UNCLOS: The Law of the Sea in the 21st Century (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I should declare a non-financial interest as a patron of the British charity, Human Rights at Sea.

When I first came into the Grand Committee, I wanted to make sure that I had the Government’s most up-to-date response. I have to tell the Minister that I was hugely disappointed by it, until I read the title, which was Technology Rules? The Advent of New Technologies in the Justice System—I had picked up the wrong one. I now have the most recent response, I hope, and will refer to it later.

I was delighted that the committee went into UNCLOS. It is its 40th anniversary and, to me, it is something that all the signatories can be proud of. I see it as the law of 70% of the planet’s surface—some of the most important, and indeed some of the most unknown and unresearched, parts of the planet. It has its weaknesses, gaps and challenges, and I will come to each of those.

It is also under threat; this is not an area I will talk about but, in terms of the South China Sea, there is a direct challenge to a ruling under UNCLOS. The Philippines brought that case but has backed off; China has totally rejected it and did not see that jurisdiction as being valid. That is a part of the autocratic world trying to undo the international conventions that have kept the planet at peace and sane over the last 50 years and more. So it is under threat.

One of the main, negative conclusions that the committee came to was that the last thing we should do is renegotiate UNCLOS. We should find ways of improving it and making it the living treaty that was described by many of our witnesses, but we should not undo it. It is a keystone of the rule of law over our oceans.

I follow on from the thoughts of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, our chair, on flags of convenience. To me, this is the one area where, to use the wrong analogy, we drive a horse and coaches through the way that UNCLOS is supposed to work. The table shows exactly that Panama has gross tonnage of vessels of about a quarter of a million under its flag, the US has only 10 million, and the UK 8.7 million—in 22nd position. Clearly, everything is out of kilter. We are trying to get a balance: historically, the freedom of the high seas has been very important and something which we would not want to move on. The trouble is that it is abused and there is widespread immunity on the oceans through flags of convenience.

I was delighted to hear that we are now going to sign the 1986 UN Convention on Conditions for Registration of Ships. This seems one of the areas in which the UK should be leading internationally. The original government response, as I remember it in the committee, was that there was not a lot of interest from other nations, so why do it? That raises the question that this must be unsatisfactory to the vast majority of nations—though perhaps not Panama, the Marshall Islands and Malta. But to the rest of us it is important, and something through which we should be trying to get an economic link between flag and vessel. Until we do that, there will be a rather big hole in jurisdiction and how this charter actually works.

Of course, the International Maritime Organization is within a mile of this building. Surely, just due to the fact that it is in that location, we should be able to provide extra leverage to make sure that other nations come alongside us, and we should show that leadership.

I would be interested to understand from the Minister how we can improve port state control and make sure that those measures are more effective, as well as territorial waters. I would not like to stop the right of innocent passage through territorial waters but there needs to be more national responsibility for who goes through those waters.

Human rights is the area that is very much missing, and I completely agree with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, on this. It is not just about human rights themselves but the fact that, where there are these abuses—and all enforcement is difficult at sea—it moves on to other abuses and other breaches of international law. Whether it be illegal fisheries, people trafficking or drug trafficking, all this will continue if we do not take a much stronger approach to the human rights side of UNCLOS and the way that we enforce and legislate with regard to the high seas.

Never mind all those examples, I thought we had a good example with the cruise ship in the Mediterranean, outside of territorial waters. There was an assault on a passenger by a member of the crew; the national was Spanish, and the Spanish courts were not able to do anything, and there was an Italian connection, but Italy was not able to do anything either. The flag state, Panama, was just not interested. There is no recourse, even for that type of person, let alone for those in enslavement on fishing vessels.

I will say just one last thing on human rights. As I said, one of my areas is as a patron of Human Rights at Sea, which is a British charity. It is pushing ahead here with a document called the Geneva Declaration on Human Rights at Sea. This has been taken up by New Zealand and other nations but has had indifference, to a degree, from the United Kingdom—though not entirely; we had a very positive meeting with one of the Transport Ministers under the Boris Johnson Administration, but nothing has happened there. Can the Minister look at this further, to see how we can help push that declaration to extend human rights under international law?

Lastly, I will talk briefly about seabed minerals. At COP 27, President Macron said, very abruptly, “We aren’t going to do sea mining—I’m going to try to stop it altogether.” Similar declarations have been made by New Zealand, Chile and one or two other countries, including Panama and Costa Rica. But the latest government response says—not unreasonably, in a way—that the UK is looking at

“the Regulatory framework of the ISA, with a view to adopting regulations in July 2023 in accordance with the ISA’s road map for their elaboration.”

After that, there are a lot of caveats about what we are pushing for as a nation within those negotiations.

My view is very clear on this. We already have enough minerals and despoliation on land. If we believe in natural capital, and particularly in circular economies, we should, not just as a nation but as an international community, make sure that we get those minerals through a circular economy and through the exploitation that we already have, not in new domains under the sea. Can the Minister say whether the United Kingdom will back those other nations in saying that, at the end of the day, enough is enough, and we have despoiled our terrestrial domain enough? Let us not let that happen to the seabed, as it inevitably would, whatever regulations we have as regards that future convention.

China: Security and Trade (IRDC Report)

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and his wise words, particularly on Chinese influence in Africa and beyond, because that is where the cut in our foreign aid budget has quite substantially taken away the power, prominence and respect that we had in international development. It is something that we pay for when our competitors take over.

