Oral Answers to Questions

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2019 Commons Chamber

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

The environmental impact of bags, including bags for life, can be reduced simply through reusing them. We will be publishing our response on extending the carrier bag charge to all retailers very soon, so we are not currently considering stopping the use of plastic bags altogether. In our bio-economy strategy, we have committed to issuing a call for evidence, because it is important to note that these biodegradable bags need careful treatment when they come to the end of their life.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

Following the recent Scottish deposit return scheme proposals and the conclusion of the Government’s consultation on a DRS, can the Secretary of State tell us how the Government intend to learn from best practice? Does he hope to emulate the 98.5% recycling rate achieved by Germany for plastic and glass bottles and metal drink cans? Will he commit to a deposit return scheme that matches the ambition of other Governments in Europe, to achieve a UK-wide standard, as suggested in “Our Waste, Our Resources”?

[Dr Coffey]

This is something that the Government have worked on extensively. I have visited several countries, including Germany, and it is fair to say that not all deposit return schemes take glass. As I have said to the House before, the front end of these schemes is very simple, but how we make the back end work is complex. That is why it is taking some time. We are considering carefully with the devolved Administrations how we can make progress, and I hope we will be able to announce more soon.

Trophy Hunting

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) on securing this debate. We have heard several useful interventions from Members of all parties—I would especially like to mention those of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson). Not only was my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) passionate, but he showed identifiable ways forward to help to bring this horrible trade to an end. We also heard passionate speeches from the hon. Members for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries) and for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who exposed the spurious financial arguments for hunting.

When I spoke for Labour to support the Ivory Bill, which the Government were taking through the House, we debated the extent to which sales of old ivory could disguise the continuation of the slaughter of elephants in pursuit of the trade in ivory. Clearly, selling an ivory-handled hairbrush made in the 1950s would not in itself cause the death of any more elephants, but the very fact that the trade in ivory was still legal gave merchants dealing in fresh ivory a market for their goods. I am very pleased and proud of what this House decided to do, with unanimous, cross-party support.

Having taken such a firm line on the ivory trade, how can we possibly support the importation of hunting trophies, which can include parts of those self-same elephants? We have heard the appalling statistics from the hon. Member for Richmond Park: 1.7 million dead animals, or bits of dead animals, were imported over the previous decade, according to an International Fund for Animal Welfare report from 2016, including 10,000 lions. Britain is one of the world’s 12 most prolific countries for killing lions and elephants, and bringing bits of their dead bodies back. Even with the National Rifle Association supporting international trophy hunters, the US does not allow the import of bits of dead cheetah, but the UK does. The CITES statistics show a 23% increase in the number of trophies imported globally over the four years from 2013 to 2017, amounting to 20,846 in 2017 alone.

Imports of some trophies have reduced in recent years. The number of southern white rhinos shot for their trophies went down from 75 in 2016 to 72 in 2017, but that is probably because there are so few left to shoot. How can we be so concerned about the possible extinction of rhino and still let people go out with the intention of shooting them and return with a bit of the animal to prove their action?

The word “trophy” suggests that there was a contest, in which the brave hunter managed against the odds to defeat the ferocious beast against which he was pitted and took part of the animal to remind himself of his accomplishment. In reality, so-called canned lions are bred in enclosures and factory farmed, and then released to be shot like clay pigeons. Even if such blatant preparation were stopped, there is no genuine contest involved in trophy hunting; the activity is just plain slaughter.

When we debated the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill last week, I made the point that it is not the number of animals that is at issue, but the degrading treatment and the inhumanity of taking pleasure in making them perform. How much more cruel, pointless and inhumane is it for a person to go out to another country and deliberately kill an animal just so they can put a bit of its dead body on the wall of their house? In this case, it is about not just the inhumanity but the numbers. Of the 1.7 million so-called trophies taken over the past decade, 200,000 were from endangered species.

We do not have to allow this preposterous practice to go on just because it is allowed by CITES. CITES is clearly not adequate for the preservation of international wildlife. It allows trophy hunters to shoot even species listed as critically endangered. It would not be helpful for this country to withdraw from CITES, but it is time for us to join with other nations in creating a framework for the genuine protection of wildlife around the world.

Trophy hunting does not protect against poaching. There is good evidence that poachers use the activity of legally sanctioned hunters as smokescreen for their own killing. Permits for hunting have been used by poachers to trade rhino horns. Two-thirds of hunting trophy export records are inaccurate, and there is no reason to suppose that some are not being used to cover poaching. In any case, what difference does it make whether a species is wiped out by poachers or by trophy hunters?

