Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Teverson and Lord Cameron of Dillington

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

Debate between Lord Teverson and Lord Cameron of Dillington

Committee stage
Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, as this is my first intervention in Committee, and for the purposes of all the stages of the Bill, I declare my interests as a retired farmer and landowner, chair of an internet travel business and chair of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology research.

Most of these amendments stress the importance of the Government taking seriously the planning of people’s enjoyment of nature and all that the countryside has to offer. Other noble Lords have outlined the advantages for people and their health, and indeed for nature itself. I am pleased to be following the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, with his knowledge and expertise in the subject.

I very much support the principle that the Government should get involved in the promotion of access, as it is no use leaving these things to chance. If it is worth a taxpayer paying land managers to produce a landscape or habitats of which we can be proud, it is vital that the same taxpayer should be enabled, and even encouraged, to enjoy the fruits of their spending. As Professor Dasgupta has indicated, our countryside and its wildlife are extremely valuable. I ask noble Lords: would an artist complete a wonderful painting without thinking about how they were going to display it? Would a drama company put on a play without thinking seriously about attracting an audience? In my view, the taxpayer deserves no less. The Government must set out how they are going to facilitate and improve the public enjoyment of our countryside and its nature.

I will add a note of caution to what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said. As the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, said, it is relevant that, while Scotland has a population density of 65 people per square kilometre, and Norway, another country that she mentioned, has 15 people per square kilometre, and the UK has 278 people per square kilometre, for England by itself the figure is actually 432 people per square kilometre. We are a very crowded country, and all land uses therefore have to be carefully planned, although I believe that where access is available it should be well-promoted.

I sat on the Glover review of the management and uses of our national parks and AONBs. We are still waiting for the Government’s response to it, although I am told that it is extremely imminent. I remain hopeful that that response will be a first step in the right direction of improving people’s enjoyment of our natural environment.

I turn to Amendment 58, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. The issue is an old chestnut that this House has touched on many times before, and indeed Governments and local authorities have skirted around it for decades without really resolving it. The NERC Act 2006 tried to put it to bed, as the noble Lord said, and partially succeeded, but the despoilation of green lanes remains a thorny issue. The problem, as he said, is that these lanes, made for use by horses, and by horses and carts and carriages, have become an attraction for four-wheel-drive vehicles, trail bikes and quad bikes. In some rare instances—I stress that they are rare because mostly coexistence works quite well—they have become so popular, and, frankly, so irresponsibly used, that parts of the green lane have become almost impassable mud baths. That often makes those sections impossible to pass for the very horses and carriages that they were originally intended for, and even sometimes for ramblers on foot. Some of the photographs that I have seen are not attractive.

There is also the problem of local farmers who have permitted rights over the green lanes, usually to feed their stock on the nearby hill. On rare occasions, even they have found it hard to get access to their stock because of the state of the green lane. It is not common, as I say, but it is a problem.

When the Select Committee looked at the NERC Act 12 years on, in 2018, we recognised the problems and the controversy between the various users and suggested that if the rules were clear, as well as easy and inexpensive to use, the small number of problem sections could be dealt with by local authorities imposing traffic regulation orders, or TROs. These TROs could either ban motorised vehicles altogether or limit them to summer months, or even just summer weekends, or whatever. But the point is that they have to be put in place cheaply and without bother by the local authorities, which do not have the money to put into them at the moment. Nor is the legal situation very clear. If these problems could be dealt with simply, firmly and, I hope, cheaply, and on a localised basis, that would be a successful result.

The Government’s response to our report was to ask the motor vehicle stakeholder group to produce recommendations for how the TRO process could be used more efficiently by highway authorities. The Government indicated that they would consider bringing forward legislative or regulatory changes in the light of the stakeholder group’s report. But as far as I know, no new enabling regulatory changes have been brought forward, and it would seem that the issue continues to be controversial. I am not sure whether a new consultation, as proposed by the amendment, would actually help the situation—I expect the views of the various participants are by now well known to all. As I say, in 2018, Defra was expecting to bring forward measures to simplify the TRO system very soon, and maybe now it should, frankly, just get on with it.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

I put my name to Amendment 8, and it is perhaps worth reminding ourselves what that says given the debate that we have just had. It says

“public access to and enjoyment of the natural environment”,

but it does not say whether that should be urban or rural.

