Brexit: Environmental Enforcement Agency

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to establish an independent environmental enforcement agency before the United Kingdom leaves the European Union.

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

My Lords, on 12 November last year, the Secretary of State set out plans to consult on a new independent and statutory body to hold government, and potentially public authorities, to account on environmental commitments. We will carry out a consultation early this year on its remit and functions. I do not want to pre-empt the result of the consultation, and so at this stage cannot be definitive about timescales for establishing the new body.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the Minister for his reply, but I am curious about the consultation. Will it be made public so that we have a chance to examine it in this House before the withdrawal Bill comes through, so that we are well informed about exactly what we are voting on?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I assure your Lordships that it will be a full and proper consultation. We want to have detailed consideration with stakeholders and your Lordships so that we get the right decision because we recognise that something needs to be done to fill what we acknowledge is a governance gap. I am not sure about the precise timings, but the whole purpose of an early consultation is so that we can move this forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the whole basis of having a consultation is not to prejudge anything. I assure your Lordships that this is serious work on a serious subject in which, yes, government and public bodies need to be held to account. There could be a range of ways in which that can be secured. A number of your Lordships have mentioned fines, but it could be through the provision of advice or annual reports to Parliament. I do not want to rule anything in or out because we are having a genuine consultation.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, may I recommend to the Government that they devise principles on which to base this new body? You cannot have a new body that is entirely designed by the public. You need to have principles—for example, that the polluter pays—through which the Government can be held to account. You cannot devise a new, strong enforcement body without any principles underlying it.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness because part of my script is that we will be setting out plans to consult on a new policy statement precisely on the environmental principles that will apply post our exit. It is absolutely right that one principle in the current system of environmental legislation is that the polluter pays. In the proposed consultation we will explore the scope and content of a new statement on environmental principles.

Recycling

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

The Minister clearly will understand that incineration capacity is increasing quite fast but, at the same time, the residual waste stream that goes to incinerators is less than it should be to keep incinerators going at full capacity. What are the Government doing to encourage local councils not to support incineration of materials that could be recycled? We want to increase recycling, but we will not do so if it is all going to incineration.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, this issue is fairly complicated. The first thing that we have concentrated on in this cycle is prevention of waste. We all need to concentrate on how much less should go into landfill, how much less should go into incineration, and how much we can reuse and recycle. With incineration, we must remember that there is some energy recovery, but we certainly need to do better in this country on reuse and recycling. I will perhaps want to discuss the matter with the noble Baroness in greater detail, given the time.

Plans to Improve the Natural Environment and Animal Welfare

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is always very useful for me to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, because it pushes up my adrenaline levels, which is obviously very good for speaking. So I thank him for that. I thank also the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, for securing the debate and allowing us to air our concerns before the Brexit legislation comes to your Lordships’ House.

Noble Lords have mentioned that we are now at a crossroads and that it is incredibly important for the natural environment and animal welfare to figure strongly in our minds as we go through the processes of the next few months. We will face a number of choices on these issues and it is clear that there is a lot of divergence. Do we improve our environmental and animal protections and safeguard nature, or do we burn them in a bonfire of red tape to secure trade deals with the USA and Donald Trump? Do we bring in tough new laws that recognise animals as sentient beings deserving of legal protection, or do we regulate so that we can swap our battery-caged eggs for their chlorinated chickens?

We have educated consumers; I think that there will be an outcry if our food standards drop to any extent. Then, there is the most important choice of all: do we leave for our children a healthy planet—an abundant, thriving natural world—or do we continue to damage, devalue and destroy the very living systems on which all of us depend for survival? The noble Earl mentioned the loss of biodiversity. Here in Britain we have lost 50% of our wildlife since 1967—and that is speeding up; we are losing more and more.

We have to make stark choices over the coming months. We have to recognise that our decisions will have an impact downstream in not just a few years’ time, but decades’ time. We will be held to account. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, made a point about air pollution. I have been working on air pollution since the year 2000. I raised the issue with then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and with the second Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. Not very much was done. Now it is a crisis. Greens look ahead. We have policies that other political parties will pick up in 10 or 20 years’ time. Perhaps they should take some advice now about things that will be real crises in a decade or so.

