Queen’s Speech

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Selborne (Con)]

Like the noble Lord, Lord Soley, I would like to focus my remarks on the environment. The purpose of the Bill promised in the gracious Speech which will impose a charge of 5p for a single-use non-biodegradable plastic bag is presumably to do more than reduce the pollution caused by those ubiquitous bags. The Bill is a not very subtle nudge to make us change our behaviour and become more aware of how we can reduce adverse impacts on the environment, which will in turn damage our economy. I would welcome the Bill with more enthusiasm if I could be sure that the Government themselves were pursuing a coherent, overarching strategy to achieve what they said they would in the 2011 environment White Paper. As your Lordships will remember, that set out an agenda for this Parliament with the brave aim of being the first generation to improve our natural environment.

There are in fact a number of areas where in recent decades we have indeed improved our environment. Pollution control, which is the primary purpose of the charge on plastic bags, is in many ways something of a success story. We no longer have pea-soupers or a stinking Thames and, as my noble friend Lord Patten reminded us today, the otter has made a comeback in many of our rivers. However, as we increase our consumption, so we increase the danger of harmful impacts on ecosystems and ecosystem services. In the United Kingdom we have converted or modified most of our semi-natural vegetation to arable and grassland use. Major increases in fertiliser use, particularly nitrogen and phosphorous, adversely affect aquatic ecosystems through run-off. As my noble friend Lord Plumb reminded us, United Kingdom agriculture has also delivered a largely successful programme, initiated after the Second World War, to improve our food security, but the price has been increased leakages into soil, air and water.

Other sectors including energy, industry, housing and transport, some of which could also be described as success stories, have also had major impacts on ecosystems and the delivery of ecosystem services. Examples of such impacts are the deposition of atmospheric nitrogen and sulphur, the loss of habitats through construction and disruption of flood regimes in river basins and coastal wetlands. We take ecosystem services too often for granted yet we depend on them to produce our food, to regulate water supplies and climate, to break down waste products and much else. Nutrient cycling, the purification of air, soils and water, groundwater recharge and flood control are all critical to our economy and our well-being, yet these services are consistently undervalued in economic terms. If we want reminding of just how damaging extreme events can be, think of the impact of what happened in Thailand in 2011, when in one year flooding reduced its GDP by 11%.

The Natural Capital Committee was set up to advise the Government on how to deliver the aspirations of the 2011 environment White Paper. We had signed up at the Earth Summit in 1992, and subsequently elsewhere, to heroic targets—for example, on protecting our biodiversity—but had, frankly, no prospect of achieving those targets and no coherent policy either. The committee has now produced two helpful reports, the second in March this year, and its message to the Government is that we must plan long-term, by which it means at least 25 years. The second report states that integrating the environment into the economy is hampered by the almost complete absence of proper accounting for natural assets—what is not measured is usually ignored. The committee is leading in developing metrics and risk registers, identifying the necessary capital maintenance and ensuring that project and investment appraisals in both the public and private sectors properly take natural capital into account.

I wish the committee every success, but it has to change the way that investment decisions have been made for generations. Take, for example, the proposed Thames Water tideway scheme, which has been contemplated since the 1990s and which is to resolve the problem of contamination of the Thames tideway from sewerage overflows by a new tunnel that will cost £4.2 billion at 2011 prices. The driver for this is the urban waste water directive from the European Union and the threat of some highly expensive infraction proceedings. Yet this project, so long in gestation, does nothing to promote water recycling, flood alleviation, green infrastructure or sustainable urban drainage systems. It is, frankly, the Victorian solution of Bazalgette repeated, and it puts the problem firmly into the hands of one organisation, Thames Tideway Tunnel Ltd, and the cost on those in the Thames Water catchment, whether near the tideway or miles away in Gloucestershire, Berkshire or wherever. It is probably too late to stop this scheme but I am sure that it would never be started now, when we are learning at last how to value our natural capital.

By the end of this Parliament in March next year, we should be able to judge whether the committee’s advice to the Government on the need for long-term planning has been accepted. If we are to make biodiversity offsetting work, one of the more innovative proposals that have been considered by Defra and put out to consultation, it can be done only with the help of a detailed national long-term plan. By definition you will never be able to offset ancient woodland, for example, but you might be able to offset other habitats—meadows, perhaps, or wetlands.

When Sir John Lawton produced his 2010 report Making Space for Nature, he attributed the continuing decline of many species to the size of protected sites, which tend to be too small to prevent random fluctuations driving local populations to extinction. His solution was to create more, bigger, better managed and joined-up sites in a landscape-level approach to wildlife conservation. Such an approach would be possible only by involving partnerships working together on well designed schemes, funded appropriately by agri-environmental and woodland grant schemes.

Such schemes must be underpinned by sound ecological research and supported by good-quality data, with their effectiveness measured by a suitable monitoring system. Realistically, funding on this scale can come only from a reformed common agricultural policy that allows national Governments to allocate maximum resources to environmental programmes. That brings us back to the need to achieve greater subsidiarity and for the Prime Minister to be supported in this essential endeavour.