My bedtime reading tends to be contemporary and modern history, rather than fiction—although obviously as you get close to the Trump Administration the two tend to merge. It is quite clear, and comes over in the report, that we as a nation were a major part of China’s humiliation through the opium wars. Perhaps there is a lesson there that, as you overtake people going up the global league table, it is good to remember occasionally that you might be on the way back down a few years later—maybe that affects the relationship.

I am reminded that we had President Xi here in this Palace in 2015, only seven years ago. He addressed us as the combined Houses of Parliament in the Royal Gallery, and I was privileged—I will use that word—to meet him personally for an instant afterwards at a reception, because I had chaired a committee delegation to China a few years before. We were given the chance to say one sentence to him. I do not know whether he understands any English—he certainly makes out that he does not, and he probably does not—or whether what I said was translated, but I made some fatuous comment about the importance of the European Union. What I really wanted to say to him was, “President of China, you don’t have to assert yourself as China in the globe, because the rest of the world realises that you as a nation will be a major player globally over the next century. You don’t have to assert that in other ways; it is evident in the economy, size, population and other issues.”

Unfortunately, he clearly has not taken the advice that I would have given him. As has been said, we have very much seen this in Hong Kong and the end of “one country, two systems”. We have also seen it in the gradual but assertive implementation around the nine-dash line in the South China Sea; although we have shown that we still treat them as international waters, along with our other allies, predominantly America, its taking control of that area continues. On Taiwan, both we and China have become more threatening, as we saw in particular with the Nancy Pelosi visit. I am pleased to say that India, which we often forget about, is also mentioned in this report, as is the control line, where China is claiming parts of the Indian nation—those are two nuclear powers occasionally facing off with border skirmishes. There is also the growth of its military power and the President going for life presidency of China. There are other big challenges that other Members have already gone through.

Connections with China are important, however. I will reflect some of the themes around climate change that the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, talked about, and then move on to supply chains, which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned. As the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said, it is quite clear that China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, having overtaken the United States. It accounts for something like a quarter of emissions. Without getting too techie on this, even on a consumption basis—often we look at China as the workshop of the world, exporting to us, and we export its emissions back—it still accounts for about a quarter of emissions, given its economic growth and the way that incomes have gone up there. Even cumulatively, to look back through history, China is now the second most responsible for the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. No longer can it blame the western world for being the major emitter; admittedly, on a per capita basis, although it is now ahead of us in the United Kingdom, it is still well behind the United States.

Partly through our good work—and that of Alok Sharma in his presidency of COP 26—China has now set a target of peaking its emissions in 2030 and meeting net zero in 2060. I do not know whether it will do that; ironically, it seems it might actually achieve it through the continued zero-Covid policy, which has crippled and will continue to cripple Chinese economic capacity for some time to come, until it has to make that break—I hope for the Chinese population that it will use western vaccines.

It is imperative that we engage China in that process globally. As the noble Baroness said, it is ahead globally on investment in renewables of all sorts. In fact, it has three times the level of renewables investment of the United States, which is second. It is a key player in that area and we must encourage and include it globally, despite the rest of the issues, in those conversations moving forward. It is so important that we remain global leaders in that area. How does the Minister see our leadership now that the present Government—and, I presume, the next Government under a new Prime Minister—have endorsed fracking in this country? I would be very interested in his comments on that.

That leadership on investment, however, has another difficult effect on us. Through its supply chain and economy, China produces some 80% of solar panels globally. It has, if not quite a monopoly, a dominant oligopolistic position in supply chains nationally and globally, which is expected to rise to something like 95% if trends continue in certain areas of that supply chain. We in this country are very much into wind, and offshore wind, but solar is the major area of renewables transition and China has, and will continue to have, a stranglehold in that area. In EV batteries—I think the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned EVs—it has a market share of about 60% at the moment in productive capacity. Even on wind turbines, 10 of the top 15 companies globally are Chinese. Most of those are for investment within China, but believe me, Chinese companies are predatory globally. Once they fulfil their own market and have extra capacity, they will move outside. There is real concern here about the transition needed throughout the world when China has a stranglehold on those technologies. I am interested to understand from the Minister, who I know is very strong in these areas, how we might start to change that so we do not have the equivalent of Russian gas dependency that the European Union has had until now.

I mention one more related area: rare earths. Again, China has something like an 80% stranglehold on the production of rare earths. As we know, there are 17 of these elements and, because of their conductivity and magnetism, they are used in all sorts of high-tech applications. I am not so much asking about alternative sources of supply—although that is important and I would be interested to also hear how the Government are approaching that. To me, this is the key area where we need to move from a linear to a circular economy; this is true in batteries—lithium and others. For all transition and high-tech sectors, we need to concentrate on and incentivise a circular economy, so that we can recycle these products and use them within our economy, increasing our security and lessening our dependence on other, chancier nations, securing our supply chain and helping the earth’s resources as well. Can the Minister say whether the Government are really going to push forward that agenda?

China may look on the United Kingdom as a not particularly helpful player in the past, but that is no excuse for its agenda at the moment. This report, produced under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, lays out a lot of those challenges. We must work with our allies in Europe, the rest of the world and the G7 to ensure that the rise of China is much more benevolent and less dangerous to us as a civilisation.

