Draft Import of, and Trade in, Animals and Animal Products (Miscellaneous Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 Draft Official Controls (Animals, Feed and Food, Plant Health etc.) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2020 General Committees

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I echo the Minister’s opening comments: I think we are all keen to hear the action going on in the main Chamber. These SIs appear to be largely technical and uncontroversial, although I am always loth to say that when I read through the many pages of changes—and I will come to that in a moment—but the Opposition will not oppose them, because we, too, want to ensure that UK trade remains as robust as we can make it after the end of this period.

However, these are very important issues, and it is hard to overstate the importance of sanitary and phytosanitary controls. There has, of course, been considerable controversy on this around the links between GB and Northern Ireland and, of course, safety issues are in our minds given avian flu and, sadly, the African swine fever in much of the rest of the world. Getting these things right and making sure that our defences are strong are really important, so there are some important questions.

Turning to the official controls SI, paragraph 2.2 of the explanatory memorandum outlines our current

“appropriately designated border control points and other points of entry”

and says that controls are

“also carried out at other locations, such as slaughterhouses, to verify the compliance of imported SPS goods with Official Controls Regulations”.

Will the Minister say a little more about where those kinds of places are? I cannot quite imagine exactly how that works, so I would be grateful if she will explain that. There is not much more that I wanted to ask about other than the impact question because—Labour has made this point with other SIs—it seems hard to imagine that there are no impacts.

On detail and the accuracy, I could not help notice that the previous time this matter was discussed—in the pre-no-deal discussions when it was in the form of SI 2019/1488—the then Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee highlighted a couple of things that were, in effect, errors or needed clarification. I just wonder how we can be sure, as one looks through the huge array of changes, that it is all entirely correct. I suspect it is not, but that is no criticism of those who are doing the drafting. I do not think that we in this place have the capacity to scrutinise such things closely enough. If someone wanted to slip something through, it really would not be hard to do, and it would be hard for people to spot it. We rely on people elsewhere to draw attention to these things, but there is nothing else on the official controls SI that requires further questioning at the moment.

Moving on to the second SI on the import of and trade in animals and animal products, I have one or two questions around the pre-notification requirement, which appears to be changing. Paragraph 7.5 in the explanatory memorandum—I think the Minister touched on this—recognises that imports into Great Britain using existing health certificates will be maintained

“for a period of time after 31 December 2020”,

without any reference to how long that process will continue. Again, the Minister may not have the answer to hand, but there is always a danger that temporary and interim arrangements can drag on in the future. It would be good to have some clarification and on how long that situation may last.

On the impact side, an impact is actually recognised with the import and trade SI, specifically on the pre-verification procedure and the differing computer systems that will be needed. It is estimated that the change will

“add to the staffing costs of a proportion of the 21,600 firms who are estimated to be involved in”

these import activities. Will the Minister give us some indication of the level of those additional staffing costs? It clearly is not the case that things are going remain exactly the same.

The Opposition do not see anything further to clarify at the moment, and we will not oppose the measures.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Question 4 has been withdrawn. If the substantive question cannot be answered, do not worry. I call the shadow Minister.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

May I associate those on this side of the House with the Secretary of State’s comments on the appalling loss of the Joanna C?

Twenty-six per cent. of our food comes from the European Union, and it is reported that last week the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ head of food security warned industry reps to expect just 40% flow rates. I am sure the Secretary of State will want to provide reassurance on that, but as we have already heard, his attempts to placate livestock farmers recently led to some pretty dreadful headlines in the farming press. “Laughable” was the comment from the Farmers Guardian. So can he do better today and explain the plans he has in place to keep our food supplies flowing in just 35 days’ time?

[George Eustice]

We have worked with industry to ensure that the capacity is in place to issue export health certificates, and we have been contacting meat processors, fish processors and others in the sector to ensure that they are prepared for the new administration that will be required, and of course we continue to work on plans to ensure that goods flow at the border.

Environment Bill (Twenty Second sitting)

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 22nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 26th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Just to give the batting averages, we have taken half an hour for two new clauses. At this rate, we will be here until 4.30 pm this afternoon. Speed is of the essence.

New Clause 29

Report on climate and ecology

“(1) The Secretary of State must, no later than six months after the day of which this Act is passed, lay before Parliament a report containing an assessment of the adequacy of environmental legislation and policy for meeting the climate and ecology challenges faced by the United Kingdom and the world.

(2) That report must include specific assessments relating to—

(a) water quality, availability and abundance;

(b) biodiversity, including, but not limited to, the restoration and regeneration of biodiverse habitats, natural and human modified ecosystems, and their respective soils;

(c) the expansion and enhancement of natural ecosystems and agroecosystems to safeguard their carbon-sink capacity and resilience to global heating; and

(d) resource efficiency, waste reduction and the promotion of the circular economy.”—(Daniel Zeichner.)

This new clause requires the Secretary of State to go beyond setting one target (as in Section 1(2)) to within 6 months, assess, develop plans and outline adequacy of each target. “Circular Economy” is included as the Prime Minister agreed this concept in September 2020 at UN Leaders Pledge for Nature

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

I am grateful to the Minister for writing to me yet again. We are such regular correspondents that I am half expecting a Christmas card any time soon. She wrote on the debate we had on new clauses 25 and 27. It is a very detailed reply and it does give some reassurance, but I have to say that it shows why we should have had a discussion about those clauses in an evidence session, rather than have them inserted late in the day. I suspect there will be other lawyers who will take a different view on some of these matters, but I am sure that can be pursued as we go through the later stages of the Bill.

On new clause 29, I very much echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test. We believe that new clauses 29 and 28 together would strengthen the Bill. New clause 29 would give additional bite; it can stand on its own, so there is still time for the Minister to redeem herself. Exactly as my hon. Friend said, we take issue with the lack of overall clarity in the Bill. It needs a clearer thread running through.

The new clause, which would require the Secretary of State within six months of the Bill becoming law to report on the adequacy of current environmental law and policy in meeting the climate and ecological challenges the UK faces, would be tremendously helpful, not least because—as we saw yesterday—it seems the Government do one thing one day, and completely different things another day. They fail to face the challenges when they make big policy announcements. The new clause would make it much tougher for the Government to crawl out of their obligations.

We think the report should specifically be required to address issues of water, biodiversity, the capacity of natural and agroecosystems to mitigate global warming, resource efficiency, waste reduction and the promotion of the circular economy. That should be helpful to Government. As my hon. Friend said, we support the Prime Minister’s signing up to the UN leaders’ pledge for nature, and this includes the circular economy in our thinking.

We have taken a number of these ideas from the climate and ecological emergency Bill, which we believe is right to place emphasis on the importance of expanding and enhancing natural ecosystems and agroecosystems to safeguard their capacity as carbon sinks, as well as on the need to restore biodiverse habits and their soils. Out there in the world, which is sadly not following proceedings on the Bill as closely as some of us would hope, there is an appetite for this more ambitious approach.

After the Secretary of State has made the report, we would then very much hope that he or she would act on it and ensure that the environmental targets and environmental improvement plans were appropriately ambitious and would set out not just one long-term target in each area as required in clause 1, but set and outline the adequacy of those targets and lay out adequate plans to address each of those major issues within six months.

If it is an emergency, it needs addressing urgently. We do not believe the Bill does that at the moment. New clause 29 would help.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Much of the Bill is concerned with English-only environmental issues, as I have mentioned in the past, because environment is a devolved area under the Scotland Act 1998 and legislative consent motions have been agreed.

In connection to new clauses 29 and 29, I point out for those who are keen to hear what is happening in Scotland that the Scottish Government are developing their own environmental strategy. “The Environmental Strategy for Scotland: vision and outcomes” was published earlier this year. As the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform indicated just yesterday at her appearance in front of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, she will soon be publishing a monitoring framework for the strategy, which will bring together existing statutory targets, elements of the national performance framework and indicators from other strategies. That is after considerable consultation with stakeholders.

The strategy has attracted a broad range of cross-party support. The Cabinet Secretary just yesterday suggested working with Opposition Members to design amendments that will set out an obligation on Ministers to continue the work on an environmental strategy. It is an example of cross-party working that I think this place would do rather well to emulate. The Scottish Government and Parliament are leading the way in many environmental areas. I encourage Members from this place to lift their eyes from here and look to some of the great progress in this area that is being made in the devolved nations of the UK. I think it really would be worth their while.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for Cambridge for moving this new clause. He is always very passionate about what he says. I am pleased that my letter was able to give a bit of clarity on the subjects he raised in the Committee.

I reassure the Committee that the new clause is not needed. It will not surprise anyone to hear me say that. There are already measures in the Bill to help assess the adequacy of environmental legislation. Under clause 26, the OEP will proactively assess how our environmental laws work in practice and advise the Government on the most effective and efficient way of implementing those laws.

The OEP’s reports must be published and laid before Parliament and the Government are required to respond to the OEP and publish that response, which must also be laid before Parliament. Given that climate and ecology challenges are key environmental issues affecting us, we would expect that the OEP would want to address such matters in its clause 26 reports. That is basically its raison d’être and the raison d’être of the Bill. I do not think the hon. Gentleman is seeing what is in there, which covers what he is asking for. We also report annually on our progress in improving the environment through the 25-year environment plan.

The Bill as drafted already introduces a number of reporting requirements in the areas specified. Clause 94, for example, requires designated public authorities, including local planning authorities, to produce five-yearly biodiversity reports. The reports will provide transparency and accountability, and help local authorities to share best practice. Over time, they will become a very valuable source of data to support nature’s recovery. Clause 75 concerns improving water companies’ water resources management plans. This planning occurs every five years, taking into account the next 25-year period. Companies must review their plans annually.

The reporting requirements introduced by the Bill will complement the Government’s existing and proposed reporting and monitoring of the natural environment. There is only so much reporting people can cope with. I honestly think more reporting would cause people to groan under the weight of it all. What we want is action, and that is what this Bill is going to set in motion, which is why we need to get through it.

Last month, the Government published their response to the 2020 recommendations from the Committee on Climate Change. The response sets out the Government’s intention to publish a comprehensive net zero strategy in the lead up to COP26. The strategy will set out the Government’s vision for transitioning to net zero and reducing emissions across the economy. We have already set out our plans for a nationwide natural capital and ecosystem assessment. That is a big data-gathering census and a new large-scale surveying initiative, which will provide us with the all-important data to drive better decision making. That is something I have absolutely wished for as the Minister, as has the whole Department. It will be crucial in our future—we have talked about data before, and it is absolutely essential to know what we have now, what we will have tomorrow and what we would potentially like in the future.

I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith for her comments. We obviously work closely with the devolved Administrations, and we will be sharing a lot of the measures in the Bill. We always like to learn best practice from others—I mentioned that in the main Chamber only this morning, when the hon. Member for Putney and I spoke about air quality.

Although I welcome the intent behind the proposed new clause, I do not believe it is necessary, for the reasons I have outlined. Wide-ranging reporting assessment measures are already in place in the Bill and will be able to drive the sort of action that I think the hon. Member for Cambridge is after. I honestly do not believe we need the new clause, so I ask him to withdraw it.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful, as ever, but disappointed by the Minister’s response. I do not think we need to divide the Committee, but I doubt whether even the Office for Environmental Protection will be established in the next months. Let us hope that it will go more quickly. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 30

Smoking related waste

“(1) The Secretary of State will by regulations introduce a producer responsibility scheme in England to tackle smoking related waste.

(2) The scheme will compel those tobacco companies operating in England, as defined in the regulations and subject to annual review, to provide financial support to the scheme based on a market share basis.

(3) The scheme will ensure that those tobacco companies will have no operational or other involvement in the scheme other than to provide financial support in accordance with guidance from the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and the Department of Health and Social Care.

(4) The regulations will set a target for a reduction in smoking related waste by 2030.

(5) The regulations will set out an appropriate vehicle to deliver the scheme including governance and criteria for funding related initiatives.

(6) The Secretary of State must prepare and publish an annual report of the scheme and must lay a copy of the report before Parliament.”—(Ruth Jones.)

The aim of this new clause is to ensure that the Government creates a producer responsibility scheme for smoking related waste. No such scheme exists at present and the clear up and waste reduction of cigarette butts are not covered by other Directives.

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause is really quite clear, and I suspect that colleagues on both sides of the Committee know what is coming, but I want to speak to it for a moment. It is designed to ensure that the Government create a producer responsibility scheme for smoking-related waste. No such scheme exists at present, and the clear-up and waste reduction of cigarette butts are not covered by other directives.

I remind colleagues that it was this Government who clarified, back in February 2020, that tobacco packaging is covered by the current producer responsibility regulations, which require companies to recycle a proportion of the packaging waste that they place on the market. In their resources and waste strategy, the Government committed to look into and consult on the extended producer responsibility, or EPR, for five new waste streams by 2025, as well as to consult on two of them by 2022. The five priority waste streams are: textiles, fishing gear, certain products in construction and demolition, bulky waste, and vehicle tyres—the Minister has already alluded to that several times during our debates. They are important areas for the challenges facing us as we look to tackle the climate emergency.

The producer responsibility powers in the Bill enable the Government to set up an EPR scheme for cigarette litter. I urge the Minister to do so, and I look forward to a positive response from her on that specific point. I am concerned that, up until now, Ministers have not identified cigarette litter as a priority area for EPR, so I would like some further clarity on the detail and the likely timescale for any progress. I am sure that the Committee does not need to be reminded—I will do so anyway—that cigarette butts are estimated to account for 5% of ocean plastic, which is a big deal. We need to act, and we need to act now.

I hope the Minister will take the opportunity to set out a clear action plan and timetable when addressing the issues raised by the new clause. There is a crossover with the other responsibilities that we have as parliamentarians and lawmakers, because it is clear that smoking has a public health impact. Having been an NHS physiotherapist for more than 30 years before being elected to this place, I know a fair bit about the lungs and the danger that smoking causes. New clause 30 will help the wider battle against smoking and help promote a healthier world for all of us. As such, and with the determination needed to tackle the climate emergency, I wish to divide the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause seeks to address a glaring problem with the current biodiversity net gain provisions, which we discussed earlier in the proceedings. Currently, the Bill does not extend the requirement for biodiversity net gain to major infrastructure developments delivered through the nationally significant infrastructure projects regime. We fear that that exemption will result in habitat loss on a large scale due to the size of those major infrastructure developments and could potentially lead to the destruction of irreplaceable habitats, increased fragmentation of remaining habitats and the local extinction of endangered species.

