Environment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

I find it difficult. I personally support the HS2 project in principle, but why we have not managed to avoid a route that hits ancient woodlands I do not understand. Similarly, I support housing development in general, but there is plenty of land for it that does not need to impinge on these fantastic survivors. We need to preserve them all. I support the amendment and I hope the House will do the same.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches very much support the amendment, and if the noble Baroness decides to divide the House then we shall support her in that vote. Following on from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, as I understand it from the Woodland Trust publication, 97.5% of the rest of the land could be developed in order to avoid ancient woodland. For me, this amendment is so important because of the biodiversity of these woodlands and the species under threat in this 2.5% of our precious land.

There are two amendments in this group. I know the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, will be speaking to hers later on, but I want to say that a tree strategy is important in how we move forward in the area of woodland forests and trees. I noted in the Conservative manifesto of 2019—the current government programme—a target to plant 75,000 acres of woodland per year by the end of this Parliament. You cannot do that without a sensible strategy that makes sure there is a balance between climate change and biodiversity, and that these plantings last and tie in with nature recovery strategies; you cannot do it with just a huge, broad target. I welcome the scale of the ambition, but we have to have a strategy to go along with it. We on these Benches very much support Amendment 101 and believe it is an excellent way to move forward.

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register and confirm that I am the owner of, and actively manage and love, ancient woodland.

I do not support Amendment 100 as I do not believe in the sacrosanct protection that appears to be its purpose. First, not all woodland designated as ancient is of such high environmental value that it requires such protection—particularly PAWS, which are ancient woodland sites where semi-natural woodland has been replaced with a plantation. Secondly, there is also currently an opportunity to negotiate strong mitigation that will offer bigger and better woodland habitat if development is in or adjacent to ancient woodland. This amendment might preclude this.

The standards proposed are very similar to what already exists in the joint standing advice that the Forestry Commission and Natural England have issued, which is a material consideration for planning authorities, as is the National Planning Policy Framework, as has been mentioned. It states in paragraph 180(c) that, when determining planning applications, planning authorities should apply the following principle:

“development resulting in the loss or deterioration of irreplaceable habitats (such as ancient woodland and ancient or veteran trees) should be refused, unless there are wholly exceptional reasons and a suitable compensation strategy exists”.

The framework also covers infrastructure projects, including

“nationally significant infrastructure projects … where the public benefit would clearly outweigh the loss or deterioration of habitat”,

the only difference being the greatly expanded buffer zones.

Definitions are key to preventing well-intentioned legislation constraining legitimate forestry work. For instance, what do the proposers of this amendment mean by, first, “development”? Does it include woodland creation, rides, forest roading, culverting and widening access points on highways? Secondly, does the policy to

“prevent further loss of ancient woodland”

prevent restocking PAWS with conifers and non-native broad-leaves, planting up the edges of ancient woodland sites with non-native species and widening access points? Thirdly, is “ancient woodland” the Forestry Commission category or based on a looser definition of woodland indicators? Fourthly, the amendment mentions “a suitable compensation strategy”—decided by whom and how calibrated?

This amendment should be rejected. I suggest that the best thing the Government can do to help ancient woodland is to fund and unashamedly support the eradication of the grey squirrel and massively reduce deer pressure.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the three noble Lords who have already spoken on this group. They have given us a comprehensive explanation of why we need all these amendments. I shall speak chiefly to Amendment 121 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Randall, also signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on the global footprint timetable. It has already been clearly set out why this amendment needs to pass: we need drastic action now.

A large number of amendments in Committee addressed the broader issues here. There was the call to look at not just resource efficiency but cutting total resource use in Part 1. There was the call to move towards the Treasury managing our economy for the purposes of people and planet, not chasing after growth that we cannot have more of on a finite planet. Your Lordships have heard the Government’s cries about their desire to progress the Bill quickly, so many of these amendments have not been put. They have been boiled down to some very clear, simple essentials that need to happen. I offer support for all these amendments.

The questions that the noble Lord, Lord Randall, asked were very clear and important, but I will address a direct question to the Minister on Schedule 17. It is crucial that Schedule 17 covers the main commodities driving global deforestation, so can he confirm that it will cover beef and leather, cocoa, palm oil, pulp and paper, rubber and soy? They are not currently defined in the schedule, and there is concern that any limits to the approach would utterly undermine the intentions expressed in this provision and by the Government.

I also want briefly to address Amendment 107 on the rights of indigenous people. We know that many of the parts of the world that still remain relatively pristine rely heavily on indigenous people to protect them, and how often their rights to do so and to live their lives are threatened by mining companies associated with us—often large multinationals with close ties to the UK. When one considers that and our historic legacy, as well as the impact of colonialism on those communities, we have a particular responsibility to ensure, practically and morally, that they are being listened to.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Randall, on his speech and his due diligence on this issue, which is crucial in terms of deforestation. We have the frustration whereby we want extraterritoriality, which we do not normally have in the UK, but we can influence some of these matters only through supply chains and our own British corporates. The United States seems to get away with extraterritoriality in relation to more or less everything. We do not have that privilege.

As regards this approach, I also like the reference to recognising indigenous people. It is clear and obvious that it is so much more effective to keep forests rather than start to regrow them. That is the other side of the coin, as it were, to the previous debate and perhaps is even more important. That is why these Benches are very much in favour of the system proposed—although one of the big challenges that we have faced regarding environmental regulation and the Bill is enforcement and making sure that the regulations that we make can operate and are policed. We have the FSC, the Forest Stewardship Council, which works okay but all of us know of instances of duplicity in the system—not in the work of the FSC itself but among those copying and wrongly branding products. That challenge remains, but that does not mean that we should not move ahead in these areas.

I want also to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Randall, on his pioneering work on the global footprint. We have mentioned a number of areas but the Dasgupta review, sponsored by the Treasury, again stressed that in terms of natural capital we are extracting far more than we are putting back into the planet. I suspect that the noble Lord is not expecting the Minister to accept the amendment but I hope that the Government will do further work in this area. I agree strongly with a point that the noble Lord made: if we can become the leader of standards in this area, it would be incredibly important.

Lastly, I come to the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on urgency. That is the word I hear from her and she is absolutely right. We have so little time in so many of these areas and here, through these amendments—which I hope the Government and the Minister will accept—we have an opportunity to wind up that urgency and start to make right what we need to do soon and so urgently.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I have put my name, although only online, to my noble friend Lady Meacher’s amendments as well as to Amendment 121 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Randall.

We outsource so many things in this country that globalisation has destroyed any sense we have of how products get to us or what they are made of. Just look at the list of ingredients that go into a cheap ready meal. They will certainly contain stuff that one’s grand- mother would not recognise and probably include ingredients such as soy. Manufacturers are keen to keep us ignorant of those chains.

Much of what happens on Amazonian land, in the forests of Brazil and other parts of South America, is the growing of soy and feed crops for cattle, which then go to feed us. From an environmental and energy point of view, that is a travesty. I am not even counting the transport involved. We are colluding—for many people, I am sure, completely unwittingly—in pulling and cutting down ancient rainforests for the simple reason that the loggers and farmers can get away with it. We actually do not know about it. It is time to stop it and for us to stop buying those kinds of products, but we have to know and have transparency.

Amendment 108C also makes it clear that we must be aware not just of illegal deforestation, which varies between countries and often between jurisdictions, but of what might today be considered legal. Brazil’s forest laws have changed in the past decade but that does not mean that we should lay off the pressure. The good news is that 81% of the biggest UK companies in the forest risk supply chains have stated that they aim to remove all deforestation from their supply chains, and 22 major UK businesses recently called on the UK Government to develop a legal framework to halt it. Citizens also support such a move. In the Government’s own consultation, 99% of all residents supported the introduction of just this kind of legislation. However, in the meantime we continue to see ghastly pictures of the Amazon on fire. Scientists know that decades of human activity and a changing climate have pushed the jungle near to a tipping point; 17% of it is nearly destroyed and the tipping point will soon be reached.

That brings me neatly to Amendment 121 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Randall, and I congratulate him on his speech and for all his work. The day that the UK overshot our planetary boundaries was 29 July this year—the day that demand for ecological resources and services in any given year exceeded what the earth can generate. It hardly needs to be explained why that matters. I understand that all the measures in the Bill are effectively working to ensure that we live in harmony with the earth and that we do not use more than we can regenerate. However, it is also easy to see that it is not entirely working. We are a long way from that but we are not the first country to take measures. We therefore need to measure the progress, even though it is difficult to do so.

I have just finished reading a chapter from a new edition of Jared Diamond’s extraordinary book, Collapse, about Easter Island, which was the home of a once-thriving community who drove themselves almost into extinction over a period of about 250 years. They had amazing trees called Chilean pines, from which big canoes could be produced that were capable of going out far into the Pacific Ocean. One can tell from dietary remains that at that point the people ate big fish such as tuna, and porpoises, dolphins and so on, and were very healthy. Indeed, the society was so wealthy and healthy that they could spend their time making the extraordinary heads found on Easter Island. At one point, the people cut down the last Chilean pine. No one thought that it mattered because they then made smaller canoes. Unfortunately, their diet worsened, as did the soil because there were no trees. When travellers visited that society in the middle of the 1850s—not really that long ago—they found a bunch of people in rags who were impoverished and soil that was incapable of producing many crops.

That is a metaphor for our time, because the point is that it happened not with a bang but a whimper. Right now, one could say that the earth was beginning to scream. When we saw Covid coming, that was a bang and we were able to respond, but what we are doing now is slowly grinding down the planet to a point at which one day, we might end up like the people of Easter Island.

Environment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Lords Chamber

So, if the Minister can give me assurances in the way I have suggested, I certainly will not divide the House. If the Minister can say nothing, well, we will see—but I hope that will not happen, because I have had some really good discussions with officials. This is not anything like as important as everything else we have been discussing in the Environment Bill, but it is an opportunity for me to bring this to your Lordships’ attention and, hopefully, not only get the Minister to give me the assurance I want but encourage islanders to get on and do this and make sure that their water quality and sewage quality are compliant with the Water Resources Act, as the rest of the country should be. I beg to move.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has brought this amendment forward. I had the privilege of representing the Isles of Scilly in the European Parliament many years ago. They are often forgotten in legislation, as well as in terms of policy implementation and how that happens. The most obvious example was in 1651 when we declared war on the Netherlands—absolutely justifiably —and, in the peace treaty that followed, forgot to include the Isles of Scilly. This was discovered, and only in 1986 was peace agreed between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly. Never mind President Biden, that equals the longest war in history: some 355 years. I am pleased to say that it was a bloodless war that has now been resolved.

