World Ocean Day

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Thursday 8th June 2023 Westminster Hall

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

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham. I echo the words of congratulation of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) to my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) on securing this debate. This issue is enormously important, and does not get enough time in this House. Even as the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on global deforestation, I find that we are too apt to look at what happens on land, and not apt enough to look at what happens at sea. This is a very appropriate and topical debate, particularly on World Ocean Day, as my hon. Friend said.

I am pleased to see the progress that has been made in recent months, including the treaty that was agreed back in March and the output of the various conferences of the parties of the past 18 months. I hope that the next COP, due to take place in the United Arab Emirates this autumn, will drive improvements to our approach to tackling biodiversity loss. I equally hope that it will reflect the need to protect ocean biodiversity.

I will focus on three aspects of the challenge we face: the need to protect more, the need to restore more, and the need to enforce more. Let me start with protection. The Minister knows of my concern to ensure that we accelerate our work on marine protected areas and highly protected marine areas; we debated that in this Chamber only recently. That is fundamentally important both for our nation and for the globe, because protected areas are about not just the UK but important areas of marine ecology around the world.

But let us start at home. We are making progress. The work that the Government have done on Dogger Bank and in other areas is very welcome, as is their ambition. As the Minister knows, my only concern is the pace. We need to do more, because although we have marine protected areas, most people would judge them not to be particularly well protected at all. In those areas, we still allow large industrial trawlers to scan the seabed with huge mechanical equipment, causing all kinds of damage and destruction. That may be appropriate in some parts of the sea, but it is inappropriate in our marine protected areas. It is particularly important that we accelerate the process that has started. As we have left the common fisheries policy, we have the freedom to apply proper protections. We will renegotiate our fishing arrangements with the European Union in the next couple of years. I suspect that those in Brussels are probably expecting things to carry on much as they are. We must ensure that is not the case, and that we really do take a significant step forward in applying UK-focused and ecology-focused rules to our fisheries, particularly those that are in need of much greater protection.

There is also the issue of the highly protected marine areas, which are much smaller. A substantial part of the seas around the United Kingdom are covered by our protected marine areas. The highly protected marine areas are much smaller, which is as it should be, because very little fishing should take place there at all. They need to expand too, and the Benyon review was very constructive in that respect. Of course, Lord Benyon is now very much at the heart of delivering this.

We must not make the same mistake as Scotland, which pressed ahead without engaging and involving the fishing communities. I take the view that the fishing communities of this country benefit from measures that look after our marine life and particularly our fisheries, because without those, the fishing communities have no livelihood. I do not think that our fishing fleets in the UK have anything to fear from a more robust approach to marine protection, because they see their fisheries disappear when we have huge industrial boats scouring the ocean in areas where we should be restoring fish stocks, not allowing them deteriorate still further. The benefit of highly protected marine areas, where there is virtually no take at all, is that they really do give the fish and the other life a chance to recover. In fact, fish stocks in areas around the most protected areas, where there is genuine enforcement, are now better as a result, and fishing fleets benefit from that.

I will continue to push the Minister, who I know is very sympathetic on this issue, and, through her, her officials to get on with this. They have made a good start, but I still see no reason why we cannot deliver a complete ban on bottom trawling in marine protected areas and deliver a significant increase in the area covered by highly protected areas in the time left in this Parliament. Our fishing communities and our ecology would benefit greatly if we did.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye mentioned the 2030 goals—the 30x30 protections. We have to play our part in ensuring that other countries do the same as us, and help them where they need political, financial or other support to do so. It is all well and good the UK protecting our waters, but if others do not do the same, we clearly do not achieve anything like what we need to achieve globally. Our ocean is a global asset. We have to protect it. We need to support other countries in enforcing proper protections in their marine protected areas, and in banning the most damaging fishing practices in those areas, so that see the ecology recovers.

This does work. When we put in place greater protections, numbers rise. We need only look at the whale population. Whales were in serious danger of extinction, but since positive steps were taken globally to ban whaling, numbers have started to surge. People can go and see these magnificent creatures all around the world now. If we take similar steps to provide appropriate protections in key areas of marine ecology—I am talking about excluding fishing, not from whole seas, but in key areas—we will benefit enormously. I am thinking of areas such as Galapagos, where until recently there was a genuine threat from some of the big, global fishing fleets that were sailing around the Pacific. We need to ensure that absolute, proper protection is in place, backed by enforcement; I will come back to enforcement in a moment. This is not just about protection of what is there; it is also about restoration of habitats that have been lost. My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet are absolutely right: there are opportunities to recreate habitats in the ocean, which can make a real difference to supporting and restoring marine life.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye mentioned seagrass. There is clearly an opportunity for us in the United Kingdom on that. There are interesting projects taking place around the UK to begin to restore some of the seagrass that has been lost. We have lost something like 90% of our seagrass beds. We need to restore those, and we need to create the space for that to happen, because that helps marine species to recover. I would also mention kelp. If she has seen the extraordinary photography in the recent BBC “Wild Isles” series, she will have seen just how extraordinary kelp forests around the UK are. They, too, have disappeared to much too great an extent. We need to reverse that.

This does not really apply to our shores, but we must also focus on mangroves, because mangroves in coastal waters around the world have disappeared at an alarming rate, and they play a hugely important part both in the ecology of coastal areas and in protecting local communities against rising sea levels, floods, storm tides and the rest. I would therefore like—this does not fall within the Minister’s Department; it falls more to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office—those elements of our aid budget that go on supporting ecological projects to support the restoration of mangroves around the world. Of course, there are big, global efforts taking place to do that, and to restore other marine habitats.

One of the most extraordinary projects I have come across in the last couple of years is the work being done by Mars Sustainable Solutions, and community groups working with it around the world, to restore coral reefs. The before and after for such projects is quite extraordinary. If a simple piece of netting, which looks like the inside of a chip pan, is placed on the seabed near a reef that has deteriorated, the reef regrows quickly, so there is a real opportunity to restore some of what has been lost.

Too many of our reefs are in danger, and too many have suffered damage from changes to water temperature, boats and the impact of mankind, but it is possible to restore reefs more quickly than one might imagine. Across the piece, we have an opportunity. Replanting seagrass, supporting the regrowth of kelp, and restoring coral reefs and mangroves can all play a part in capturing carbon, helping to restore local habitats and making the ocean healthier, so we as a nation should be putting as much effort as we can into helping the restoration of those habitats around the world. As I say, I speak as somebody who campaigns on deforestation and, indeed, on reforestation, but we must not forget marine environments.

Then we come to the issue of enforcement, because all our efforts are pointless if illegal operations destroy marine habitats again. Along with the treaties that have been agreed over the last 18 months, the good work being done on restoration, and what I hope our Government and others will do to put in place proper protections in marine protected areas, we also need really robust enforcement, because we have too many illegal and unregulated fishing operations doing real damage to fish stocks and marine environments around the world. Often they are carried out by vessels that simply go dark. Law-abiding, decent fishing vessels go around and do their stuff with proper tracking systems onboard, so we know where they are. If I opened up an app on my phone, I could probably see where most of the vessels are. Those that do not play within the rules disappear—they go black. That cannot be tolerated, because then however many rules we put in place, damage is still being done.

We as a country need to play our part as we move to the next stage in the negotiation of global agreements. We have done some really good work in putting together frameworks for the future, but they now need to be translated into action if we are to deliver the protections and the constructive approach that have been agreed by countries around the world. However, in order to do that, there has to be proper enforcement of what is put in place. My message to the Minister is this: when it comes to illegal and unregulated fishing, we need to make sure as a nation that we take a lead in saying that the next step is not just practical ecological measures, but the enforcement to go alongside them.

There are tools that we can use. The amount of Earth observation data is now substantial—we have satellite data for even relatively small areas. Supermarkets use Earth observation data to make sure that the products they source do not come from areas of land that have been deforested, which is great. In this country, that is being driven by our pathfinding legislation, the Environment Act 2021. We have a bit more to do, as the Minister and I discuss regularly, and I will happily help push other Departments to work with her to deliver that. But that is on land, and we need to do the same in the oceans. The technology can also be used by supermarkets to look at the origin of the fish stocks they are purchasing. It can also be used by enforcement authorities to look at what is happening—who is fishing where, and who is doing what where—and to take the appropriate action. We can also support countries that do not share our economic strength or ability to take enforcement action; that piece is enormously important. It must be a central part of what we as a nation do, going into the next stage of the various COPs and international discussions about how we turn the 2030 agreements into action. We must provide proper protection, both for restoration work and for what we have at the moment.

Those are the challenges. None of them will be easy, but they are challenges that we have to meet. As a global community, we cannot see the ocean continue to deteriorate and decline. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet is absolutely right about plastic. I happen to believe that before too long, we will end up harvesting it from the oceans. The plastic needs to be removed, but we may well find that it has positive uses, now that technology is moving on, in helping us to combat climate change through a move away from conventional fuels, for example. We may well end up having a positive reason to take that plastic out of the ocean, but we should certainly stop putting it in. We should be taking all the steps that we can to avoid the further pollution of the ocean and further degradation of marine habitats.

We have the foundations and frameworks in place for the next 10 years. They are already agreed in principle, and they now need to turn into action. That action is about protecting what we have, restoring what we lost and enforcing good behaviour to ensure that rogue elements do not get away with doing further damage to our marine habitats. That is not a small task, but I am delighted that we have this Minister in place, because she is very committed to this issue. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye on calling for this debate. World Ocean Day is a moment for all of us to think about what else we can do, individually and collectively, to protect our oceans.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Trudy Harrison)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mrs Latham—two days in a row—especially for such an important debate. I have enjoyed hearing the knowledge and passion of colleagues this afternoon. It is clear that all colleagues present today recognise the importance of our ocean and the urgency with which we need to take action, and with which we are taking action. I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) for securing the debate, which was perfectly timed, given that today is the UN’s World Ocean Day, the theme of which, as has already been said, is “Protect 30x30”, aimed at protecting at least 30% of our blue planet by 2030.

Despite the official title of UN World Oceans Day—of course, there are many different oceans—I will refer to it as World Ocean Day, because it is one ocean, all connected. The nature and species that survive, thrive and depend on our ocean see no boundaries. There is one global connected ocean, and it makes sense to design policy responses accordingly. There have been many calls this afternoon for us to work collaboratively with devolved Administrations and internationally with other countries. I will come on to the progress that has been made.

Marine life is important. A safe, healthy ocean underpins our lives and our economies and my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye was correct to say that more must be done. More is being done, but it will not be easy. We have to tackle the triple planetary crises of biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution. Without action, plastic pollution entering the ocean is set to triple by 2040. Over 1 million species, including 33% of reef-forming corals and one third of marine mammals, are predicted to disappear entirely over our lifetimes. Meanwhile, 33% of our global fish stocks are over-exploited.

I want to pay tribute and give thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) for the sterling work that she did in my Department, setting the scene and paving the way for the Environment Act 2021, off the back of which we have the recently launched environmental improvement plan 2023, which goes into far more detail than I can possibly give here today. It is not just about oceans, but about all aspects of how we will protect our planet and halt the decline of nature by 2030.

We know that many small island—or, more appropriately, big ocean—developing states are bearing the brunt of the challenges from climate change and plastic pollution. They have been raising the alarm for decades while contributing little to the problem. Here in the UK we are seeing the effects, including estimated losses of 85% of our saltmarsh and 92% of our seagrass habitats in the last 100 years.

I also want to thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) for a most insightful and interesting contribution and making us all more aware of ocean acidification. I found her contribution staggering in terms of the acceleration that our oceans are enduring.

But we can be proud of the Government’s record. I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) commend the work of Lord Goldsmith, who attended the APPG for the ocean’s annual general meeting earlier this week, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye also attended. The work is cross-Government. I am also proud of the UK’s international leadership, where we have been at the forefront of securing critically important international agreements. Just last week the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), was involved in the second intergovernmental negotiating committee on plastic pollution, demonstrating that we continue to work with other countries. At the UN biodiversity summit in December, as leader of the Global Ocean Alliance and ocean co-chair of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, the UK helped to deliver a landmark global deal for nature.

The Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework commits to halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030, including through the 30x30 target for land and the ocean. The Secretary of State attended that conference, which made such fantastic progress, along with my noble Friend Lord Benyon, who is the Minister with responsibility for oceans. There can be no better parliamentary champion for mangroves than the Secretary of State, although his passion is matched by my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), who is a fantastic champion for all things environment and nature. Once again, I heard his plea loud and clear to chivvy along officials in DEFRA, but I think we are making tremendous progress. These things are not easy, but I will support our teams and all the NGOs and devolved Administrations we work with in going as fast as we can, because we understand the urgency. I welcome the constant nudging and encouragement from him on this and other matters.