We have a very controversial example at the moment in High Speed 2—a major infrastructure project that does not have biodiversity net gain and that has put at risk 108 ancient woodland sites, 33 sites of scientific interest and 693 local wildlife sites. I appreciate that HS2 was not delivered through the NSIP regime, but it is comparable with future major infrastructure projects that would be delivered in that way. It is disappointing that HS2 has not gone with the trend of recent times and moved away and gone beyond no net loss, despite frequent calls for it to do so. Will the Minister comment on why no net gain is necessary in her view?

In their response to the net gain consultation, in which the Government outlined their intention that nationally significant infrastructure would not be subject to the requirement, despite the fact that there was considerable support from many respondents, the Government said that they will

“continue to work on exploring potential net gain approaches for these types of developments”.

What alternative net gain approaches have been considered for NSIPs? I understand that the Government have commissioned a study into the costs and benefits of bringing the large infrastructure projects into the scope of mandatory biodiversity net gain. What are the findings from that study, and is the Minister able to share them with the Committee?

I have one final plea for the Minister to find redemption in this whole process. As I have said many times—she has quoted it many times—we started with the 25-year environment plan, but we now find ourselves with the “Planning for the future” planning White Paper. Will she write to me on this issue—another item in our endless list of correspondence—and explain how the planning White Paper proposals will impact on net gain? This is one last chance for redemption. I live in hope.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for Cambridge for his tempting words and for the new clause, which would extend the biodiversity net gain objective and the biodiversity gain plan requirement to include nationally significant infrastructure projects.

I recognise the good intentions behind wanting to apply the mandatory biodiversity net gain objective to such projects. The Government are clear in the 25-year environment plan that our commitment to seeking to embed a principle of environmental net gain for development applies to infrastructure as well as housing. In line with that commitment, we are exploring how a biodiversity net gain approach for major infrastructure projects could best be delivered and how policy or legislation could be used to support that.

There are a number of ways in which a form of the biodiversity net gain requirement could be implemented for nationally significant infrastructure projects, but it is very important, as I am sure the hon. Member will appreciate, to take the time to work with stakeholders to develop an appropriate approach. Many stakeholders are really keen to discuss the matter.

Introducing a new legal requirement for such projects now could lead to significant delay and increased costs for projects in the pipeline, hampering our ability to build back better in future generations. I am sure the hon. Member appreciates the need to get lots of the projects going, not least because of the link with jobs and levelling up across the nation. Risks of delays and costs to major infrastructure for a premature and inappropriate mandatory requirement could result in delays to the delivery of environmentally beneficial projects, such as those living renewable energy generation and waste facilities.

The hon. Member is trying to draw me on the planning White Paper. All I will say is that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is working very closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. We are at absolute pains to work with that Department, but also to ensure that the environmental protections remain there. It is going to be a green future, as the Prime Minister himself has said many times—in fact, I heard him say it again yesterday—so I can give assurances on that.

Nationally significant infrastructure projects are often distinct from other types of development in terms of scale and complexity. They have to be planned for over a number of years, as the hon. Gentleman knows, and many are in that design pipeline. We need to be very careful about doing what he is asking for now.

It is therefore important that any strengthening of biodiversity net gain requirements for the nationally significant infrastructure projects regime is done at the right time and in the right way, particularly if any mandatory net gain requirement is introduced. We do not want to be limited to the proposed approach to Town and Country Planning Act 1990 development when considering how to introduce any objective to other classes of development. As I have said, there are a number of ways in which biodiversity net gain for those big projects could be implemented through legislation or policy in future, for example through the national policy statement, sponsor-driven objectives or changes to planning legislation.

As I have said, the Government have set out a clear ambition to deliver infrastructure, but greener and faster. I support the intention behind the proposed new clause, but to ensure that we consider the best way to introduce any requirement for biodiversity net gain for major infrastructure, we need to consult on further details, which we will in due course. It is really important that we take that time to get this right. I would like to think that the hon. Gentleman will agree on that and will withdraw his new clause. I hope that we can continue to engage constructively on this issue when we do formally consult.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I admire the Minister’s relentless optimism, which she has managed to maintain throughout the Committee’s proceedings, and I congratulate her on that. I almost misheard her at one point: when she said that DEFRA had been “at absolute pains” with MHCLG, I thought she said that they “are absolute pains”. There may be some truth in that.

I am not surprised to hear that, yet again, the Minister is unable to support our new clause, but we will not divide the Committee. I will just say finally that the Minister’s jacket is enough to brighten any dull winter day, and I thank her for her optimism. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

[The Chair]

Do the Opposition wish to move new clause 33?

Draft Veterinary Medicines and Residues (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 Draft Aquatic Animal Health and Alien Species in Aquaculture, Animals, and Marketing of Seed, Plant and Propagating Material (Legislative Functions and Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 General Committees

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Mundell, and to be with the Minister again today. There is something rather important about the statutory instruments before us. I am not sure that anyone thinks that considering them is soporific because most Members, in my experience, are quite keen on knowing what they will have for tea later. Somewhere down the line, this could well affect what we find being served up in the Members’ Tea Room, so it is important stuff. [Laughter.] I will come to it—do not worry. I also have a direct interest in the sense that I chair the all-party parliamentary group for life sciences. I have many life science researchers in and around my constituency, so I know quite a lot more about this issue than I did when I came to Parliament a few years ago, and it is important.

Paragraph 2.2 of the explanatory memorandum explains what the instrument does, which is pretty much what the Minister said:

“In England and Scotland, the Residues Regulations prohibit the use of certain substances as growth promoters and provide for a surveillance programme for residues of veterinary medicines…Regulation 470/2009 establishes maximum residues limits for pharmacologically active substances in foodstuffs from animal origin.”

That is, of course, quite salient to many of the debates that we have had in recent times. Paragraph 7.2 states:

“The policy objective is to maintain existing laws.”

We agree with that overall objective; the question is whether it will be achieved. Paragraph 7.3 talks about

“light touch regulatory controls on medicines that are approved in Northern Ireland and not Great Britain and that move from Northern Ireland onto the Great Britain market.”

Could the Minister elaborate a bit on what those light-touch regulatory controls actually mean?

I am grateful to the British Veterinary Association, whose members obviously deal with such matters on a day-to-day basis, for giving us some advice. The BVA said:

“In the medium term there may be concerns about the availability of medicines in Northern Ireland. Today, medicines are often shipped from the EU and warehoused in GB. They are then moved in smaller quantities to NI. Friction in the Irish Sea could make this difficult. For example, there could be a requirement for batch testing once medicines enter Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a small market. Similarly, if there are additional costs associated with sending medicines to Northern Ireland companies may choose to exit the Northern Ireland market.”

It is therefore very important that we get this right. I am frequently accused by Ministers of being unduly pessimistic about the future, so here is a note of positivity from the BVA, which says that

“an agreed approach had been reached on a phased process for implementing medicines regulation in Northern Ireland up to 31 December 2021, providing the additional time needed”.

That is good news, and it came from the Ireland/Northern Ireland Specialised Committee, which apparently met on 5 November, but it leaves some longer-term questions in the air. The BVA concludes:

“The concern is that there may be a requirement for a standalone authorisation process for Northern Ireland. As a result of the small market, this could see medicines companies choose to forgo the market.”

It is important that we get these things right in the future.

I am also grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the House of Lords, which often does excellent work in this area. There is some correspondence between that Committee and Friends of the Earth, which had asked very detailed questions that the Department answered. It showed me the level of complexity in all this. With the best will in the world, I am not sure that any of us has the capacity, knowledge or time, frankly, to dig through the levels of complexity to be absolutely sure that nothing has been either overlooked or, if one were being unduly negative, passed through the back door in some way. The questions from Friends of the Earth certainly bear looking into. I will not trouble the Committee with the fine detail of each part, but I would be grateful if the Minister wrote in response to one or two of their points.

There is a detailed legalistic discussion about whether the analysis of animal product samples is subject to two pieces of legislation, one of which is removed in the first SI. The Department argues that it is replicated elsewhere, but I do not think Friends of the Earth are entirely convinced by that, though I am not in a position to judge.

The second question is more serious. Friends of the Earth argue that within the regulations there are so-called reference points for action. That essentially means points at which the standards are reconsidered. There are some to come in future, prompting a discussion between Friends of Earth and the Department as to whether we would replicate that process. The answer from the Department is only that we are committed to maintaining high standards. Frankly, that is not an answer. I would read that answer to mean that there is no guarantee, which potentially weakens the position we would have been in if we were not taking this course of action. On that basis alone, it gives me cause for concern.

What gives me more concern when I think about what might be in the Tea Room later—or many years hence—are maximum residue levels. That is the vexed question of what is still left in the animal when we come to eat it. There is a complicated series of questions posed about whether to shift to an administrative process rather than a legislative one. I would argue that the Department has not put our minds at rest on that process. That again suggests a potential weakening of our protections.

Some may ask why any of that matters. I will quote my good friend, the learned Lord Whitty, speaking in the House of Lords. Members will appreciate that much of this has been discussed before, when we were going through the process last year. Lord Whitty put the case very well. He said:

“MRLs are ultimately there to protect the human and, in some cases, animal consumer. They are there for a health reason. It is very important that we do not go backwards. The withdrawal period specified in the EU legislation—the period since the animal last received those medicines—is important to preserve but does not exist in the same way in other jurisdictions around the world. If we are entering new trade agreements with, say, America or Brazil, they will be operating on different systems. We must be careful.”

Lord Whitty asked that we check on one particular protection. He said:

“The Americans portray hormone injections as medicine but they are really there for growth.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 March 2019; Vol. 796, c. 301GC.]

I suspect the Minister knows where I am going with this discussion, as all roads in these debates tend to lead ultimately to chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-fed beef. My concern is that deep in the intricacies of the legislation there are potential back doors opening to allow lower standards. That is something the Opposition are not prepared to allow.

The other SI deals with a range of issues. As the Minister said, it covers seven policy areas: seed, plant and plant propagating material; aquatic animal health; transmissible spongiform encephalopathies and animal by-products; livestock; zoonotic diseases; pet travel and the use of alien and locally absent species in aquaculture. That is very wide ranging and there is some question about how those issues are grouped. Some of the things we are discussing this afternoon were previously grouped with some of the things we discussed this morning, which adds to the confusion, I am afraid. No one ever said this was going to be easy.

I gently suggest that anything relating to spongiform encephalopathies and salmonella will cause politicians of a certain age to be on alert. Of course, that dispute ran for years and years. It strikes me as astonishing that people talk about how easy everything is to sort out when we spent a decade having an argument with the European Union, with all those “Dad’s Army” posters on the front of The Sun and all the rest of it, over one item of dispute. Goodness knows what lies ahead, but that is for another day, sadly. These are important issues and they need to be resolved properly.

Finally, I come to the subject that probably concerns the most people: the pet travel issues. As the Minister said, these SIs touch on that. As I understand it, something like 300,000 pets come into the UK at the moment. There are some concerns about those numbers and about puppy smuggling. Anything the Minister might want to say about that would be welcome. I again welcome the work of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the House of Lords, because it has asked some serious questions about that, and again I will refer to the Government’s answers. It is all about which direction we are going in, basically. We can make our decisions, but it is not so easy for us to take pets into the EU. The EU is apparently now considering our application to be a Part 1 listed third country, and the Lords Committee rightly said:

“We note that it is not clear at this stage what the process and requirements will be for moving pets from GB to Ireland via NI after the end of the”

transition period. Anything the Minister can tell us about that would be extremely helpful.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee also asked about the practical impact of having separate regimes in areas such as TSEs and zoonotic diseases. DEFRA’s explanation was:

“Changes for goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will be kept to an absolute minimum”—

oh, joy—

“but there will be a requirement for export health certification. A new Trader Support Service, available to all traders at no cost, will be established to provide wraparound support”.

Frankly, that is the same old magical thinking and we are not convinced by it. On that basis, we are not convinced by either of these pieces of legislation, but we will divide the Committee only on the first.

Draft Agricultural Products, Food and Drink (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 Draft Food (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 General Committees

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be back in a Committee under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank the Minister for her introduction. She explained very well the importance of geographical indicators, as did the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs in a powerful intervention. I think we are all broadly supportive of getting these things right. Geographically protected goods represent about one quarter of the UK’s food and drink exports each year, we are told by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and are worth almost £6 billion.

This is a complicated set of issues. I am not sure that I fully comprehend all the complexities in the documents that we have been given, but ensuring TRIPs—trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights—compliance and that we are conforming to World Trade Organisation rules is important, so we are broadly supportive of what the Government are doing. However, we do have a few questions, as you might expect, Mr Davies.

Some of the questions are really about the broader issue of what happens in the next few weeks if we do not secure a deal with the European Union. We have heard assurances from the Government that our geographical indicators will continue to be recognised in the EU market after the end of the transition period, but clearly there is considerable concern across the sectors that, in the absence of any deal, there is no guarantee that that will continue to be the case. If the talks do not lead to fruition and the UK does not offer mutual recognition for EU GIs in this country, what will that mean for those producers and what message are the Government giving to our exporters, who depend so much on these recognitions?

The Minister touched on the new arrangements for administering the schemes in the UK, which she described as being likely to be streamlined, more efficient and quicker. I am sure that we all hope that that will be the case, but what assurances can the Minister give that the internal digital infrastructure necessary to administer all this will be in place by 1 January? Perhaps she can update us on what progress has been made so far. As ever, I do not necessarily expect her to have all the answers at her fingertips—she is very good at writing afterwards.

The Minister claims that the new arrangements for administering the schemes will be more efficient, quicker and streamlined. Perhaps she could say a little more about the evidence to back that up, because we are not convinced that that is always what happens. We have not seen an impact assessment for this SI, but it seems to us that engaging with the changing systems will have some costs for specialist food companies and those with protected designations. What is the Government’s assessment of those extra costs, and what costs will be involved in applying for a new geographical indicator status and appealing to the first-tier tribunal?

We also imagine that there will be extra costs in setting up systems of promotion abroad for our specialist protected products. Again, any indications as to where the Government have got to on that would be helpful.

On the second SI, which is largely about natural mineral waters, it was clear from the consultation, which we welcomed, that the majority of respondents favoured the Government’s course of action, but some took a different view. Can the Minister explain why we settled on six months? Some looked for a much longer time through a transition period. That is a similar point to the one I made earlier about a no-deal scenario: it could leave our producers of natural mineral water at a distinct disadvantage if they cannot export to the EU. Will the Minister say a little about the provisions in that case?

