Environment Bill

Earl of Dundee Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, what a pleasure it is to follow my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. I would like to thank the Chief Whip for giving us our very own Green group grouping; I think that is very forward-thinking of him. It is probably about time that we had our own space on the Order Paper as well and, of course, Green group debates in the new Session. I really feel we are moving on here.

My amendment touches on the same philosophical question as my noble friend’s. Mine is predominantly about clean air, because this is getting very urgent, but it also mentions net-zero emissions. The question is: what is government for and how should it act? If our 20th-century nation state is to develop into a 21st-century sustainable society, the purpose of government should be to preserve and enhance human health, life and the environment, both for current and future generations. Nations and states are less important than clean air, clean water and a liveable planet.

We need public authorities to have legal duties and the funding to improve the health of people and the environment—particularly air quality, as that impacts on so many other parts of society, including placing a burden on the NHS now and reaching into the far future because of the damage being done to the lungs of children. Whether you are a parish councillor, a Secretary of State, a governor or the Secretary-General of the UN, people at every level of government and governance need to be racing to clean up our planet, to cut our air pollution and to cut back to net zero as soon as possible. I would argue that a liveable planet is actually a human right, and every single person on this earth, now and in perpetuity, deserves it.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support these amendments in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Jones, and will refer to three aspects.

The first is how the pursuit of new economic goals, as here indicated, can be consistent with or complementary to the pursuit of previous and different economic goals.

The second is the need for greater clarity about what they actually are, not least as communicated between government and local authorities.

Thirdly, promoting the joint interest of humans and the natural environment together is not a vague aspiration but instead a concrete aim which deserves to be represented by very specific plans and particular called-for action dates—such as, in the second amendment, net-zero emissions by 2030, an achievement which, of course, benefits not just the environment but, in the context of the first amendment, humans and the environment together.

In the latter terms, these useful and coherent amendments thus assist the Bill’s purposes, including initiatives for producing our own food, fuel and housing, and with restoring biodiversity and capturing carbon, while at the same time avoiding negative international impacts, whether in general or from our own exports to others overseas.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to see the relationship with the economy being brought to the fore here for two reasons: one is its inherent importance; the second is the query lurking around somewhere about whether the Bill should have anything to do with the economy. Before Glasgow, that query will be blown out of the water. We cannot just go on saying that we are doing things about greenhouse gases, and about what we might call the coefficient between the growth of greenhouse gases relative to the growth of GDP, and thinking everything in the garden is lovely. It is not; the opposite, I am afraid, is true. We have until Glasgow to make sure we are not blown out of the water when it comes to our credentials.

I have raised both in Grand Committee and here, in different contexts, how we are going to make sure that we have a relevant metric—that is what the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, called it—to measure the development of greenhouse gases, the growth of the economy and, above all, the desired change in the coefficient so that greenhouse gases are going downwards, relative to the growth of the economy, rather than upwards.

Whitehall government is falling between some stools here, and I would like the Minister to take on board the fact that we need to get our act together with some statistical compatibility between the things we think we are talking about. There is no point repeating mantras such as “net zero” and looking at many decades if we cannot even get our quarterly data to make sense. We need to have quarterly data that puts together the recent change in the gross national product on the one hand and the greenhouse gas data on the other. The work done by the Committee on Climate Change leaves open to discussion an alarming divergence, in the wrong direction, of these two metrics.

I am not coming from the same place, politically, as Members from the Green Party. However, some clarity about how our economy, in the short to medium term, should be developing in terms of greenhouse gases, and how this can be made into a more credible picture before Glasgow, is—for the Labour Party and others taking a serious interest in this matter, I am sure—a hugely important requirement. We hear very little about it, and it is partly because of the environment being in a different silo in Whitehall from the economic silos in the department of business and the Treasury. We have some experience of those sorts of arguments; I recognise one when I see one.

I will table an amendment on Report on precisely these questions. This is a good moment, I hope, to flag up the importance of getting something into the Bill which will be an opportunity to make some progress before Glasgow, so that we do not look like the emperor with no clothes.

--- Later in debate ---

Finally, a clear message to enable local authorities to engage with residents, tourists and businesses in their area will be necessary. We are all used to the very effective message during Covid of “Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives”. Perhaps the environment also needs clear messages to avoid public confusion and mixed messages which would not help local authorities in their interface with their local community. I hope that the Minister will take on board local authorities’ comments in the consultation as well as some of the points made in this debate, and see if further changes need to be made to the Bill before we deal with these issues on Report.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support this amendment. Clearly, it is unsatisfactory if local authorities cannot deploy this Bill’s prescriptions.

As is here implied, such failure might simply reflect lack of local government staff and financial resources. If so, it is up to the Government to redress that deficiency.

