Agriculture (Miscellaneous Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Gardiner of Kimble and Lord Jones

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Jones]

The Minister is very persuasive. He persuades me to request that he writes, when he considers the debate, with as many assurances as he dares.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I think I have given the Committee assurances that these statutory instruments are technical and operable. We have gone into a wider debate about the Government’s support for agriculture and agricultural communities. We want agriculture to prosper in all parts of the kingdom. We obviously look to the farmer for many things, and we will continue to do so. This is an opportunity for me, in declaring my farming interests, to say that we must work very productively with farmers across the United Kingdom, for all the reasons I have outlined. I give that assurance to the noble Lord and to the Committee.

Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Gardiner of Kimble and Lord Jones

Monday 22nd January 2018 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I am pleased to introduce these regulations. Air pollution is the biggest environmental risk to public health in the UK. Air quality overall has improved significantly in recent decades. Emissions have decreased across each of the five key air pollutants—sulphur dioxide, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and ammonia. We need to ensure that these improvements continue through concerted action by government and local authorities in collaboration with others.

In some parts of our country there are unacceptable levels of air pollution. The Government are committed to tackling this and improving air quality, and are working to make sure that concentrations of nitrogen dioxide come within statutory limits. We are also looking to reduce total emissions of air pollution through legally binding targets for 2020 and 2030. On a local level, authorities across the country are developing local plans to tackle air pollution. The measures they bring forward—including, potentially, clean air zones—will include encouraging the replacement of old, polluting vehicles with modern, cleaner technologies. It is also important that we look to encourage the replacement of the most polluting forms of energy production.

The regulations before your Lordships relate to medium combustion plants and generators. These are a largely unregulated, significant source of emissions of air pollutants. For example, emissions of nitrogen oxides from diesel generators are on average more than six times higher than emissions from gas engines.

These regulations will implement the medium combustion plant directive, in adherence to our membership of the EU. Emissions from small-scale, highly polluting generators have also caused concern. The Government are looking to take robust action to tackle this source of emissions by introducing further domestic measures that impose additional emission controls on these generators.

These regulations are highlighted in the 25-year environment plan, launched earlier this month. They will encourage a shift to cleaner technologies and will assist in meeting the requirements of the ambient air quality directive and the revised national emission ceilings directive. Subject to your Lordships’ consent, they will make a valuable contribution to improving air quality, thereby protecting human health and the environment.

Emissions from plants over 50 thermal megawatts are already regulated under the industrial emissions directive. These regulations bring into scope medium combustion plants, which are in the 1 to 50 thermal megawatt range and are used to generate heat for large buildings such as offices, hotels, hospitals and prisons. They are also used in industrial processes, as well as for power generation. Implementing the medium combustion plant directive, commonly referred to as the MCPD, will help to reduce air pollution by introducing emission controls for these combustion plants.

As well as transposing the requirements of the MCPD, these regulations will impose new domestic requirements on the operators of low-cost, small-scale flexible power generators. There has been a rapid growth in the use of this type of generator in this country in the last few years. The recent growth of mainly diesel generators is a cause for concern. These generators emit high levels of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides compared to other medium combustion plants, and they are not currently subject to emission controls. This growth has a negative impact on local air quality as well as on our ability to meet future emission reduction targets on a national scale.

The MCPD requirements are not sufficient in themselves to tackle emissions from the increased use of these generators. The proposed regulations will subject generators to permitting and a nitrogen oxides emission limit. As a result, the regulations will ensure that diesel generators reduce their emissions to the same level as gas generators.

These regulations will provide an estimated 43% of the sulphur dioxide emissions reduction, 9% of the reduction for particulate matter and 22% of the nitrogen oxides emissions reduction needed to meet our 2030 targets. They are supported by organisations including the British Heart Foundation, the British Lung Foundation and the Royal College of Physicians. The regulations will encourage the use of cleaner plants and generators and will require those which pollute more to have technology fitted to bring their emissions within the specified limits.

Clean air is one of the most basic requirements of a healthy environment for us all to live, work, and bring up families. Clearly there is a strong case for action and we have a clear ambition and policy agenda to achieve this. These regulations will make a real impact and are a further demonstration of our commitment to improve air quality in this country. I beg to move.