On the details relating to Northern Ireland, there is a complex and difficult set of issues. Although we welcome the Government’s recognition of the pressure on the food industry in relation to labelling changes—I think they have advised that the necessary labelling changes for food sold in Great Britain will now apply to food sold from 1 October 2022 to give producers more time to get their affairs in order—there is still much to get in place by 1 January next year. After all, it is now only four or five weeks away.

Much still needs to be done in terms of pre-packaged food. If it is sold in Northern Ireland, it must include a Northern Ireland or EU business operator address. Food manufacturers have been told that from 1 January they need to label food from or sold in Northern Ireland as such where EU law requires it. So there is a range of complexities, and I would welcome any indication from the Minister on how close we are to resolving those points.

I have one final point, which I will probably repeat in future SI Committees. In my research for the Environment Bill Committee yesterday, I came across an interesting piece by Professor Andrew Jordan and Dr Brendan Moore, who have analysed many of the SIs that we have been talking about. It was a fascinating piece. We are frequently told that the SIs involve technical transpositions and that nothing is really changing. Their piece pointed out that in much of EU law there are review and revision clauses, and they have helpfully gone through and noted which are the SIs where we too have introduced review and revision clauses, and which are the ones where we have not, and overwhelmingly we have not. I will not bore the Committee with the list, but some of them are ones that we have ourselves discussed. So my question on all the SIs is: were the review and revision clauses included in the legislation that was brought across? If not, why not?

[Victoria Prentis]

That sounds like an extremely interesting article. I look forward to finding it later. I am sure the hon. Gentleman and I can have a discussion while we wait for our SI debates this afternoon. I will try to answer as many of his questions as I can.

The first SI that we are discussing today is very long. It replaces 15 EU regulations and four different GI schemes. I accept that the legislation is complicated. In the first SI, there is certainly policy change. It very much lays the framework for setting up our new and, in my view, very exciting GI system.

To talk generally about the new policy, last week we had a webinar with about 130 producers, all of whom are raring to get going in the GI space. In future, there will be a one-stage application process. We are designing it with producers in a way that we hope will be as helpful as possible.

On the broader issues that have been raised, we very much hope that we will get a deal with the EU in the next week or two. As I said earlier, we will continue to recognise EU GIs. As I set out, we have a 21-month period of adjustment on labelling, and I will go through some of the labelling changes. The same basic rules will apply for logo use as under the EU schemes. Logo use will be mandatory under the agrifood schemes but optional under drinks schemes relating to wines and spirits—that is the same as it was under the EU schemes. GB producers of existing agrifood GIs will have a three-year period from 1 January until the use of the new logos becomes mandatory. New GB applicants for agrifood GI protection will need to start using the logos straightaway once their protection starts. It will be optional for NI producers that are protected under the UK schemes to use the UK logo, but they will of course continue to use the EU logos. We will endeavour to make the process as streamlined as possible for new NI producers that apply under both schemes.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The Minister has explained that very clearly. What she has not touched on is costs to producers. Can she say anything about that?

[Victoria Prentis]

We very much hope that the costs will be less than for the previous application process, which is partly why we are engaging so heavily with producers at the moment to find a system that suits everybody. It is not an easy issue, though. To have a GI is a big deal for a producer, and it should be. The application process will of course be relatively onerous, but we will try to ensure that it is as low cost for producers as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

This is an additional new cost, however one looks at it.

[Victoria Prentis]

No, the existing GIs will just be brought over into our system, so there are no new costs for producers there. If producers wish to sell in the GB market as well as in the EU market, as I said earlier, we are working hard to ensure that the two processes are streamlined, to minimise the cost to producers as much as we can. This is in a world where I hope GIs will be a much bigger deal for the UK. I am looking forward to boosting them and to working with producers as we seek to export much more food, and much more really high-quality food, than we do at the moment.

I think I have dealt with most of the hon. Gentleman’s points. Public consultations were held on natural mineral waters, food labelling policy and impact assessments in 2018, when we thought we might have a no-deal Brexit. Meetings were held with industry, and we had a great deal of feedback from stakeholders. As I said, the amendments made by the SI are mainly technical changes in order to make the regulations operable, so we did not feel that any additional consultation was needed. With that in mind, I recommend that we approve the two instruments.

Question put and agreed to.

DRAFT FOOD (AMENDMENT) (EU EXIT) REGULATIONS 2020

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Food (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020—(Victoria Prentis.)

Environment Bill (Twentieth sitting)

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 20th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 24th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

We have reached that point already. We have been in the EU, so have had all the same laws. We are not going to sweep them all away, but we will build on them. When that review of international law is done, the EU laws will also be looked at.

I think we have covered what the hon. Member for Cambridge is asking for. On the SI points—I am very interested that the hon. Gentleman has looked at that report about the SIs—I should say that, three to five years after Royal Assent, the responsible Department must submit a memorandum to the relevant Commons departmental Select Committee, published as a Command Paper. The memorandum will include a preliminary assessment of how the Act has worked in practice, relative to objectives and benchmarks identified during the passage of the Bill and in supporting documentation.

The Select Committee, or potentially another Committee, will then decide whether it wishes to conduct a further post-legislative inquiry into the Act. Perhaps we should send that to the authors of that report, because perhaps they were not aware of it. I think it is really helpful, and I hope that it helps.

I have not yet mentioned the OEP, which will help to uphold our standards as well. It will be absolutely essential, ensuring Governments are held to account for the environmental performance I mentioned before. All that goes further than the EU’s environmental governance framework, with stronger binding remedies available to the courts and a wider scope to hold all public authorities to account on the environment. It is much wider.

Our sovereign Parliament must be able to fully realise the benefits of regulatory autonomy in order to take action on improving environmental protections in the future. To support parliamentary scrutiny of our ambitions, the Bill contains provisions in clause 19 that allow Parliament to hold the Government to account on delivering their commitments to improving environmental protections, and where a new Bill contains environmental provisions, the Ministers in charge of that Bill—who will potentially be Ministers in other Departments—will be required to make a statement confirming whether it maintains the level of environmental protection in place at the time of the Bill’s introduction. I hope that has been helpful, and I ask the Opposition if they now might withdraw the new clause.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I do not think the Minister will be surprised to hear that I am not convinced and will not be withdrawing the amendment. The reason we are not convinced is that there is nothing wrong with optimism, but it has to be tempered by realism, and frankly, as we have seen at the very top of this Government over the past few months, optimism does not always produce results. Looking at the state of our economy, I suspect that we are facing a hard winter and the pressures that will be put on environmental protections will be intense. It is not unreasonable for us on the Opposition Benches to once again remind Government Members about comments made by the current Prime Minister and previous Conservative leaders. The green crap is still the green crap, as far as some are concerned—[Interruption.] That was said by a Conservative Prime Minister.

[Rebecca Pow]

I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw that remark and stop referring to that. We have moved echelons from there, and it is really unfair that this keeps being dredged up by the Opposition, who themselves do not have a great record on the environment. Does he agree?

[Daniel Zeichner]

The Minister might well wish it had not been said, and I wish it had not been said, but it was.

[Richard Graham]

You heard it, did you?

[Daniel Zeichner]

It was widely reported and not denied.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

That, of course, is not a matter of order; it is a matter of content.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The point I am making is that all Governments will face a dilemma and a pressure when it comes to economic imperatives and environmental protection. We have seen as much in the response to questions I raised about the impact of the planning White Paper, which have not been addressed by the Government. I understand why they have not been addressed—because they are not addressable. There is a tension, and the question we are asking is: when those pressures come—as they will—is this legislation strong enough to protect our environment? The Minister says it is; I say it is not, and that is the difference. I am sure the hon. Member for Gloucester appreciates the point I am making, because it can hardly be denied that there is a tension. If he thinks there is not a tension, that is great, but that is a different world from the one I am living in.

The non-regression issues go beyond the EU question. The point we are making is that a worldwide set of negotiations will continue, hopefully in a more positive way with the new American Administration, and non-regression will be part of those wider discussions. Exactly as my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test has said, this new clause does no more than establish a baseline from which we believe we should be moving, and we see no reason to not put it in the Bill.

I hear what the Minister says about the review and revision clauses that were in the transposed legislation, but I gently say that when that comes up, it will be a very big piece of work, given the number of statutory instruments we have been discussing. In fact, as I think most of us appreciate, once we start digging into them, it often opens up a cornucopia of riches in terms of issues to look at, and we see that what looked like a very simple transposition is actually extremely complicated. We think non-regression is really important, and that is why we intend to press this new clause to a Division.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

To some extent, this is part 2 of a discussion that we had a little earlier. The new clause was tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), former Committee members who have now gone on to other, greater things—perhaps not greater, but different. I am delighted to move it on their behalf. Opposition Members give it our full support.

My hon. Friends were very far-sighted, in the sense that they tabled the new clause before the Government came up with their own proposals. However, the new clause goes further, which is why we believe it is worth pursuing. I will go back to why this matters. Greener UK tells us that about 28% of the UK’s overseas land footprint—nearly 6 million hectares—is in countries at high or very high risk of deforestation and which often have weak governance and poor labour standards. At the same time, about 1.6 billion people depend directly on forests to secure their livelihoods. The food and everyday products that we buy could be destroying habitats for endangered wildlife and impacting livelihoods overseas. This is a big issue, which I think we all agree on, on the basis not only of the discussion this morning but of those facts.

The new clause would create a duty on the Government to publish draft due diligence legislation within six months of this Bill receiving Royal Assent, consistent with our earlier discussion, covering all environmental and human rights risks and addressing the impacts associated with the activities of specified bodies, including within business, finance and public authorities. It is the human rights risks and finance issues that we particularly add to the earlier discussion. The new clause would require any goods placed on the UK market to have fully traceable and transparent supply chains and to not cause adverse environmental and human rights impacts, including deforestation, forest degradation and ecosystem conversion and degradation.

Since the new clause was first tabled, as the Minister mentioned earlier and as my hon. Friends have also referenced, there has been a consultation on whether the UK Government should introduce a new law designed to prevent forests and other important natural areas from being converted illegally to agricultural land. As the Minister reported, there is strong support for action, with 99% of respondents agreeing that there should be legislation to make forest risk commodities more sustainable. The Government were good to their word and have introduced new schedule 1 and the associated clauses, which we discussed and agreed to earlier. However, we think this new clause would go further. Its scope is wider, which means it would have a greater impact and would do more to tackle what we sadly see as our complicity in deforestation.

The evidence base is there. The Global Resource Initiative taskforce recommended back in March that:

“The government urgently introduces a mandatory due diligence obligation on companies that place commodities and derived products that contribute to deforestation”—

whether that is legal or just illegal under local laws, which is an important distinction—

“on the UK market and to take action to ensure similar principles are applied to the finance industry.”

The financial industry can be supportive in those markets. That, again, goes further than new schedule 1.

We think that a mandatory due diligence framework would formalise and obligate responsible practices throughout the UK market-related supply chains and could ensure comprehensive accountability and help prevent deforestation and other global environmental damage. The Government are right to set their sights high. We had discussions earlier about how ambitious—or not—the legislation is. We think we should be world leaders; the problem is that we are not entirely convinced that this does enough.

Greener UK says of what we have already agreed in the Bill:

“This does not accord with the urgency needed to tackle deforestation and falls short of the government’s ambition for a world leading approach.”

That is the view of the major environmental organisations. They also think—and we reflect this point—that there should be more dialogue, both with themselves and others who understand how the processes emerge. They are also concerned that, because this was a late addition to the Bill that came in through a Government amendment, it would have been helpful to have produced more detailed explanatory notes as to how it should work. They have a range of detailed questions, which I will not trouble the Committee with this morning. However, it suggests to me that there is more work to be done and that our new clause would help with much of that.

We hope the Government will go further in future, but it is striking that, Greener UK draws a comparison between the due diligence system and the approach taken to the EU timber regulation, which we have brought across through secondary legislation. It thinks that our approach is weaker by comparison.

That feeds into my overall sense of what is happening with the Bill: sadly, the rhetoric is good but the delivery and actuality is weaker. We wish to make the Bill stronger. Again, this is an important point for us so we want to divide on it, but I want to hear why the Minister thinks we should not be strengthening in that kind of way.

[Rebecca Pow]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are already one step ahead and, in fact, voted to include the world-leading legislation in the Environment Bill this very morning. We are making more progress than any other country. I understand his sentiments but, yet again, he is being negative about the enormous step we are taking.

Our amendments will help us protect the world’s most precious forests. They will allow us to set mandatory requirements on businesses that use agricultural commodities associated with deforestation. As we have said before, there are other regulations that deal with timber; our amendments will deal with other products where trees are cut down to grow crops such as palm oil, soya, rubber, beef and the associated leather, and cocoa. The hon. Gentleman will agree that those are crucial crops to be looking at as we proceed, and that that will make a genuinely big difference. We have heard the great example of what happened in Indonesia when timber was tackled. The same thing could happen with other crops in reducing the cutting down of forests. I have seen some of those on my travels.

Our framework is designed to work with Governments around the world, who are the custodians of the world’s precious forests, by requiring businesses to ensure that commodities they use have been produced on land that is legally occupied and used. I have pointed out previously how so many countries are not even adhering to their own legislation, so that is the crux of where we are placing our intentions. Our amendments will become part of the Bill now, allowing us to act quickly on this important issue, as opposed to within six months of Royal Assent, as in the new clause.

The hon. Member for Cambridge mentioned the consultation, which had a fantastic response. It highlighted that we need to act urgently, which is why we are taking action. That is in line with the recommendation of the Global Resource Initiative to introduce due diligence legislation. That is what we are doing urgently, as was called for. We are listening to feedback and I reassure the Committee that we intend to move swiftly to take forward this legislation, laying the necessary secondary legislation shortly after COP26. We hope that our setting this path will be a big talking point at COP26, potentially encouraging others to follow.

The hon. Gentleman made a sound point on human rights. We agree that, in some circumstances, there is a relationship between commodity production and human rights. It does not necessarily follow that the best solution is to tackle those two issues at the same time. Tackling human rights abuses requires an approach that is tailored for that purpose, rather than through the narrow lens of the subset of commodities, examples of which I have just listed, chosen for their impact on forests.

The Government support the United Nations guiding principles on business and human rights—an internationally agreed framework for addressing human rights risks in all kinds of business activities. Those principles encourage businesses to adopt due diligence approaches and to address any negative impacts, where appropriate. The UK was the first state to produce a national action plan for the guiding principles, and we have already announced measures to strengthen the approach of the UK’s Modern Slavery Act 2015, as part of that plan. I am sure the hon. Gentleman is fully aware of that really important step.