United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 (Exclusions from Market Access Principles: Single-Use Plastics) Regulations 2022

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I very much welcome these regulations. I should explain that I am a member of the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee and it is in the light of my experience on that committee that I extend this welcome. I am delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, here with us, because she too is a member of that committee and will understand the points that I am about to make, although I have not discussed them with her.

The Explanatory Memorandum explains the position clearly. In his introduction, the Minister touched on these points. It is important to understand that these regulations have a specific and—unfortunately, from the point of view of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb—rather limited purpose. As described in paragraph 7.1 of the memorandum, their purpose is to give effect to the

“agreement reached under the provisional Resources and Waste Common Framework … that has been developed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government”—

I think I am right in saying that this is the first time that an agreement reached under a common framework has found its way through to a regulation, which is why this is a significant moment, particularly for people who believe, as I do, in the value of common frameworks.

The Minister may understand that the frameworks were devised by the Joint Ministerial Committee on EU Negotiations to find a means of reaching agreement among the various components of the United Kingdom to create an internal market for the UK in place of the EU market we were leaving. The point was to put in place structures that would focus on areas formerly governed by the EU under EU regulations to enable the UK internal market to function. The important point in the communiqué that was delivered in October 2017 was that policy divergence among the various parts of the UK would be encouraged and permissible.

The memorandum explains well that the internal market principles in themselves would not enable the Scottish regulations being discussed to receive their effect in Scotland, because the principles would allow people who did not comply with the rules under the Scottish regulations to trade in a way that was inconsistent with them—they would have a right to do so under the internal market principles. As the memorandum goes on to explain, the effect of an amendment to what became Section 10 of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act, which is the basis for the Minister’s regulations today, enables these regulations to be made, which provide the effectiveness that the Scottish regulations need so that they are enforceable in Scotland. That is what the regulations are designed to do and that is why I very much welcome them. They are the first step in what I hope will be a fairly well-understood method of dealing with these things.

As the noble Lord, Lord Jones, said, the Scottish Government are leading the way on the control of single-use plastics. The Welsh had done so already, before the internal market came into effect, and their regulations are preserved by the United Kingdom Internal Market Act, because they preceded it. The Scottish regulations need the protection that these regulations are providing them so that they will receive the same effect in Scotland as they do in Wales. This is just one example—there could be others—of the way in which these devolved Administrations with rather simpler single-Chamber systems are able to forge ahead and produce results that benefit the environment. I quite understand the frustration expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, at the way in which England is still to catch up, but that is not the problem for today. The solution achieved today is to protect the Scottish system.

I am not going to say very much more, because it is so well explained in the memorandum, but I have a particular point for the Minister, which he might like to reflect on. I had great difficulty when the internal market Bill passed through the House in the late summer of 2019 in trying to persuade the Government to recognise that common frameworks had a part to play at all in the creation of the internal market. I must say that I owe a great debt to the opposition parties, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, for the support that they gave to me over a series of amendments, which eventually had the effect of persuading the Government to introduce a subsection into what is now Section 10 to enable common frameworks that were the subject of agreement to be recognised. That is exactly what we have here.

The point that I really want the Minister to recognise is that we can now see how the system can be made to work in practice and the benefits that come from supporting agreed initiatives by the devolved Administrations such as this one to receive effect. I hope that there will now be a more relaxed and co-operative approach that will enable us to move forward in similar cases in future. I think that I am right in saying that, in Wales, the case of plastic bags is an example of what might happen in future—but there will be others. There may be other things to come, as paragraph 6 of the Explanatory Memorandum explains to us. I hope, therefore, that the Minister recognises the value of what we are doing today and the way in which it could be a way forward to support initiatives that have been taken in various parts of the UK for the benefit of us all, and indeed for the benefit of the environment.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I could just take up a theme from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, around the leadership campaign that is going on at the moment at the other end of the Palace, and to thank the Minister for intervening in that debate and reminding people, along with his right honourable friend Chris Skidmore, that climate change is a pretty important subject. If it is junked by those candidates, that is bound to have a severe effect not just on our planet and country but probably on the party as well. I hope that he has luck in that mission, but I am doubtful to a degree, unfortunately—and I say that with great gravity.

I intervened only to a certain degree during the passage of the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, which was fairly fraught, during the lockdown and the Covid crisis. I seem to remember all sorts of confusion between mutual recognition and non-discrimination and the two being mixed up by a number of the speakers who maybe should have known better. The question that I got involved on was exactly this one, around how we make sure that environmental protections that are part of devolved authorities’ programmes are not overridden by those principles, so they can be enforced within those national boundaries. Therefore, I am pleased by and welcome this SI in making that possible in part, so that environmental protections in the devolved authorities and nations can be enforced and not overridden by imports from other parts of the UK. I very much welcome that.

As noble Lords have said, the reason why this is an issue practically at the moment is that in England, the most populous part of the United Kingdom, we are very much behind the times. Scotland, Wales and even Northern Ireland are ahead of us in terms of these restrictions on single-use plastics. I understand that, after going through this consultation, the earliest we in England will be implementing similar regulations is April 2023. Although nearer than it was, this is still some time away. Perhaps the Minister can find a way of making that quicker. I would be interested to hear his views on that.

