TB in Cattle and Badgers

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ruth George]

I will do, Mr Wilson.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I have been out with Avon Wildlife Trust, which has an excellent badger vaccination programme. The cull is now being rolled out to Avon, and we have a ridiculous situation where badgers that have been vaccinated are now liable to be culled. Does my hon. Friend agree that that seems a complete and utter waste of money and effort?

[Ruth George]

Absolutely. We would not want that to happen in Derbyshire either.

In 2014, 20% of culls were supervised by Natural England staff, but by 2018 the organisation was able to monitor only 0.4% of them. That gives rise to safety concerns, particularly if protests are involved. Without even responding to their own report, last month the Government extended the badger cull to a total of 40 areas, including around Bristol, Cheshire, Devon, Cornwall, Staffordshire, Dorset, Herefordshire and Wiltshire. It was not extended to Derbyshire, however. That delighted the thousands of supporters of Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and its vaccination programme, but not the Derbyshire farmers, 700 of whom had signed up to the cull in their area.

With infections increasing so much recently, and no other Government policy forthcoming, farmers feel that the badger cull is their only option to escape the real fear of TB. As has been said, however, there is conflicting evidence about the effectiveness of the cull, and it is disappointing that Professor Godfray’s team was specifically asked not to evaluate whether ongoing culls are reducing TB in cattle. A recent report from the Animal and Plant Health Agency stated explicitly that the data cannot demonstrate whether or not the badger control policy is effective.

The Downs report shows some reduction in infections during and immediately after the cull, but infection rates are now rising again and TB is spreading among cattle. Professor Godfray stated that the only feasible alternative to control badgers is vaccination, and that leads me to the work of Derbyshire Wildlife Trust—the largest volunteer-led vaccination programme in the UK, supported by the National Trust, the National Farmers Union, Derbyshire County Council, the Badger Trust, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Derbyshire police and local badger groups. Derbyshire’s police and crime commissioner is also a strong supporter, especially after assessing the resources that policing protests against the cull would involve. DWT is supported by more than 100 volunteers, and that number is continually increasing. I thank the small band of professionals and all the volunteers who dedicate a substantial amount of time in the evenings and early mornings to trap and vaccinate badgers. They have vaccinated 742 badgers so far, including 218 this year.

The Climate Emergency

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sue Hayman]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The matter was mentioned during Labour’s party conference this year, because we are taking this very seriously.

My concern is that the Conservative Government have a track record of missing environmental targets on air quality, major pollution incidents and biodiversity, and last year a leaked document showed that the Government had abandoned altogether an agreed target to restore 50% of England’s sites of special scientific interest to a favourable condition by 2020. It is therefore disappointing, but unsurprising, that the legally binding targets will not apply for nearly two decades.

Once the Government’s record on climate change and the environment is examined more closely, we find practices and policies that completely undermine and work against efforts to tackle the climate and ecological emergency. The Government continue to use UK export finance to support fossil fuels, but it is totally hypocritical for the UK to limit extraction at home while promoting extraction abroad. The Natural Capital Committee recently concluded that only half of our habitats currently meet minimum quality targets, with bees, butterflies, birds and many plants species continuing to decline.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has already mentioned the fact that we are financing fossil fuels overseas while trying to reduce their usage here, but we also consume 3.3 million tonnes of soya per year, 77% of which comes from high-risk deforestation areas in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. It is one thing to talk about protecting natural habitats here, but if our consumption habits are contributing to deforestation overseas, we are not really solving the problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the cross-party consensus around stronger action on climate change, but action there does need to be, including in the Environment Bill. In 2006, as Labour’s Housing Minister, I put forward a 10-year plan for zero-carbon homes by 2016, including a regulatory timetable, that was backed by the housing industry and environmental groups, but sadly it was ditched in 2013. We still need that stronger action to cut emissions from new and existing homes as part of our action on climate change.