The hon. Member for Cambridge touched briefly on finances. I want to clarify that the due diligence legislation is designed for a specific purpose, which is to ensure that companies in the UK are not using products that have come from illegally used or occupied land. We anticipate that information included in the reports published by the regulator will provide data, which others, including the finance sector, can use, thus helping inform investors of the extent to which the companies they invest in are involved in illegal deforestation. That is the way in to what the hon. Gentleman was addressing. I hope that is helpful. I will wind up and ask the hon. Gentleman, in the light of my assurances, to withdraw his proposed new clause.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Frankly, I do not think that the Government are one step ahead, given that our proposal was tabled long in advance and is far more extensive and far reaching. I heard what the Minister said, and I know she is very proud of what is being done. We just need to go further.

I gently point out that I am not the one saying that what is being done is not achieving what was hoped for. It is many environmental organisations, some of which the Minister cited earlier. I suspect she will find that the debate will continue. No one is saying the matter is easy; it is complicated and difficult, and this has to be done in some cases through international negotiation. We understand and appreciate that, but we believe it is better to be more optimistic and ambitious.

Again, I heard what the Minister said on the linkage to human rights, but the evidence is pretty clear that environmental degradation and disrespect for human rights go hand in hand. That is why we believe the new clause would give a sensible way forward. On that basis, Mr Gray, we will divide the Committee.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Environment Bill (Twenty First sitting)

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 21st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 24th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Whitehead]

If the hon. Member for Gloucester were pursuing a principled position on that, he would have to undo the whole structure of regulation in this country to ensure the freedoms and the way of life that he suggests that we should follow, because that is what regulators by and large do—they quite often produce regulatory decisions and regulatory outcomes that apply to those who are being regulated. I gave the hon. Gentleman the example of Ofgem, which levies fines on bodies that appear to transgress what Ofgem has decided as a regulator. That is not a court action but relates to how the regulator works and how those who are supervised by that regulator are expected to behave. There is a direct relationship between those two, and that is the case with a range of other regulators in all sorts of other areas. For example, the hon. Gentleman will be aware of Ofcom’s regulatory activities on a number occasions, and those of Ofwat.

I am not suggesting an exceptionally authoritarian proposal that comes out of thin air in a desire to regulate people beyond what they can bear. It is based on the relationship between the regulator and the regulated and their respective actions. Normally, those who are regulated should do what the regulator suggests should happen. To me, that is not akin to the Stasi going in to everyone’s life and regulating their private thoughts out of existence. What is proposed is a reasonably standard regulatory process, as carried out on a agreed basis in this country.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

As ever, my hon. Friend is developing an interesting argument. I suspect that in some ways it goes back to where our regulatory frameworks first emerged. He and I are probably of an age to remember those discussions, which originally arose around some of the privatisations of public authorities. A regulatory framework grew up and it was initially intended that it would melt away because the market would weave its magic. Of course it quickly became apparent that we did need regulatory authorities. Does he agree that, over the past 20 to 30 years, we have had an emerging regulatory structure that is quite different from how it was originally envisaged?

[The Chair]

Dr Whitehead, strictly on this new clause.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I would like to think that the shadow Minister was going to branch out and not press this new clause to a Division.

I share everybody’s desire to deliver on a tree-planting commitment. The Government are mindful of that and are not wasting time. We are working to increase planting across the UK to 30,000 hectares per year by 2025—the figure which has been quoted and which is in line with the CCC recommendations. We are taking those recommendations extremely seriously. Forestry is devolved, so we are working closely with the devolved Administrations to meet that commitment. To increase planting in England, we have announced a £640 million nature for climate fund. In our England tree strategy, which will be published in early 2021, we will set out further plans for how a lot of the money will be used to fuel all the tree planting we need.

New clause 17 would set a UK-wide target, but as I just said, forestry is devolved, so the Bill is not the place to establish targets for the UK overall. The shadow Minister quoted some statistics—from a blog, I think—about 2,300 hectares of planting. That was an England-only figure for 2019; it was part of UK-wide planting of 13,400 hectares. Our manifesto commitment is to a UK goal, but the Bill is not the place to establish UK targets.

The new clause also proposes a specific England-only target, but significant woodland cover targets in legislation would have a major impact on land. Ours is a small island and therefore we have a limited resource for planting. It is not helpful to make comparisons with a country such as France, which is five times the size of the UK and has a much smaller population. I applaud what the Norwegians have done, but they have terrain that is much more suited to growing trees and, to take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley, they have fewer choices to make about prime agricultural land. We must and will strike a careful balance on where we put the trees.

Extending our 2025 commitment to 2050 would result in 17% tree cover, which is an enormous increase, but the new clause proposes 19%, which would require us to think seriously about the possible extent of woodland cover and how it would affect our prime agricultural land and land for housing and so on. I am sure the shadow Minister is completely aware of that. In a policy paper this summer, we set out our intention to explore whether legislative tree-planting targets would be appropriate under the target-setting procedure in the Bill. Before that process is complete, we should not set specific targets in legislation. Setting potentially unachievable targets, as proposed in the new clause, could lead to trees being planted in the wrong places for the wrong reasons, which could harm food production and sensitive habitats, or even increase carbon emissions. There are lots of things to consider.

New clause 19 proposes a duty to prepare a tree strategy for England and sub-sectoral targets. We know that a major increase in planting is needed—nobody denies that, and it is a manifesto commitment. That is why we have launched the consultation on a new England tree strategy. The strategy will be published in 2021; it will set out a clear vision, objectives and policies for trees in England, covering trees, woodlands and forests. There was great involvement in the consultation and some interesting ideas and proposals were advanced.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I appreciate the Minister’s great enthusiasm for trees. Will she join me in supporting and celebrating tree charter day, which is this Saturday, and congratulate the young plantscapers of Mayfield Primary School in Cambridge, who created a tree hanging especially for me to celebrate it?

[Rebecca Pow]

Of course I would like to celebrate that. I commend the school for its work. It is a brilliant thing to engage young people in nature and everything about trees, including ancient trees. That can only bring benefits to people’s lives. Well done to them for engaging.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

Indeed. Yes, not only do I welcome those forests but I positively embrace the fact that they are being established. When we look at the older midlands forests that have arisen around Sherwood, we can see how more tree plantation can sit in the landscape alongside other uses. That is exactly what is being tried in the northern forest at the moment, so I understand and welcome that.

New clause 19, however, just says, “Get on with a tree strategy. You can put all these targets in it, but it has to be statutory so that we make sure it works properly.” I do not wish to press new clause 17 to a Division, because I accept that it includes targets that, although I think they are very important, the Minister may think might be mediated by other factors. However, it is important that we put on record that there should be a statutory tree target in the Bill and that we should get on with that strategy now. I will therefore put new clause 19 to a Division, to test whether the Committee agrees with that notion. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 18

Policy statement on environmental principles: effect

“When exercising any function of a public nature that could affect the achievement of—

(a) any targets set under sections 1 or 2;

(b) interim targets set under section 10; or

(c) any other targets that meet the conditions in section 6(8)

public authorities must act compatibly with and, where appropriate, contribute to the achievement of those targets and the implementation of the environmental improvement plan.”.—(Daniel Zeichner.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

After the drama and passion of the trees debate, I am happy to inform you, Mr Gray, that the next few new clauses are a touch drier and return to issues of environmental law and the philosophical underpinnings of the Bill. They are important none the less.

New clause 18 would introduce a new duty on all public authorities to ensure that all levels and arms of government play their part in achieving the environmental targets. The new clause would give the air quality, water, waste and biodiversity targets we established at the outset real relevance and meaningful drive from day one, and it would bolster the effects of clause 4. Our concern is that, as it stands, the Bill does not require or sufficiently clarify the need for action across all levels of government and other public bodies.

I will give one example, on air quality. Although part 4 of the Bill provides welcome new powers for local authorities and some useful clarification of their existing responsibilities, it does not do enough to ensure that a comprehensive approach is taken across all levels of public decision making; in fact, it rather risks putting the burden of responsibility solely on local authorities. As we know, air pollution does not respect boundaries, and action by local authorities alone will not be enough to tackle all the sources of air pollution. The new clause would help to spread that burden across central and local government and other significant public bodies in this space, requiring them to contribute to providing solutions on a national and regional scale. We fear that, without something like this, progress will be too slow. The same would be true of the other priority areas as well.

We will not push the new clause to a Division, you will be pleased to hear, Mr Gray, but we would like to hear what the Minister has to say about how those targets can be achieved, which we all want, without this kind of wider environmental duty.

[Rebecca Pow]

The legal obligation to achieve the long-term target set by central Government properly rests with central Government, and it is for central Government to create the right natural policy frameworks in which other public bodies can best contribute to our environmental goals alongside their own priorities and legal obligations. We will report annually on the implementation of the environmental improvement plan, on improvements in the natural environment and on progress towards the targets, which will provide an opportunity to identify how these national policy frameworks are contributing to environmental improvement. The Office for Environmental Protection will respond to the Government’s annual report with its own independent report. That covers everything that I have been pointing out from the beginning about the whole process of monitoring and reporting.

Where necessary, the Government could change these national policy frameworks, as we are doing through the Bill by making improvements to the local air quality management framework; the hon. Gentleman touched on air, but this measure, already outlined, will do exactly that. Changes would need to be made, following proper consultation with affected bodies, having due regard to the environmental principles policy statement. Local authorities, as I said, have an important role to play in delivering environmental improvement, including through some of the measures in the Bill. Long-term, legally binding targets will set the trajectory for driving long-term improvements in our natural environment.

Public authorities, in particular local authorities, have an important role to play in delivering these improvements, and measures in the Bill will help to drive that action on the ground. For example, the nature section of the Bill strengthens the existing biodiversity duty under the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006. Public authorities will have to act to conserve and enhance biodiversity, while taking account of local nature recovery strategies. We have covered all that in great detail. There will be a groundswell from the bottom up; local authorities will be hugely involved.

Clear accountability at central Government level provides clarity and avoids additional burdens on hard-working public bodies. Were the new clause to be accepted, the shadow Minister would be placing many more burdens on local authorities. We are at pains to make sure that we do not overburden them, but what they do is an essential part of the whole system, with the Government up there at the top, being held to account and playing their role. I think the hon. Member for Cambridge said he was not going to press the clause. If that is the case, I thank him for it.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The Minister is right; we are not going to press the motion, but I would say that I think we are repeating some of the arguments we had on earlier clauses. We are somewhat sceptical that the Minister’s noble hopes will be realised. I entirely agree that the Government are expecting a lot from local authorities, but we think that it is not only local authorities that will have to step up. I hear what the Minister says and we shall see how it plays out. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 19

Duty to prepare a Tree Strategy for England

“(1) The Government must prepare a Tree Strategy for England as set out in subsection (2) and (3).

(2) The strategy must set out the Government’s vision, objectives, priorities and policies for trees in England including individual trees, woodland and forestry, and may set out other matters with respect to the promotion of sustainable management of trees in these contexts.

(3) The Tree Strategy for England must include the Government’s targets and interim targets with respect to—

(a) the percentage of England under tree cover;

(b) hectares of new native woodland creation achieved by tree planting;

(c) hectares of new native woodland creation achieved by natural regeneration;

(d) the percentage of native woodland in favourable ecological condition; and

(e) hectares of Plantation on Ancient Woodland (PAWS) undergoing restoration.

(4) The Government must keep the Tree Strategy for England under review, and may, if they consider it appropriate to do so, revise the strategy.

(5) If the Government has not revised the Tree Strategy for England within the period of 10 years beginning with the day on which the strategy was last published, they must revise the strategy.”.—(Dr Whitehead.)

The aim of this new clause is to ensure that the Government prepares a tree strategy for England. It will ensure that the Government has to produce targets for the protection, restoration and expansion of trees and woodland in England.”

Brought up, and read the First time.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

After the Government’s majority was slashed at the last vote, I am hugely excited. If only there were a Liberal Democrat bar chart to hand, we could see the swing. I am quite excited about new clause 20 and I am glad the Committee has come back to life. I am so sorry that some hon. Members failed to witness the excitement.

The new clause brings us back to the discussions that the Minister and I had about the state of nature. We think that we need to turn the Government’s rhetoric into reality by setting out a target for reversing the decline of nature, in time to play a leadership role as we head to COP15. COP15 is delayed—it would have been happening about now—and is now set for late spring next year, in Kunming, China. The hope is for a new set of global goals for 2030 to replace the 2020 Aichi biodiversity targets, which, as we all know, the world has sadly not done too well on.

I think we can all agree it is vital that the next decade sees much more success than we have managed collectively to achieve in the recent past. As a driving force of the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature, which commits to reversing biodiversity loss by 2030, the UK is in a really good place to be a key advocate for leading on these matters. The Bill contains a framework for setting long-term legally binding targets, but it seems to us that the timeframe does not sit comfortably with the 2030 goal. New clause 20 would require the setting of a state-of-nature target that takes account of what needs to be done domestically to contribute to improving the global state of nature. 

Looking back at the document on environmental targets from late August, we see that, interesting reading though much of it is, it seems almost like at discursive paper. In my city we are familiar with interesting, discursive papers, but this goes back to the may/must argument. There are plenty of fine intentions, such as:

“Natural England is currently working on a programme to improve monitoring of our protected sites”

That is great, but it is not necessarily mean that it is doing something.

The paper also states:

“A legally binding target for Marine Protected Areas could complement and bolster this on-going work.”

And, sadly:

“Trends show that overall, species populations have declined over the last 40 years. Whilst these losses have slowed down, there is still work to do.”

That simply describes a state of decline.

The document continues:

“Our most comprehensive species data is about the abundance of species. Using this, we could set a target”.

They could set a target, or they might not. It continues:

“It will be difficult to predict how species populations will change over time—including as a result of implementing new policies—as we consider whether to develop a target or targets for species.”

That is all worthy stuff, but it is not the stuff of leadership.

On habitat restoration, the paper states that

“the Environment Bill lays the foundation for the Nature Recovery Network that will complement plans for a new Environmental Land Management scheme.”

Again, that is a description of an aspiration. Frankly, we know how difficult it will be to do some of this stuff. The document states:

“We are currently developing an indicator to directly monitor.”

As I say, it is all aspirational stuff and, I am afraid, all too vague.