On a serious note, this is real, and what I like about the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is that it does not say that these islands should be exempted for ever—not at all—but that we have to fix this problem and then make the regulations apply equally there as in the rest of the nation. Also, having spoken to the Isles of Scilly authorities over the past week, I know that there have been serious discussions about this with senior officials in Defra and the Environment Agency. I very much hope that the Minister can give the assurances asked for by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, because this is something that we do not want to last for 355 years; we would like it to be solved a lot more quickly than that.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Well—follow that. I thank my noble friend Lord Berkeley for moving this amendment. He has identified a situation that clearly needs rectifying. We should thank him for drawing the Government’s attention to this. I hope that the Minister has understood the concerns raised and the potential way forward outlined so clearly by my noble friend today.

It was interesting to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I have learned an awful lot about the Isles of Scilly that I never expected to today. Clearly, as someone who has never been there, I need to arrange to go as soon as possible and enjoy the islands’ pleasures.

I am sure that the residents of the Isles of Scilly will be very pleased to get this properly sorted out. So, as I said, I am grateful to my noble friend for his work on this, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

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Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

92: Clause 98, page 101, line 9, at end insert—
“(c) agroforestry.”Member’s explanatory statement
The amendment enables agroforestry to be seen as a direct mechanism for public authorities to meet their biodiversity targets.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership. Following the Sunday Telegraph article yesterday, I should declare my “not-at-all” interest in and non-membership of climate—forgive me—

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

Extinction Rebellion.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

Yes, Extinction Rebellion. That was not where the emergency amendment that we debated last week came from. I will speak to Amendments 92 and 102, and I thank very much the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for their support.

As the amendments specify, their purpose is to strongly raise the profile of agroecology, which is very important for the way agriculture moves into the future. It is very striking that when we think about trees in a rural context, we think of forests and also farmland that on the whole does not have trees or may have trees around the boundary, young trees as part of hedgerows, or maybe the odd copse in the middle, at the sides or in the corner of a field. But that need not be how we practise our tree planting and growing and our harvesting of the products that come from trees.

At the moment we have that divide, but agroforestry is very much a combination of those types of agriculture; it is farming with trees, not farming and forestry. There are great benefits to this. Clearly, it is not right for the whole of the British countryside—I would not argue that at all—but some strong benefits come from it. Those are that we can plant more trees, and more diverse types of trees, and they are not necessarily trees just planted within meadows or pastural land; they can be, for instance, a grove of hazel trees within an arable field too. There are a number benefits from this, in terms of climate change, sequestration, water management, soil health, animal welfare, shade and retention of water. Clearly, there is also the extra income to farming from what those trees can produce, such as fruit, nuts or timber, from the types of wood that can be used for timber, then replanted and replenished. There is a wide range of benefits to using agroforestry and bringing it much more predominantly into farming systems in this country.

In 2016, a survey showed that, in Europe generally, agroforestry accounted for some 9% of land use, whereas within the United Kingdom that was down to 3%. So the purpose of these amendments is to raise the profile of that form of agriculture in England by way of the Environment Bill, but also to have the benefits that flow from it.

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[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I offer many thanks to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. Protecting trees and woodlands is a priority of the Government, and I hope my response will reassure your Lordships on this.

I start with Amendment 92, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. There are numerous ways for public authorities to fulfil the biodiversity duty, such as creating habitats for pollinators or other threatened or declining species. However, it would not be appropriate to prescribe each one on the face of the Bill. We want authorities to identify where there are opportunities to make a change, but we do not want to force public authorities to have regard to a particular form of land use that in many cases will not be relevant to their functions. We will provide detailed guidance to support public authorities with both what they should do to comply with the biodiversity duty and what they should report on.

Our environmental land management schemes are about giving farmers and land managers an income for the environmental public goods they provide. We are considering how more environmentally sustainable farming approaches, including agro-ecological approaches such as agroforestry, should fit within environmental land management. Turning to the noble Lord’s Amendment 102, I share his enthusiasm for agroforestry systems, which will undoubtedly play an important role in delivering more trees into our farmed landscape, improving climate resilience, and encouraging more wildlife and biodiversity in our farming systems.

We have outlined support for agroforestry within the England Trees Action Plan, which sets out our aims for expansion, investment and research in agroforestry systems. That includes commitments to support agroforestry across the sustainable farming incentive, local nature recovery and landscape recovery schemes. The England Trees Action Plan also laid out the intention to develop the evidence base for agroforestry, further aiding responsible authorities to invest in agroforestry systems.

Agroforestry systems compatible with basic payment scheme support have been defined in the publicly available Rural Payments Agency guidance document Agroforestry and the Basic Payment Scheme. As the commitment to support agroforestry and definitions of it have already been published, I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, feels reassured and I ask him to withdraw his amendment.

I turn to Amendment 103 from the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, who I thank for meeting me over the summer. As I mentioned when debating the amendment in Committee, woodlands created using public funding must conform to the UK forestry standard for woodland creation management plans. Such plans include steps to reduce grazing from browsing mammals, including through active management, barrier protection, and the development and monitoring of deer management plans.

In the England trees plan that I mentioned earlier, we announced a number of commitments to go even further to protect our woodlands from browsing animals such as deer and grey squirrels. They include updating the grey squirrel action plan, which we will publish next year. We will be consulting with the signatories of the UK Squirrel Accord as part of that update process. We are also working with the UK Squirrel Accord to support the ongoing research into grey squirrel management.

Very briefly, I say to both the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and my noble friend Lord Cathcart that the Forestry Act provides a legislative basis for the management of pests affecting woodlands, which is a core part of management for anyone who receives public money. Given the ongoing work and progress in this area, I do not believe that we require new legislation to ensure that newly planted trees are protected from browsing animals.

Turing to Amendment 104, I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for his amendment, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for presenting it. The Government are committed to increasing biosecurity, and we support the plant health management standard and certification scheme—an independent, industry-backed biosecurity standard available to the market and international supply chains.

Our existing biosecurity legal framework already implements a comprehensive range of measures to address and minimise biosecurity risks. Recognition of the importance of domestic production to meeting our planting commitments is clearly a very big part of that. We engaged with the nursery sector to inform our England Trees Action Plan and we have provided support for the nursery sector. In the plan, we committed to fund nurseries and seed suppliers to enhance the quantity, quality, diversity and biosecurity of domestic production. We will help the sector to better plan for sapling supply and demand, ensuring that suppliers can produce the right stock at the right time, with all the economic benefits that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned. A further published strategy is not necessary to ensure that this is delivered.

I thank noble Lords for their valuable contributions at this very late hour, and ask that they not press their amendments.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise to Extinction Rebellion for having completely forgotten its name. No doubt there will be a picket line outside my farm gate when I return to Cornwall later this week.

I thank every noble Lord for their contributions—particularly, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for her examples and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. I look forward to her amendment on a tree strategy when we meet again, which I think we still have to do. And I thank the three noble Earls for their contributions.

I am not going to prolong this evening. I thank the Minister for his enthusiasm for agroforestry and his recognition that this is an important part of the jigsaw for the future. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment withdrawn.

Environment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased table Amendments 34, 44 and 45, which will support the swifter and more effective implementation and operation of extended producer responsibility measures.

In Committee, we recognised that a priority of the House was to ensure that we are able to get extended producer responsibility regimes up and running as soon as possible. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, highlighted this on Monday. These amendments will save both time and money when setting up and running new schemes and will apply right across the UK.

The amendments allow us to adjust the provisions for appointing scheme administrators from a solely competitive procurement process to allow for the appointment process to be set out in regulations. This increased flexibility will benefit smaller schemes such as for single-use products. We anticipate in these instances that a process which would have previously taken 12 months could now take four.

Amendment 44 gives the Environment Agency, the Natural Resources Body for Wales and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency the same charging powers in relation to Schedule 5 as they have for Schedule 4, which is granted through Clause 64. This amendment allows them to make one scheme with both provisions from Schedules 4 and 5, as opposed to having to have two separate charging schemes.

Amendment 45 provides for the same powers for the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. As a package, these amendments will enable the swifter establishment of extended producer responsibility schemes. I beg to move.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, the last time I spoke at this Report stage was on Monday, when we were talking about very macro issues around the emergencies of biodiversity and climate change. Those are really important, and I was very glad that the House saw that. However, we all know as well that the minutiae—the micro side—of how this Bill’s provisions are delivered are equally crucial to its success.

We also know that, on extended producer responsibility, the circular economy and making consumers fully informed about what they want to do and how they can make the right decisions for the environment they live in, those small issues are really important to make this Act—as it will be—a success in terms of its delivery.

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[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate.

I begin with Amendment 125, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. We are very much aware of the environmental issues associated with absorbent hygiene products—which makes them sound a lot nicer—including those relating to incorrect disposal. We recognise the importance of the issue and have commissioned an independent environmental assessment of the relative impact of washable and disposable nappies. With that research added to the evidence base, as well as the powers in the Bill to make secondary legislation, we will be in a good position to take action where necessary and appropriate. I assure the noble Baroness that this includes action along the lines set out in her amendment.

I also assure the noble Baroness that the powers we are seeking through the Bill will allow us, among other things, to set standards for nappies and introduce labelling requirements. We will be able to mandate product labels to require specific information about products such as nappies; for example, regarding their environmental impact or how best to dispose of them. We will also be able to introduce a requirement for products to have marks or symbols signifying that they meet certain standards.

Briefly, in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, on a point also made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, new guidance to be produced shortly by the Competition and Markets Authority will address issues relating to environmental claims. That, we hope, will help business to both understand and comply with its existing obligations under consumer protection law.

I turn to Amendment 35, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I reassure noble Lords that the powers he is asking for in his amendment are already covered by the powers set out in Schedule 6. In fact, it is fair to say that the powers in the Bill are broader than the amendment specifies; for example, we are able to regulate how information might be provided. I agree that it is essential for labelling to be consistent, simple, clear and understandable, and that will be a central consideration as we develop and introduce regulations.

I end by agreeing and very much empathising with the frustration expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. Like all my colleagues in Defra, we want this work to happen very quickly. There is an unavoidable process but we are pushing as hard as we can. I hope that I have managed to reassure noble Lords that the Government are aware of the environmental issues associated with absorbent hygiene products as well as the importance of clear, consistent labelling regimes. That is why we have included powers in the Bill to tackle those specific issues. I ask noble Lords to not move their amendments.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

I understand that this is Report and I seek clarification. The problem is that this is a broader issue, as the Minister said. I am just trying to clarify whether the Government are committed to a single, consistent system of labelling in terms of recycling and extended producer responsibility. Will there be one system or is it still open for there to be multiple systems?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I can confirm to the noble Lord that we will do everything we can to ensure a simple, understandable and clear system. I cannot tell him whether there will be a single system but clarity, simplicity and transparency are absolutely the driving considerations.

Environment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

1: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Purpose and declaration of biodiversity and climate emergency
(1) The purpose of this Act is to address the biodiversity and climate emergency domestically and globally. (2) As soon as reasonably practicable and no later than one month beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, the Prime Minister must declare that there is a biodiversity and climate emergency domestically and globally.(3) The Government must have regard to this purpose and declaration when implementing the provisions of this Act.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would have the effect of the UK Government declaring a climate and biodiversity emergency.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, it has been two months since we debated the Bill in Committee over a period of three weeks, but the planet has not stood still over that time. First, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the IPCC—released its sixth report prior to COP 26, on which the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr António Guterres, commented:

“This is code red for humanity.”