Antarctica: Centenary of Scott Expedition

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Selborne]

My Lords, I have a particular reason for being grateful to my noble friend Lady Hooper for giving us this opportunity to mark Scott’s science heritage. When Scott set off across the Ross Ice Shelf, he named an area Cape Selborne after my great grandfather, who was the First Lord of the Admiralty—and of course this was on the “Discovery”, not the “Terra Nova”, and was a naval expedition. I am only too pleased, four generations later, to pay tribute to Scott on his expedition. For many years I was a trustee of the Oates Museum, and two years ago, at the invitation of BAS, I visited the Rothera Research Station. It was only a short visit, but one could not help but be deeply impressed and humbled not just by the science and the scientists, but by the other people who support the work. I mention the pilots of the Twin Otter aircraft, who are remarkable people, the plumbers and carpenters and, as the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, mentioned, the dedication to health and safety, which is an extraordinarily important issue.

Today’s debate invites us to look at the scientific legacy, so I have plucked three names from the past 100 years which encapsulate some of this heritage. The first is that of Professor Frank Debenham, who came back from the Antarctic and set up the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge. Let us fast forward to the 1950s and to Sir Vivian Fuchs, director of the British Antarctic Survey, who set up many of the bases on the Antarctic Graham Peninsula and, of course, led the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition. If we fast forward again to two months’ time, we have Sir Ran Fiennes who, in the tradition of the golden age, is to set off once again on an Antarctic crossing, this time during the winter.

Like everyone else, I now turn to the NERC consultation document. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Willis, on posing to us the real challenge of what questions we should be asking. Although I do not agree that the merger is the only alternative, and he has said that it has not yet been resolved, I think that we have to come up with some positive proposals to solve the problem of ever-increasing logistical costs squeezing the science, which is not something that anyone wants. The opening paragraph of the consultation document talks about exploiting “scientific synergies” and the need for a “long term vision”, as well as how to support science,

“in the most cost-effective way”.

We would all agree with such sound sense, but where we part company is how to achieve those aspirations. Perhaps I should declare an interest as a past chairman of the NOC Advisory Council and the present chair of another NERC advisory group.

The proposals are set out in surprising detail considering that a consultation document is meant to look at first principles. It even gives us the name of the new centre: the NERC Centre for Marine and Polar Science. That name is not going to catch on. As the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, has just pointed out, there is a reputational risk here since we will lose two good brands. I speak with some experience of this. When I chaired the Agricultural and Food Research Council in the 1980s, we had dramatic cuts forced on us, much greater than the pressures NERC is now facing. We decided to protect the “recognition of our investment”—as NERC puts it in its document—by labelling our institute with names like the “AFRC Institute of Arable Crops” and the “Institute for Grassland and Animal Research”. However, what happened was that BBSRC sensibly reverted to John Innes, Rothamsted and Babraham—these are the brands that matter. We do not need to worry about the reputational risk or the value of the investment at NERC; we should recognise that BAS and NOC are valuable brands that need protecting.

The question that must be asked is: are there synergies to be gained and is a merger the best way of achieving them? Within the NERC family there are organisations such as the British Geological Survey, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the National Centre for Earth Observation. With all of these there are opportunities for synergy. Certainly with marine and polar science there are opportunities.

However, merger in itself does not achieve any of these synergies. It is NERC’s job to ensure that the different disciplines merge. In America they have combined oceanography, atmospheric sciences, satellite observation, weather forecasting and polar science into one organisation. That is the logical end to all mergers. I would focus on the smaller groups and keep costs down—but we will have to answer the question of the noble Lord, Lord Willis, about how we will make ends meet. The answer must be by sharing services and logistical support. Whether sharing the fleet will work, either under the ownership of NERC or of someone else, I do not know—but clearly that is the route that has to be explored.

It is essential to pool resources and share costs, but merging NOC and BAS is not the answer. I was very relieved to hear—and entirely accepted—what the noble Lord, Lord Willis, said: namely, that it is not a done deal. If it is not too late, let us have the costings and let us see what the costs would be of sharing rather than merging.

British Overseas Territories

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Selborne]

My Lords, I know I speak for the whole House when I say what an enormous privilege it is to be the first to congratulate my noble friend Lord Ribeiro on a very distinguished maiden speech. He describes himself as a child of the empire and he brings to this debate what my noble friend Lady Hooper called the remnants of the empire, a unique perspective. It must be unusual, to say the least, to have in his territorial designation a title which includes both his birthplace in Ghana and Hampshire. As someone who comes from Hampshire, I am delighted to welcome a neighbour.

After qualifying at Middlesex Hospital Medical School, my noble friend embarked on his career in surgery and he culminated as an outstanding president of the Royal College of Surgeons from 2005 to 2008. He has been a major participant in the restructuring and modernisation of surgical training and he has overseen the introduction of a new surgical curriculum. He brings with him a great deal of expertise and I hope he will speak frequently. I look forward to further interventions from my noble friend.