I cautiously welcome the commitments the Government have made already on the direction of travel for environmental policy. They have committed to making this the first generation that leaves the natural world in a better condition than we inherited it—I find it quite difficult to read that without smiling. The Secretary of State seems to have a genuinely held commitment to the environment, making pledges that Greens like me might once have been laughed at for being “naive” and “idealistic”. I have heard him talk about reforming the CAP, for example, so that it addresses market failures and ensures that “ecosystem services”—those essential things that nature provides for free—and “public goods” are properly valued. We have the opportunity to create a system that properly rewards sound environmental stewardship and punishes an “industrial farming at all costs” approach. We can create a system that works for small farmers, small holdings and lifestyle farmers, as well as bigger farmers, and allows small farmers to use their land to do much more than just produce food—to encourage biodiversity and to improve the soil. But it is early days and the so-called “greenest Government ever” have quite a test ahead of them on their environmental principles.

The noble Earl closed with the point that we all have a responsibility as individuals, which is absolutely true of course, but the Government have to help us. They can make it easy for us to do the right things. The plastic bag tax is a classic example: 5p has made all the difference to whether people use single-use plastic bags. The Government have a real opportunity to do similar things to help us grow in the right way. We also have to remember that most political parties think in terms of constant growth being an asset and a good thing. That is not true. It goes against all common sense. We have a finite planet and resources. We have to understand that when we put in place all our legislation.

When the going gets tough, we cannot allow Ministers to make grandiose policy pledges without any real delivery plan, as has happened so many times in the past, and then scurry away when reality bites so we cannot see them again and cannot hold them to account. The Secretary of State told me recently to judge him by his actions, not his words. I like his words so far, but I will judge his actions fairly. If he does not live up to what he is saying, I will judge him very harshly indeed. I will be very happy if my caution is unnecessary. I hope we can have a very good dialogue when we consider the Brexit legislation and that the Government will be in listening, not just in transmit, mode.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred to the EU withdrawal Bill. It will be a key battleground for many of us. There will be a lot of amendments on the issues we are discussing in order to retain a positive environment here in Britain and animal rules, many of which are currently enforced by the EU. Maintaining the polluter pays principle, for example, is fundamental, as is recognising animal sentience. The news is that there will be a Statement on this issue; I look forward to hearing it. We have to have robust, independent enforcement mechanisms. It is simply not true that we have enough enforcement. Once funding comes from the Government, nothing is independent. We need some sort of mechanism that enforces the law.

It is going to be quite exciting here: I think a lot of amendments on these issues will be forced to a vote, and the Government will lose some of them. Ministers will no doubt say that the withdrawal Bill is not the place to raise these issues because they do not fit in. My question is: if not then, when? What the Government could do is publish their plans for alternative legislation before the Bill comes to this House. That would be a positive thing to do and help us understand the direction of travel.

I have read that MPs have been briefed by Gavin Barwell, Mrs May’s chief of staff, that care for the environment is to be the unifying principle across a range of policies designed to rehabilitate the Conservative Party’s reputation. That is wonderful. If the Government are honest in their claim to care about our environment, they should deal with the issue of plastic. The noble Earl mentioned a very useful fact which I will use in future and pretend is my own—the point at which the amount of plastic will outweigh the number of fish in the sea. A plastic bottle deposit scheme, for example, would be such a positive thing. Recycling rates are falling in the UK—they fell last year—so we are not the caring, responsible country we often like to think we are. These issues are far too important for us to leave to the whims of the Government.

I challenge the Government to set out their legislative plans for the environment and animal protection ahead of the withdrawal Bill coming to the House. I ask the Minister to make that commitment today.

Air Quality

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I think I should repeat the first line of my reply: we have committed £3.5 billion for air quality and cleaner transport. We are helping 28 local authorities that need to accelerate their plans so that we can specifically tackle those hotspots. I reassure the noble Baroness that we are very much concentrating on this matter.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, since 2014 there have been 27 air pollution episodes. That does not sound particularly bad until you realise that one episode lasted 10 days, 300 people died and 1,600 people were admitted to hospital. There is currently no action plan in place for Public Health England. Will the Minister ask it to put one in place, as it does for hot and cold weather?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, obviously this is a matter on which we have to collaborate and we are, with both the Department of Health and the Department for Transport. Another issue for collaboration is that there are times when half the air pollution in this country comes from abroad. I suspect we send some to them. This is why international collaboration is also very important.

Brexit: Non-chemical Farming Methods

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect rural communities from pesticides; and whether they intend to adopt non-chemical farming methods post-Brexit.