This is an absolutely accurate declaration to my mind.

However, this is not just theoretical: let us look at other things that have happened during the end of July and beginning of August. First, we could look at fires: we have had forest fires in the northern hemisphere, almost unknown before, in California, Canada and Siberian Russia, where some 4 million hectares of forest have burned down and are still burning in parts of Siberia even today.

In terms of flooding, we have seen flash floods just now in New York. It was almost unexpected there, let alone down in the southern states of the United States. We have now had some 300 deaths in the north-east of the United States from those flash floods. Earlier, in July or August, some 300 people died in Henan province in China, many of them in underground metro systems, again in flash floods—something that had never happened in that way before. Of course, nearer home, in Europe—in Germany and close-by states—we had some 200 deaths because of flooding, which was unprecedented and unpredicted in terms of conventional weather forecasting.

In terms of temperature, in Lytton in British Columbia we had the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada at 49.5 degrees centigrade. More staggering was the fact that that was 5 degrees—I repeat, 5 degrees—more than the previous record. All those incidents and that report have happened since we last debated this legislation in this House.

We have also had, in July, the Government’s response to the Dasgupta report on biodiversity. They accepted, quite rightly, that we have to reverse biodiversity loss by the end of this decade; it is something that has been going backwards for decades and we have to amend that within a period of nine years.

We are now a month closer to the beginning of COP 15 next month, the biodiversity equivalent of COP 26, the first half of which will be centred around Kunming in China. Of course, we are now only 56 days away from COP 26 opening in Glasgow on 1 November. I also remind Members of the House that we had a report in June, again from the IPCC—the Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change—and the secretariat of the biodiversity equivalent, which made it quite clear that these two crises, climate change and biodiversity, are absolutely and inextricably linked. You cannot solve one without solving the other. That is why this is an important area, an emergency, a real area and a place where the planet is globally changing.

We want this to be a landmark Bill; in fact, the Government declare this to be very much a landmark Bill, and we all want it to be so. But what I find it difficult is that it is not yet that. I welcome many of the Government’s amendments that they want to put forward, but it is not yet a landmark Bill, as the Climate Change Act 2008 was at that time. I do not believe that it is credible that this House, this country, can have what will become an environment Act without pointing out and declaring the obvious—that we have at the moment a climate change and biodiversity emergency.

I am sometimes asked whether this is the way we do things in the United Kingdom, and I had some arguments with the Public Bill Office around this when I put down this amendment. But I remind Members that over 200 local authorities in our land have already declared a climate emergency, and many of those are now also declaring a biodiversity emergency. I believe that what is right for them is right for us as a Parliament. Also, the way that we in the United Kingdom show unity in parliamentary politics is through legislation, because that brings the two Houses together, together with the Government. Having a declaration in an Act of Parliament brings together the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the Government, and I believe that this is absolutely what is needed to make this a landmark Bill.

I believe this amendment would achieve leadership for this country—globally as well as nationally—in both those crises. I believe it will give us extra credibility and leadership at COP 26 and COP 15. I believe it will make this Bill something like the Climate Change Act for the future, and that it will also bring biodiversity, which is so important to this Bill, up to a similar status to the Climate Change Act. As I said, I think it brings together the two Houses and the Government in a unity that is important and that we saw in the citizens’ climate assembly.

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[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I have been told to finish but I am not sure how; this is the first time I have been asked to finish in these circumstances. I will repeat what I said earlier: all I can suggest to the House is that if feelings are strong then this question should be put to a Division. I do not see an alternative to doing so.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, in all my time in this House, this is the first time that I have got to a point where the Minister is calling for a Division on an amendment that he does not agree with. We have perhaps made history this afternoon.

This is a very serious matter. I listened carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. If subsection (1) had been accepted by the Government then I would have been in a great dilemma, because it does not quite say what I wanted to say but gets pretty close to it. The reason why it is written as it is, I have to say, is partly because of the Public Bill Office. I would have appreciated the Government’s help in getting it right and we could have done that at Third Reading, but we are not in that position.

I want to be quite clear about this. These are key issues where what we say matters as much as what we need to do. All of us here believe there is no difference between saying what we want and actually doing it; we all know that we need both of those, not just one. The Bill goes on to do a lot of what we need in some of those areas.

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for her in-depth look at biodiversity. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott and Lady Bennett, and other Members have said, biodiversity has to be brought into greater focus. The point is that, in public life as in private, there is a big difference between acceptance and public declaration. That is why the amendment is so important for the Bill and why I, like the Minister, would like to test the opinion of the House.

Environment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who wants to ask a question before proceeding.

[Lord Teverson (LD) [V]]

I thank the Minister for that good reply. I will sum up in just a second but I have a specific question. He said, and I take some encouragement from this, that he wanted to “move at pace”. When will we next hear back from the Government about what they are going to do specifically on REM and, hopefully, how they are going to apply the method of data collection?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. We have a number of consultations and calls for evidence coming up over the next few weeks and stretching out over the next few months. I will set out the exact choreography to him in a letter, but obviously that work needs to happen before any firm dates can be set. I hope that provides a clear agenda of what we are doing and that the next steps will go some way towards answering his question.

[Lord Teverson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his comprehensive and actually quite encouraging reply. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall, who has been very supportive in this area, as has the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. This is one way that we can start to make progress on what we understand about the marine environment, by catching that data and, hopefully, encouraging much better management of that environment. I look forward to the Minister’s letter and to the fisheries management plans that we were promised being concluded. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 262A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend opposite, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I sort of see the point in her amendment; I had better not say that I support it, because I would probably get rude emails from the Green Party saying it has not been party policy, but obviously I would be happy to discuss it. On the issue of not being invited to meet the Minister, the Greens still have not been invited to meet him, and I cannot decide whether that is because we completely trust the Minister to understand everything that we are saying; I cannot think of any other option. We obviously trust the Minister completely to take our point of view back to Defra.

My amendment is on something that I care about very deeply, namely fracking. I have tabled it with a view to banning it once and for all. In doing so, I want to celebrate all the hard work of campaigners and activists across the country who delivered massive opposition against this dirty and dangerous polluting industry, often in the face of poor policy decisions by the Government and the fracking industry’s might-is-right attempts to quash them. In particular, I applaud the Preston New Road campaign in Lancashire. It was a thousand days of protest by the anti-fracking Nanas, a bunch of mainly older women led by Tina Rothery. They fought so hard in the face of well-financed and rather nasty, threatening behaviour by Cuadrilla.

In the 2019 general election, it was announced that we had won on this particular issue. The Conservatives, along with every other political party in Parliament, declared themselves to be against fracking. However, we in the UK are still supporting fracking in Argentina, which means we are offshoring the horrid stuff, so we do not have to count all the carbon emissions and so on, and Namibia is being exploited by a Canadian company. Ireland called for an international ban this year, and calls are now growing for an Irish-led global ban on fracking. I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether that is something that the Government might support.

Here in the UK, there are still legal loopholes that could allow fracking to be forced on communities. I am most worried that, even if the Secretary of State did reject planning permission for fracking, this could be overturned in a judicial review. The Government may have changed their policy to be against fracking but, if this conflicts with the law in a judicial review, their policy will be ruled unlawful. For this reason, we must change the law to reflect what is now common agreement: that fracking is banned in the UK. I hope that the Minister will agree.

[Lord Teverson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and her strong advocacy, which I very much respect. I am going to speak to Amendment 280, to which I was very pleased to put my name, alongside that of its proponent, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. As the noble Baroness said, this is an area that the EU Environment Sub-Committee looked at. When we started looking into the areas of research, planning and the various impacts of wind farms, we found far more questions than answers. I look forward to the Minister coming back in this area.

I clearly welcome the renewable energy programme that we have. Obviously, offshore wind—whether it be floating or on the seabed—is going to be a very major part of that. However, it is important to make sure that that programme has the least negative impact on the environment, whether it be all the marine areas that the noble Baroness talked about, or birdlife—seabirds and migratory birds as well. There is not enough research in this area; there ought to be research for the future shared among all the countries around both the North Sea and the Celtic Sea, so that we can make sure that we locate turbines in the most favourable way to protect—and, in some areas, to encourage—environmental life at marine level. As the noble Baroness said, there might be positives in this area as well.

I want to ask the Minister about the fora that we deal with now on energy in the North Sea. We have been excluded—I think unreasonably—from one of the main European ones, which was not an EU institution, and included us in the past. However, I understand that there is a new forum that we might be involved in where these discussions are taking place. This is important because, clearly, the locations of wind farms in the North Sea and, in future, the Celtic Sea should be co-ordinated, if for no other reason than to make sure that as much infrastructure as possible is shared. I would be interested to hear from the Minister how we will ensure, as we start to develop the Celtic Sea as well, that we do not have multiple landing points and multiple cables put down, as has happened in the North Sea. We should have some co-ordination there to minimise damage.

Environment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th July 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

226: Clause 97, page 99, line 3, after “England” insert “and its territorial waters”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that an area’s adjacent territorial waters are included in a Nature Recovery strategy

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, as some of my amendments are associated with nature recovery network strategies, I once again declare my interest as chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership.

I know the Minister has assured us that the marine environment is included in the Bill. It hardly has a high profile, yet our national waters, including the EEZ, have an area of 885,000 square kilometres, whereas the terrestrial landmass of the United Kingdom is a mere 242,000 square kilometres, so that marine environment is three and a half times larger. My contention is that it is just as important and should receive at least the same amount of interest. Last year we had the Fisheries Act, and the Government made it very clear that that was not a piece of environmental legislation. It dealt with fisheries management plans, but those were not environmental management plans. Indeed, we gave credit that the Fisheries Act had a number of objectives relating to the environment and climate change, but that was not the mission of that piece of legislation—yet nature recovery in our marine area is just as important as in our terrestrial environment.

I was interested to see that one of the Government’s targets is to have good environmental status for our marine environment. In 2019—two years ago—they published an appraisal of progress made on having good environmental status for our marine environment, looking out beyond our territorial waters to our economic zone as well. I am afraid to say that of the 15 areas the government report focuses on, in six we managed not to meet targets at all; in five we made partial progress on those targets; and in four we actually achieved them.

I will take the Committee through some of the areas where good environmental status targets were not achieved: commercial fish, non-commercial fish, benthic habitats, invasive species, marine litter and breeding birds. None of those was achieved. There was some improvement in pelagic habitats, the food web, underwater noise, cetaceans—primarily dolphins, as we know them—and seals. As far as I can see, things such as seagrass, which is hugely important not just for the marine habitat but for carbon capture, were not covered at all in that report.

