Protecting and Restoring Nature: COP15 and Beyond

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I was not aware of that—I am now—and what a great idea for countries to work together in that way.

When we were taking the Bill that became the 2009 Act through Parliament, I was really quite surprised to discover how little we appeared to know about what was on the seabed surrounding these islands. Some very intrepid divers, some of whom I met, went down and took photographs. If the photos were shown to me or to anybody else and the question was asked, “Where was that picture taken?”, most people would say, “Is that the Great Barrier Reef?” No—it was under the murky waters of the North sea.

One thing we know about nature is that although we have been destroying it at a rate of knots, if we give it the chance, it can recover with astonishing speed. The North sea was originally covered abundantly in oyster beds, coarse peat banks and rock deposited by glaciers, and it was home to a rich community of marine species. A lot of that was sadly destroyed by bottom-trawl fisheries over the past century and it is now a relatively poor community of species.

Let me say a word on bottom trawling. It is an incredibly destructive practice, but it is unseen because it takes place beneath the waves. To make a slightly absurd analogy, let us imagine that to collect apples, someone decided to drag a net across the countryside taking with it all the hedges, tree saplings, bird nests and the trees on which the apples hang just for the purpose of collecting the apples in the process. People would be outraged and appalled, but that is what we have been doing on the surface of the seabed for a long time and no one sees it happening. It is about bearing witness to what is going on. The right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), who is not in his place, talked about the deforestation of the Amazon. The thing about technology is that, with satellites, we can see how the rainforest is reducing over time. It is really important that we use all those means to bear witness to what is taking place in order to motivate change.



We find the recovery of nature in some surprising places. There has been a lot of debate about the impact of wind farms on birds, but research has shown that, in effect, wind farms act as artificial reefs. They can host a very wide range of marine species once nature has had a chance to recover.

My final point is about the contribution that nature makes to our health and wellbeing.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am sorry that I could not be here for the beginning of the debate. Is there not a concern that although many marine protected areas have been designated, they are really just paper parks because things like bottom trawling are being allowed to continue? Does my right hon. Friend also share my concern that there is now a move towards deep-sea mining, which could be hugely environmentally damaging?

[Hilary Benn]

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

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I am delighted to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), whom I congratulate on securing the debate.

Here is my perspective. Life on this planet has been going for 4.5 billion years—4,500 million years. Human beings have been on this planet for 6 million years. That means that we have been around for 0.013% of the time that life has existed on this planet. We are cashing in 4.5 billion years of planetary saving bonds and blowing it on bling, and nothing but our own hubris gives us the right to do so. Exponential growth within a finite system leads to collapse, and that is what is happening—collapse. We know it is happening. Only last weekend, as I was in Durham, the IPBES report set out again what we already know: the global rate of species extinction is between 10 to 100 times higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years. We are living in the Anthropocene—the sixth great extinction event. Human activity is actually being compared to the asteroid that obliterated the dinosaurs—except that unlike the asteroid we know what we are doing. We know that 12% of tree species and over 1,300 wild mammal species are threatened by unsustainable logging and hunting, more than 25% of the world’s forests are subject to industrial logging, and 34% of marine wild fish stocks are overfished—but the plunder goes on.

We politicians are strange creatures: we say we want to do the right thing but so often we end up doing the easy thing instead. We spend our lives trying to win, but in this struggle between ourselves and our planet, there is always going to be just one winner: planet Earth will continue in a new form long after we have made it impossible for our own species to live on it. Reversing the trend of biodiversity loss requires urgent, transformative change. That is code for saying that we need to consume less, because at the current rate of consumption, we would need three planets-worth of resources by 2050. That means that we must examine our economy. It is not just about reducing our consumption; it is about changing our economic accounting model in order to account properly for the free goods and services that we are destroying. Pollination services, clean air, the purification of water by forests and the protection of coastal cities by mangroves are all regarded as externalities by classical economics.

Let me now enter into the earlier debate between the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion—my hon. Friend on this side—and the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), whom, certainly in terms of conservation, I am happy to call an hon. Friend on the other side. Our obsession with GDP suggests that the coastal surge that destroyed cities such as New Orleans—under hurricane Katrina—resulted in the growth of GDP owing to the economic activity when all the new levees were built. The disaster that destroyed so many lives and so much wealth is counted in our economic system, GDP, as a positive, but the loss of the tupelo and cypress forest swamp, which had previously—when the trees were not being taken down—reduced the surge swell and protected the city, was not counted as a negative in any economic calculation.

The Dasgupta review, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central referred, set out with great economic force the consequences of what Professor Dasgupta termed “impact inequality”: the imbalance between humanity’s demand and nature’s supply, and the need to reconstruct economics so that nature is an essential part of it and ecosystem services are properly valued. It was disappointing that when the then Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee to discuss the Dasgupta review, it became clear that she had not read it. Yesterday, when the chair of the Committee on Climate Change appeared before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and was asked about DEFRA’s plan for net zero, it was notable that he said not only that there was no clarity for others, but that there was no implementation that it was possible to judge because the metrics were not there. Just as the Government should implement net zero stress tests for all budgets, so they should implement net nature tests against all expenditure to ensure that alignment with our post-2030 biodiversity framework is maintained.

That brings me to the importance of data. We are extraordinarily blessed in this country to have more than 250 years of amateur scientific data-gathering. We have baselines against which we can say, with real confidence, that 41% of all UK species have declined in the past 52 years, since 1970, but under-employed Church of England vicars and other gentlefolk going back to Georgian England provide us with a database that other countries can only of dream of. May I ask the Minister to ensure that our support for COP15, and the financial assistance that we make available to countries, focus on enabling them to have an accurate dataset of their own natural and biological assets.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

I will give both ways, but not simultaneously. I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy).

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank my hon. Friend. What he is saying about data is a huge issue for the small island developing states, because there is so much biodiversity, particularly in the territorial waters, and populations of perhaps a few hundred are somehow expected to manage a vast space. I agree with what he said about the importance of supporting them, and our overseas territories, so that they can do that work.

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. One of the constant problems, particularly in our overseas territories, which do not have the resources to be able to establish their own datasets, is the gaming between them and the Foreign Office, because technically, through the convention on biological diversity, we are responsible for the biodiversity in those overseas territories.

It is a great tragedy that this palming off of responsibility between the two continues. I know that the Minister is new in post, and I welcome him to his post, but I hope he will have robust discussions with his colleagues in the Foreign Office about this. Perhaps he could whisper something to that effect in Lord Goldsmith’s ear, given that he is Minister of State in both DEFRA and the Foreign Office. This really does need to be sorted out. The overseas territories need that support to get the database.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner]

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

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

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

[Kerry McCarthy]

On the amount of money we need to give to help countries in the global south to cope, those countries are often faced with crippling debt—we had the whole jubilee debt campaign. Belize, for example, is a small island state that is right in the forefront of the impacts of climate change. It has incredible biodiversity that needs protecting, but is crippled by debt repayments. If we do not deal with that side of the equation, there is not an awful lot of point giving such countries money to help them invest in the sort of projects my hon. Friend is talking about.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend made that intervention at precisely that moment, because it enables me to talk about green finance, and the importance of involving the private sector and ensuring that critical private finance is coming in. Green bonds and debt-for-biodiversity swaps are innovative and fundamental ways in which we should facilitate countries such as Belize to tackle the environmental problems they face. It cannot be done without money, and it cannot be done simply with public money. In fact, green bonds are now classed as more attractive than ordinary, vanilla bonds, because they tackle not one issue, but two; they mitigate risk on two factors. The secondary market in green bonds has really taken off.

I want to talk about the way in which the financial sector needs to be regulated and guided through the issue. The right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell spoke about the way in which our financial sector was incentivising deforestation, particularly in Brazil. He is absolutely correct. We should not simply say, as is the Government’s position, that companies need to declare their climate and sustainability actions in their mandatory annual reporting, and that they should not fund any activity, such as ranching in Brazil, that drives illegal deforestation. That is not good enough. When those stipulations were put in place, countries such as Brazil simply changed the law to make it legal so that they could continue to receive the finance. There must be objectivity about whether something is or is not deforestation.

I am conscious that I should not take up too much more time, but it is critical that COP15 addresses access and benefit sharing. We will not have global agreement and global co-operation on the environment and our failing global biodiversity unless biopiracy by pharmaceutical companies is addressed. These companies must not go into communities—my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central referred to this—and say, “We are going to take the genetic sequences of these two trees and use them in our pharmaceutical products, but you will not get any advantages from it.” That is why the UK must be foursquare behind access and benefit sharing at COP15.

An ecosystem has the right to exist, to flourish, to regenerate its vital cycles and to evolve naturally without human disruption. Nature has rights. We often think that rights apply only to us, but trusts and institutions have rights, and those rights are safeguarded by trustees and guardians. That is us. Nobody else is here to argue for nature. We must be the guardians of that trust. We have been on this planet for only 0.13% of the time that biodiversity has existed. We have no right to destroy the world around us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I rise today in place of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), who is on an Inter-Parliamentary Union visit to Kosovo and hence is not able to be in the Chamber today. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), the shadow Secretary of State, is visiting Yorkshire, so I am afraid the House is stuck with me. I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this debate and for her speech. I have enjoyed listening to all the powerful, interesting, educational and unifying calls for action among the speeches we have heard here.

When we were notified last week that this motion would be considered by the House, many of us were concerned that we would be Minister-less, but our fears have thankfully been calmed, because the people’s business must go on despite a caretaker Government and its outgoing Prime Minister. We are also relieved to find the Secretary of State safe in his caretaker position at DEFRA. I welcome the Minister formally to his place; I look forward to his completing his eight-week job interview, and I hope he will be able to stay on.

I place on record my genuine thanks to the hon. Members for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) and for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) following their resignations from the Front Bench last week. We did not always agree, but we developed a respectful working relationship, and more than once we joked that we saw more of each other than we did of our spouses, children and loved ones, due to the constant flow of DEFRA-related business in the House.

