Plastic Packaging

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, as I say, I think that industry is absolutely seized of this. I could take noble Lords through the companies involved in coffee and coffee cups, and the number of them that are now dealing with rewards, with water filling stations in their coffee shops, et cetera. I think that what we are looking at now is the beginning of a considerable revolution in the way we do things.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the consequences of the Government’s Brexit policy is that all pallets importing food into the UK or exporting it from here will have to be disinfected at the frontier if they are made of timber. Will the Minister encourage the use of recycled plastic for pallets so that this does not have to happen? It would also save some of the trees that are used in pallets.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, wearing my other hat as Minister for Biosecurity I know that the noble Lord will well understand some of the dangers that we have had from pests and diseases coming through in timber packaging. I take the point very seriously indeed. We need to look at all sorts of innovative ways of reusing and recycling plastic. He has given a very good example of the reuse and recycling of materials.

Bat Habitats Regulation Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on introducing this Bill. It has enabled us to have a really interesting debate, so far, on the pros and cons of what one might loosely call “bats versus humans”. I suppose I am a late convert to interest in bats; my wife is in fact the chairman of the Isles of Scilly Bat Group and I have been taken out on a number of tours to see them and listen to them. I find them very interesting. I sponsored a bat evening in Committee Room G a few months ago and some noble Lords came to stroke the bats—I think they found it very interesting.

I am also on record criticising some of the costs associated with bats. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, and I have had many conversations about this in connection with HS2, where a new type of bat was allegedly found on the centre line. It cost, I think, £15 million and the committee was told to move them. Therefore, costs are a problem, but that has to be balanced by the fact that the available habitats for bats, which do not include bat boxes on pylons, are declining, and the number of bats are declining. I love churches and love the history and artefacts, and this is a classic debate about balancing the environment with human beings. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has done us a service by issuing a wake-up call. I know that he says that he has been doing it for 47 years, but that is good. Many noble Lords have tenacity with regard to certain issues and projects, and I commend the work he has done. I could give the House a long description of what bats do and how they live, but that is not necessary today, because all noble Lords who have spoken have demonstrated a great knowledge of bats, whether they think the present legislation is right or not.

However, I will say a word or two about the question of bat numbers, because there are some clear examples, which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned, of colonies which are possibly growing and causing trouble in churches—I will come back to that. A very interesting survey was carried out by the Bat Conservation Trust and others, The State of the UK’s Bats 2017, which noted the increase in some species, put that in the context of the historic decline and emphasised the importance of protection. The decline has nothing to do with churches but, as other noble Lords have said, everything to do with the lack of suitable habitats in newer buildings. There is therefore still a strong argument for keeping at least the present legislation, which we have had since 1981, and accepting that churches are an important sanctuary for bats as well as humans—although for humans they are not, as they are for bats, maternity roosts and places for hibernation.

Although the Bill is a wake-up call, many of its parts are probably unnecessary, and they fail to take into account some of the complex nature of bat ecology. For example, why include wind turbines in Clause 1? I am not a bat, so I do not know whether I would be attracted to a wind turbine—I do not think I would be. However, specifying in legislation that bat boxes must be fitted to the bottom of turbines seems a bit odd if we are not to have bat boxes on every telegraph pole and pylon in the country. We should encourage other habitats. We should probably look at mobile phone masts as well.

We need to continue the survey to record the growth or decline of the different types of bat, but the key issue is probably dealt with in Clause 2, which seeks to remove some of the protection in churches. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has told us about the legislation that is still there, and which in my view should continue to be there. There seemed to be a bit of debate about the number of churches affected; the right reverend Prelate mentioned different figures. My information is that, according to the only nationwide systematic survey of bats in churches, of 30,500 churches and chapels of all denominations in England—I emphasise that they are of all denominations and ages, before someone picks me up on it—6,398 could be used by bats. Within that latter number are the examples referred to by the right reverend Prelate, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper. Churches are important places for bats to roost in. I accept that bats cause trouble in a small number, and if it is your church that is affected, it is no good people down the road saying that that is all right. Things have to be right for the small or large number of bats and the small number of humans who deal with the problem.