Hunting does not support the economies of the world’s poorest countries in any meaningful way. Photographic safaris in African nations generate 40 times as much revenue as hunting, as revealed by this week’s report from the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, which is based on United Nations figures. How much of that tourism income will be retained if all the animals that tourists come to see and photograph have been wiped out?

It is time for this country to act. Labour has already committed, in its animal welfare plan, to ending the import of all wild animal trophies from species classified as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and to extending that ban to species listed under CITES. There may be good grounds for going further and we would like to hear from those who think that we should explore that option.

Will the Minister tell us whether the Government plan, in the near future, a wide-ranging public consultation on trophy hunting and the import of wild animal parts, with the view to banning all imports of such trophies? We cannot and must not allow the present situation to continue, and we cannot stand idly by while extraordinary and magnificent creatures are driven to extinction to satisfy the vanity and bloodlust of a tiny number of killers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

We do, and I commend the Welsh Government on that policy deployment. We are consulting on certain measures to try to increase recycling, and the consultation closes next week.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

As the Minister knows, the level of recycling in England rose from around 7% in 1997 to around 44% in 2011, but it has flatlined since then. Much of the incentive for the increase in recycling during those years came from avoiding the landfill tax, and Government capital grants for increasing recycling were balanced by landfill tax receipts. However, now that most household waste is incinerated, those incentives no longer apply. The “Our waste, our resources” strategy states:

“Should wider policies not deliver the Government’s waste ambitions in the long-term, we will consider the introduction of a tax on the incineration”.

Will the Minister tell us how many more years of flatlining it will take before she is willing to make that consideration?

[Dr Coffey]

The landfill tax has been important in reducing landfill. As I have just said, we are consulting on measures that build on the resources and waste strategy that we published a few months ago. We have been quite clear that we must ensure that we increase recycling, and we will take further measures if incineration is still proving part of the problem.

Plastics Recycling

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) on securing this important and detailed debate. He was absolutely right to say that recycling and pollution are not necessarily linked. Indeed, climate change and pollution are not necessarily linked. We need to deal with both: we need to ensure that recycling is there to deal with the climate change impact of plastics, but also that we are preventing pollution.

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who made interventions, all of which were helpful in this particular case. I thank the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant), who is absolutely right to mention that we had extensive deposit schemes in the past. In fact, I can remember the first time I ever got involved in any sort of political campaigning, when I was at school: we tried to persuade Corona not to stop using a deposit scheme for its bottles. It did stop, and went out of business—we can put two and two together. Most bottles are actually recycled in Germany, precisely because they still keep deposit return schemes.

My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) mentioned the incredible level of self-restraint that she has shown over the past 40 days and 40 nights. I do not believe it is possible or reasonable to expect the majority of our population to make that sort of choice. We need to make it more convenient for people to go plastic-free.

My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) outlined the importance of making reduction, reuse and recycling more financially viable than just making things and chucking them away. The hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) was right to point out that some applications of plastic are correct, but a lot are not. Where we use plastic, we must ensure that it is not just claimed to be recyclable, but is actually recycled. The convenience of plastic makes it the fastest-growing waste material, but its use is not always appropriate. Most plastic items have a limited lifespan and cannot be reused. However the most-used plastics, such as PET and HDPE, are readily recyclable, and the main difficulty is getting them from the point of use to the point of recycling.

Councils have been successful in establishing recycling infrastructure and services: 99% of local authorities in the UK currently collect plastic bottles, and 77% collect pots, tubs and trays in kerbside recycling. However, all of that costs money, and if we are going to increase our recycling rate at all we will need the people who do the work—the collection authorities, the disposal authorities and the recycling plant—to be economically viable. In the future, and I hope sooner rather than later, there needs to be a mechanism for ensuring that the producers of the plastics pay for them to be recycled. For bottles, that may well be best done by a deposit return scheme, as in Germany. We welcome the Government’s commitment to investigating deposit return schemes and to the principle of extended producer responsibility.

The requisite sense of urgency in the Government’s resources and waste strategy appears to be lacking. Recycling in this country has flatlined. Between 2000 and 2010, under the last Labour Government, household recycling increased by 235%. However, after years of austerity, local government, which is responsible for waste and recycling, has been left underfunded and understaffed. While Labour-run Wales has accelerated ahead, achieving a national recycling rate of approximately 63%, England has flatlined at around 44% since 2011, and is set to miss Europe-wide targets of 50% by 2020.

It will take time to introduce an effective producer-pays system. In the meantime, our local authorities need the capital investment and revenue to maintain their recycling collections, let alone improve them. Local authorities currently have an £8 billion funding gap; unless that it is filled, it is unrealistic to expect them to do anything additional.