We have a real crisis and challenge out there in the oceans that surround our island and islands, so that is why I have tabled these amendments. The first one is to ensure that local nature recovery networks include not just the land area but the adjacent territorial waters—that is, out to 12 nautical miles—of those areas. They have to be included in those plans. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said on another marine amendment some days ago, it is not just the fact that they are two different environments; they are connected—literally—so it is important for that reason too that nature recovery networks include marine, littoral and territorial areas.

But it would clearly be unreasonable to ask, say, Sussex or maybe even more so Cornwall to look at its whole EEZ stretching way out into the Atlantic, yet EEZs also require important help in terms of nature recovery out to the 200 nautical mile limit. So, to be practical, I have tabled separate amendments to propose that the Secretary of State should be responsible for creating, producing and revising nature recovery networks for those offshore EEZ areas. Indeed, it would make a lot of sense if they tied up with marine management organisations and marine planning areas, but, again, those plans are not primarily environmental ones. They are mapping and usage ones. They are not primarily environmental plans, but they should come together to do that.

In the other amendment I put down—Amendment 246—I tackle highly protected marine areas. I have to give good credit to the Minister and the Government in this area, because, since I laid down that amendment, at the early stages after Second Reading, the Government have opened a programme and asked for bids for pilots for highly protected marine areas. So there is progress on this already, and, to some degree, this amendment is now redundant—but I would be very keen to hear from the Minister the progress on that and how he sees the timescale in terms of rolling out beyond pilots.

At the moment, we have some 372 marine protected areas around our shores. They cover some 38% of our total waters. That sounds impressive, but the regimes for those marine protected areas are extremely weak in many cases and certainly do not protect the seabed and all the habitats. These highly protected marine areas absolutely have to be done in consultation with the fishing industry and other commercial interests, but it is so important they are rolled out quickly, effectively and as soon as possible. That is why these amendments are important.

In Cornwall, as I have said before, we were lucky enough to have one of the pilots for the nature recovery networks. When we started work on that, Defra may not have been “against” it—that is perhaps too strong a word—but it did not see marine as being included in that pilot strategy. We went ahead and included it anyway, because you cannot talk about the environment of the far south-west peninsula without including marine; it is just impossible. The Minister could hopefully make my amendments redundant—not the EEZ ones, but these amendments—by confirming that it is now government policy that nature recovery networks, when it is appropriate and there is an adjacent ocean or territorial waters, should be included within those nature recovery network strategies. That is my clear message and question. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, with all his expertise. The Government bring legislation to this House so that we can help them improve it—so the expertise in your Lordships’ House can be of benefit to the Government and of course the nation. So I really think that, if the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, were not a Lord already, he would deserve some future honour for all his hard work in contributing to our work here and to the Government. He has highlighted another example of how this Bill has passed a suite of legislative measures without reference to water—to territorial waters, to the sea.

We looked at agriculture and fisheries: they do not tie together in any coherent way, and I do not understand how we can keep on passing legislation that does not tie up. Without these amendments, we are at risk of seeing our seas and fisheries as being separate from the rest of our environment and all our ecological activities. This sort of silo thinking would undermine the realities of the inseparable ecosystems and natural systems. I would be particularly concerned and upset if an upland authority had a nature recovery strategy that failed to take into account what was happening to its downstream neighbours and, ultimately, to the seas where the watercourses will end up. An Environment Bill that allows for that eventuality is fundamentally inadequate and incoherent, with no basic understanding of the environment.

I am sure the Minister will take time over the Summer Recess to ensure that this Bill fits with the Agriculture Act and the Fisheries Act. I am sure that is going to be a priority, so these two important ecosystems can be integrated into the mechanics of this Environment Bill. The alternative is that, inevitably, in a few years’ time, the Government of the day will have to bring in new legislation to try to patch up these incoherencies, with perhaps a decade of lost opportunity to heal the environment in that time. It is much better that we work together now to get it right.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, would like to ask a question of the Minister before he decides how to dispose of his amendment.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I will sum up in just a moment but I have a question for the Minister. I am very disappointed by her reply. It seems to fly in the face of what nature recovery networks are all about. However, I will come on to that later.

The Minister said that local authorities are not competent to deal with these issues—for example, the six-mile limit. However, she mentioned in particular IFCAs, which are the inshore fisheries and conservation authorities. They are nominated partly by the Marine Management Organisation—I agree with that—but appointments to them are also hugely influenced by local authorities. Local authorities are already hugely engaged in the first six-mile limits; they already have duties in that area. When it comes to the Marine Management Organisation and its licensing, which is within that same area as well, it has to talk to a number of statutory organisations before it can make decisions—for example, Natural England and the Environment Agency—and it has a concordat with local authorities to discuss those developments with them as well. Local authorities are already hugely involved in that area. Why not make it so that there is some structure to that within at least the six-mile limit, so that those decisions become coherent and make more sense—they are also probably more quickly made by the Marine Management Organisation and IFCAs—and so that the whole system becomes better and more efficient, and works for the environment as well? That is my question to the Minister.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I take the noble Lord’s point, but the three coastal pilot areas that we considered—Cornwall, Cumbria and Northumberland—all took very different approaches to voluntarily including adjacent marine areas in their pilots. There will be a sense of duplication in what the noble Lord is suggesting, because the spatial assessments of a marine area, capturing current uses and signalling future potential, are led by marine management organisations. To go further than that, I would like to take this back, consider it and perhaps write to the noble Lord if I can add any more flesh on those bones.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I beg the noble Lord’s pardon; forgive me, I had not spotted the notice—I also have a request from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, to ask a question of the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and apologise again to him.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

No, I apologise for speaking at the wrong time. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for their support on this amendment. I am seriously disappointed because, if nature recovery networks are right for the land, they are also right for our oceans. For land areas, all sorts of different authorities, whether it is Natural England, the Environment Agency, local authorities, national parks, or even the police, deal with all these areas of environmental enforcement and environmental policy. The nature recovery networks—and this is the reason I support them so strongly—bring those together within a context with a plan and structure, meaning that natural growth in biodiversity and the quantum of nature can start to happen.

Yet it is just all too complicated, apparently, for our marine environment. I do not get that, and I think it is unfortunate. I welcome the Minister’s progress on highly protected marine areas; I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, that one can never be certain until something is in the Bill, but I suspect that this particular thing may not get into the Bill, so I welcome the Minister’s comments in that area.

I am hugely disappointed about the marine environment. I know all the MMO inshore and offshore marine plans, but they are not primarily focused on environment; that is not their purpose. They include elements of it, but it is not why they are about. I was on the board of the MMO when they were written and created—they still have not all been approved yet—and I highly welcome them. They are important, but they are not what this is about. In the meantime, however, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 226 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am very pleased to be able to follow the noble Earl. I declare an interest as an owner of a plantation on an ancient woodland site, mostly replanted in 1986. I reckon that my cumulative loss to squirrels is about 60%. There are areas of the wood where nothing has survived except the coppice regrowth, and a lot of that is damaged. I have been trying to control squirrels throughout that time. This is a really serious problem if we want to take trees seriously, particularly if we want them to be commercial. I therefore very much support Amendment 260A. It would be a really useful way to go, getting us all working together in the same direction.

Deer are important too. Those who know the border between Wiltshire and Dorset will know the troubles the RSPB has had in Garston Wood with the herd of fallow deer it had there. It got zero regeneration at the end of the day because there were just too many deer. It has now excluded them, which is not fun for the local farmers, but at least it solves the RSPB’s problem. However, generally we have to recognise our position in this ecosystem. We are very important as the top predators—the controller of what happens with herbivorous activity—and if we want particular species and kinds of things to grow, we must act on that responsibility.

We need to start to understand how regeneration is working around us. Oak regeneration does not seem to be happening at all, something that is echoed by other people in the south of England. I do not know what circumstances need to change to make the ecology right for that. These are things that, with a big ambition for forestry, we need to understand. We do not want to have to be for ever planting trees; we ought to be able to rely on a pattern of regeneration.

I am very much in favour of the direction of Amendment 259. We need to be quite strict about the diseases that we let into this country. We have a very limited degree of biodiversity when it comes to trees and shrubs; we have about 30 different ones, around one-tenth of what an ideal temperate woodland would have by way of variety—courtesy of the Ice Ages, mostly, and the opening of the Channel but also, subsequent to that, the effect that man has on restricting the natural movement of plant species. We need, as the Forestry Commission is setting out to do, to improve our genomic diversity within species as well as the number of species that we have.

While I do not at all resent the activities of the Romans and others in bringing across chestnuts, for instance, or the buddleia in my garden—a cousin to many that are spread over the south downs—I do not think additional biodiversity hurts us. We are a very impoverished ecosystem and should be able to stand some introductions—but not, please, diseases. We have seen the devastation caused by ash dieback around here in Eastbourne. With a limited ecosystem, each disease is a big hit, and we do not want to risk more of that because it will take a very long time before we have a more diverse forest population.

However, I am not convinced by Amendment 258. As I said, I own a plantation on an ancient woodland site, and an SSSI designation would be a disaster. There is so much needed to do to make it better. The point of an SSSI is that you pick on a bit of landscape that is as you wish it to be, and the focus is then on keeping it as it is and making it difficult for people to change it. A plantation on an ancient woodland site means a lot of restoration to do, and you do not need the level of bureaucracy that goes with being an SSSI. I would be happy to have something to give it greater protection against invasion by planners but not something that stops the woodland owner from making it a better wood.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome this group on the subject of trees. As we know from the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and the Woodland Trust, which I think she chairs, only some 7% of our woodland is in good condition. We have a very small percentage of cover—13%—as has been noted by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and ancient woodland covers roughly 2.5% of our area.

I have put my name to Amendments 260 and 283, but I shall start with some comments on Amendments 258 and 259 about ancient woodlands and SSSIs. I very much take the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in that SSSIs can be complicated areas involving many rules. One issue that we have not tackled in the Bill, and which appals me, is that—if I have this right—the target by which to get 75% of SSSIs in good condition is 2045. I am sure the Minister will put me right if I am wrong, but it is an atrocious statement of where we are and where we intend to be if that is the case. Having said that, I can say on behalf of my colleagues that we would very much welcome this sort of amendment, even if it were not drafted exactly as at present.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

262A: After Clause 109, insert the following new Clause—
“Collection of marine data
(1) The Secretary of State must—(a) by regulations provide that all vessels over 10 metres in length, and of whatever nationality, fishing within territorial waters and the UK Exclusive Economic Zone must be fitted with remote electronic monitoring systems and cameras for the purposes of—(i) full and accurate documentation and data collection of fish activities, and bycatch, so far as these affect biodiversity and sustainability; and(ii) monitoring compliance with fish activities, bycatch and other marine management regulations so far as it affects biodiversity and sustainability;(b) by regulations provide that all British vessels fishing outside the UK Exclusive Economic Zone must be fitted with remote electronic monitoring systems and cameras for the purposes of—(i) full and accurate documentation and data collection of fish activities and bycatch, so far as these affect biodiversity and sustainability; and(ii) monitoring compliance with fish activities, bycatch and other marine management regulations so far as it affects biodiversity and sustainability; (c) publish a timetable for the phased introduction of the provisions under paragraphs (a) and (b), the final phase of which must be implemented within three years from the day on which this Act is passed;(d) publish plans, within two years from the day on which this Act is passed, following a consultation, to extend remote electronic monitoring systems with cameras to all motorised vessels of whatever nationality fishing within territorial waters and the UK Exclusive Economic Zone.(2) Regulations under this section are subject to the affirmative procedure.(3) In this section, “fish activities” has the meaning given by section 52 of the Fisheries Act 2020.”Member’s explanatory statement
The amendment mandates the use of remote electronic monitoring (REM) on all fishing vessels above 10 metres in length that fish in UK waters in order to accurately monitor marine environmental data and requires plans to be published to extend REM to all vessels.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I owe the Committee an apology, as I tried to change this amendment from one group to another—the first group we did today—but then I managed to de-group it totally, so it is my fault that noble Lords are all still here. I apologise for that.