The section on nature finishes by saying:

“We are currently undertaking the following steps to increase planting in England”—

this goes back to trees—

“developing a new England Tree Strategy…developing plans to deploy the £640 million Nature for Climate Fund”.

That is all part of a wish list, but it really does not add up to a leadership strategy.

We think the strategy needs to be much stronger and more ambitious. New clause 20 would signal the intention to set a target in domestic legislation. That would allow us, in advance of next year’s very important international summit, to set a lead such that we would truly be able to say that we were world leading. Frankly, that section of the paper seems a bit fluffy to me.

[Rebecca Pow]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the UK is committed to playing a leading role in developing an ambitious and transformative post-2020 framework for global biodiversity under the convention on biological diversity. The UK Government already support a global target to protect at least 30% of the global ocean by 2030, and 32 countries have joined our global ocean alliance in support of the target. We really are forging ahead on this issue. At the end of September, the Prime Minister committed to extend that commitment to land—indeed, the hon. Gentleman referred to that.

Together with the European Commission and Costa Rica, the UK was instrumental in crafting the leaders’ pledge for nature, a leader-level voluntary declaration that was launched at the United Nations General Assembly on 28 October. The pledge sets out 10 urgent actions to put biodiversity on a path to recovery by 2030. If that is not ambitious, I do not know what is.

Our international aims on biodiversity must be underpinned by credible action at home—the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about that. Indeed, it is something that I keep saying as the Minister. Following agreement of the post-2020 framework, we will publish a new strategy for nature in England that will outline how we will implement the CBD’s new global targets domestically and meet our 25-year environmental goals for nature at the same time. We recognise the importance of setting legally binding targets to support our ambitions. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Bill includes a requirement to set at least one long-term, legally binding target in relation to biodiversity, as well as targets for air quality, water and resource efficiency, and waste reduction. Our recently published policy paper on environmental targets sets out the areas under consideration for targets, including on species and habitats. So there could and will undoubtedly be myriad targets in future years that will affect the space of biodiversity to which he refers.

The Government will determine the specific areas in which targets will be set via the robust and transparent target-setting, monitoring and reporting process that the Bill sets in train. Advice from independent experts will be sought during the target-setting process, and stakeholders and the public will also have an opportunity to provide input as to what they think is the right level. Targets will be based on scientifically credible evidence, as well as economic analysis. We do not want to prejudge the specific targets that will emerge from this process. Indeed, scientists and academics very much support this thinking and way of operating. I have made it clear that there is enough in the Bill without the proposed new clause, so I ask the hon. Gentleman—who, as ever, makes an eloquent point—to withdraw it.

[Daniel Zeichner]

On this occasion, I am afraid I will have to disappoint. The Minister has wheeled out a veritable forest of aspirational opportunities, but we think that the Bill needs to be clearer in its ambition. If that were the case, we would be in a stronger position going into COP26 next year. I suspect this debate will continue over the coming months, but in the meantime we would like to put our position on the record by forcing a Division and—who knows?—perhaps a great victory.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

I am sure the Minister will thank us for giving her the opportunity to read out that pellucid note, which puts on the record the intention to, through the OEP, collaborate fully with the Governments of the UK. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 22

Application of environmental principles

“(1) A public authority must apply the environmental principles in section 16 in the exercise of its functions.

(2) In this section ‘public authority’ has the same meaning as in section 28(3).”—(Daniel Zeichner.)

This new clause requires public authorities to apply the environmental principles.

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

New clause 22 takes us back almost to the beginning of our deliberations and to environmental principles. The December 2018 policy statement on environmental principles set out five important principles in law: integration, prevention, precaution, rectification and polluter pays. There has been wide discussion in this area, including a lot of work by the Environmental Audit Committee, which came up with about 55 recommendations. Here we are, at the tail end of our discussions about the Bill, going back to some of those points. Concerns have been raised by environmental lawyers through Greener UK. After all this discussion, their view is that the Bill

“does not yet provide an adequate route to ensuring that those important legal principles fully function to achieve”

the aims set out by the Bill.

This is important because, when matters are tested in court, this is what people will look at. Much more learned people than me have pored over these issues and these are some of the conclusions they have come to. They feel that clauses on environmental principles have not changed much since the December 2018 document. Despite discussions in pre-legislative scrutiny and on Select Committees, the expert conclusion is that the Bill

“does not maintain the legal status of environmental principles as they have come to apply through EU law.”

That is, of course, one of the crunch issues of the entire discussion around the Bill.

I will not go through in detail the fine points that they make, but they do say that

“environmental principles have been binding on all public authorities including in individual administrative decisions. This legal obligation on all public authorities to apply the principles, whenever relevant, will be undermined through the bill.”

That is a strong concern, which reflects our continuing worry that, despite the ambitions, rhetoric and optimism displayed by the Minister, when we dig down into the detail of the Bill, we see that it does not provide the same level of protection that we have enjoyed before. Sadly, that takes us back. I am sure the Minister will disagree, and we will listen to the reasons why, but we will not press this to a Division.

[Rebecca Pow]

The Government are fully committed to ensuring that environmental protection sits at the heart of the policies that we will bring forward. However, the new clause would place significant—I would say huge—burdens on Government and public authorities, without adding any additional environmental benefit. Moreover, the Government already implement these considerations in other ways. Central Government develop strategic environmental policies and set the strategy and approach for any key decisions taken by public bodies. It, therefore, makes sense for the new environmental principles duty to sit with Ministers.

To use the example of a planning application for a shed, it seems wholly unreasonable for a public authority to be obliged to prove the principles have been considered, when the strategic framework, in such case the national planning policy framework, should embed these expectations. To be clear, strategies set by central Government, such as the NPPF, will have been developed in line with the principles policy statement. Placing a legal duty on Ministers to

“have due regard to the policy statement”,

as we have done in clause 18, enables the provision of clear guidance to Departments to ensure an efficient policy-making process.

The policy statement will set out the details on the application and the interpretation of the principles. This would not be clear if the duty were directly on the principles themselves, as primary legislation cannot go into the necessary detail. In a similar vein, the proposal to alter the environmental principles duty from “have due regard” to “must apply” would be extremely burdensome and would have unintended consequences.

The new clause would also extend the scope of the principles duty from being limited to policy making to covering all functions administered by all public authorities, which would result in a massive, unnecessary burden. The new clause would create a significant additional and excessive burden on public services, while duplicating existing provisions, without any clear environmental benefit or purpose.

I think the hon. Member for Cambridge touched on the lowering of standards relating to the EU. The EU only has principles and it does not have a policy statement to explain how to use them. We have taken a big step further than that and it is much clearer, I would say. I hope that gives this complicated process a bit of clarity. I ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Daniel Zeichner]

On this occasion, I am happy to oblige, not least because I suspect we will want to go away and look very carefully at the Minister’s words. I think there is quite an important set of issues here. We are not necessarily convinced that this strengthens our environmental protections. A planning application for a shed was a slightly unfortunate example to give, given that under the proposals in the planning White Paper, there will be whole swathes of the country where no planning application will be needed in future at all. That is exactly the force of our arguments. While we remain concerned, we will not pursue it any further this evening, because 20 minutes to 5 is not the time for this. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Leo Docherty.)

Environment Bill (Eighteenth sitting)

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 18th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 19th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

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

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester for his lovely comment on my suit. As I explained to the Chair earlier, it is my lucky suit. I wore it for both Second Readings—we have had two already—and I thought, as we are doing nature, I should wear it today.

Public authorities can and should play an important role in improving our nature. Under the current duty, a number of public authorities have undertaken projects with the aim of conserving biodiversity, such as changing cutting regimes for roadside verges to allow wild flowers to flourish. The hon. Member for Cambridge mentioned something going on in his own area along those lines, and I am pushing my county council in Somerset to do exactly that.

Such efforts are not consistent across public authorities, nor are they enough when compared with the Government’s wider ambitions for recovering nature and the country’s desire to build back better. They are also not enough to address the drastic decline in biodiversity seen over past decades, which we have referenced several times in Committee. I believe we all agree about the need to address it.

The existing duty was criticised in a House of Lords Select Committee report in 2017, with environmental groups such as Wildlife and Countryside Link giving evidence that the duty was ineffective. We have listened and clause 93 therefore strengthens the biodiversity duty to better reflect the ambition set out in the 25-year environment plan and to give public authorities a better approach to building biodiversity into their core activities. It just needs to be part and parcel of everything in the future. We are changing the nature of the duty away from considering biodiversity every time that a function is exercised, when in many cases it will not be relevant or it will be too late in the implementation process to make the most effective change. We want public authorities periodically to take a strategic look over all their functions, identify where they can make a change that will improve biodiversity as they are developing their policies and procedures, and then take action.

Public authorities must also have regard to local nature recovery strategies, species conservation strategies and protected site strategies—I mentioned those in the previous sitting—when they consider biodiversity. That is an important underpinning for the strategies and is crucial to their implementation.

The strengthened duty seeks to embed consideration of how biodiversity can be conserved and enhanced in the overall performance of public authorities’ functions across England. I urge that clause 93 stand part of the Bill.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Let me start by reassuring hon. Members that my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test is not suffering undue excitement from the previous sitting, but is on a late-running train from Southampton and will join us soon.

May I also thank you, Sir George, for allowing us to sort out the slight procedural difficulty that we had at the end of the previous sitting? It was a long sitting and finished in a bit of a rush. The Government introduced a whole range of important new clauses relating to clause 93, to which I will now be making reference. A huge set of amendments were introduced about species conservation strategies and protected site strategies. Of course, it was not possible to discuss that provision in evidence sessions, and the Opposition were disappointed that that was not possible. It prompts a whole range of questions, and perhaps the Minister can answer some of them in her reply. We are not clear on why the provision was introduced at such a late stage. Although some of it is welcome, there are some questions of detail, which I will go into. It is not clear to us why the provision was introduced at such a late moment.

I have to say that this goes back to the argument that I have been making—you missed the first half of it, Sir George—as I have questioned who was responsible for, in the Opposition’s view, so diminishing the power of the Environment Bill. We think that there is an interaction with the Government’s planning White Paper, and I ask the Minister just to say a little more about the interaction that she thinks that there will be with these proposals.

I draw the Minister’s attention to a piece in The Planner, which I am not sure she is a regular reader of—I confess I am not. The question was raised over the summer of the interaction between the planning White Paper and the good proposals in this Bill and clause 93. One question raised by Huw Morris, one of that publication’s key writers, is this: in a streamlined planning system, how will local plans be assessed from an environmental and sustainability point of view, and how will individual schemes be environmentally assessed to provide the right mitigation? The point is that in the planning White Paper, we have new categories, including of course the growth category, where none of these things will be done in detail. Huw Morris says that the picture gets murkier in growth zones, where schemes will be allowed automatically. With sustainability appraisal scrapped and environmental impact assessments not carried out at the outline stage, how will a development’s green footprint be judged, if at all?

That is a very big question. I appreciate that the Minister might not want to respond immediately, but I hope that she has some opportunity, in the discussions, to give some reassurance to people, because this potentially, in our view, undermines many of the good points that we have talked about. That is why we were so keen to have an evidence session.

In relation to clause 93 and new clause 25 on species strategies and licensing, we have looked at this provision closely and are disappointed that we were not able to examine it more closely in a proper evidence session, because the interaction between some of these suggestions and existing legislation is quite detailed. Strategic approaches to species conservation are clearly essential. We agree with them. It is vital to preserve biodiversity and enable the recovery of nature. As I think we have already said, that is important because 46% of conservation priority species in England declined between 2013 and 2018, and many of those species would certainly benefit from a strategic plan resulting in all relevant public bodies taking appropriate actions to save and restore them.

Sadly, this proposal has to be understood in the context of the net-gain offsetting that we have already discussed, and our fear is that there could be unintended consequences. We are advised that the overall result could sadly be to allow the destruction of habitats and protected species in return for new habitat creation elsewhere. A developer could be licensed to proceed with activities that destroy habitats and species in return for contributing to habitats that support the wider population of that species.

It is a complicated point, but I am sure that the Minister knows what we are driving at. Our worry is that it would allow a developer to proceed without protecting every specimen of a protected species and without always undertaking site-specific survey work. The result would be to speed up development and reduce costs, which seems to us—this is the argument that I am trying to build—to be the effect of the planning White Paper. It seems to be the very opposite of what we are trying to achieve in the Bill.

If the proposal is implemented well, it certainly could be a positive way to contribute to the conservation of certain species, but if it is managed badly or applied to inappropriate species it could sadly become a shortcut to getting round some of the protected species obligations. The evidence for that is provided by conservation organisations that tell us that the implementation of strategic approaches to species protection, such as district licensing for great crested newts, have not been proven effective. The Minister claimed that they had been, but that is not their view.

The Government notes do not give us cause for optimism. In the fourth bullet point of the notes that were issued alongside the clauses, the Government say that there are

“concerns limiting the development and roll-out of such existing schemes: 1) uncertainty about how effective they are and 2) whether they can be considered to meet the high standard of certainty required by law.”

That is the point that we are seeking to pursue.

We are told by environmental organisations that monitoring has been incomplete, that there is little evidence that it has protected the most important newt populations from development, and that the overall benefits for the species are unproven. That could have been probed and tested in evidence, but sadly we have not been given that opportunity. We are concerned that the Government seek to advance on the roll-out of district licensing around the country, with a duty to co-operate forcing the hand of local authorities, many of which are already saying that they are concerned about the effectiveness of the scheme.

We can see the dangers, and we think that high risks would come from extending that kind of approach to other species that have distinct conservation needs. As far as we are aware, no assessment has been undertaken to establish which, if any, other species would be ecologically amenable to this or similar approaches. Can the Minister tell us whether that work has been done? Again, I do not necessarily expect her to have the answer to hand, but if she cannot tell us today, she could write to us.

We are looking for some serious reassurance that the species conservation strategies will not lead to perverse outcomes. We need to ensure that they are delivering gains for nature rather than gains for developers. This may be slightly tedious, and I apologise, but again because we have not had the opportunity to interrogate these matters we think it is important to put it on the record.

Greener UK has raised several legal details with us that we would like addressed. It asked us why the clause has not been worded to ensure that each species strategy is required to identify priorities for the protection of habitats in addition to the existing priorities of creation or enhancement of habitats. Greener UK’s concern is that purely focusing on enhancements, as is currently the case in the clause, would undermine the planning process by undervaluing the need to protect existing habitats, and it wonders why the clause has not been worded to ensure that each strategy must give precedence to the mitigation hierarchy.