I want to talk about the importance of public transport as part of our action to cut carbon emissions and the desperate need for more support for public transport in our towns, which was missing from the Government’s agenda, but first I want to make a point about the Government’s Brexit plans. It is deeply disappointing that the Government seem to be moving away from a Brexit deal with a customs union, rather than towards one, as that idea lost by only three votes in Parliament in the spring and is something that many Opposition Members have argued for. Fundamentally, we have to make a choice about what kind of trading nation we wanted to be: do we want our closest trading relationships to be with our nearest neighbours, through a customs union approach, and built on safeguards, standards and workers’ rights, or do we instead, as the Government seem now to argue, want the price to be deregulation and an opening up of markets to the biggest global corporations, risking cuts in environmental standards and prioritising a deal with Trump’s America?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I tried to intervene on the Secretary of State about this. I and the Chair of the Select Committee tabled new clauses 1 and 4 to the Agriculture Bill to say there should be no lowering of standards in any future trade deal, which I think was one reason why we did not see the Bill after last December. Does my right hon. Friend agree it is important that when the Bill comes back, such provisions are back in there?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We want rising standards and support for higher standards. It is the only way to cut carbon emissions, support our environment and protect our workers’ rights.

There is nothing in the Queen’s Speech to address the serious challenges facing our towns and the unfair deal they are getting. We see that particularly in public transport. Our bus services have been cut and our trains, particularly across our northern towns, are still rubbish. We are not getting our fair share of investment. Billions of pounds is locked up in transport investment in our cities, while in Normanton we still have only one train an hour to Leeds, even though it is just half an hour away, and we still do not have disabled access at busy stations such as Pontefract Monkhill and Knottingley. We had the awful situation of a constituent in a wheelchair having to crawl over a bridge because the Government, despite our requests, refused to fund the basic disabled access. Moreover, we still have rubbish Pacer trains and no proper plan for transport in our towns.

That compounds the wider problem of the growing gap between our cities and towns. Our towns, which have strong communities, are great places to live and are proud of their history, are getting an unfair deal, and Tory austerity has hit them harder. As public services budgets have been cut, many public services providers have pulled services out of towns altogether. We have lost libraries, sports centres, magistrates courts, police stations, fire stations, hospital services, maternity units, swimming pools, Sure Starts, jobcentres and council services, as so many of these services have shrunk back into the cities. We are supposed to travel to the nearest cities instead, but the public transport is not there, because bus services have been cut and the trains are inadequate.

Private sector investment, always pursuing economies of scale, is pulling in the same direction. Banks, ATMs and post offices in our towns have closed. The big cities and shopping centres may still be able to compete with Amazon, but our smaller town centres are struggling with business rates and parking charges, and having their heart taken out. The numbers of new jobs are growing twice as fast in the cities as in the towns, and as our town centres have shown, foreign direct investment in the cities is accelerating and our towns are not getting a fair deal. The Government’s stronger towns fund is still a top-down approach and only reaches a certain number of towns. Areas still have to bid and most towns still lose out.

We need a proper industrial strategy for our towns, which is why the Labour party’s approach of more investment in our towns, listening to towns and putting power back in towns is so important. We need towns to be at the top of the list, not the bottom, so that they can get our fair share of funding. We need public services back in our towns with a proper guarantee. We need a fair deal for Britain’s towns.

Exiting the European Union (Pesticides)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

Yes, I can confirm that, in the sense that all the draft regulations are about continuity—an approach to ensure simply that where authorisations are carried out and decisions made by the European Commission, they will in future be made by the Secretary of State or the relevant authority.

Some amendments are required as a consequence of the change in our departure date. The plant protection products EU exit SI in particular contains a number of transitional measures that apply until specified dates. Those dates have been updated in common with the approach in other SIs. Given that exit day is now 31 October, those transitional provisions would allow much less time to adjust than was originally intended. This instrument therefore replaces dates that were calculated from the original exit date with a specified period of time after exit.

The draft regulations also deal with new EU legislation that has come into force since the original EU exit SIs were produced. The plant protection products and the maximum residue levels EU exit SIs converted active substance and MRL regulations into a new national register to give effect to the provisions in a national context. The EU regulations themselves were no longer required and therefore revoked. This instrument deals with new EU regulations that have come into force since then, and we have taken the same approach. Some outdated EU regulations have also been superseded or replaced, and those have now been identified as redundant, so they can be revoked.

This instrument also contains transitional provisions relating to grace periods for the withdrawal of active substances under EU regulations, so that they are carried across unchanged into our national law. Finally, this instrument also fixes a number of technical errors that were made in the earlier EU exit instruments. The vast majority of those were very minor in nature. However, I should draw attention to the fact that it came to light that the earlier plant protection products EU exit SI erroneously removed some provisions on endocrine disrupting chemicals. That omission was purely unintentional and this instrument therefore corrects that error.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am glad that the Minister has admitted that this error took place, but the Department has had to bring forward about 80 or so SIs over the summer. Has it conducted a review to ensure that similar errors have not been made in other legislation or are we are going to see a repeat of this situation, with other last-minute amendments?