It has been a very quiet week here in Westminster, with not a lot going on at all. As such, I was grateful to be able to use this time to reflect on the critical work required to preserve our planet and protect our environment. I am very clear that we need the upcoming COP15 summit to do more than just contribute to global warming through lots of hot air; we need it to deliver for the planet’s wildlife and for its people. It will be no surprise to the House that I am here to reiterate Labour’s approach to the environment, which has always been driven by those twin priorities. We on the Labour Benches believe that those priorities are even more important now, because in a time of such cost of living desperation, both internationally and here at home, we cannot deliver for one without the other. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) for his stark example of GDP versus biodiversity with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Delivering for the natural world requires social and economic justice. That is something that the Leader of Opposition recognises, and I hope the Minister will recognise it too. The approach of protecting a few isolated green spaces and relying on markets is failing and gets us nowhere near far enough, and certainly not fast enough, as the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) highlighted earlier.

In any case, we are seeing protections eroded because commercial demands for land are insatiable and some in this House have the wrong spending priorities. Time and again, across the world and at home, we see the most disadvantaged communities suffering the worst impacts of environmental degradation: their homes flooded and swept away in deadly landslides, their fields and livestock left parched by drought, their homes left draughty, cold and damp through lack of insulation while fossil fuel-dependent energy bills soar, their children’s health blighted by fossil fuel-generated air pollution, sewage pumped into their local rivers and over playing fields, and their neighbourhoods devoid of the green space and nature that lockdown surely taught us are so essential for human mental and physical wellbeing.

The United Kingdom has been among the most nature-depleted countries for decades. The Natural History Museum’s biodiversity intactness index revealed that the world has crashed through the “safe limit for humanity” level of for biodiversity loss, and saw the UK’s 53% score place it in the bottom 10% of countries.

That is well below China, and humiliatingly we are last in the G7—so much for global Britain. In practice it means that even some of our most iconic and much loved animals are being added to the growing list of endangered species. Eleven of the 47 mammals native to Great Britain are at imminent risk of extinction, including the red squirrel, wildcat, water vole, dormouse and hedgehog. I pay tribute to the Members who have declared their animal championing pedigrees, such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). A further five native mammals have a realistic possibility of becoming threatened with extension in the near future, including the mountain hare.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I was under instruction, had I been able to make a speech, to mention that I am parliamentary species champion for the swift and to make a plea for us to protect and to increase their habitats by ensuring that there are swift bricks in every new building. I have got that on the record.

[Ruth Jones]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the great work she does on biodiversity and as a swift champion. I will add that to my list of champions in the House. We know that puffins are projected to decline across Britain and Ireland by up to 90% within 30 years, and they are among 14 seabird species regarded as being at risk of negative climate change impacts. The shadow Minister for the natural environment, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West recently visited RSPB Bempton Cliffs, renowned for its puffins, but was not able to find a single one.

Ministers, notably Lord Goldsmith, often pat themselves on the back claiming they are doing all they can to advance the environmental agenda, but the fact of the matter is that our nature teeters on a cliff edge. I hope when the new Prime Minister takes office on 6 September that she or he will set out clearly how they will pull nature back from the brink. Under this caretaker Prime Minister, we all see a Tory Government consistently making the wrong choices, failing to engage with stake- holders properly, delaying action and ducking the urgent challenges facing us all.

Rather than setting the international agenda on biodiversity and leading the debate, the Budget last year—delivered as world leaders began to arrive for COP26—did not even mention climate change. The former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) found time to give a tax break for domestic flights and fell woefully short on the investment needed to deliver green jobs and a fair transition. It does not bode well for how he would approach the top job.

The Conservatives’ Environment Act 2021, which was well known as the “missing in action” Bill as it worked its way through the House, set a target on species abundance, and the Minister will recall that DEFRA Ministers were forced to concede that action was needed. Sadly, they only went as far as promising to halt the decline in species by 2030. Just halting the decline is not good enough—our ambition should be nature-positive here at home and in our work with colleagues on the world stage through COP15.

In 2020, the Government managed to deliver less than half their target of 5,000 hectares of new trees in England, and we had empty words from Lord Goldsmith that they would do better. The planned spending on tree planting is dwarfed by subsidies to Drax to ship and burn wood pellets from around the world, particularly from the US, with a lack of due diligence to make sure it is not from virgin forest. Meanwhile, the Government are doing far too little to protect the trees we do have. Deforestation is increasing across the planet and our consumption in Britain is driving deforestation abroad, which impacts here and across the world. Here, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central for his dogged tree-planting over the past 30 years.

In the Environment Act 2021, the Government’s due diligence measures cover only illegal deforestation. Why are we agreeing trade deals with countries such as Brazil, Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia while they continue to destroy rainforests? Just yesterday, we saw reports that deforestation of the Amazon is at its highest level for six years. The right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell highlighted that in his speech earlier. We must remember that human rights are always threatened when rainforest deforestation happens, and the best stewards of those rainforests are the indigenous people who have cared for them for thousands of years and for whom they are home. Funding men with guns to guard empty rainforest is not a sustainable or ethical policy, but sadly it appears to be one that this Prime Minister and DEFRA have pursued up until now.

Action has been inadequate across DEFRA policy for far too long. Water companies have continued to be allowed to pump sewage into rivers, and that has only hastened the decline of endangered species. After the Government finally got an ivory ban on the statute book in 2018, their dither and delay meant that it did not actually come into force until years after many other countries had acted. They have failed to deliver promised wildlife protection legislation to ban trophy hunting and fur imports. Last week I had a very good meeting with former President of Botswana Ian Khama, who, although out of office, is a really doughty and dogged campaigner for the rights of animals. Obviously he backs a global ban on trophy hunting.

Meanwhile at home, thousands and thousands of badgers continue to be killed. The Government have also authorised bee-killing neonic pesticides and have failed to act to stop illegal hunting or effectively limit peat extraction and moorland burning, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) outlined in her speech. Of course, I cannot forget foxhunting. The killing of any animal will have an impact on our natural world and biodiversity, and hunting is no different. We have so many more priorities; I urge the Government to clean our waters, clean our air and protect our green spaces as a starter for 10.

Labour will deliver the change that we all want to see. Action at home must showcase for the world how a positive nature policy can practically be delivered across Government. The shadow Chancellor has committed a Labour Government to a robust net zero and nature-positive test for every policy. That will be backed with a £28 billion a year investment to meet the challenge of the climate and nature emergency, create certainty for business, and provide leadership as we seize all the opportunities before our United Kingdom.

Earlier this week I attended the online meeting with Patrick Vallance. Nobody who was there could have failed to leave fired up and ready to do whatever is necessary to protect our planet and preserve our environment. We can address both the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis. I say to the Government: if they cannot do both, they should get out of the way because we will. The truth is that, when we want them to, Government can and do make real change to the lives of people and our environment, too. The clock is ticking on the Prime Minister’s time in office, and it is ticking on our mission to save our planet, too. Now is the time for transformational change for our people and our planet. I wish COP15 well and hope that all those round the table will heed the warnings, wake up and smell the coffee, and get back to work.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner]

Good morning to you, Mr Davies, and to everybody. I think this will be an interesting and, I hope, fruitful discussion. It is a fascinating subject, and it is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Davies.

At the outset, let me start by repeating Labour’s mantra on this Bill. We are pro science, pro innovation and we want Britain’s scientists to succeed and to be at the very forefront of development. We want the investment, but we argue that investment comes from regulatory certainty and clarity. We are concerned that the Government have sadly failed to provide that. As a consequence, the risk is that, far from getting ahead, the UK gets caught in a paralysis, as investors look to see what others are doing and put developments on hold. This legislation really matters.

I hope that the Government will weigh carefully the superficially attractive benefits of moving quickly in search of what they claim to be a Brexit opportunity against the longer-term benefit of getting it right. The genetically edited tortoise versus the selectively bred hare, or vice versa one could perhaps say.

We are particularly concerned about the place of animals in the Bill, so we are starting with what could be described as a veritable blockbuster group of amendments, which would frankly remove animals from the scope of the Bill. We think that that is appropriate for several reasons. We recognise that the Government may not agree with us on this, and in the unlikely possibility of their winning the votes, we have tabled many further amendments to later clauses that we think will strengthen the framework of the genetic editing of animals, which will be discussed later. We have done this, because as I said on Second Reading, we think that the Government have got it the wrong way round on animals.

All the secondary legislation that has preceded the Bill was really about plants, not animals. Likewise in much of the discussion ahead of the Bill, much of the Government’s language again focused on plants. The consultation that was held by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs referenced animals, but I would say in passing that at the time that did not seem to be the main focus of attention. It was a surprise to many in the House, as well as to concerned outside stakeholder and advocacy groups, that the Government chose to include animals in the Bill as they have.

When we look at the Bill, there is some evidence of the lack of really concrete provisions in the vague and non-committal timeframes offered by the Government, and the admission that much of the preparation necessary for a regulatory framework for animals has not yet been done. A document that I hope Members have had the opportunity to read is the impact assessment. If we want to know what the Government are really thinking, it is not in the Bill, but in the impact assessment, and I will reference it many times.

A good example of the point that I am making is on page 41 of the impact assessment, right at the top, in paragraph 109:

“Despite the potential benefits accrued by applying changes to the GMO regulations in animals, there is currently high risk of considerable consumer backlash in altering their regulations.”

The Government are well aware of the risks, and we are as well.

The Bill is in effect a framework Bill, with little detail on actual intentions and provisions laid out in law. It delegates a broad set of sweeping powers to Ministers not only to bring in a lot of secondary legislation, but to amend primary legislation with a Henry VIII clause hidden further on, which we will debate later.

The impact assessment lays out some further detail on the powers in the Bill. Again, it explicitly states on the secondary power contained in it that

“an understanding of the impacts of these provisions is not fully developed”—

so, not fully developed—

“A full understanding of the impacts will be developed ahead of any of the provisions being tabled, with impact assessments for each developed for scrutiny.”

That is on page 38, in paragraph 97. In the Government’s own impact assessment of the Bill, they are admitting that a huge amount of work still needs to be done.