That is an important point because, as we said in earlier discussions, offsetting and licensing through species plans should be the very last option rather than considered earlier in the process. Greener UK is particularly concerned that site surveys should still take place when existing data is inadequate to identify impacts on key species. The worry through all this is that this is an attempt to speed up the process for development rather than to protect species.

Site surveys covering features important to species as well as habitats are particularly important for bats and invertebrates. Bat roosts, which are essential to the species’ survival, and endangered insects on private sites, are easily overlooked and are often detected only in pre-development site surveys.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank hon. Members for their comments. As the hon. Member for Cambridge said, he has raised a large number of points in one go. He has given me a large task, and I will write to him if there are points that I miss out, because it was an awful lot to take in at speed.

The hon. Gentleman is right to be asking these questions because we need to make sure that we have got this right. I give him the assurance straight away that new clauses 25 to 27 will not diminish the Bill, but will add to it. That is what we have in mind and there has been a lot of discussion in order to come to that conclusion. We have listened to a lot of comments. That is why clause 93 strengthens the biodiversity duty, to better effect the ambition set out in the 25-year environment plan and to give public authorities a much better approach to building biodiversity into their core activities, so that that is part and parcel of everything rather than being done on an itsy-bitsy, one-off basis.

[Daniel Zeichner]

No one on the Opposition Benches questions the Minister’s commitment to this, but why was it introduced at a late stage? If she can explain that, it would go some way to assuaging some of our fears.

[Rebecca Pow]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, this Bill has been in the making for a very long time. It began long before I came along as the Environment Minister. We have spent a whole year working on it, which has enabled us to strengthen it and to work more closely with all the bodies and organisations, particularly Natural England.

The hon. Member for Cambridge talked about Natural England, with whom we have worked really closely. In fact, it will play a big role in all this and we have had full discussions with it. Indeed, Natural England launched a project about 10 days ago. I would have gone, had it not been for the lockdown, so all I could do was a speech. The project was about how nature recovery networks, which is a generic term, and strategies will be pulled together with the protected sites. The launch went well and about 500 people attended the Zoom event, to show how these things will work as we go forward and make sure that in the future biodiversity is embedded into all that we do.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I will not keep intervening, but my concern is about the section on nature in the 10-point plan that the Prime Minister launched yesterday. There is no mention of net biodiversity gain, which seemed to us to be surprising. That is why we are suspicious. It is difficult, because we have new proposals coming forward from other bits of Government and our worry is that the strength of this Bill has been undermined.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thought the 10-point plan was brilliant. It put a massive focus on decarbonising and the renewable energy sector, which I know the hon. Member for Southampton, Test is particularly interested in. It was addressing other elements of the whole green recovery. We were really pleased that we got the tree mentioned in there.

--- Later in debate ---

Biodiversity reports

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move amendment 142, in clause 94, page 95, leave out lines 28 and 29 and insert—

“(a) all public authorities and persons or bodies exercising functions of a public nature, and”.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 186, in clause 94, page 95, line 30, at the end insert—

“(d) Natural England and the Environment Agency”.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I assure the Committee the going may be slightly lighter for the next period. That was complicated. I appreciated the Minister’s response, but I think there are two takes we can have on this: one is the optimistic take, which she presents, but others are a little more sceptical and suggest that even if the bulldozer is hydrogen-powered, it is still a bulldozer, so we need to be careful.

We welcome clause 94, because it remedies a weakness in the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, which lacked a reporting duty for public authorities with regard to the biodiversity objective. The world moves on and we want to do better, so the clause is good. Those reports will be important in regularly recording the actions that public authorities take to conserve and enhance biodiversity.

I am grateful to the Minister for her letter referring to the burdens on local authorities. She was very swift in writing to me. I am not certain that my council colleagues will be totally convinced, but apparently there is a new burdens doctrine, which sounds slightly severe. In her letter, she was very specific about some elements that will apparently be funded, but I suspect that, with all these measures, whether it is the reporting duty or anything else, many local authorities will ask where the resources will come from to enable them to do it. Nevertheless, we would like it to be done, because we think that these reports will help to improve information on protected sites, priority habitats and priority species.

The clause could helpfully be amended, to realise the full potential of those reports, so I will continue my theme of trying to strengthen the legislation and achieve the outcome that we all want. Extending the range of public authorities that are required to provide reports, providing more direction on report content and expanding the list of topics that public authorities should report on would be helpful. Currently, the requirement to produce biodiversity reports applies only to local authorities in England other than parish councils, local planning authorities in England and designated authorities. We think that it would be beneficial to extend the range of public authorities required to provide reports, to make sure that all bodies that have influence over the natural environment are properly included. Our amendments 142 and 186 seek to do that.

Amendment 142 would make it a requirement that

“all public authorities and persons or bodies exercising functions of a public nature”

have to produce these reports, spelling out how they are meeting the biodiversity objective; and amendment 186 would add Natural England and the Environment Agency to the list of designated authorities required to publish biodiversity reports. We think these amendments would be helpful. We will not pursue a vote, but it would be helpful to hear the Minister’s response.

[Rebecca Pow]

You will be very pleased to hear that I will not speak for as long as I did previously, Mr Howarth.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his amendments. Importantly, the addition of a reporting requirement strengthens the Bill. The reports will be a valuable source of information, facilitating the sharing of best practice and providing both transparency and accountability.

Clause 94 designates some public authorities and provides the Secretary of State with a power to designate in secondary legislation which other bodies will be required to report. We are clear that local authorities and other planning authorities have important contributions to make to restoring nature, so we have designated those authorities in the Bill. We will require reporting from other relevant public authorities, including Government Departments with large estates and bodies that undertake statutory requirements, such as the public utility companies.

Amendment 142 would significantly broaden the duty to report on action taken under the biodiversity duty, which would not be appropriate for some public authorities that are small and have few resources. Parish councils, which we have mentioned previously, are a clear example of such authorities, but there will be others for which it would not be a sensible use of their limited resources to produce and publish biodiversity reports. I am sure that they will all want to have their say, but they could feed that in to their local authority.

Under amendment 186, Natural England and the Environment Agency would be named specifically in the 2006 Act as needing to produce biodiversity reports. The decisions on which public authority should be asked to report are best considered in detail as we develop the regulations that will flow from the Bill. All interested stakeholders will have the opportunity to engage with us to make sure we get the list of public authorities right. I think it is important that that is done. Consideration and consultation are important parts of the process, and while Natural England and the Environment Agency undoubtedly have crucial roles in our effort to enhance biodiversity, there are other important public authorities. I urge the hon. Member to withdraw his amendment.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I anticipated that response, but I do think there is a missed opportunity here. Part of the problem goes back to the existing pressures on organisations like Natural England and the Environment Agency. They have to prioritise. The danger is that they will not be able to do some of the things we are asking them to do unless we actually specify and lay them out. The worry that has been expressed to me is that they sometimes struggle to carry out their biodiversity duties. Unless we actually press them and make it an obligation, they are not going to report on it or be able to do it. That is not a criticism of them; they are working with limited resources.

It comes back to the very basic point that it depends on how important one thinks any of this is. We think it is really important. I will gently say that, in the lead-up to COP26, where nature-based solutions are going to be a key theme, we could be setting a lead here by showing how we are pushing nature and biodiversity up the agenda—not at No. 9 on the 10-point plan, but much higher up, which is certainly where we would put it. I think it is a missed opportunity.

On parish councils and other authorities, which we will perhaps come on to a bit later, perhaps I am slightly obsessed by environmental land management schemes because of my role on the Agriculture Bill, but it seems to me that an awful lot is being put on these schemes. I said during the discussions on that Bill that there was a clear opportunity for local input, and it would be local knowledge that made these measures work. There is a role for these authorities, and this is exactly the kind of place where we could set that obligation.

[Rebecca Pow]

I have been wanting to intervene and give reassurances on that very point that everything in the Bill will also dovetail with the measures in the Agriculture Bill and the environmental land management schemes. That is essential, I am working very closely with the Farms Minister and the Secretary of State to make sure the Bills work together. The environmental land management schemes will deliver much of the biodiversity and nature enhancement, and public goods including clean water, carbon capture and climate change mitigation, in large part through nature-based solutions. The measures in this Bill will help towards that, and the local authority biodiversity reports will particularly help, as well as the local networks that are developed. They show what nature is where, what needs enhancing where, and how different groups of people can join up through catchment-based approaches. I think what the hon. Gentleman wants to happen is what has been designed. Does he agree?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving me the opportunity to say how disappointed we were that the Government did not take the opportunity we offered in our amendment to link the Bills together, not least because they came in the wrong order, being driven by a Brexit timetable rather than an appropriate timetable to do this in the right way. We are not convinced they have been integrated in the correct way. We are only a few weeks away from that new system potentially beginning, and there is a lot of work to do, to put it mildly.

We think that there should be local input from the very beginning, much like the schemes we are losing—economic development, leader schemes and so on—that worked on a local level before. Who knows where the sustainable investment is going? A lot is being lost at the moment. To return to the amendment, we feel that a strengthened reporting obligation would actually help the Government, as we are trying to do, to achieve the outcomes they are seeking more effectively. None the less, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move amendment 141, in clause 94, page 95, line 43, at end insert—

“(e) an analysis of how actions taken have contributed to delivery of priorities identified in the Local Nature Recovery Strategies.”

This is a continuation of the same discussion, in effect, because we are looking at how the biodiversity reports could be improved. In the Bill, in the list of topics that the biodiversity reports should contain, there is no reference to any consideration of local nature recovery strategies. I have already spoken with some passion about the need to link all these things up to make them work. We agree that if we are going to tackle the biodiversity challenge, co-ordination is needed. The local nature recovery strategies are designed to do just that, so tying them into biodiversity reports would help to achieve that core purpose of directing local nature recovery activity.

Our amendment would do that by adding to the clause that biodiversity reports must contain analysis of how the actions of public authorities have contributed to the delivery of the priorities identified in the local nature recovery strategies. Our concern—this is a consistent theme—is to lock in a guarantee that something actually happens. The danger is that often good intentions are parked somewhere within authorities that, quite understandably, have many other things going on, and nothing happens. We need to ensure that things are considered in key decision-making processes and that actions are properly monitored, with decision makers held to account. Again, the amendment is a probing one to tease out of the Government how they think the provision will work. There will be no need to divide the Committee.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the amendment. We intend the biodiversity reports to be proportionate and flexible. Designated public authorities will report every five years on how the measures throughout the clauses dealing with nature and biodiversity deliver the intended improvements for nature. To achieve that aim, we should not be too prescriptive by specifying in the Bill what the reports must contain.

There will be considerable variety across the public authorities designated to report. For many, it might well make sense to frame reports against the context of the relevant local nature recovery strategy. The requirement in the clause to “have regard” to the strategies while determining what action to take will encourage that. Indeed, we anticipate that biodiversity reports will be a valuable source of information for local nature recovery strategies when they are reviewed and republished. This should be a two-way process.

For many public authorities, however, having to specify the contribution to every relevant strategy would be a disproportionate burden. A public authority with national reach would find it challenging to provide a meaningful analysis of its contribution across a very large number of strategies. As I said, the idea is that the report is workable, is flexible, but that people are actually able to do it. A lengthy analysis could prevent the public authority from producing a report that is clear, readable and focused on the most important action that it has taken to help nature recover.

We therefore believe that such detail is best left to regulations and guidance, which allow for greater flexibility and, where suggested, content can be better tailored to individual circumstances. On those grounds, I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment—I think he said it was just a probing amendment.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Once again, I might have anticipated that response. My concern continues to be that insufficient leverage is being applied to ensure that such things actually happen. That is the only point at issue. Having heard the Minister’s response, I am happy to beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move amendment 12, in clause 94, page 96, line 27, leave out “may” and insert “must”.

This is our familiar “may” or “must” discussion. In this case, clause 94 currently outlines that the Secretary of State “may” make regulations to

“require biodiversity reports to include specified quantitative data relating to biodiversity”.

I want to say a little about some of the data issues, because we think that this is rather important. Paragraph 846 of the explanatory notes makes a very good case for the amendment. It says:

“This will ensure key quantitative data is reported in a consistent fashion across all reports, thereby making comparisons across the reports easier. Having such data defined in regulations will also allow for it to be updated in the future as required.”

The Minister will say that that means it is good to have it in the regulations, but we think it should be stated up front.

We believe that good data will make a big difference to how effective public authorities can be in improving biodiversity outcomes. This carries over into some of the discussions around the environmental land management scheme, which is why we pressed very hard for an environmental baseline to be established. Sadly, that was not taken up by the Government, but we think that they will probably have to do it at some point anyway. None of these worthy processes will be possible without good data. Of course, the world has changed in that there are many new and innovative ways of scanning, recording and assessing that may not have been possible a decade ago.

The Secretary of State himself said in his speech on environmental recovery in July:

“We want everyone to be able to access an accurate, centralised body of data on species populations so that taking nature into account is the first, speedy step to a”

planning application. That is a laudable ambition, which we absolutely support, but to do that the Government have to get the data in place. I pay tribute to the army of volunteers who gather data at the moment. We have fantastic volunteers in this country. I suspect that many people here watch and count butterflies, bees, birds and so on, which is all helpful. I have been very impressed by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust—I have already mentioned the ruderal bumblebee—which does excellent work in recording what is happening to bumblebees.

All such organisations require support and the volunteers sometimes need training, because is not always obvious how to gather the data. There then needs to be a process of recording, verification and infrastructure, and there are costs to all of that. Although we have some wonderful not-for-profit organisations and there is a good tradition of volunteering, we feel that it is important that the Government provide support to ensure that we get the centralised, accurate body of data that the Secretary of State referred to. That, of course, will then allow the data sharing, the comparison and the mechanisms that are needed to ensure that we get the biodiversity gains that we are looking for.

I have said on many occasions that we think that local authorities are already struggling to fund, resource and support the kind of work that will be needed to make all these good intentions come to fruition. Fewer than a third of them have an in-house ecologist or biodiversity officer, and we fear that Natural England does not even have the required resources, as I have said, to carry out its current statutory duties in some cases, let alone the extra responsibilities. We think that there needs to be an investment from Government in the right data and environmental information infrastructure to ensure that nature conservation can work.

Again, this is not an issue on which we wish to divide the Committee. However, I would be grateful to hear from the Minister how she proposes to make sure that that fantastic pool of data is going to be put in place and maintained, to ensure that we can make the progress we are all looking for.