The right hon. Member for Twickenham is right to say that there is high public interest in recycling, particularly plastics, and a greater awareness of where our waste ends up, in part down to “Blue Planet” and other programmes. Since China started to refuse the UK’s poor quality recyclables and waste in 2018, the UK has been exporting waste to countries with some of the highest levels of ocean plastic pollution. Some south-east Asian counties are also moving towards a ban.

We need to encourage the UK to be more responsible for our waste closer to home, and to recycle in the UK—not export our waste. We need to take the opportunity of the current political support to drive a green transformation into an efficient and productive green economy with new, green jobs. We need to clean up our natural environment and halt the flow of plastic and other waste into our oceans. It is time to put actions behind the national waste strategy for England. It is time to show Government leadership.

Exiting the European Union (Agriculture)

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

This legislation is important for the protection of human, animal and plant health and for maintaining important safeguards to ensure food safety information for consumers. The Government can easily ensure the maintenance of such safeguards by agreeing with Labour that there should be a permanent and comprehensive UK-EU customs union, close alignment with the single market, dynamic alignment on rights and protections, and clear commitments on participation in EU agencies. That would ensure that we continue to share knowledge and expertise with EU bodies, avoiding extra costs and burdens for business, saving jobs and protecting our livestock, trees and plants from pests and diseases.

This statutory instrument is another in the series of Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs EU exit SIs, of which there have been over 120 to date, using powers in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 to make technical changes to retained EU and domestic legislation. This SI covers salmonella in poultry, labelling of beef and veal, and seed potato marketing, all of which are devolved matters for Northern Ireland, and it is a real shame that there is no functioning Northern Ireland Assembly to scrutinise it.

Labour believes that it is vital that we maintain protections for imported eggs and poultry food products. Despite the discreditable chlorinating process that is supposed to prevent infection, citizens in the US still suffer around 1.2 million cases of salmonella food poisoning a year, and there were 450 deaths last year. What is the current assessment of the level of risk of salmonella in poultry in Northern Ireland? What assessment has been made of the level of risk of salmonella in eggs and poultry food products expected to be imported into Northern Ireland after the UK leaves the EU?

Northern Irish seed potatoes are highly prized and commercially valuable, so it is important to maintain the EU classification and certification regime and protect them from imports that might be of inferior quality or bring in pests and diseases. Similarly, the high quality of Northern Irish beef needs continuing protection via the EU labelling regulations.

[Ian Paisley]

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that Northern Ireland processes about 2.6 million birds every week. The poultry industry is one of our most vital and supplies about 30% of the entire UK market. Protecting the sector is much more important to our farmers and processors than anything else, and we do not want to implement anything that would damage our local UK market.

[Sandy Martin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his strong point. Clearly, where the major market is within the UK, that needs to be protected. However, there is always the danger not just that other markets will be lost, but that the UK market may be lost if inferior and cheaper poultry were able to be imported into the UK. The protection of good-quality food from the EU is one of the major planks that it has operated and this SI is an attempt to try to salvage some of that, but whether it will be successful largely depends on all sorts of other issues.

The succession of different versions of this statutory instrument, each with errors and omissions, does not inspire confidence. Despite now being on its fourth version, there may still be an error in regulation 9(b), which amends regulation 4(3)(b) of the Seed Potatoes Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016. Can the Minister confirm that the substitute wording should have two “where”s, rather than one “where” and one “were”? It is a minor point but, with the vast amount of work being done on all these SIs over a very short period of time, there have been grammatical errors that might lead to them being difficult to enforce.

Why was Regulation (EC) No. 2160/2003 not included in the three Northern Ireland poultry salmonella orders referred to in regulations 2, 3 and 4 when they were originally made? Numerous changes have been made between the four different versions of this SI that have been presented to Parliament so far. Can the Minister explain whether there is any significance and why the wording of regulation 8(f) and (g) in the previous version has been omitted, why the reference to point A7 of annex III was added to proposed new paragraph (b)(iii) of regulation 2 of the Seed Potatoes Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 and why the wording in regulation 9(a) and (c) was omitted in this version? Various changes have been made, and it is extremely difficult to follow them and to work out why they have been made. Will the Minister commit to correcting any errors that are identified and to ensuring Parliament has the opportunity to consider how stakeholders can be better engaged in the scrutiny of secondary legislation in future, as suggested by Green Alliance?

After 120 different statutory instruments over the past three months, I put on record my admiration for the stupendous amount of hard work done by civil servants in producing all this necessary work, and I crave the Minister’s indulgence in also registering my profound thanks, and the profound thanks of my hon. Friends, to our Opposition staff for their enormous work in preparing us for these statutory instruments. In particular, I thank Roxanne Mashari, Rob Wakely, Will Murray and Eliot Andersen.