My noble friend Lady Scott emphasised small spaces, and I very much welcome the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who emphasised urban space and greenery, which is much more accessible to the majority of our population. That reminds us of something which has always been true: in the countryside, perhaps as well as in urban areas, once people are at the car park, or wherever they decide to park their car—in a national park, an area of outstanding natural beauty, or by a nature reserve—the amount of travel that they do from that point is extremely limited.

One of the key things about this is public health and social prescribing, which people have been talking about. I am not an expert in that area, but in my role as chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, we have decided to work closely with the local health and well-being board to make sure that we have a combined aim and goal to improve people’s lives by their access to the environment and to green spaces, which needs to be frequent rather than occasional—small bites, rather than occasional large sorties into the countryside.

I say to the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, that access to the countryside tends to be fairly limited, but I have to agree with him: during last summer in particular, I saw pictures on television of improvised barbecues and camping on beaches and areas of Dartmoor National Park. That is clearly an issue. But when I think about that I wonder what the equivalent is in an urban area. Yes, there is probably equal aggravation from litter and barbecues in parks, or whatever, but the point is that, in urban contexts, normally there are people there, and there is a budget, to clear this up. In the countryside, national parks, and in particular areas of outstanding natural beauty, have very small budgets for rectifying these sorts of issues that are created by minorities.

As the noble Viscount said, there is an issue with fly-tipping; it is an increasing problem and I suspect that, last year, it was partly because tips—I have been told off for using that word, and should say public waste disposal facilities—were closed for quite a long period of time. There is a real need there. I identify entirely with farmers who find that there is waste-tipping on their land and suddenly it becomes their responsibility. We somehow need to transfer the way that it works in urban and suburban areas, where there is a community responsibility to put that fly-tipping right, to the countryside. Obviously, the most important thing is to try to prevent it in the first place.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Teverson and Lord Cameron of Dillington

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 4th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I repeat my declaration of interest as co-chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, as one of my amendments mentions local nature partnerships.

I was grateful to the Minister for his letter of 4 March, which I think was to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. In the passage dealing with “Stock definition areas”, the Minister stated:

“One of the matters the Department will consider is whether and how it could take a more regionalised approach to quota management.”


I welcome that statement very strongly. One of my aims with this group of amendments is to try to understand what is in the Minister’s, and indeed the Government’s, mind.

We are constantly reminded that the Bill has been knitted together by the various devolved authorities along with Defra and the Secretary of State. That is great: the devolved authorities can go off and agree their authority in terms of how fisheries management works. However, in England we do not have devolution at all; the whole of England is treated as one. I feel strongly that that advantage of devolution in the rest of the UK should be allowed to happen within England as well. I do not see why England should be at a disadvantage here. There are very different fisheries; even within south-west England there are significant differences, let alone further along the south coast, and certainly once you get to the North Sea. There is a very wide range of fisheries, and there will be a very wide range of fisheries plans.

I am sure the Minister will be able to pick holes in this amendment in all sorts of ways, but what I am trying to say is that there needs to be a method of devolution within England around fisheries management in how the industry operates that goes beyond bog-standard consultation, which, to be honest, is very limited in its effect on the way that it works. What I have suggested—I am not saying that this suggestion is perfect; I am just looking to the Government to take the issue seriously and come back to what has been suggested in that letter—is a way to a devolved situation.

I suggest that the major ports should have an advisory board—I am not saying that it should be an executive board, so I am being very modest in my aspirations—that should be able to have a major influence over the management plans. In fact, in many ways the advisory board should be the initiator of the local or regional strategy. It should then meet to go through the issues and make suggestions to the Secretary of State before the draft management plan comes out. When the draft management plan has been produced, the advisory board would then have a second bite at considering that and making recommendations. This is a process, and the amendment is very process driven.