This is a serious issue. It is often said that we know less about our oceans than we do about the surface of Mars. I do not know whether that is completely true, but there is certainly a strong element of truth about it. We lack information about the ecology, biodiversity, quantity and types of species there are in our waters. Yet, unlike Mars, which I think has at least three rovers trundling slowly over its surface at the moment, we have thousands of fishing vessels sampling the ecology of our oceans every day.

I was very interested to receive communications from the Shetland Fishermen’s Association a few days ago. I know that Shetland is clearly in Scotland, although it sometimes sees itself as independent of it, and that this is an English Bill, but I will take this as an example because one of the things it is complaining about is the data on fish coming from ICES—the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. We all know ICES; it is the key data provider for us and the European Union in setting quotas, TACs and that whole area. To quote Simon Collins, executive officer of the Shetland Fishermen’s Association, on the ICES recommendations about changes of TACs in the North Sea and off the west coast:

“These numbers bear no relation to what our members are seeing out on the fishing grounds every day … With such wild swings in both directions a regular occurrence in recent years, it is clear that ICES needs to take a good hard look at the process and consider whether its modelling is still relevant.”


I have really good news for the Shetland fishermen: using remote electronic monitoring with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and very cheap technology, we can have live data of what is in the ocean, what is being caught and what is discarded. We can really firm up on the data on our marine environment. It has probably escaped the Minister’s notice that I put down a similar amendment with the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, to the Fisheries Bill—or he has perhaps forgotten. One of the things which we emphasised there was not the control aspect of fisheries regulation, but the fact that this provided plentiful hard data about fisheries, the marine environment and everything that happens to be caught. That is why I brought this amendment back into this Bill, because it is equally—if not more—an environmental issue as much as a fisheries management one. That is why this amendment is important.

Following Royal Assent to the Fisheries Act, I was delighted that Defra went out and undertook two consultations around remote electronic monitoring. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister what the responses were, and when the Government are going to move those forward. I congratulate them on moving this process further forward. It is the way to sustain fisheries stocks, and it is the way, more importantly, to be clear and have hard data rather than the opaque and fuzzy data which we have on our fisheries at the moment, and our marine biodiversity and ecology more broadly. Again, here we can actually lead, and in such a way that all those nations that want to enter with their fishing vessels into our EEZ and our waters can be told, “You must do the same thing”. For those foreign vessels, most of them from the European Union, but also Norway and other Nordic islands, we can actually start the process, and have others start it as well.

This is a truly important way of moving forward. I welcome the fact that the Government took on these consultations. It would be a huge shame if they got no further. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister what the Government’s plans are for remote electronic monitoring. With this technology, we can really understand what is going on in our oceans. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for tabling this amendment, which I have signed. It is the latest move in his long and valuable campaign for the adoption of remote electronic monitoring of fishing vessels. I do not blame him at all for our being here late at night; I blame the Government. If they had written a better Bill, it would not have attracted 300 amendments and we would not still be here after seven days, with an eighth day in prospect.

We discussed remote electronic monitoring when considering the Fisheries Bill, and your Lordships were able to get the Minister to put a firm commitment in support of it on the record. The noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, stated:

“The Government are clear that we will be consulting on increasing the use of REM in the first half of 2021, with implementation following that. I am not in a position to give a precise date today for when this will be implemented, but I can absolutely say—and I want to put this on the record—that the Government are absolutely seized of the importance of REM.”—[Official Report, 12/11/20; col. 1174.]


That is great, isn’t it? We could all be confident that this would go in the Bill.

Unfortunately, things do not seem to be progressing particularly quickly. The latest update I could find on the GOV.UK website, from 7 May, says:

“We’ve considered all the submissions and will continue to use the evidence provided to inform further thinking on the use of remote electronic monitoring in England. We’ll engage more with stakeholders in the near future around the topics that were highlighted in this call for evidence.”


This language does not reflect the previous enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, so can the Minister here today please confirm that the Government remain

“absolutely seized of the importance of REM”?

Can he please give details of the Government’s thinking that has been informed by the consultation? It would be wonderful to know how long it will be before this thinking turns into action. Given the long lead-in times for retrofitting all the existing fishing vessels, the sooner the Government can move forward on this and articulate a specific monitoring scheme, the better. We need to embrace this technology as a matter of urgency. If the Government continue to drag their feet, it would seem that the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, has been left hanging out to dry.

Environment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her useful intervention. She is right: the cost of pollution rarely features on the balance sheet. Her suggestion that, in order to move forward, we need to find a way of internalising those costs is spot on. It is also the main thesis of the Dasgupta review. She asked who will be responsible: ultimately, the water companies will need to improve their act in order to prevent pollution of our waterways, but it is for the Government to set the framework and the rules. It is not the Government who will deliver the solution on the ground: that will be for the water companies and they will be required to do so. She also asked if I would be willing to meet. Yes, of course, I would be happy to meet her, my noble friend the Duke of Wellington and anyone else who has a particular interest in this issue. I am very keen to get this right.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for assuring us that he is talking to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about greywater and other related issues. I ask him to work really hard on this, because the longer it goes on, the more homes—hundreds of thousands—will be built that are not up to the standards that probably everybody in this House wants, including the Minister. Can he give us some idea of when we will get the new standards up and running, be it on greywater, flooding, heat conservation, net zero, or keeping houses cool in the future when temperatures rise? This is urgent, and housebuilders need to get on with it.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I am not sure that I can give the noble Lord a date, because that is not in the hands of Defra and certainly not in in mine. I can absolutely offer him an assurance, however. There are an enormous number of things that need to be done to building regulations in order to maximise the chance for nature to flourish, to tackle water waste, and to slow down the flow of surface water to prevent flooding. The list goes on and on. I am certainly not an expert: I have ideas of my own, but I am talking to a number of people outside government who really are experts. I am harvesting the best possible ideas and suggestions for building regulations. I cannot guarantee that I will win every argument, but I extend that invitation to Members of this House. If people have ideas about things that should be included—particularly for new-builds, but also retrofit—I will gratefully receive them because I am in the market for ideas.

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[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I have just been camping at Knepp for three nights—Friday, Saturday and Sunday—so I walked the land extensively, went on guided tours and saw the work being done. He is not correct when he says that a housing estate next door will in fact be of some kind of educational benefit. The whole point of Knepp is that a wildlife corridor was going to be created where this new housing development is that would take the birds, as well as some other animals, to the sea.

I support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, because we need a rethink of how we look at land and what we do. We need to start using things imaginatively such as the middles of towns for people to live in. I live outside Taunton, the town centre of which has completely fallen apart in the last couple of decades. There are empty shops and closed-up buildings; there is no life in that town. Instead, you have miles and miles of small boxes outside the town that are extremely environmentally non-sustainable. They are miles from the schools and the town centre and the place has become a doughnut—it has that sort of hollowed-out feeling.

Unless we start to reimagine how we want to live, of course we will go on having the problems that we have all talked about, and 3,500 houses will continue to be put on the Knepp site. Storks have just been brought back and there are now about 120 storks flying around. We had lunch on Sunday under three trees where there were storks’ nests. It is completely magical. Those creatures will go if they suddenly find that they are under houses. The noble Earl, Lord Devon, is right: the Burrells decided to rewild Knepp because their land was not productive. They were losing £150,000 a year in 2000 and felt that they could not go on drowning the site in chemicals and trying to make weak soil support high-yield crops, so it was logical to rewild that site. However, they have no ambition to rewild the whole of England. They know that Knepp is a site of special interest and should be seen in that way—as an educational tool. It is buzzing with researchers from all over the world who are studying everything, including how a pig’s trotter makes a little pool that enables a particular flower to feed, which in turn has brought back the turtle dove. They have found all those connections that had been completely lost.

Of course we need good food, good farming and grade 1 land, so I hugely support the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, when he says that agro-ecology and agro-friendly farming have to be the way forward. I have recently been to the Groundswell conference, which is about min-till or no-till, whereby one makes just slices through the earth and does not disrupt the magic of our soil. Just as many crops are being grown without the inputs. We can do it.

I come back to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, to which I have put my name. What really matters in this is that if we do not give local authorities the ability to stand on their own two feet and enforce rules on people, we take away their agency. If one looks at causes such as the transition towns or Incredible Edible Todmorden, these are absolutely miraculous and wonderful community initiatives that have brought life, health, friendship and masses of plants in all sorts of forms back into the middle of towns. It destroys one’s belief in the system if one constantly fails, if the housing development goes up against all local opposition and if, over and again, one’s voice is turned down. We are going to need all those local people with vested interests in their local community if we are really going to make a difference. It is therefore blindingly obvious that local authorities need the teeth of this amendment to fight off any imposed housing quotas. We have to put nature first in the planning system. It is not tangential and we do not have an option.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, once again, I declare my interest as chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, which is rather relevant to a couple of my amendments.

I want to go back to the basic argument of what the Bill is about. There is a real issue—an emergency, as I and many others would describe it, in biodiversity and the quantum of nature in England. Because of that we have this Bill. It is about doing something—and we have to do something. However, while we all welcome nature recovery networks as a great initiative in the Bill for which I congratulate the Government, when we have that emergency and we have seen how the Aichi targets over the past 10 years mean that we have gone backwards in this area, we need those nature recovery networks actually to work. Exactly as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, if we do not do that, what is the point?

This group is about the rubber hitting the road, if you like. This is “make your mind up” time. Are Nature Recovery Networks and biodiversity targets going to be something we can all feel good about because they are in legislation, or will they make sure there is change over the next decade? That is the choice that the Government have in these amendments. I will be very interested to hear the Minister’s response.

There is a great deal going on, as we have heard from noble Lords. If the biodiversity targets that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, described so well, are not implemented and joined up with the fundamental area of planning, we are throwing away this opportunity. We must tie it up with land use and farming, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and the noble Lord, Earl Caithness, have mentioned. Roughly 75% of England is agricultural, and if we get that right we can move forward in terms of biodiversity.