We take all these matters extremely seriously and intend to do everything we can to maintain and enhance this country’s record of high standards and scientific excellence as we prepare to leave the EU. I hope the Minister will respond seriously on the matters I have raised. Having said that, we do not intend to vote against the regulations on this occasion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Goodwill]

I will briefly wind up and answer one or two points that have been raised. I agree with the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) about the quality of Northern Ireland’s food. Indeed, I believe the Ulster fry is the pinnacle of Ulster cuisine in the ingenious way in which it manages to incorporate both potatoes and lard. I always look forward to an Ulster fry when I visit Northern Ireland.

A number of points made by the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) are not specifically relevant to what is before us today, which is about the quality of produce produced in Northern Ireland. Matters relating to chlorinated chicken or other issues as regards future international trade deals are important, but they are not specifically before us today. He raised a couple of technical issues where we may or may not have made errors. I would be pleased for us to look at those again and correct any errors we may have made. As I said in relation to an earlier statutory instrument, the quantity of legislation we have had to go through means it is almost certain that we would have made some mistakes, and if they are brought to our attention—or if we notice them first—we will make sure they are put right.

I repeat that this statutory instrument is a “business as usual” SI. It does not make changes; it allows a continuity of the situation should we fall into a no-deal Brexit. If, as I seem to gather from what the hon. Gentleman was saying, he is concerned that we may leave the EU without a deal, the matter is simple: he should, together with his colleagues in the Labour party, vote for the deal to ensure an orderly departure from the EU and to ensure that we move into the implementation period, when many of these sorts of issues can be dealt with in the fullness in time and be properly dealt with. I am disappointed that, particularly in the north of England, where so many constituencies that elected Labour MPs actually voted to leave the EU, some MPs are not listening to their constituents.

[Sandy Martin]

Does the Minister accept that, if we were to have a permanent customs union and to move in the direction that the Labour party has been calling for, the Government would not need to have a backstop and they might get the support of the party on this side of the House as well?

[Mr Goodwill]

Staying in the customs union is not what the people in Scarborough and Whitby voted for when they voted—62% was the figure—to leave the EU. In any case, I ask that this measure be approved.

Question put and agreed to.

Draft Market Measures (Marketing Standards) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 Draft Market Measures Payment Schemes (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 Draft Market Measures (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 General Committees

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I sympathise if Committee members feel that they are here for groundhog day, with yet another repetition of the complicated and technical details of statutory instruments designed to replicate in UK law the regulations that we currently enjoy with the EU.

I say enjoy advisedly, because if one good thing comes out of this process, it might be that we begin to realise just how many regulations it takes to create optimum trading relationships. The Minister and his hon. Friends have made much of the wish to reduce regulations—“red tape” they rather pejoratively call them—but when we joined the Common Market it was precisely regulations such as those that helped to bring about the single market which has been so beneficial to the British economy and which we are now so gratuitously throwing away.

The reason that we need market measures at all is that the market does not and cannot regulate itself to the satisfaction of society as a whole. The attempt to replicate those regulations and thereby to maintain what really only works properly as part of our membership of the EU is probably doomed to failure. Without the unanimity of purpose of a large organised bloc, and the role of equal sponsor of the market conditions in Europe that our membership has afforded us, I predict that many of the regulations will be either unworkable or superfluous.

In particular, the likelihood is that we will not be able or willing to adhere to the marketing standards element of the common organisation of markets, and our ability to trade freely with EU countries will therefore be hampered. Whether we have a soft Brexit or a hard Brexit, our agriculture will be seriously damaged. We will have no influence over changes in EU regulations on marketing agricultural produce, but we will have to adhere to them none the less if we are to continue to trade effectively into EU markets. The fundamental problem therefore is not with the wording of the draft SIs, but with the very idea that we can continue with our marketing and relationships with the EU simply by changing “EU” to “UK” and “Commission” to “Secretary of State”.

Is there anything in the draft SIs that I can pick out for particular criticism? No. Can I be sure that nothing in the SIs ought to be changed? No, I cannot be sure. It would not be at all obvious if mistakes had been made in these technical amendments to technical regulations. Normally, we rely on multiple stakeholders going over amendments to regulations such as these and alerting us to any possible dangers, but the absurd timeframe that we now face, having left all these SIs to the last possible moment, makes that impossible.

The Green Alliance, a grouping of most of the major environmental pressure groups for the purpose of engaging with Parliament and the political agenda, has stated:

“For the majority of environmental legislation that has been transferred in this way, there was no prior consultation or engagement with stakeholders.”

The SIs before the Committee are primarily about marketing agriculture and food, rather than environmental protection, but there are environmental consequences to our choices of which foods to eat and the promotion of more sustainable production methods. Did the Minister consult with any environmental stakeholders on the SIs? Did he receive a consultation response from the National Farmers Union on the SIs?