I also understand that there is this strange issue of plastic straws in pubs, which you will continue to be able to use—not that I would, obviously—even when they are banned from retail. I would be interested to understand whether that has been resolved yet.

To me, the bigger issue on single-use plastics is still export. There were a number of areas in the 2019 Conservative manifesto around levies on single-use plastics, particularly around export to non-OECD countries. I have certainly become more and more of the opinion that that should be much tighter—maybe we should even export only to EU or G7 countries. I would be very interested to understand from the Minister where we are on that and the various provisions made in the Environment Act. I remind Members that last year we exported some 770,000 tonnes of plastic waste abroad. Those are staggering figures and reflect some of the figures from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh.

This is an area where clearly we need urgent action. We should be a leader, not just nationally but internationally, and I look forward to the Minister’s response on where we are on this much broader agenda as well.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for drawing this SI to our attention. I add my support to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, about the Minister, and thank him for addressing the candidates to be the next Prime Minister and keeping their feet to the fire on the environment. Although we have had our occasional disagreements in the past, nobody doubts his passion and commitment on this issue. I hope he keeps fighting that battle.

Like other noble Lords, I accept that this SI is becoming necessary following the agreement with the devolved Governments in the Resources and Waste Common Framework. I was grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope; I did not realise we were making history in the way he suggested and that this was the first time an agreement on common frameworks was finding its way into regulation and statute. Obviously, that is something we should celebrate. I thank him for drawing that to our attention.

I will raise one practical thing, which is that the Resources and Waste Common Framework is still referred to as “provisional”. Perhaps the Minister can clarify when that will be a final agreement. I do not have a problem enacting it, but if it is only provisional presumably there is a final sign-off to take place at some point. I would be grateful if he could advise what the process is for that to happen.

As noble Lords have said, it is obviously welcome that all sections of the UK are now taking co-ordinated action to ban the use of certain single-use plastics, as set out in the SI. As I said, I do not have any objections to the SI, but I have a couple of questions about the implications for further actions on plastics. Are the UK Government planning to ban further categories of single-use plastics? We know that it is only a very limited list at the moment. If further single-use plastics were now being considered, would a separate SI be necessary to address the internal market implications of a ban on each occasion as it came on stream?

Secondly, as a number of noble Lords have said, over the last years the relatively slow pace of progress in England has been frustrating. We have heard again today that Wales and Scotland seem to be leading the way on this. Although we understand that it is necessary to consult before taking action, it is frustrating that Defra is doing this in a piecemeal manner and taking so long about it. I hope the Minister can give us some good news on that before we leave today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

Very good, thank you. She works very closely on the issue we are discussing. I am merely her mouthpiece in this Room, because the domestic part of this is not directly part of my remit.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked about wet wipes, and she could have named any number of other products that have come under the spotlight. This goes to the broader question from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about whether the policy goes far enough. I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, that there was a call for evidence in relation to wet wipes and we are analysing its results. It seems inconceivable to me that at the end of this process we would not take the view that the noble Baroness and pretty much everyone who has spoken has taken on the issue of plastic waste over the few years that I have been here debating these issues. We recognise that this is a very serious environmental problem that needs to be resolved and can be resolved only as a consequence of government intervention. That is true in relation to a lot of other single-use plastic items.

The frustration that I have felt many times in exchanges with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on the piecemeal approach is one that a number of my colleagues share. It is necessary for us to go through a certain process; you cannot just, at the stroke of a pen, destroy a particular business model by banning something that is key to it. However, we do need to get to a point where we are simply not using, and where it is not permissible to use, single-use plastics when alternatives are there. There will be medical exemptions and certain other uses where single-use plastics are unavoidable, but as a rule it should be our intention to move as quickly as possible to the wholesale removal of avoidable single-use plastics. There are countries around the world—including Rwanda, which has been in the news a lot recently—which are ahead of us in relation to adopting a more comprehensive approach to tackling single-use plastics. The UK has done a lot of the running on this internationally, but we have a long way to go.

In answer to the noble Baroness’s specific question, yes, we would need separate SIs for additional bans that come after the bans that have already been announced, but I hope that we would be able to cluster as much as possible to avoid endless debates about specific things and, instead, to get on and really take a bite out of this problem in the limited time we have in Parliament. I very much share her concern about that, but this is not a consequence of reluctance on the part of Defra. I hope she understands that.

At both ministerial and official level, this is something that we are very keen to do, not least because getting our own house in order allows us to have a bigger voice internationally, as UK negotiators. I would like to take the credit as a Minister, but it is UK negotiators, who are always nameless in these things, who are responsible, more than those of any other country, for negotiating an agreement at UNEA for a global treaty on plastic pollution. They worked 24 hours a day. I spoke to the negotiators from many other countries who made a point of thanking me for the UK’s contribution. I cannot name them—you are not meant to do that; it breaks protocol—but it was UK negotiators who did that and we are now part of the process of pushing for the highest possible ambition.

If noble Lords do not mind, I shall branch out a little to address the questions on leadership, because this matters so much. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and others expressed concerns about where we are going. I share those concerns and have expressed them, probably a little too noisily, in recent days. My appeal to anyone who might happen to be listening to this debate and to friends at the other end of the building is that we should not be focusing just on net zero.