I am trying to present a possible model of a way to involve and get expertise in a real sense—not just in a passive consultation—to make sure that these management plans are workable, have real buy-in from those that are affected by and have to operate them, and include the organs of the state, whether it be Natural England, the MMO or Defra. These should be able to participate in the process as well.

I am looking for the Minister to set out how we are going to achieve this in England. This will makes a difference not just to the fishery but also—as we have talked about so much—to the local communities, particularly coastal communities, which are affected. This allows that wider dimension to affect the local benefit of these fisheries plans.

One of the possible methods of devolution is already established. IFCAs are already responsible for management in quite a broad sense, not just in fisheries but in conservation more generally up to the six-mile limit. There are local fisheries all along the English coastline that operate within the six-mile limit. These organisations are already well represented by stakeholders, from local authorities, NGOs and the fishing community. Could we not use them to be able to have a strong power —in fact, executive power is what I am suggesting—over their own local fisheries? By doing so I believe we will have much greater buy-in and much more effective management plans.

I am not sure what the principle of this Government is regarding devolution at this stage, but I get the impression that they are keen to push power downwards where appropriate. I feel this is an area where that could be done successfully, but I stress again that this is a model and not necessarily the definitive answer. I beg to move.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group, particularly Amendments 98 and 99. It is an interesting idea to have the IFCAs involved in determining fisheries’ opportunities.

There does not seem to be much respect for the MMO among smaller fishermen. In our committee last year, for instance, we heard complaints that it tended to take a short-term view of micromanaging individual small fishermen’s quota—that is, the quota for the under-10 boats. As opposed to issuing an annual quota, which would let them decide when and how they should be managed, the MMO issued weekly or monthly quotas, which did not go down well.

Since then, I have spoken to fishermen operating in Cornwall, south Devon and south Dorset. While I have no sense of the veracity of what I heard, it is clear that respect is pretty low. One said: “The MMO do short term quota fixes, sometimes on a daily basis. People go out and come back and find their quota has changed.” Another said: “With the new catch app, a skipper has to compulsorily weigh up his 20 species of fish before he lands, while meanwhile the coastguard says, ‘Do not work the app while steering your boat.’ Who do you obey?”. The last one is pretty damning—again, I am just repeating quotes; I have no idea about the truth of them—“The MMO is always looking for ways to prosecute the under-10s industry, which is already on its knees.”

As I say, I do not know where the blame lies for the breakdown in communication and trust, but clearly something needs to change. It might be worth looking at the more democratic and wider interests of the IFCAs—as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, was saying—to see whether they could be involved in the setting and monitoring of the inshore fleet quota.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Teverson and Lord Cameron of Dillington

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 4th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. It is always useful to go back to the Government’s own approach to negotiations published in February. In part 2 of the document, headed “Other Agreements”—maybe fisheries did not quite get the profile it should have done in the document—paragraph 3d states:

“The UK is committed to acting as a responsible coastal state and to working closely with the EU and its Member States and other coastal states on the sustainable management of shared stocks in line with our international obligations.”


How could I ever improve on that? It is absolutely on the button.

It is therefore completely in line with government policy that we should put those agreements within the statements. That would make the statements far more comprehensive. This is a good part of the Bill, in that it deals with a lot of the areas that we are concerned about, but there are gaps in two areas. The first is in respect of those agreements that have been reached on adjacent stocks. Let us not forget that something like 80% of UK fish stocks are shared with other EEZs, so it is a positive thing to include that in those lists. Secondly, given the Government’s right focus on complying with international agreements—the Minister has referred to it many times—it would be good to boast and be proud of how we have implemented and complied with those obligations. That is obvious and would be helpful, and I hope the Government would not find it difficult to agree.

On Amendment 34, it seems to me that that part of the Bill is mealy-mouthed. We ought to be able to go beyond sustainability, whereas that clause seems to suggest that sustainability is all that we need to aim for. It may be the way it is phrased, but it is almost as if we need to stop once we have achieved sustainability or MSY. I want to go beyond that to a much more bountiful harvest, if that is possible.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 31 in this grouping because I think it is important that we put in place agreements with other nations who host most of the stock we live on.