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, as ever, the Minister has made helpful and succinct introductory remarks to this statutory instrument, for which I thank him. Can he confirm that recently there have been changes at the top of the natural resources body for Wales? Is there a new director and a new chair? Are there any details he can give, either now or at a later date, about the principles of the chair and the director of that body in Wales? What is the extent of the contact and co-operation between the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales, bearing in mind that we now have devolved government operating in Cardiff? Can he say what his department’s experience is of dealing with our Government in Cardiff?

Public Bodies (Abolition of the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Arbitration Tribunal) Order 2013

Debate between Lord Gardiner of Kimble and Lord Jones

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Arbitration Tribunal was established by the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act 1977. It was created to determine any question or dispute which was expressly required by the Act to be subject to arbitration or any matter in respect of which jurisdiction was specifically given to the tribunal by the Act. In practice this meant considering disputed valuations of assets at the point of nationalisation.

The Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act 1977 nationalised three aircraft companies and most of the major shipbuilding companies that were based in England and Scotland. The Act created British Aerospace and British Shipbuilders as public corporations. The tribunal was established in 1978 and considered two applications, one from stockbrokers in respect of Cammell Laird and the other on behalf of Vickers auditors. The tribunal completed its determination of both cases by 1981 and has not met since. British Shipbuilders subsequently sold its shipyards and British Aerospace was privatised.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills launched a public consultation on the abolition of the tribunal in February 2012. This was a six-week rather than a 12-week consultation as the tribunal had been defunct for such a long time. The department sent copies of the consultation to the relevant trade body and to the companies that had been part of the public corporations and continue to operate following privatisation. The department received two responses to the consultation, both of which supported the proposal to abolish the tribunal. An impact assessment has not been produced because abolition of the tribunal will not generate any savings. It is a tidying-up matter.

The Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Arbitration Tribunal was considered as part of the Government’s public bodies reform programme and the Government’s commitment to reduce the number of quangos. The tribunal has been defunct for 30 years and does not have any further cases to consider. The Government therefore put forward a proposal to abolish the tribunal using the powers of the Public Bodies Act. The Government are in the process of seeking consent for this order from the Northern Ireland Assembly, and I understand that the Assembly will consider this order over the coming weeks. The Government have consulted Scottish Ministers as required by the Public Bodies Act and, although it is not required under the law, have consulted Ministers in Wales. For these reasons, I beg to move that that the Committee consider this order.

[Lord Jones]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his considered and courteous introduction. I rise to support not to oppose what he proposes. I note that both orders carry the date of 1977 as a start point. In an attempt to give brief context to these orders, I point out to the Minister that the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act was hugely controversial at the time of its enactment. I was present in the other place as a Member of the then Administration, and I would be the first to say that 35 years is a very long time. It is just possible that the Minister, with his expertise and his group of able advisers, will also remember when the legislation was enacted but, if not, perhaps a few brief remarks on whence the orders have sprung may not be amiss.

The legislation engendered massive confrontation in the Chamber of the other place. It was hugely controversial. As the legislation made its way in the Committee corridor, it was often almost impossible to enter the Committee Room because of the huge number of interested parties—in shorthand you might say they were lobbyists, of the most honourable kind—from the industries concerned. Also there were trade unionists who knew that they had a problem concerning their long-term employment. In the Chamber itself, on the fateful night, the nature of the legislation was challenged. Was it a hybrid Bill or was it not? The consideration of such proposals by the then Administration was hugely controversial. In the vote of that night, there was a tie, and it was for Mr Speaker Thomas, as he was then known, later Lord Tonypandy, to make the decision. In terms of tradition, he cast his vote where the Government’s proposals lay—a time-honoured practice. At that time, the then Secretary of State for Industry was Mr Eric Varley, who subsequently entered your Lordships’ House, having had a distinguished political career. Mr George Thomas, as he then was, came under huge pressure on that night and in the months leading up to that fateful vote, because his decision in the end on advice from his clerks would be crucial. I thought that your Lordships would need to know the content of this set of orders.

It was historic because, in the early 1970s, the Upper Clyde shipyard was occupied, and the occupation, which was very controversial and huge in Scotland, was led by a legendary trade unionist, Mr Jimmy Reid. He enunciated a famous principle in the thick of the fight, saying that a rat race was for rats. I pass hurriedly by on that. Following the occupation came the astounding requirement to nationalise the iconic Rolls-Royce factories.