Farming is crucial to making nature recovery networks and biodiversity work. We have to tie that up with the organisations that have these responsibilities already, exactly as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said: drainage boards and the Environment Agency. That is true as well. I believe that it is essential, and I think the Committee does, that there should not just be “regard” for these nature recovery networks. They have to be embedded, planted, and statutorily mandated to comply with them. Otherwise, they will not have strength.

Down in Cornwall, as the Minister is probably well aware, we have a lot of beaver introductions—we were talking about those earlier on—and have gone through one of five nature recovery pilots. I have been very much involved, as chair of the local nature partnership. It is a great exercise to go through. The noble Earl, Lord Devon, talked about consultation with local communities. We have to get that buy-in, and I am pleased to say that some 700 people were involved in consultation with our pilot in Cornwall. We have a really good scheme there, but, coming back to one of my amendments, how the heck are these going to be resourced?

There are two necessities here: one is tying and mandating their use with other machinery, whether it is the Planning Act or agriculture—we will come onto ELMS in the next group—but there also have to be the resources. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, said local authorities do not have ecologists at the moment. We have to have them so they can work on nature recovery networks as well as net gain. If we do not have the resources to develop nature recovery networks and get them to work, how will it happen?

The Government might say that we have the environmental land management scheme, with £2.5 billion worth of state aid to buy public goods, but I do not see that necessarily fulfilling the needs of nature recovery networks entirely. We have net gain; I hope most of that net gain will be done onsite, and there are potentially ways of having resources there, but those two together are not enough to make nature recovery networks work. How are we going to resource the implementation of these strategies? Those are the fundamental points.

In terms of my other two amendments, local nature partnerships were, I was sad to see, not even mentioned in the Bill. They came about through The Natural Choice: Securing the Value of Nature, the natural environment White Paper of June 2011. They were never put on a statutory basis, but they exist throughout England, full of people from all walks of life. In Cornwall and Scilly, we have local authorities, the Environment Agency, Natural England, farmers, ecologists and ordinary independent directors to make nature work in our region.

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[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I shall be pretty brief on this, because both my amendments should really have been in the previous group, although one of them is particularly important.

First, I take just one minute to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. She was concerned that she should not be consumed by vultures, but on the of Isles of Scilly, we have an Egyptian vulture visiting this year. There may not be an opportunity next year, so there are big decisions. That vulture joins Wally the Walrus, who, unfortunately, has come some 2,000 miles too far south on an ice floe and is trying to land his big weight—up to a tonne—on local vessels. I say to the Minister that we have some introductions that were not necessarily there before the last ice age, but there we are.

I shall be very brief. My first amendment says that local authorities must have a duty to implement nature recovery networks. That comes back to the theme of the previous group, and I shall not go through that again. My second amendment, which is also slightly out of place here, is key. It comes back to environmental land management schemes, which will be the big game-changers in practice in the countryside over the next decade. Why? Because they have real resources behind them—£2.5 billion per annum, potentially—to put into nature recovery. Their whole ethos and guiding hand is public goods being paid for by public money, and their concentration is to be on biodiversity—not all of it is for nature recovery but a large proportion of it is.

We have the three tiers, as they were called: the sustainable farm initiative, the nature recovery area and the whole landscape side. I am stating the totally blindingly obvious, but you cannot have that going off in one direction and nature recovery networks going off in another. One is primarily produced by local government, AONBs or national parks; the other is produced and decided by Defra centrally. The good news is that they are both within the “Defra family”, but I have little hope that, without real concentration, one part of Defra will be talking to the Natural England side, on the other, on nature recovery network implementation. My challenge is this: how are we going to get those two key elements to work together, rather than working in conflict?

The only other thing I would say is that I was delighted to put my name to my noble friend Lord Oates’s amendment; he has expounded those virtues tremendously. I will not follow on from that, except to entirely endorse his arguments.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

Environment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, once again, it is a real pleasure to follow my noble friend the Duke of Wellington and to support his Amendment 162, which seems a very good response to the Minister’s claim in respect of the last grouping that it was altogether far too expensive to prevent CSO discharges and the damage done to our rivers by our sewage treatment works. My noble friend’s amendment asks for continuous improvement of sewage works, and it should be accepted.

I shall speak to Amendment 162A in my name. It is probably superfluous, and I am merely probing to get an assurance from the Government. In the light of what we know about the state of our rivers and of getting to grips with some of the future problems—for example, the necessary but dramatic rise in planned housing provision and the fact that we probably have too many people per cubic metre of water in many parts of our country—it is important that the drainage and sewerage management plans work.

The amendment is designed to ensure that the plans work not only for present and future customers but for the environment. Above all, and I stress this, it is important to get this emphasis on the environment into this part of the Bill, so that Ofwat, in its authorisation of capital expenditure by water companies, is aware that environmental considerations are a legal necessity. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me on that specific point.

Turning to my other amendment in this group, Amendment 163A, on nature-based solutions, I realise that this has already been touched on today, but I thought I would use the amendment to drive home the message. “Nature based solutions” is a better name than the alternative of a sustainable urban drainage system, or SUDS, the point being that these solutions are just as important in rural areas as in urban.

Like trying to fit modern heating systems into old houses, it has to be admitted that retrofitting natural drainage solutions into existing communities can be expensive and difficult, but it is crucial that, starting right now, we insist that all new developments consider nature-based solutions from the start. It should be a compulsory part of the planning system. The main message I wish to get across is that Schedule 3 to the 2010 Act, as mentioned in Philip Dunne’s Bill, must be implemented in England as it already is in Wales, because these schemes have to be planned before the design of the site even starts. They are dependent on gravity, whereas every other service to a site can, as it were, flow uphill. The positioning of these nature-based solutions is therefore crucial, and they should be the first thing designed into any new site.

Let me give a brief example of a retrofitted nature-based solution which also perhaps helps explain what it is all about, and which could even be a model for new developments. I refer to the Greener Grangetown scheme, as it is called, near Cardiff. It consists of 12 streets and is now a series of rain gardens. The water is cleansed, and many trees grow there. What is essentially a drainage scheme has become a community garden scheme looked after by people of the community. The CSO is no longer needed, as storm conditions are already catered for. I admit that such a scheme is probably too expensive for mass replication, but, with its many outputs, it attracted many willing partners and investors. Businesses and local government wanted to get involved, so it is not totally unrepeatable with the right local driving force. When the Severn Trent Mansfield pilot has produced some results, we might be able to introduce more schemes across the country, confident that we know what works and what positive outcomes we can expect.

It is worth stressing that one of the major purposes—in fact probably the main purpose—of nature-based solutions is that they deal successfully with much of the problem of road run-off, which is such a contaminant of our rivers. As well as the oils and grease from roads, 63,000 tonnes of rubber tyre particles go into our rivers every year, plus suspended solids which coat the bed of the river, hydrocarbons and dissolved metals which are toxic to fish, and benzo(a)pyrene, which is very carcinogenic. Highway run-off needs treating, and most sewage treatment works are not really designed to deal with its particular pollutants. Meanwhile, at the moment, highway authorities can connect their drains to sewage works without the water companies being able to deny them. We must do all we can to introduce nature-based solutions, wherever we can.

To summarise—and I apologise if this is over labouring my point—nature-based solutions have four main benefits. First, they slow the flow, which of course helps the CSO problem; secondly, they act as filtration plants to remove road oils, grease, hydrocarbon pollutants and microplastics; thirdly, they clean the water, whether it is going back into the river or down into an aquifer; and, fourthly, and not unimportantly, they provide beauty and habitats. As I said, they should be everywhere.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, it is genuinely a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, who always gives us a master class. Whereas I tend to rely a bit too much on rhetoric, he gives us facts, which are far more robust and demanding of a government response. I shall speak to Amendment 175, although I also put my name to Amendment 175A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, which I support. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for their support.

It was more than 15 years ago that a member of my family opened a printing factory in Cornwall and I heard the term BREEAM for the first time: a building standard demanded at the time because it was partly financed by the European Regional Development Fund. There was a reasonable expectation—in fact, a necessity—that certain standards be built into that building. One of them concerned grey water. I remember saying, “What the heck is greywater?” The answer was that it is recycling water—not water that has gone through the lavatories, or loos, but the rest of it—to make sure that water demand comes down. It was one of the most obvious examples of what we would now call the circular economy. Those technologies can save something like 50% of water consumption.

In those days—all of 15 years ago—it would have been completely unrealistic to apply such a system to domestic houses, because they were not available at that scale. But even then, for commercial buildings, it was the case that those systems worked, and worked well—the system in that building is still working very effectively and reducing water demand. But now those systems are up for use in domestic housing as well. They work. There are criticisms of them: obviously, the cost, technically—I shall come back to that—but also that they raise the demand for electricity, and so the carbon footprint may go up. We should always remember that domestic buildings will probably last for 100 years. We know that we will decarbonise electricity generation anyway, I hope, well before 2050, so that carbon footprint will not be an issue for very long.

I say to the Government that surely we have a real opportunity here to save a major proportion of water consumption. It will not solve leakage, which I appreciate has to be done elsewhere, and there are other amendments to deal with that, but on water consumption we already have a solution which, if it is rolled out in new buildings, whether commercial or domestic, the difference on the cost of that building is far from great—perhaps a couple of thousand pounds. Over the life of that building, clearly there will be savings in both resources and the cost of water.

Environment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 103 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. Clause 27 attempts to delineate the OEP’s scrutiny and advice functions, but it is too tightly drawn. It is much to be welcomed that the OEP can monitor and report on environmental improvement plans and targets, and on the implementation of and changes to environmental law, but, for the avoidance of doubt, the amendment is necessary to enable the OEP to give advice on any other matter relating to the natural environment. It is a sweeping-up amendment so that if there is some environmental ghastliness that otherwise would not be within the OEP’s ambit, this provision would allow it to take up the issue and give advice. It is a sensible provision which enhances the OEP’s independence and flexibility, and I hope that the Minister can simply accept it.

I also support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, requiring the Secretary of State to report to the OEP anything he used to report to the European Commission. I know that the Government do not want to carry on as if Brexit had never happened, and unnecessary reporting could be ceased provided that it was reviewed by the OEP and an adequate reason was given. However, several areas of data and reporting have already been lost as a result of their no longer being reported to the Commission, including issues of ambient air quality, pollutant emissions and the implementation of some key fisheries rules.

The issues lying behind Amendment 114 have already been aired in the debate on Amendment 78, so I shall not labour them. Environmental protection is indeed as vital as defence and security to our well-being and our very existence. The importance of issues of taxation and spending or the allocation of resources for the environment has already been demonstrated. The exclusions listed in Clause 45 cannot go forward without the OEP being debarred from some key areas. Subsection (1) must also be challenged. Environmental law is there defined as

“legislative provision … that … is mainly concerned with environmental protection”.

