Plastic Bottles and Coffee Cups

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the First and Second Reports of the Environmental Audit Committee, Plastic Bottles: Turning Back the Plastic Tide, HC 339, and Disposable Packaging: Coffee Cups, HC 657; and urges the Government to accept their recommendations as part of its Resources and Waste Strategy.

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, the Liaison Committee and the Backbench Business Committee for granting time in the House to debate the Environmental Audit Committee reports. I thank my Committee colleagues, too, some of whom are present, for their work on our inquiry last year.

Today, I want to talk about the scale of the plastic pandemic, the solutions we proposed, the importance of the EU circular economy package and how we make producers responsible for their packaging. May I begin, however, by welcoming the announcement on Tuesday that Parliament will phase out most single-use plastics on our estate and introduce a 25p “latte levy”? I thank you, Mr Speaker, and the Chair of the Administration Committee for your support in making this happen. [Interruption.] Creagh’s law; very good.

We are in the middle of a global pandemic. Plastic is everywhere, from the top of Mount Everest to the depths of the ocean to the north pole. Plastic has been found in every species of animal in the Arctic, from plankton to polar bears. Research by Dr Erik van Sebille at Imperial College London shows that most of the UK’s marine plastic pollution ends up in the Arctic, so the UK has a particular responsibility to clean up our act and protect the Arctic.

In 2015, the UK signed up to the United Nations global goals for sustainable development, including goal 12, “sustainable consumption and production” and goal 14 on protecting our oceans. The UK led in the development of those goals, but unfortunately the Government sometimes seem to think they are something for other countries, not the UK.

Our planet has only one ocean, wrapped around it like a cloak, and plastic bottles make up one third of all plastic pollution in the sea. They break down into micro-plastics, which harm marine wildlife that eat them. After my Committee’s ground-breaking work on rinse-off microbeads, which led the Government to ban their manufacture and sale, we examined single-use plastics, focusing on plastic bottles and coffee cups.

Single-use plastics take five seconds to make, five minutes to use and 500 years to biodegrade, so when we throw them away there is no such place as “away.”

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. Has she or her Committee come to a conclusion as why the Government are seemingly so resistant to oxo-biodegradable plastic technology, which was invented by Professor Scott at Aston University in the 1970s? Does she agree that the Government have no strategy to deal with plastic which escapes into the environment already?

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[Mary Creagh]

I have seen evidence on oxo-biodegradable and I know there are a couple of possible additives to plastics. The research on how and how fast it breaks down is not conclusive. I know it can break down in proper professional composting machines, but the evidence on what happens out in the ocean is not that clear and we do not want an end-of-pipe solution to this problem; we want something at the beginning that is sustainable.

There is a live argument on this and it is going on at EU level between the plant-based plastics manufacturers of the south and those such as us in the north who have a more petrochemical-based approach. I am not a scientist, but I know the jury is out and that scientists have looked at this. It is important that we develop the correct policy and do not just look at what happens at the end of the pipe.

In the UK, we recycle just 57% of our plastic bottles overall; the figure for water bottles is higher. We estimate that 700,000 plastic bottles are littered every day. That litter spoils our streets, threatens our wildlife and ruins our beaches. We are paying for this clean-up through our council tax. Keep Britain Tidy estimates that English councils spend £1 billion a year cleaning up after fly-tippers and litterbugs. We recommended introducing a deposit return scheme to boost recycling rates and create a clear stream of recycled plastic for manufacturers. When the Environment Secretary gave evidence to my Committee in April, he told us that we would not see that product return scheme until 2020, but better late than never and we welcome his commitment. We must also create a market for that recovered plastic, which is why we recommended that Ministers set a target for 50% of recycled plastic to be present in new bottles. I am pleased that Coca-Cola has committed to do that.

We use 2.5 billion coffee cups a year, enough to stretch around the planet five and a half times. Before our inquiry, I—along with most other people—thought that coffee cups were recycled, but they are not. Their plastic coating, which is thinner than a human hair, means that most of them end up landfilled or incinerated. The coffee shop industry has told us that disposable coffee cups are recyclable, but “recyclable” does not mean “recycled”. Paper mills do not want them, and plastics reprocessers do not want them. Just one in every 400 is recycled, which is just 0.25%. There are just three recycling plants in England that can recycle them. Moreover, if someone puts their coffee cup in a recycling bin, in a coffee shop or on the go, it will not be recycled and it could contaminate the other papers and plastics in the bin.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech, with which I wholly agree. It seems to me that the principle that the polluter should pay is an important one, and that there should be incentives for individuals to do some of the tidying up as well. I remember as a child scuttling around on Saturdays collecting bottles and returning them to the local shop or off-licence to get the returned deposit. Those sorts of deposit scheme help to incentivise human behaviour. Does she agree with the “polluter pays” principle and that incentives are important?

[Mary Creagh]

I emphatically agree. I remember the happy days of collecting those bottles. In doing that, we can create an army of litter pickers out in the streets. I was out in Norway with NATO last week, visiting the Arctic, and there is a full deposit return scheme there. One of the people we talked to told us that his son had made £580 in the holidays last summer by going on a little mission out on the streets every day. I also noticed, when I was at the airport disposing of my single-use plastic bottle in the throwaway scheme, that the deposit would be collected by the Red Cross in Norway. There is an opportunity here for charities to partner alongside the deposit return scheme and to find a valuable new income stream.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I am going slightly off the point here, but the hon. Lady mentioned airports. Does she agree that one thing that is little understood is that people are allowed to take their refillable containers to the airport? There are often places to refill them there, but people do not seem to be aware of that fact.

[Mary Creagh]

I agree with the hon. Lady. I know that Heathrow has introduced refill stations just the other side of the security gates, but the problem is that people are usually already in the queue for security before they remember that they have a full bottle of water. Most people cannot drink half a litre of water straight off. Airports could look at how to dispose of those liquids while encouraging people to keep the bottles. That would result in more reuse. That is a challenge for the airports and the transport industry to think about today.

Reducing and reusing are always better than recycling, and the 5p plastic bag charge reduced plastic bag sales by 83% in the first year, so we know that charges change consumer behaviour. My Committee recommended a 25p latte levy on disposable coffee cups to encourage people to bring their own cups. We want that levy to fund new “binfrastructure”. That is terrible; I am trying not to murder the English language, but I think I have just stuck a nail in there. The Chancellor is consulting on a single-use plastics tax, and I look forward to reading the responses. The consultation closes tomorrow.

Industry is stepping up to this; it knows that it cannot go on with business as usual. Costa has introduced a recycling scheme that aims to recycle half a billion cups by 2020. Unfortunately, only 14 million cups were recycled last year, but that was a good start. Starbucks is trialling a 5p latte levy in 35 central London cafés, and reusable cup usage has more than doubled in the first six weeks, which is very encouraging. The truth is, however, that we need both. We need the latte levy and we need recycling schemes if we are to tackle this problem.

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech. I am also a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, and she is a wonderful campaigning Chair. It is a great honour to serve with her.

The hon. Lady is talking about recycling, and I was recently at a circular economy discussion at which WasteAid said that 2 billion people lived without waste collection and that 3 billion lived without proper waste recycling or reuse. One of the big things we discussed was the use of plastic bottles in the developing world where glass bottles used to be used. Does she think it would be better if glass bottles were used in the developing world?

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[Mary Creagh]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution to the Committee, of which he is a fantastic, excellent and constructive member. He provides challenge as well as co-operation, which is how we get to a good place and find cross-party agreement.

I remember visiting Juba in South Sudan in 2012 and noticing that there was very little water there for people, and that all the aid workers and visitors were using plastic bottles. There was no waste infrastructure whatever. This is a really important problem, because we know that huge amounts of waste are thrown into rivers in Africa, India and the far east. We need to get that waste out of the rivers. How do we do that? We pay people to do it. It is not just kids in the UK who will collect 5p or 10p plastic bottles; people will do the right thing, but they need a cash incentive to do it. The United Nations has an opportunity to achieve that through the international climate fund. We all tend to think about that in relation to green energy and clean energy, but we need to look at how some of these climate funds are allocated and spent at supranational level, and at how our own UK aid budget could be used to help to set up systems to keep plastic out of the oceans. As I said earlier, there is only one ocean and we need to do more to protect it.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I recently went to Bangladesh, and along the whole beach the plastic litter was waist-high. The amount was huge. I have spoken to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development about this. Does the hon. Lady agree that it would be a good idea to spend some of our aid money on paying people to clear up the mess? It is, after all, going into the same ocean that we use and that everyone else uses. That would help people to clean up their environment, which would also help their tourism, because people will go to a clean beach but not a filthy beach.

[Mary Creagh]

I agree with the hon. Lady. She makes an excellent point. Bangladesh is absolutely at the forefront of climate change, and much of our aid budget is going there to make homes more resilient, but resilience in communities is also about giving people a good, clean, safe environment to live in and ensuring that the poor have decent incomes.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for all the work she does on environmental issues, both here at home and internationally. This is not just about beaches in Bangladesh. We have seen footage of beaches in Brighton, for example, being polluted by bottles. Does she agree that local authorities need more support? There is some excellent practice, but it is patchy. Perhaps the Government could consider introducing citizens grant schemes to encourage people to take part actively around the country and to work with local authorities and corporates to clean up our beaches as well as our streets.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for her suggestion. We actually made that point in our report on marine protected areas and said that there should be a coastal communities fund to help to develop tourism and to enable communities to take ownership of the amazing nature that surrounds them. We do not have tropical rainforests in the UK, but we do have some of the world’s best breeding sites for birds and all sorts of Ramsar wetland sites. Bringing communities closer to nature where they live can only be a good thing. I also want to pay tribute to Sky Ocean Rescue for its work in bringing to a wider audience the good activities that are going on not only globally but locally, including those literally outside our own door to clean up the Thames.