[George Eustice]

Well, a point was made earlier that this has been an extraordinarily huge task of converting a highly complex body of EU law across into national law. When the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018 was passed, it was even envisaged that there may be circumstances where there were errors, omissions or oversights. The hon. Lady will be aware that that Act makes provision for SIs to continue to be made in the event of errors occurring. I deal closely with the team of civil servants who have been working on this legislation, so I know that they have a huge amount of technical knowledge and have drafted the instruments we have been discussing today to the best of their ability to ensure that they have covered everything. But there can be difficulties if a last-minute update contained in particular EU document that is needed to make a particular element of EU law operable is not noticed; sometimes these things will come to light. The important thing is that we are clear about what we are trying to achieve, which is continuity, and that we put things right when they arise.

This instrument was originally submitted under the negative resolution procedure. We subsequently accepted a recommendation from the House of Commons sifting Committee that it be upgraded to the affirmative procedure and debated in the Chamber today on the basis that it includes a provision that relates to the charging of fees. In practice, this measure simply removes a redundant EU provision that clarified that member states could charge. The instrument does not change the existing fees and charges relating to the pesticides regulatory regime, nor does it have any effect whatever on the UK’s future ability to charge fees or make changes to the current fees. That relates to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), who I know is very concerned about these issues, but I hope that I have assured him that this changes nothing about the existing charging regime.

We have worked closely with the devolved Administrations —as we have on all the other measures we have discussed today—to develop this instrument, and they have consented to it being made on a UK-wide basis. I therefore commend it to the House.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is the most controversial of the four SIs that we have dealt with today, and we had a forthright debate on this subject previously in Committee. Much of that debate was about the theme I have been pushing today—that is, questioning the process of oversight and accountability.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Pesticides Action Network have both contacted me to demand that the Opposition scrutinise what the Government are saying and doing, so it was at our behest that this instrument was moved from the negative to the affirmative resolution procedure. In fact, we were tempted to vote against it on the basis that the Government need to explain better and to be clearer about how they intend to carry through—not just legislatively, but practically.

As I said earlier, this is about dissecting the parts that we have played as an integrated constituent partner within the EU, and how we begin to pull away. Two of our major agencies—the Food Standards Agency and the Health and Safety Executive—will be involved in this process. The HSE will almost certainly be responsible for testing the measures. It is therefore important that we know from the Government what they intend to do and how they intend to do it.

The RSPB and the Pesticides Action Network made six points. First, there is the loss of oversight checks and balances for a significant consolidation of power within an agency that, as such, does not exist at the moment. That is why I referred to the FSA and the HSE, because they are certainly going to have to be responsible for this in the short run. Secondly, there is the weakening of the requirement to obtain independent scientific advice that I referred to previously. Thirdly, there is the weakening of other standards. Fourthly, there are the important parts of the regime left unclear or with detail to be filled in through guidelines. I accept that this debate is partly about trying to clarify further where we might be in terms of those guidelines, but it is not yet absolutely clear what is going to happen. Fifthly, there is the loss of capacity and the lack of investment in the stand-alone regime. Again, I keep referring to that. Finally, as I have said and they confirm, there are the mistakes that were made in drafting these SIs on a previous occasion.

In the previous debate, the Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), gave me some assurances. However, this is a work in progress and not necessarily something that has yet been completely nailed down by the Government. It is really becoming very important. I am still not clear what has happened to the REACH—registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—directive, for example. This will be a very major part of what the REACH directive, as constituted when it comes into UK law, then entails, because pesticides, or plant protection products as they are properly referred to, will be an important part of what it is properly accountable for. I would welcome the Minister saying something about that. The chemicals division of the HSE has 150 people because it is largely operating within the framework of the EU. It will not be doing that after 31 October, so it will be important to know exactly how this is going to be constituted in a different format, given that we still do not have the environment Bill enacted.

There are other concerns that are important at this stage, to reiterate what I said in Committee, cost being one of them. The Minister has presumably looked at who is going to pay for this, because it will potentially be more expensive when we have a stand-alone regime.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I share my hon. Friend’s concerns. One of my concerns is that the Government may seek to recoup some of these costs, or to make savings, through the weakened requirement to obtain independent scientific advice. As I understand it, the measure now says:

“The assessing competent authority may obtain independent scientific advice where it considers it appropriate to do so.”