I believe that there has to be a flexible solution to this which, one hopes, will build on the Bats in Churches project, which other noble Lords have mentioned. Those involved in the project have been working very hard on this. There are lots of details on websites about what they are doing and I think that the outcome is due in the next month or two. The conclusions are particularly important because they have to aim to find practical, tailored solutions for the churches that are most affected.

Yesterday I had a very interesting meeting with the chief executive of the Bat Conservation Trust at which I asked what the solutions are. The trust has not announced them yet—it is still working on them—but I asked whether there are any. Other noble Lords have more experience in this area than I have but two solutions seem worthy of being taken forward. One is what you might call ultrasonic barriers, which I am told work in some instances. The other is to try to restrict the areas in a church where the bats can roost to places where they do not, for whatever reason, cause damage to the people underneath. I believe that this could be done without legislation. It would need some more funding, which the people involved in the project hope to get from the Heritage Lottery Fund. If they can create a network of volunteers who are able to provide help and support, and, in the process, come up with solutions that are within the funding capabilities of those who live or work there or have access to funding, I am sure that that is the answer.

Therefore, I am not very happy with the Bill as presented to the House today. I will be very interested to hear what the Minister says in response and I look forward to an interesting Committee stage if the time for it is allowed.

--- Later in debate ---

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

My Lords, I join your Lordships in thanking my noble friend Lord Cormack for the opportunity to respond and contribute to the Second Reading of the Bill and hear many passionate contributions. I have no personal declarations to make, but I did build a new outbuilding some years ago; within a year, there was an extraordinary arrival of bats. Like many of your Lordships, I was very pleased by their arrival.

As said by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, most of the 18 species of bats found in the UK evolved to live, breed and forage in or around trees and caves but have adapted over the centuries to roost in buildings—an adaptation accelerated by modern development, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. These building roosts are now essential to the survival of many bat species, including the Natterer’s bat, a species for which the UK’s population is of international importance. Churches play a vital role in the survival of bats. I was also interested to hear, in the extraordinary contribution from my noble friend Lord Goschen, about what is happening in the natural landscape of a part of Africa and how bats play an extraordinary part in ecosystems across the globe.

However, the Government and I recognise that bats in some churches give rise to both distress for congregations and damage to our cultural heritage. I obviously agree with what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich said about his experiences. Indeed, I endorse the work of the Church Monuments Society, to which my noble friends Lord Cormack and Lady Hooper referred in particular. We are taking this problem seriously. We take responsibility for our obligations to heritage, community and worship. That is why we are working with Historic England, Natural England and the Heritage Lottery Fund to alleviate the problem.

My noble friend Lady Hooper asked about progress with research and pilot schemes. Following a research project and a pilot with three churches, Natural England has engaged with 20 individual churches and worked at diocesan level to develop plans and proposals to manage the issues. This approach will be rolled out to a further 80 churches. They are learning from the pilot, training hundreds of volunteers and professional ecologists, and sharing the approaches with a wider network of 700 churches. I say in this connection that many volunteers will be from the Bat Conservation Trust. Bat helpline volunteers, who advise the public and churches, are employed and trained by Natural England and follow Natural England policy guidelines. We have found no evidence that they are overzealous or over-precautionary, and customer satisfaction with the service is high—that was borne out by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. In fact, I have here a figure of 97% for those who said that the service was excellent, and none was dissatisfied.

The solutions include ultrasound-emitting devices to deter bats from using specific areas of a church, excluding bats from the interior of churches, and the provision of alternative access points and artificial roosting opportunities. Radio-tagging is used both to identify the species and where it is entering, and to monitor success.

All species of bat are subject to protection under the EU habitats directive, which will continue under UK law through the withdrawal Bill. It is a criminal offence deliberately to kill, injure, take or disturb bats. Bat species are also protected from disturbance in their place of rest or the deliberate obstruction of such locations.

The Bill put forward today by my noble friend proposes that bats be excluded from a building used for public worship unless it has been demonstrated that their presence would not have a significant adverse impact on the users of such a place. Such a blanket prohibition does not take account of the importance of some churches to some of our most vulnerable bat populations, or of the considerable steps that the Government in collaboration with others are already taking to alleviate and mitigate the impacts in such places where bats are causing nuisance or distress.

