World Health: 25-Year Environment Plan

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Sarah Wollaston

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Pow]

I will go to my right hon. Friend’s farm in Berkshire, but there are certainly very few yellowhammers left in Somerset.

There has also been a two-thirds crash in the global population of flying insects. Insects are our friends: we need them, and we cannot survive without them. I did entomology as part of my university course, and people probably thought that was amusing, but it is proving very useful. Insects pollinate our crops, and we need a world in which they can thrive. It is very important that we put legal obligations into the environment Bill that commit us to achieving all the things that are stated in the environment plan and that will hopefully be put into that Bill.

Nature recovery networks have been mentioned. I have been involved with the Somerset Wildlife Trust, which has a very good model for those networks; I believe the Minister knows about them. They are like a framework for all land use and all the things that go on to a piece of land, so that we can work out what is important, what to concentrate on, what has disappeared, what we can add and what we need to work on. They are very important.

I would also say that our rural areas will be important to us in the future, because they are like the lungs for the urban centres. They provide us with green space, places for tourism, places to grow food, flood control and all those things. We need a much bigger agenda to bring the rural area into helping us to solve our biodiversity problems.

[Dr Wollaston]

Does my hon. Friend feel that there should be greater penalties for acts of environmental vandalism, where developers come in and clear wildlife corridors and later on we find that the tree survey, for example, shows that there are no trees because they have cut them all down? The current penalties for that are simply not sufficient. It has happened in my area in Dartmouth and caused great upset and loss to the environment.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning that, because it leads me on, interestingly, to ancient woodland. I am pleased that this Government, through the all-party parliamentary group on ancient woodland and veteran trees and the Woodland Trust, and working with many colleagues, have managed to get extra protection for ancient woodland. In future, developers should not be able to bulldoze ancient trees down in the way they used to. Those trees are very precious, as is the soil underneath them. We must get teeth so that we can hold people’s feet to the fire and ensure that those things do not happen.

I was pleased to hear just this week that we have nearly one quarter of a million pounds to do an ancient woodland inventory. That money came from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, but I am sure that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will be interested in the project. It will mean that we can identify all those precious woodland sites and trees, so that we can help to protect them in future. If we do not know what is there, how do we know whether we can protect it?

I praise the Select Committee on Environmental Audit, which I was so proud to be a part of, because that Committee held the inquiry into plastics and microbeads—all credit to the Government, again, for bringing in the microbeads ban. They are only 2% of all plastics, but they were something controllable. The ban is a good start and proves that we can do these things if we want to. The Committee also conducted the soil inquiry, which revealed so much; I do not think soil had ever been talked about in Parliament before.

As I mentioned earlier, it is so important to get the biodiversity and health of our soil right. I reiterate my call to make it an indicator in the 25-year plan and give it the credit it needs as a public good in the Agriculture Bill, because without it we cannot have healthy food. It holds our carbon. We can achieve all our climate change commitments because of that property of soil—its ability to hold carbon. If we get the management of that right, we have ticked a massive box on the way to meeting our net zero targets. I am optimistic on climate change; this Government are making huge strides on the issue, for which they are not getting enough credit. I am optimistic, having had many meetings about this, that we are going in the right direction, and I believe that we will meet our net zero targets sooner than we think.

I have to wind up, so I will say that we need to get climate change sorted. I understand how important it is. As part and parcel of that, we need to get biodiversity sorted. We owe it to the nation. I am pleased that the Chancellor mentioned all that in his spring statement, and I am pleased that we have a Minister who understands this.

Stalking Protection Bill

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Sarah Wollaston

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Wollaston]

The Bill specifically notes that acts carried out from outside this country will also be taken into account, particularly with regard to online stalking. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I thank him for making that point.

Although the proposed stalking protection orders would be civil orders, there would be a criminal penalty for breach. They are not intended to replace a prosecution for stalking where the criminal threshold has been met, but we all recognise that it can take time to fully gather the evidence and present a case for court, and during that time victims can be especially vulnerable. They are intended to act not only in those types of cases, but perhaps where the criminal threshold has not been met but it is recognised that the acts are at risk of escalating. Importantly, the Bill allows for the onus to be taken off the victim, because the police will be able to apply for the protection orders on their behalf.

It is also important that the penalties for criminal breach have real teeth, with a maximum sentence of up to five years. The civil protection orders will allow us to put in place a bespoke regime of not only prohibitions but requirements on the perpetrators, setting out very clearly what they must not do—in other words, stop contacting not only the victim but those around them—and setting out the ways in which that might take place. In some cases, perpetrators are not well, so the Bill will also allow the court to set a requirement that they attend a mental health assessment. There is also a notification requirement: perpetrators would have to give notification of all the names and aliases that they used in order to stalk their victims, and their address. None of those important protections will be of any benefit, however, if the police do not know about them and do not have the required training, expertise and willingness to exercise them.

Another purpose of a private Member’s Bill such as this is to explore the issues throughout the criminal justice system to ensure that everyone takes them seriously. Stalking should not be trivialised by references to someone’s having an “admirer”; there is nothing romantic about it. It is also important to recognise patterns of behaviour. Each individual action may in itself appear trivial, but the pattern should be viewed in its entirety. I know that the Minister is personally committed to acting on the findings in “Living in fear”, a joint report from Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary on the police response to harassment and stalking, and I hope that she will comment further on it. We need to improve the entire system of that response, and I am grateful to her for her personal commitment.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. She may have heard Emily Maitlis talking on the radio this morning about how she was stalked for 20 years. She said that she felt that the current legislation was not fit for purpose, and did not provide her with any protection. Does the Bill not seek to address that?

[Dr Wollaston]

Absolutely, and I pay tribute to Emily Maitlis for her courage. Anyone who reads her personal victim impact statement will see that not only the person being stalked but that person’s entire family is affected. She has been exceptionally courageous in coming forward to talk about her experience and in raising awareness. It is also true that stalking does not just affect people who are in the public eye; it can affect anyone, and sometimes after a relatively trivial contact. Victims are often made to feel responsible, or guilty. We have to break that cycle, and take the issue seriously.

I will cut short my remarks now, because I know that many other Members wish to speak. I thank all colleagues for their support for the Bill.