[Rebecca Pow]

I will narrow my comments down because this is a “may” and “must” amendment again. As I have previously explained during discussion of similar amendments from the hon. Member and others, primary legislation consistently takes this approach to the balance between powers and duties. I assure the hon. Member that the Government intend to make the regulations.

--- Later in debate ---

I reassure the hon. Gentleman that the Government intend to make the regulations and that the Bill provides an appropriate power for the Secretary of State to do so. As such, we believe the amendment is not needed. I respectfully ask him to kindly stick to what he suggested earlier and treat this as a probing amendment.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I find much of that reassuring.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

As a trained mathematician, I fully support the use of data supporting policy and as chair of the Government’s Regulatory Policy Committee, it was my job to ensure that we had evidence-based policy making. However, I do not think it is good enough just to say that there should or must be data unless we specify what that data is. The risk, otherwise, is that we come up with the wrong sort of data.

Given our shared belief in data, I have been doing a bit of data gathering myself—not counting butterflies and so on, but counting “musts” and “mays”. In clause 94, I counted not just one or two—not three, four or five—but six “musts” and only two “mays”. That shows how strong the paragraph is, with the “musts” outnumbering the “mays” by three to one. Do Opposition Committee members welcome that fact?

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[The Chair]

Order. We are straying into the territory of the Shakespearian debate about the use of “thee” and “thou”. Interesting though it is, I am not quite sure it adds any edification to our proceedings. It is for the hon. Member for Cambridge to decide whether that intervention has any influence on him.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful, Sir George, and I am grateful to my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire. As the chair of the all-party group on data analytics, I, too, can bore for Britain on that. He is right about the “musts” and the “mays”, but a lot depends on where they come in the paragraph. Sadly, there are lots of “musts” and then, quite often, whether something will be implemented or not is followed by a may. There is a hierarchy of “musts” and “mays” that also needs to be taken into account, which shows the difficulties that sometimes arise with using data. It does not always tell the whole story.

Data will be important, particularly as we go down the environmental land management route. I have concerns about that because of the complexities involved. The only way they will be able to work, I suspect, will be through good collection of data. If we are going to move to outcome-based measures—and I think that that is where many people want to get to, finally, on many such issues—it will be essential to be able to measure, record and draw conclusions. I think that we are probably all going in the same direction, and I suspect that we all want the things that are proposed to happen. It is just a question of how quickly they happen, and when. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 94 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 95 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 96

Preparation of local nature recovery strategies

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move amendment 13, in clause 96, page 97, line 27, leave out “may” and insert “must”.

This is one of the most exciting provisions. I do not want to be in danger of getting over-excited, but we think that the set of provisions that we have now reached is very important. That is why I must go back to the ninth of the 10 points yesterday, and say that I found the references—and there is a reference to a local nature recovery network—slightly confusing, as it was in the context of landscape recovery projects.

We are in danger of drowning in a sea of acronyms, I fear, and one thing that we would look for from the Minister is clarity about how all those things will work together. We want a coherent framework that will drive an approach that will reverse nature’s decline across the country. We genuinely believe that that can be done, but we feel that the potential for the local nature recovery strategies is constrained by the current wording and, yet again, we are trying to suggest improvements to help the Minister.

We have already touched on some of the weaknesses of the duty in question, and the need for monitoring in biodiversity reports. The amendment has been tabled to underline the point that the full positive impact of local nature recovery strategies will be realised only if authorities are given clear and effective procedures to follow when they are preparing, producing, reviewing and publishing their local strategies. I am afraid that it is again a may/must issue.

Also, it is a concern of ours that in some instances the affirmative procedure will not be used. There is a strong feeling that, were there to be wider discussion, the legislation would be improved. Allowing third parties, including experts in a sector, to have input into the procedures through public consultation, would be only to the good. We seek the Minister’s comments on whether she can make sure that happens.

We worry, also, about the timing. There is no date to begin the preparation of some of the things in the clause and our worry that they could go on the back burner. Will the Minister give some indication of when she thinks they will be in place and implemented, and when the good work is to begin? Once again, we are trying to find out information. We do not seek to divide the Committee—I can anticipate the Minister’s response. I should like to hear what she has to say.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the amendment, but it will not surprise him to hear that we do not believe it is necessary. The backbone of the local nature recovery strategy clauses is a series of duties on the Secretary of State: first, to ensure that there are local nature recovery strategy areas covering the whole of England; secondly, to appoint responsible authorities to lead local nature recovery strategy preparation; and, thirdly, to provide the responsible authorities with the necessary information. The Government are also seeking the power to create regulations to establish the process for preparing a local nature recovery strategy. That is to enable that process to work smoothly and to create consistency in what each responsible authority produces.

I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Cambridge is aware, but just for information, I point out that five pilots are already running on local nature recovery strategies. One is in Cornwall. There were lots of areas where the pilots on the strategies could have run, but on the whole the areas chosen were those that had already done quite a lot of work in this respect and so had lots of good processes and plans and thoughts. My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth probably knows about that initiative, given that it covers her patch. I hope that that explanation gives assurances. The work is ongoing, so the lessons will be learned about all that. That will help for the quick roll-out of these things; others will be able to copy what has been done and put them in process.

We have developed local nature recovery strategies to be an important new tool in delivering a wide range of environmental commitments, such as tree planting, peat restoration, natural flood management and the creation of the nature recovery network, which was touched on by the hon. Member for Cambridge. These commitments for this overarching improvement of nature—that is, the nature recovery network—are set out in the 25-year environment plan. The environmental improvement plan clauses in the Bill will establish duties to monitor and report performance against the commitments—it should be remembered that the first environmental improvement plan is the 25-year environment plan; that is how this all knits together—creating ample incentive for Government to ensure that local nature recovery strategies work effectively to help to meet all our commitments. That will very much be part of it.

I would like to provide reassurance that we intend to waste no time in producing the regulations following Royal Assent to the Bill. It has to happen that we get on with these things pretty fast. Changing this proposed power to produce regulations into a duty to do so would serve no purpose. The Government are clearly committed both to the establishment of local nature recovery strategies and to the role that the regulations will play.

I hope that what I have said gives a bit more clarity on the direction that the hon. Gentleman was asking about and I ask him whether he would kindly withdraw the amendment.

[Daniel Zeichner]

We still do not feel that there is sufficient speed. That is our concern. Pilots are great, but we have seen with the environmental land management scheme that we can go through pilots and pilots and pilots; the question is whether the crisis is being addressed sufficiently speedily. We would like things to move more quickly, but I hear what the Minister says, and on that basis I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 96 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 97

Content of local nature recovery strategies

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move amendment 143, in clause 97, page 98, line 6, at end insert—

“(c) a statement of how the strategy is expected to contribute to achievement of relevant environmental targets.”

We move from pace to content. We would like to say a little about this—we have a number of amendments, which we can probably go through fairly swiftly—because we think that some things could be done to strengthen the content of local nature recovery strategies. Amendment 143 is to underline that we believe that there need to be clearer links between these requirements and the target-setting framework established at the outset of the Bill.

We believe that the strategies should be required to be developed with regard to the need to contribute to delivery of the environmental targets. We fear that, without that, there will be no means to measure how well the nature provisions are contributing to the overall goal of nature recovery. A clear link would ensure that each local nature recovery strategy delivered local and national objectives, as intended.

Local nature recovery strategies need to be the primary means by which ambitious national environmental commitments, priorities and investments are targeted to deliver maximum public and ecological benefits—the whole range, from tree planting to nature-based flood defences. In combination with those clear national priorities and ecological advice, working with local knowledge and expertise, they can be channelled into delivering measurable achievements through the local strategies. That is the way to make these strategies a success.

We think this amendment is helpful, provides clarity and knits the Bill together. From the outset, our worry has been that the Bill is a rather disparate set of measures. Through the amendment, we could tie it all together and make it work better. Once again, the amendment is an attempt to draw out from the Minister the Government’s thinking on the issue, and we will not seek to divide the Committee.

[Rebecca Pow]

I understand the hon. Member’s intent in tabling the amendment, but I do not think it is necessary. The Government already have ample measures at their disposal to ensure that the local nature recovery strategies play their part in meeting the relevant targets, once those have been determined. As time goes on there will be opportunity for all manner of targets on nature to be set. That link has already been made.

First, as we have discussed, the Bill gives the Government the power to issue regulations setting out how each local nature recovery strategy must be prepared. Secondly, it will enable Government to issue statutory guidance on what local nature recovery strategies must contain, expanding on the detail on the face of the Bill. Thirdly, it will require the Government to provide the responsible authority with information to assist in preparing these strategies. That information includes a national habitat map as well as the location areas that the Secretary of State believes could contribute to the establishment of a network of areas across England for the recovery and enhancement of biodiversity in England as a whole.

In combination, these measures provide the opportunity for Government to set out a national spatial framework for the nature recovery network and to shape how it is reflected in each local strategy. The Bill also introduces a duty on the Secretary of State to meet the long-term environmental targets. All that reporting and monitoring will feed into that, starting from the ground upwards. All these measures will feed into achieving those targets.

The duty will be sufficient to ensure that the Secretary of State will use the tools referred to and provide responsible authorities with clear information on how local nature recovery strategies should contribute to achieving those specific targets. It will ensure that the Secretary of State has every incentive to monitor the effectiveness of these contributions. I urge the hon. Member to remember that the framework of reporting, monitoring and being held to account will all be part of making sure that we improve nature. I urge him to withdraw the amendment.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move amendment 144, in clause 97, page 98, line 16, at end insert—

“(e) a description of how actions intended to meet the net gain objective and land management changes supported by public funds should be spatially targeted through Local Nature Recovery Strategies in order to contribute most effectively to environmental improvement.”

This amendment clarifies the relationship between LNRSs, net gain, ELM and other policies.

I suspect that we are trying to achieve the same things through slightly different means. Amendment 144 seeks to ensure that local nature recovery strategies are comprehensive and bring all an area’s environmental gains into a cohesive plan. They should co-ordinate all the local biodiversity net gains arising from planning as well as from the land management changes pursued under ELM schemes. As I have said, we think that linkage to ELM is absolutely key to ensuring a cohesive approach. Again, we think the amendment would strengthen the Bill, which is rather important. I have referred to the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan, which I think needs to be strengthened.

We are helping the Minister here; she could win many brownie points by pointing out to her colleagues that, given that COP26 is nature-based, this is an opportunity to absolutely deliver on nature recovery. I am offering her an early Christmas present, really, and I am afraid that on this occasion we will divide the Committee, because it is a perfect opportunity for her to show that she wants to join us in strengthening her very own Bill.

[The Chair]

Christmas seems to come earlier and earlier.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting that; I could not have put it better myself. That is why we are running the pilots, and it is great that they are already running. The hon. Member for Cambridge asks when we are going to do all this, but we are actually already doing it. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that each area will be different: Cornwall will be quite different from south Humber or Keighley. Those areas’ requirements and demands will vary and that is why we need to run pilots.

We do not want the pilots to go on forever—the hon. Member for Cambridge is absolutely right about that—and the Secretary of State and I are at pains to say, “Yes, we want all the data and feed-in, but we do need action.” I like to think that we will see action. The Secretary of State said on Second Reading that we have to ensure that we work to promote actions through the environmental land management scheme and that those actions work with what we are putting into our local nature recovery strategies. The idea is that those will all work together and that we will then deliver our biodiversity net gain, which will also be helped by the strengthened biodiversity duty on public authorities in the Bill.

Beyond the Bill, the strategies will support local authorities in protecting and enhancing biodiversity through the planning system, and encourage more collaborative working between the public, private and voluntary sectors, to establish and achieve common goals. We are keen that each responsible authority leading production of a strategy properly understands and considers the different mechanisms through which the net gain and adding to nature could be achieved. The responsible authority will not always have direct control of all those different delivery mechanisms, however, so they will need to work collaboratively with other organisations, as we have proposed.

Simply requiring the responsible authority to give its opinion on processes that it does not control will add little to the strategy and could deter partners from engaging constructively. My intention is instead to use the statutory guidance provided with the clauses to explain how the responsible authority should take account of potential delivery mechanisms when preparing its strategy. I agree with the hon. Member for Cambridge: he is absolutely right that we are coming up to a crucial year, with COP26. However, I hope he is very pleased that nature and adaptation are part of the COP. That is why it is so important that we demonstrate that we are going to lead by example, with the pilots and all the measures in the Bill, which show that we are taking these issues seriously; it can work and add to nature. I therefore kindly ask the hon. Member to withdraw the amendment.

[Daniel Zeichner]

That was a helpful set of interchanges, but I have to say that we need something stronger than, “I’d like to think that we are going to see some action.” The urgency is much more pressing. There is a danger of ending up with perpetual pilots, and we want to go much more quickly and more strongly. On that basis, we will press the amendment to a Division.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move amendment 145, in clause 97, page 98, line 23, before “are” insert

“an ecologically coherent network of sites that”.

This amendment clarifies that local habitat maps should contribute to a coherent ecological network.

Obviously, I am very disappointed that the Minister felt unable to accept my Christmas gift, but we will move on.

Amendment 145 seeks to ensure that local habitat maps, which are included in local nature recovery strategies, are set out in an ecologically coherent way. It is important to get some clarity, because the sites should relate to each other in a coherent way to form part of a wider integrated network for nature’s recovery. We do not want to see local habitats stagnating in isolation; they should relate to one another.

Our understanding is that the intention is for local nature recovery strategies to be produced, as the Minister has already made reference to, in a bottom-up way, to create a nature recovery network at a national level by way of creating corridors of habitat across the country.

I wonder slightly about the national level. As has already been referenced, we have quite clear regions and sub-regions, and it depends on the landscape. Our point is that there should be some coherence. There is a slight risk that there will be a lack of coherence. For instance, we could see a situation where a local authority prioritises a green space for people, quite rightly, but neglects the fact that it could be a crucial stepping-stone between two vulnerable habitats, which could be resolved by creating a corridor of trees that links those habitats.

The basic point we are trying to address is that there should be some integration. By linking strategies together, we believe they can form the building blocks of a national nature recovery network—a joined-up system of nature-rich places, as originally envisioned in the 25-year plan for the environment. We will not seek to divide the Committee on this amendment, but we want to get a sense of whether the Minister shares our aspirations.

[Rebecca Pow]

I have to go back to the last comments from the hon. Member for Cambridge. He said that, “I’d like to think” we might have some environmental improvement. I am thinking about it all the time, as my team know. All my thinking will lead to action, through the Bill—I just want to make that very clear.

