Environment Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Mary Creagh

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

rose—

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[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

rose—

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Mary Creagh

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

No, I will not. The Government have told us what their plans are. This Prime Minister has openly said that Brexit offers us an opportunity to “regulate differently” and when he says that, I do not think that he means increasing those standards—call me cynical.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that this is a recipe for regulatory chaos, not just between us and the EU, but within the four nations of the United Kingdom, where different environmental standards will apply?

[Caroline Lucas]

I completely agree. That brings me on to the environment. Again, when we look at the so-called reassurances, we are supposed to believe that the Environment Bill can answer the question of how we properly regulate in the absence of the Commission and the European Court of Justice, yet the Environment Bill, when given any scrutiny, as on the Environmental Audit Committee, shows, for example, that the office for environmental protection is insufficiently independent, is answerable to Government, not Parliament, and cannot levy fines, which has been the one thing in the past that has finally made the Government come into line on issues such as air pollution. The environmental principles are also very weak. They simply sit there in a policy statement, which we have not even been allowed to see, rather than in the Bill. On the sector targets, there are only four out of the 10 headline goals of the 25-year environment plan and they do not even have to be met until 2037. That is inadequate, especially when the interim targets are themselves not legally binding. So let us be clear: this is all about a race to the bottom on social and environmental standards.

When I say that I support a confirmatory ballot and that I would vote to remain, I do not for a moment mean that we should go back to how things were before the referendum in 2016. The referendum outcome was a resounding radical rejection of the status quo and of an economy that brutally fails so many, forces parents to use food banks to feed their kids, demonises immigrants and condemns us to climate breakdown. It was also a powerful and furious comment on our broken democracy. Brexit laid bare the extent to which our government structures are derelict. When citizens were deprived of a credible representative power that clearly belongs or is accountable to them, it led to anger with the most remote authority of all. The EU was blamed for the UK’s structural elitism and held responsible as the source of all the powerlessness, yet Brexit shows no sign of giving us back control or changing the way we rule. Instead, the apparatus of government has been hijacked by the Vote Leave campaign.

I recoil from the economic vandalism of this hardest of Brexits and I worry deeply about the race to the bottom. But I understand that a way forward must be found, so I will compromise if the Government do. I will not oppose the passage of the Bill through the Commons if they attach a confirmatory ballot to it and allow the British people to have their say. Three and a half years after the 2016 referendum, so much has changed, including, I believe, the will of the British people. That is what the vast majority of polls indicate. If the Government are so certain that this Brexit is exactly what the British people want, why are they so afraid to put it back to them?

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Mary Creagh

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: Second Day: House of Commons
Wednesday 17th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

Absolutely. I was thrilled to learn that the electric black cab is being made in Coventry. It is great that Carbodies has a future.

It is important to drive that great innovation, that green growth, across the country. Let us take the example of waste. Twenty years ago we sent almost half our household waste to landfill; now we recycle almost half of it because of the EU’s waste framework directive. We will have no recycling targets after 2020 unless we adopt the EU’s target of 60% by 2030. We need that new environmental protection Act to set out waste targets: that will drive the innovation that we need in reprocessing.

We need reprocessing capacity urgently. As a result of the Chinese ban on the import of contaminated UK waste, 3 million tonnes of paper and 280,000 tonnes of plastic will no longer go to China, and we will have to do something with it on this island. A hard Brexit means that we could end paying tariffs on our waste exports, so exporting our waste to faraway countries will no longer be an option. The Environmental Services Association told my Committee that the industry had invested £5 billion in new infrastructure in the past five years, and could do so again, given the right policy environment. At present, however, there is the risk of a vacuum.

We hear the same story when it comes to cleaning up our beaches. The bathing water directive ended the discharge of untreated sewage into the sea and drove investment in the replacement of lead pipes. The European Investment Bank is the largest debt investor in the UK water industry, holding 13% of gross outstanding debt. There is a risk that, if we cannot gain access to EIB capital, there could be higher borrowing costs for water companies and higher water bills for consumers.

As for air quality, the EU has set out the targets that we should meet in the ambient air quality directive. We are currently missing those targets. I have been through the 58 impact assessments, and air quality does not feature in any of them, although it is one of the most pressing market failures that we face. There is no air quality industry, which is why it is neglected. We have had our final written warning from the Commission. The danger is that when we leave the EU we will not set ourselves stringent standards. There is no agency to set those standards, no agency to monitor them, and no agency to enforce them. The Prime Minister launched the environmental plan last week. She says she wants to phase out unnecessary plastics by 2042. I can tell her now that I am not waiting until I am 75 to clear up our environment. This House needs a vote on a strong environmental protection Act, and a strong environmental protection agency to make sure we pass on a decent environment to our children and grandchildren.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Time is short so I shall make just two brief comments.

First, I support amendment 59 and thank the SNP on taking the initiative on pulling that together. The hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) made a compelling speech on the importance of remaining inside the single market and customs union, and I join him in appealing to Labour Front Benchers even at this eleventh hour to support it. As he and many other Members have said today, the Government have no mandate for the kind of extreme Brexit they are pursuing. The irony in the Labour Front-Bench position is that the NHS crisis or the inequality crisis or the housing crisis are all far harder to tackle if the UK is outside the single market and customs union.