I join others in thanking my noble friend Lady Hooper for giving us this opportunity to talk about developments in the British Overseas Territories. Like her, the right reverend Prelate and others, I want to concentrate on environmental issues. It has already been pointed out that our territories are of enormous significance as regards habitats and ecosystems and that they impose on the UK Government responsibilities and obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Many of these territories support a large number of endemic species—that is, species that are found nowhere else in the world. Of course, in some of the territories that very biodiversity underpins the economy. Nowadays, the Falkland Islands depend largely on their fisheries for their viability and in other territories which have been discussed tourism is dependent on the natural environment. Therefore, biodiversity plays a critical role in helping to achieve sustainable development for the local population.

I should declare an interest as chair of the Living with Environmental Change partnership, which brings together 22 publicly funded organisations for collaboration in designing, undertaking and delivering research programmes, not just in the United Kingdom but overseas as well, and which addresses environmental change issues.

The cost of conservation and restoration projects undertaken in overseas territories—sometimes, but not always, with a contribution from the British taxpayer; often from the British public via NGOs—can be high. Invariably, there are demands for support from government agencies and sources such as the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, which at one time I chaired. The demands are always that those sums be increased.

My noble friend Lord Ribeiro referred to the control of rats in Henderson Island. Indeed, there are programmes for the control of other alien species in the Falkland Islands, Tristan da Cunha and St Helena, all of which have rat control programmes as well as trying to control other alien species.

We have not always been as successful as we should have been in attracting European Union funding for such projects. Frankly, France has stolen a bit of a march on us on this, and I hope that we can be more successful in future. I was heartened, therefore, that last week the European Commission announced a €2 million pilot scheme for biodiversity projects in overseas territories. The project will be used to prepare the ground with a view to longer-term support. We should take a close interest in that; we must ensure that we have our own pilot schemes so that we can get longer-term funding for our overseas territories from European funds.

I shall concentrate my remarks on two territories in which there is no permanent local population: the British Antarctic Territory, to which the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, referred; and the British Indian Ocean Territory, to which the noble Lord, Lord Luce, referred. I was fortunate enough to visit the British Antarctic Survey’s research station at Rothera, on the Antarctic Peninsula, in January. For just a few days, I represented a significant proportion of the population to which the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, referred.

Thanks to the Antarctic treaty, to which the noble Viscount also referred, despite competing territorial claims from Argentina and Chile, we are able to collaborate harmoniously, conducting research of great importance in those unusual conditions. For example, I saw some of the research on marine organisms, climate change, telecommunications and much else, all of which is of enormous significance. Again, the noble Viscount referred to that.

A massive cleanup is under way on the Antarctic continent, as detritus from earlier generations is dismantled and removed, often from remote locations. Everything which is now taken to the Antarctic has to be removed; no waste is ever allowed to stay there. So we are imposing far higher standards of care on that pristine continent than was the case in previous generations. That is an example of excellent international co-operation and a scientific treaty which is really working.

I turn, as did the noble Lord, Lord Luce, to some of the problems in the British Indian Ocean Territory, where, in April, the previous Administration agreed to the establishment of a marine protection area in what has been described as probably the richest marine ecosystem under United Kingdom jurisdiction. My noble friend who will respond later told us in June that the intention to proceed with the MPA was confirmed. That designation has been widely—but, it has to be said, not universally—welcomed. The problem, to which the noble Lord, Lord Luce, referred is, as with anything to do with the Chagos, the smouldering sense of injustice arising from the clearance of the entire archipelago between 1968 and 1973. Generation after generation, or decade after decade of politicians since then—including David Miliband as Foreign Secretary last April—pointed out that we have to accept responsibility for that long-term suffering. That responsibility will never go away.

Although I, like most others, welcome the designation of the marine protected area, I must say that the way that we are negotiating for it to be established leaves something to be desired. Whatever the outcome of the apparently interminable litigation now in the European Court of Human Rights, we have accepted that if in future—it is probably a long way off—the defence base at Diego Garcia is no longer required, the archipelago will be transferred to Mauritius. Therefore, in all conscience, we simply must get the Mauritius Government’s support for any initiative in the long-term interests of the environment and, of course, for any future population there.

The Great Chagos Bank is the world's largest coral atoll, as my noble friend reminded us. It is clearly appropriate that the Mauritius and the Chagos refugee groups should recognise what great service can be done to the economy and to the environment by that designation, but, at the moment, the Mauritius Prime Minister and some, but not all of the Chagos refugee groups, are deeply suspicious of the designation. That is not helped by Wikileaks—which, as always, complicates the issue terribly.

We need to do what has been done so much more successfully in the British Antarctic Territory: demonstrate how we can have an international initiative in which the Mauritius Government and Chagos refugee groups can participate. It is no good us thinking that we can impose a designation without their having any opportunity to contribute to the design and management of the project.

Conservation projects around the world, however worthy—and this one is as worthy as they come—will invariably fail if the interests of the indigenous population, even when they have been moved elsewhere, and of sovereign states with sovereignty claims, are not taken into account. Much more fundamental claims have been accommodated in the Antarctic. We need to follow that example in the Chagos Archipelago.