We want the Government to send a clear message to industry that all single-use coffee cups should be recycled by 2023, and that if that does not happen, they should simply be banned and we should move to a system of reusable cups only. Consumers want to do the right thing, and they deserve to know that companies are doing it too.

We have also looked at the UK’s packaging system, which we think needs a fundamental redesign. Producers of packaging should ensure that their waste is dealt with according to the waste hierarchy: reduce, reuse, recycle. How do we make that happen? At the moment, businesses that produce or use packaging have to show that they have recycled it by purchasing a packaging recovery note—a PRN—from an accredited recycler or exporter. We have heard evidence, however, that that system is a blunt instrument that does not reward design for recyclability and that does not penalise the production of packaging that is difficult and costly to recycle. We therefore recommend that the Government should reform the PRN system. They should introduce a fee structure that reduces the cost of sustainable coffee cups and raises the cost of cups that are hard to recycle.

The landfill tax and the PRN system have been the twin pillars of UK recycling for the past 20 years. Most of our waste went to landfill 20 years ago, but we now recycle almost half of it. However, recycling rates are stalling, and recycling needs a shot in the arm to bring it back to life.

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

My hon. Friend is a wonderful advocate for recycling. Does she accept—if she does not, she should have a look at the parliamentary questions that I have asked—that the biggest problem is that recycling is flatlining because waste is being incinerated? That must be dangerous at a time of air pollution.

[Mary Creagh]

Well, most of the waste that we recycle is actually exported, and the recent China waste ban brought that home to people who thought that everything was somehow recycled in the UK. The situation was certainly brought home to the Members who visited Bywaters, the House’s recycling company, and heard about the difficulties it was experiencing—although some of those difficulties have been alleviated. However, my hon. Friend’s question was about incineration. I have visited an incinerator, and it is obviously better to get the calorific heat value from waste instead of landfilling it, because we will have to dig it up in 10 or 20 years’ time and incinerate it anyway, such is the pressure on land use in this country. However, we must ensure that the waste hierarchy is respected, because that is where problems arise. People tell me that they are reopening landfill sites and sending more waste for incineration.

Going back to the PRN system, the Committee could not see where the £100 million a year that the system raises actually goes, so we have asked the National Audit Office to examine the system to follow the money and tell us where it goes.

Turning to the EU circular economy package, it provides for a much more stringent extended producer responsibility scheme. At the moment, the UK has just three schemes, covering electrical goods and cars, whereas France has 14 schemes, covering furniture, tyres, mattresses and infectious healthcare waste. A mattress recycling scheme would create jobs in the heavy woollen industry in Wakefield, Ossett and Dewsbury. We need producers to be accountable for their products beyond the factory gates. Cigarette butts and chewing gum are the most frequently littered items in the country, so why are tobacco companies and sweet manufacturers not paying for the cost of their clean-up? Because it has always been that way. We need to work out how the “polluter pays” principle applies to cigarette merchants and to the chewing gum brigade. Such a move could save cash-strapped councils millions, and the money would go directly to them because they clear up the litter and do the gum-busting. Perhaps they could present the gum manufacturers with the goo that they steam-clean off the streets.

The Environment Secretary told us that he will commit to the EU’s proposed target to recycle 65% of household waste by 2035, but what will happen to that target after Brexit? Who will enforce it? The new environmental oversight body will be able to issue advisory notices, but not fines. It will not be able to take legal action, and it will not be ready for March 2019. Brexit will weaken our waste system. There was an interesting debate in the other place yesterday about whether people would still be able to bring cases to the European Court of Justice during the transitional period, and the Lords Minister was not entirely clear about whether that could happen. We will be watching developments very carefully.

We have achieved a great deal. We have got the Government working with Water UK to roll out a network of water refill points, and supermarkets such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Aldi, Lidl and Waitrose are launching a voluntary pledge to cut plastic packaging. The Treasury’s consultation on a single-use tax closes tomorrow, Departments have agreed to end the sale of single-use plastics, and Parliament is going to lead the way as well. A lot has been done, but there is a lot still to do.

We must prevent waste from entering our environment, and that will bring social, economic and environmental benefits. People are happier if the streets and parks are litter-free, our economy works better if we make smart use of limited resources, and our wildlife is protected if we keep plastic out of the sea. When people win, the economy wins and the environment wins. I look forward to a good debate and to hearing about the exciting work that colleagues have been doing in their local areas.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The plastic bottles and coffee cups inquiry was my first large-scale inquiry as a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, and I thank the Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), for supporting me and the other new members of the Committee. It was a pleasure to listen to the evidence to what has proved such an influential inquiry. We have influenced the House and soon, I hope, we will influence Government policy.

Sometimes, sitting in a Committee listening to evidence, something quietly dawns on you, and this happened to me when we heard from the #OneLess campaign. I asked its project manager, Fiona Llewellyn:

“Do you think that there is scope to look at the licences of take-aways and fast food places so they have to provide access to tap water because that’s the area where you see a lot of littering and food on the go”?

She replied:

“One of the reasons we have plastic packaged water is that it is convenient to have on the go, so if we can overcome some of the barriers to convenience for refilling that would be a wonderful step in the right direction to this wider problem of plastic pollution and what you suggest would be very welcome”.

That is a type of planning law that we could implement immediately to reduce the use of single-use plastic bottles.

The inquiry heard a whole load of evidence. The major measure identified was the deposit return scheme, to which many Members have alluded. Hon. Members might think that all manufacturers are opposed to the deposit return scheme because it is a cost to their business, but many major companies are supportive. That includes Coca-Cola, which I believe is the world’s largest drinks company. The company set out its support for the scheme in its evidence to the Committee. It actually had a number of recommendations for us, including that we should just have a single scheme, that the scheme should be managed by a not-for-profit organisation and, most amazingly, that the costs should be covered by producers and retailers. That has not come from the Committee, a lobby group or even the Government; that is from one of the world’s largest companies and largest producers of plastic bottles. We should listen to Coca-Cola, which we might have expected to be on the other side of the debate.

During the inquiry, China announced that it would no longer accept plastic waste imports, so we had a separate session on Chinese plastic waste. The Chinese waste ban raises questions such as, where will all these plastic bottles go? We do not have the reprocessing capacity. We also looked at packaging recovery notes, concentrating on packaging export recovery notes. These are the licences needed to export plastic waste abroad. Clearly we are not having any for China because of the waste ban, but with PERNs to export waste, for example, to Vietnam, it is difficult to get a clear audit trail showing what happens to the plastic. We had evidence from Zero Waste Vietnam, which asked, “Why can’t European countries recycle their own plastic materials? Why are we having to have to have shiploads of plastic materials that we are not able to recycle?”

[Mary Creagh]

There is some anxiety over the word “shiploads”.

[Alex Sobel]

For the record, I did say shiploads—boatloads of materials. Zero Waste Vietnam is a very proper organisation; it would not resort to any foul language. In that case, a local organisation presented us with evidence that the plastic that we are exporting may not actually be recycled. That is the point of these export recovery notes.

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[Mary Creagh]

I warmly thank the Minister for his remarks. In respect of the disposable coffee cup ban, let me say to him that the target must not only be realistic and achievable, but must be set on just the right side of impossible if industry is to make the changes that all of us in the House want to see. I welcomed his warm words, but I exhort him to act quickly. As other Members have said, the waste and resources strategy is now overdue, and is slipping back.

We have heard some excellent contributions from Members who said that they were thinking globally but acting locally. The right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) spoke of the Putney plastics pledge. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) talked about the great work of City to Sea and Surfers Against Sewage. The hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) told us about her difficulties in giving up plastic for Lent; we also heard her reflections on the London marathon.

From my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), we heard about the difficulties experienced by the Japanese in banning single-use chopsticks. The hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) told us that we could look forward to a green stationery catalogue, which is a genuine innovation in this place. The hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) observed that 40 years ago our colleague Ann Taylor, who now sits in the other place, was reflecting on plastics use. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) explained how Wales came to have the third highest recycling rate in the world. I look forward to my invitation from my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) to I Am Döner, where I hope we will be able to pump out some sauce—which he certainly did in his speech. The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) talked about the fantastic work of Sunnyside Primary School.

We know what we must do. Our report tells us how we are to get there. It points the way. It explains how we can create jobs, stimulate a circular rather than a linear economy, and do the right thing with a higher recycling rate. We want to see the polluter pay, and I want to see the gum and cigarette butt producers play their part in that. Waste has been a Cinderella industry for too long. We are taking it into the limelight where it belongs, to create green jobs in every nation and every region of this country.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the First and Second Reports of the Environmental Audit Committee, Plastic Bottles: Turning Back the Plastic Tide, HC 339, and Disposable Packaging: Coffee Cups, HC 657; and urges the Government to accept their recommendations as part of its Resources and Waste Strategy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The Chairman of the Select Committee and I share a commitment to making sure that the food and drink sector can become an even more important part of our economy in the future. As well as the consultation on the future of food, farming and the environment, which the “Health and Harmony” Command Paper initiated, there is ongoing work to develop a sector deal as part of the broader industrial strategy, on which the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy leads.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Last week, the Secretary of State told my Committee that the agriculture Bill is no longer urgent as we have agreed a transition period with the EU. Farmers are the bedrock of Britain’s food industry, but if the European Communities Act 1972 is repealed in March 2019, what is the legal basis on which he will continue to make farm payments? Will it be through extending article 50 or through the transition Bill, taking us straight back into the EU for the transition period?