There is so much focus on whether candidates are saying the right stuff on net zero, but it is a bit of a red herring. That is not because climate change is not an issue—clearly, that is not my view—but because we are already seeing the wheels spinning in terms of market action driving us towards a low-carbon future. We know that more money is flowing into clean energy today than into fossil fuels; that has been true for about six years. We know that the market has made that decision and that it is miles ahead of the politics. The United States under Donald Trump poured billions into trying to keep coal use going, but it fell faster on his watch than under President Obama, who was very keen to see the back of coal.

It is almost irrelevant what the next leader does in relation to net zero over the next 18 months. We have a law. Parliament is not going to delegislate net zero; we all know that. It is simply not going to happen. It will remain our law until the next election. Were a party to enter that election promising to scrap the net-zero laws, that party would not and should not be elected. I do not think anyone would argue with that. The risks around net zero have been massively exaggerated by commentators. The real risk—it is huge—relates to the natural environment. There is no momentum behind protecting the natural environment. There is no market driving the reparation, restoration and protection of nature. That will happen only if Governments intervene; there is no other dynamic there. Yes, communities around the world are fighting to protect their environments, often against evil forces, but the pressure is one way and it is not the right way. Unless Governments write the rules and intervene, we will see absolute devastation.

To those who are tempted to see these as peripheral issues—as I know that some people in politics, perhaps including even some who are standing to be leader of the Conservative Party, do—I say that that is an absurd proposition. I have just come back from the Congo Basin. Science does not really know the value of the Congo Basin. We know some of the value—we know about its biodiversity, its carbon storage and all that kind of stuff—but we also know that it provides rainfall for most of the continent of Africa. We do not know exactly how much but we know it is pretty blooming important in terms of rainfall. Wipe out the Congo Basin—this peripheral thing, according to some of my colleagues—and you lose rainfall across the entire continent of Africa, or at least a very large proportion of it; you have hunger on a scale never seen before; you have a humanitarian crisis that we simply could not deal with in Europe. Look at the problems we have with a few regional areas sending their refugees our way—this would be on a scale the likes of which we have never seen before.

Look at the ocean: 250 million families depend on fish for their survival. What happens if we continue to deplete the world’s oceans in the way that we will if we do not see Governments intervening? We will have 250 million destitute families; we will have 1 billion people losing the fish on which they depend for their sustenance. These are really not peripheral issues. They are absolutely central.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his speech, because most of us would absolutely agree with it. I would have made the same speech during the passage of the UK Infrastructure Bank Bill, when the Government rejected including natural capital and biodiversity in the objectives of the UK Infrastructure Bank. That was a great shame, because that would have given equality to climate change, just as he is demanding.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The truth is that this fairly crude speech that I am delivering, which the noble Lord could deliver more eloquently, could apply to most of the topics that we debate, and that is the whole point. Nature is the source of everything, and it is astonishing to me sometimes that we have to make that argument.

Perhaps where I will part company with one or two people in the Room is in saying that over the last few years the UK has been a global leader on these issues. I would say it has been the global leader on many of these issues. It was the UK that created the coalition of 100 countries calling for 30% protection of land and sea by the end of the decade. It is the UK that is doing all the running in creating a coalition on illegal fishing. It was the UK negotiators, as I said, who helped get countries over the line in relation to the plastics treaty. There is no country in the world pushing harder for high ambition at the CBD Convention that is being held in Montreal. It was the UK that delivered the biggest-ever package of commitments around deforestation at COP 26. Subsequently, it is the UK that is leading the global dialogue to break the link between commodities and deforestation.

I really could go on and on with areas where it is the UK that is corralling the world into action and ambition on these issues. That is why the anxiety that has been expressed in this Room today about the leadership election has been expressed by leaders all around the world. I do not know who else they are talking to, but in my dealings as an Environment Minister negotiating a lot of these points, I have a lot of them on WhatsApp and I have had messages from countries big and small —from G7 countries to tiny little dots on the map in the Pacific—terrified about the prospect that the UK is going to crawl away from its international leadership position and go back in on itself and ignore and abandon the concerns I have been talking about today and which I know are shared around this Room.

Minister for the Oceans

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

We absolutely do address this issue at the global level. There are many things that we need to do to restore the health of the ocean and protect what we have, but the single most important thing that we can do is to tackle emissions. The mantra “climate action is ocean action” is very much the case , which is why the oceans were such a central part of our presidency of COP in Glasgow just a few months ago and throughout our presidency this year.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, in terms of international humanitarian law, how would a future Oceans Minister reconcile our signature to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the safety of life at sea convention with the Government’s policy to push back vessels to outside national boundaries?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I am not 100% convinced that I followed the question, but the UK’s role internationally in standing up for the rule of law on our oceans is almost second to none. We have taken a strong position in the past few days in the BBNJ negotiations on the attempt to create a new framework. Other than perhaps France, which has taken a leadership role in recent weeks, no country in the world is doing more heavy lifting than the UK.

Sanctions

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend again raises an important point. In our debate on Friday, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, also raised the point that the oligarchs are extremely wealthy and can employ lawyers to good effect. That is why our sanctions regime is both robust and tested in terms of legal thresholds before it is applied, to minimise any litigation that may take place.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister having sufficient conversations with our overseas territories and Crown dependencies to make sure that none of our financial sanctions is bypassed in any way?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, this question has come up before—I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, asked it too. The legislation will take effect directly in our OTs as well. Of course, my right honourable friend Amanda Milling, the Minister with responsibility for the overseas territories, is dealing directly with the OTs on this.