Like Members of Parliament, the independent stakeholders simply do not have the time or energy to scrutinise all the SIs, and that increases the danger of mistakes and omissions. Will the Minister commit to correcting any errors that do turn out to have been made inadvertently? Will there be some sort of “lessons learned” wash-up after this whole sorry episode is behind us, in order to maximise the participation of stakeholders in the setting of regulations in future?

We need regulations to make our society run smoothly and to maintain our agriculture and other production. The EU not only has transformed the fortunes of its member states through the standardisation of regulation, but is on the way to using its economic leverage to make its standards and regulations the standard for the whole world. It is no coincidence that the people who think that we can do without regulations are the people who tend to think that we can do without the EU. I believe that they are about to be proven spectacularly wrong, but there is nothing that we could do with the draft SIs to make any difference to that, so we will not be opposing them.

Draft Plant Health (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 Draft Plant Health (Amendment) (England) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2019 General Committees

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. The two statutory instruments we are supposedly considering today are 210 and 58 pages long respectively. I say “supposedly” because I do not suppose for one moment that many people in this room have carefully read both documents and fully understand exactly what each one says. We had less than a week’s notice of them being tabled for today. Stakeholders whose pertinent contributions may have been able to influence amendments to the SIs have, for the most part, not responded at all because they are simply overwhelmed by the volume of SIs and are unable to engage.

The Government are proceeding with these SIs because they have to, but the process has become nothing more than a manic tick-box exercise. It did not have to be like this. We have had two and a half years to sort out a deal, and yet the threat of a no-deal Brexit remains very real, with just 10 days to go and a mountain of work still to be done if we do leave without a deal. If the Government intended to maintain the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, we should have started working our way through these SIs months ago, but we only got going on them this year. I confidently predict that there will be mistakes—perhaps not in these particular SIs, but in some of them—and that they will have serious consequences for our residents and businesses over and above the massive overarching mistake, which is the way in which this Government are failing to handle Brexit.

Yesterday the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) suggested in response to an intervention of mine that, because of their dedication and professionalism, officials who have worked very late into the night on the hundreds of SIs needed in a short amount of time cannot possibly have made any mistakes. Nobody has more boundless admiration than I for the people who have produced all this difficult and detailed secondary legislation, and I would like to put on the record Labour Members’ appreciation for their work. However, anyone put under that amount of pressure and who has to juggle a number of separate SIs simultaneously is susceptible to inadvertent error. It is of great importance that there is no mistake in these SIs.

Those of my age will remember the magnificent elm trees that used to grace our countryside. We now have ash dieback destroying our ash trees and blight sapping the strength of our horse chestnuts. It is a continuous battle to protect our crops and our wild flowers from exotic diseases and bacteria such as Xylella fastidiosa, and the presence of diseases and pests in imported plants is an ever-present danger to our native species. As pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Sue Hayman) during a Westminster Hall debate in June 2018, Prospect recently submitted evidence to the House of Lords EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee inquiry into biosecurity, recommending better training for plant health officers. Does the Minister agree that we need to establish a viable training programme for new and established inspectors, as well as joint trading ventures with the Horticultural Trades Association and the Royal Horticultural Society?

Dealing with pests and pathogens once they are in the UK will be far more difficult and more expensive than it would be to prevent their introduction in the first place. Given the volume of UK-EU trade, which we all hope will not diminish too much as a result of Brexit, the current system for sharing biosecurity intelligence with EU countries must continue in some form. Any loss of that integrated approach would pose a risk to UK biodiversity. Will the Minister commit to retaining the precautionary principle in implementing biosecurity legislation? Have the Government put any thought into a plan to deliver future biosecurity collaboration with the EU post-Brexit?

The Plant Health (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 set up lists for England, Wales and Northern Ireland that replicate current EU lists. They ensure that protected zones can continue to be protected from pests and that emergency measures can continue to be applied where necessary. However, a large raft of EU legislation is being revoked because it is considered to be redundant. Has the Minister looked carefully at schedule 17? Has someone other than the authors of the SI, and with a vested interest in finding any mistakes, been through it with a fine-tooth comb? This is precisely the sort of area—the revocation of supposedly redundant regulations —where it might be easy to make a mistake.

The schedule revokes only 24 EU regulations and Commission decisions, but given that I have not had a few weeks to read through them I am afraid that I cannot say whether they are all redundant. The EU plant health directive requires checks on material imported from third countries at the first point of entry into the EU. However, once we have left the EU the intention is to allow plant material from third countries to pass straight through the EU without checking, to enter the EU without checking at the border, and to rely on checks at the destination premises of the importers. How do the Government intend to ensure that all the plant material brought into this country from third countries without checks is actually going to be checked? How will they ensure that no invasive species, pests or diseases escape into the environment between their entry into this country and being checked at the destination premises?