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

My Lords, I declare my farming interests as set out in the register. Pesticides are highly regulated so that they do not harm people or the environment. This work is led by the Health and Safety Executive and the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides, which have a deserved reputation for rigour. After EU exit, we will continue to base our decision-making on pesticides on careful scientific assessment of the risks, just as we do now.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer. Defra’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Ian Boyd, has said that laboratory results from the testing of chemicals cannot be trusted when those chemicals are used on an industrial scale for farming. Will the Minister tell the House what the Government think a safe level of pesticide use is? How are the Government monitoring those levels in rural areas?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the whole role of our committees and regulatory bodies is extremely strong. As I said, there is the Chemicals Regulations Directorate of the Health and Safety Executive, the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides, the Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food and the Food Standards Agency, all of which are tasked with ensuring that our food and environment are safe. That is what we are working on. Of course it is essential that those who work in agriculture are assured in using pesticides and have the right training to do so in a responsible and sustainable way.

Animal Welfare Offences

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness has suggested, we have just closed our consultation on the mandatory nature of CCTV in all slaughterhouses. We think that this is important: we have been consulting with industry and stakeholders because we think that this is necessary. We will bring forward secondary legislation on this matter before Parliament early next year.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, in response to a Question that I asked on 1 March this year, the Minister told me that legislation to prevent wild animals being used in circuses was going to be brought forward by this Government. Seven months later, however, there is still no legislation, despite there being cross-party support for it and huge public support. Will the Minister tell us when this legislation is going to come through? Last time, the Minister was kind enough to give me a list of the animals that are still in circuses, which included a racoon, so there is no need to repeat that.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I do have a list of 19 animals, but I will not enumerate them. Clearly, we have a desire to prohibit the use of wild animals in circuses. I am not in a position to say when parliamentary time will permit, but we wish to do this. That is why, in the meantime, the regulations we have for the two travelling circuses to look after the care of the 19 animals is so important.

Local Authorities: Recycling

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

It is certainly important that we learn from where there are good examples. I referred to good examples in England; there are indeed good examples in Wales. We need to listen and learn from them. In Wales, a single blueprint is published; in England, there are three suggestions in the consistency document. This is all about how much we mingle—I gather that that is the word—recyclable produce. In some areas, it is easier to mingle it all and in others it is easier to separate it. The problem with that is that you might get five bins or you might get three. That is the issue that we need to wrestle with.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—

[Lord Vinson (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)]

My Lords, we will hear from the representative of the Greens.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, I applaud the noble Baroness for bringing this up; it is obviously a hot topic that we all care about. As a Green, one of the big things for me is that far too much goes to incineration. Can the Minister say, hand on heart, that for this Government, incineration is the absolutely last resort for waste of any kind?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the last resort is landfill, which we are absolutely determined to work on. Obviously, some incineration is the generation of power. In fact, whether it is anaerobic digestion of food waste or use of an incinerator, if we are clever about it, we can use those resources to our advantage. But we need to recycle more.

Air Quality: London

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, for instigating this debate. It is very timely, and possibly even a bit late, because we are already experiencing such incredible pollution levels here in London. It has been years since I have talked about air quality, which is in the title of the debate, because we do not have air quality—what we have is air pollution. It is very important to understand that we already have quite damaging levels of air pollution. I have worked on this issue for about 15 years because an eagle-eyed co-worker of mine spotted that we were likely to get EU fines if we did not reduce our pollution—even then, in about 2002.

It has been quite difficult listening to some noble Lords in the debate without shouting quite loudly—the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, pre-eminent among them. It was not people like Friends of the Earth and the environmental campaigners who lobbied so hard for the diesel vehicles. It was in fact the EU, which, seeing the problem with heavy carbon loads and trying to reduce our carbon emissions, listened to the diesel car manufacturers such as Volkswagen and then pressured our Government to do the same. So we have to understand that, although the EU has been incredibly good about getting us to try to clean up our act, it was also the instigator of the problem in the first place.

Noble Lords have already talked about the horrors of air pollution and the fact that it affects particularly the young and the already unwell, so I will talk about the solutions that we should look at. There are two solutions in particular that I will highlight and would like a response from the Minister on. The first is having a new clean air Act and the second is to talk about traffic reduction.

I am not rubbishing the small measures. The small measures are incredibly important as well. Air pollution is a very complex issue and we need a lot of solutions and ideas. We have to think about turning off engines outside schools. We have to think about techno-fixes such as cleaner cars and cleaner fuels. We should also think about the luxury cruise ships that come up the Thames and try to park at places such as Greenwich. They are incredibly polluting. There is a programme on Channel 4 tonight which says that people are more exposed to air pollution on those ships than on London’s roads. That is slightly worrying. Apparently, levels of pollution on these cruise ships can be equal to those in Delhi and Shanghai, which is really quite disturbing.