Oil Tanker “FSO Safer”

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

If I heard the question correctly, plans have been put together with UK support to do precisely that—to try to shift the oil from this tanker to another—but that is not possible without co-operation across the board. I refer the noble Lord to my first Answer.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, to follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Walney, the answer to this possibly lies through those who control the Houthis. We all know that they are dependent to a large degree on Iran. We have diplomatic relations with Tehran; we sometimes forget that. Can the Minister say what representations our ambassador in Tehran has made to the Government there to solve this crisis?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, the UK is using every avenue we can. The noble Lord mentions one; there are others. The UK is now playing an important role in supporting a commercial initiative to resolve the issue. We supported local Yemeni partners to develop a feasible initiative, which they have been negotiating directly with the Houthis in a way that others would struggle to do. Along with the Dutch Government, the UK has been foremost in rallying the international community behind that commercial initiative, including securing support from Saudi Arabia and the Government of Yemen.

Peat

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I am not convinced that peat as a fuel does fit into this picture. Our priority is to restore peatlands as closely as possible to their natural conditions, so they can fulfil the ecological functions we need them to fulfil.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I am interested to understand how the Government reconcile allowing commercial peat exploitation while at the same time the Exchequer, and thus taxpayers, are paying millions of pounds for peatland restoration.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I am afraid I cannot provide that justification because there is a clear contradiction, but that is why we are pushing ahead with our proposals and measures to eliminate the use of peat in horticulture. The noble Lord makes a very good point.

EU-UK Partnership Council

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I will certainly convey the noble Baroness’s message to the Foreign Secretary; I cannot make an undertaking on her behalf, but it certainly seems in the spirit of the approach she has taken of involving both Houses and maximum transparency.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, technically the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly will cover only the trade and co-operation agreement, yet some of the key issues between the UK and the EU are within the withdrawal agreement—not least Northern Ireland and, most importantly to MPs and Members of this House, UK and EU citizens’ rights. Will the Government sympathetically support the assembly extending its remit to the withdrawal agreement and those key areas?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, our relationship with the European Union hinges in many respects on issues yet to be resolved. The noble Lord mentioned two of them. Resolving issues around the Northern Ireland border is an absolute priority for the Government; likewise, issues around friction-free visa travel within the European Union and changes to border requirements are high on the agenda. His priorities are very much in sync with those of the Foreign Secretary.

Brexit: Food, Environment, Energy and Health (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

That this House takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee Beyond Brexit: food, environment, energy and health (22nd Report, Session 2019-21, HL Paper 247).

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I can see that the Opposition are rather outgunned on this report, so it is very useful that we co-operated right across party lines in the committee. It is a bit like a Frankenstein moment, because we are bringing to life a sub-committee that died back in March but one that I found extremely competent in its work. Although the report is now somewhat old, having been produced at the beginning of this year, many of the issues are exactly the same and are live now, as they were then. Many of the questions that we asked of the Government and to which they responded are still there.

First, I welcome the Minister to the sub-committee, as it were. I am very pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, in his place. The noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, came in front of us regularly, but, of course, he has moved on to the post of Senior Deputy Speaker.

It has been some time since the report came out. I shall briefly go through what has gone on during that time, but one thing we have to say at the beginning, and we say it strongly in the report, is thank goodness there was a trade and co-operation agreement, the TCA. It is there; it was landed. It is as good a free trade agreement as we were going to get given the red lines that we had. Sure, it affects only 20% of our economy but more of the European Union’s so it is rather more biased towards it. I remember many times during the evidence sessions that we had with our farming constituency that its view was that there was nothing worse than no deal, and we have saved that situation. We have a number of other frictions that I will come on to, but we have a TCA there.

Since then, of course, we have had rollover deals with South Korea, Japan and Canada and new deals with Australia and New Zealand, which I will perhaps touch on later. There is noticeably no deal with the United States and nothing there on the horizon. There is no practical fisheries agreement with Norway, which is something I also wish to come back to later in this debate.

Of the live issues that we still have, clearly, at the top in terms of temperature apart from fisheries—I will come on to that in a minute—is Northern Ireland and the protocol. We still have checks there, which are major frictions to trade within the United Kingdom. We still have not, as I understand it, solved the issue of medicines going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. It may be that we have; I think that is being sorted out at the moment and is one of the areas that should be resolved. We still have a number of prohibited products such as seed potatoes and we are unable to import some chilled products because Northern Ireland is part of the single market for goods.

In terms of labour, we did not talk in the report about HGV drivers but they are clearly vital in the supply chain of perishable goods and we have issues there. We have issues still, I believe, with vets, with healthcare—particularly on social services—with butchers and with farm workers. I know from my own experience down in Cornwall and the south-west that we have not cropped all that we have grown because of those labour shortages.

We have issues with paperwork still. We have no single window to deal with documentation electronically. I find this quite staggering. We have had five years to prepare ourselves from that referendum result and still we have paperwork-based systems. We are still not connected, I understand, to the TRACES system for imports of animal and vegetable products. Groupage is better but still not solved. The noble Earl, Lord Stair, was unable to be with us today but, where he is based in Scotland, he sees some of this with Northern Ireland. He particularly notes veterinary surgeons being used to check details of paperwork while hardly having to bother about animal welfare and animal health. We are having to use that resource in that way.