Yet at every given and relevant moment, central funding might well not be considered to be affordable at all, even if the Government might equally lament that their own legislation could not be deployed as a result.

However, that anomaly is prevented by this proposed new clause, which would make it obligatory for a future Government to provide funds so their own laws and prescriptions are properly carried out at local levels.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and to offer the Green group’s strong support for Amendment 293C. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley, for his clear introduction and explanation. I also declare my position as vice-chair of the Local Government Association.

The noble Lord, Lord Khan, referred to the waste recycling problem, which gives me an irresistible chance to plug the need to reduce costs by promoting reusable nappies, an issue already discussed and which we will come back to. On the broader issue, it is worth noting that the National Audit Office, in its 2018 report on the financial sustainability of local authorities, found that recent government approaches had been

“characterised by one-off and short-term funding fixes”

and a

“crisis-driven approach to managing local authority finances”.

Earlier this year, the NAO said that at least 25 councils were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, which is hardly surprising when in the past decade the spending power of local government has been cut by one-third, while demands in many areas, notably adult social care, have grown.

If we are to give local authorities additional roles and responsibilities, this direction comes from Westminster, and the money has to come from Westminster too. I note that last December the Blueprint Coalition, formed from local government organisations, environmental NGOs and academics and supported by around 100 councils, warned that our 2050 net-zero target could be achieved only with the

“full participation of, and support for, local authorities”.

That report was specifically focused on the climate side of the environmental equation but, of course, as this entire debate has acknowledged, these two issues are interlinked. I note that that Blueprint Coalition report stressed what the Minister might like to call nature-based solutions—the need to accelerate tree planting,

“peatland restoration, green spaces and other green infrastructure”.

Those are all things that the Government say that they plan to support, but the delivery vehicle that is most effective and cost effective will very often need to be local authorities.

This is also happening in the context of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. The Green Alliance highlighted the need for training to ensure that, in local government, climate skills are embedded in all roles and there is widespread access to specialist skills, as the Committee on Climate Change recommended. That Green Alliance report found that many local authority representatives were terribly concerned that this was not available and that instead they were forced to rely on consultants—which, again, was a far more expensive option. This amendment is not only essential but could save money. How could the Government possibly oppose that?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support this amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for it guards against lowered standards while still enabling the United Kingdom to do much better. It also requires transparency on any change from EU standards on the control of chemicals.

No one would argue in favour of slippage of standards. However, many of us believe that, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has just outlined, for technical and other reasons such standards can slip very easily all the same.

This amendment prevents that. Yet its expedients should not wrongly be viewed as a restrictive measure of conformity to the EU, of which we are no longer a member, but instead as an opportunity for the United Kingdom to take a lead internationally by setting even higher standards of our own.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, with another message on the need for environmental protection. I will speak briefly in support of Amendment 293E and thank the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for moving it and for his long-term concentration on the issue.

We are yet again in a non-regression cause—I feel something like a broken record. We were promised non-regression; we heard it again and again through the whole Brexit debate and subsequently. We need to consider this amendment in the light of the debate that was conducted publicly in February and March, when the industry initially proposed a light-touch registration of chemicals that were already on the EU REACH registration at the end of the transition period, effectively allowing a rubber stamp on those already in use. In response to that, environmental groups warned that this would contravene the principles that are apparently contained in the Environment Bill, which commits to maintaining the “no data, no market access” principle on which REACH is based.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, made some very important points about how the EU is progressing with investigations of the impacts of cocktails of chemicals—something that is highly relevant to Amendment 152, which we debated some weeks ago, also in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, about the impact of pesticide applications near homes.

If we do not have full data on each and every chemical, the Health and Safety Executive will simply not be able to do its job and will be at risk of legal challenge. The data being out there somewhere is not enough. Regulation is an ongoing and continuous process that requires access to high-quality, up-to-date data. I note the response in March from Breast Cancer UK, which said that such an action would weaken the Health and Safety Executive’s ability to protect public health.

This is my final contribution to this very long Committee, and indeed the final contribution of the Green group. So, if the Committee will allow me a couple more sentences, I will say that it has been a long and fruitful haul, at least in the airing of issues and the identification of many flaws in the Bill. That is not surprising, perhaps, as this is such a fast-moving area and we have been dealing with a Bill so long in gestation. We have given the noble Lord the Minister a busy Recess in terms of meetings and, we hope, the drafting of government amendments reflecting our debates. The noble Earl, Lord Devon, back at Second Reading, said that this was the Green Party’s Bill. We have done our best to make a positive, constructive contribution to this Bill, and we hope that we will see some results. I will see all noble Lords in September.