[Michael Gove]

Through the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill.

Leaving the EU: Fisheries Management

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes two very important points. Yes, it is not just the case that the fishing industry benefits by being outside the CFP; our marine environment also benefits. She also makes a very important point about the Scottish Government. They want to keep us in the common fisheries policy and deny Scottish fishermen the opportunities of leaving the CFP. In that position, their protestations ring hollow this afternoon.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The paradox is that Conservative Fisheries Ministers have been very successful in the common fisheries policy in negotiating more sustainable catches. In the Secretary of State’s 25-year environment plan, he talks about all fish stocks being recovered to and maintained at levels that can produce the maximum sustainable yield, which is an exact replica of the EU common fisheries policy. However, in that plan, he neglects to mention the linked application of the precautionary principle to fisheries management. Can he reassure the House that in the future fisheries Bill, there will be no return to the bad old days of days at sea or fishing effort?

[Michael Gove]

A number of very important points were raised in that question. First, yes, previous Fisheries Ministers in this Government—in particular, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon)—have done an outstanding job on improving the common fisheries policy and in making a bad situation better. Secondly, the hon. Lady is absolutely right that in the 25-year environment plan, there is an absolute commitment to ensuring that we follow the science, so that we have the best approach towards making sure that fish stocks are healthy and sustainable in future.

On the broader point about the precautionary principle, it is clear that during the time that we have been in the European Union, although a number of things have worked against the environmental interests of this country and our marine environment, the precautionary principle properly applied can be a very powerful tool to ensure that our environment is protected and enhanced. We will be saying more in due course about the environmental principles that have evolved during our time in the EU and the means by which we will hold the Government to account to keep in line with those principles.

Air Quality

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. Dudley is one of the areas that has been named. I have already been in conversation with Andy Street, the Mayor for the west midlands. He is very ambitious on the plans to make these improvements and I look forward to meeting the leader of Dudley Council next week to discuss further specific issues.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

If the UK leaves the EU, the Commission and the European Court of Justice lose their role in monitoring and enforcing air pollution standards. Back in November, the Environment Secretary told my Committee—the Environmental Audit Committee —that he would consult on a new body to fill that governance gap very early in the new year. When will we see that consultation? Will that body be in place before exit day? Will it have higher environmental standards, which is what the Environment Secretary says he wants, lower standards, which is what the Brexit brigade wants, or full regulatory alignment with the EU, which is what the Prime Minister has promised her EU colleagues?

[Dr Coffey]

The good news is that the House has put legislation in place—we brought this forward—on the targets for 2020 and 2030 on the key pollutants. This Government have already acted and laid the legislation. I am pleased that the House endorsed that approach.

The consultation will be forthcoming soon. I am conscious that people are eager to see it, but, in the meantime, we are not relying on the EU to help with air quality. The hon. Lady will be aware of many measures that we are undertaking, including the new bypass in her constituency, which I and my officials believe will be the solution to improving air quality for the people of Wakefield.

Leaving the EU: Chemicals Regulation

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Eleventh Report of the Environmental Audit Committee of Session 2016-17, The Future of Chemicals Regulation after the EU Referendum, HC 912, and the Government response, HC 313:

I am delighted to be here with you, Mr Evans, and with so many colleagues to debate this vital matter. I am grateful to the Liaison Committee for granting the debate and to colleagues for attending. I look forward to good speeches and good debate.

Nine months after the Environmental Audit Committee’s report, the chemicals industry in the UK remains deeply concerned about the Government’s decision to leave the European single market and customs union and the impact that doing so will have on their business. Today, I will set out why our chemicals industry is the foundation stone of UK manufacturing; how the chemical regulation REACH—the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—regulates the UK chemicals industry; and what the Government’s decision to leave the single market and customs union means in terms of jobs, trade, potential increases in animal testing, duplication of regulation and costs, the risk of tariffs and increased red tape.

Let us begin by looking at the chemicals industry. From the leaked Brexit economic analysis this week, we heard that chemicals is one of the five sectors that will be worst hit by leaving the European single market and customs union. Our Committee looked at that last year. The industry has a £32 billion annual turnover and provides half a million direct and indirect jobs across the country. Chemical clusters tend to be on coastal sites near to petrochemical sites because they are often connected by pipelines. Clusters are found in Hull, Teesside, Grangemouth and Runcorn—areas that have already been hit by industrial decline and capital flight, and where good, well-paid engineering jobs are not easy to come by.

The paints, adhesives, mixtures, polymers, plastics and dyes made by the industry are used in every aspect of our lives, including the car industry, aerospace industry, tech sector, energy sector and pharmaceutical sector—I could go on. They are the backbone of the nation’s manufacturing industry, and we rely on an integrated European Union supply chain. The UK no longer produces a number of important chemical feedstocks and is reliant on them coming in from the European Union.

The UK exports almost £15 billion-worth of chemicals to the EU each year. Chemicals is our second largest manufacturing industry and our second largest export to the EU after cars, but it is not getting the attention it deserves. It is not as glamorous; it is a Cinderella sector.

What is REACH? It is the EU’s regulation, agreed by this country about 10 years ago, which regulates chemicals and hazardous substances. It covers more than 30,000 substances bought and sold in the EU single market. It also covers products and articles such as the coating on a non-stick frying pan, flame retardants in sofas, carpets and curtains, and medicines.

Our chemicals inquiry came out of our inquiry into the future of environmental regulation after we leave the EU. People kept saying, “You need to look at the chemicals sector”, so we decided to do so. The inquiry found that, first and foremost, UK companies want to stay in REACH. They have made more than 5,000 registrations with REACH. Another deadline is looming—31 March—by which smaller tonnages of chemicals will have to be registered. By the end of March, UK companies will have spent an estimated £250 million on registering their products on the database. One concern raised in the inquiry was that smaller manufacturers, looking ahead at the potential of a hard Brexit, would baulk at spending £20,000, £30,000 or £40,000 on registering a chemical when that registration could fall exactly one year later, on exit day.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Select Committee and my hon. Friend on the report. I represent a constituency in which 7,000 manufacturing jobs are dependent on the chemicals sector and there are 1,250 jobs in chemicals companies. That exact point about the cost of registration has been raised by companies in my constituency. Some of them have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on registering chemicals over the years, and they suggest that in the Brexit negotiations we should seek third-country status, so that our companies can continue to register within REACH. Does she agree that that would be one route forward?

[Mary Creagh]

I certainly do, and that was the route recommended in the report. The report was slightly curtailed—we had to rush it out in a form that was not as fine and detailed as we would have liked because of the early calling of the general election—but we were clear that that was the most pragmatic and cheapest route.

The looming deadline raises the threat of market freeze. If a small company decides not to register and just to run down its chemical feedstocks, when a big multinational manufacturer comes to apply that coating to whichever tiny aircraft engine part or car part requires it, the supplier—in some cases they are unique suppliers—might say, “We’ve run out of that stuff now.” We could see market freeze in the automotive and aerospace supply chains long before we leave the EU, because of that deadline and the lack of certainty about what will happen.

Leaving REACH puts at risk our trade in chemicals. The European Chemicals Agency has said that without an agreement to the contrary, all UK registrations will be invalid after exit day. Therefore, the jobs of my hon. Friend’s constituents and investment in their companies will all be put at risk. I will come on to talk about the threat from double regulation.

Secondly, the inquiry found that the chemicals regulation framework established by the EU through REACH would be difficult and—critically—expensive to transpose into UK law. It is not just a list of rules or restricted substances but a governance mechanism; it is an entire working body of parts. It involves data sharing and co-operation. For the UK to establish a duplicate system of chemicals regulation, as the Minister proposed when she gave evidence to us, will be expensive for us—the taxpayer—or the industry, or both.

Thirdly, after Brexit, REACH could become zombie legislation, which is no longer monitored, updated or enforced. When we debated the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, I tabled new clause 61 to try to remedy that by ensuring that we remained part of REACH. However, it is part of the difficult third of EU environmental legislation that cannot be neatly cut and pasted into UK law through that Bill. The Minister in response said that the REACH regulation is directly applicable, but that is essentially meaningless without the chemicals agency to govern and regulate it. We will end up having zombie legislation, duplicating regulation and potentially diverging from the EU, which could also be a bad thing for British business.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend did an excellent job on this report and is doing an excellent job of leading the debate. Does she share my concern that when the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs gave evidence to the Committee, it seemed to have only just started conversations with the chemicals industry about all these issues and how complicated they would be? It was almost on a learning exercise—doing its homework—long after article 50 had been triggered.

[Mary Creagh]

I did notice that. I went over the road to read the impact assessments that were not impact assessments, and it was good to read a secret document on the chemicals sector that quoted our Committee’s report heavily. There was some good analysis in there, but I was grateful to see that however thin our report was, the civil servants involved had looked at the evidence we had taken. It was certainly a very useful exercise.