The Government also know, as we well know from the many discussions we have had in this very room on secondary legislation, that it is slightly disingenuous of them to suggest that we will have further discussion because, with secondary legislation, we know full well that there is no ability to amend and, frankly, fairly limited opportunity to scrutinise. Given that the issues are big, complicated and of public interest, I do not think that that is good enough.

Those who have looked at our procedures and at the way we operate in this House have said before that, if the Government intend to do that kind of thing, they could have drafted statutory instruments in advance, for example, but none of that has happened. The Bill is in essence a framework Bill, and as others have argued elsewhere, that is not the right way to do legislation. That is important not just in principle, but because the Bill is a significant piece of legislation. It could—will—have wide-ranging impacts on our food system, on the health and welfare of animals in this country and, as I have argued before, on the investment climate.

As has been raised numerous times, both on Second Reading and by many of the witnesses in the evidence sessions—those excellent sessions we had—the public have real concerns about the technology, in particular about its application to animals. Again going back to the impact assessment, paragraph 9 on page 11 states:

“Historically, ethical concerns have dominated the GM space, preventing proper consideration of scientific evidence.”

In itself, that is an interesting sentence, although not one I would recommend: to suggest that ethical concerns should not be considered in the broader debate is not a good starting point. It is a clumsy observation.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern about that point. We heard from several witnesses that we should be talking about animal welfare not in this Bill, but in connection with other legislation, such as the Animal Welfare Act 2006 or the farm animal welfare codes. That is almost, “Put that to one side; this is just about the science.” Does he share my concern that we are not looking at the Bill in the round and considering those ethical issues?

[Daniel Zeichner]

As ever, my hon. Friend speaks good sense. She is absolutely right. There is huge interest and I think understanding among the public of the potential benefits and of the potential risks. That is why we should have a proper discussion and debate in the round. We will keep coming back to that today and on further days, as we try to discern the Government’s thinking from the Bill. We have to work quite hard to understand the wider framework within which this sits, and the overall impact it will have. We will keep coming back to that, so I very much agree with her.

To go back to the impact assessment, at paragraph 122, again there is recognition that public acceptance remains uncertain, with the document referring to

“public scepticism and non-acceptance of GE products, including those that qualify as PBOs”—

precision bred organisms.

The Government are also clear—as are we—about the potential benefits and the need to weigh them proportionately with the risks. We would argue that to do so, and to ensure public confidence, the Government need to be absolutely transparent and explicit about the changes they are seeking to make. As I have indicated, however, that is not really going on at the moment. It seems that we are being asked to vote for a blank cheque that would give the Government the power to set up any regulatory framework that they desire, without proper discussion about the merits of one particular framework over another.

That was made clear in evidence, particularly that of Professor Gideon Henderson, the chief scientific adviser at DEFRA, who said:

“The passage of this Bill has pointed to those problems in animal welfare and made them clearer, and made it necessary to deal with them quite explicitly before we can enact legislation about precision breeding for animals.”––[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 28 June 2022; c. 18, Q26.]

I quite agree. He also said that the process of considering the evidence on animal welfare

“will have to take place before secondary legislation can be enacted. The process for that is laid out in the Bill, and the timescale will be something like two to three years where scientific input will feed in.”––[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 28 June 2022; c. 17, Q24.]

We know that the Government’s thinking is that that would take some years—possibly two to three; possibly longer—but no such process or timescale is laid out in the Bill. If more time is needed to get the provisions right, why not focus on doing that rather than asking us, essentially, to allow them to pass and to ask questions only afterwards? I do not think that is how we get good legislation, and even more worryingly, that is not how we maintain public confidence. This is quite a big decision, as these matters are a big part of the Bill, but we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that animals should be excluded for now, until DEFRA and the Government have carried out the very large piece of work that they clearly and self-evidently need to do—as they admit—before they are ready to come back to the House with concrete proposals.

Amendment 29 would remove “or a precision bred animal” from the definition of “precision bred organism” in subsection 1(1). That term will itself be subject to further discussion in a few minutes, but I think that the effect of the amendment is clear.

Amendment 30 would remove paragraph 1(7)(b) and is consequential on amendment 29. Should the amendments be successful, there would need to be many further consequential amendments later in the Bill, but rather than putting the Clerks to the task of considerable further drafting work, we thought it might be sensible to test the water first. Consequently, we will not press amendments 29 and 30 to a vote, but we will test the view of the Committee with amendment 28, which can be found the end of the amendment paper and would amend the Bill’s title to remove references to animals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

Amendments 32 and 10 concern the requirements for releasing a precision bred organism. I go back to my mantra—we are pro-science and pro-innovation. We want to find ways to maintain and improve the efficiency, security and safety of our food system, while addressing the environmental and health damage that the modern food system has sometimes created.

In our view, the UK has the opportunity to create a world-leading regulatory framework that others would follow and that provides a clear public good. We recognise that the laws need to be updated to match current scientific understanding, as we talked about earlier. We want our scientists to succeed, and we want them to use their skills for good here in the UK.

To get the legislation right, the Government must balance several risks and benefits. Without consumer and business confidence, we fear we will not see that innovation happening here in the UK and we will not see the subsequent improvements to environmental sustainability and better food security that we all seek.

We want the UK to prioritise innovations that provide public benefit and prosperity. There are so many good examples happening across the country, including in my constituency of Cambridge. The Minister has already referred to the many examples presented to us in the evidence sessions last week. I pay tribute to the passion, expertise and dedication that all those people bring to their work.

I was particularly struck by the evidence given by Bill Angus, in which he noted the motivations behind the work he does as a wheat breeder and as vice-chair of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico, and the passions that drive it. Likewise, Professor Giles Oldroyd gave compelling evidence on the work being done at the University of Cambridge, focusing on improving the sustainability of farming systems and, in particular, removing the need for inorganic fertilizers. Those are clearly areas where gene editing could bring significant benefits for environmental sustainability and in reducing food insecurity across the world. Those should be the innovations that are championed.

However—there is always a “however”—we also heard evidence that while gene editing could be used for good, it could be used for ends that to many of us do not seem so desirable. I found the evidence from Peter Stevenson of Compassion in World Farming very persuasive. Here I am thinking of some of the harmful impacts that, sadly, traditional breeding methods have wrought on different animal species, whether that is farm animals that have been bred to produce high yields, which shortens their lifespan, or companion animals such as dogs, which have been bred to have bodies so small that they can barely sustain their internal organs. There is a risk that the Bill could be used to breed animals in a way that meant they would suffer more or be made to tolerate harsher conditions.

There is widespread agreement across the House that we are proud of the animal welfare and environmental standards that we have in the UK, but we know that not all countries around the world share that ethos or those aims, and that they might have different intentions for these new technologies. The question we pose in our amendments is, how can we ensure that the technology is used for good here in the UK, and who decides what that good might be?

The Bill includes some animal welfare tests, which we welcome—we shall discuss them in more detail later—but that is about it. There is a question in my mind: is development of further herbicide-resistant crops allowing more herbicide to be used, not less, what we really want to see? I do not think so. Are there tests in the Bill to stop that? That is where, again, I worry. I am not convinced, although I am happy for the Minister to point those tests out.

Our amendments propose something more explicit. Amendment 32 would create a public benefit test before precision bred organisms could be authorised and released. An organism would have to have been developed for any of the purposes described in the amendment, and I am sure all members of the Committee agree that that is an excellent list. Sharp-eyed Members might think that they have seen the list before. Labour Members are keen recyclers, and Government Members will be delighted to know that those worthy goals have been lifted from the Agriculture Act 2020. The added benefit is that that makes it all much easier for Conservative Members to support all this. What is not to like in the proposal?

The amendment would ensure that we got the most out of the Bill. As Professor Sarah Hartley of the University of Exeter said in evidence:

“The Bill enables science to develop in this area, but it does not enable us to direct the science and technology towards doing any good. That would require a different form of governance.”––[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill Public Bill Committee, 30 June 2022; c. 123-24, Q193.]

That is the key point, but there is nothing in the Bill to ensure that that will happen. Members might remember the exchange I had with the scientist who is developing the tomato with added vitamin D. I love the enthusiasm of scientists, which is fantastic, but they are great optimists in many ways, and they assume that everyone is, like them, developing positive stuff that will be good for the world. I hate to enlighten them about the fact that there are people out there who do not take exactly the same view.

When making legislation, we have to ensure that, as well as welcoming those who are undoubtedly trying to do good, we guard against those who are not. Amendment 32 would strengthen the Bill, harness the good that can be created through such technologies, and properly encode the Government’s stated aims for the Bill in the text itself.

Amendment 10 concerns the notification requirements for the release of a precision bred organism. The secondary powers in clause 4 are important, as they will specify the information that a notifier is required to disclose before releasing a precision bred organism. That is important not just to ensure that concerned members of the public remain informed, but also for what is termed “co-existence”—the ability of organic growers to maintain the integrity of their product.

We heard evidence from representatives of the organic sector. They made it clear that they cater to a group of people who do not want to see genetically modified or edited organisms in their food. Whatever our wider view of the Bill, I think we can all agree that those people have a right to that choice. With thorough information in release notices, organic farmers can make informed decisions about their crops or animals, take the necessary measures, and track their supply chain. That is an important set of issues, and given the clause’s importance, we believe that any powers created through it should be properly discussed and given proper scrutiny by this House rather than being waved through.

I fear that we will make a number of similar points as we discuss whether legislation should be decided via the negative or the affirmative procedure. It would have been helpful and desirable for the Committee to have had details on the powers, rather than being asked to give the Government a blank cheque to do what they think is best. In the absence of any detail, I think that we should be able to debate and scrutinise the secondary legislation when it is laid before the House. That is what amendment 10 would secure.

Although we will not necessarily press both amendments to a vote, I think amendment 10 is sufficiently significant for us to divide the Committee, but let us see what the Minister says.

[Kerry McCarthy]

In speaking to amendment 32, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge quoted oral evidence. I had a bit of a Twitter conversation with David Rose, professor of sustainable agricultural systems at Cranfield University. He was due to give evidence but could not because of ill health. Professor Rose said that the Government have not considered how the Bill will lead to more sustainable agriculture, and that, although gene editing does have potential, it could, if used badly, make agriculture less sustainable.