When I first heard that a new UK fisheries policy was one of the primary reasons for Brexit, I scoffed, because surely fish do not understand national borders. As we know, they move about and we can never have a fishing policy without close co-operation with our neighbours. But that was before I understood the absurd principles of relative stability and how our total allowable catch was based on fishing records from the mid-1970s, when our large fleet was fishing around Iceland before the cod wars and our inshore fleet kept very few records, and before climate change moved our national dish of cod into northern waters. Did your Lordships know that we are only 8% self-sufficient in cod? Furthermore, we currently consume in the UK three times the total EU quota of cod. We are no longer blessed with being—as I was taught in my childhood—an island built on coal and surrounded by cod. Climate change has changed all that. So, to some extent, our fishing arrangements with Norway, the Faroes, Iceland and even Russia are going to be as important as our fishing arrangements with the EU.

But the problem for the EU fleets is that their catch, like ours, has moved north. Therefore, they catch a lot of their fish in UK waters. The European Fisheries Alliance reckons that cutting them off from our waters would slash profits for the EU fleets in half, leading to job losses for at least 6,000 people. A fish war with the EU, or at least clashes between boats, is not such a remote possibility, which is why the EU Commission has given itself the powers to command any or all EU fishing boats to return to port. They have also allocated funds from the EMFF to compensate fishermen forced to retire due to Brexit.

The EU is also gearing itself up for the possibility of tariffs or other restrictions on the 60% to 70% of the UK catch that is currently exported to Europe. I have often thought that one of the best ways we could spend the replacement for European Maritime and Fisheries Fund money would be to have a massive marketing campaign to stop us eating so much cod and persuade the great British public to eat more of the fish we produce. Sadly, I suspect that the great British public could not afford to do that, even if they were so inclined.

We all hope that it will not come to clashes at sea, but the point of this amendment is to prevent future clashes with our neighbours while at the same time ensuring that we use the best up-to-date science to sustain our fishing stocks. Zonal allocation is a far better way of distributing quota among national fishing fleets than the historically based quotas. The seas are always changing, and so are the fish within them; this amendment is an effort to take account of that fact.

However, the problem is that looking at relative stability terrifies the Europeans—opening up a whole can of worms for them, from the Black Sea to the Baltic —even if they know in their hearts that it is the right thing to do. We have to enter into very serious negotiations with not only them but our other fishing neighbours in order to achieve sustainable fisheries.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Teverson and Lord Cameron of Dillington

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 2nd March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

Absolutely. I agree with that. That is what I am saying. Given the new opportunity that we have, we should take advantage of being an independent coastal state. The Bill does nothing to change the status quo in any way. This is one thing we can do—lay down a marker on the ownership of those stocks. As to how those stocks are distributed, the amendment does not prevent them being leased for a period, rented or allocated without charge. We are trying to make the point that, at the end of the day, these stocks belong to the nation and not to any individual.

Coming back to the point made by the noble Lord, 17 million people voted for Brexit and for taking control of our own resources. They did not vote for—in relation to fishing—a profitable industry keeping all the advantages that it has at the moment. They were thinking more of the smaller fleets and the fact that those fishing stocks should belong to us rather than to individuals and perhaps, if you would like to call them that, to the elite of the fishing industry at the moment. I beg to move.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment. At the beginning of last year, in Committee in the Commons on the earlier incarnation of the Bill, the Minister—who is now Secretary of State—George Eustice MP, said:

“I do not believe we need a statement that fisheries resources are a national asset or public property, because that is self-evidently the case and our common law has always held as much.”—[Official Report, Commons, Fisheries Bill Committee, 13/12/18; col. 285.]


At the time I took that as gospel. I admire his legal confidence—I say that in a “Yes Minister” context—because I am not certain that the legal confidence is supported by all involved in the industry. There is a famous case where Justice Cranston suggested that there was a type of property right attributed to a fixed quota allocation and that owners would probably need to be given in the region of seven years’ notice of the intention to move away from those FQA units as a type of property right. Such a legal hitch—this is important—might hamper the Government’s intention to move away from relative stability to zonal allocation.