The Government’s response to our report was pretty thin gruel—a couple of pages, and quite dismissive. That reflects what my hon. Friend says about the Government making it up as they go along. They are knitting their own policy as they go. There is nothing wrong with knitting, but we do not want something that ends up full of holes.

We put out the response because we wanted to see what the industry would do. It is fair to say that last year, when we were doing the report, the industry was perhaps more concerned about the impact of tariff barriers than it was about regulatory barriers. It was happy to give Government the benefit of the doubt, to believe what it was hearing and to accept reassurances, but as the exit day deadline heaves into view, that belief has been replaced by thorough scepticism and in some cases downright fear, particularly about the impact of a hard Brexit.

We put the Government’s response up on our Committee’s website and invited comments. The Chemical Business Association said,

“the Government Response to the EAC’s Report fails to…recognise the unique nature of the regulatory issues facing the chemical industry”.

Breast Cancer UK said,

“the Government’s response to EAC’s report is woefully inadequate. It fails to provide even an outline of how the Government will manage chemicals regulation post-Brexit.”

EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation, said:

“The degree of uncertainty in this area is causing concern not just in the chemicals industry but also very much among downstream manufacturing industries which are reliant on a wide range of substances and chemical formulations.”

That is why 20% of the 126 companies represented by the Chemical Business Association were looking at moving to the EU. We had that evidence almost a year ago, and it would be interesting to know how many of them have established presences in Dublin, Paris or Frankfurt.

On a recent visit in my Wakefield constituency I went to a bed manufacturer, Global Components. It is in Ossett, in what used to be called the heavy woollen district—the Dewsbury part of my constituency. I was not expecting to hear about Brexit, but the company told me that 90% of its products are imports, so it has been hit by the fall in the value of the pound. It is finding it harder to recruit new staff and has delayed a major investment as a result of uncertainties over Brexit. Crucially, the foam it uses in its mattresses comes from a German supplier, and the price of that foam has risen by 30% since the referendum. Global Components is having great difficulty passing those costs on to its consumers.

The European Chemicals Agency has been very clear that without an agreement to the contrary, all UK company registrations will be invalid after exit day. No REACH means no licences. No licences means no market access. No market access means no trade. It is that simple. As one senior executive said to me, on condition that I did not say his name or his company,

“Brexit is a business-killing issue.”

If we leave the single market and the customs union, businesses will no longer have access to the database they helped to fund and build. UK science, testing, ingenuity, innovation and creativity helped to build the database. UK scientists are present in Helsinki. We helped to build the database, but now we are ripping ourselves out of it and we will no longer have the detailed safety information on all the chemicals that are handled and produced. Obviously, that is of great concern to my own trade union, the GMB, which represents workers in what can often be hazardous industries.

What choice is left to our constituents and companies? UK companies that want to continue to trade must set up what is called an only representative in the EU to re-register with REACH the registrations they used to have. That is absolutely absurd, and it is duplication. If those companies want to stay registered, they must set up somebody in a European Union member state and pay twice for something they have already bought. That is the height of absurdity. It is a huge duplication of costs, and it risks making UK chemicals and manufacturing uncompetitive. Companies could ask the importer to register themselves, but why would they do that? Why would they take on the cost and documentation? They will just switch to an alternative supplier, and that will be bad for British jobs, British growth and British businesses.

[Kate Green]

Does my hon. Friend share the concerns of businesses in my constituency? Even if the Government are able to say that existing registrations would continue to be recognised in both European and UK law under some form of deal—the Minister suggested in a letter to me that that was the Government’s preferred position—that would not offer any certainty about future registrations and might lead to businesses relocating out of the UK altogether.

[Mary Creagh]

I do share my hon. Friend’s concerns. UK industry is not waiting for the Government to sort this out; it is already voting with its feet on this issue, delaying investment and winding down operations. None of that is being announced. I asked one senior executive why not, and he said, “In all my years in this industry, I’ve never done a press release announcing job losses and closures. This is not something we want to talk about.” That is understandable, but we have also seen courage—in the case of the chief executive of Airbus, for example, who has talked about how manufacturing and competitiveness will be hit. Our debate goes into the detail underpinning that: what do we mean when we say that, and what will it cost in jobs?

I turn now to what was a touchstone issue during the passage of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill: the issue of animals and animal testing. We might be able to stay in the registration, but will we be able to stay in the knowledge-sharing scheme? If we do not participate in European Chemicals Agency scientific committees or the forum for exchange on enforcement, we may need more animal tests to be done in this country—something that none of us would welcome. At the moment, UK companies registering chemicals within REACH must share data from animal testing. Other registrants access that data, which minimises the need to carry out and duplicate animal testing, but only participants in REACH have access to that data, so we could see an unwelcome increase in animal testing.

The REACH framework is built on co-operation between signatories. It contains obligations, oversight and control mechanisms. It requires freedom of movement of products between all signing countries. If we do not co-operate in that way, how will we ensure that human health and our environment are protected from chemical hazards, and how will we stop our country from becoming a chemical dumping ground?

As an aside, the Committee travelled to the US to see how it regulates chemicals. We were pleased to hear that the US, after 50 or 60 years of fighting the chemicals industry on the issue, has set up its Toxic Substances Control Act, although there was a question mark over its implementation with the arrival of the new regime under President Trump. We also heard that the EU’s chemical standard was seen as the global gold standard and was being used by the states of California and New York; that things such as babies’ bottles were advertised and marketed as meeting EU chemicals standards as a badge of honour and safety; and that the US chemicals industry had asked for that regulation to keep up and compete with European chemical products and articles.

We also heard that the de-regulatory lobbying and the Americans’ approach in this area had led to the absurdity of asbestos—a known carcinogen hazardous to human health—never having been banned in the United States. I am sure that the citizens of this country, whatever their thoughts when casting their vote for leave or remain, were not asking for an increase in animal testing, a decrease in jobs and the supposed freedom to follow a weaker regulatory regime.

The Government have said that they want to set up their own chemicals agency, but they really have to clarify what system of registering, monitoring and authorising chemicals will be used in the UK post exit. The clock is ticking. What is the plan? How will decisions be made after exit day? Will we be like Switzerland, which does not have access to the REACH database, or Norway, which does, through its membership of the European economic area? How does the Minister propose to protect our £14 billion export trade with the EU?

The Government’s 25-year environment plan promises a new chemicals strategy that will set out the Government’s approach as the UK leaves the EU. I hope we will not wait two and a half years for that new chemicals strategy in the way we did for the environment plan. The Government say that the new strategy will “build on existing approaches”. When will we see it? When will it be published?

Words and phrases such as “build on existing approaches”, “looking” and “monitoring” are a prime example of the “muddling through” that former Department for Exiting the European Union Minister Lord Bridges talked about in the other place on Tuesday. Although we are not clear about what will happen during the two years of the Brexit transition phase—if it is for two years; it will perhaps be longer—Lord Bridges has warned that it

“will be a gang plank into thin air.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 January 2018; Vol. 788, c. 1423.]

We must not force our chemicals industry to walk down it. Will the Minister clarify whether there will be a two-year transition period during which we will remain a member of REACH? Businesses need that clarity.

Let us look at the IT aspect of setting up our own agency. The European Chemicals Agency has a budget of more than £100 million a year and 500 staff to manage its database and monitor compliance. Will we still have our own agency? The Minister’s civil servant told our Committee that a new agency would cost tens of millions of pounds. Who will pay for that extravagant bauble? Will it be industry, which already has the double burden of re-registering the stuff they have already registered with REACH, and would then have to register again in a UK system—a triple whammy—or the taxpayer?

Several witnesses expressed concerns to the Committee about the Government’s poor track record in setting up IT projects. Setting up our own database will be expensive, and we have seen the beginnings of the taxpayer footing the bill for it. The DEFRA permanent secretary wrote to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on 18 January requesting a ministerial direction to approve a spend of £5.8 million between February and July this year on the delivery of a new IT system for registering and regulating chemical substances placed on the UK market, as part of the preparations for a no-deal Brexit.

Will the Minister tell the House what that £5.8 million will pay for, the total estimated cost of the new agency, the total estimated cost of the new database and how much it will cost every year to run the system? How many staff will be needed and what happens to them if the Government negotiate to stay in REACH, as the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), told Parliament could happen only this morning? How will we recruit the best people to a job that may not be there in a year’s time?

The UK’s chemicals sector will see its costs treble: it will re-register with REACH, thereby losing the money it spent first registering with REACH, and will also have to register with a new UK regime. However, the pain will not stop there. Leaving the customs union will compound that pain. As well as the regulatory barriers, the risks of tariffs and customs red tape on chemicals could cost companies dearly. A Chemicals Industry Association Brexit survey suggests that tariffs on imports could be in excess of £350 million, while re-exporting could cost £250 million.

Ministers often fail to understand that intra-company trade is a significant percentage of those imports and exports. We import things from the EU to make the wings of an Airbus aeroplane in Alyn and Deeside and then export them to Toulouse, where they are fixed on to an aircraft. Those are intra-company imports and exports, and customs and tariffs and paying more money to import and export such things will make British industry non-competitive.