Then there are the sanitary and phytosanitary arrangements that were not resolved in the TCA. This has been one of the big frictions in the trade in food and animals, and it particularly affects the area that we looked at in this report. Because of that friction, we have had a major fall in trade with the EU.

We have an issue on fisheries the moment. We have, maybe, a certain amount of unreasonableness—I would say absolute unreasonableness—from France and the threats it made towards our Crown territories. Again, we have an issue there that has not been sorted out. We do not have an agreement with Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes or Norway. That affects a number of our fleets, particularly that out of Grimsby. We still cannot export bivalve molluscs and there are a number of other areas that were not really foreseen.

On the chemicals side, we still have the issue of UK REACH. British chemical firms—and, indeed, foreign ones trying to export to our supply chains—are finding much additional cost that in many ways is dogmatic rather than necessary.

Having said that, a number of achievements have happened since then. We have our own emissions trading scheme in the UK, which as I understand it is working well. We now have an Office for Environmental Protection, which is but one week old, with an appointed chair and staff. Some of us might question its independence, but we have it and it will be working. That is good. Replacing the CAP we now have ELMS, which if delivered properly in the way it was meant to be—I hope that happens—will mean we have a much more environmentally friendly form of agriculture ahead of us. We have interconnectors that are still working; indeed, the Norway-UK interconnector has become operational since Brexit happened. On Euratom, many of us were concerned about that relationship and being able to trade in nuclear and radioactive products. That has been sorted extremely well, even with the United States, where we felt the Senate would get in the way. We have a universal health card as well. A number of positives have happened.

However, I have a number of questions for the Minister; perhaps I can just go through them. There are quite a few of them, and it is fine if he wants to reply to me in writing on some of them. Will the UK and EU ETSs, the emissions trading schemes, come together as we want?

I had sympathy for our not doing the EU waters Norway deal, because Norway seemed to get a lot more out of it than we did, but we still do not have a deal in the subarctic area either, and I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether he reckons we will as we move into next year.

On sanitary and phytosanitary rules, the whole Northern Ireland side and EU exports, we could get over this if we agreed to regulatory alignment as opposed to offering equivalence. Why do we not do that? We can withdraw from that whenever we want to. It would solve the short-term problem while we do not have divergence. When will that single window of documentation start?

On chemicals, we are going through UK REACH. What divergence does the Minister predict? Will that happen now?

The noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, was so involved in biosecurity. As I understand it, we are now not going to check goods coming into the UK until July 2022. How will we ensure that our biosecurity is good up until that time?

What has happened to the specialist committees, particularly the sanitary and phytosanitary and fisheries specialist working committees? Have those met yet? There seems to be a silence there.

In some ways most importantly practically, certainly for my region, will we have an extension of the seasonal workers scheme? It seems to me that now we have full control over movement of people across our borders, we can afford to make sure that supply equals demand while the electorate know that it is not going to be for ever and that we have control over it ourselves.

Those are some of the questions in our report that are still there. I will say one or two things as a conclusion. I will not go into Brexit in detail, but the thing that saddens me is the confrontational attitude we still have between the UK and the EU. France is to blame on fishing, but I believe we have had an almost proactively aggressive attitude to the European Union, which does not help any of the constituent parts of the economy that our report looked at. If Article 16 is enacted, I believe that is a threat to the TCA altogether and effectively takes us back to a no-deal Brexit, which is something that no one of any sense wants at this stage.

I come back to COP 26. I never believed the Treasury’s forecasts for Brexit that the Minister’s Government put out at the time of the referendum campaign. However, one area that I did believe was that one of the losses from Brexit would be in our influence on the continent among the other 27. The performance of the EU at COP 26 illustrates that: the EU was seen as not being a good enough player at COP 26 in Glasgow. Why was that? It was because we were not there. Whether it was the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, back in the Kyoto protocol days, Ed Davey under the coalition Government or Amber Rudd under David Cameron, we led that negotiation—we drove it from the European Union point of view. Its relative failure at Glasgow is because we were not there, and I find it unfortunate on the environmental side. We were in that last foursome—but with Alok Sharma, whom I praise along with everybody else for his work at COP 26, at COP 27 in Egypt, which now looks like being equally important, we will not be there in that cabal, or there to make sure that Europe does not backslide on its environmental needs and leadership.

This report is still alive. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I very much hope that in all these areas we will find a way forward. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all Members who have contributed today. I suppose I must particularly thank Members who were not members of the committee, in particular the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. It has been an excellent debate. I have found it very interesting, and I think we have had a fairly common agenda.

One of the things I have learned in my 15 years in this House is that you do not spend a lot of time summing up after a debate. What I want to do is thank the clerks team of the committee, although they are not here—Jennifer Mills; Oliver Rix, our policy analyst; and Laura Ayres, our administrator—for the fantastic work that they did for the committee. I am sure they are all going to go on to much greater things.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is right, though I had not even thought about it: this is the first time that any of the committee have met physically for some considerable time—and certainly the present membership. That is something to celebrate, perhaps.