Does the Minister believe that it is more appropriate to offer a lighter-touch inspection regime to imports via ro-ro ferries than to other forms of transportation? Surely, the situation will give importers an added incentive to use ro-ro, which is a less environmentally friendly form of transport than other alternatives. Have the Government made any estimates of the amount of plant material that is imported from third countries via the EU every year? As it is not currently checked, I am not clear that we know how much there is or, therefore, what resources will be needed to check it. If those imports are not checked properly at the multiple inland destinations at which the checking will take place, does the Minister agree that there will be risks for biosecurity?

The explanatory memorandum details the additional costs that will be faced by businesses as a result of needing to use a UK plant passport and having to pre-notify for imports from the EU. I cannot find any acknowledgement of the additional regulatory costs that may be entailed by exporting plant material from this country to remaining EU countries. Can the Minister give us any information about the regime for exporting plant material from the UK to the remaining EU countries, or does she not expect that to happen in the future?

We cannot find anything in these SIs that we believe to be fundamentally wrong, but at the same time we fear that they may contain mistakes or inadequacies that could have serious consequences for plant health in the UK after Brexit. We have had neither the time nor the resources to satisfy ourselves that that is not a danger.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Coffey]

I do not have a list of the premises to hand. I do not know whether my officials have one, but if they cannot provide me with that information before the Committee rises, I will write to the Committee with it.

[Sandy Martin]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dr Coffey]

No, because I am trying to finish my answer to the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark. I am very conscious that different elements of checks will be required. I have been informed by officials that 227 extra officers have been recruited to facilitate the inspections that we believe may be necessary.

If the hon. Member for Ipswich would like to intervene now, he would be very welcome to do so.

[Sandy Martin]

I apologise if I have misunderstood the advice in the explanatory memorandum, but I was under the impression that importers would be able to register their premises. That was the basis on which I was talking about the destination of imports. Clearly, the Government do not control how many premises are registered—unless, of course, they decide not to register them, in which case they will have a problem, because people will no longer be able to import.

[Dr Coffey]

I have since been informed by my officials that the hon. Gentleman is correct in his assertion. The location of these centres around the country will vary, but the total of 227 APHA full-time equivalents is a significant increase. I think it is nearly double the current number. They will be able to undertake those additional controls. Forestry commissioners currently have about 10 FTEs, and they will be increasing that by a further five in order to be able to undertake the work for tree imports.

It is important to note that it is mainly plants and trees that will be planted, rather than fruits, vegetables and flowers, which will largely be able to continue to enter the UK freely from the EU. To give some assurance to the Committee, it is important to say that it is not the case that people will just be able to self-register premises. Recognising how important it is to protect the biosecurity of this nation, APHA inspectors will need to approve those premises in advance. I do not think that somebody’s back garden can suddenly become an import, unless it is so perfect that APHA agrees that it is necessary—well, it could be a very fancy back garden, I suppose.

The hon. Gentleman asked about training and a better training programme. I have already outlined that we will have additional plant health inspectors and additional Forestry Commission inspectors. We will be working with the industry, including the Horticultural Trades Association, to develop a plant health assurance scheme that will include training. I am confident that that programme will work well.

I have already answered the question about databases, and I have tried to answer the question about transit in the third country. We do not have data on the volume of EU transit trade, as regulated goods from third countries are currently checked at the first point of entry into the EU, after which they move under single market arrangements. However, APHA estimates that there are about 14,500 consignments from third countries that transit the EU for entry to the UK. That reflects the substantial increase in the number of plant health inspectors, who are already being recruited.

I have tried to answer all the questions, but I keep being sent more information so I will not have to write to the Committee. So far, about 25 businesses have been improved for the inland facilities check. APHA estimates that a maximum of about 100 will be considered eligible. It will be for businesses to decide whether they want inspections for the non-roll off. Felixstowe is one of the major areas and it already carries out such checks at the border. It will be for businesses to decide if they want to change the situation, but in my experience as the local MP for Felixstowe, one of the major ports, there is no reason why we would expect businesses to change that regime.

My noble Friend Lord Gardiner is responsible for biosecurity. I know of nobody who is more passionate about trying to ensure that we prevent all these different diseases from entering our country. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote to the Commission about, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs worked with the Commission last year on, trying to get more checks on Xylella fastidiosa, because there is a genuine worry about that coming up, in particular from Italy. We are desperate to ensure that it does not cross into the United Kingdom. Our scientists believe it is only a matter of time with regard to how some of these things might get travelled, but we know that the number of species it affects keeps rising; at one point it was 50, but now it is considerably higher. I assure the Committee that we will continue to press the case on ensuring that we have biosecurity.