When I first asked the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how he planned to regulate chemicals after the UK leaves the EU back in July, he said, “Better”, and sat down. However, 20 months after the referendum, things are much worse. I hope I have explained why “better” is simply not possible. Remaining close to REACH is not only unavoidable—it is desirable, pragmatic and sensible. Staying in REACH is the right thing for jobs, British growth and British investment, and the majority of our inquiry’s witnesses supported continued membership of REACH. The Green Alliance said:

“The REACH regime is the most advanced in the world, protecting citizens and the environment from tens of thousands of chemicals.”

Our Committee recommends that the UK remains in REACH. It is the passport to a global marketplace. UK companies do not care whether that passport is blue or brown, so long as it does not kill jobs and investment. Leaving REACH could mean lower environmental or safety standards than in the EU, exposing UK workers, consumers and the environment to greater risks. Leaving REACH places huge additional financial burdens on the chemicals industry and the UK taxpayer to comply with two different sets of regulations. Leaving the customs union creates the added danger of tariffs.

I look forward to the Minister’s response to colleagues’ speeches and to hearing how she will provide the certainty that our businesses and our constituents rightly crave.

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I am afraid that I may have to leave early to travel back to the frozen north. I appreciate your indulgence in that.

I congratulate my colleagues on the Environmental Audit Committee on producing the report. I have become a devoted environmentalist since serving with my colleagues on the Committee. I am a farmer, and partly an organic farmer, and as I said to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) the other day, I once owned a vegan food manufacturer, of all the bizarre things. However, I am also a beef farmer. I seem to be crossing the divide.

The report was written largely before I joined the venerable Committee, which is so ably chaired by the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) with her typically collegiate approach, which I very much enjoy. Not being the author of the report, I will be brief. The report recommends that the Government take a pragmatic approach to the UK’s relationship with the EU’s single market for chemicals, and in particular that it should seek to remain a participant in the registration process for those chemicals.

I represent Gordon, the constituency with the biggest oil and gas footprint, so hon. Members will see how difficult it is for me to be on the Environmental Audit Committee. However, I see oil and gas as part of the solution, not part of the problem. The oil and gas industry is clearly a massive feedstock supplier to the chemicals industry, which employs 157,000 people. To put that into perspective, the oil and gas industry employs 320,000 people, down from 460,000.

The UK could decide to follow the regulatory decisions made through REACH—the regulation on the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—or to take a different approach while still allowing UK companies to sell their products in both the UK and the EU, thanks to continued data sharing. Oil and gas is an international, dollar-denominated industry; 60% of oil and gas exports are outside the EU. Oil and gas should be an example to other sectors of how there may be good things outwith the EU. UK oil and gas, a bit like the UK chemicals industry, sets EU standards and has done for the 40 years during which it has been producing. The Government indicating that they have no intention of aligning the future UK system of chemicals regulation with that of the US is welcome news. However, the experience of the US in providing consistent regulation across the country, rather than allowing variations from one state to another, could be a model for the Government should the UK decide to establish its own system. I say that because we have UK-wide frameworks and we will be maintaining the single market within the UK.

As I am not the author of the report, that is how brief I am going to be.

[Mary Creagh]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has spoken on the report, and it has been fascinating to hear about the oil and gas industry, but does he agree that the experience in respect of, in particular, worker protection in that industry has been potentially much weaker outside the UK? I am thinking of the experience of Deepwater Horizon and some of the environmental degradation in the Niger delta in particular. Those are not models that we would wish to follow in our own oilfields, where we want workers and, of course, the environment to be protected.

[Colin Clark]

That is a very interesting point. The UK and Norway are obviously the two biggest oil and gas producers, by a long way. UK regulation has set EU regulation for the last 40 years; and interestingly, the EU is currently trying to put through regulation that Norway will not accept, because it feels that its regulation is already higher. I am therefore very optimistic that the oil and gas industry in the UK and in Norway will continue to set standards. It will be interesting to see how the UK chemicals industry will set international standards and have an effect on the EU going forward.

I look forward to greater participation in the Environmental Audit Committee, and I hope that the next time I stand here I am a signatory to its report.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I congratulate the EAC on its report and my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) on her very clear and detailed explanation and defence of its recommendations, which I entirely endorse.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gordon (Colin Clark). He had no need to justify his position as both an MP for a constituency with oil and gas interests and as someone with an interest in the environment. If we dichotomise those two very important issues, we do a disservice to the country. The oil and gas industry remains important; it will not disappear overnight. We need to work hard to reconcile those two key interests as much as we can.

This topic is critically important. I am chair of the all-party group on the chemical industry, and this report is of great interest to me and to the all-party group. I reinforce the point that the chemicals sector directly contributes £6.4 billion to the UK economy each year and employs approximately 88,000 people—in all the areas that my hon. Friend outlined but also in areas such as the south bank of the Humber, where it is a critically important employer.

As has been pointed out, 60% of our chemical exports go to the European Union, and 75% of our imports in this sector come from the bloc. We must recognise that the chemicals sector has an important impact on all manufacturing sectors—in my constituency, for instance, we have the steel sector, which is an important downstream recipient of chemical products—and therefore the knock-on effects of regulation in this sphere will be profound and felt far and wide.

[Mary Creagh]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the brilliant work that she has done in chairing the APPG and ensuring that the voice of the chemicals industry is heard loud and clear in this place. Does she agree that the issue is not just upstream but downstream chemicals, affecting things as diverse as kidney dialysis chemicals and machines, artificial limbs and so on? It spreads right out into the medical industry as well. We do not want there to be unintended or unforeseen consequences, because chemicals really do network out into every nook and cranny of our lives.

[Angela Smith]

I agree. That is why chemicals are considered one of our key foundation industries that is of profound importance to the UK economy in every respect. On that basis, it is imperative that we get this right; on that, at least, I hope that we all agree.

The Environmental Audit Committee made several very sensible recommendations as part of its inquiry. However, in their response, the Government have given very little away about policy proposals. Nine months later, and with the Brexit date looming on the horizon, I, alongside the sector, the members of the Committee and Parliament more generally, remain deeply concerned by the lack of clarity.

What do we know and what do we not know? Against the Committee’s explicit advice, the Government are attempting to use the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill to give Ministers the power potentially to create a new UK-based regulatory body to replace REACH. The industry has made it abundantly clear that replacing REACH would be costly and over-bureaucratic. It would also potentially limit important access to data, as my hon. Friend pointed out, and to scientific collaboration, a point made powerfully by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

REACH represents the gold standard in international chemical regulations, and there is no appetite at all in the industry for degrading regulatory standards, I am pleased to say. What is more, if companies are to continue trading with the EU, compliance is, in the words of the Chemical Business Association, “non-negotiable”. Failure to comply means no market access and therefore no trade, as my hon. Friend pointed out.

As I said, creating a body like the one that we are discussing risks costing the public purse and taking a huge amount of time, simply to add another layer of bureaucracy for no practical purpose whatever. After all, substances requiring evaluation or authorisation will already have achieved that status by complying with REACH by this year’s deadline of 1 May. I ask the Minister these questions directly. Will she urge the Government to reconsider their approach to chemicals regulation post Brexit? Can she assure the industry today that we will remain in full regulatory alignment, both in the transition and in the long term?

Another area causing immense concern relates to the registration process. The Committee recommended that “as a minimum” the Government should ensure that the UK retain the registration element of REACH. The Government even acknowledge that any company wanting to trade with the EU will have to engage with that element of REACH. So why leave it? In the short term, companies need assurance that REACH registrations made before May 2018 will remain valid post Brexit, because otherwise, why bother, why do it? Millions of pounds have already been spent on registrations. The Chemical Industries Association says that if companies have to re-register everything because of Brexit, the cost will be in the region of £350 million. That is not pocket money; it is a significant sum that could have a serious impact on the industry.

The uncertainty is enormously problematic for companies, which need REACH registrations to operate but are reluctant to make the payments in case they become invalid. That dilemma risks an exodus of companies from the UK to the European Union—to other member states—and has already led a number of companies to spend vast sums of money opening up offices on the continent.

[Mary Creagh]

My hon. Friend is making a brilliant point. As she sets it out, I am struck more and more by the fact that the Government like to talk about sound finance, but actually our own chemicals regime starts to look more like an ideological indulgence, an extravagance, with, of course, other people’s money—taxpayers’ money and the chemicals industry’s money.

Does she agree that many of the only representatives of American firms based here are now having to—or will have to—shut up shop and set up in other countries? Not only are our own companies moving out into the European Union, but companies from third countries, which use the UK as a springboard into that integrated European market, are also going shopping and setting up elsewhere.

[Angela Smith]

I agree with that latter point. On the first point that my hon. Friend made about ideological indulgence, I find it enormously frustrating that we are set not only to spend large sums of public money to achieve satisfaction and indulge ourselves ideologically, but to ignore the voice of business. I find it startlingly difficult to comprehend why what has always seen itself as the party of business is ignoring those very important voices—I just find it absolutely unbelievable.

Two years after the referendum, I still find it hard to reconcile my understanding of the party of Government. I have always respected it as a party that has always listened to the voices of those who make the wealth that keeps this country going, but it is no longer doing that—all in the name of a project that will damage the country’s economy in the long term. I find it absolutely astonishing, I have to say.

I ask the Minister what she is doing to give clarity to business in this area. Should businesses continue to make REACH registrations and will these registrations remain valid post-Brexit, or at the very least during the implementation period? Have her Government colleagues broached these subjects with their European counterparts during negotiations? I think we need to know—Parliament has a right to know this.