A recent three-year project led by Defra and undertaken by Bristol University researched and developed techniques to assist churches in developing mitigation strategies for bat-related problems. This led to a pilot project led by Historic England to implement some of the identified solutions. As a number of your Lordships have said, last year, Natural England, with the Church of England, Historic England, the Churches Conservation Trust and the Bat Conservation Trust, successfully bid for £415,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to develop further some of these solutions and put them in place in badly affected churches across the country.

I can report that 100 of the worst-affected churches have been surveyed. In the three most severely affected, All Saints at Braunston-in-Rutland, All Saints Swanton Morley—to which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich referred, and which is in his own diocese—and Holy Trinity, Tattershall, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Cormack, trial solutions have been agreed and detailed, costed plans will be now be put in place. These churches host sizeable colonies of bats, including, at Tattershall, breeding populations of seven species of bats. The approaches include restricting access to certain parts of the building and the provision of alternative, artificial roosts nearby. In the case of All Saints, Braunston, this artificial roost will have a webcam to allow activity to be viewed, and the project is working with the community to offer opportunities to witness the spectacle of hundreds of bats emerging at dusk. At Holy Trinity, Tattershall, the congregation has embraced the presence of the bats, including them as part of their visitor attraction. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, is right that the challenge is how to find a solution whereby bats and ourselves coexist in harmony. Indeed, an application for a further £3.8 million for stage 2 of the project will be submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund in June of this year to enable such solutions to be put in place for more affected churches. I am sure that noble Lords will join me in wishing the bid well.

My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering referred to the church in Ellerburn, about which I have a quite substantial note. There again, Defra and Historic England collaborated with Natural England—Natural England taking the lead—to find an acceptable solution at St Hilda’s. Of course, I endorse all that my noble friend did to ensure the progress that was made. Again, a solution was found and after the exclusion operation was complete, successive years of monitoring showed that the bats were able to continue roosting under the tiles and in the walls but were no longer able to gain access to the interior of the church. Since the work took place the congregation has been able to use the church for worship once again.

[Lord Berkeley]

I am very grateful for the Minister’s response. His description of phase 1 of this joint study and the budget for phase 2, and what is contained in it, seemed to me incredibly good value compared to some of the projects we come across. Is he confident that the solution that could be applied to the many churches that have been described this afternoon, and others where there is a problem, can be done at a cost that is affordable for local congregations and other small funds? Or is there going to be a big shortage of funding for anything useful to happen?

Water Supply Disruption

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement and for his explanation of all the work that the water companies and their engineers are doing to reinstate supplies. It must have been a very hard job, day and night in pretty horrible conditions, and the engineers deserve all our thanks. Whether the water companies deserve our thanks is a completely different issue. It is obvious that when the temperature gets cold, the freezing depth goes down and eventually will probably hit a pipe; whether it is a quick or a slow thaw probably does not matter very much. I was cycling through Trafalgar Square this morning and there were two enormous floods coming out of manhole covers that looked to be nothing like water company manholes, so God knows what is happening to the rest of the services in Trafalgar Square. Not that that matters—it is just that it is near here.

My worry is that while Ministers are quite rightly saying that they are going to get a grip on Ofwat and the water companies—I was pleased that the Minister talked about the strategic policy statement and ended up by saying that the water industry works for everyone—that is not what has happened in the last five years. Ofwat, and to some extent the Ministers, have been asleep on the job. I have been saying for the last five years that Thames Water needed looking at because Macquarie bank has managed to reduce its level of assets to about 25% of what they were when it started, and then promptly went after the money to somewhere more attractive and sold Thames Water to the extent that it could not fund the Thames Tideway tunnel on its own and had to seek a government guarantee. That investment could have gone into improving the quality of the pipes, reducing leakages and so on. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, it needs more capital, but there really needs to be a massive change of attitude on the part of Ofwat to do what the Minister said and hold the water companies to account so that we never have this again. The companies should have enough assets to invest so that they can produce a much better system where the leakages are less; the charges, hopefully, are less; and it is about what the customer wants rather than what suits the companies in making the most massive amount of money in salaries and so on in the City. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, again, so many of the noble Lord’s comments are in line with what I said and what the Secretary of State was very clear about last week. Some water authorities are, in my candid view, better than others. I have a list of some of the many projects that certain water companies are undertaking, whether investment or dramatically improving water on beaches. There are some very good examples of where that investment of £140 billion since privatisation has undoubtedly borne fruit, whether it is in sewers, flooding, pollution or reduction in nitrates. But there is no doubt that the game needs to be upped, and that improvements in certain water companies need to be considered.