Rivers Authorities and Land Drainage Bill

Sandy Martin Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 15th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on Second Reading and in Committee, and I welcome the cross-party consensus that has, if not sped the Bill along its way, allowed it to ooze into its present position. I add my thanks and appreciation for the efforts of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton), whose hard work and persistence has got us to this point. Of course, the Bill also has the support of the Government, even though they did not take it forward in Government time, and of the National Farmers Union, the Environment Agency and the Association of Drainage Authorities.

I find myself partially disadvantaged in discoursing on this Bill because I am not from the west country, and the majority of the running has naturally come from west country Members, who have a long-standing commitment to helping the people of the Somerset levels, whence this Bill gained its original impetus, whether or not their constituencies cover any of the affected areas. The fact that fellow MPs are willing to work together to help one another’s constituencies is hugely encouraging and is in some ways a mirror to what the Bill seeks to achieve. It is by sharing the load that the new rivers authorities are going to be able to command the resources and implement the strategies that our vulnerable valleys and river catchments have been crying out for. Very often, the measures that will have the most effect on one community need to be carried out upstream in a separate community. These new rivers authorities will enable the best outcomes for all. However, while many parts of the south-west have been affected by flooding over many years and it is the area in which the first rivers authority—the Somerset Rivers Authority—will achieve its full expression through the Bill, once it has passed the Bill will enable improved drainage and flood prevention strategies in various parts of our country.

The Bill is long overdue. It would have been sensible if the Government had introduced it. There is still a very real threat that some of the planning and flood-prevention measures that could be facilitated by the creation of rivers authorities will not be put in place before the next major flooding incident, like the floods in Cumbria in 2015. I hope that those river areas where setting up a rivers authority will make a positive difference do not wait until the next major incident to do so. We would welcome proactive encouragement from central Government or the Environment Agency in that regard.

The Bill aims to provide local communities with new powers to organise and protect themselves from flooding, and that is wholly commendable. However, we also need to ask ourselves why there has been an increase in the prevalence and ferocity of flooding incidents in recent years. Alongside the powers to control and mitigate the flooding, I believe that we will need to take far more effective measures to deal with climate change in the near future and be more coherent and sensible about the development that is allowed on our floodplains.

We welcome the local accountability of the new precepting authorities through their public sector elected members, although we would welcome a more transparent and consistent approach to the selection of those members. It is essential for there to be a process for removing members if they are not careful with local taxpayers’ money, although I assume that that will take place through the normal democratic process for locally elected members. We wish to warn that any new money collected locally must be spent on additional measures, and not used by central Government as an excuse to cut the current funding of, for instance, the Environment Agency.

It would also be beneficial for local community ownership of a rivers authority to be given some genuine expression in the ability to follow and challenge the strategies and programmes of the authorities. I remind the Minister of the suggestion by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport of an annual flood risk management plan as a tool for engaging with the public. I hope that the Somerset Rivers Authority and other forthcoming authorities will institute such plans.

Rainfall on the scale of the 2015 storm Desmond is becoming a more frequent threat as a result of climate change. We need to ensure that our regulatory system and our flood defences are fit to meet that challenge, but we must also do what we can to prevent the increasing occurrence of such storms through reductions in carbon emissions. According to the Committee on Climate Change, 200 km of English coastal defences are likely to be at risk of failure during storm conditions. The Bill will set up bodies to mitigate riparian flooding, but I hope that the Minister will suggest to his colleague the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) that there might be some merit in seeking a similar solution to coastal flooding, too, and that perhaps, once the bonanza of Brexit statutory instruments is finally over, she might want to turn her attention to doing something about that in Government time.

We face an unprecedented challenge in defending lowland areas from flooding. The Bill is welcome and timely, and has our full support. We are delighted to see it becoming law. The Government now need to think about how they can enable as many relevant communities as possible to make full use of the powers and opportunities that it gives. Ideally, there will be a comprehensive plan for every community at risk of flooding. If this Bill can help us to achieve that, it will have made a major contribution to the safety and happiness of the nation.

Draft Detergents (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 Draft Detergents (Safeguarding) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 General Committees

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. These draft instruments are largely non-contentious, and it would be easy to rush them through with very little scrutiny. However, there is a danger, even with SIs as straightforward- looking as these, that the changes proposed will in fact fail to enshrine the same protections in UK law as currently exist in EU law. The fact that we are addressing so many SIs over such a short period of time makes that possibility of failure all the greater.