Does the Minister acknowledge that the easiest way to resolve these issues would be to stay in the single market and, as a consequence, to remain within REACH? That is the easiest way forward. It is the way forward that the chemicals industry prefers, and it would solve so many problems. I look forward to the Minister’s response and hope that she can provide some clarity.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Evans. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) on her brilliant job chairing this inquiry. When we first started taking evidence, I thought, “How on earth are we ever going to get our heads around such a complex subject?” I have to confess that I might have got 50% of the way there, but I am pretty sure that she got 100% of the way there and it is a credit to her. I think we saw that in her speech.

It is unusual that both environmental NGOs and the chemicals industry think that the structure of REACH is about right. It is one of the most sophisticated chemicals regulations systems in the world, and if the Government are planning to leave its protective framework—I do not think they should—they need to clarify as a matter of urgency what will replace it. Not doing so is not fair on the industry. If the Government do not get on with the job, we are going to be left in limbo.

As my hon. Friend said, when we talk about chemicals, we are talking not just about things that are obviously chemicals—the sorts of things you keep under the sink, such as bleach or cleaning sprays—but the chemicals that are present in every product and activity. Chemicals are in car engines, in the paint on cars and in our carpets; I had never thought that carpet dye was a chemical. We are exposed to countless chemicals in every facet of our lives, and they are all controlled by REACH. They are all part of the system. It should therefore be of the highest priority to ensure that chemicals continue to be properly managed after we leave the EU, not least because of the potential harm that improperly regulated chemicals can cause to the environment, and human and animal health. There is another debate to be had about chemical use in the developing world, for example, where things happen that we would not tolerate here, but that is a question for another day.

Everyone has heard of the American case made famous by the film “Erin Brockovich”, in which 370 million gallons of chromium-tainted water leaked into the local water supply and dramatically increased the levels of cancer in residents. More recently, in 2008, tributyltin—a paint used to cover the hulls of boats—was outlawed in Europe after it was found to be extremely toxic to both humans and the marine environment, with the World Health Organisation reporting a 20% to 40% increase in the risk of certain types of cancer after regular contact with the substance. That shows us the importance of regulation and vigilance.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for her speech, and for the brilliant contribution she makes to the Committee. I am sure she was far more than 50% of the way there in this inquiry. If she did not feel that way, she certainly did not let on. I know that the inquiry was difficult. Does she agree that information sharing and knowledge sharing are a really important part of the REACH regime? This stuff is all around us and the evidence only builds up gradually, in bits and pieces, because we do not conduct controlled experiments on ourselves to see what gives us cancer—that would be unethical. The information emerges over time, and we are often ignorant of the damage that a chemical is doing to our body. When that gets out, there is always a vested interest that does not want it to be banned, changed or removed. That is why REACH is the global gold standard.

[Kerry McCarthy]

That is absolutely right. I do not think I need to add anything to that. My hon. Friend has told us, in a nutshell, why it is so important to be vigilant and on top of things—almost ahead of the game—in terms of what is being brought on to the market. If we are not, there could be quite devastating consequences that we might not discover for years. New chemicals are being manufactured continually, so we cannot rest on our laurels.

It is impossible to know what chemical regulation will look like in the future, so to transpose current standards without supplying the surrounding infrastructure would be an approach that was totally unfit for purpose. It is not a case of bringing in a law and then putting it into operation in the UK, as has been said—such a law would be out of date almost immediately. As we have heard, the infrastructure that is required to regulate chemicals is extensive. REACH manages tens of thousands of chemicals, with an estimated 140,000 chemicals present in the EU market, and 33 new chemicals are awaiting evaluation.

When we were in the United States, we discussed the time-lag—how long approval can take. I think the US system has been improved now, but, at one point, if a chemical had not been assessed and approved within, I think, six months, it automatically got approval by default. That seems a dreadful way of going about things, and I think that the US has introduced new legislation on the matter fairly recently. We want an efficient and speedy but absolutely thorough system that can get these new chemicals on the market or reject them as required.

The UK has the second largest number of REACH registrations in the EU. It is important to remember that REACH is a relatively new creation; it did not come into existence overnight. It came into force in 2007, after many years of preparation, and there are 600 people working on it at the European Chemicals Agency. There is a suggestion that we could create a British REACH. There was some laughter in the Environmental Audit Committee when the Minister coined the acronym BREACH, because it is probably not the best name for our own chemicals regulator. If we were to create BREACH, it would be impossible and absolutely foolish to try to replicate the work of REACH, when there are 600 people already working on it and we could seek to be part of it. Trying to duplicate that work would require the investment of a huge amount of time, resources and expertise.

We know that DEFRA has suffered from budget and staffing cuts over recent spending reviews. It has so many competing priorities—it seems to be about to release a new plan or strategy every other week—so I do not see how it could take on this task as well. We cannot match the pooled resources of all the EU member states. If we try to operate with a reduced capacity and a pared-down scheme for regulating and managing chemicals, the negative impact on the environment could be huge.

Hundreds of chemicals are classified as toxic to marine life under EU harmonised classification. That includes 1,045 chemicals that are classified as very toxic to aquatic life, 933 chemicals that are classified as very toxic to aquatic life with long-lasting effects and 405 chemicals that are classified as harmful with long-lasting effects. I use the marine environment as an example because, as people will know, it is a passion of mine. The organisation Blueprint for Water estimates that, even with the stringent regulation that is in place at the moment, at least 27% of total ecosystem losses are due to chemical pollution. Reduced capacity could further expose humans and animals to numerous cancers, disrupted reproduction, immune dysfunction, DNA damage and deformities, to name just a few concerns.

There is also the problem of persistent pollutants, called bioaccumulators, which build up inside cells or environments over time, meaning that humans, animals and the natural world are still exposed to them today. The negative impacts are felt only when a certain threshold of accumulation is passed, and that could be many years after their use begins. Bioaccumulation often occurs through food chains, with those at the top suffering from the worst exposure—in most cases, humans are at the top of the food chain. Polychlorinated biphenyls, which were once widely used in electrical products, paper and flame-resistant coatings, are a prime example. It took many decades, pre-REACH, for a ban to be finally implemented, and during that time people were regularly exposed to dangerous carcinogens. Surely, it is better to take a pragmatic approach and attempt to stay in REACH. Although it is not perfect, it has, as I said at the start of my speech, the support of both sides of the equation: the vested interests in the chemical industry, and those who seek to protect the environment, humans and animal welfare.

REACH is being constantly updated, and it has had 38 amendments since its creation. UK companies would have to continue to comply with REACH if they wanted to continue to trade with the continent. As we have heard, even if only a small component of a product—with a car, for example, it could be the paint, the seats or any of 101 different elements—is manufactured in the UK, that small part may well have to comply with REACH. The UK Chemicals Stakeholder Forum recorded that there was a

“clear consensus that businesses did not want to see a weakening of environmental standards”,

and that the industry wants to maintain access to REACH after we leave the EU.

REACH is also closely connected with the EU’s classification, labelling and packaging legislation, as well as the more general EU health, safety and environmental legislation. Just as “chemicals” includes a wide variety of substances, so too does the body of regulation that is required to adequately govern them. If we leave REACH, it is not just a case of replacing it; the UK would need to offer up a substitute for EU regulations, including the sustainable use of pesticides directive, the biocidal products regulation, the industrial emissions directive, the bathing water directive, the drinking water directive and the urban waste water treatment directive, to name just a few. They are all interconnected.

The UK has signed up to a number of sustainable development goals that bind us to regulate chemicals properly and not to support a drop in standards. They include ensuring that by 2020 we use and produce chemicals in ways that do not lead to significant adverse effects on human health and the environment; and, by 2030, reducing the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and soil pollution and contamination, as well as improving water quality by minimising the release of hazardous chemicals.

That strays on to the turf of another Environmental Audit Committee report on the sustainable development goals and how we can implement them in domestic policy. Again, we were not particularly happy with the Government’s response, and I am sure we will continue to pursue the matter. Despite the obvious risks and uncertainties that face both the chemical industry and the health of the public and the natural environment, the Government’s response to the EAC report was disappointing and rather lacking. I urge the Government to commit to and implement the Committee’s recommendations, because the cost of failing to act, and of not being adequately prepared for when we leave the EU, is too great. In the Government’s election manifesto, they promised to be

“the first generation to leave the environment in a better state”

than they found it, but achieving that is incompatible with their current approach to chemicals regulation, and with any regulatory system that does not adequately protect humans, the environment and animals to the extent that REACH does.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Creagh]

I thank Environmental Audit Committee members present—the hon. Members for Gordon (Colin Clark) and for Falkirk (John Mc Nally), and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy)—for their support, along with the Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow). I certainly feel that the Committee is waking up, having been a sleeping giant on the Committee Corridor; it is finally finding its voice.

I agree with the Minister that her response was very disappointing. Based on what she is offering the sector, I think the verdict is “Must try harder”. She has told us that the chemicals strategy will not be published this year, which is deeply worrying. She is not offering continuity, as she said, but rupture and multiplication of uncertainty. She is in danger of sounding complacent when she talks about only representatives setting up in other countries. These are the people through whom business flows, so if they leave, the business leaves with them.

[Dr Coffey]

indicated dissent.

[Mary Creagh]

The Minister says no, but we can have a debate about that. She talks about setting up a database with £5.8 million of our money, yet she says that a business case has not yet been developed for it.

[Dr Coffey]

May I add some information? Clearly the system will cost more than £5.8 million. That is part of the release of money.