The UK was also instrumental in agreeing the draft text of the “biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction” agreement earlier this year, which will provide the framework to implement greater protection and governance for over 60% of the global ocean. This is vital to achieving the global 30x30 target.

We also know that biodiversity loss and climate change are inextricably linked. With a 2° rise in global temperature, a predicted 90% of coral reefs will be lost, so we continue to work to raise ambition on ocean-climate action across the United Nations framework convention on climate change, to fill key evidence gaps and to build capacity around the world to protect and restore blue carbon habitats. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye will recognise the work that is being done. She called for more research and development, and for better understanding, which is what we are working towards.

As a founding member of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, which now numbers well over 50 countries, we are pushing for an effective and ambitious plastic pollution treaty that will end plastic pollution by 2040. As I mentioned, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane, was in Paris last week, and I am pleased that the critical decision was made to start drafting the new treaty text, with our world-leading scientists, businesses and NGOs working towards an agreement by the end of 2024.

Alongside protection, we know we have to manage our global ocean sustainably. That is why, last year, the UK joined other ambitious ocean leaders as part of the High-Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, again working and collaborating internationally, and it is why we pushed for the June 2022 WTO fisheries subsidies agreement to curtail harmful subsidies and tackle one of the key drivers of overfishing.

In parallel, we are determined to end illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. I was pleased to speak at a recent debate secured by my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell on this subject. With expanding membership, the IUU Fishing Action Alliance will bring further international pressure and action to stamp out this harmful practice.

Effective ocean action is possible only with the right resources and tools to deliver it. SDG 14, “life below water,” is the least funded of all the sustainable development goals, so the UK is helping to mobilise finance for ocean action. I was particularly pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye reference the importance of private finance because, of course, taxpayers’ money can go only so far. My noble Friend Lord Benyon, as the Minister with responsibility for green finance, is working diligently and determinedly to secure that private finance, particularly for the oceans. The UK’s blue belt programme is supporting the British overseas territories. It is so important that we work with our overseas territories to take action to protect the ocean. With £30 million of support since 2016, the blue belt now protects 4.3 million sq km of ocean and supports sustainable growth.

Our £500 million blue planet fund is supporting developing countries to address biodiversity loss and climate change by tackling marine pollution and supporting sustainable seafood in some of the world’s most important but fragile ocean environments. Just this morning, Lord Benyon hosted a roundtable to understand how public and private sector investment can come together to deliver a blended finance solution through the excellent global fund for coral reefs programme, which supports the ocean, reefs and climate-vulnerable communities.

But, of course, our action starts at home. We remain committed to achieving a good environmental status in our seas, and we will shortly publish an update to our programme of measures to do so. We have already built a comprehensive network of marine protected areas— 374 sites covering 38% of the UK’s waters and 40% of England’s—and we are focused on making sure that they are properly protected. Nearly 60% of England’s inshore MPAs now have fisheries byelaws in place. Having left the EU, we can put in place management to protect against damaging fishing practices in our offshore sites. The first four byelaws for offshore sites were made last year, and we plan to finish putting in the management needed in all MPAs by the end of next year.

Using the new powers in the Environment Act 2021, we now have a statutory target to make sure our MPAs are recovering our biodiversity. We have announced the first three highly protected marine areas, which provide the highest levels of protection. Those sites will be designated in the next month, and we are starting to look at further sites.

Protecting and restoring critical blue carbon habitats is a key part of our approach to protecting coastal communities, such as the one I live in, from rising seas and more frequent storms. That will deliver biodiversity and absorb carbon dioxide.

I am delighted that the cross-Administration UK Blue Carbon Evidence Partnership is publishing its evidence needs statement today, setting out key research questions and demonstrating the UK’s ambition to fill critical blue carbon evidence gaps. In response to the UN decade of ocean science for sustainable development, the UK has established a National Decade Committee to inspire and enable a whole-of-society approach to meeting the interconnected challenges to the ocean that we have heard about today.

[Chris Grayling]

The Minister referred to discussions that we had this week about these issues, when we spoke about the complexity of getting consent to reforest an area of the UK. Have she and her officials looked at what barriers there are, if any, to restoring areas of seagrass or kelp? If there are planning barriers, will she and her Department look at ways that we can alleviate the situation and make it easier to do that?

Marine Protected Areas

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Marine Protected Areas.

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I am grateful to have the opportunity to debate this issue again, which is one that I feel passionately about and I intend to keep pushing on.

This is not the first time I have pursued this matter on the Floor of the House. Two years ago, I brought forward a private Member’s Bill, the Marine Protected Areas (Bottom Trawling) Bill, with the objective of banning bottom trawling in marine protected areas. Since then, I have been pleased with what the Government have done. They have taken the first steps in the right direction by banning bottom trawling in areas that are particularly important. We were not able to do that when we were part of the common fisheries policy. That Government have made a good start, but while the intent is good, progress is not yet rapid enough and planned measures not extensive enough to provide adequate protection to key species around our shoreline.

I want to set out the measures that are essential if we are to protect and restore a thriving ecosystem around our shores. I do not believe that this needs to be done at the expense of the fishing industry—indeed, it must not be done at its expense. I see no reason why fishing boats from ports around the UK cannot continue to do the important job that they do today. What must stop is the situation where large, industrial-scale boats are able to scalp our seabeds, towing huge mechanisms behind them to hoover up marine life, without regard to what gets trapped in their nets. That is what has got to stop.

Outside the EU, we have a chance to pursue a different course. As we approach the review of the post-Brexit arrangements—that is not too far away now—we need to make sure that we do not leave nature behind when planning the future of the industry. The starting point is our marine protected areas. I have said it before: most people would be astonished to discover that marine protected areas are not really properly protected at all.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

Despite measures to protect marine protected areas from damaging fishing gear, ecosystems were subjected to more than 130,000 hours of industrial fishing in 2022; 7,000 of them involved the use of destructive bottom-towed fishing gear. Does the right hon. Member agree that current Government measures are not sufficient to protect MPAs from detrimental fishing practices?

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Member makes an important point about the nature of the equipment and the damage it does to the seabed. I think the Government have made a good start in the process, but there is a way to go.

I want all our marine protected areas to have the same protections that have been introduced to the Dogger Bank. I hope that, after this debate, the Minister and officials will get a move on. The job is not nearly completed. We now have the first four or five areas protected. The Dogger Bank is particularly important, and that is a good start, but every day of needless destruction in other marine protected areas causes more damage to our ecosystems, which will take years and years to restore.

My message to the Minister today, first and foremost, is that we need to get on with stopping these destructive practices altogether. That is why I have particularly focused on bottom trawling. If we destroy the seabed and the habitat of the creatures that live on it, we also deeply damage the food chain for the fish who live there. In doing so, we compound the problem for our fish stocks. To my mind, there is a benefit to the fishing industry in sorting out adequate, proper and appropriate protections for marine life. I do not believe that there are any fishing communities around the UK that want to destroy our fish stocks and create a situation where fishing is unsustainable.

We must prevent the most damaging practices—big industrial trawlers, often coming from continental ports, towing vast mechanisms behind them—simply scalping the seabed and leaving a trail of destruction. We have to take a wholly new approach to managing fish stocks and supporting the industry. As stocks diminish, the industry has had to go further and further afield to stay in business. Our focus therefore must be on helping our fish stocks to recover. Proper protection in marine protected areas is an essential part of that.

If people do not engage in damaging fishing practices and there is only limited scale local fishing, marine protected areas become a breeding ground for new fish. Those fish will spread outside of the protected areas. Fish stocks have shown signs of really recovering in the small number of highly protected marine areas around our shores, and in the waters around them. That approach is beneficial to the fishing industry as well as being of absolute importance to our natural ecosystems. We must step up our approach to restoring the marine environment and managing it well so that both nature and fishing can flourish.

My first ask of the Minister—it is one of a number—is to drive forward with bans on damaging fishing practices in marine protected areas. There really is no reason why that cannot be done in the current Parliament. Let us take responsibility. We have done some great things in government, including taking the legislative framework for nature protection further than it has ever been before. Before we get to a general election, let us be able to say to the country that we have completed the job, that we have provided those protections in the MPAs and that we have done what we started out to do. My message to the Minister is: please, let us get on with it.

We must also take a further step forward and provide even greater protections for our most important waters. As recommended by the Benyon review, I want to see highly protected marine areas around our shores. In such areas, no extractive activity is permitted, and nature can be left to its own devices. In the few areas around the UK where really tough protections have been put in place already, there has been a resultant rapid increase in local marine populations. That has happened only on a very small scale in the UK, but the results have been dramatic. It benefits the surrounding fisheries because if an area’s nature, fish stocks and ecosystems are given a chance to recover, surrounding areas have better fish stocks and healthier marine life. If we look after nature, the benefits work for everyone.

My second request to the Minister is this: let us move to designate our most important ecological areas as highly protected marine areas. If we ban all extractive activity in those areas to help them to recover, we will provide a real boost to the surrounding seas too. I say that fully in the knowledge that we must find a balance for the fishing industry; we cannot just close the fishing industry off from large areas of the waters that it has fished for centuries. However, it is also in the interests of the industry that there are patches where we provide complete protection.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman is being sufficiently general in his terms that I do not think that anyone, even from the fishing industry, would disagree with him. However, he may want to look northwards to the experience of the Scottish Government with their consultation on highly protected marine areas. There is a great deal of advantage in hastening slowly in this area. The right hon. Gentleman really must bring fishing, coastal and island communities with him. Otherwise, he will end up doing something that is ultimately counterproductive to fish conservation. If the right hon. Gentleman can demonstrate the benefits in a small number of areas first, there will be more support from coastal and island communities.

[Chris Grayling]

I absolutely take on board the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the need to do this in stages. It is still more important to do this in partnership with the fishing industry and with fishing communities as well. Where there are highly protected marine areas, communities are seeing the benefits. I am not in favour of barging in and saying, “This area of sea that you currently use is closed from tomorrow.” Let us talk to them and work with them to designate areas in a way that works for those communities and for marine life. Let us not approach this on the basis that there should be no more marine protected areas or highly protected marine areas. This can be made to work for both sides.

[Mr Carmichael]

The right hon. Gentleman has to bear this point in mind. He wants to exclude fishermen for rewilding purposes, but fishermen find themselves excluded from other fishing opportunities as well because of cables, pipelines, aquaculture and offshore renewables. It is a salami-slicing effect. Does he agree that if we are to be effective in creating marine protected areas, or highly protected marine areas, we have to look at it in the round, and not just the HPMAs in isolation?

[Chris Grayling]

I accept that we need to look strategically at all our waters to see what the right approach is, but I do not think this is something we can simply not do. The need to protect and restore the ecology around our shores is such that we must take bold steps, although we should take those steps fully aware of the potential impact on coastal communities, and work in full consultation with those communities to identify the best places on which to focus. This is not something we can avoid doing, or even try to avoid doing. We need to step up the pace to provide protections where it is appropriate and most important to do so.

[Margaret Ferrier]

I thank the right hon. Member for being generous and giving way again. The 2015 figures show that 341,000 people were employed full time in the marine economy, with sectors such as marine transport, defence and oil and gas among the largest employers. Does he agree that the Government must balance employment and environmental concerns to ensure that the UK marine economy moves forward in a sustainable manner?

[Chris Grayling]

I do not think that there is any contradiction between high-quality environmental protection and employment, and indeed the welfare of communities. It is paramount that we get the marine ecology piece right. We have done so much damage to nature in this country that, frankly, it is to our benefit and our children’s benefit that we start to turn back the clock.

I will touch on another area where there has been a loss that needs to be restored.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time. Before he moves on to another point, I want to follow the previous interventions by accepting that the development of protected areas has to have the support of local fisherpeople. That was the experience of the sites off Lyme Regis and elsewhere in the country.

I am a member of the Science and Technology Committee. From time to time we and other Select Committees have called on the Government to be quicker in their implementation while consulting. Will the right hon. Gentleman, who is experienced in government, give us any insight as to why it has taken more than 10 years to develop the sites this far?