Professor Rose posed a number of questions. What is gene editing for? That goes to the very heart of what the Committee is trying to nail. Who benefits? Will it reduce chemical use? Will it facilitate further monoculture? Will it intensify animal protection? The fact that those questions and concerns exist mean that gene editing could be used for good or for bad, so it would be helpful to have a public interest test in the Bill.

The Agriculture Act 2020 contains very clear tests on public money for public good, and establishes quite a clear idea of what is regarded as a public good in food and farming—certainly in how people farm their land, although not so much on the animal side of things. There is concern, however, that the Government are rowing back a little on that agenda as they start to consider how to distribute subsidies to farmers.

As we look at the more technical side of things, it would be good to reiterate that the Government do see that there is a need to promote the public good with regard to this legislation. Sue Pritchard, chief executive of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission—with whom I am sure the Minister is familiar—agreed with Professor Rose, saying that his comments were “consistent” with the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission consultation response; she also agreed that DEFRA must anticipate good and bad consequences. That is our concern: while we have heard lots about the potential, it is just not clear that the safeguards are there against potential misuse of the legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fay Jones (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

Can the hon. Lady provide the Committee with more evidence for her assertion that we are moving to an American or Australian system of farming? None of my farmers want to deviate from any of their world-class standards, so I am curious about where she gets that idea from.

[Kerry McCarthy]

We have seen planning applications, for example, for huge pig farms where there have been lots of concerns about the impact on the local environment. One of the problems is that although those planning applications can be rejected on the grounds of the environmental impact—slurry leaking into the soil and the water supply, for example—they cannot be objected to on animal welfare grounds. There are quite a lot of examples of that happening. I have also been to chicken farms with high numbers of chickens kept in close confinement and a high turnover, as it takes 28 days to bring a chicken up to market weight. My concern is that if gene editing allows us to accelerate that process even further, the sheer number of animals involved could lead to welfare concerns.

There were also some very good arguments that gene editing could reduce the need for antibiotics. It would allow us to deal with disease at source, so we would not have to worry so much about disease spreading. Obviously, reducing antibiotics use would be very good, given the impact it can have on human health if it leaks into our food supply chain. At the same time, though, if we are less worried about disease spreading among animals because we have managed to breed out that concern, that could open the door in some sense to putting an awful lot more animals in close contact and, perhaps, not being as worried about husbandry.

I think it is very good that, for the most part, British farmers do not want to go down that American route. We had that argument over the Agriculture Act and the Trade Act 2021—about protecting standards and trying to support British farmers who do not want to do that. That is a very good thing. However, given the possibility that British farmers will have to compete with imports that are produced to lower standards, there may be some who do want to go down that route. We see that with some food producers because they want to be able to produce more cheaply.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge said, scientists want to do the right thing and use gene editing for the right purposes. By and large, farmers in this country also want to do the right thing and farm to good, sustainable standards. However, if market forces are against them, there will always be the temptation to take advantage of being able to put animals in close contact; there will always be some people who choose to do that. I do not see the harm in trying to have safeguards in the Bill to prevent that. That is not to say that everyone will try if the safeguards are not there.

[David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)]

Further to the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire, I am struggling to see where the evidence is that, through the passage of the Bill, our animal welfare standards, which are covered by other legislation, would somehow be cancelled out.

[Kerry McCarthy]

When we discuss clauses 11 to 13, I might raise some examples of where I am concerned about animal welfare standards. I do not think the farm animal welfare codes are particularly effective. There was concern about seven years ago that the Government wanted to put them on a self-regulatory footing. I need to check what happened with that, because there was public outcry about self-regulation on that front. The Government did a complete U-turn, but I am not sure whether they have tried to do it by stealth in the time since. I have a mental note to check what has happened to that since I played a leading role in trying to stop it being moved to that footing.

There have been undercover exposés filmed at certain farms about the way some animals are treated. I like to think I have a very good relationship with the National Farmers Union and Minette Batters. The vast majority of farmers want to do the right thing, but looking at some of the red tractor farms that are meant to be higher welfare and seeing what is being uncovered as a result of people going and filming, we cannot be complacent. The red tractor mark is meant to be a badge that consumers can trust to mean higher welfare, but there are many examples where they do not seem to have met those standards. That is proof that something is going wrong in the system.

[Deidre Brock]

I draw attention to clause 17, which is about the importation of precision bred organisms into England in this case, although the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 means that it can affect the situation in Scotland, too. I am not clear what kind of monitoring there would be of the gene editing procedures that are taking place in the countries that will be importing those organisms into the UK.

[Kerry McCarthy]

That is a fair point. Hopefully we will come to that when we get to clause 17.

To conclude, Joanna Lewis at the Soil Association talked about this “unhelpful trajectory”, and how that is in conflict with the Government’s goals on the sustainable farming transition. She says:

“We therefore need to ensure that we are not accelerating that trend through carte blanche deregulation.”—[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill Public Bill Committee, 28 June 2022; c. 56, Q92.]

I agree. She goes on to say that there is an opportunity to put good governance at the heart of the Bill, and to get that public interest test in there, which I support.

[Jo Churchill]

Amendment 32, as I understand it, would embed public interest into the Bill. We are very much aligned with the intentions behind the amendment, and are already undertaking a range of work across Government that delivers public good. Some of those have been mentioned. We want precision breeding technologies to deliver real benefits. They are a vital part of toolkit to deliver benefits for our food system and the environment. The hon. Member for Bristol East said—rather, implied—that our farmers were not doing the right thing.

[Kerry McCarthy]

indicated dissent.

[Jo Churchill]

Well, if they are doing the right thing and our researchers are, too, there is no need for that reassurance in the Bill. Throughout the Bill there is the PBO assessment via ACRE on both plants and animals; the animal welfare declaration and the animal advisory body; the PVS varieties listing for plants and seeds; the FSA and the food and feed marketing authorisation to check before food comes to market. There are checks and balances throughout the Bill. We are keen to see those things in the Bill that can deliver good—disease resistance, pest resistance and drought resistance.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Third sitting)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 30th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Mr Lewis, we are straying from the topic. I have to stop you because I have three other Members who want to remain on topic—Kerry, Andrew Bowie and Katherine Fletcher. We will move on because we have strayed off the topic. I have been very patient and I did let it go on for a little while.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Q On a similar point to Clive’s, I note what Dr Rice said about the virus coming from outside, but from my reading of the syndrome, it spreads by direct contact between animals, as well as by natural breeding, artificial insemination and a variety of other things. There is the concern that the more animals you have in one place, the more likely it is that the disease will spread.

I note that the syndrome was first identified in the States in the late 1980s, and now it has spread worldwide in most swine-producing countries. I would be interested to know your take as to why it has spread to that extent. Is it because there is more intensive farming, in the same way that we saw with things such as bovine TB? I get what you are saying about the farm animal welfare codes, although they are not very well adhered to—there is a separate debate about that. If this would permit more animals to be kept in intensive situations because the virus would not spread, does that not leave the door open to people to argue that that is the path we should be going down?

Dr Lewis: I appreciate the question. We can look at this in a couple of ways. Just as pure history—as I say, it was my pet project with my PhD—the PRRS virus was originally identified in two separate locations at the same time. One was in North America—Minnesota—and one in Lelystad in the Netherlands. It was pretty much simultaneously defined in Europe and the United States. Did the movement of animals globally—breeding stock and so on—facilitate the global spread? I think that is probably fair, but that needs to continue to happen as we move the geneplasm around the world and connect populations.

The number of stock is an interesting question. PRRS is very infectious, so once you have got it into a farm, it does not matter if there are 10 pigs or 100 pigs in the farm; the whole farm is probably going to get it. The way that you look at it is that the barrier to entry into the farm is more important than how many pigs are in the farm. That is why we continue to refine biosecurity practices.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I was talking more about proximity than about numbers.

[Jo Churchill]

Professor Hammond might be interesting on this, because he deals with avian flu, and obviously that might broaden it to the wild community.

[The Chair]

If you want to do that, you have less than a moment. It is for all Members to direct the questions to who they would like to hear answer them.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q It is not so much numbers, but if you have a smaller number of pigs, they tend not to be kept in such close proximity.

Dr Lewis: My final point would be that if we look at gene editing, or genome precision breeding on the other extreme, one of the reasons why we keep animals inside is to protect them from disease, whether it is flu or PRRS. One different way of looking at it is that the use of precision breeding technology could facilitate the extensification of agriculture.

Professor Whitelaw: You have to remember that a virus does not choose which animal it is going to infect. It will infect an animal in whichever farming system it is in. This technology, equally, can benefit all farming systems.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Okay, with two minutes left, is it possible to get Kerry McCarthy and Andrew Bowie in?

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q This will possibly have a one-word answer. We have heard quite a few witnesses say that the farm animal welfare codes are sufficient in terms of regulating some of our concerns bout welfare. This question is particularly for Professor Campbell and Mr Stevenson. Do you think they are adequate?

Peter Stevenson: No, the codes do not address breeding issues in any very clear way, other than sometimes through a broad principle to say, “Yes, be careful how you breed in order not to harm animal welfare.” We have a huge amount of legislation in this country, but just one or perhaps two provisions that deal with breeding, and they are so broadly worded that they have never had any impact on the harms done by selective breeding. To go back to Katherine Fletcher’s point, I think it is vital that there is something in this Bill to protect animal welfare, because the current legislation, as I said, has really very little on breeding, which is why we have all these problems. If this Bill is going ahead—I know it is—let us at least have some good, well-crafted animal welfare protections.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Is not the implication of that that you would be telling the scientists what to do?

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Second sitting)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Deidre Brock]

Q So a real commitment to transparency and some effort to address the possibilities of unintended consequences on the back of this need to be tightened up in the Bill?