The point I am making is that if the Government believe that quota and marine stocks belong to the nation as a whole, it cannot possibly do any harm to make that clear in the Bill right at the start, so there is absolutely no doubt throughout the industry; and, more importantly, that in any future court case, trying to prove the opposite will founder on the rock of this legislation, set out in 2020, at the start of a new fishing era by the express will of Parliament.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Teverson and Lord Cameron of Dillington

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, in rising to support this amendment, I should first declare my interests as a farmer and landowner with renewable schemes on my property which I am involved with financially. I try to encourage others to get involved in such schemes as well. I want to talk in particular about the future of our housing infrastructure. I hope that a lot of new houses are going to be built over the next few years and it is therefore important to think about these issues at this stage. I want to take a particularly narrow line, which I hope the Committee will excuse.

It may be that my remarks would be better targeted at Amendment 95ZBB tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, but I have only just come across it so I am not quite sure what it is all about. The difference between some of the continental housing developments I have seen in recent years and ours is the much greater frequency of community heating schemes in both rural areas and new build housing estates in towns. For some reason our developers seem to shy away from community schemes, preferring individual gas-fired boilers or, in rural areas, oil-fired boilers fitted in each and every house. That must be very inefficient. I know that we have the renewable heat incentive, but clearly it is not quite enough and it tends to be used in community buildings such as churches and village halls, as well as on farms and in factories so that the heating system can be linked to one or two houses. These are quite small schemes. Plugging a new estate of 400 or 500 houses into a community heat source is really quite rare.

[Lord Teverson]

It may be useful if I tell the noble Lord that the RHI is not applicable to new builds, and there is a distortion because of that. We do not see community heating systems in new builds because the RHI does not apply to them.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

I thank the noble Lord for that explanation, which certainly underlines the point I am trying to make. As I have said, I hope that lots of new housing estates are built over the next few years, so DECC and DCLG ought to look very carefully at this issue and consider how community heating schemes might be improved. The advantages are huge. For a start, they are much more efficient and thus would justify proper investment either in the new type of boiler that is required or in the overall management of the heat. In rural areas, for instance, it is often hard to justify piping gas into villages, which is obviously the cheapest form of heat, but it could be much more worth while in cases where there is a major community heating unit so that gas can be brought in to provide fuel for that one particular source of heat. That is certainly better for climate change than putting oil boilers into each and every house because that involves a huge waste of oil and energy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson]

As I said, I am sympathetic and understand that. However, that is also true of other parts of the economy. and I am just making the point about how far one could extend the argument. I hope that we can prove that this works, although there is still quite a challenge, and I have an amendment on some bits of it later on. At this point, I just want to say that it is an excellent initiative and that at least we are on the first few steps of this process, even if we do not get perfection straightaway. I fully understand the points made by the noble Baroness, but this is a great start and we should get on with this, prove that it works and move on after that point.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I, too, support the idea of community involvement in projects. As I said in my Second Reading speech, I support Amendment 94AA in view of the possibility of local opposition causing projects to fail. Fracking is very controversial. It seems to me that if you could involve the local community in a fracking project in the same way as the Government are trying to do with renewables, it would be very beneficial.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Teverson and Lord Cameron of Dillington

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I very much support my noble friend’s amendment, to which I have added my name. I was looking through Schedule 9 to the Wildlife and Countryside Act to see what sort of things were in it. There is everything from budgerigars to Egyptian geese, night herons and parakeets, so there is quite a bit there. The thing that struck me about the importance of this issue is that if we look at Cornwall not as a nation—which of course it is—but as a sovereign nation, its national bird, which features on its coat of arms with a fisherman and a miner, is of course a chough. It is widely known in Britain as the Cornish chough. Regrettably, it disappeared from Cornwall in 1947, but I am pleased to say that it reintroduced itself from Ireland in 2001 and since then has been fairly active in reproduction and has succeeded in west Cornwall. If we went back and passed this legislation in 2000 and looked upon Cornwall as an ecological area, we would now see the chough as an alien species, despite the fact that it is our national bird. I use that as a broad illustration of the issue. Having said that, it is an important issue. I absolutely support this part of the Bill and see this as a very important area.