[Chris Grayling]

Most immediately, we are only recently free of the common fisheries policy, so it was never that straightforward. We now have the opportunity to get a move on, though. That is why I set a goal for Ministers for this Parliament. I see no reason why we cannot provide, in the course of this Parliament, a ban on bottom trawling in marine protected areas. It does huge damage to the seabed and to ecosystems. Most members of the public in this country, and frankly most people in coastal communities, will be amazed to discover that a large continental fishing boat dragging huge amounts of equipment behind it can scour the seabed. To my mind, that is the first priority. The second is to start looking at additional areas, as the Benyon review recommended, where localised no-take areas can be put in place to help the ecology recover.

My next point is about the seabed itself, which is crucial. We hear a lot about the need to plant trees and reforest degraded areas. As hon. Members know, I am passionate about my view that deforestation is a blight internationally and needs to be reversed. However, the loss of seabed habitats—kelp and seagrass—also has a big ecological impact, and we must deal with that as well. We have seen huge loss of seagrass beds around the world and around this country. Restoring and expanding the seagrass and kelp beds on our shores and under our waters is important because it helps local marine ecosystems and is a rather quicker way of absorbing carbon than planting a tree. The Government and all those who work in this field should be eagerly pursuing the opportunity for this country to contribute to our 2050 net zero goal by restoring the traditional kelp and seagrass beds around our shores.

My third request to the Minister is, therefore, for regulatory and financial support for those working to restore seagrass beds and kelp forests. We have lost 90% of our seagrass beds, with a corresponding loss of small marine creatures; many species are vulnerable to disappearing altogether. That would be a sensible, logical part of the good Government strategy over the coming decade of turning around the loss of nature in this country. Of course, there is a financial benefit too, and groups that work in this field have highlighted a number of areas where the UK can benefit financially from a smarter approach to marine protection, but it is not about money. It is just the right thing to do. It is also necessary to protect our future.

I very much hope that the Minister will follow up on all three of those requests, but I also want to touch on an area outside the United Kingdom: the future of the marine areas we do not control around the world. I pay tribute to the UK team that played an active part in the recent negotiations to secure the international agreement on the future of our oceans. As they did at the COP summit, the Government have continued to play a leading role internationally in seeking better protection for and the recovery of nature. That is clearly a very good thing, and Ministers and officials should take credit for it.

[Margaret Ferrier]

I commend the ethos behind the blue planet fund and the Government’s commitment to aid developing countries in protecting marine environments, but it is vital that the many workers in the microplastic industry are given the opportunity to transition into alternative jobs. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the blue planet fund must be inclusive and sensitive to the economic realities of developing countries?

[Chris Grayling]

We clearly have to be sensitive to the issues in developing countries, but they do not benefit from a damaged environment. I see this proposal as beneficial to everyone on the planet. I do not see any downside to living on a cleaner, greener planet. It will bring different kinds of job opportunities. There are many opportunities across the developing world—renewable energy is an opportunity in parts of the world that are hotter and windier than the UK—so it is not an either/or. There are benefits to pursuing an environmental strategy and an economic strategy.

International agreements are all well and good, but to make those strategies work, it is action that matters. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing around the world remains a huge problem, despite the international community’s readiness to talk positively about growing the number of marine protected areas around the world. That is a good thing, but those areas have to be protected. Illegal activity is doing real damage around the world. It is making fish stocks much less sustainable, and is having a big negative impact on smaller coastal communities. One of the key steps to deal with that problem and to protect our marine protected areas is to require every fishing vessel around the world to have satellite monitoring devices on board and to keep them switched on. Even in our own waters, boats occasionally go dark, but elsewhere it is a particular problem. I will be grateful if the Minister touches briefly on what the Government are and will be doing to address this issue.

There is also a job to be done onshore. I have long argued for a system of food labelling in this country that indicates clearly how sustainable the product and its supply chain are. A lot of the focus has been on products such as palm oil from south-east Asia and soy from Brazil, and we need to keep pushing on those issues. It is very much a current problem: recently, beef from deforested areas of Brazil ended up on Tesco shelves. We in this House should clearly keep the pressure up, to ensure that we bring about the right international pressure against deforestation, and that the Government do what they can to move us in the right direction.

We really have to step up progress on food labelling. When the Environment Act 2021 was before Parliament, I pushed the issue of moving towards a system of sustainable food labelling. Ministers made encouraging noises, and committed to doing work on that, which I know they are, although I want to see it happen straightaway, or pretty much straightaway. May I ask the Minister to give the Chamber an update on that work and on when we can expect a proper sustainable food labelling system to come to fruition? Unless and until we can demonstrate to consumers that the products they are buying are from sustainable sources, or that they are not, so consumers can take a decision not to buy them, we will not bring to bear the full weight of consumer power on this issue.

There are always limits to what Governments can do, but consumer power, harnessed in the right way, can probably make a bigger difference than any politician can. We need to bring the full strength of consumer power to bear on marine protection, environmental protection, combating deforestation, and creating a greener, more nature-friendly world. That is basically my message to the Minister. Let us get on with completing the work on banning bottom trawling from all marine protected areas. Let us start the process of going further in expanding highly protected areas, though not in a way that completely cripples the local fishing industry. Let us work with the industry to do that, but let us get a move on to make it happen. Let us do what we can around the world to turn the recent international agreements on illegal fishing into action.

Let us move to bring in sustainable food labelling in this country, and let us continue to focus, on both sides of the House, on the protection and restoration of nature, whether it is seagrass beds, kelp forests or the things that we need to do on land. This is an agenda that the nation increasingly feels passionate about. There is a real need for action before further damage is done, but the opportunity is enormous. We can make a real difference over the next decade, so my message to the Minister and the Government is please get on with it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

This has been a helpful and informative debate. As the Minister said, the noble Lord Benyon holds this portfolio, but she will no doubt be assiduous in communicating the nature of what has been said to her colleague—as I am sure the officials will too—so I am grateful to her for stepping in and making some very helpful points.

I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones); I am not on a journey. Conservatives are, by nature, conservative, and I do not think that there is much contradiction in being Conservative and being focused on conservation—they do rather go together.

Since 2010, this Government have been to places that no previous Government have been, by putting in place measures that will be needed to reverse the loss of wildlife in this country. However, as the Minister says, although it is a good start, there is a long way to go and there is always more to do. The purpose of this debate is really to give DEFRA a hefty nudge. I know that officials like to take their time to go through the responses and work thoroughly to prepare the strategies, but we do need to get on with this. Of course, there is likely to a major political event next year, and it would be very nice, by the time that we get to that, to be able to point to some real further steps in marine protected areas.

When arguing for change, I have always been careful not to say that a ban on bottom trawling in MPAs should be absolute; there will, of course, be localised exceptions for small boats—DEFRA can work with that—but I do not buy the argument that a blanket ban is wrong. I would prefer a blanket ban with some thoughtful exceptions rather than a whole paraphernalia of stuff that eventually, step by step by step, gets to something approximating a ban. Let’s do it the other way around: let’s look at where we need the exceptions and get on with it. Every week or month that goes past sees a continued degradation in too many areas, particularly from large industrial ships.

I agree with the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson, the hon. Member for Newport West, on enforcement. We really need to get that right. I would like to see some measures to ban from UK waters all together vessels, such as big industrial trawlers, that break the rules when the ban is in place. I hope we will see proper enforcement and real consequences, so that people do not break the rules.

As I have said, this has been a good start—with a long way to go. We need a bit of a foot on the accelerator, as we cannot afford to wait longer for the measures that need to be taken. I have set out today some things that I want to see happen, but my message to Ministers is this: thank you for listening, but please accelerate now, because, both politically and naturally—in conservation terms—time is not on our side.

Question put and agreed to. 

Resolved,  

That this House has considered Marine Protected Areas.

Protecting and Restoring Nature: COP15 and Beyond

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

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

It is a great pleasure to be speaking in the debate this afternoon. While I do not always share the views of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), I agree with much of what she said. She is absolutely right to highlight the imperative this year to deliver a good outcome at COP. I very much welcome the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), to his new position. Nobody is expecting him to be able to rewrite the world in one afternoon, but I hope he will be able to secure or stay in his position, and that he will listen to this afternoon’s debate and take a steer on a subject that brings together Members from all parts of the House.

This issue does not divide us—fundamentally, every one of us agrees that the loss of the natural world is a disaster in every respect that has to be reversed step by step. We have to take an approach that begins to rebuild nature. I happen to believe that we can do that and achieve other things as well—I do not think this is an either/or, as I will explain. This is such an imperative, and this year it is so important that the world acts and, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion rightly says, starts to deliver.

It is a matter of regret to me that the COP summit is not happening in China. In reality, we need the Chinese in particular to take a lead on this, because they are by far the world’s biggest consumers right now. Given the scale of China and the emerging demand for natural products and agricultural products in China—apart from the issues we all know about relating to the parts of the wildlife trade that we all abhor and detest—we need the Chinese to be at the heart of the necessary changes, so it is a shame that they are not hosting the summit. However, I very much hope they will still play an active part in it.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I am listening with interest to the comments that my right hon. Friend has made. It is unfortunate that COP15 was unable to take place in China. Does he not agree that to try to ensure that China recognises the global importance of its chairmanship of COP15, albeit in Canada, we need as many world leaders as possible to attend in Montreal, including whoever is the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom? They should put the date in their calendar and make it a priority to attend in Montreal, to take part in those negotiations and to demonstrate that we need a Paris moment for nature. The UK’s leadership at COP26, delivering the Glasgow climate pact and also our leadership on net zero have been conditional on ensuring that leaders at the very top take part in negotiations. Does he agree that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom should also be there in December?

[Chris Grayling]

I absolutely agree with that. I hope that he or she—whoever is elected—will do that. One of the questions I have been asking the candidates is, “Will you protect and keep up the agenda that this Government already have on the environment?” We are seen as leaders internationally. Yes, the strategies need to be actioned, but nevertheless we are doing good work in this area. We are targeting aid in the right places, and we are doing as much as any nation on Earth, but that does not mean there is not an awful lot more to do, and that is one of the things I will be talking about this afternoon. I absolutely agree with the point he is making.

Let me start by touching momentarily on what we are doing here, and then I will go on to talk about the international challenge. First, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion is absolutely right to talk about the decline in native species. She is parliamentary species champion for a sadly rare flower in Sussex. I am parliamentary species champion for the not yet very rare, but much too reduced in number, hedgehog. There used to be 35 million hedgehogs in the UK, and there are now probably 1.5 million. The numbers are recovering in urban areas, but not in rural areas. The decline has been appalling, and if we do not do something to reverse it, they will rapidly move from the vulnerable list to the very endangered list. For a creature that we all love and adore, that must not be allowed to happen.

It is about protecting and extending habitats, a smart approach to the management of our countryside and doing things differently. I happen to believe that we have to be pretty robust in trying to change the nature of the pesticides we use. It seems pretty clear that they have been a factor in the loss of biodiversity. We have to do that in a smart way—we cannot compromise our food production.

As we know, we have a crisis in Ukraine that is feeding through to food supplies around the world. Last Monday, I visited a regenerative farm in Gloucestershire, which I thought mapped out a pretty good path towards sustaining our agriculture, but in a much more nature-friendly way, and I am encouraged by those who have started as pioneers in regenerative agriculture, which involves a much closer relationship between farming and the natural world, leaving aside more space for nature, much more careful management of the land and taking advantage of natural approaches to manage pests, rather than simply covering the countryside in pesticides. It is encouraging to see that that movement, which started small, has now grown and the number of people in the farming world expressing an interest in it is growing. We have to protect the interests of our farmers, and we have to look after and support our farmers, but I am yet to meet a farmer who wants to trash the countryside. If we can help them farm in a more environmentally sustainable way, that has to be the right thing.

I very much support the work that the Campaign to Protect Rural England is doing to try to encourage more planting of hedgerows. For a creature like the hedgehog, hedgerows in the countryside are vital, as is a good field margin. It creates the kind of corridors that the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) was talking about. It is no good having wildlife in a little pocket. We need more hedgerows, more corridors and more space for them, and farming does not have to be done in a way that kills everything around. A wider field margin can still be part of a successful field with a successful crop, where the creatures can live side by side with the crops. If we do not take a much more enlightened approach to the management of our countryside, we will not be able to reverse the decline of species that we have sadly seen. That is our task here.

I very much welcome the steps the Government have taken so far. The structures put in place for farming, with a much greater focus on environmental stewardship, are good. There are challenges in the farming world as they adapt to that, but we should not move away from an approach that says, “We will reward farmers who can look after our countryside and we will encourage the use of farmland in the best way to sustain the wildlife that is so important to our countryside.”