Many laws would be not be considered to be

“mainly concerned with environmental protection”,

but they have a big impact on the environment. There is a huge list—I think immediately about planning legislation, transport legislation, energy, agriculture, fisheries, housing and food. I could keep on listing, but your Lordships would be here all day. We need to press the Minister on whether he truly believes that the OEP should be able to consider these issues and not just what is in the tightly prescribed provision in the Bill.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I was pleased to put my name to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Parminter. It seems obvious, as many noble Lords have said, that for the OEP to have the stature that the Government want it should be able to give advice as it sees fit without constraint. Clearly, it will be constrained anyway in terms of its budget, its resources and its capacity so, like any similar authority, it is going to be careful about what it concentrates its resources and time on. That is quite a sufficient constraint on the OEP’s work and what it does. As the legislation says, if the Minister or the Secretary of State want advice in certain areas, it can give it, whatever that area is, yet it is strongly constrained in terms of reports on its own initiative. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, laid out that long list of areas where it would invaluable for the OEP on occasion to give its own opinion unprompted by the Secretary of State. As we have said many times before, the Climate Change Committee, which is respected nationally and internationally, is able to do that, and it uses that power well, responsibly and to effect. I see no reason why the OEP should not be able to do that as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Duke of Wellington (CB)]

My Lords, I wish to speak briefly to Amendment 112, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. As other noble Lords have said, Amendment 110 has very much the same purpose.

In Clause 43, in defining what is meant by “natural environment”, mention is made of “land”, “air” and “water”, but I really do think that the Bill would be much improved by including “soil”. All scientists tell us how much the quality of soil has been degraded in this country in recent years. There is an increasing risk of erosion from flooding. There is an increasing occurrence of compaction caused by the regular passing of heavy agricultural machinery. There is a decline in organic matter in the soil, brought about by modern farming methods and the use of chemical fertilisers, insecticides and herbicides. I am sure that the new environmental land management schemes will indeed encourage farming methods that will avoid this steady and continuous degradation. Let us hope they will go further and encourage and support farming systems that restore soil quality. However, in the meantime, I encourage the Minister to accept either Amendment 112 or Amendment 110, which would demonstrate that the Government intend to take very seriously the question of soil quality and to include it in the various proposals to improve the natural environment.

I turn briefly to Amendment 194AC in this same group, which deals with biodiversity gain in planning. Of course, I would be minded to support any improvement in biodiversity in rivers and lakes as a result of any new planning application. I must say that I am doubtful whether it can really be practical to place on all developers an obligation to demonstrate on each occasion a biodiversity gain in water. Surely, connection to a wastewater system that will not create any increased risk of sewage discharges in the adjacent river system should be a condition for all developers. The most important point for improving aquatic biodiversity is to reduce in the short term and eventually eliminate discharges that pollute our rivers. Therefore, although I know it is well intentioned, I personally could not support Amendment 194AC.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, we have had some really good literary contributions. My favourite was probably about Kenneth Williams from the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone; we also had a number of others. When the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, talked about the dust-bowl, I thought of when I was quite young—an A-level student, I think—and I read John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Even today, that brings back an image. I could see that novel as a movie in my mind about that dust-bowl during the depression of the 1930s in middle America where, because of soil erosion and degradation caused by wind, there was a huge exodus in the United States to urban areas and a failure of the farming system and those ecosystems. That is a lesson for us.

One of the things that struck me when the 25-year environment plan came out—that was what, five years ago?—was that, at that moment, it seemed the Government had suddenly discovered soil for the first time. The great advocate at that time, who particularly seemed to have discovered soil, was Michael Gove, the then Environment Secretary. I ask my Liberal Democrat colleagues to put their ear muffs on for a moment: I thought that Michael Gove was an absolutely excellent Secretary of State for the Environment because he brought all these issues to the fore. He had guts, he was bold and I am sure that, if he were still in the position, we would have rather a bolder Bill than we have before us at the moment. Needless to say, I was less keen on the rest of his career, so I will stop there.

The noble Lord, Lord Randall, was absolutely right about the breadth of what we mean by soil. Piedmont soils are something we have to be incredibly careful about in this country. I was privileged, two or three weeks ago, to see peat restoration on Bodmin Moor, which was brought about by a consortium of organisations—public and private sector and water companies—as part of bringing back a huge area of peatland to hydrate that whole area. I always thought we had enough rain in Cornwall to keep the whole of the ecosystem going, but you could see the degradation there. That team had worked in Dartmoor and further north and west as well. This is really important. Whether the Minister says soil is somehow included in these definitions, it is absolutely clear that it is right to give it the emphasis by including it within these definitions. I was thinking of the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, and Gulliver’s Travels, which I had not noticed, I must admit.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, used the word “urgent”. The 25-year environment plan is brilliant in terms of laying out the issues and what we need to do but the implementation of so many of these things has not been good, as the Audit Commission pointed out strongly. Urgency is something that we can maybe put back into this Bill now. Many Members—including the noble Lord, Lord Curry, who is well known for his agricultural knowledge and experience—have come out strongly on the need to do that.

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[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is not only producers who have to have regard to resource efficiency; it is also the Government. It is really important in devising regulations in this sort of area that we look at the overall effect of what we are asking people to do and, in particular, what we are asking companies to do to make sure that the end effect of what we are regulating is an improvement and not a disimprovement.

We have seen, for instance, in the case of washing machines and dishwashers, regulations regarding their use of energy, but we have done nothing to regulate how long these machines last. If you are replacing a machine every five years because it has fallen to bits, that surely is part of the resources being consumed by the process. It ought to have been part of the regulations and something that we should look at. We will come to this question when we look at deposit return schemes.

If we are instituting a deposit return scheme on something where we already collect 85% efficiently, and it is only the remaining 15% that are causing problems, then by creating a system that puts a lot of extra costs on society in recycling the existing 85% in a different, less efficient manner, we are not achieving an overall benefit. What is sauce for the goose is very much sauce for the gander.

Looking at the other amendments in this group, I think that the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, would result in regulation that was extremely resource efficient. The small one-off costs for producers after that would lead to a very substantial reduction in costs for the sewerage undertakings. That is what we ought to be aiming for: a good, big overall benefit. We should not be looking at little bits of the process; we have to look at the benefits and the costs that will be imposed by the regulation as a whole.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I want to speak to my own Amendment 128, which goes back even further into the depths of this Bill to Schedule 6. It is a probing amendment in many ways, and very mild, just to tease out where the Government stand on this. Although, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said so well, this seems to be a very technical area, these issues are absolutely essential in making the future circular economy, and everything we want in terms of resource efficiency, actually to work and become public friendly—and the way that it faces the public becoming friendly as well.

It comes down to labels. We have had some mention of labels already, particularly from my noble friends Lady Scott and Lord Bradshaw. What I am trying to get at here is that there are provisions, rightly, for the Secretary of State to be able to make regulations about such things as labels on products, but what it does not do is suggest that there should be some consistency about that labelling so that we all find that interface useful, friendly and usable.

I am thinking of two other areas in particular. When I put the laundry into the washing machine at home, there is the occasional garment that I do not have a clue how it should be washed. So what do I do? I look at the label on the garment that has all those little symbols that tell me how I should wash this—at what temperature and all that sort of information. It might tell me not to wash it at all, but to dry-clean it instead. Over the years, I have got to know those symbols. Everybody else has: they are actually fairly international rather than national; I am not even asking for them to be international. Through that, we get to know what we should do.

I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who mentioned electrical appliances. Whether it be a dishwasher or a dryer, they also have labels that give an energy efficiency rating. That has been so successful that we have had to reinvent or restate what the most efficient levels are, because people have got to know them and simply go for green rather than red.

This amendment is merely offering a suggestion to the Government. It would give the Secretary of State the power to ensure that labelling on goods in the system that will become part of the circular economy is consistent, so that everybody gets to understand the symbols and they are therefore effective. We should not have a wide range of different labels from different manufacturers, or different systems, which would confuse consumers. In labelling, we need consistency, good design and systems that have been tried and tested, and last. As, I think, my noble friend Lady Scott said, this will make sure that people who want to do right can achieve that.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I rise chiefly to speak to Amendment 292, which appears in my name and has the backing of the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott and Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I thank them all for their support and note that a number of other noble Lords would have signed this amendment had there been space.

I was simply going to speak to my amendment, but I must briefly and strongly commend Amendment 119, which was so ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, highlighted in a previous group that I had focused on the word “urgent” a lot. With this amendment the noble Baroness has really driven home the need for urgent action. We have a plastic and waste-choked planet and nation that cannot take any more: it cannot take the volumes we are imposing on it every day.

Amendment 292 is about nappies. That might sound like a minor issue but I hope that by the time I have finished, noble Lords will understand that it is not. Before I begin, I declare my position as vice-president of the Local Government Association, since that will become relevant. For full transparency, I declare that I have worked on this amendment with, and many noble Lords will have received briefings from, the Nappy Alliance, which represents makers of reusable nappies. Supporting a green industry and working with it is not something I am going to make any apologies for, but I think it is important we acknowledge such ties and where the resources come from.

On average, each single-use or disposable nappy generates 550 kilos of carbon dioxide throughout its whole lifecycle, from production to disposal. From birth to stopping using nappies, an average child will use the equivalent of 15,000 plastic bags and half a tree in fluff. This is why the Local Government Association is relevant: at a local level, single-use nappies account for some 4% of residual waste in England. That is 3 billion nappies each year, and it costs local authorities £600 million a year to dispose of them. When such nappies are sent to landfill it takes 300 years—roughly 12 generations—for them to break down. Incinerating them gives rise to significant carbon emissions and local air pollution levels, an issue we keep coming back to. This is where my amendment links to that tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw: single-use nappies often end up contaminating waste for recycling because of misleading labels and consumer confusion. Many people do not realise they contain plastic, and think they are a kind of paper.

By way of contrast, reusable nappies use 98% fewer raw materials and generate 99% less waste. They save the equivalent of 17 plastic bags per day. Here, I think I need to dispel some misunderstandings. As we have seen in many other areas of health and environment where there are powerful industry interests, there has been a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about environmental impacts and comparative environmental impacts. In March 2021, in a report I would be happy to share with any noble Lord who is interested, the United Nations Environment Programme published a comparison between single-use nappies and reusables. It concluded that reusable nappies had a lower environmental impact across all trial scenarios when compared to single-use nappies.

Michael Gove seems to be coming up a lot this evening. Back in 2018, he did actually suggest that disposable nappies might be banned. In a very rare occurrence, I am not going to go as far as Michael Gove did in 2018. When people are travelling or when there is a new babysitter, for example, there may be an argument for the occasional use of single-use nappies, but it should not be the norm.

This brings me to some other aspects of the amendment that really start to address how we change the situation. There are some really good local authority small-scale practical schemes that are helping people change to using reusable nappies and get away from single-use nappies. Often, they are based on nappy libraries—frequently run by volunteers, most usually women—which have a range of nappies that families can try out. People can see which ones are suitable before they spend money. Many local authorities—by no means all and by no means extensively—offer schemes that can help families to purchase reusable nappies. The problem is, of course, that when you have a new and growing baby, you need a set of nappies, which is a big initial outlay beyond the reach of many people. Subsection (8) of my amendment would allow the Secretary of State to make regulations for a levy to be paid by nappy manufacturers to fund a scheme to help people use reusable nappies. We are talking about ensuring that people can afford to buy them and that they have access to understanding and knowledge—nappy libraries also share information about how to use nappies and what the best ones are.