As I said, Ofwat has already given Thames Water a substantial fine for missing leakage targets. When one thinks of water shortages in the south-east and other places with large populations, it is imperative to bear down on continuing leaks very strongly. We need to ensure that water companies are investing properly. In fairness, I have to say that leakage levels are down by a third since privatisation and bills since 1994 are but 3% higher—but there is room for considerable improvement. That is what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is looking for. We are clear that if Ofwat needs any further powers, we will actively look at them.

Recycling: Chinese Import Ban

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, following considerable investment, there are now about 40 large municipal waste plants. They are highly regulated by the Environment Agency precisely to ensure that we recover energy and, importantly, they also operate within all the emission tests. I do not have the precise figure for what is currently recyclable but I will write to the noble Lord. However, the whole essence of our objective is to cut the amount of plastic in circulation and to reduce the variety of plastic so that we can recycle ever more.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

In his original Answer to my noble friend Lady Jones, the Minister mentioned that the Government were looking for alternative markets to replace the Chinese market as the current receptacle for much waste. Is it not immoral to say that we are just going to look for another place in the world to dump the rubbish that we should be looking after ourselves?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, there obviously need to be alternatives and we are looking at them. Nothing is exported in the way that the noble Lord describes—there are very strong and strict requirements. I agree with him about wanting to recycle more at home but a number of countries—Turkey, Taiwan, Vietnam and India—all have resources and are taking more waste. However, we certainly want to work more on recycling at home.

Waste: Chinese Import Ban

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the House for allowing me a quick intervention in the gap.

I congratulate China on banning the export of waste. Why should it be the world dumping ground for this kind of waste? We should look after our own waste.

However, there are many other examples to which I hope the Minister will respond. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in his excellent introduction, talked about west Africa. However, there was a case—reported only in Private Eye because everyone else was threatened with legal action and unlimited fines—of a chemical that was sent to west Africa in such secrecy that anyone who mentioned it would be liable. As the Daily Mail reported on 23 April 2017, toxic waste, chemicals, phones, fridges and so on are burned in the most awful circumstances for the people working there. The reason why is that it is cheaper to do that than to recycle in the European Union. I hope the Minister will look at this because it comes down to price in the end.

The same applies to the breaking up of ships on the beaches of India—one of the big growth countries in the world—and Bangladesh. Again, the workers are subject to awful toxic fumes, dangers and so on. What are the Government doing to make the IMO, which is responsible for this, prevent such things happening?

I am pleased that the Prime Minister has made a Statement on the environment today but we need action. I hope that the action taken in this country will set an example to the rest of the world.

Japanese Knotweed

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 7th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, there are community protection notices, which give local authorities and the police powers. I suggest that the noble Baroness considers that way forward.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of Japanese seaweed? I do not think you can eat it, but it is a serious invasive species in our watercourses and rivers. What action will the Government take to try to control that?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, there is a list of invasive species that we very much want to manage and control. The most important thing is biosecurity and awareness campaigns such as “Check, Clean, Dry”. We each have a responsibility to help deal with invasive species.

Air Quality: London

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, on achieving this debate. It has been an excellent debate with lots of interesting comments and statements.