[Mary Creagh]

How much will it cost?

[Dr Coffey]

We do not have a final estimate for the budget, because the system is still to be finalised. That is why the business case still needs to be assessed.

[Mary Creagh]

This looks like a release of initial moneys to scope out and make the business case for the rest. I wonder about DEFRA’s capacity to deal with this. DEFRA has lost 5,000 civil servants in the past seven years.

The ECHA website states:

“Only a mutual agreement between the EU and UK authorities can change this date”,

meaning 30 March. It also states:

“It is the European Commission that conducts the withdrawal negotiations with the UK Government under a negotiating mandate…ECHA is not party to these negotiations.”

We face the uncertainty of whether there will be a transitional period, how long it will be and what will happen, and then the further uncertainty of what will happen afterwards. Lord Bridges said that the transition period was set to be one of “muddling through” and

“a gangplank into thin air.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 January 2018; Vol. 788, c. 1423.]

The Minister says that when people voted in the referendum, they were voting to leave the single market. Daniel Hannan, her Tory MEP colleague, said that only a madman would leave the single market. Well, I am afraid the Minister’s party seems to have been taken over by the madmen. We need a sensible, rooted debate based on the reality of people’s lives and the reality for businesses in this country, not constant reassuring words that give solidity to mere wind.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Eleventh Report of the Environmental Audit Committee of Session 2016-17, The Future of Chemicals Regulation after the EU Referendum, HC 912, and the Government response, HC 313.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

On a visit to Bywaters recycling centre in Bow yesterday, I saw the amazing work that the waste industry is doing to tackle our waste and heard about some of the challenges it faces. I was told that the Chinese ban on imports of UK waste has caused the price of recycled paper to fall from £100 a tonne to £20 a tonne, and I presume that the same can be said for plastic. That will have an impact on the viability of councils’ recycling contracts and will feed through to council tax bills. Does the Secretary of State agree that we can tackle the problem by setting long-term targets for the waste industry, such as the 65% target by 2035 that has been suggested by the EU?

[Michael Gove]

Setting appropriate targets is absolutely part of this. One of the challenges of the EU’s target is that, because weight is such an important component in how the EU measures recycling, it does not always incentivise quite the right behaviour. Even though the EU has made important strides, I am glad that our own Government have gone further by ensuring that we tackle the scourge of single-use plastics.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green), will the Secretary of State ask those involved in building on and encouraging the work on the northern forest to look at the national forest in the midlands as an exemplar? Some 8.5 million trees have been planted there since its inception.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Under a Labour Government.

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) makes an admirable point. I hope to visit her constituency and others to see the wonderful work that has been done. A comment was made from a sedentary position by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), and I am very happy to acknowledge that leadership has been shown by Labour politicians as well. [Interruption.] Forgive me, it was the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh). Labour speaks with one voice on this matter—though not on any others. Coalfield communities have been helped on their journey towards revival by the investment in woodland cover, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough has been a hugely effective champion of that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. That work is being undertaken now, not just in the area to which he rightly alludes but in other areas of animal welfare.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

By next summer, the UK chemical industry will have spent £250 million registering its chemicals. It is united in wanting to remain within the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—REACH—scheme and to avoid EU tariffs of between 4% and 6% on its goods, so why is the Secretary of State proposing to double its regulatory burden by setting up a new agency here? Why is he playing politics with our second largest manufacturing sector?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady has been a consistent champion of the work that is done in our world-leading chemicals industry. We are seeking to find the right regulatory framework to ensure that we can continue to do good work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Absolutely. Before we entered the European Union, we recognised in our own legislation that animals were sentient beings. I am an animal; we are all animals, and therefore I care—[Interruption.] I am predominantly herbivorous, I should add. It is an absolutely vital commitment that we have to ensure that all creation is maintained, enhanced and protected.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State to his place and thank him for his visit to Wakefield during the recent election. He can rest easy in the knowledge that he played some small part in my return to this place.

The UK’s participation in the EU’s registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals, or REACH, regulation system allows us to protect the environment and human health, and allows UK businesses to sell exports worth £14 billion to the EU each year. It is our second biggest export after cars. The Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry into the future of chemical regulation heard that the legislation cannot be cut and pasted. There are severe concerns about market supply chain freeze and regulatory disruption. How will the Secretary of State regulate chemicals when we leave?

[Michael Gove]

Better.

Future Flood Prevention

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I rise to speak on behalf of the Environmental Audit Committee, which has published a report on flooding. We found a lack of long-term strategic planning for flood risk and that the Government had not been doing enough to ensure the resilience of nationally significant infrastructure. Crucially, there has been a stop-start approach to flood defence funding and a lack of support for local councils. Our report called on the Government to take a proactive approach to funding and to make companies that operate key digital, energy and transport infrastructure report on their preparedness levels for flooding and their resilience targets. We called for more support for councils to prepare plans to deal with the risk of flooding, and for the Government to publish a 25-year plan for flooding alongside the long-awaited and much delayed 25-year plan for the environment, for which, yes, we are indeed still waiting.

Before I discuss the detail of our report, I wish to say a few words about climate change. Flooding is the greatest risk our country faces from climate change. As hon. Members have said, the risks are already significant and will increase as a result of climate change. Even if global temperature rises are kept below 2°, the UK faces a rising threat from surface water as a result of the intense rain patterns, from coastal erosion and tidal surges, and from fluvial flooding. It is important to stress that cities such as Hull face all three of those threats—some areas are much more vulnerable than others.

Sea-level rise forecasts vary from 50 cm to 100 cm by the end of the century. That will make tidal surges bigger. We saw how exposed is our North sea coast on the east of England in January’s storm surge, when the coastal town of Jaywick in Essex, which suffered so grievously in the 1950s, had to be evacuated by the Army. It is good to see a faster response time from the Government in such fast-moving, life-and-death situations, but we need to be able to scale that up if the North sea surge happens simultaneously along the whole eastern coast.

Various predictions, including the forecasts in the Government’s national flood resilience review, say that monthly winter rainfall could be 20% to 30% higher over the next 10 years, so as well as planning for the next 80 years, for our children’s lifetimes, we need to be thinking about the next 10 years. There are risks to all nations and all sectors of the economy. In its latest risk assessment, the Committee on Climate Change said:

“Current levels of adaptation are projected to be insufficient to avoid flood and coastal erosion risks”.

We are not yet doing what we need to do to match the scale of the risk.

[Rob Marris]

I hope my hon. Friend shares my disappointment at the slow rate of progress. The adaptation measures in the Climate Change Act 2008 are the direct result of a private Member’s Bill I introduced around 10 years ago. As she points out, we have made almost no progress.

[Mary Creagh]

There has been some progress, but we need to move much further and faster as the scale and nature of the risk becomes more apparent and as the science develops. My concern is that Government policy is not changing fast enough to meet the changes in the scientific forecasts.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that it was found that when the floods hit Cumbria and other areas at Christmas 2015 the Government were not using the most up-to-date modelling? Surely the most important thing is that we try, to the very best of our ability, to predict what is going to come next.

[Mary Creagh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She has joined me on the Environmental Audit Committee, and her expertise on this subject has been invaluable.

The Committee on Climate Change warns that increased flood risk affects property values and business revenues, and, in extreme cases, threatens the viability of some communities. A much worse scenario is set out in the climate change risk assessment: if global temperatures rise by 4° above pre-industrial levels, the number of UK households predicted to be at significant risk of flooding will double from 860,000 today to 1.9 million in 2050. Those are very stark and very concerning figures.

I know from my own constituency the misery that flooding can bring. In the 2007 floods, 1,000 homes in Wakefield were flooded. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) said, successive Government have cut funding over the years, and 2007 was one such year—it was Labour that cut the funding that year. Our flood defence programme was cut, and I lobbied very hard to get that money reinstated. We got £15 million for flood defences to protect our cities. Thanks to those defences, which were completed in 2012, Wakefield managed to escape the worst of the 2015 storms. That was really, really important.

Nationally, the Government have taken a rollercoaster approach to funding. During the previous Parliament, flood funding was initially cut by 27%. The money was then reinstated after the 2013-14 floods. Mark Worsfield’s review of flood defences, which was published by my Committee, showed that those Government cuts had resulted in a decline in the condition of critical flood defences. It showed that the proportion of key flood defence assets that met the Environment Agency’s required condition fell from 99% in 2011-12 to 94% in 2013-14. Therefore, in three years we had a pretty large decline in the condition of mission critical flood defence assets, which posed an unacceptable risk for communities—I am talking about those communities that think that they have their flood defences in place and that they can sleep easy in their beds at night when it is raining. The more flood defences that the Government build, the more they need to increase the maintenance budgets. We cannot keep spending more on capital and then cut the revenue budget.

The failure of the Foss Barrier in York shows what happens when critical flood assets fail. It was built on the cheap in the 1980s. It was not built to the correct height and it had just two mechanisms. Once one of those mechanisms failed, the water overtopped its banks and reached the electrical switch rooms. Local flood engineers were left with no choice but to raise the barrier with very little notice, which led to hundreds of homes being flooded. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) will have a great deal to say on that.