We really should not mention Japanese knotweed, although that is in Schedule 9. If we are not allowed to talk about Japanese knotweed I could call it Polygonum cuspidatum.

This is an important area, but clearly animals and plants that have been part of the British habitat over a long period are native species and can return. We all know of important reintroduction programmes that have taken place. We should welcome them rather than outlaw them.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I, too, strongly support this section of the Bill. It was very encouraging this morning at the session that some of us attended at Defra to hear that the UK is ahead of the game vis-à-vis Europe in terms of trying to control and monitor invasive species. The more that we can do it, and the quicker that we can do it, the better. However, I am not certain about Amendment 65A; I am not sure that past claims to being native mean that they would not necessarily be invasive now. I agree about certain species—red kites are one, and perhaps the bustard will be another—but let us take a species that has been in the news recently: beavers. Actually, in spite of the newspapers saying that beavers have recently been discovered in the wild in the south-west, they have been running around in the south-west for some years now, as far as I am aware. They say that it is the first time they have around for 800 years but we do not quite know what effect they will have. Their habit of damming streams and blocking rivers—bear in mind that there have been floods recently in the south-west—might be a problem. I feel that that situation would need to be looked at.

Turning to my native Scotland, there is a suggestion that we might introduce wolves there. I have an interest to declare here: my ancestor Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, who was known as the great Sir Ewen, apart from spending all his life in the latter half of the 1600s killing Englishmen, for which he got knighted by the English king as one tends to do—do not ask me why—also killed the last wolf in Scotland. I have always been led to believe that he swung it round his head and wrapped it around a tree, but that may be a detail too far.

The situation has changed dramatically for wolves in terms of both population density and livestock density in Scotland. So I do not think that you can put a provision like this in the Bill. Every species has to be judged according to its particular habits and interests in relation to the countryside today.

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[Lord Teverson]

If I may interrupt the noble Lord, in Cornwall recently—last year, in fact—a company with which I have familial connections produced grey squirrel pasties, which were extremely successful, and there were no demonstrations whatever outside the shop.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

I am sure that the appetites of the Corns are something to be praised in this respect. My point is that I hope that this principle will not be too rigorously followed when dealing with invasive alien species in future.

Energy Bill

Debate between Lord Teverson and Lord Cameron of Dillington

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson]

I am sorry but I did not quite hear that.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

The noble Lord was talking about the common fisheries policy. The North Sea regional advisory committee has been a huge success, and probably is the greatest success, of the common fisheries policy in the past 10 years.

[Lord Teverson]

I absolutely agree that there are places for advisory boards. There are examples of where that works and I am a member of some advisory boards. However, they tend not to do quite what I believe this body is around to do. I accept much, although not all, of the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. The issue is that we have to get a much better way of governing at department level. We probably have to reform how the Civil Service works in terms of corporate memory. I have spent much of my life in the private sector and my experience is that its corporate memory is probably far worse than that of government. Perhaps it is not true of some in the oil and energy industries, but certainly in many industries there is not a lot of corporate knowledge. Certainly, there is no more than there is in government departments.

It may have been more of an executive authority but in the rail industry, which perhaps has similar levels or timeframes for investment, the Strategic Rail Authority was brought into existence by the previous Government and abolished because it did not work in relation to departments. Ultimately, departments had to take control. Of course, we have now seen problems with franchising but I do not think that the SRA was the answer to that.

Another area in which I would criticise the detail of this amendment is that the list of areas it looks at avoids energy efficiency and demand management, which are fundamental parts of how we think about the economy. Although I agree that it could be varied in the way it is written, from the description of this committee, I worry that it will again look particularly at building or planning energy in terms of capacity and generating capacity. It is interesting and dispiriting that two weeks ago, when the National Grid asked for tenders for demand reduction and for the demand-side response to looking at the future possible energy crisis, there was generally a very negative reaction from the press and wider than that. That is exactly how we should look at this area. We should not necessarily look at planning for more and more plant, although that would be part of it, but look at the demand side as well.