I start by paying tribute to Simon Birkett, who runs Clean Air in London. He has kept air pollution in the public eye and produced a mass of statistics over many years. If we are to have a sensible debate about air pollution, we have to have the right data. Simon has recently produced what I think he calls a Birkett app. If you have the right type of phone, you can look at the Birkett IndexTM—I suppose that means trade mark—which gives the air pollution levels and the percentage of deaths attributable to PM 2.5 in local authorities and regions of the UK. Simon looks at the average over 10 years or so of deaths attributed to different public health risks. Smoking comes top with 80,000 in England. Air pollution comes second with 29,000 in the UK, so it is not totally comparable. Alcoholism accounts for 15,000 to 22,000 deaths, obesity 9,000 and road traffic accidents just under 2,000. It is important for people to understand the comparators and where the data have come from if we are to have a proper debate.

All the arguments focus on the need to reduce traffic, particularly in London. It is interesting to note that a lot of noble Lords have talked about ways to reduce other people’s traffic so that they can get through quicker, which is a natural reaction. However, we have to ask ourselves whether we have the right to drive in London where and when we like, probably at minimum cost to ourselves. The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, talked about roadworks. However, I think that some of those around Parliament recently have been caused by the utility companies, which are a bit of a law unto themselves.

As many noble Lords know, I am a cyclist. Cyclists have come in for a bit of a bashing tonight from a number of noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Higgins, talked about cycling in The Hague. I have cycled in The Hague and it is very nice. There are some cycle lanes and places where you can feel safe. However, one of the things about The Hague is that there is not much traffic around, and that must make it a great deal safer. I cycled across Paris a couple of weeks ago between the Gare du Nord and the Gare du Midi. There is a segregated cycle lane most of the way, very like the cycle lanes here. However, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, correctly said, the law is different on the continent. If a cyclist gets hit by a vehicle, I think that the driver of the vehicle is already at least 50% liable before the circumstances are investigated. A long time ago in your Lordships’ House, I suggested that we should change the law here. I was given a pretty rough time by some of the Law Lords, who said that would mean that somebody was guilty before they were proved innocent, or the other way round. But it has contributed to the antipathy, which is often there, between cyclists and motorists. It would be much better if there were no antipathy and everybody behaved with respect to other road users. One of the cycling groups I am involved in is starting a campaign to persuade cars to keep at least a metre and a half clear of cyclists on main roads. In London that is of course impossible, because there is too much congestion. However, we have to look at all the types of traffic here. Buses have come in for a lot of abuse today too. Trains have not been abused yet—I will talk about them in a minute.

In the rush hour, that cycle lane along the embankment is very full and congested; I sometimes feel in danger going down it, while at other parts of the day it is less congested, as are the buses and the roads. However, the benefits of cycling start and finish with people not feeling frightened on a bicycle, and the segregation achieves that. They made a mess of the cycle lanes through the Royal Parks, which is one of the reasons why there has been a delay in Great George Street; the Royal Parks bit of the cycle lane was about two years late, whatever you think about it, and that has caused a lot of problems. It is the same with buses; if we had electric buses, people would use them. The concentration of people you can get in a train, a bus or a cycle lane is rather higher than you can get in one car. I therefore come back to the question: should we not restrict people’s ability to drive their own cars around London and other cities?

Nobody has criticised white vans or trucks yet, but maybe some of my colleagues will do that in winding up. They also cause quite a lot of pollution. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. We are trying quite hard to get more freight on the rails into city centres. Sometimes it comes in passenger trains, sometimes in roll cages—such as supermarkets have delivered—or in the guards’ vans of trains; there are various examples of that, including crabs and lobsters from Penzance. However, where do you transfer the freight from the train into, hopefully, an electric vehicle or possibly even for cycle delivery for the last few miles into the centre of London? That would create a large reduction in emissions, but there needs to be somewhere to transfer the freight, such as a consolidation centre. The cost of land around the mainline stations is high, and that challenge has not yet been addressed.

The last aspect is the building sector. There are concrete mixing plants, which everybody sees around London and other big cities; there is a big one just outside St Pancras station, which supplies a large amount of concrete buildings in London—it might even supply HS2, if it gets built from Euston. The materials come in by rail—that is quite environmentally friendly—but then you have big concrete trucks going around London. They are diesels, and generally pretty efficient, but it is difficult to know how that could be transferred to electric in the short term anyway. But the biggest problem we have is in the link between the policies and the planning, which is a problem in London and many other places.