There is a comparison here. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, talked about energy labels on packaging, and that is partly what this amendment calls for. But in fact, it is a bit like cigarette packets, for which we have labelling and pricing that acknowledges the cost of the product that applies to all of us.

So, I strongly commend this amendment to the Minister. I point out that I have probably been approached by more noble Lords on this amendment than on any other I have tabled—and I have tabled some with very wide-reaching effects. This issue is of great interest to people for many reasons. One, of course, is something I am sure we will be referring to a lot in the next few hours: litter. There is a big problem with litter from single-use nappies. It is a deeply unpleasant thing. I am sure most noble Lords have been volunteer litter pickers in some form or another, and it is not a pleasant thing to encounter when doing that.

What we are talking about here is changing things to make life better. It is about the kind of systems thinking that I very often refer to. This is the Environment Bill, and when we talk about the environment people ask if we can we afford the cost of this or that measure. If we can help most families to use single-use nappies, that would save them, on average, £11 a week. That is a lot of money to many families—money that could be spent on healthier food or on taking off some of the stress and pressure. This amendment has environmental and social benefits: it is a win-win. If the Minister is being pressured to offer some yeses, here is an easy win.

Environment Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 28th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

I have received a request to speak after the Minister from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I get the impression from that short reply that the Minister does not understand the gravity of what was said around the Chamber. I understand that we are coming back to this issue and Clause 24 on another occasion, but in his description of the OEP’s relationship to the Secretary of State he asked Members to “examine the Bill”. I am looking at Clause 24, which says:

“The Secretary of State may issue guidance to the OEP on the matters listed in section 22(6) (OEP’s enforcement policy).”


If that were not bad enough, the next sentence is:

“The OEP must have regard to the guidance in … preparing its enforcement policy, and ... exercising its enforcement functions.”


That drives a coach and horses through what he has said.

I come back to his point about the Climate Change Committee. Whatever the arguments are about it—and we all believe it is a hugely fantastic organisation for this country—it does not have an enforcement role in terms of the Government; the OEP does, and that is the big difference. Perhaps he could give those items more attention.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for this question, which relates to ministerial interference in the OEP. Ministers cannot set its programme of activity or in any way improperly influence its decision-making. The Bill does not provide Ministers with powers of direction over the OEP; it requires the OEP to act objectively and impartially and to have regard to the need to act transparently. If it does not, it is breaking the law. The OEP will be free to consider and highlight any instances where is a suspicion of any kind of improper ministerial interference in its decisions.

I know that we will be coming to the issue of ministerial guidance—although I forget which group of amendments it is in—but I will say that the OEP is under no duty to follow guidance if it feels that the guidance is in any sense improper. Indeed, it would be illegal for a Minister to suggest guidance that undermines the independence of the OEP. As I say, we will be coming to this later on and I hope that I will able to address some of the noble Lord’s concerns more completely then.

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[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I have not taken part directly in these important debates around the OEP, mainly because of the fear of repetition. There are many noble Lords far wiser and more eloquent than me to discuss this. However, I share many of the concerns that we have heard around the funding and, as we are now discussing, the independence of the OEP. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will take on board the serious concerns of many around the Committee, including myself. I hope that he and his officials will consult with noble Lords before coming back with the Bill on Report. If he does not, he may find himself in rather more difficulties than I would like. There are lingering doubts about this.

There have been some very wise words. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said that it was important for the OEP to be seen to be independent. The problem is that there is distrust on both sides. The Government’s position will be that they are distrustful, fearing that a strongly independent OEP will run riot and cause many problems—although we would probably argue that, if that is what is necessary, that is what will have to happen. Others think that the Government’s intentions are to make sure that that does not happen and so are curtailing the power of the OEP.

As I have often discovered since I arrived in this House, I take on board the very wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I say to the Government that it is just possible that having a strongly independent OEP could help, because the public will not necessarily believe a government Minister. If the OEP were not seen to be independent enough, when it made a decision that the public did not like and went against them, they would consider it a government stitch-up. However, if there were a strongly independent OEP, they would have to accept that it was an independent decision.

I hope that this can be resolved because this is a very important part of the Bill. If we are to have faith in how the legislation works, we need that strongly independent OEP.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I start by quoting the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who said that the OEP was “adequate”. Remembering that word, I will quote Michael Gove, who said in July 2019, when he was Environment Secretary and the Bill started its oh-so-slow process—procession, we should say—through Parliament:

“The measures in our Environment Bill will position the UK as a world leader, ensuring that after EU Exit environmental ambition and accountability are placed more clearly than ever before at the heart of government.”


Is that a description of “adequate”? I think not.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. Guess what—I am going to argue the opposite.

Dame Sarah Gilbert received a well-deserved standing ovation at Wimbledon today for her pioneering work on vaccines. I echo those cheers and that standing ovation, but I note that that achievement required experimentation on monkeys and mice. I oppose these amendments—a whole range from Amendments 97 to 297 and in between —because, in one way or another, they seek to make animal testing ever more regulated. There is even an inference, by positing it in an animal welfare context and with this emphasis on the last resort, that this vital part of scientific research is somehow a necessary evil that should be abolished and is morally dubious.

The UK system of regulating animal testing and experiments is already the tightest in the world, and researchers complain that they can obtain licences only if they clearly demonstrate that there are no alternatives. Some have to wait so long to secure approval for small amendments to research licences that the research becomes outdated and has to be abandoned. The whole field is too heavily bureaucratised; certainly, no more bureaucracy is needed. I am worried already about the Bill, without it being tightened up by these amendments.

I have long felt queasy about the “reduce” and “replace” elements of the three Rs. Endless attempts at placing restrictions on the types or numbers of animals used in experiments can, I fear, only stifle medical and human safety progress, with their positive benefits for humanity. For the record, and I know this is medical research but I want to remind people of the kind of benefits we mean, the use of dogs to extract insulin to treat diabetes, the experiments on armadillos that helped develop a cure for leprosy, and the wonder drug levodopa used on people with Parkinson’s—if you know anyone who has had that disease and taken that drug, you will know what a wonderful gain it is—would not have been developed without the insights gained from research involving animals. Think of a world without pacemakers, heart transplants, open-heart surgery, safe anaesthetics, polio vaccines and cancer treatments that mean survival rates have doubled over the last 40 years. So many people alive today—in fact, so many in this Chamber—are here only because of the role of animal research in the battle against nature and natural diseases. That is even before we talk about Covid vaccines.

Reducing the use of animals in testing or medical science would be a backwards step. The truth is that, if we are to fully understand and find more treatments for Covid-19, we will need to do more animal research, not less—not reduce the number of animals, but use multiple species. There will be lots of failed experiments, which some will say is a waste, but that is what will eventually mean that we find answers and cures. As outlined in Nature magazine recently:

“Monkeys and mice tell researchers different things about infection, shedding light on factors such as … the immune system or how the virus spreads.”


Whatever the testing is for, we have to say that this is one result of human ingenuity, of life-saving problem-solvers, and it should be celebrated and encouraged.

Instead, there is a faintly misanthropic whiff to this constant demand to reduce animal research, as well as a focus on animal welfare rather than human welfare. We all know how animal rights activists have adopted anthropomorphic language to discredit animal research: mice are “tortured”, pigs are “sacrificed” and dogs are “mutilated”—we have heard about “barbarity” today. This leads to a narrative of scientists portrayed as though they get perverse pleasure from sadistically experimenting on animals.

I am not trying to sugar-coat vivisection or this kind of testing. I know that it involves gore and, ultimately, destroying animals. But this is not wanton animal cruelty; it is driven by a desire to save human life and have a safer society. That is why I have so objected over the years to the way that these scientists and researchers, and the research institutions and the chemical and pharmaceutical companies, whether private or public, have been vilified and harassed—named and shamed in a culture of fear. These scientists and researchers should have nothing to be ashamed of; indeed, I want not only to reject these amendments but to go on the offensive about the moral good of research on animals. If Sarah Gilbert deserves a standing ovation, so do they. I rather feel as if these amendments are a bit of a dispiriting slow handclap.

Let us not get muddled up here. We should not allow rhetoric about animal welfare to stand in the way of human welfare and the alleviation of human suffering or making the world safer. Some may think this human-centric and unsympathetic to animals but, rather, I am rather worried about affording a moral equivalence between animals and humans. I refute the caricature that this equates to indifference to animals.

As it pays attention to wildlife and with its focus on biodiversity, the Bill inevitably also has a focus on animal protection policies. That means our gaze is on animals, but we must resist seeing issues through an animal rights framework that upgrades and exaggerates the capacity of animals, while logically and philosophically down- grading and diminishing the agency and consciousness of humans—capacities that animals do not possess. This careless interchangeability between human and animal rights and capacities has been raised as a problem in relation to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill by a number of noble Lords.

I hope that the Minister and the Government will reject these amendments and, without rehearsing Cartesian dualism, note that it is precisely human consciousness that allows us to legislate for how we should better organise our relationship with the natural world. It also allows us so much progress and scientific innovation, so necessary to much in the Bill and vital to post-Covid prosperity and health.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I listened to that speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, with great interest. It was a Second Reading speech for the animal sentience Bill, but I do not know that it argues against any of these amendments, which are just about avoiding the use of animal testing except as a last resort. I do not see that contribution as entirely relevant to the Bill, but I am sure it will be repeated in that other Second Reading later in the year.

I take a particular interest in UK REACH because, when I had the privilege of chairing the EU Environment Sub-Committee, we did a number of reports on REACH. Of course, it is not UK REACH at all; it is called that, but it is actually “GB REACH” because Northern Ireland is still part of the single market. UK REACH does not apply to the Province.

With that clarification, I welcome the speeches of all the noble Baronesses and was very pleased to add my name to the first amendment. However, I want to come to something a little deeper and test the Minister on it. We can talk about animal testing being a last resort but also change the bar of where that last resort is. That is probably far more important than this amendment, although I support it absolutely. Duplication of this testing is necessary because of the existence of UK REACH. Given the hard Brexit that we had and the decision to come out of the single market, we had no alternative. Even if we had wanted it, the EU Commission and Mr Barnier would not have liked or allowed it. However, that will cost British business—this is undisputed by the Government—£10 billion, or something like that.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I have received one request to speak after the Minister from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that excellent reply and information but, as we are in Committee, I would like to press the Government on their current view of divergence in regulation, because it has a huge effect on this industry. I also want to take this time to correct myself, in that the cost to the industry is £1 billion and not £10 billion—so we have already saved £9 billion this evening.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I think the current estimate of costs is actually significantly less than £1 billion. I have come to the exhaustive end of my notes on that specific question so, if the noble Lord does not mind, I will write to him.