All witnesses indicated assent.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Q Going back to what was being said about animals, particularly what Joanna was saying, I want to try to unpick this. It has been mooted that one of the benefits of the Bill is that it could result in the breeding of more disease-resistant animals and in less use of antibiotics in livestock management. The downside is that that could pave the way for more intensive farming, because disease obviously spreads when lots of animals are herded together. That does not necessarily mean that making animals more disease resistant and not having to use antibiotics on them is a bad thing.

Some witnesses who gave evidence this morning said that it is not the Bill that is at fault. There is a completely separate argument, they said, about whether we want to increase the intensification and industrialisation of animal farming. Where do you sit on that argument? They said that the animal welfare codes deal with some of the concerns. I would say, however, that they are not operating in the right way at the moment, because we already allow a degree of intensification and, to my mind, animal welfare standards are not good.

On the separate issue of increasing yields from animals, cows produce an awful lot more milk than they would have done a few decades ago, and certainly a lot more milk than they need to feed their own calves. Where do you sit on the use of this technology for that purpose? Finally, do you think that the Bill’s provision for the Secretary of State to refer things to a welfare advisory body is a sufficient safeguard? Sorry, that was an awful lot of questions, and you do not have much time to answer.

Joanna Lewis: You asked whether you can separate the intention of gene editing to solve animal welfare problems from the broader challenge of facilitating the perpetuation of systems that result in very poor animal welfare. I think it is important that we bring these together—as the public brought them together in the Nuffield Council on Bioethics public dialogue. We know that conventional animal breeding trends have been to prioritise greater yield, litter size and fast growth over the welfare of sentient animals, and we know that the argument for gene editing is partly that it speeds things up and is likely, therefore, to accelerate those trends. The public were saying, through that dialogue, that this is where they want to see governance. They want the Government to come in and say, “This is our vision for the future of animal farming. This is how it is going to become a higher welfare system that also delivers for climate, nature and health. This is the role we want to see gene editing play in that context.”

I know that you will be hearing evidence from Compassion in World Farming on Thursday, and I know that amendments will be proposed to try to make sure that there are additional tests—which could be linked to the Secretary of State’s powers, secondary regulation or the role of the welfare advisory body—on whether these traits are going to focus on yield, litter size and fast growth and cause lasting harm to the welfare of the animal. Also, are they going to perpetuate, facilitate or enable a farming system that is very detrimental to the welfare of animals? Those are the amendments that will be coming through from animal welfare bodies.

Roger Kerr: In terms of the disease-resistance issue, we have to be really careful about how we approach this. What we have seen, albeit through the use of antibiotics, is the reduction of disease. Again, unfortunately, I am referring back to the dairy industry. We have seen farmers driven to reduce cell counts in dairy cows to a point where the cow’s immune system has been suppressed to such a degree that the more virulent diseases come in, because there is not the natural, more benign flora around any more. Therefore, you have cows going down with E. coli and other things, which is killing them. We have seen this continual drive to reduce the immune system and reduce the cell count.

What we have found more recently is that allowing the cow to have a more natural immune system actually allows it to live a longer and healthier life. We have to be really careful when we start talking about disease that we do not start messing with something but then find that we end up with a whole lot of unintended consequences in terms of opening the animal up to other disease implications. Ultimately, we will just end up on the same old wheel of trying to continually firefight because the animal is going down with disease.

On the yield aspect, again, we can keep saying, “Oh, well, we can genetically breed them to produce high yield,” but what we find is that the longevity of the animals is massively impacted. These cows that can produce 12,000 or 15,000 litres of milk do not live very long because, unfortunately, cows are just not designed to do that. We have to be really careful about what we consider to be a farm animal and what it is there for. If we continue to drive it, we are effectively supercharging its physiology, and therefore it will ultimately not be able to live as long.

Using cows as an example, if you go into a collecting yard or a cubicle shed, you will see the cows breathing really quickly, even though they are lying down, because their physiology is going so fast. What we are effectively doing at the moment is turning what was a very low-input, low-output animal into a Formula 1 car. Unsurprisingly, they do not cope with it and they fall over. What we are doing now in terms of genetically editing is stepping that up a whole other gear. We have to be really careful about what it is that we are seeking to achieve here, and I think we have to look, in terms of welfare, not only at disease resistance but at longevity, quality of life and ability to withstand other disease impacts.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q Is one of the concerns when it comes to the hormones of an animal—I am talking about animals that are being killed for meat; I know that this came up in the discussion about slaughterhouses —that if the animal is stressed throughout its life, that could affect the meat from a human health point of view?

Roger Kerr: It can affect—

[The Chair]

Order. I just point out that we only have just over two minutes.

Roger Kerr: Sorry. Chris was going to say something.

Christopher Atkinson: Going back to what you said about what sort of tests should be applied to animals by any regulatory committee, the Farm Animal Welfare Committee introduced the concept of a good life for animals. Our view of animal health and welfare is based on positive aspects of an animal’s life. You have referred to the codes of practice; generally, they are based on absences of harm. For a long time in animal welfare science, absence of harm was equated with good welfare. We have moved significantly beyond that, so we would encourage you to look at the good life framework and ensure that those tests for a good life for animals are applied to any traits and outcomes.

Roger Kerr: On your point about slaughterhouses, we talk about a good life, but we also talk about a good death. It is important to recognise that a lot of stress is experienced when animals have to be moved a significant distance, or even away from the farm and environments that they are familiar with. The fundamental issue is how many abattoirs we have and how far animals have to move. To say, “Oh, well actually, what we’ll do is we’ll genetically manipulate their genes so that we can transport them hundreds of miles before we kill them,” seems to be a perverse and illogical approach.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q I was more asking whether stress—you were talking about being able to increase yields, and about cows being put under stress—would affect the animal’s meat in the same way that—

Roger Kerr: I am not sure. We were talking about dairy cows, which, as you know, are not bred to be eaten. Beef animals would be different again. There is an issue around stress with killing an animal, but that is more about the environment that it is in. I think we should look at that in a holistic way in terms of the environment and not necessarily just say, “Let’s tweak something so that we can still treat—”

[The Chair]

Order. I am afraid that I am going to have to bring the session to an end. Our allocated time is over. I thank you all for another interesting session.

Examination of Witnesses

Dr Richard Harrison and Professor Giles Oldroyd gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

Q It is good to see you again, Professor Oldroyd and Dr Harrison. Your last comments have thrown my question in many ways. You said that not much is said about pharmaceuticals and other products in the free market, but that is quite a low bar. I have been involved with the trade-related aspects of intellectual property waiver campaign. A big part of the global south is campaigning to have access to the understanding of how to make anti-covid drugs, and they are struggling.

I do not think that is a model that I would want to apply to food. Some of us would like to see something more robust that did not make the mistakes that we have made on pharmaceuticals, for example. Food supply is critical, especially as we move through the 21st century with the climate crisis and a growing population. When I was asking you questions as a BBC journalist a long time ago, I was always struck by your passion for the science and for communicating the science. As currently constructed, does the Bill provide the protections we need? Outside your laboratories, away from the pure science, there are free-market corporations for which the bottom line is the end game and the main driver. Do you feel that this science is beyond abuse and beyond being used in the same way that perhaps big pharma have cornered those markets?

Lastly, I understand the notion that reducing barriers opens up the market to small and medium-sized companies, but the history of any industry shows us that big players begin to hoover up small players over decades, and you end up back in an oligopoly or monopoly situation. That does not necessarily have to happen, but that is what usually happens with new tech. There is a free-for-all when everyone piles in, but ultimately people sell up and move on, and the big companies hoover up. When you get past the science and it reaches the real world, do you feel that there is the opportunity for abuse? Does the Bill protect us from that?

Professor Oldroyd: With the caveat of clause 3, legislating gene editing as equivalent to conventional breeding is the best way to allow small to medium-sized enterprises to become involved in the technology. If you really want to see a break in major corporate ownership, lowering the barriers to how you get a product from that technology is almost certainly going to facilitate that. As I said earlier, the big problem currently with GM is that it is so costly to release a GM variety that only “the big four” can afford to do that. I think that taking this approach will help that ownership of lines.

Certainly from me, as a researcher, the Bill as it currently stands greatly facilitates me to work directly with plant breeders and move products through the conventional plant breeding mechanism into the market and on to the consumer. Some of that plant breeding is in the big four, but quite a bit of it is not. Those are more the medium-sized enterprises, not necessarily BASF or Bayer, although they do have a role in some of that. I think the current Bill will certainly facilitate that broadening of ownership of the technology and a speeding up of the impact to the consumer.

Dr Harrison: If I could add one small point, our public research institutes in the UK have a pivotal role to play here. We do research funded by the Government in this area and we publish that. We can protect it before or we can just publish it so it is free and able to be used by many.

You could really think strategically about how those research organisations are used to direct change in the way that one would want to see, so that varieties come on to the market either nearly complete, so breeders can take them up, which is often what happens, or even release complete varieties, as happens in many other countries, from public funded research organisations. Again, that allows freedom of choice, so varieties come on to the market that have traits that are desirable and do not suffer from the problem you point out, which is that some small companies may become subsumed into larger companies.

Thinking about it more broadly—this is outside the scope of the Bill—there is an absolute opportunity for the UK to lead on bringing those traits to the point at which they can be taken to market, in a variety of different ways that are not just dependent on the big four.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q You have said that you are funded by the Government for some of your work. To what extent is that related to potentially boosting economic growth by making these crops more profitable for farmers, or to what extent is it about achieving public policy objectives? I am thinking particularly about the drive towards net zero. Is that ever put to you? I am thinking about measures to improve soil quality and, in that way, carbon sequestration. Let us take a potato, which takes an awful lot out of the soil in nutrients and so on. Are you looking at that sort of thing in the broader sense?

Professor Oldroyd: I am probably the best person to answer that, because my research is entirely focused on trying to remove the need for the addition of phosphate and nitrate as inorganic fertilisers for food production. I am absolutely driven by a desire to have sustainable productivity for both rich and poor world farmers. Historically, I got most, if not all, of my money from the British or European Governments, but now, as I said, I get money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and also from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. In that regard, it is absolutely policy driven for sustainable productivity for smallholder farmers.