I will give an example. We have talked about the ultra-low emission zones in London, we have plans to ban older HGVs from London, which is probably a good thing, and there is the transport strategy. However, while the transport strategy acknowledges the future needs of housing and infrastructure development—which means all these building materials—in over 200 pages it includes not a single reference to air quality and the congestion benefits of rail freight. That seems a bit odd.

The last point relating to this issue is that there are many little concrete batching plants around Greater London. The railway delivers the aggregate and sometimes the cement as well, and it is mixed on site and delivered locally, but there are more and more cases, including in Stratford and Bow in east London, where local authorities allow residential developments next door to these plants. The residents then obviously complain about the noise and dust, and they want them closed down. We either have these little terminals around London and city centres that can receive the materials by rail from the batching plants, which make the asphalt and so on, or they are brought in from 50 or 100 miles away by truck. It is a planning and policy issue, and I hope that when the Minister responds, he will say that he will look at it again. I hope that we can have a meeting about it later because it is quite a serious problem. There are these lovely terminals, which have been there for years—working 24/7, as they have to—and then people build a house or a block of flats next door to them and the residents complain and want to restrict the opening hours of the works.

I have very much enjoyed listening to and participating in this debate, and I look forward to the noble Lord’s answers.

Natural Environment

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome participating in this debate and listening to what I think is the start of the Liberal Democrat manifesto from the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the noble Baroness. I also welcome another engineer to the House of Lords in the shape of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. I welcome his speech. There are not many of us and he has added quite a high percentage because of that.

The noble Baroness and my noble friend Lord Whitty made a powerful case for change, which I fully support. I want to outline some of the difficulties that we will have in achieving it, especially when people have the time, energy and resources to fight for or against it. Sometimes, of course, even those who are in favour of a particular green or environmental initiative actually spend more time fighting each other than achieving their objective.

I will give two examples. First, I will say a little more about air pollution, on which the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, gave us some very interesting data. The noble Earl, Lord Selborne, and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, also mentioned this. We started off with a Question on 6 January which I put down about the premature deaths caused by nitrous oxide and the PM2.5 from diesel engines. We can all disagree on the exact number of people who may have died prematurely nationwide. The figure I cited was 55,000 people nationwide, with an average loss of life expectancy of more than 10 years. Other people have different figures, but I do not think it really matters. We can go on discussing the figures ad nauseam, but I think we all agree that the figure is very high and it could be reduced.

Again supporting the statement by the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, Dr David Carslaw, who is a highly respected scientist, has said that the pollution in Oxford Street is the highest in the world. That is a pretty challenging statement to make. I suspect he is right. The NO₂ annual concentrations and the hourly exceedances in Brixton Road may exceed those in Oxford Street in 2014. It is easy just to talk about London, but I think the problem is just as bad in many other cities.

The easy solution is to get rid of the polluting diesels, as the noble Lord has said. But how are we going to know where the problem is? The solution, of course, is by the network of measuring stations that, at the moment, local authorities are required to run. I have it on good authority that, before the London Olympics, the Mayor of London covered up the stations that were reading a bit high. Otherwise, the Olympics would have been performed allegedly in an atmosphere that was worse than that of Beijing four years previously. Whether that is true, I do not know.

Of course, it is much easier to deal with the problem by removing the evidence. I think it is extraordinary that Defra wants to remove the requirement for local authorities to keep maintaining such measuring points. It is going to be very easy for a future Government to say, “Well, there is no evidence of air pollution”. The noble Lord may be right that we will be able to measure it on our mobile phones. However, at the moment, having some official statistics is extremely important, because it is easy to say, “Well, there is no evidence, therefore we don’t need to tackle the problem”. Are the Government really allowing 55,000, or whatever the number is, premature deaths to continue because they will not only not ban diesels in the worst polluting areas but now want to remove the source of evidence as to where they should act?