I want to focus today on deforestation internationally. To my mind, it is one of the biggest global challenges we face. The destruction already done to forests around the world has had a huge environmental impact. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion made reference to what is happening in the Amazon. It is a scandal and a disgrace. It is mostly illegal, and it is a matter of extreme regret to me that as we in this House continue to challenge the Brazilian Government over what is happening, warm words are sent back via the embassy here, but on the ground nothing seems to happen.

Many of us in this House have met people from the indigenous communities who have told us in no uncertain terms about the illegal logging and illegal mining happening in those areas. It has to stop. I have said it before and I will say it again: Brazil cannot be treated as a good member of the international community unless this stops, and we should not sign trade deals with the Brazilians unless this stops. All our diplomatic contacts with Brazil should be focused around saying, “If you want us to work with you normally, this has to stop.”

It is not as if there are no alternatives. I know from discussions with people in Brazil that there are 19 million hectares of degraded land in Brazil, and there are programmes to restore parts of it. That is good, but they are still chopping down the rainforest at the same time. Why not focus on the restoration of land in areas where deforestation has already taken place and where that land has become substantially degraded, rather than simply cutting down and cutting down? It needs tough enforcement action and political willpower, and it must happen, because as the hon. Lady said, the consequences globally of the loss of the Amazon rainforest are simply enormous.

It is a matter of enormous discredit to Brazil and the international community that this illegal action is being allowed to take place. Month after month we hear from Brazil that the situation is getting worse, not better. It really has to stop. I praise the Government for the work they are doing to try to protect the other great forest, in the Congo basin. The noble Lord Goldsmith has been at the forefront of supporting efforts to protect that rainforest. We must keep that important work up as the Administration evolve towards a new leadership, but the Brazilian issue has to be solved. We simply cannot go on like this.

The biggest subject that needs to be on the agenda for the discussion at COP about how we should start restoring biodiversity around the world should be the restoration of degraded land. The World Wide Fund for Nature estimates that the amount of degraded land around the world is equivalent to an area the size of South America, and we can see it. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am an active member of the International Conservation Caucus Foundation, along with the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner)—we are very much of the same mind on these issues. I went with the ICCF to Kenya in April to visit projects in the Maasai Mara. As I flew back to Nairobi, looking down from the plane, I could see what has gone wrong. Areas that were forest have been cleared and the land has been poorly farmed. It is now degraded and will gradually dissipate into desert.

That exists all around the world, whether it is that kind of land in Africa, derelict mangrove swamps or areas of arid land in other continents. If we are to solve the issue of biodiversity loss, and at the same time provide livelihoods for the people living in those areas who have chosen to chop things down because they see it as their only option, we will have to start restoring that degraded land. That is the biggest thing that I want to see come out of the COP summit: a global programme to start to restore the land that we have lost, with some of it returning to habitat, some of it used in a proper way for farming—not subsistence farming where people scrape a living, but properly managed agriculture that can create genuine livelihoods—and some degree of sustainable logging and forestry, because that can be done in a nature-friendly way. The key, however, is to bring that land back into proper use.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I absolutely agree with what the right hon. Gentleman has just said. Does he not also think that we have to do something about the market for very rare, valuable tropical hardwoods? That market acts as a huge economic incentive for people in forest areas, because it is their only way of surviving economically. We have to do something about that as well, because we are indeed the market for those products.

[Chris Grayling]

I do not often agree with the right hon. Gentleman, but I absolutely agree with him on that point. None of us in this country should be buying tropical hardwoods for furniture or other purposes.

At the same time—this is perhaps where I differ slightly from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion—for communities in developing countries where we want to see the restoration of the natural habitats that are so crucial to some of the world’s most iconic endangered species, our starting point should be the people themselves. We have to ensure that there are proper livelihoods, so that people can earn a living and at the same time benefit from the restoration of nature. That means helping them to establish proper, viable farming on part of that land, on a much larger scale and more efficiently, it means ecotourism to bring wealth into those areas, and it means sustainable logging and the sustainable management of forests. All those things are necessary. This is, to some extent, about GDP growth, because that is how we give those people the sense that, by properly managing that land, they benefit from it and also benefit from the restoration of nature.

[Caroline Lucas]

Just to be clear on the record, I absolutely agree that people in developing countries who would otherwise be deprived of their livelihoods if current unsustainable practices are not stopped should be supported into more sustainable practices. We have an absolute responsibility to do that, but the idea that we should go out there and treat increasing GDP as an overall abstract aim is wrong. If GDP happens to go up, then fine, but surely our aim should be to allow those people to thrive by giving them sustainable livelihoods, not chasing some kind of GDP figure, which is what I worry about both here and there.

[Chris Grayling]

But if we do not help them to grow their GDP—and do that in a sustainable, nature-friendly way that enables them to derive real benefits from the proper stewardship of that land, the restoration of natural habitats and the restoration of degraded land for other purposes—in the end, we will not create the kind of local ownership that will break the cycle of illegal logging, poaching, the illegal wildlife trade and the rest.

My message to the Minister is this. This COP is enormously important. It is a vital moment for the world. In my view, it is as important a moment for the world as COP26 was last year. The hon. Lady is right: climate and nature are two sides of the same coin. We have played a really important leadership role at COP in securing agreements, which might not do everything we wanted but took us a step forwards. We need to do the same this year. We need to send a senior delegation, we need to push for a proper agreement, and we need to be leaders ourselves in what we do in this country, but we cannot let the global community miss this opportunity. So my message to him, as he takes up this role and as we prepare for a reshaped Administration—I hope he stays where he is—is this. Will he please do everything he can to ensure that the United Kingdom plays the cornerstone role in the COP discussions this autumn, which will be so important to ensuring that we manage to reverse a global decline in nature that should be a matter of shame to the whole of mankind?

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn]

Yes, I do. There was cross-party support in the House of Commons for the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and the creation of marine conservation zones. We basically have a planning framework; we have had one on land for a long time, but we did not have one for the sea at all. We are now confronted with a choice about what we permit. The ability to understand the consequences of what is happening beneath the waves is important. We now have the means to do something about it, but we cannot just say “We’ve got the designation —job done,” and move on to something else. That is not sufficient at all.

Yesterday, my wife and I were discussing what I might talk about in this speech. Apart from telling me, “You must mention the water voles,”—I have now duly done so, and I hope that she has noticed—she said, “Tell them about our oak trees.” For the past 30 years or so, we have been planting oak trees from seed, along with ash and silver birch trees. “Nature reserve” would be a very grand title for the eight acres of former farmland in Essex that my mother set aside, where nature has been left to do its work. The tallest oak tree is probably about 20 or 25 feet now. Over the years, the trees that we have planted—the trees that nature has brought—have brought with them cuckoos, owls, adders, foxes, muntjac deer, the odd badger and white campion, as well as loads of brambles that I attempt to do battle with whenever I can. Every time I walk on that piece of land, I feel the same sense of anticipation about what has changed, what has grown and what is different.

Why do we feel like this? Because nature is part of our very soul. It is about who we are and where we come from. Think of how we encounter it—looking out of the window of a train as it rushes through the countryside, seeing the first crocus of spring, encountering the wonders and glories of the Yorkshire dales, seeing a view of Ditchling Beacon or a view of Scafell Pike from Great Moss, or hearing the buzz of a bee at the height of summer. We do not hear that buzz as much as we used to, or see as many moths. I remember when moths were really common in the summer. When did I last see one? There was an extraordinary experiment in which people were asked to put a bit of sticky plastic on their number plate, drive around and count how many insects were caught. That showed that there has been a catastrophic decline.

[Chris Grayling]

rose—

[Hilary Benn]

Ah! The right hon. Gentleman has returned.

[Chris Grayling]

I apologise for popping out briefly for a family call. Last summer, I went to the far north of Scotland. The further north we got, the more insects hit the windscreen. As more arable farming happens in the south of the country than in the north, that seems pretty clear evidence of the link between the disappearance of insects and pesticides. That is one reason why I was so attracted by the regenerative farming model.

[Hilary Benn]

I agree completely. There are one or two insects in the north of Scotland—midges in particular—that can cause a certain amount of distress, but just think of the glory of the Scottish countryside and the mountains. Who does not feel a sense of awe and wonder as they contemplate the astonishing biodiversity and landscape that our small islands reveal unto us?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

This is why my argument is around a real focus on the restoration of degraded land. Semi-desert subsistence farmland will never deliver anything for anyone except an impoverished lifestyle and poor biodiversity, but the restoration of land is a tangible that can be addressed in the COP because it can be measured and tracked.

[Barry Gardiner]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He is right that we need to look at land restoration as one of the key indicators. It is particularly the case in sub-Saharan African countries, which are facing an increasing challenge of desertification from climate change, which they are having to fight against, rather than just looking at the land that is already semi-desert and trying to see how to restore that. It is a huge problem. The NBSAPs must be living documents, which is why they need to be ratcheted up, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion said, every five years between major COPs.

Let me turn to finance. I pay tribute to Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, who spoke at the beginning of COP26. For my money, she was the most powerful speaker at the whole event. She pointed out to the politicians assembled for the launch of COP26 that the promise we had given was for $100 billion a year to be put into the global planet fund to help the global south to cope with climate change and to take effective mitigation efforts. We have not delivered that, and we are nowhere near delivering it. She pointed out that it was not because we could not afford it, because we had just spent $9 trillion—trillions, not billions—bailing ourselves out over the covid pandemic. The funds are available and they must be made available.

The extent of quantitative easing that the global north has allowed itself since the 2008 global financial crisis has been more than $36 trillion. What is COP15 asking for? It is asking for the same as was promised at COP26: $100 billion a year, rising to $700 billion a year. That is essential. If we are to enable those developing countries in the global south to do exactly what the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell was talking about with regard to the restoration of degraded land, and if we are to deal with these problems, we have to be serious. As the human species, we do not have the right not to be.

Bottom Trawling: Marine Protected Areas

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Bottom trawling in Marine Protected Areas.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. This may be unusual for a half-hour debate, but there are a number of colleagues here who may want to briefly join the discussion. The Minister knows that this is an issue of great concern to me. We have been here before, and I did a ten-minute rule Bill on this issue last year, but I want to keep it on the agenda. It commands concern across not just our House but the other place, where my noble Friend Lord Randall has taken my Bill from last year, improved it and tabled it again this year, and I wish him well with progress on it. I know that, without Government help, it will struggle to reach the statute book, but I hope that that is another indication to Ministers and officials of the strength of feeling about the issue.

Why does this issue command so much concern? The Government are rightly focused on improving our stewardship of the environment, and most people on both sides of the House share that view. Most of the public, who also share our concerns, would think that the presence of marine protected areas, covering around a third of our national waters, would play a big part in ensuring that we look after our own marine habitats. Whether we are talking about the smaller fish, the other creatures that live on reefs or the fish that live in broader areas around those marine protected areas—areas that we would hope would allow fish populations to recover and grow—the public would see those as central to our task of protecting the marine environment.

Sadly, as the Minister knows, the truth has been rather different. Our marine protected areas do not offer a lot of protection at all, particularly for our seabeds. The areas at the bottom of the sea are so important, because they are populated by the smallest creatures, which make up an important part of the natural food chains in our oceans. However, they remain open to large-scale trawlers dragging nets along the bottom, destroying much of what is in their path. The worst culprits are big international vessels that do enormous damage, as they use vast amounts of energy to scoop up everything as they go, and they have equipment that covers a vast area under water. That means, in reality, that those protected areas are subject to regular intensive fishing, which does huge damage to the ecology.

In total, less than 100th of 1% of our waters are covered by the highest level of protection, where all fishing is banned. Ninety-four per cent. of our MPAs permit bottom trawling; only 6% do not. That, in my view, means that they really are not properly marine protected areas at all. There is an urgency about the need for change. We cannot go on like this, because the more time passes, the more damage is done and the more ecology is lost. We have 372 marine protected areas, including coastal and offshore areas, which represent around 38% of UK waters. However, most are not in good condition and have suffered significant habitat degradation. Bottom trawling is a key part, if not the key part, of the problem, with that scalping of the sea floor destroying habitats all around our coastal waters.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it must be remembered that fishermen have the world’s greatest reason to be environmentalists? They know that if they get it wrong, they have done themselves and future generations out of a job. Consultation with long-standing fishermen must play a large part in any conversations regarding marine protected areas. Does he agree?