Dr Harrison: I echo that. For the UKRI-funded research that NIAB delivers there are two key components. One is scientific discovery. When you are working in crops, that is about strategic discoveries of things that are important to the strategic objectives of the research councils. Of course, BBSRC is the primary funder of agricultural research in the UK. It is absolutely in that zone of looking at how crop science and net zero intersect and how we can generate more sustainable farming systems. Much of the research, even if it is discovery and frontier bioscience, always has a strategic element to it.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q The Government have been criticised for not having a net zero strategy for agriculture but you would say that there is a clear direction coming to you that it should be there.

Dr Harrison: There is certainly a clear research strategy.

Professor Oldroyd: Absolutely. In fact, it is more driven by that policy. The drive for sustainability is very much an active area of research in the public sector, probably more so than in the private sector. A lot of the public sector research is pushing towards some of those policy issues, in contrast to the private sector, which is looking principally at productivity.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q When it comes to the new subsidy regime—public money for public goods—is that something that could be quantifiable? If a farmer switched to a gene edited product—this is getting a bit techy—could they be rewarded for looking after soil health under the public money for public goods approach? Do you see a situation where a farmer could make the switch because they know they would rewarded for that? Or is that outside your remit?

Professor Oldroyd: I guess so. The subsidies are changing quickly.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q I suppose I am asking whether it is traceable. Could a product be badged as “This is better for the soil”, and therefore ticks the box when it comes to environmental land management schemes?

Professor Oldroyd: In the case of my research, we hope that what we are testing right now in the field are lines that will be productive at lower levels of treatment of phosphate as a component of fertiliser. By that it is absolutely measurable how much fertiliser you are putting on the field relative to your productivity. The landscape for subsidies for farming is changing rapidly, and I think within that there are great opportunities for incentives for farmers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester more carbon in the soil. The challenge will be how you measure that, and it is probably going to be by encouraging farming practices that we know on average reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr Harrison: I think you absolutely have to measure it at a farming system level; the genetics alone, in isolation, will not do it. Of course, the system that we have at the moment, the value for cultivatable use, includes some public good traits, for example, disease resistance traits, which are ones that have a clearly measurable environmental benefit, because you are reducing the amount of fungicide sprays and so on. There is absolutely scope to look at that system and ask what additional measures could be put in place to ensure that the varieties, whether conventionally bred or using new breeding technologies, have some level of enhanced environmental service. That is a big opportunity for the UK, because we sit outside the common catalogue, so we can define our own value for cultivatable use and national listing system. Again, we could be progressive in the way that we look at this, and lead the way in making sure that the things that breeders are asked to do to put varieties on the market meet the wider policy objectives of sustainable farming and emissions reductions.

[The Chair]

Minister, you have another point.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (First sitting)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Q Would gene editing give us the ability to grow things in this country that we currently cannot? I am thinking particularly of the situation as we adapt to climate change. Is it the case that there are there crops that, because of weather conditions, soil conditions or whatever, do not flourish in the UK, but where this would mean we might be able to enter those markets in the future?

David Exwood: A key example might be soya beans. The current situation is that people have tried over a number of years to grow soya beans. Clearly, it is desirable to grow more of our own homegrown protein, but given that that is quite difficult, it is the sort of opportunity that this technology could give us—the opportunity to make varieties better adapted to our climate, so that we can grow such crops. I do not want to promise too much, but clearly breeding, as I said, offers some of the big solutions in the future. It is those sorts of solutions that we perhaps cannot quite see yet but that may well help us to be much more sustainable in what we do.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q Is the UK is geared up for research into that side of things? We do not put an awful lot of money into food research and research on crops. I do not want to put words into your mouth. It is one thing for the opportunity to be there. Do you think that we are actually geared up for making the most of the opportunities?

Dr Ferrier: We have really excellent scientists. We have some really world-leading plant science organisations here. An example is NIAB in Cambridge, as Daniel Zeichner will know very well. The scientific capability is certainly there. Obviously, it needs funding, and increasingly research funding is seeking to enable impact from research—impact beyond the academic world, but on society and the economy. Based on that, if research funders see that there is a route to market eventually for the science that they are funding, that will increase the investment in research and development. Of course, the statutory instrument passed a few months ago will enable and make easier the R&D for these particular technologies, which is a good first step. Then, if we have a clear route to market, that will be a further incentive to explore those funding streams.

Of course, with funding comes greater capability, because research organisations are then able to recruit the best researchers. When we were doing our consultation of our members on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs consultation last year, we had scientists come and talk to our members, including a wheat scientist from the John Innes Centre, who explained the science he was doing and the potential for that to address some of our members’ challenges. We have seen in the food White Paper the reference of protein crops and finding ways to get sources of plant-based protein. Some considerable investment in R&D is required in order for that to become a greater commercial proposition for growers in this country.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Q Organic food was mentioned earlier. In shops and supermarkets, organic food tends to attract a higher price than other food. Where would the costings of genetically modified food sit? Would it sit between those two or lower than the current standard food price, if you will?

Dr Ferrier: I guess we are talking about a new, not genetically modified food. I have not done a comparison of current GM foods on the market—the chocolate bars and the oils, for example—so I am not sure where they sit. Organic commands are premium partly because of the greater cost of producing organic. Maybe David could talk about that. On potential products that might come through precision breeding, it depends on the product. I think there is potential, as we have already seen with some conventionally bred products, such as a broccoli with higher antioxidant levels or eggs high in nutrients, for some premium products that have nutritional benefits, but initially there may not be any difference in the final price in shop.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones]

Q Just to be clear, did you say this piece of work will take two to three years to take place?

Professor Henderson: That is our expectation.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q Continuing on the animal front, we know that some animals, such as pets, including some of the brachycephalic dogs, are bred to have traits that are not desirable from a health point of view. There is increasing concern about the popularity of pugs, French bulldogs and creatures like that. On the farm animal side, you have poultry that is bred to an immense size and cows where the milk yields are going up year on year—they are bred to produce more than they would naturally.

What do you see as the parameters of that? How will the Bill protect animal welfare? Because of the popularity of those dogs, breeders may make use of the new technology to breed even more extreme examples. Would that be desirable? How can we prevent that from happening? You may have answered that in response to my colleague and said that it needs more time, but how do you see that in terms of the desire for increased yields and increased production on farms? Is there not an argument for not including animals in the Bill while this further research takes place?

Professor Henderson: Scientifically, the application of these technologies to cross to livestock or other animals is identical in terms of the changes it can cause. It can mimic the impact of breeding more efficiently, effectively and rapidly. In the livestock and animal area, this has identified more clearly a problem that was already there and the fact that we know, with respect to animal welfare, there are some negative outcomes that come from traditional breeding processes. If we are able to speed that process up through precision breeding, those negative outcomes may occur more quickly.

The passage of this Bill has pointed to those problems in animal welfare and made them clearer, and made it necessary to deal with them quite explicitly before we can enact legislation about precision breeding for animals. That is not because the science is different but because the existing regulation around animals differs from that needed around crops. That is why the instrument is set up as a secondary instrument, so that there is time to fully consider and deal with the animal welfare processes before that is changed in law.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Professor Henderson. We will end the session there. It has been a difficult session because of the technology. I will consult the Front-Bench spokespeople and we will consider whether to change our programme motion and possibly invite you back, if you would be good enough to return. Thank you for the information you have given us and for your time.

Examination of Witness

Professor Robin May gave evidence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the value that restoring peat can bring to us. That is why we have nearly 100 restoration projects across the UK registered with the peatland code, which he referenced, enabling the restoration of nearly 14,000 hectares of peatland. Through the natural environment investment readiness fund and the peatland grant scheme, we are also developing a lot of pipeline investing projects that will bring forward all the things he is highlighting.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

5. What discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the implementation of the Government food strategy published in June 2022.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

Before answering this question, I would like to take this opportunity to correct the record. In an urgent question to which I replied on 19 May, I stated:

“We are largely self-sufficient in wheat production, growing 88% of all the wheat that we need.”—[Official Report, 19 May 2022; Vol. 714, c. 839.]

In fact, we produce 88% of the cereals that we need and the figure for wheat is a little lower, at 81%.

In answer to the hon. Lady’s question, let me say that the food strategy has themes that are cross-cutting and have effects on policy in many other Departments. I can therefore confirm that the process of securing collective agreement meant that this issue was discussed exhaustively with Cabinet colleagues and other Departments.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank the Minister for that response. Henry Dimbleby’s national food strategy was an

“excellent plan to help people escape the ‘junk food cycle’”.

That is what the former Conservative leader William Hague said when he was writing in The Times a few weeks ago. He went on to describe the Government’s U-turn on implanting any of the recommendations in that strategy as

“intellectually shallow, politically weak and morally reprehensible”.

Was he right?

[George Eustice]

No, he was wrong, because we have implemented new point-of-sale restrictions, which take effect later this year, in October. That is already driving reformulation; so we have put in place policies that deliver on the issues highlighted in Henry Dimbleby’s report. As for advertising and bans on promotions, we do not believe that that is the right thing to do in the context of rising food prices.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and that is why we have decided this year to give the industry the confidence needed by bringing forward half of the BPS payment to July from December. That will help ease those cash-flow pressures. In the context of Lincolnshire, which has a particularly strong horticultural background, we have increased the number of visas so that farmers can have access to the labour they need.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

T6. On Tuesday, at Foreign Office questions, the House paid tribute to the activists Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, who were killed while working on the book “How to Save the Amazon”. Does the Secretary of State agree that our food chain is contaminated by products linked to deforestation, in particular livestock feed from imported soya that is grown in the region, and that we need to do much more to stamp that out and protect the work of activists seeking to expose this?