That is quite a bit weaker than the current requirement where it says that it “shall” obtain advice. That may be one way in which the Government would seek to save money.

[Dr Drew]

I thank my hon. Friend. That is one of the things we waxed lyrical about in the previous incarnation of this debate where we looked at “may” replacing “shall” and “must”. That gives—dare I say it?—a degree of wriggle room about how this is going to operate. This really does need sorting out by the Government because it will be too late if we get to this stage in a month’s time and it is not at all clear what is going to happen. This matters, because farmers need clarity.

I read today the report on the ban on neonicotinoids. I do not pretend to understand everything in it, because I read it quickly, but it was quite interesting. It looks at some of the scare stories put about that neonicotinoids would lead to a dramatic reduction in sugar beet and other products, whereas that does not seem to have been the case initially. We need to know what pesticides will be allowed and who will scientifically adjudicate on their safety. Will we have a different regime? We could choose to ban glyphosates, which the EU decided not to do, largely at the instigation of British MEPs. That matters to not only farmers but every gardener, because most of us have Roundup in our sheds and, if we are ever going to dispose of it as a potentially hazardous product, we will have to think about how to do it.

These debates are crucial, and this one has a more far-reaching impact than any, so we have to ensure that we get this right. It would be interesting to know from the Minister whether this is the final time we will consider this; what mechanism is now in place, whether it be the HSE working with the FSA or, eventually, the office for environmental protection, which presumably will encompass those two agencies when it comes to these products; and the detail of how we are changing the process of looking at the scientific basis of how we deal with these products, which are potentially quite hazardous but which farmers would argue are crucial to the way they carry out their business.

Sheep Farming: No-deal EU Exit

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman]

That is exactly right. I think the phrase is “In with a bang and out like fools,” because sheep breed at the end of October or the beginning of November, and the lambs arrive in the spring. As the Minister well knows, farmers make their arrangements and plan such things a long way in advance, which is why, according to farming bodies, we need at least a two to three-year transitional period. The AHDB report I was referring to goes on to say that

“under a rapid response scenario, the national flock would be culled to reduce size”.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my astonishment that the Welsh Secretary said over the summer that we could start exporting to Japan and that that market has opened up? They do not eat lamb in Japan at the moment, and they are certainly not going to start eating it on 1 November just to oblige us.

[Jenny Chapman]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Yes, in theory and given enough time, it may be possible to find new markets, but it will be too late by then, because our flock will have been decimated and will take decades to rebuild. Should the situation improve in future years, with new markets, it might just be possible to re-establish the flock, but it really is not likely. Once the breeding ewes have gone and their special characteristics have been lost, it will take years to recreate the unique features of our national flock. Tens of thousands of jobs and our treasured landscape would be lost, and this is all so preventable.

A minimum of a two to three-year transitional deal is needed, and we need agreements that recognise the safety and quality of our produce. Critically, we must increase the capacity of essential cold storage facilities now. When Ministers reassure me and try to reassure farmers, they need to explain what precisely they intend to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

Clear labelling is vital, particularly when it comes to ingredients that may provoke allergic reactions. We have learned a very sad lesson from that situation, and the Government have responded.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

On the subject of the Game Fair, it is very sad that Chris Packham has been banned from attending to speak out against grouse shooting. I would have thought that the Minister would welcome free speech on the subject.

On food, the Government grant for school meals has not risen in the last five years. It is £2.30 per pupil. It is really difficult to provide nutritious meals for children for that amount. Can he speak to the Secretary of State for Education about that?

[Mr Goodwill]

I will certainly speak to the new Secretary of State for Education, a fellow Scarborian, to discuss that issue. It is very important that we have good, nutritious school meals available for children.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

We have updated the planning guidance for the planning policy. As we set out in the consultation, we intend to develop in the environment Bill an update of metrics for biodiversity and wider environmental net gains. We will provide practical tools to support developers and, critically, local planning authorities to achieve better environmental outcomes for every development.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

A 38 Degrees petition started by Norman Pasley from Bristol is calling for legislation on the installation of swift boxes in all new housing developments, and it has more than 130,000 signatures. As parliamentary species champion for the swift, I urge Ministers to support the campaign. Perhaps the Secretary of State in particular would like to make it his legacy from his time at the Department.