[Chris Grayling]

Yes, I do agree. Fishing communities need to be a part of the discussion, and local fishing communities in the United Kingdom are pretty good at looking after their coastal waters. The problem is the big guys who come in and hoover the ocean floor. It is necessary to get the right balance, but we have to do a much better job on protection.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I am grateful that my right hon. Friend is championing this matter, because it is so important, and I think there would be strong support on the Isle of Wight for a ban on bottom trawling in all MPAs. In a place such as the Island, a ban on bottom trawling in MPAs combined with, for example, a Reserve Seafood brand, as in Lyme Bay, would be very good news. In Lyme Bay, we see increased catches, increased job satisfaction and increased prices for the fish when fishing is done environmentally and sensitively. I am very supportive of that, and I look forward to helping my right hon. Friend in future.

[Chris Grayling]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes some very good points. This is about proper, careful stewardship of the ocean and the ocean floor. As he rightly says, if these things are done well, it can benefit everyone.

Of course, there is another issue, because this is not just about scalping the seabed; it is also about our ability to tackle climate change and absorb carbon. It is not just the fish and other creatures that suffer because of bottom trawling. Kelp and seagrass are enormously important as well, and are a crucial part of improving our absorption of carbon emissions. We know that bottom trawling can destroy them as well, so there is a variety of reasons why we need to deal with this issue.

One irony is that, from time to time, I get messages from constituents who did not back Brexit asking me what benefits it has brought the country. I remember many people saying that Brexit would mean the destruction of all our environmental protections and that Britain would become a pariah nation, but the opposite is true. We can now do something that we could not do before. Bottom trawling was just a reality of the common fisheries policy, and the Minister would have struggled to take the steps that I have been pushing for. We would have had real difficulty overcoming either the vested interests in fishing fleets elsewhere or those countries that have no coast and that were not terribly interested in the issue in the first place. We are now free to act, and I thank the Minister for what she has done so far—the issue today is not a Minister who is saying no. I know she is sympathetic, for which I am grateful. I also know that she continues to face international pressures, and I encourage her to keep resisting those.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is absolutely right that we have to be mindful of the livelihoods of those who work on smaller fishing boats and in the ports around the UK. My Bill was not about getting rid of all of that. History shows that many ports are home to people who are good at managing their fisheries. It is the large boats that we need to deal with, and the Minister has made a good start with the initiation of a ban in four of the protected areas, including Dogger Bank. Well done to her for that step in the right direction.

I asked for this debate so that I could ask the Minister and her officials to move faster on their plans and so that I could share concerns about the approach taken so far. We really need to get on with this as rapidly as possible. There will be more and more pressure in this place to cover not just the first handful of MPAs but a whole raft of them. Although there has been a good start, I sense that progress so far is still much slower than most of us would wish. Of course, officials will want to take a careful and methodical approach, but there is not a lot of time to spare. The more time we take, the more damage is done, and the more damage is done, the longer the ecosystems will take to recover.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Not only is damage done, but the damage is increasing. In 2019, Greenpeace found that the amount of time supertrawlers spent fishing in marine protected areas had more than doubled, to 2,913 hours, in that year alone. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we have a real opportunity now to ban supertrawlers in every single MPA as a quick early win and then to help fishers move to different gear types to be more sustainable in their methods?

[Chris Grayling]

It is, as the hon. Gentleman says, the big vessels that are the problem. I am sure the Minister will take a careful note of those comments, with which I am extremely sympathetic.

There is another point of concern that I would like to put to the Minister. Not all of the protected areas are uniform in their underwater terrain. There are areas where there are reefs of great sensitivity surrounded by areas of sand on the seabed. That is just the reality of MPAs. The Marine Management Organisation, which is implementing the bans, seems not to be taking a uniform approach to all the protected areas. In some, it is deciding to ban bottom trawling in part of the MPA but not all of it. Effectively, it is saying, “You’ve got sandy seabeds, and they are not affected at all.” I can understand, in theory, the logic behind that. The argument has been made to me by some in the fishing community, but I ask the Minister to think carefully about this.

First, it is going to be incredibly difficult to police. Who will be monitoring the movements of a trawler to establish whether it has approached or gone over the top of a protected reef?

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

MPAs are monitored by the automatic identification system. In a recent incident on the Irish sea, not only did a fishing vessel swear at me over the radio and fail to display the correct lights, but it had also turned off its AIS, which meant that we could not monitor what those fishermen were doing. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, even though we have the international convention for the safety of life at sea, we need legislation to ensure that the AIS systems remain working on commercial fishing vessels?

[Chris Grayling]

I absolutely agree. Frankly, I think that any fishing vessel that comes into UK waters and turns off the tracking systems should be banned from UK waters. It is as simple as that.

Whatever we do, we have to police very carefully. Problems arise if we only proscribe bottom trawling in part of a marine protected area. How on earth do we check whether a vessel has really passed over a protected reef or not? Who is policing that, watching the vessel every inch of the way and coming up with sufficient evidence to make it legally watertight to prosecute if it does it? Although it may be possible to segregate in a small number of areas where it is clear that that is the obvious thing to do, my message to the Minister is to please make that a rare exception rather than the norm. I do not believe that we have the ability to track and police those areas properly.

The other point about sandy seabeds is that they are not always areas of non-ecological importance. The opposite is often the case. These are areas with seagrass or kelp, and there are fish that live there as well. We cannot just say that it is fine to bottom trawl sandy seabeds but not if there is a reef there. Segmenting an area should be the exception, not the rule. The whole MPA should mean the whole MPA, and only very rarely should we take a different approach. The default position should be that the ban covers the whole area, and it is only in exceptional circumstances that we should we accept that bottom trawling can continue.

I stress that, whether we are talking about segregation of MPAs or a wholesale ban, this needs to be properly policed. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) made a very good point. We have to have mechanisms in place, and we have to be tough. If somebody comes into our waters, breaks the rules and damages the ecology, I do not see why they should be allowed in our waters again—or, if they are a UK boat, why they should be allowed out to sea again. We want tough enforcement. In looking at what the Government are doing, I urge the Minister to act in this area.

This issue commands concern across the House. Concerns are held widely among people around the country—in fishing communities and elsewhere. We have to be careful about protecting the livelihood of people in the small boats that go out into coastal waters. They are, and have been for years, an essential part of the livelihoods of people in our smaller fishing ports. We cannot say to the fishing community, “No more. Away you go. Do something else.” That is absolutely not what this is about. This is about stopping industrial trawling in marine protected areas and getting rid of the equipment that scalps the seabed. It is about having proper protections for areas of great ecological importance and looking after our oceans better than we have in the past.

I thank the Minister for making a good start in this area. I know that she has had to fight battles to get the first four areas. It is a good start, but this cannot go step by step. I know that civil servants like to take things methodically sometimes, and I completely understand why—we will come back to the issue of due diligence following the Environment Act 2021 before too long—but we need to move as fast as possible. Otherwise, we are leaving our seabeds to be damaged and damaged again by trawlers that are getting bigger and bigger, and it will take our seabeds, reefs and marine species far too long to recover.

Government Food Strategy

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

The principal driver of pressure on household budgets at the moment is the very sharp rise in energy costs. The measures that the Chancellor announced two weeks ago are a major step towards helping the poorest households to deal with that blow to their finances. The Department for Work and Pensions has already made some changes to eligibility for free school meals, because on 24 March it made permanent the extension of free school meal eligibility to include some of the children who had no recourse to public funds, subject to specified income thresholds.

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

Opposition Members might like to note the fact that April exports to the EU were the highest on record.

I congratulate the Secretary of State on the statement, in which there is much to be welcomed. He knows of my concern and that of Back-Bench members of the 1922 committee about food security and encouraging the maximisation of the harvest over the coming months. Will he ensure that as the strategy is taken forward he does not walk away from some of the Government’s biodiversity strategies, which are so important, and makes sure that they remain at the heart of what we do? In particular, can we resist the turning of farm land into pine forests to the exclusion of biodiversity and of the rewilding that can make a difference?

[George Eustice]

My right hon. Friend raises an important point. He has been a long-standing champion for the hedgehog, as many Members will know, and he has previously raised with me the issue of food security. I hope that what we have set out today addresses our intentions in that regard. He is also right that sustainable environmental protection and profitable, successful food production are not in conflict with one another but are two sides of the same coin, and if we get our policy right we can achieve both.

Hedgehogs

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2021 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg.

I follow a fellow parliamentary species champion, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), but I am perhaps the most topical species champion today, because I am the species champion for the hedgehog. Indeed, as the Minister knows, because she is committed to these issues, I have been, probably not biting her ankles, but prickling them over this issue for some time now, and I intend to carry on doing so. Six years have passed since this House last debated the hedgehog. I very much hope that we will not need to debate it again soon, but I also hope that, if a debate is necessary, it will not take another six years.

It is a national tragedy that we have lost so much of our wildlife. If we look across the range of species that have suffered catastrophic declines in recent years, the picture is profoundly disturbing and worrying. The hedgehog’s decline goes back further than the last 20 years, though. In the 1950s, there were nearly as many hedgehogs as people in the United Kingdom; today the hedgehog population is only a tiny fraction of our population, with perhaps only 1.5 million hedgehogs surviving. We have to turn the situation around, not just for hedgehogs but for all the species that have suffered such declines, and we must start doing it now, because we cannot allow numbers to continue to go down.

There is a variety of reasons why these declines have happened. It is true that there has been habitat loss. Sadly, over the years too many hedgehogs have died on our roads, although I have to say that it is relatively rare to see a dead hedgehog on our roads nowadays. Of course, we see rather a lot of dead badgers on our roads, but that remains a subject of debate. I am not here today to point a finger at the badger, although are issues around the competition between species for ever-diminishing habitats. I am here to argue for tangible Government measures to address the issue.

There has been a lot of debate about the specific review taking place this year. There is genuine cause for concern there, which I hope the Minister will address in her remarks, because none of us wants a formal reduction of protection for species. She knows my concerns about the way the quinquennial review approaches creatures such as the hedgehog, and I hope she will be able to set everybody’s mind at rest.

I hope the Minister recognises from the scale of this petition the genuine public concern. I echo the words of congratulation to the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, to Hedgehog Street, which has done a fantastic job in promoting the need for action, and to all those groups around the country doing so much to protect hedgehogs, to rescue hedgehogs that are in danger, to rescue baby hedgehogs that may not survive the winter, and to look after those that have been injured. I pay tribute to the team at the Wildlife Aid Foundation, just outside my constituency in Leatherhead, who do a fantastic job. I have been down there on many occasions to see the work they are doing with hedgehogs that have run into difficulties in life..

That work and all those different projects all around the country are valuable, but there is a bigger-picture issue to solve here. It was brought home to me this week by a message I received from one of the hedgehog groups distraught that, just down the road from where it is based, a developer starting to clear a site ahead of development had killed a significant number of hedgehogs just by clearing the undergrowth alongside a roadway to make way for that development. In accordance with the law, we in this country do a lot of work before we develop sites, such as checking for bats and newts, but I want the Government think differently, because searching for an individual species on a development site is not the right way forward. We need an holistic approach to nature on a development site. Of course, we still need to develop for the future—we need to provide housing for the future—but we should do that with care. One thing I hope for from the Government in the next few months is a plan to turn the current system into one of holistic analysis of what wildlife is on a site and what needs to be protected, so that we do not simply bulldoze a roadside or cut down a hedgerow with no regard at all for any animals inside it. All too often, hedgehogs are inside it. That change is urgently needed.

The Minister will be aware that I tabled an amendment to the Environment Bill to move the hedgehog into schedule 5 protection. I did not push that amendment to a Division because I understand that the legislative framework is not right for today’s world. It is focused particularly on human intent against animals, and nobody is seriously suggesting that everybody wants to kill hedgehogs. However, I expect quid pro quo from the Minister, which is a proper, urgent review of the legislative framework to address things such as the circumstance I just described, where a developer does not have to look holistically for the full range of species on a site but can just make sure that there are no bats or newts and everything else just gets bulldozed out of the way. That cannot be right, and I very much hope that she will change that.

I ask two other things of Ministers. The first involves habitats for hedgehogs and other species. One reason why we have seen the decline in numbers has been the disappearance of hedgerows. I very much hope that the implementation of the Agriculture Act 2020 and the new agriculture support framework will genuinely encourage farmers to put back some of those lost habitats. CPRE is in the process of launching a timely campaign to get more hedgerows planted in this country, and I hope the Government take that on board and ensure that the support they provide to farmers encourages them not only to have wider margins at the sides of existing fields, which is to be welcomed, but to start replanting hedgerows for the future, because they are vital habitats.

My final request to the Minister is this. It is important for species that travel long distances to be able to do so. Colleagues have mentioned hedgehog highways and developers being encouraged to put holes in fences. That is very good and should continue to be encouraged, but we also need, in areas of open country where there are development threats, to make sure that corridors exist for wildlife—not only hedgehogs but other species—so that we do not lock away one bit of habitat from another, losing the movement between the two and so ultimately the species decline and die. That also has to change.

