on this problem. Is there nothing that can be done to speed up that part of their work?

I turn to future projects. My noble friend the Minister mentioned two reservoirs in particular. When I was a land agent, I was very involved in the Severn Trent water scheme in the Midlands close to Lichfield. I was struck then that more could have been done for nature, and I have thought about that a lot since, particularly with the recent focus on biodiversity, nature and the environment. Is there anything that Ofwat or my noble friend can do to ensure that when these reservoirs are built, if they are built, more account is taken of nature, with the schemes being adapted so there is more natural use of water and sewage disposal rather than using infrastructure? It would be much kinder for the environment and better for nature. There are great opportunities for un-straightening bits of river that were straightened some time ago, building water meadows and flood plains, and planting trees by riverbanks. If those things could be included in the schemes, even though the water authorities might not want them, it would be very beneficial for the environment and for the cost-benefit of the schemes.