[Dr Coffey]

Hopefully, the hon. Lady will be swift in her praise for the work we are doing with the forthcoming environment Bill. As the species champion for bitterns, which are literally booming as we speak, I know that this issue matters. We want to take more proactive approaches to how we protect species. I am not sure whether a swift box in every single house is the right thing, as opposed to all sorts of other things such as beetle hotels—there is a wide variety—but we need to make sure that we encourage a wide range of biodiversity for birds, for wildlife and for the protection of nature for future generations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

T5. An investigation published last week by The Guardian, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and “Channel 4 News” suggested that at least 3,000 deaths each year could be avoided if agricultural ammonia emissions were halved. The Secretary of State said that he wanted to close the current loopholes by 2025. May I suggest that it would be a marvellous legacy for him as he leaves the Department —which he presumably will, whatever happens today—to introduce a comprehensive ammonia reduction strategy?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s valuable advice. She is right: when it comes to dealing with air quality, we need to deal with ammonia emissions. We have a number of policies that we will implement as part of our environment Bill.

Trophy Hunting

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I will come to the points he raised later. Despite the appalling background that I and others have already described, we do care about nature in this country. It is often rightly said that we are a nation of animal lovers. I am proud of things that have happened even on this Government’s watch. We have banned microbeads and ensured that CCTV is required in every slaughterhouse. We are finally prohibiting the use of wild animals in circuses. That took a while to happen, but it is happening. We have banned the ivory trade. We have world-leading legislation. We have extended the blue belt to protect vast swathes of the world’s oceans. We have done much more besides that, but the need to protect animal welfare does not stop at our borders, and that is why I want to highlight the issue of trophy hunting today.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

No one is in any doubt as to the hon. Gentleman’s commitment to these issues. He just mentioned things outside our borders. I apologise if I pre-empt what the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries) is here to say, but there is also real concern about what is happening in Woburn on the estate owned by the Duke of Bedford. Tourists are paying up to £7,000 to shoot deer there. That is another form of canned trophy hunting, but it is happening in this country, not very far from where we are now. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that also should be prohibited?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I think that issue will be raised later in the debate. It is not an issue that I know a huge amount about, but from what I do know, I very much share the hon. Lady’s concerns, and I thank her for raising them.

On a personal level, I believe that shooting beautiful endangered wild animals purely for sport is barbaric and perverse. I think the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spoke for many when he said recently that he had an “emotional problem” with trophy hunting. It is no surprise that a poll found 93% of the public opposed to trophy hunting. Earlier this week, the Commons digital engagement team kindly asked members of the public for their views in advance of this debate, and there was a huge response. Many thousands of people responded and, unsurprisingly, the vast majority were opposed to the practice, describing it as “abhorrent,” “appalling”, “barbaric”, and more besides.

Members will remember the tragic story of Cecil the lion, a beautiful and much celebrated animal, shot dead by a trophy hunter in Zimbabwe in 2015. I remember feeling sickened by the sight of celebrity hunter Melissa Bachman gloating on Twitter and Facebook, smirking alongside dead bears, crocodiles, lions and so many other beautiful animals, but the issue goes far wider than the stories that occasionally make it into the mainstream media or even social media. A 2016 report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare revealed that as many as 1.7 million hunting trophies crossed borders between 2004 and 2014, at least 200,000 of which were from threatened species. The US accounts for a staggering 71% of them. In 2016, 1,203 trophies were taken from the most endangered species of all—those listed on appendix I of the convention on international trade in endangered species.

Some of those species are in real trouble. Wild lion numbers, for example, may now be as low as 15,000, which is a 43% decline in just 21 years. Only 415,000 African elephants remain, when there were more than 3 million a century ago. The black rhino population has recovered a bit, but there are still just 5,000. It therefore seems perverse that the hunting continues, and in many cases is all perfectly legal. We sometimes hear from the hunters when they are pushed, charged or challenged that they do it for the love of the animal or for the love of nature, but could anyone who loves and respects the noble lion or the gentle giraffe even entertain the idea of paying thousands of pounds to butcher them?

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

Having studied soil science at university, I understand that soil is one of our greatest assets, and indeed the numerous environmental benefits and services that can be derived from activities that enhance soil health will be eligible for public money.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am glad that the Minister has had a change of heart on that because he argued against my amendment on soil during the Bill Committee, but now he is on the Front Bench. What are we doing to try to meet net zero emissions from farming either through the Agriculture Bill or other mechanisms? The Committee on Climate Change again endorsed that this week. What are the Government doing and when is the target going to be reached?