My second point is to commend the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) on her speech on her new clause 12. I agree entirely with what she said. She says the environmental plan lacks a “how”. That is true, but, crucially, it also lacks a “when,” and a key question at the heart of my new clause 18 is about timing. The Government are in theory at least committed to bring forward this new domestic environmental regulator, which is supposed to set out the way in which environmental legislation will be enforced once Brexit happens, if it happens. I am concerned that there is nothing to guarantee that that new body will be in place by Brexit day.

We have had positive written statements. For example, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs explained in a written statement last week that the Government’s 25-year environmental plan will be underpinned by what he says is

“a comprehensive set of environmental principles”

to “ensure strong governance”. He also talks about consulting on setting up

“a world-leading environmental watchdog, an independent, statutory body, to hold Government to account for upholding environmental standards.”—[Official Report, 11 January 2018; Vol. 634, c. 12WS.]

That is all very well, but what is not addressed is the question of timing, which is why my new clause 18 is so important.

We need to make sure that there is no so-called governance gap, and there is still a very real risk that, after Brexit day but before this new body comes into place, we will have a governance gap where environmental legislation that might well have been brought across from the EU to the UK still will not be enforceable. We will still not have that replacement for the Commission and the ECJ. We will end up with what has been called zombie legislation.

This new clause 18 is vital; we must not be left with that legal gap. We need legal certainty. That is what this provision will provide, and I urge the Government to think again about supporting it.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Mary Creagh

Committee: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

rose—

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Mary Creagh

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is not just about the fact that they can go only up; if we are in the EU, we can actually have an influence on the other 27 member states, as we have done on many issues, not least that under discussion, and make sure that animal welfare is improved not just in our own country but right across the EU28.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the ban on neonicotinoids would not have taken place were it not for years of sustained campaigning by environmental groups and scientific research by the European Commission? It stated that we should invoke the precautionary principle to protect our bees from those potentially toxic chemicals, but the precautionary principle will no longer be in place when the Bill is enacted.

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Lady neatly brings me on to the next issue that I want to address. She is absolutely right to say that there is real concern about what will happen to those vital principles as a result of the Bill. Her new clause 60 aims to address precisely that by ensuring that, after withdrawal, the environmental principles embedded in EU law are fully retained as part of UK law. I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has a planned consultation on the principles, but I am worried about the timescale, because we need the outcome to be meaningful and to know what it is before the Bill finishes its passage through both Houses of Parliament. I hope that the Secretary of State will be in listening mode, because so many people are deeply and rightly concerned about what will happen to those principles as a result of the Bill as it stands.

The environmental law that the Bill rightly sets out to transfer into UK law is composed of not only specific legal obligations such as the prohibition on certain chemicals, but a broad and comprehensive framework in which those obligations are embedded. That framework includes a number of environmental principles—including the precautionary principle, the “polluter pays” principle and sustainable development—and they underpin and aid the interpretation of those legal obligations. That assists Governments, agencies and courts to understand and correctly interpret the aims and objectives of EU environmental law.

Currently, those environmental principles are set out in the EU treaties, and they have been instrumental in decisions such as the EU ban on imports of hormone-fed beef, the moratorium on neonic pesticides and the control of the release of genetically modified organisms in the EU. To give just one example of how that has benefited environmental protection in the UK, the “polluter pays” principle states that the polluter should bear the expense of carrying out pollution prevention and control measures. The EU’s water framework directive, which drives the sustainable management of the UK’s waterways, has led to enormous improvements in the quality of our drinking water and it is specifically based on the “polluter pays” principle.

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[Caroline Lucas]

I really do not understand the hon. Lady, because we have done it—it has been done. All the fears that we might not be able to do it because of EU law have been absolutely shot down by the fact that we have done it. It has been recognised—done; over; finished; kaput.

[Mary Creagh]

The Environmental Audit Committee had a very interesting meeting this morning at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with its Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), who is in the Chamber. We look forward to the statutory instrument that will ban the manufacture of microbeads from 1 January and their sale—hopefully—from 1 July. I hope it will be laid before the House very shortly and that we are all able to sit down and pass it very swiftly.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that helpful update. There are many myths about what the EU prevents us from doing, so it is useful to get that clarification.

I was just explaining the different areas in which we need these environmental principles to apply. My concern is that the Bill delivers on only the first: the interpretation of retained EU environmental law. Clause 6(3) states that general principles of EU law will be retained in UK law, and that the courts will be able to interpret EU-derived law in accordance with the retained general principles of EU law, but it is not yet clear whether the environmental principles will be considered to be general principles of EU law. Neither the ECJ nor the treaties have defined “general principles”. The concern is that if the Bill does not explicitly recognise environmental principles as general principles, they could be lost altogether. Even if they are retained, as they should be, the Bill explicitly limits how they could then be applied in two ways: first, UK courts will not be able to overturn decisions or challenge actions that do not conform to the principles; and, secondly, there will be no compulsion on public bodies or businesses to refer to the principles in future actions and decisions.

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[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

rose—