The Government are talking about spending more on flood defences. One mechanism they are using is the so-called partnership funding. My Committee looked into the sources of that funding and found that 85% of it was coming from public sector bodies. Therefore, the Government are cutting funds centrally, and then putting pressure on hard-pressed local councils, which have seen their budgets fall by 30% over the past seven years, to boost their flood defence assets. When they say, “Do you fancy stomping up for some flood defence assets for your town or city.” those councils are left with no choice but to say yes. Just 15% of the money is coming from the private sector. Of course, it is not a level playing field, because any private sector company that gives the Government money for partnership funding gets tax relief on that so-called donation.

At the start of each spending review, the Government announce how much they will spend. In 2015, they allocated £2.5 billion for flood defences, but after storms Desmond, Eva and Frank, the Government announced, in Budget 2016, that the funding was not adequate and that they were going to invest an extra £700 million. Once again, we have this stop-start approach—cut when it is dry and spend when it is raining. The hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), who was then a Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said that the extra money would be spent according to a “political calculation”.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

Let me point out that we have increased our budget, not cut it.

[Mary Creagh]

The coalition Government in 2010—I know that the hon. Lady was not a Minister then—cut the flood defence budget by 27%. Of course, the way in which the Minister is raising the money—the extra £700 million that was announced in the Budget in March 2016—came from a stealth tax: an increase in insurance premium tax. That raises £200 million a year and goes on every insurance policy in the country, so car drivers and people who own pets are paying for flood defences. We can argue about whether that is the most transparent way of raising money for flood infrastructure.

I will talk about the Committee’s report and the criticisms that we have made, particularly about infrastructure resilience. Storm Angus caused landslips and ballast washaways on railway lines in Devon, Cornwall, the north-east and Scotland before Christmas, bringing travel disruption—as storms always do—as we saw last week with Storm Doris. Last winter’s floods, particularly those in Leeds, which the Committee visited, showed that key energy, digital and transport infrastructures are not well protected. Let us not forget the bridge being washed away in Tadcaster. The replacement bridge has only just reopened, over a year after those floods. Roads and railways going down have a huge impact on the economics of an area.

The Government’s national flood resilience review, published last summer, found that 500 sites with nationally significant infrastructure are vulnerable to flooding. During the winter floods of 2015-16, nine electricity sub-stations, and 110 water pumping stations or sewage works in Yorkshire were affected by flooding. Keeping the water supply going and the sewage under control is vital. My Committee recommended that the Government mandate energy and water companies to meet a one-in-200-year flood resilience target for risk. I am afraid that the Government’s response was hugely disappointing, simply saying, “We don’t think that’s the best way of doing it”, but not saying what the best way is. I am interested to hear that. Our strategy cannot just be tumbleweed—listening for the wind and hoping that it is not coming our way.

Minimum standards for energy, transport infrastructure and digital telecommunications companies are vital. Let us not forget that the railway lines were flooded out of Leeds. The police Airwave response radios went down, so West Yorkshire police were unable to work out where to send their blue light emergency response vehicles in the middle of a civil emergency. That is simply not good enough. If that had happened not on Boxing day, but on a normal working day a couple of days later, tens of thousands of people would have been stranded in Leeds city centre with nowhere to spend the night. There would have been a much bigger civil emergency response.

The Government’s long awaited national flood resilience review was published in September. It was good to hear about some of the things that are happening, such as the mobile flood defences. However, the Committee thinks that flood defences are essentially a sticking plaster solution: they are good as far as they go, but fail one third of the times they are used, so they work only twice in every three times. The review said nothing about the risk from heavy rainfall overwhelming sewers. No one likes to talk about sewage, although some people might think that a lot of it goes on in this place, Madam Deputy Speaker, but clearly not in this debate and under your excellent chairmanship.

The Government need a comprehensive long-term strategy properly to deal with some of the granular issues around flood risk, none more important than the way in which local authorities have to deal with flood planning and prevention. Some 30% of local authorities in September 2016 simply did not have a complete plan for flood risk, and a quarter of lead local flood authorities did not have a strategy. How are the public and Members of this place meant to scrutinise whether the plans and responses are adequate if they simply do not exist?

The Environment Agency provides advice to local councils about where new housing developments should be built in order to minimise flood risk, and the Committee heard that such advice is usually followed. However, almost 10,000 homes were built in high flood-risk areas in 2013-14. The extent to which the Environment Agency’s advice on where or whether to build homes is systematically monitored, reported or followed up through the planning system is simply not known. There is nothing wrong with building new homes in flood-risk areas, as long as those areas are adequately protected—Southwark and this place are at risk of flooding, and people are obviously still building new homes in London because there is a thing called the Thames barrier—but the situation is not being systematically monitored. We would therefore like to see much more help going from DEFRA and the DCLG to enable councils to adopt local flood plans and then actually follow them up.

In the wake of the winter storms in 2015-16, the then Prime Minister appointed two Ministers as flood envoys to co-ordinate the response to flooding in two areas: the hon. Members for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) in Cumbria and for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) in Yorkshire. A question was raised about whether those posts transferred under the new Government and the new Prime Minister. I wrote to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in July. She responded in September, saying she was thinking about it. Finally, on 7 January, we got a reply saying, “Actually, they are still in post.” It should not take six months for the Secretary of State to reply to a Committee Chair of this House to let us know whether, in the event of a flood, those two Ministers are still co-ordinating the response. What would have happened if flooding had taken place in Jaywick? That is simply not acceptable.

Finally, on insurance, last winter’s devastating floods cost over £1.3 billion in insured losses and about £5 billion across the whole economy. As I said, my Committee visited Leeds, and we had particular access to insurance. We had people coming across from Calderdale, where 70% to 80% of businesses were affected by the flooding—they have been affected almost annually by fluvial flooding and surface flooding. The floods cost small and medium-sized enterprises an estimated £47 million, with indirect costs totalling £170 million.

The floods in Leeds were the worst since 1866. Leeds University, which has done some research into this issue, told my Committee that 60% of local businesses have been unable to obtain a quotation for insurance since last winter’s floods. We heard of one business whose excess had risen from £1,000 to £250,000 after the floods. We heard of another business whose buildings insurance premium rose 60%, to £10,000, and whose excess increased 40%, to £10,000, but it would get the insurance only if it stumped up £400,000 to build new flood defences. The Committee on Climate Change says that the economic viability of some areas is being threatened, and the way insurance companies are failing to rise to meet this risk and failing to stand with communities is putting whole parts of our country at risk of becoming economically unviable.

[Richard Arkless (Dumfries and Galloway) (SNP)]

Has the hon. Lady taken a cursory glance at the other report we are discussing, which asserts that there is no market failure when it comes to providing affordable insurance for businesses at risk of flooding? If these excesses are not market failure, I wonder what is.

[Mary Creagh]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: there is market failure in these areas. Businesses are encouraged to shop around, and there are some excellent community Flood Save schemes, where people try to get together to use market power to purchase insurance collectively, and one of those schemes is now up and running in Calderdale, but it should not have to come to that. We want to see insurance companies standing alongside communities. The insurance companies lobbied long and hard to mitigate their risk from climate change, and the Government set up the Flood Re scheme —another insurance tax on contents premiums and buildings premiums, with every homeowner in the country stumping up for the access risk so that the insurers do not have to pay it and can transfer it to the Government. Insurers need to cut businesses some slack and rise to meet some of these challenges.

[Mr Evans]

A few businesses in my area have been hit. One of them is relatively small, but it has been hit a couple of times by flooding, so the insurance premium is now running way into the thousands. The premises is also a mixed hereditament, which makes things more complicated, because people live where the business is. Surely, if Flood Re kicks in to help domestic premises, it should kick in for businesses as well. If there is a market failure, which I believe there is, and if it is suitable to have that sort of pooling of risk for houses, it should be the same for businesses.

[Mary Creagh]

It is important that we do not end up with every taxpayer subsidising the private sector. The Government need to look again at the use of different, innovative mechanisms that do not place yet another burden on the already hard-pressed householder or car driver who has seen their insurance premiums go up as a result of mitigating and pooling some of this risk.

Failing to fund flood defences adequately is playing Russian roulette with people’s homes and with people’s businesses. I have talked about my Committee’s concerns about rollercoaster funding instead of steady-state funding; vague targets; vulnerable transport, energy and digital infrastructure, where again the Government simply lack the political will to work with companies across Government to get them to have flood-resilient assets; and local councils left to just get on with it by themselves. The storms may have receded for the moment, but the clean-up in some areas of Yorkshire, and in other areas across the country, is still going on. The lessons that we draw from this debate and these two Committee reports will shape our winters and our summers for decades to come.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I commend my hon. Friend for his continuing support of the hedgehog. The Government support efforts to make our gardens more hedgehog-friendly through the creation of havens, and the campaigns within local communities to work together to look out for the hedgehog, including that of BBC Suffolk; I encourage him to get BBC Devon to do the same. We do have a proud tradition, and we want to continue that with our next generation.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

On hedgehogs and related matters?

[Mary Creagh]

Indeed, Mr Speaker. Many happy returns.

Hedgehogs and other wild mammals, and precious bird species, are currently protected under European Union regulations. The Environmental Audit Committee’s report on the effects on the natural environment of leaving the EU recommended a new environmental protection Act. Has the Minister had a chance to read the report, and what is her assessment of our recommendation?

[Dr Coffey]

I read it from cover to cover on the day it came out, as is appropriate for a Minister in serving the needs of the House. I can honestly say that our intention is to bring environmental legislation into law on the day that we leave the European Union. As a consequence, we see no need for any future legislation at this stage.