[Mr Goodwill]

The hon. Lady makes a good point and, indeed, emissions from agriculture have fallen by about 16% since 1990. However, progress has stalled in recent years, with little change since 2009, and I know from the work we did together on the Environmental Audit Committee that we need to make further progress on that, particularly by looking at methane, which has a briefer half-life than other greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and so needs to be dealt with in a slightly different way.

Environment and Climate Change

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

We need action on so many fronts to tackle this climate emergency, but time is limited so I will speak about just one. Unsurprisingly, it is about the fact that 30% of our global greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to our food system.

If we do not make changes, the food and farming system will singlehandedly use up our Paris climate agreement emissions budget within the next 30 years, yet there is still a woeful failure to rise to the challenge, and there is no excuse. There have been endless wake-up calls, including from the UN, the IPCC, EAT-Lancet, Chatham House, academics from Harvard and Oxford, and many more—I have a big pile of reports in my office—yet politicians are still hitting the snooze button.

Lots of things contribute to the climate impact of our food system: the use of fossil fuels and synthetic nitrogen fertilizers on farms, methane emissions from ruminants, transportation and refrigeration. If food waste were a country, it would have the third largest carbon footprint, behind China and the USA. However, the biggest impact is from land use. Some 48% of UK land is used for animal agriculture, and 55% of that is used for animal feed, rather than for growing food that is directly eaten by humans. The destruction of the Amazon rainforest is driven by industrial farming, which destroys habitats, biodiversity and natural carbon sinks.

It has been more than 10 years since I held a debate in Westminster Hall on the environmental impact of the livestock sector. To say that the reaction I got then was hostile is an understatement, but it now feels like there is a breakthrough. This breakthrough is being led by the public, and the private sector has responded to that public demand. It is not being led by politicians. I really think we need to rise to the challenge and start talking about it. We need a net zero emissions target by 2040 in the Agriculture Bill, which the NFU now backs. We also need to reward farmers who reduce their carbon footprint, to plant more trees and to store more carbon in the soil—and yes, we need to accelerate the trend towards healthier, more sustainable diets by reducing red meat and dairy consumption by at least 30% by 2030.

Last night, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) and I attended an event in Soho hosted by the Meatless Farm Company, which is calling for people to sign up to a meatless consumption target. It commissioned research by Joseph Poore of Oxford University that showed that if people replaced one read meat meal a week with a plant-based meal, it would cut UK greenhouse gas emissions by some 50 million tonnes—that is a reduction of 8.4% or the equivalent of taking 16 million cars off the road. I call on all the politicians in this place who profess to care about climate change to take up that challenge.

World Health: 25-Year Environment Plan

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I will come to that, because the environment plan commits to environmental net gain measures in planning. That is why, as was mentioned earlier, it needs some teeth. We need to see the environment Bill, which I will ask the Minister to comment on later.

I am an enthusiastic advocate of the challenge from DEFRA to make 2019 a year of action for the environment, working with Step Up To Serve and other partners to help children and young people from all backgrounds to engage with nature and improve the environment. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) is right that if we are tearing down perfectly healthy trees to build the houses and buildings that we need, that is not the example our children need to see. The Woodland Trust can provide up to 400 trees for schools to plant, and many of my schools have done so. It has 40,000 trees left—and I am hoping to get half of them, so hon. Members will need to get in there quick.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

That recognition of the biodiversity net gain principle is incredibly important. Will the hon. Gentleman join me in condemning what seems to be becoming a pattern of developers netting off hedges? The most recent case was at the Bacton cliffs, where there was terrible footage of a sand martin that had flown back from its winter migration and was trying to return to its nest, but was being prevented by netting. It is an attempt to flout the rules that say, basically, that developers cannot interfere with hedgerows once the nesting season has started. Is it not absolutely appalling that that is going on?

[Derek Thomas]

I completely accept that. We must find stronger methods to manage that practice, and I wrote to the Secretary of State in the last two weeks or so to ask him how we can toughen up on it. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise it, and I am glad that she has had the opportunity to do so.

I mentioned how important west Cornwall and Scilly is. It boasts some of the most important and precious parts of natural England. For example, due to careful management we are seeing the recovery, as I said earlier, of the Manx shearwater, a rare seabird, and the storm petrel on Scilly. That seabird recovery project has brought members of the community together to rid some of the islands on Scilly of litter and rats, which has led to the survival and remarkable recovery of these rare seabirds. There is a need to continue that work and to expand it to other islands on Scilly—as I said, there are just two places across the UK where the birds nest—and I would welcome a commitment from Government to fund this valuable and successful initiative.