As regards why we are in the situation we are, I suspect that we will get through it although I entirely accept that the margins are less than we would want them to be. Through the Climate Change Act and the whole area of the climate change challenge, we have changed direction quite substantially in what we expect our generating and our energy industries to do. With not a U-turn but certainly a 45-degree turn on what we expect from our generating industry, it does not necessarily surprise me that, through that policy change in areas where there are long gestation periods in investment and planning, we have this difficulty at the moment. That is not necessarily a function of the way in which government works—necessarily imperfect though it is.

My noble friend Lord Deben mentioned the climate change committee. To me, that is the most important committee in this area by far. It may not be a complete substitute and it clearly is not for the energy side, but the Government really need to take notice of it. On the broader agenda, the climate change committee as set up and put into legislation is a good way of doing it. In terms of infrastructure planning, the case is far from proven.

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[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. I will not repeat all the arguments that I and others have already given for the 2030 decarbonisation target. I seem to remember the Government’s response to that was, “Yes, probably a good idea but not yet”. Frankly, their emissions target of 450 grams per kilowatt hour in 2044 is just laughable. Bearing in mind that even if all our electricity is produced at that time by unabated gas, in 2044 our emissions would be around 300 grams per kilowatt hour. I cannot understand why this figure has been put in the Bill. It is absurd to set such a target for 2044.

To save me jumping to my feet on the next amendment we will discuss, I would like to say that I would prefer to see a target of 300 grams in 2029. I prefer to combine the two amendments, which would make a lot more sense. As the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, has said, we have to keep driving this CCS agenda. As I said in the previous debate, we have to be economically ambitious here, so I very much support this agenda and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I, too, have great concern about the very late date here. It seems that this, perhaps ironically, is the one area where I would hope to put a maximum, which might be 450, in primary legislation but give the Secretary of State discretion to tighten that standard through secondary legislation as years go by. I would expect to do that in most other areas of life, perhaps through European legislation for car emissions, white goods and all those things where we expect to tighten emission and efficiency limits over time. If a number is put in the Bill for the next 31 years, obviously it could be changed by primary legislation but that would take time and would be difficult. Rather than mess around with an EPS, we might as well just say, “We want to stop any coal generating after 2020 and we will let the rest of it do what we want”. That is the effect of writing the Bill as it stands.

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[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for tabling this amendment, which has prompted a further debate on this additional aspect of EPS. During our debate so far, there has been a good deal of consensus among noble Lords on ensuring that the UK remains an attractive option for those looking to invest in a low-carbon electricity sector, and on the importance of gas generation. Noble Lords have also noted that the key to meeting that objective is providing investors with certainty about the regulatory environment that will govern their assets.

The Government’s gas generation strategy, published in December, set out our view that, along with low-carbon generation, we expect gas generation to continue to play a major role in our electricity mix over the coming decades as we decarbonise our electricity system, providing flexible back-up to increasing levels of intermittent generation. It also said that we are likely to need significant investment in new gas plants, in part to replace older coal, gas and nuclear plants as they are retired from the system, with much of that investment likely to be in the 2020s. It is therefore vital that we provide investors in new gas plants with the degree of certainty needed to ensure investment comes forward. Certainty over the EPS is part of that, and grandfathering the EPS limit until the end of 2044 will—

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

A gas power station produces emissions of 300 grams per kilowatt hour, coal 600 grams. Hence we have the target of 450 grams. So, if we are trying to encourage more gas, why must we have an emissions target of 150 grams per kilowatt hour more than the 300 that gas emits?

[Lord Teverson]

Perhaps there is something I misunderstand here in the argument. This is not just about grandfathering, as I read it, it is about new plants in 2044. It will still only be 450. To get investor certainty, yes, we need the grandfathering, because once you have built the plants, as with cars, you are stuck with that. I would accept that once you have built them you would expect them to go through their normal life before any major refurbishment; you would expect that to stay at the emissions limit applying when that plant was first operated. However, this includes new plants, as I understand it, right up to 2044. That is not related to investor certainty, because plants at the moment would have grandfathering rights, but if we moved this date later on we could have different rules, and that would not affect investor certainty.