[George Eustice]

The hon. Lady raises a sad and tragic case, and our thoughts are with the affected families. On her specific question, she will know that we have introduced legislation to push for due diligence in supply chains; that will require producers in the UK to ensure there is due diligence right through their supply chain, in particular for forest-risk products.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

We have heard today of the potential benefits and of how gene editing could have a role to play in reducing our reliance on fertilisers and pesticides and in creating food that is resistant to drought or food that is more nutritious. We have heard about vitamin D in tomatoes, and there has been a long-running conversation about vitamin A being added to golden rice, although it has yet to live up to its billing.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) that the Bill is very thin on the regulatory framework. Perhaps the Government ought to have put those measures in place before steaming ahead with developing these products. His points on labelling were well made, too. The concerns about cross-contamination and support for organic food producers and consumers are valid.

The Soil Association has raised concerns about the commercialisation of crops and tells us that just four companies control more than 60% of the global seed supply. I do not have time to go into detail on those concerns, but they need to be flagged up in Committee. I went to talk to farmers in El Salvador after the Central America free trade agreement, and they want to support organic farms and natural seeds but were told they cannot because, under the free trade agreement, alternatives from Monsanto and others have to be allowed into the market. I would be very concerned if such a situation were allowed to develop here at the expense of people who want to go down the organic route.

The most problematic part of the Bill concerns the gene editing of animals. I accept there are some positives, such as helping to reduce our reliance on antibiotics, but there are other ways to do that. Other countries have been much better than us in restricting the routine overuse of antibiotics.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) said the Bill is trying to tackle the symptoms, not the causes. If not for the ever-growing intensification and industrialisation of farming, where animals are crammed together in unsanitary conditions, we would not need to rely on the routine use of antibiotics, as too many farmers do.

We have had an interesting debate on whether we could use technology to suppress the birth of male chicks. At the moment, 29 million male chicks are killed by the poultry industry each year, and 7 billion are killed globally. They are fed into maceration machines—mincing machines—because they do not lay eggs but, again, other countries such as Germany, France and Sweden are already doing things to stop chick shredding without resorting to gene editing.

I am concerned by what the Secretary of State said in response to the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) about yields. He did not refute her concern about the Government saying the Bill will enable the development of

“precision-bred plants and animals which will bolster food production”

and “drive economic growth.”

Existing livestock farming methods have already led to the creation of animals that are radically different from their original natural forms. We see turkeys and chickens that are bred to be so heavy that they cannot support their own weight on their legs; the milk yields of cows have more than doubled in the past 40 years, to about 22 litres per day in the UK—that is not natural; and we know that cows, as well as suffering from mastitis, now become infertile extremely quickly from intensive milking. Their life cycle has been reduced from 20 years in the wild to about three or four when raised in intensive farming conditions. Again, the causes, rather than the symptoms, ought to be tackled by the Government as well.

Food Security

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) on securing the debate.

I have spent the last six minutes pondering whether to respond to the bait laid by the hon. Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith), and I thought, “Why not?” So, just very quickly, it was very interesting that his underlying intention is to remove agricultural subsidies, which is what I have always suspected the Tories wanted.

[Greg Smith]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kerry McCarthy]

It was quite clear that the hon. Gentleman said that he ultimately wanted to see a situation where we would not subsidise farming.

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I did not say that there was a need to remove agricultural subsidy. I clearly said that agricultural subsidy was absolutely essential right now, but we must surely get to an end point where all agriculture is profitable.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Exactly. The hon. Gentleman said that the end point he wanted to get to was the removal of subsidies and to leave everything to market forces. We know there is a need for subsidies—about 60% of farmers’ incomes depend on subsidies. His end point is so far into the future that to have it as an underlying policy objective is not a great idea. I do not agree with him on trade, but I will come to that later. I do not agree with him that the sugar tax or action on obesity would have the impact that he suggests, because we know from the soft drinks levy that what it has led to is the reformulation of products and people choosing to buy other products. If it works, people will not pay more because they will change their diets accordingly.

On game meat, a study that has just been released from Cambridge University showed that 99.5% of pheasants killed contained lead shot. I hope the Government will look at that figure with a view to banning lead shot. I certainly would not want to see that being served in our hospitals. However, all that has taken up more time than I had hoped, but I can never resist.

The impact of the rise in the cost of living and the absolutely desperate situation in which many people find themselves is a really important debate to be had, but I want to talk about food sovereignty and what we grow in this country. According to the national food strategy, we are about 77% self-sufficient in food that we can grow in this country—64% self-sufficient overall. Importing more food, changing diets and eating more exotic foods is not necessarily a bad thing. I remember when spaghetti was considered exotic in the 1970s. It is good that we have far more varied diets and that we can buy fruit and veg out of season, but there is a point at which declining food sovereignty starts to have a significant impact on food security and our vulnerability to global food shocks is exposed. We have heard about Ukraine and Brexit, and we all remember the empty shelves and rotting food caused by trucks getting stuck at borders earlier this year. There is also the ever-present threat of climate change and the impact that it could have on future harvests.

A national food strategy recommendation is that we should have reports to Parliament on food security every year rather than every three years, as specified by the Agriculture Act 2020. Given the vulnerabilities that we have spoken about, it is really important that we do that so that there can be a quicker response. I would also be interested to know whether there is a target to increase food sovereignty in this country and for us to grow more, as several Members have said. That should absolutely be a goal of our policy. Instead, what we seem to have underpinning the policy is an almost desperate touting of ourselves around the world as we try to secure trade deals, which would have the impact of not just lowering food standards in this country but undermining our farmers and, in some cases, putting them out of business—particularly if the hon. Member for Buckingham has his way—further down the line.

[Anthony Mangnall]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kerry McCarthy]

If I get an extra minute for doing so.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. I am afraid the hon. Lady does not get an extra minute, but it is her decision whether she wishes to give way.

[Kerry McCarthy]

In that case, I will not give way.

When I look at the trends in the global food system, my view is that it is broken. It has become incredibly reliant on huge agribusinesses that engage in heavily intensive practices that are massively destructive to the environment. There have recently been reports that the global food giant Cargill has refused to pull out of Russia, and it has repeatedly been linked to deforestation in the Amazon. JBS is another huge agribusiness that is complicit in rampant deforestation and modern slavery on Brazilian ranches. We should not be dependent on global food corporations that churn out poor-quality, mass-produced food that is bad for human health, global security and the planet.

Obviously, one of the solutions is to grow more at home. I was very pleased that the Minister met me the week before last to talk about peri-urban farming. Ideally, the Government will meet their pledge to put more money into county farms, which was made some years ago. I am slightly worried that it has dropped off the agenda, but I am pleased that the Minister is taking up some of the points that we make. The shorter supply chains are, the better, so that we can grow food closer to home and cut out food miles as well. We need to support agroecology, and we also need to tackle food waste, as I have said many times.

The final point I want to make is about supporting some of the sectors that do not get talked about. There is a big focus on red meat and dairy in this country. When I went to meet representatives of Pulses UK, it was the first time they had met a politician for such a long time. We can grow so many pulses and legumes in this country, and we can also use them to make more innovative products. One of the things that that side of the industry is crying out for is support on research and development, so that it can develop value-added products. In the industrial strategy, food barely gets a mention. If the Minister could take one thing away, I would urge her to look at how we can support farmers to grow more here, to sell more here and to flourish.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords]

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

I would probably make an exception for amendment 2, but my hon. Friend makes a good point that amending legislation sometimes does not work in exactly the way we want it to work. I do not often give much praise to the Government, but on this occasion they have probably worked hard on the Bill to get it where it is. It is in a much better place than it was.

I will also talk briefly about new clause 5, which is an interesting amendment about water companies and pollution. The key to the water companies and pollution in our rivers is that we are about to have a new chair of Ofwat. The Secretary of State is looking at candidates and the EFRA Committee is about to look at whoever he or she might be. The new chair has a very big job to do, because—let us be blunt—the water companies have paid their shareholders and directors too much and have not put enough into infrastructure.

At one time, a previous Secretary of State was keen to bring forward legislation to ensure that more pressure was put on the water companies to deliver, because it is not just about putting up bills to get more infrastructure to stop pollution; it is about ensuring that water companies invest in building the infrastructure. I would not go as far as the Opposition parties want and nationalise the water companies, but I would apply some thumbscrews to them—only metaphorically—so that they really make a difference on the investment that they make. Hon. Members on both sides of the House know well that water companies should not be discharging into rivers when there is an overflow from treatment plants, many of which have not had the investment that they should have done over the years.

In fairness to the water companies—I do not like being fair to them—we should remember that, after going through education, health and all the other sectors, when they were nationalised they had not necessarily had the amount of investment that they had needed over the years. Since they were privatised, therefore, there has been a lot of investment by those companies, but it has not been enough, which is why we now have an opportunity to get it right. I am not sure, however, that the Bill is the right place for such a provision. I think we should be beefing up Ofwat and taking on the water companies directly.

The Opposition are saying that we are not creating greater biodiversity, but I do not accept that. I believe that we are and that all our policies are destined to do that, but we have to get the balance right. We see Putin and his dreadful regime inflicting this horrendous situation in Ukraine, murdering innocent people. Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe and, in many respects, of the world. Therefore, as we move towards greater biodiversity, we must also ensure that we have good food production, with enough food being produced. We have to get that balance right.

I may have journeyed slightly away from the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, but we have to be concerned about getting enough food. Food and energy security—these basics of life—are so important to us now. Let us get the Bill through and ensure that we set up the right committee, with the right chair, to ensure that proper animal welfare is considered, that there are practical ways of dealing with this issue across Government, so that it does not end up in the courts, and that the committee makes sensible decisions that are passed to Parliament, through the Secretary of State, to make sure that the Bill works in practice.

I support amendment 2 and I will support the Bill, but I think we have probably made very heavy work of getting here.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), is quite right that we have made heavy work of getting here. We have probably at times shared the view that we would not get here, so I welcome the fact that we have done so. I am not sure why some Government Back Benchers are so upset about the Bill, because it is pretty weak, although the test will be who is on the animal sentience committee once it is up and running, and what decisions they make and are allowed to make, so we reserve judgment on that.