I understand that the intention behind the amendment is to ensure that local nature recovery strategies consider the ecological coherence of any areas that they identify in their local habitat map, and I reassure the Committee that I recognise how important ecological coherence will be in the strategies. The current clauses allow us to publish statutory guidance to set out in more detail what each strategy must contain, so we intend to draw on examples of existing good practice in spatial prioritisation for nature, to ensure that ecological coherence is reflected in the strategies. Quite clearly, “link up” and “join up” are very important, and wildlife corridors are exceptionally important.

--- Later in debate ---

The amendment would limit the consideration of ecological coherence to only part of the strategy, excluding existing protected sites, which are the areas of greatest value for nature. I am sure that is not what is intended, but that is how it might be interpreted. Nor would the requirement apply to locations where the recovery or enhancement of biodiversity could make a particular contribution to other environmental benefits, which is a key aspect of the strategies. I do not believe that is the intention of the hon. Member for Cambridge. I therefore ask him to consider the reassurances I have given and to withdraw the amendment.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to the Minister for her reply. We probably have slightly different views on this issue, but we are both trying to get to the same place. My concern—it goes right back to the planning White Paper, where these issues are touched on very lightly—is about the lack of integration, rather than having a coherent, planned overall approach. That makes the whole approach less effective. We have heard what the Minister says, however, and we do not seek to push the amendment to a Division. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Leo Docherty.)

Environment Bill (Nineteeth sitting)

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 19th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 19th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

Information to be provided by the Secretary of State

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 146, in clause 98, page 98, line 45, at end insert—

“(3A) The Secretary of State must produce a strategy to inform the development of a Nature Recovery Network, including a spatial description of the opportunities for recovering or enhancing the environment through actions to protect or restore biodiversity, in terms of habitats and species, in England.

(3B) The Secretary of State must publish guidelines that set out a process for review and approval of Local Nature Recovery Strategies by Natural England to confirm the priorities and proposals identified in the Local Nature Recovery Strategy would contribute adequately to the delivery of a national Nature Recovery Network and relevant environmental targets.”

The amendment requires the Secretary of State to undertake the mapping and planning work necessary to carry out their functions in relation to the national habitat map.

We welcome the provisions of the clause. It requires the Secretary of State to assist public authorities in preparing their local nature recovery strategy by publishing a national habitat map for England, and to help identify national conservation sites and other areas of particular importance to biodiversity. Predictably enough, we have one or two concerns and comments about that, which our amendment 146 allows us to address.

If this national habitat map is to be effective in informing the preparation of local nature recovery strategies, it needs to be available in good time for the preparation of local nature recovery strategies. As we touched on earlier, we want that to be done speedily, so the national map needs to be done speedily.

It will not be sufficient simply to present national conservation sites on the map. We will also need critical information—on, for example, the condition of sites and the opportunities for recovery—to help direct public authorities in their important work to improve and restore national conservation sites.

The Government’s proposal is a start—it provides some of the information that authorities will need—but good planning for the natural environment requires more than the identification of isolated patches of nature on a map; it requires a strategy for enhancing and linking sites, throughout urban and rural areas, to facilitate nature’s recovery. What is missing from the clause is provision for the Government to undertake work to identify habitat opportunities. Nor is there any national system of review of the local and national recovery strategies put in place—any quality control to check that each one is making a meaningful contribution. Our amendment 146 would address these omissions by requiring the Secretary of State to

“produce a strategy to inform the development of a Nature Recovery Network”;

to

“set out a process for review and approval of Local Nature Recovery Strategies by Natural England”;

and to confirm that each one

“would contribute adequately to the delivery”

of the national nature recovery networks that we need. Those requirements would give the Secretary of State responsibility for knitting local nature recovery strategies together, which is what the Minister said she wishes to do, so that they function as a coherent national network.

As this is a good opportunity to help the Minister in her endeavour to rescue and strengthen the Bill, I will give her one last opportunity to accept our assistance; we will seek a Division on the amendment.

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

I welcome the hon. Member’s ambition of providing a national framework to inform the development of the nature recovery network, but the Bill already provides for a framework.

Part 1 of the Bill requires the Government to publish an environmental improvement plan, setting out the steps that they intend to take to improve the natural environment. It also establishes the 25-year environment plan, which, as I said this morning and so many other times, is the first environmental improvement plan. That first plan commits the Government to establishing a nature recovery network, and to publishing a new strategy for nature that includes the network. We have no intention of reversing any commitments made in the 25-year environment plan. Of course, the Office for Environmental Protection will also hold the Government to account on their progress in implementing the environmental improvement plans, including for the nature recovery network.

The clause requires the Secretary of State to provide information that we intend will offer a national spatial framework for the network. This framework includes a national map of areas of existing value for biodiversity, as well as areas where there are opportunities to enhance biodiversity and associated wider environmental benefits. There is also provision in the Bill for the Secretary of State to issue statutory guidance on what the local natural recovery networks should contain and regulations on how they should be protected. These mechanisms will allow the shaping of how each responsible authority reflects the information provided under clause 98.

Natural England has a key role to play in supporting the establishment of the local nature recovery strategy, as I explained earlier. We want them to help produce national guidance to support the responsible authority in producing each strategy and to be the responsible authority themselves where needed. These roles are provided for in the Bill. Regulations produced under clause 96 will be crucial for establishing roles and responsibilities. Provisions for local nature recovery strategies in the Bill will form part of environmental law. This means that the Office for Environmental Protection will have oversight of these provisions, as it does over all aspects of environmental law.

I hope that the hon. Member is reassured that the Bill, as a whole, provides a suitable framework for the nature recovery network, as well as appropriate mechanisms to ensure that local nature recovery strategies contribute to its development. Therefore, I request that amendment 146 be withdrawn.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful for the Minister’s response and to her for reintroducing the OEP at this stage. As she will recall, this side were not entirely convinced of the efficacy of this new organisation, and some of us do worry that it will just be a desk in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the early new year, and we want it to be much tougher than that. I suspect her response on this has been the same as on many of these attempts from our side to strengthen and add vim and vigour to this process. However, I am afraid I am still not persuaded or convinced, but I do thank her for the charm and courtesy she has shown in our exchanges. I would still caution her to beware the bloke on the bulldozer, and we do think there is a danger that this Bill’s good intentions are undermined. We would like to press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that long intervention.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I thought it was short.

[Rebecca Pow]

It was short for the shadow Minister. The Government’s approach to negotiating a future relationship with the EU includes a proposal for a chemicals annex as part of the EU free trade agreement. I thought the hon. Member for Southampton, Test might welcome that. A deal on data sharing with the EU could mitigate the need for industry to provide full-data packages. If that were to happen, we would be responsible for the updating of this as it went along. That is a clear direction of travel.

We continue to push for that, but the EU continues to reject any sectoral annexes. However, securing the chemicals annex is still our preferred outcome. It would obviously be in the interests of both UK and EU businesses, including those that will want to continue selling their chemicals into the GB market. The EU must, though, respect the UK’s position on no ECJ jurisdiction and no alignment.

As regards amendment 198, I recognise the importance of the precautionary principle for each, but I do not believe the amendment is necessary or desirable. Article 1 states that REACH is underpinned by the precautionary principle: that means that it is firmly bound into the safeguards I have already described. However, emphasising the precautionary principle could also have unintended consequences. It risks creating uncertainty about how to interpret article 1 as a whole. This is because article 1 sets out a series of overarching aims for REACH, as well as underpinning it with the precautionary principle, so I do not believe that such a consequence would be desirable.

Amendment 174 moves on from REACH itself to the UK REACH enforcement regulations. Paragraph 2(2) of schedule 19 says that any amendments must be “necessary or appropriate” for the enforcement of REACH. Taken with the protections in paragraph 1 of the schedule, I believe we are already providing what the hon. Member actually wants. There is a lot of detail there, but I therefore ask the hon. Member to withdraw these amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

I beg to move amendment 107, in schedule 19, page 229, line 16, leave out sub-paragraph (4).

This amendment removes the high degree of discretion when setting REACH Chemical regulations afforded the Secretary of State by Clause 127 in the Bill. Without this amendment the Secretary of State is able to make wide provisions to chemical regulations.

This amendment illustrates the continuing problem we perceive with the way that the REACH regulations— or the breach regulations, as I call them—are to be set out in the Bill and implemented as the new regime. Paragraph 1(3) of schedule 19 refers to

“protected provision of the REACH Regulation”,

which are set out in the schedule. Having indicated that there are protected provisions in the REACH regulations, sub-paragraph (4) states that there is nothing to

“prevent any protected provision…being amended by provision made under this paragraph by virtue of section 127(1)(a).”

What appears to be the case here is like other elements of the Bill. The protected provisions of the REACH regulations under paragraph 6 of the schedule include the articles that deal with its principles and scope, animal testing, information for workers, and so on. By the way, we shall later consider the fact that a number of the articles that we think should be protected do not appear in the list, and our amendments would include them in it. However, we must first address the point that the list, even once it is agreed, seems to be infinitely malleable.

I wonder what is the purpose of our agreeing the protected list this afternoon if there will continue to be a sub-paragraph in the schedule stating that if someone decides in future that they do not particularly like it, they can zap particular protected provisions, which will no longer be protected. That is a rather cavalier way, at the very least, of going about translating protections that were in the REACH regulations into a UK equivalent. It must be apparent to anyone that the measure is not, aside from the good intentions of present Ministers, worth the paper it is written on for recreating a REACH regime with similar standards to the previous EU ones.

If paragraph 1(4) is left in the schedule, we will simply be digging a hole in which to bury the protected clauses for the future. They will not really be protected, and we shall not be able to refer to them in the long term as the substance of the REACH regulations in the UK. The amendment would simply remove the sub-paragraph so that the protected provisions would actually be protected, as they should be. The Secretary of State would not have the ability to remove the protected articles.

The Minister has already referred to several assurances that can be based on the fact that article 1 is protected. It is, indeed, in the list of protected articles, but it is not exempt from the Secretary of State’s ability to remove articles. It is nonsense, to be honest, and pretty shabby nonsense, looked at in any reasonable way.

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful case. I find myself wondering what he thinks the purpose of all that is. He sets out clearly that the protections we have now can be swept away. Who benefits from that?

[Dr Whitehead]

I presume it would be someone at a future date who did not particularly like the idea that we should have high standards of chemical protection, perhaps because they thought we should have a let-it-all-hang-out, free trade, laissez-faire arrangement that would let all sorts of stuff come in from all over the world that was not subject to that high standard of chemical protection—someone who would be quite happy for those items to flood into the country at a future date—and there would be nothing we could do about it, because our protections would have been knocked over by our own Government.

Environment Bill (Sixteenth sitting)

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 16th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

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

It is good to be back this week. I welcome the shadow Minister again, and the new member of our Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn. I thank the hon. Member for Southampton, Test for the amendment. I understand that the intention is to give certainty that Ministers will make secondary legislation about the procedure for preparing and publishing water resources management plans, drought plans and joint proposals, but he is again playing on my sympathies over “may” and “must”. He will not be surprised that I am not going to relent on this one.

I think the hon. Member will agree that the explanation is quite clear. The duties under sections 37A and 39B of the Water Industry Act 1991, which we have already heard about, to prepare and maintain water resources management plans and drought plans remain on statutory undertakers; they are “must” duties on the Minister. This was raised by the hon. Member for Putney. The plans are already on a statutory footing, and the Minister’s power to make regulations about procedural matters, to which the amendment refers, does not remove those duties. Ministers fully understand that water undertakers need to know the procedural requirements for fulfilling their duties in good time.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire for the good points that he made about independence and his children. It is entirely appropriate to provide Ministers with flexibility on when and how this provision is given effect.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I come from a very dry region, which adjoins the constituency of the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire. Some water companies, such as Anglian Water, are already working with other parts of the country, and there are regional plans coming into place. Does the Minister agree that it would be much better to give legal certainty by specifying that as the amendment suggests?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point, and lots of companies are already working towards that. We will talk later in more detail about how water companies will work holistically together to deal with the whole water landscape.

In the Bill, the Secretary of State has powers to direct future procedure under statutory legislation if he thinks, for example, that more attention needs to be given to what the hon. Gentleman suggests. There are existing powers in section 37B of the 1991 Act to make regulations for procedural requirements, and those are replaced by new section 39F. The existing powers have already been used by Ministers to make the Water Resources Management Plan Regulations 2007 and the Drought Plan Regulations 2005.

Water companies’ plans are revised every five years. The plans are prepared at different times within their own five-year cycles. When exercising these powers, Ministers in England therefore need to be flexible and mindful of when to introduce the new planning requirements, so as not to have unnecessary impacts on the preparation of water companies’ plans, many of which are under way. I therefore ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

The water companies operate in a tightly constrained regulatory framework, always having to balance bills, investment and shareholder returns. What impact does the Minister think her welcome initiative will have on that, and will she be directing them as to either what they do not do instead, or where that investment should come from?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for Cambridge for that, and of course he makes a really important point. All those things will be in the mix for consideration. The storm overflow taskforce has been set up between the EA, DEFRA, Ofwat, the Consumer Council for Water, Blueprint for Water and Water UK. These are all things they are well aware of and will be discussing, and they will be the ones setting out clear proposals to address the volumes of sewage discharge into our rivers. They are working on that now, at speed, and I anticipate we will have a good idea of their list of actions by spring. The hon. Member might say that that is a long time away, but we are already in November; it is actually only a in few months’ time. I anticipate that this will be really beneficial and really helpful.

The whole thinking behind the taskforce’s action list is to increase the amount of sewage processed at treatment plants, for example through building additional sewage storage capacity, which I think my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester might be pleased to hear, and separate surface water connections for the combined sewerage network.

I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth for her input; I have met her and others from Cornwall over the issue of surfers, as well as Surfers against Sewage, who do great work highlighting the issues. As I said, the taskforce is looking to all issues to do with water quality and sewerage overflows, which will include bathing water. We are looking into that.

I also want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire, who makes a good point—always standing up for her farmers, in that great farming country she is in—and she is absolutely right. We cannot lay all of this at the door of the farmers. There are many causes and they all have to be looked at and tackled, but that is not to say that there is not work to be done with farmers—I believe they know that. Through our new environmental land management scheme, there will be opportunities to work with farmers to reduce pollution. That is coming down the tracks as well and will also help with the whole water pollution issue.