Those are my three requests to the Minister. We need to ensure that we have proper planning for highways between different habitats, and that we look at supporting the recovery of hedgerows. We particularly need protections for species such as the hedgehog in law, to prevent developers from simply ripping up a site with no regard for what is there. If the Minister delivers all that, she will be able to take pride in the fact that she has played a big part in turning the tide on the tragic decline of hedgehog numbers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

That is the kind of offer I would find hard to refuse. Interestingly, we went to all the effort of making the house, then releasing the hedgehog into it, but I do not think that the hedgehog ever lived in it again. I think my garden was much more suited to it than the house. That is not to say that the boxes from Sutton Coldfield will not be a great deal better than those from Taunton Deane.

On the serious points, as we look to conserve and protect our native hedgehogs we have to consider the reasons for their decline. The main threat to the hedgehog is habitat loss, as many hon. Members referenced, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and the hon. Members for Blaydon (Liz Twist) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Habitat change has been due to such things as agricultural intensification and deterioration in the actual habitat, and that has affected so much of our other wildlife as well.

Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 focuses on deliberate harm against species. Although I agree with the sentiment behind the proposal of my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) to ensure that we protect our hedgehogs, it is not clear that the species is being threatened in that way. Therefore, that protection under the Act would not address the main challenges that the species faces, although I was interested to hear about the potential collecting and selling of hedgehogs. If there is evidence of that from the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, I would certainly like to see it, because that has not been flagged to me and it would concern me.

I must go on to the points made by so many Members, particularly my right hon. Friends the Members for Chipping Barnet and for Epsom and Ewell, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) and the hon. Members for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and for Blaydon, about schedule 6 of the 1981 Act, under which the hedgehog is listed. The schedule makes it an offence to kill or take listed animals by certain methods, such as types of traps and snares.

The quinquennial review process, which many have referred to, reviews schedules 5 and 8 of the Act, and the JNCC will make recommendations with regard to those lists. As I have highlighted to a number of Members, no changes to species protection have yet been recommended to us, nor have any decisions been made. Proposals for change will be formally consulted on later this year, and the Government will then consider the recommendations and advice provided by the JNCC before making any decisions.

[Chris Grayling]

Given that the Minister accepted in the debate on the Environment Bill—I am grateful for that—that the current legislative framework is really no longer fit for purpose in today’s world, would it not be better to set aside the quinquennial review and just get on with replacing the system? Carrying on with what we have at the moment will just cause confusion and uncertainty. It would be better to say, “This doesn’t work anymore,” and do something different.

[Rebecca Pow]

I hear what my right hon. Friend says. We have discussed this at length, and I thank him for that. As I have said previously, it is a priority for us to provide the legislative protections and policy interventions needed for our wildlife, including of course declines in hedgehogs. I am determined that we will get this right, and my right hon. Friend will know that we have recently announced a Green Paper towards that ambition. My Department will begin a review of species legislation, with a view to enhancing and modernising it, and we intend to publish the Green Paper and seek views later in the year. I absolutely agree that we need a better approach to addressing threats to a range of species, and that is what the Green Paper will focus on.

Furthermore, the Environment Bill will strengthen our commitment to such species as hedgehogs. We have amended it to require a new, holistic, legally binding target to be set for species abundance by 2030. The aim of that is to halt the decline in nature. That is a really strong commitment, the like of which we have never seen before. It demonstrates that the Government are determined that we will get this right. Indeed, we have to get it right, and I agree with various Members who have spoken, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), who was very forceful. The matter is urgent and we need to get on with it.

We are taking action through a range of measures that I honestly believe will help. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet referred to the net gain provisions in the Bill, which will mean that every single new development will have to put back 10% more nature than was there at the start. I know that many developers will put back more than that, and that will help hedgehog habitats. Through the Bill, we are also introducing local nature recovery strategies, which have been referred to. Those will help to identify local biodiversity priorities in order to improve the co-ordination of the whole conservation effort, but at scale, and they will be beneficial to species such as hedgehogs.

Environment Bill

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 26th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Hon. Members will be pleased to know that the children of Our Lady of Victories Primary School in Putney have been writing to me about the issue under debate this afternoon. Thirty members of year 6 wrote to me with lovely pictures all about the environment, and most of them said that the most important issue to them was the environment and tackling climate change, so I know the eyes of those children and children across the country are on us this afternoon as we debate this.

I was on the Environment Bill Committee last November. We spent a long time discussing it line by line, with many, many amendments, and this is the third time that I have debated the Bill in the Chamber. I am very glad that it is back. It is not missing in action—it is here today—but I am disappointed because it could have gone further. Despite all our work poring over the Bill and all the evidence submitted by civil society groups, we see a Bill before us that will still fail to tackle the climate and ecological emergency. I am worried that it is just warm words without the back-up of a really strong Office for Environmental Protection, whose remit and powers have been watered down since the Bill was last before the House.

I will focus today particularly on trees. It is welcome that the Government have announced, in the past week, the England trees action plan, but we now need strong wording and a much more ambitious plan in this legislation that will drive the action that is needed across Government, the economy and society. In Putney, Roehampton and Southfields, we love our trees and our green spaces and we know that, across the country, trees are essential for climate reduction, meeting that net zero target, biodiversity and our mental health. However, the UK has one of the lowest areas of tree coverage of any country in Europe. At current rates of planting, it will reach its own target only by 2091, as was pointed out earlier by the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard). That is 40 years off the target of 2050 and it is an example of where we can have a lot of warm words and keep talking things up, but if we do not have enforceable action by the Office for Environmental Protection, as there should be, we will be coming back here in one year, in five years or in 10 years’ time and we will not see the amount of tree planting that we need.

The action plan was originally promised as a 30-year vision for England’s trees and woods, but it has been published as a shortlist of commitments, with three years of funding. Long-term funding is needed for any real environmental action. Clear timescales are needed to ensure that objectives are met, and clarity on that funding beyond 2024 will be absolutely necessary to give the sector long-term security. I welcome the provision for consultation with local people about tree felling that will happen in their roads, and I think that will give people the power they need to stick up for their local trees, which will be very good. However, Ministry of Defence land should have been included in the Bill. We have power over so much of our swathes of land in this country and the armed forces have environmental targets and actions, so they would be able to put such provision into place. Why is MOD land not included, because we could have lots of tree planting? I share the concerns that other Members have expressed today that this Bill will be undermined by the planning Bill.

Despite the progress over the last week, there is an urgent need for a medium to long-term strategy with clear targets to ensure that we protect, restore and expand our woodlands and trees. New clause 25 sets out what targets these should consist of and I hope it will be supported by the House. It will go some way towards rescuing the Bill, as will the other amendments that I will be supporting today, along with my Labour colleagues, and I urge colleagues to support them to improve the Bill.

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson). I have sympathy with a lot of what she says about trees, but it is really important for the House to remember that it is also a matter of restoring marine conservation areas and wetlands. Many alternative habitats offer better ways of capturing carbon than simply planting new trees, so we must focus on the full range of habitats and not just on one aspect, however important trees are—and I will be talking later, if I catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, about deforestation.

For this section of the debate, I want to talk about why I tabled new clause 4. I welcome the Minister’s comments and I welcome the announcements from the past week. What the Secretary of State said last week is enormously important if we are to start to reverse the decline of species in this country. It is tragic: back in the 1950s, there were something like 30 million hedgehogs in this country. Now, there are estimated to be 1.5 million. That is a catastrophic loss. When I was a child, hedgehogs were around in the garden all the time. I have never, as an adult, seen a hedgehog in my garden or anywhere near it. This is a tragic loss and one we have to work to reverse.

There is a whole range of reasons why that has happened, including habitat loss and the loss of wildlife corridors. It is enormously important, in looking at planning policies, that we focus on how we ensure we maintain wildlife corridors. It is also about the protections available. As the Minister knows, I have had a lively debate with the Department over the weeks. I welcome the approach she has taken. I understand the shortcomings in the existing law, but the reality is that it is nonsense that the hedgehog, which has had a 95% decline in its numbers, is not protected, whereas species that are much less in danger and whose numbers are recovering are protected.

The existing law protects primarily against malicious action by human beings, but of course not all species that are endangered have faced malicious action from human beings. A hedgehog does not face that, particularly, but some other animals on the list, such as the lagoon sandworm, valuable though it may be, is not in my view facing direct malicious action from human beings either. It faces threats to its habitat, and so do hedgehogs. We have a situation today whereby if a developer is going to clear a bit of land for development, he or she has to do exhaustive work to establish if newts are present. Much as we love the great crested newt, which is a fine species, it is not actually endangered in this country. We have laws about it in this country because it is endangered elsewhere in the European Union—happily not in the United Kingdom—but there is no obligation to see if other species such as the hedgehog are present. Developers can just bulldoze a hedgerow without checking if there are hedgehogs asleep in it.

I would like to see a holistic approach to any new development, where it is necessary to do a broader assessment of the presence of species and take action accordingly to protect them, and not have a focus on one individual animal as opposed to another. We have too many species that have declined in numbers. We should be protecting them all. Of course, we will need to develop in the future to ensure we have homes available for people in this country, but that needs to be done in a careful way: protecting wildlife corridors, protecting numbers, and ensuring that the steps we take maximise the potential to retain, restore or develop habitats of our species.

I welcome very much what the Minister has said today about hedgehogs. I think everyone in this House will welcome any measures we can take to protect them. I pay particular tribute to the former MP for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, Oliver Colvile, who was the first champion of hedgehogs in this House. I hope we will all be hedgehog champions going forward. We shall be holding the Minister’s feet to the fire to make sure her Department delivers.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We should be going by video link to Mike Amesbury, but we shall come back to him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones]

I do agree with my hon. Friend: Wales is leading the way and I urge the Minister to seek meetings with the First Minister of Wales and his Environment Minister Lesley Griffiths as soon as possible, so that lessons can be learned and rolled over to England.

As we heard in the previous debate, we have seen 44% of species decline over the past 10 years—and that was on the Minister’s and her party’s watch. Now that we have left the European Union, it is vital that we seek to maintain the highest of environmental standards. That is the approach that the shadow Secretary of State—my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport—and my colleagues and I in the shadow DEFRA team have taken to this Bill, from Second Reading through to Committee and to today’s Report and remaining stages. We have proposed fair, balanced and necessary amendments, all of which were defeated by this Government. Not one of them was partisan, and not one of them was done to play games. All were done to make this Bill fit for purpose, and our new clauses 12 and 24 do just that. They are balanced and they are fair, and they reflect the will out there of those in communities across England who want an Environment Bill that will preserve our planet and protect our environment.

That brings me on to another opportunity the Government have missed with this Bill. This Bill, this debate today and this moment were the Government’s chance to tell the fracking companies, “Your time is up”, but given the choice between doing something bold and doing nothing at all, we know what DEFRA under this Secretary of State always goes for.

My position and that of the shadow Secretary of State and the Opposition is clear: fossil fuels need to stay in the ground. This is doubly true when we take into account just how damaging fracking is for our environment. When a third of England’s drinking supply is in the groundwater, do we really want to engage in a risky industry that could poison it for good? Even more disturbingly, fracking is causing earthquakes of up to 2.9 on the Richter scale.

In our recovery from covid, we need to focus on creating good green jobs for the future. Fracking is not green and it does not create jobs. According to the fracking company Cuadrilla’s licence application in Lancashire, for example, just 11 jobs will be created across two sites—just 11. Labour MPs up and down the country are standing up for their areas in opposing this. I want to give a special mention to my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), who has done so much work in this area, and I commend her for all she does. Now is the time to join France, Germany, Ireland, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Scotland and, of course, Wales, and put this destructive industry to bed once and for all.

[Chris Grayling]

I would be grateful if the hon. Lady clarified that. Clearly, I support the principle of our leaving fossil fuels in the ground and not using them for the future, but we are going to need natural gas for the time being, albeit I hope that in time we can phase it out. The Germans are planning to bring it in by pipeline from Russia. We are currently bringing it in by tanker from the middle east. What does she think is the best source of natural gas for the coming years, while we still need it?

[Ruth Jones]

We are in a transition phase, and we need not just to look at natural gas, but to look forward to renewables because that is where the future lies. Renewables are the future. We know already, in this country, that there are certain days when no coal is being burned and some days when just renewables are being used. That is the future for the whole of the UK, not just England, and that is where the Opposition would want to be seeing our future. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention.