My second example is railways—no great surprise there—an environmentally friendly type of transport and probably the best one, apart from walking and cycling, if people feel the need to move around. The issue of nimbyism is, I am afraid, as rife as ever. We have seen it in all the debates on High Speed 2. People even complain when the railway is in a tunnel, under- ground, two or three miles from their house; they say it will still affect them.

I have heard a more recent example in Bath, which I think is more serious. Noble Lords will know that the Great Western railway is being electrified. When you are putting wires above the trains, you need extra height, which means that you either lower the tracks or you raise the bridges. There is a very famous tunnel, which Brunel built, called Box tunnel, where the tracks have to be lowered to get the wires in. The problem is that there are bats in the tunnel. I love bats and have many friends who love bats. They seem to have survived and prospered in this tunnel for 150 years or so, even when 125 miles per hour trains are rushing through every 15 or 30 minutes.

The only time that Network Rail is allowed to lower the tracks in this tunnel is in July and August, due to the bat breeding season or something—it will do a lot of other work at the same time, which I could explain but will not now. That means that the railway through Bath has to be closed for two months in the summer. Bath, as we all know, is a World Heritage Site and summer is a good time of the year for tourists from around the world to come to Bath. However, because there are no trains, and Network Rail obviously finds it necessary to help move passengers around, it has to use buses. I am told that there will be 200 buses going in and out of Bath for two months in July and August.

We have to have a specially designed catenary because it is a World Heritage Site. We have to drop the track, which may end up on an old Roman ruin, which will probably close the line for another six months while the archaeologists dig. The question is: what price progress? This is one of the reasons why the cost of electrification has doubled around there. It is not Network Rail’s fault, because it has been told to do it this way, but one rather thinks that if the people of Bath and the people who are requiring all these changes do not want electrification, we should give them a steam train instead. We can let the people of Bristol get to London on the other route through Bristol Parkway and have a chuff-chuff between Bristol, Bath and Chippenham. They can pollute their town with smoke instead. Is it really justified for the bats, which clearly have to be protected to the extent that they can have a tunnel dug up only in August, although they survive all the rest of the year round with all this noise going through?

It is a question of what price we pay for progress, a debate that we will continue to have for a long time. There is an added cost and there are a lot of people who feel very strongly about this, but we have to have a balance. I hope in the future we will get a better balance.

Milk Production

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[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 Berkeley]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. Does the Minister agree that one way of reducing the cost of production would be to introduce mega-dairies and very big units in the way that has been done for poultry and pigs? Does he have a view on that and what sort of size would the Government welcome?

[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.

Health: Diesel Engine Pollution

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans the National Health Service has to reduce the number of premature deaths caused by the combined impact of nitrogen dioxide and fine particles emitted by diesel engines.

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

My Lords, the plan to reduce emissions and pollution is set out in the Sustainable, Resilient, Healthy People & Places strategy. This encourages walking and cycling, which have direct health benefits, and reduces emissions of air pollutants and carbon dioxide. Key to reducing the health impacts of air pollution is reducing emissions at source. We are investing billions of pounds in measures to reduce air pollution, including incentivising low-emission vehicles and sustainable transport.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer, but is he aware—I am sure he is—that, according to Clean Air in London, 55,000 premature deaths a year nationally are attributable to NOx and fine particulates? Already, monitors in Oxford Street and other parts of London have shown that NOx hourly limit values have been breached for the whole of 2015, which is not bad in six days. Why then is Defra consulting on proposals to remove the obligation for local authorities to monitor such pollution? In the absence of that evidence, are the Government trying to avoid blame for denying those 55,000 people their 10 extra years of life, which they could achieve if the policies were implemented?

[Lord De Mauley]

It is helpful that the noble Lord has asked that question. It gives me the opportunity to clarify that nothing in the consultation could lead to the closure of monitoring stations. It is essentially about streamlining and simplifying the reporting system to reduce unnecessary burdens and speed up delivery of air quality action plan measures to tackle pollutants such as NO₂ and particulate materials. We are not proposing a reduction of monitoring by local authorities, but decisions on local air quality monitoring are for them, so ultimately it is up to them to decide what level of monitoring they wish to undertake.