I will speak briefly in support of new clause 1. It was rejected by the Government in Committee, although I am not sure why. It would require the preparation of an animal sentience strategy and annual statements on progress towards that. That would lead to a more proactive approach to sentience from Ministers. One of the amendments I tabled in Committee would have removed the word “adverse.” The new animal sentience committee’s job is to look at the “adverse effects” of policy. The hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) said that it would be able to look at kids learning in school about how to be nice to pets, but that is not the purpose of this committee. Its purpose is to look at negative things, but I think it would help if it could also look at the positive side of things.

Having an animal sentience strategy in place would force the Government to set out how they would respond to relevant reports, assessments and research, and it would be more proactive. Improving animal welfare should not just be about protecting where we are; it ought to be a constant, iterative process, because where we are simply is not good enough, whether because the laws are not strong enough or because enforcement does not happen.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree with me that although the Bill is a step forward, it is unusual to have a committee of this type without its having a strategy? As Government Members have pointed out, the committee needs to be making sensible decisions and recommendations. How can it do that without a strategy? I am sure the public would expect it to have a strategy, because the public expect us to be focused on animal welfare.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, particularly as we have a Government who cannot be trusted to keep their promises, as we have seen recently on imports of hunting trophies, fur and foie gas, for example. We need a mechanism that keeps the Government on track and creates that forward momentum, and new clause 1 would provide that.

It is clear from the Government rowing back on their promises to legislate on those imports that the Government are scared of some of their more unreconstructed Back Benchers—actually, some of the current Cabinet are pretty unreconstructed too, if the press are to be believed. On Second Reading it was noticeable how many Conservative Back Benchers stood up to criticise the Bill. The lack of enthusiasm for it—even the fear of it—was palpable, and we have read about efforts behind the scenes to neuter it, and I think that is what amendment 7 is about.

The hon. Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) wrote a rather amusing article for ConservativeHome recently, saying that he had rumbled my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) and me and sussed us out—I paraphrase. After close scrutiny of our comments in Committee, he had worked out that we had a hidden agenda: we were against fox hunting. That was remarkably clever of him; it was like when Scooby Doo suddenly unmasks the villains at the end. If there is anyone with a hidden agenda, it is he and the hon. Member for The Cotswolds, and I think he ought to be clear as to what amendments 6 and 7 are about.

Why would we want to exclude anyone with past or present commitment to animal welfare issues from serving on the animal sentience committee? Amendment 7 says that anyone who is an

“employee, former employee, or is a consultant or former consultant to, a charity”—

that could be the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, which are pretty benign organisations—

“or campaigning organisation concerned with animal welfare or animal rights, or is or has been in receipt of any payments or funding from such a charity or organisation, whether directly or indirectly”

should not be allowed to serve on the animal sentience committee. I do not understand why we would want to exclude people who have shown commitment, interest, knowledge or expertise in animal welfare from the animal sentience committee, unless the aim was to try to ensure that it was as weak on welfare and soft on sentience as possible.

[Sir Roger Gale]

According to the hon. Lady’s analysis, would that also mean that any member of the Countryside Alliance would have to be excluded?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I was actually just coming to that point. I was going to say that if the hon. Member for Buckingham thinks that nobody who has aligned themselves to a particular cause can be impartial, then that also ought to cover his friends in the Countryside Alliance and the rest of the hunting and shooting lobby. When he refers to extremists, I would say, certainly having been on the receiving end of it, that there are extremists on that side too. For example, Chris Packham has been subjected to a huge amount of abuse just for speaking out about the persecution of hen harriers, so there are clearly unpalatable elements on that side as well.

Amendment 7 would mean that someone such as the eminent zoologist Michael Balls CBE—father of Ed—who served as an adviser to the Government on the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and was a founding member of the Animal Procedures Committee, which advised the Home Secretary on all matters related to animal experimentation, would not be allowed to serve on the animal sentience committee, despite that expertise, because he had been a trustee of FRAME—the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments. He also, alongside the Prime Minister’s own father, came to Parliament to campaign against a huge new puppy farm in Yorkshire, where beagles were being bred specifically for purposes of animal experimentation. He is now an emeritus professor and might no longer wish to serve on Government committees, but surely someone with that sort of background would be absolutely perfect for this committee. That is not to say that we cannot also have a balance, with people who have other views.

I think it is nonsense to suggest that such experts, who are drawn to campaign on animal welfare precisely because of their in-depth understanding of the science behind animal sentience—it is because of their expertise that they are concerned about animal sentience and animal welfare—should not be allowed to serve.

Finally, turning to amendment 2, I think the same thing is actually going on. The hon. Member for The Cotswolds was very brief in speaking to his amendment, but he happens to be chair of the all-party parliamentary group on shooting and conservation. It is somewhat ironic that some of those who were so vocally supportive of leaving the EU, apparently to take advantage of new freedoms, are now arguing that they want to carry over the Lisbon treaty wording, chapter and verse. I think one of the reasons why this provision was in the Lisbon treaty was to protect things such as bull fighting, which I would hope we all think should not be protected in the name of culture and tradition.

I do not have a huge problem with the amendment being made to the Bill, because I have argued from the start, going back to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill debates, that the Lisbon treaty provision should be carried over. However, having heard what the hon. Member said on Second Reading, I think what he is really trying to do, by the back door, is to turn back the clock on the hunting ban or to create legal uncertainty around its enforcement by saying—this was the old argument we had when the Labour Government banned hunting—that it is all part of our tradition and of rural culture. The fact is that, for most people, as polling shows, it is a tradition they want confined to the history books, along with bear baiting, cock fighting, sending children up chimneys and so on. The hon. Member has to accept that times have changed, and that there is no place for fox hunting in a civilised world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Hudson]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I urge Ministers to move quickly on this. We must identify horses so that we know why they are moving and can stamp out the illegal movement of hundreds, potentially thousands, of those animals that are moved for slaughter. That is important. Much as I am keen on making decisions from an evidence base, there comes a time when we do not need to keep consulting. The evidence is out there. Let us act; let us do it now.

I have raised this point with Ministers many times, as have Government and Opposition Members: if we are bringing in animal sentience legislation, let us have joined-up animal health and welfare legislation in practice now. For instance, as we speak, pig farms in the United Kingdom are still in crisis with more than 40,000 pigs having been culled on farms and not gone into the food supply chain. That is horrific. It is incredibly upsetting for the farmers, the vets, the slaughter workers and everyone concerned. It is an awful thing to do. Again, I firmly push the Government on that. I know that the Minister has been convening summits and working well with the sector, but we need action to put pressure on the food processors as well as work with the Home Office to sort out the visa situation to mitigate the crisis.

Many of those are workforce issues that have been exacerbated by Brexit and covid, but they are now having implications for our food security, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). They may also become an animal health and welfare problem. Let me give an example from the veterinary sector from a professional viewpoint. Since Brexit, the number of EU vets registering in the United Kingdom has reduced by a factor of about two thirds, and about 90% to 95% of vets working in the meat hygiene sector come from the European Union, so that reduction is producing a real crisis. We are short of not just workers but vets in the slaughter sector. In parallel, in the veterinary sector there is a huge increase in the time and demands on veterinary surgeons. Throughout lockdown, people have been taking in pets—we had the puppy boom—so the pressure on small animal veterinarians has gone through the roof, and, with Brexit, the pressures from export and import certification have also gone up. We therefore have a real crisis in the sector; it is a perfect storm that we really need to address.

On the EFRA Committee, we have made recommendations about keeping an eye on veterinary workforce issues and, again, that goes cross-departmental. For instance, I have been calling for an EU-UK veterinary, sanitary and phytosanitary agreement, which would smooth the movement of animal and plant produce between the UK and the EU. That would help with trade and help solve many of the issues we face between GB and Northern Ireland. I ask the Government to work across Government and with our European colleagues, because, if we could secure such agreements, that would take pressure off some of our workforce issues. That would also be of huge benefit to the country’s biosecurity.

Finally, I urge the Government not to lose their nerve on some of the welfare promises we made in our manifesto and in policy. I sincerely hope that media reports about the Government potentially dropping the ban on imports of farmed fur and foie gras are false and that they will keep going with what they promised. Some in my party have been reported in the media as saying that it is a matter of frippery or of personal choice—they should tell that to the animals farmed for their fur and to the birds with a tube rammed down their throat who are force-fed to make their livers pathologically fatty for some culinary delicacy. I firmly believe that we should hold our nerve in the Chamber and in the Conservative party and forge ahead with our promises, because that is the right and proper thing to do.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The hon. Member is making an excellent speech. I entirely agree with him on the iniquities of fur and foie gras. Is it not that we deem it cruel enough to have banned its production in this country, so all that we are squabbling about is whether we will outsource that cruelty and allow imports? I think it was the chair of the 1922 committee, the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), who talked about having to smuggle foie gras into the country on Eurostar. Surely there is hypocrisy at the heart of it as well.

[Dr Hudson]

The hon. Member makes a valid point. Those practices and procedures are rightly banned in this country. I firmly believe that we should not import things that we believe are wrong in this country. There has been a lot of discussion about trade deals, hormone-treated beef and chlorine-washed chicken. Rightly, those practices are banned in this country. That is one area where I do actually take the Government at their word. They are still banned, so those products will not be imported. I firmly believe we should keep our promises. If we make a promise, we should keep it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Prentis]

The Welsh Government intend to move away from their current practice of individual animal valuation. They are considering and have recently consulted on moving to a practice of table valuation, such as we use in England. I understand that my hon. Friend recently met the Secretary of State, with her constituent Andrew Birkle, to discuss this important issue.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Most livestock farmers want to follow the best animal welfare standards, and consumers need to have confidence in that. I do not know whether the Minister saw the recent “Panorama” episode, “A Cow’s Life”, but it shows yet another Red Tractor farm that is not meeting those standards. What is she doing to ensure better consumer confidence and to make sure that livestock farmers live up to the standards that they profess to adopt?

[Victoria Prentis]

The hon. Lady is a great campaigner for animal welfare and she and I have discussed these issues many times previously. She is right to raise the important issue of animal welfare again and I would be delighted to talk to her about our recently published animal health and welfare pathway. An annual vet visit to every farm and direct discussion between the vet and the farmer will really help at a granular and practical level to bring about the increases in animal welfare that we all want.