A Brighter Future for the Next Generation

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con) [V]]

I welcome the breadth of measures in the Queen’s Speech, which are necessary and welcome. We are talking today about the plans for further education, which right an anomaly that has been there for too long. Someone can go to university and receive subsidised loan support from the Government, but someone pursuing a vocational course in the FE sector is all too often largely left to fend for themselves. That reform is really important.

I also single out the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill, which I hope will put an end to the anomaly of house builders selling properties that should be freehold with a long-term lease that they then use to exploit their buyers to get more money. I have many constituents who have experienced that, and the behaviour of companies such as Persimmon has brought discredit on the sector.

I want to focus my remarks not on a new Bill but on an old one, but one that is vital to the future of the generations we are talking about today. The Environment Bill has already passed through most of its stages in this House, but carrying it over into this Session provides an opportunity to make further improvements to what is already a good and important Bill. I really welcome the steps taken to address deforestation and the use of deforested land to grow products that might end up on sale here. The loss of forested areas around the world in recent decades has been disastrous for our planet, impacting on habitats, biodiversity and climate change.

The Environment Bill will make it much more difficult to use illegally deforested areas to produce products for sale in the UK, but that leaves a big challenge where the deforestation is not illegal. We have seen in Brazil, only in the past few weeks, moves to introduce new laws that would permit greater exploitation of the Amazon rainforest, which our planet simply cannot afford. This country cannot and should not stand idly by while that happens. The Amazon rainforest is a global asset of vital importance to all our futures. I pay tribute to the retailers who last week sent a clear message to the Brazilian Government that they will not source products from a country that behaves in that way. I ask the Secretary of State to talk to the Foreign Secretary to make sure that his Department also makes clear our Government’s disapproval of what is proposed in Brazil, to ensure that these damaging laws are withdrawn by Ministers there.

Many environmental groups have rightly raised concerns about the fact that the Environment Bill takes action on illegal deforestation but not on legal deforestation—given what is proposed in Brazil, they have a real point. Of course, it is difficult to criminalise products in the UK that have been produced legally in other countries, and it is often very difficult to prove that this has happened, even in a court of law. We must take every possible step to prevent damaging legal and illegal deforestation where it does serious damage to ecosystems. Where countries need deforestation for economic reasons, we should help them where necessary and provide aid to help them find alternative ways.

There are two steps that I want to see taken in the Environment Bill or by Ministers in the coming months, to a clear timetable and with a clear commitment. First, I hope that the Government will accept amendments, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), that would prevent UK-based financiers from supporting investments in businesses that exploit forest risk products. I think that is absolutely essential. Secondly, I want to see the introduction of a clear system of sustainable food labelling in this country. I have tabled an amendment that would mandate the Government to do that. If it is difficult to make agricultural products coming from areas of legal deforestation illegal, let us at least give consumers the power to reject those products themselves. If we do so, retailers will inevitably also reject those products.

Another change that I would like to see in the Environment Bill relates to something rather closer to home. I am the parliamentary species champion for one of our favourite, but sadly now dwindling, species: the hedgehog. Some of the measures in the Agriculture Act 2020, and now in the Environment Bill, can make a real difference. I want to see greater protection for the hedgehog against the wanton destruction of habitats. We still have to conduct newt surveys, and small creatures such as the lagoon sand worm are protected, but a developer can simply rip up a hedge without even checking whether there are hedgehogs or other endangered species in it, and that needs to change. When the time comes for that debate, I will be pushing Ministers either to provide that protection immediately or, perhaps more realistically, to move rapidly to create a new framework that provides proper protections—updated, modern protections —for hedgehogs and other species with dwindling numbers.

This Government are already providing more wildlife and animal protection than almost any of their predecessors, and this Queen’s Speech contains a range of very welcome measures to improve the legal protection we offer, and I commend Ministers for that. The Environment Bill takes us further than virtually any other country in taking responsibility for our planet and our ecology. There is more to come from this Government as they look at some of the issues, such as live animal transport, that must be addressed for animal welfare in this country. These are very welcome, overdue and necessary. I hope that Members on both sides will agree that, based on these measures alone, the Queen’s Speech should have—I fear that it probably will not—the unanimous support of the House.