I thank the Minister for everything he said. It is interesting that, during the whole time that I have been chair of this committee—which has been for something like five years—whenever we had a Minister from Defra in front of us, the message was that we will maintain welfare standards and we will maintain, in all our international agreements, all of those areas that British farmers have to comply with through our own legislation. But then when we have had International Trade Ministers in front of us, the emphasis from them has always been on free trade and all the benefits that British consumers will have from a much greater range of products and, dare I say it, even cheaper prices in the shops. I found it very interesting that the Minister, rightly from Defra’s point of view, emphasised the traditional line from Defra of welfare standards and equality of environmental standards.

As the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said, the Australian and New Zealand deals just do not have that. There is no greater critic from the Government’s own side than the noble Lord, Lord Deben; I have never heard anybody more critical of those arrangements than him. It is interesting to see that divergence is still there in government.

I thank the Minister, as always, for going through all the questions he has promised to go through—those that he has not answered—and for his fulsome reply to the Committee. Again, I thank everybody for having contributed.

Motion agreed.

Environment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

While I recognise the concerns raised by noble Lords, it is our view that, even with the proposed additional process, the changes would have a detrimental impact on environmental enhancement. I hope I have reassured noble Lords that our position is well considered, and indeed considered in light of the contributions that have been made in this House throughout the passage of the Bill. I look forward to hearing noble Lords’ contributions today. I beg to move.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I always think that ping-pong can be rather a brutal affair. I have spent months working on an amendment; the combined House of Commons comes back and says

“the provision made by the Amendment is unnecessary”—

and there we are, it has been written off. However, the House of Commons, in its wisdom, is absolutely right: the amendment was unnecessary because all it actually needed was for the Prime Minister and this Government to declare, as many local authorities have, a climate and biodiversity emergency. Therefore, I accept what the Minister has said. The Prime Minister in his foreword to the Net Zero Strategy—a document that we all welcome, although it is rather late, before COP 26—says:

“We will meet the global climate emergency”.


I truly welcome that; it is a shame in a way that he then says

“but not with panicked, short-term or self-destructive measures as some have urged.”

That somewhat takes the shine off it—but I accept that that declaration is there; it is by the Prime Minister and it is published in one of the most important documents that the Government have released in recent times, in the run-up to COP 26. However, I also point out that it does not include the biodiversity crisis, which is particularly pertinent to this Bill. The motive for this amendment was to give equality to both those emergencies, and to stress their interconnectedness—the vital relationship between the two.

However, that declaration is there. The other Motions that we are going to debate during this afternoon are, perhaps, of greater practical importance to the future of the environment, our country and our planet, so I shall not contest this. I thank the Minister and his officials for the conversations that we have had since passing the Bill in this House and today in finding ways in which to solve this area. I shall not contest this judgment, brutal as it was, by the House of Commons.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and to agree with every word that he just said. I thank the Minister for his introduction to this debate and thank him and his officials for the very detailed and useful discussion this morning, particularly with such a lively avian accompaniment.

I shall take a second to reflect on the place of your Lordships’ House. I had a discussion a couple of days ago with a Cross-Bench Peer for whom I have the greatest respect, who expressed great frustration at the huge amount of work done in your Lordships’ House, which so often—as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has just said—gets casually dismissed in the other place. Yet we are so often told, “Oh, we can’t send too many things back to them; we can’t resist too hard; we’re the unelected House.” That, of course, raises a whole other question about the constitution. None the less I fear—and we have seen some cases of this already—that many of our strong, fine Peers are getting fed up and really considering whether they are going to continue to devote their time to your Lordships’ House. It is crucial that we recognise that we are in a different political time and that we are crucial to the future of this country, its environment and people, and we need to stand firm.

I have come under strong pressure, as I am sure many are aware, not to push forward with the soils amendment. Those looking closely will notice that I have not pushed forward with the same amendment as was sent to the other place. My amendment in lieu simply refers to soil quality rather than soil quality and soil health, as in the amendment sent to the other place. Health very often talks about the biology of the soil; quality is frequently used to refer to the structure. I am guided here particularly by the Sustainable Soils Alliance but also by academics, independent experts and farmers, who say that it is possible to use the metrics from the soil structure monitoring scheme to establish a target specifically for soil structure which would fit the definition of quality. As the Minister said on Report, targets can be iterative—they can be developed, evolved and finessed over time.

I acknowledge that the Minister here and those in the other place have spoken often and very clearly, and clearly are engaged with the issues of soil that are so crucial, but we all know that Ministers change. The only thing that will guarantee a way forward is with soil being on the face of the Bill. I put it to noble Lords that this Bill will be fundamentally deficient if we do not have soils there with equal weighting and place alongside air and water. I am afraid that the Minister in debate also said at one point that, if we were looking after air and water, we will sort of be looking after soils as well. I am afraid that very powerfully makes the argument for me—that soil risks falling into a second order unless it is given the same status.

I note that, in your Lordships’ House on Report, the margin by which this vote was won was equal top with that for the amendment on sewage tabled by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. This was a very clear voice from your Lordships’ House on Report.

I also particularly wish to acknowledge the very strong efforts in this area by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who has done a tremendous job and has seen some steps forward from the Government. But those steps are still not enough.

I finish, given the pressure of time, by noting that I do not believe that the amendments we are looking at today are either/or. All the amendments that have been retabled today are crucial. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb will address interim targets in more detail, but I stress that that is crucial as well. I also want to acknowledge the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, in supporting my amendment last time. I urge your Lordships to show that we are really here to make a difference. I give notice of my intention to push this Motion to a vote.