I encourage colleagues across the House to get behind Labour’s new clause 12, which would ban fracking and show we really are serious about tackling the environmental crisis that our country and our planet faces—a crisis this Government want to tackle with a 25-year environment plan. Talking about the Government’s 25-year environment plan, it feels as though the last few months have given us less of a plan for the next 25 years and more of an impression that it will take 25 years to develop a plan to preserve our planet and protect our environment. This just is not good enough. While I do not doubt the Minister’s personal commitment, I do wonder if Government Back Benchers really understand what is at stake here and what they need to do.

I now want to move on to the issue of peat burning and to speak to Labour’s new clause 24. I fully accept that soil does not always grab the headlines—it is not particularly sexy—but the impact that peat burning has on our environment is profound, and that is why Labour has tabled this new clause. I want to thank stakeholders, such as Matt Browne at Wildlife and Countryside Link, for all the passionate campaigning on these important issues.

The Government’s peat action plan came three years late. In the meantime, our peatlands have been continuously burned and degraded, releasing approximately 10 million tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere each year. The Government have committed to restoring 35,000 hectares of peatland by 2025, which is great, but that is only one tenth of the 355,000 hectares that need to be restored in England, and we have no clear targets for peatland restoration after 2025. What is going to happen then?

The Government have committed to ban some peat burning, but, again, it is not enough. All we get from this Government are words and hot air, and we need cool, focused and comprehensive action. Labour’s amendment would prohibit the burning of peat of any depth in upland areas. We cannot wait for action any longer. We need a foolproof strategy to restore and protect this vital carbon sink. I hope the Minister will do the right thing and get her colleagues to do what so many out in the real world want us to do, which is to provide action to stop burning peat. It is as simple as that.

Today, we have the chance to improve a weak Bill—a Bill that is lacking in ambition, in focus and in delivering a real and tangible plan to preserve our environment and protect our planet. I encourage the Minister to send a message to the Secretary of State—I wonder where he is today, because this is supposed to be his landmark Bill— and to the Government Whips and tell them that the time has come to get real, to act and to deliver by supporting Labour’s new clauses 12 and 24. There is no better way than by supporting us in the Lobby tonight to show that this Government are finally willing to act, to get real, and to deliver on their rhetoric. The future of our environment and the preservation of our planet demand no less.

--- Later in debate ---

[Deidre Brock [V]]

I will be brief, because as I have already laid out, this is almost entirely an English Bill, but I wanted to touch on new clause 12.

The new clause is a good addition that the Government should welcome. Scotland banned fracking some time ago and Wales has made it very difficult to get the permissions needed. Adding a fracking ban to the Bill would complete the set, and we in the SNP certainly support that, because when our neighbours keep trying to set their house on fire, we want to help them to stop.

Fracking releases gas—at a greater input cost than other types of gas well, I might add—and not all the gas is collected for commercial exploitation. Fracking is associated with a greater escape of gas to the atmosphere than other forms of gas production, which in itself contributes to the climate crisis. The seismic effects may cross borders, of course, and the large amounts of road traffic needed for frack wells gets in the way of other transport needs and themselves contribute to the climate chaos. It is in everyone’s interest to make sure that neighbouring countries do not frack the place up, but responsibilities for the licensing of oil and gas development since the Scotland Act 2016 was passed rest with the Scottish Government; the clause therefore impacts on devolved powers.

Finally, I want to correct a statement the shadow Secretary of State made earlier. He said that the UK was the first country to declare a climate emergency. It was not. The climate emergency petition started in Australia—many very good things come from Australia—and dotted around the world for a while before the Scottish Government became the first to declare a climate emergency, closely followed by Wales. England caught up a wee while later—aye ahint.

[Chris Grayling]

I will focus my remarks on the issues I raise in new clause 19. We have talked about deforestation this afternoon and I pay tribute to the Minister in particular, because she has been a driving force in ensuring that the Bill takes significant steps on deforestation, in effect making it illegal and much more challenging to bring the fruits of illegal deforestation to the United Kingdom. That is absolutely right. The stronger the law on that front, the better.

What the Bill does not do, and what it is difficult for any Government to do, is prevent the fruits of legal deforestation arriving in the United Kingdom. Only now do we see the issues in Brazil, where the Bolsonaro Government are looking to pursue further legislative change that could lead to further deforestation in the Amazon—something none of us can afford to let happen. Through the new clause and its underlying principle, I am encouraging the Government to take a step that I believe would make a real difference to those who seek legally to deforest in other parts of the world—to put the power not in the hands of regulators, but in the hands of consumers. I passionately believe that if consumers around the world say no to the consequences of deforestation, it will be much more difficult for Governments or individuals to pursue deforestation, whether it is legal or illegal.

In this country, if I go to the supermarket and want to know whether the product I am buying contains anything that has damaged forests, it is pretty difficult to tell. If I do not want to buy a product with palm oil in it, I have to scrutinise the small print of the ingredients on the back to establish whether it contains palm oil. If there is palm oil, it is even more difficult to work out whether it comes from a sustainable source. Some aspects of our supply chains are invisible, such as whether the soy meal fed to the animals whose meat we eat came from a sustainable source or—much, much more likely—from an unsustainable source. We have to address that issue, and I think one of the ways to do that is to have a proper system of food labelling in this country that indicates whether a product comes from a sustainable source.

There is a lot of work taking place right now in the private sector, by retailers and others, and in the academic sector to look at how we would assess the sustainability of a product. It is about not just the food we buy in a shop, but the ingredients that go into that food. I think labelling should be placed on the sacks of soybean meal that go to feed pigs in our pig farms, as well as on the products that we buy in the shops, to indicate very clearly to buyers and consumers when a product comes from a carefully thought-out, sustainable source and when it does not. Work is being done by big supermarkets, academics and some really innovative smaller food companies to try to ensure that there is a good way of tracking the sustainability of a food source.

In the end, what we cannot have is the wild west of food labelling. What we need is a coherent, single approach that enables a consumer, in an easily recognisable way, to say, “I know that I can buy that in good conscience,” or “I know that that’s a product that creates problems for the environment.” The truth is that that label alone will ensure that the buyer does not buy the product and that it never appears and there is no market for it. My request and message to the Secretary of State and the Minister—I will follow this up over the coming months—is please to follow the path of introducing a single system of sustainable food labelling, sending the message to consumers, “You are empowered to make the right choices.”

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I want to address most of my remarks to new clause 12 and fracking, but before I turn to that specifically, I want to put on record my concerns about flooding, because we are in a climate and ecological emergency and we are seeing increased instances of flooding. I have certainly witnessed that in my Lancaster and Fleetwood constituency, and it concerns me that at the same time the Environment Agency budget has been cut by a third and the fire and rescue service by a fifth. It is simply not enough to wring our hands while making these cuts, when we cannot respond to the flooding emergency, so I urge the Minister to look again at these cuts and at investing in upland water management.

The Environment Bill is the Government’s first opportunity to bring in equivalent standards to those in the EU regulations, so, frankly, if we cannot secure strong environmental protections in this Bill, it certainly bodes ill for securing workers’ rights and workplace protections. New clause 12 would revoke current fracking licences and prevent the Oil and Gas Authority from being able to provide future licences for hydraulic fracturing, exploration or acidification. Fracking is a big deal in Lancashire. When Cuadrilla started, in just two months 57 earthquakes were detected. Cuadrilla stopped fracking five times because it triggered earthquakes bigger than the Government rules allowed. Even more disturbingly, a year later, an earthquake measuring 2.9 on the Richter scale led to a review by the Oil and Gas Authority, which, worryingly, concluded that it was not possible to predict the probability or size of the tremors caused by fracking.

My Lancashire constituents and, indeed, much of the country were relieved when the Government got around to launching a moratorium halting fracking and exploration with immediate effect, but in the past two years the Government have failed to deliver the legislation that is needed to give effect to their promise. If the Minister is not willing to support new clause 12 today, when will that come? It was a relief that the Government got as far as the moratorium almost two years ago, but we need something concrete—something solid—behind that. If the Minister is to assure my constituents that the Bill is not just empty words, will she accept Labour’s new clause and legislate to ban fracking once and for all?

We know from the Lancashire experiment on fracking that it is a risky way of extracting dirty energy. We have seen that France, Germany, Ireland, Bulgaria, New York state and the Netherlands, as well as Scotland and Wales, all agree, so this is our opportunity to bring England into line. There are so many risks surrounding fracking, and the Government know that or they would not have called the moratorium in the first place. The British Geological Survey is very clear:

“Groundwater may be potentially contaminated by extraction of shale gas”.

In England, groundwater supplies a third of our drinking water.

In addition, the assertion that fracking will lead to a jobs boom is simply not true. Cuadrilla’s application in Lancashire talked about starting just 11 jobs, and that is before we start looking at the jobs that would be put at risk by fracking happening on the Lancashire coast, because so many of our jobs on the Fylde coast are in the tourism industry, and people are not keen to holiday next to fracking wells.

Most importantly, scientists agree that if we are to avoid dangerous levels of global warming, fossil fuels need to stay in the ground. With every application comes huge environmental concern. There is a risk of additional carbon emissions, as well as the understandable anxiety for local people about the impact of earth tremors and water contamination. When will the Minister listen and finally take action? Now is our chance, once and for all, to tell the fracking companies that time’s up, and to put the future of our planet and our communities first.

Environment Bill

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind) [V]]

Diolch, Madam Deputy Speaker; it is a pleasure to speak briefly in this debate to the amendment in my name and in support of the many excellent amendments tabled by colleagues from across the House.

While they were open, my visits to schools were able to continue over Zoom; it has been one of the pleasures during this difficult lockdown. The common theme in these sessions is always questions about the climate crisis. The sense of urgency among young people is palpable, yet I fear that in decades to come, they will look back at the decision makers of today and ask why, despite all the warning signs, we did not do more when we had the chance. I want Wales to seize that chance and use our natural resources and innovation to fuel our recovery and transition to a sustainable economy. We have the capacity and capability to do it, but too often, our efforts are being hampered by Westminster. There has been the refusal to support the Swansea bay tidal lagoon, the pitiful track record on rail investment, and a flat refusal to empower the Welsh Government with powers over energy policy or meaningful economic levers.

I fear greatly that the latest power grab will see any climate ambitions set by the Senedd actively undermined by Westminster. I am talking, of course, of the powers grabbed via the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 to spend in devolved areas, which the British state intends to use to deliver the shared prosperity fund. It takes very little imagination to picture a scenario in which the British Government bypass the will of our democratically elected Senedd and pursue their Union Jack-plastered pet project in Wales without any regard for the environmental consequences.

Amendment 40 in my name seeks to defend Wales from Westminster intrusion. It would require that an impact assessment is carried out on the effect on environmental targets set by the Senedd of any infrastructure project that the British dare to seek to deliver in Wales via the shared prosperity fund or any other mechanism. Where the effect is found to be a negative one, my amendment would give the Senedd a veto on the project.

While I will not push this amendment to a vote this evening, I seek reassurances from the British Government. I want a guarantee that Wales will be free to not only set, but achieve more ambitious targets on achieving net zero, improving air quality and reducing plastic waste, without any interference from Westminster. By introducing the Bill, the British Government have rightly made much of the importance of setting long-term environmental targets and establishing lines of accountability. Is not it only right that the Welsh Government are fully accountable for any decisions that affect Wales’s environmental targets?

I briefly pledge my support for new clause 17, which would require the UK Government to deliver a strategy setting out how the economic recovery can be designed to improve our wellbeing and environment. I also support new clause 9, which would ensure that anyone with responsibility under this legislation must comply with the commitment to achieving a healthy, resilient, biodiverse natural environment. I welcome amendments that seek to strengthen, and hold the Government to account on, the promise to combat global deforestation, and to set targets for the reduction and replacement of animal testing for the purposes of chemicals regulation.

We do have an opportunity to make a difference, and the next time I talk to young people in my constituency, I want to be able to show them that we are taking it. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

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

I start by welcoming this Bill and praising the Government for bringing it before the House. I know it is disappointing that the Bill will not make it into law until the next Session, but it is a world-leading piece of legislation. Whether it is because of the scientific warnings about climate change, the loss of biodiversity, air quality issues, or the need to create a better environment around us all, the measures in this Bill represent a major step forward. Although there will be a lot of debate about whether the Bill should be enhanced and how, I hope that all who propose changes to it recognise what an important measure it is.