On the clean air Act, the fact is that Brexit will impact on every single area of our lives, creating endless trauma—no doubt—but also the chance to improve things. We will need our own laws and our own enforcement mechanisms and agencies. It is an opportunity to create a body a bit like the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States, with its own staff, legal powers and a culture of independence from the Government. We need that sort of body to look at the environment, and clean air in particular. Brexit means that we have the chance to do new things and to create a new clean air Act with new standards and limit values—a clean air Act that will freshen our filthy air and let us all breathe easier.

Of course, London Councils has made the point that, although we are talking about London in this debate, pollution does not respect legislative boundaries. What London is experiencing today, other cities and towns are experiencing as well. The problem will only get worse. If we can fix it here in London, other places can learn from our example.

I am impressed with the Mayor of London’s list. Obviously, I would like it to go faster and be larger and more expensive, but he is on the right lines. Transforming the bus fleet is going to be incredibly important to cleaning up. I do blame Boris Johnson for some of the dirtier buses that we have. He chose not to have the cleanest buses. He bought us buses that actually are not fit for use. But I harbour only a small antipathy towards him for that. Other people have done just as much, although during the Olympics he tried to clean up our air pollution so that it would conform to EU limits by putting pot plants along the Olympic route. There was only one emissions testing facility, which was on the Euston Road, and the intake pipe was something like 18 feet up, and anybody who knows anything about pollution knows that the worst pollution is lower down. Previous mayors have done their bit. Ken Livingstone brought in the congestion charge. Boris brought in the wonderful cycle lanes, which are doing so much for London. Now Sadiq Khan is bringing in a whole raft of measures. For me, it is not a pick-and-mix list; every one of those things has to be done.

The European Commission currently has the power to fine the UK Government for failing to protect the health of their citizens. We need a replacement UK body with similar clout. The Environment Agency and Natural England are under the thumb of Defra and cannot offer the necessary protection to people or planet. We also need a body that can be sued by victims if it sets the bar too low or fails in its job of enforcing standards to protect human health and the natural world. All these things have to be taken into account in our Brexit negotiations and in the repeal of the laws. They have to be contemporaneous so that we do not just move into a situation where we have nothing protecting our environment.

On traffic reduction, all levels of government have failed to deal with the air pollution crisis over the past two decades. Labour, Conservative and coalition Governments failed to reduce nitrogen dioxide levels to the legal limit, which we were meant to do by 2010. None included traffic reduction in national plans, despite that being the most direct, fastest and most straightforward way to cut pollution.

The new bike lanes have been a success and now carry as many people as the Victoria line. They have replaced car traffic and relieved pressure on public transport, but we need more of them to reduce pollution to legal levels in London. People often fail to understand that every cyclist is somebody who is not taking up a seat on public transport and is not using a car. We should be welcoming cyclists. The reason we have protected cycle lanes is because our roads are dangerous. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, talked about how wonderful things are in France with no Lycra and no helmets. Why do people wear Lycra and helmets on the roads in London? It is because they can be dangerous. I do not wear Lycra or a helmet, but I get criticised for not making myself visible. I was once stopped by a taxi driver who said, “What do you think you’re doing? You look just like a pedestrian”, as I was wearing normal clothes on my bike, so you cannot please everybody. Cycle lanes also mean a healthier population. They encourage people to get exercise. Even if you are breathing the polluted air, you are still not breathing as much of it as car drivers, whose air intake is much lower. We will have cleaner, healthier people if we have more cyclists.

The Government have lost two court cases for failing to produce a plan which would enable us to reduce pollution to the legal limit. ClientEarth has done an amazing job on this. It is getting harder to take the Government to court to get a judicial review, but it has done it. The Government are in the High Court again this week. A Government’s highest priority should be to protect their citizens. Why are they dragging their feet on something as dangerous as air pollution? We have a national health crisis, not just at the moment for people who are experiencing respiratory problems but down the line with all the children, who have small lungs, who will have breathing difficulties in future. For some reason, the Government find this impossible to visualise. Why is public health reliant on the dedication of a voluntary organisation such as ClientEarth? Why have official bodies charged with protecting our health been silent and failed to act? I do not want to put ClientEarth out of business, but the success of its actions has highlighted the enforcement vacuum at the heart of the UK’s environmental policies.

ClientEarth’s successful court action in British courts has relied upon advice from the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. Whether those reference points are still to be part of British law post Brexit depends on the so far rather confused negotiations. We should know. We have to have enforcement mechanisms, legal opportunities to sue and our own enforcement body.

Will the Minister say whether a clean air Act is going to be government policy? Do the Government see the sense in traffic reduction?