I shall seek to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, when the Bill reaches the second day of Report, to move my amendment on the protection of the hedgehog and to speak about forest protection. Today, though, I want to focus on the first part of the Bill, particularly the requirements to prepare an environmental improvement plan and to set targets for improvements. The 25-year environment plan that the Government produced two years ago provides an essential and world-leading blueprint for the kind of change that is needed. It covers a whole range of issues, but in particular I want targets and updates of the plan to focus on habitat restoration and protection here, and I want tangible measures to incentivise and support the restoration and protection of habitats in other parts of the world. We have to be world leaders in protecting our species and encouraging other people to do the same.

The loss of biodiversity in the UK has been tragic. Whether we are talking about the disappearance of birds from our gardens and hedgerows, the decline in the numbers of much-loved species such as the hedgehog, or the challenges of our marine environment, it is the job of this generation to start to turn the tide. The decline is even more tragic in other parts of the world, with large numbers of iconic species in real danger of disappearing and with habitat being lost at an alarming rate. The implementation of this Bill, the targets that are set and the ongoing improvement plan must tackle this disaster in our country, and help to do so for our planet.

In other parts of the world, deforestation is a key part of the problem, and this Bill must play a part in ensuring that the UK says to the world, “Enough is enough.” We will come back to that next time. Here, the issue is not deforestation—we have more trees today than we have had for centuries, and we have ambitions to plant more—but we have intense development pressures. We do need new homes and we need to tackle some of our infrastructure challenges, but new developments must have a smart strategy for environmental protection alongside them, particularly to avoid the unnecessary destruction of habitats.

We need to grow more food here and stop importing so much from around the world, so we need a bigger and stronger farming sector, but it must protect biodiversity. The measures to do so in this Bill and in the Agriculture Act 2020 are very welcome. We need to take some tough decisions about invasive species, because we have to stop outsiders multiplying in a way that drives our native species to extinction. The targets set under this Bill must put biodiversity at the heart of our strategy, and the duties that it places on local communities must also strengthen biodiversity.

In the coming weeks, we will hear a lot of thoughts and ideas about additional things that could be done to improve our environment, but we must give the Government credit. This Bill can and will make a difference, and I look forward to it becoming law. Given the delay, however, the need to act on biodiversity starts now. Although I know that we must wait for the Bill to pass into statute, I want Ministers to make this a central part of their work now. The powers in this Bill will help them to do so in the future, but protecting our species and protecting biodiversity here, and encouraging others around the world to do the same, must start right now.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

I rise to support my new clauses 14 and 15. The core principle of the Bill is that safeguarding the environment should be at the heart of decision making right across Government, and that must include the planning system. New clauses 14 and 15 would give the OEP the power to veto or reduce housing targets and require new developments to be consistent with our net zero carbon target. Of course, the environmental net gain provisions in the Bill will generate, via the planning system, a welcome flow of investment into nature. I also welcome the Government’s recent abandonment of their housing target algorithm, which generated impossibly high numbers, but for London, that threat remains for the longer term. We also have a planning Bill due soon.

My fear is that the Government’s determination to “build, build, build” could compromise the environmental ambition of the Bill that we are considering. Let us face it, nothing has a greater physical impact on the landscape than the buildings we construct. Successive generations have been judged by the legacy of the built environment they have left behind. By giving environmental and climate concerns a greater weight in the housing and planning system, my new clauses are an appeal to Ministers not to repeat the mistakes of the ’60s and ’70s, which their algorithm makes me fear that they will.

Even with Ministers’ change of heart on the algorithm, the housing targets remain very high. That could mean a drive for ever denser, ever higher blocks consuming ever more of the green spaces we value so much, and never more so than in a time of covid. Local input into the planning system provides a formidable defence for the environment, and I ask the Government to drop their White Paper proposals to remove local decision making for areas designated for growth.

Despite the measures that I would like to see added to the Bill, Members should be in no doubt of my strong support for this legislation, which I introduced as DEFRA Secretary in its first iteration in the last Parliament. The Bill will mark a historic turning point as we establish a demanding and rigorous framework of legally binding targets, improvement plans and measures to protect biodiversity and crack down on waste and plastics pollution.

As many Members have said, we are at a crisis point for nature and for climate. We need urgent action to arrest the decline in habitats and the threat posed to thousands of species both here and overseas. We hold this earth in trust for those who come after us. If we are to have any chance of being the first generation to leave the natural environment in a better state than we found it, we need to make big changes to the way we do things in this country, and I am confident that this Bill will help us do that.

Environment Bill

Chris Grayling Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 26th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

Yes, that is what we will be doing. Indeed, the design of our future environmental land management scheme will have a local component, and we want to make sure that what we do to promote nature through ELM is consistent with the local nature recovery strategies.

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

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[George Eustice]

I will give way one more time, and then I will make some progress.

[Chris Grayling]

My right hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way.

This is one of the most important parts of the Bill. We need to restore habitats in this country, with a particular focus on those species—birds, hedgehogs and others—that have declined so dramatically in numbers. Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that the mandate that goes with these measures, both for the new agency and for local authorities, will focus on helping those species to recover, particularly by recreating the habitats that will enable it to happen?

[George Eustice]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point, and the Bill will require local authorities to have their own strategies for biodiversity and for nature recovery. As he identifies, these are exactly the types of issues that we want them to address.

Before I close, I will highlight three new additions to the Bill since it was introduced in the previous Parliament. Clause 19 will mean that, when introducing a Bill, every Secretary of State in every future UK Government will have to include on the face of that Bill a statement on whether the new primary legislation will have the effect of reducing existing levels of environmental protection.

The second addition is that the Bill will create a new power to implement the Government’s manifesto commitment to end the exporting of polluting plastic waste to non-OECD countries. We will consult industry, non-governmental organisations and local authorities on specific restrictions or prohibitions.

Thirdly, clause 20 will require the Government to take stock biennially of significant developments in international legislation on the environment and then publish a review.

In conclusion, this Government are committed to leaving the environment in a better state than we found it, whether through planting 30,000 hectares of trees a year by the end of this Parliament, transforming our approach to agriculture, tackling air pollution or improving our waste management. This Bill will create the framework to set a long-term course for our country to drive environmental improvement, and I commend it to the House.

Environment Bill

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 26th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder). He focused on air quality and that is very much what I want to focus on today. I agree with everything he said about that. I also agree with him that we should leave the environment in a better condition than we found it, but I fear that, in its current form, the Environment Bill will not deliver that mandate, which I share. It certainly will not deliver the bigger mandate of delivering zero carbon for 2050. As the Minister will know, the latest projections show that we will reach the 1.5° increase by 2030, not 2040, so we really do need to up our game. The Bill is possibly capable of delivering environmental protection, as opposed to climate change mitigation, regarding air, chemicals, plastics and our oceans.

The problem with the Bill, at least as it is drafted at the moment, is that it does not have the teeth to deliver enforceable, known targets to ensure that we deliver those higher standards. As we leave the EU, the real risk is that because we do not have dynamic alignment, we will fall behind the escalating standards in the EU and possibly even behind the current standards. On air quality, the Minister will know that we consistently fail to meet the EU air quality standards and that is why the Government have been taken to court on several occasions by ClientEarth and rightly fined. We need a system that can duplicate that, but that system does not exist.

[Chris Grayling]

It baffles me that Opposition Members think that this country is incapable of setting high standards itself without having an international body to do it for us. If we all, collectively, across the House, believe in high environmental standards, why cannot we look after our own interests, rather than have somebody else do it for us?

[Geraint Davies]

That was very much an own goal by the former Transport Minister, who cancelled the electrification of the line to Swansea and knows that the UK has consistently failed to meet standards. The empirical evidence shows that we have not and cannot do it with this Government, because we have been dragged into court, kicking and screaming, for failing those standards. That is why we have the Bill, which waters down the standards, does not provide an independent agency and does not provide an opportunity for fines to be paid for failure to deliver World Health Organisation standards. In my view, such fines should be paid to the health service to treat people for the harm and to local authorities to actually reduce air pollution.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist). I do not agree with what she said about the need for the European Union to set our regulations, but I do agree with a lot of what she said about deforestation and biodiversity, which indicates commonality across the House on the need to tackle these issues effectively.

I am not a glass-half-empty person, and I think that we in this country have made good progress in recent years. Our rivers are massively cleaner than they were, although discharges still damage our wildlife. We are planting trees around the country—I have a fantastic project in my constituency, the Centenary Woodland, which is being planted by the Woodland Trust—but not enough is done to ensure that new housing developments are built in a sustainable way alongside protected habitats, and that housing does not destroy wildlife in our country.

We are doing much more than we previously did to tackle unnecessary waste, but the hon. Lady is right to say that we still have too much plastic pollution, and we do not sufficiently reuse potentially valuable materials. As a nation we have made good progress in cutting carbon emissions, but we still have an impact around the world. There is deforestation, and one thing I would like, which consumers can deliver, is a significant reduction in the amount of palm oil that this country uses. We know the environmental implications of too many palm oil plantations around the world, and this country should seek to set an example on that issue.

My remarks will focus on two things. First I will speak about biodiversity, but I will also stress the need for a smart approach towards these matters. Our constituents still have priorities. They may think that this issue is a priority, but it is not the only one, and we must approach these matters in a way that delivers a cleaner, better environment, and enables us to meet people’s other priorities.

It cannot be right that our generation has seen such a loss of biodiversity here and around the world, and we must seek to address that. Many of us will remember the dawn chorus from when we were children. There were birds all over the place, but today there are far fewer. I hold the role of parliamentary species champion for the hedgehog, and to my mind, the dramatic decline in hedgehog numbers shames this country. Not just in this country but around the world too many species are in danger because of man’s behaviour. One thing that I hope will result from the dreadful outbreak of coronavirus in China is a proper crackdown in Asia on the illegal wildlife trade, which does so much damage to so many species, including endangered species.

I welcome measures in the Bill that require biodiversity gain in new developments. That is an important step forward, and when meeting our undoubted housing needs, we must not simply build over wildlife habitats without seeking to make provision for the species that are affected. It is right to have a proper nature recovery network, and to give local authorities and other organisations the duty and power to restore and create better natural habitats. That is the only way to reverse the decline in species such as the hedgehog, or those birds that have disappeared from so many parts of the country. It is not the only solution, but it will be important.

We must also introduce measures on water quality in our rivers. We have made progress, but not enough, and the Bill includes some provisions on that, particularly regarding extraction. Over-extraction to meet human and agricultural needs has a serious impact on biodiversity in our river valleys, which the Bill rightly seeks to address. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) was right to speak about the importance of measures in the Bill to tackle illegal deforestation, which are welcome and overdue. These issues are not just for the Government or regulatory bodies, because our whole society needs to act. I welcome the gradual steps now being taken by some developers to open up the access routes through new developments that species such as hedgehogs need. Without such provision, those species will continue to decline.

We need a smarter approach to managing our impact on the environment, but we live in a democratic society, and people also have other expectations. If we demand that people give up major aspects of their lives in the name of the environment, or because of environmental pressures, they simply will not do it. People expect us to improve their roads, and ensure that they can buy or rent a home and take a holiday, and we must work out the best way to deliver our environmental objectives, alongside meeting the rest of those goals. The new Office for Environmental Protection must use its powers wisely and effectively. We must do everything we can. If there is a solution we must grasp it, but if no solution avoids damaging other parts of our society, we must think carefully about how we approach those issues.

One example of where we need a smarter approach is in preparing for net zero. I hear, week by week and day by day, people and companies saying that they will be net zero by a particular date. That is absolutely to be desired, but we know that some of the mechanisms to get them there, particularly offsetting schemes, are not always what they are made out to be. We will therefore need a much more carefully thought through, higher quality approach to nature recovery here and around the world. It is not just about planting trees, although hon. Members of all parties have talked about the importance of tree planting. I support the planting of trees. We can play a big part internationally, through our development aid budget, to encourage and support other countries to reforest areas that have been allowed to become arid and deserted. We can do more in this country, too. We have projects already, but there is more we can do here. It is not just about tree planting, of course. Wetland areas can absorb carbon and create more habitats for birds. We need a mixed approach to biodiversity.

Offsetting projects have to be genuine and beneficial. It is important that in this country the Office for Environmental Protection ensures that projects within the UK are genuine in their impact. Internationally, I want us to refocus part of our aid budget to support genuine projects around the world that restore biodiversity and habitats to create the opportunity to bring back wildlife populations and capture carbon at the same time. As one of the great donors to the developing world, we can play a real leadership role in doing that.

Restoring our habitats and our natural environment is, to me, an urgent priority. Legislation can only take us so far. The whole of our society needs to work on delivering it, but the Bill can help us to take a major step in the right direction.