Protecting our human health and our natural environment from inappropriate and dangerous detergents is absolutely crucial. The existing EU regulations are detailed and fairly restrictive. If it operates properly, the draft Detergents Amendment (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 should ensure that all the protection we currently enjoy from the EU will continue under UK law. The Opposition would certainly support that. I would like an assurance from the Minister that the UK Government have no intention of relaxing any of the regulations at any stage in the foreseeable future.

As EU members, we could rely on all future UK Governments being bound by the regulations, which are clearly in the best interests of the whole of Europe, with a degree of certainty that may not be quite so great if the decision is simply down to one country’s Government. Leaving the EU also makes it far more difficult for the UK to persuade other European countries to adopt higher standards if that becomes our position.

The corollary to the environmental and health protection is the provision of equal standards across the EU that enable detergents and surfactants to be produced and traded across the EU. To maintain the economies of scale necessary to enable detergents to be manufactured in the UK at a competitive price, most manufacturers will need to continue to meet the requirements of the EU market. In that regard, I am concerned about the passing of the power to make derogations in the UK to the Secretary of State, albeit that it will be administered by the Health and Safety Executive in practice. Will the Minister assure me that derogations of that sort will not have the potential to undermine the UK’s ability to produce and export detergents to the EU market?

We would also like to know whether the Minister believes that any changes in the regulation of detergents in the EU in future should be mirrored by similar changes in UK regulations. If not, what impact does she believe any future divergence will have on the ability of the UK to manufacture and trade detergents?

The power to make derogations, and the need to make amendments in future, will take expertise and diligence. Does the Minister believe that the HSE will receive additional resources to take on that additional workload post Brexit? Given that the HSE’s remit is to protect human health rather than to protect the environment per se, what scrutiny will there be of the effects of any future changes or derogations on the health of the natural environment?

The safeguarding SI is simple, straightforward and wholly sensible, and we support it. I am not aware of any element in the SIs with which we would disagree, but we will abstain due to our concerns about the limited means of scrutiny offered by the timeframe within which they are being presented, and the lack of any possible in-depth examination of the implications.

Rivers Authorities and Land Drainage Bill (First sitting)

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Committee Debate: House of Commons
Monday 11th March 2019 Public Bill Committees

[David Warburton]

My hon. Friend is precisely right. It is about planning for the future, and sustainability in the Somerset Rivers Authority. At the moment, it lives from hand to mouth and the local authority pays it voluntarily. Although £2.5 million of taxpayers’ money goes into it, it has no certainty about whether that will continue in five years, three years and so on. The Bill provides that certainty and the safety that the residents of Somerset deserve.

As I said, if there are gaps in the local plan, the rivers authority must publish a plan of proposed additional flood risk management work, which must supplement the work that existing risk management authorities have already planned to carry out. That will help ensure that work is not left for a rivers authority to pick up on another body’s behalf. The rivers authority can then either fund a relevant risk management authority to do the additional work, or contract someone else to carry out the work on its behalf.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

I think that we can all support the idea of having one agency that will do all this work. However, is there not a danger that in the areas where the work is needed the most, there will be far higher expense than there will be in other parts of the country, and that this will not in any way enable central Government to step in when there is an emergency or when a serious amount of capital work needs to be done?

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome for introducing the Bill. He spoke with detail and authority about its contents. I am pleased that we nearly have a south-west majority in Committee—it is about time that the south-west got its fair share, and if we have to get it by taking control of Bill Committees, I support that. We also have several hon. Members from SERA—Labour’s Environment Campaign, which is good.

The Opposition welcome and support this good Bill, because changes to flood protections for communities are long overdue, but I hope that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome will not mind my asking a few questions to understand how the powers will be implemented. Some of my questions will be for him, but I suspect that the Minister and her officials will have some insight on the more technical ones.

The Bill is timely, because there have been flooding incidents not only in the south-west. In the Lake district and across the country, flooding has had huge and disproportionate effects on small communities that often do not have the resources to provide the protection they need on their own. It is important that we set out a regulatory framework that will help them to pool the risk and the effort.

The Bill is also long overdue. Many of its measures should have been introduced by the Government long before they were proposed in a private Member’s Bill and we would have liked Government time to have been used for debating its provisions. None the less, we welcome the effort that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome has put into introducing the legislation. We need to invest time and energy in considering the proposals to make sure that they work for all our communities. We know that not every community will be affected by flooding and that not every community affected by flooding will be affected by the same type of flooding—coastal flooding and river flooding are very different.

[Sandy Martin]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although it is true that coastal flooding and river flooding are different and occur at different times for different reasons, the effects of climate change will tend to exacerbate both through increased and unpredictable rainfall and through rising sea levels?

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend is right and pre-empts one of my questions for the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome about how the provisions will work in coastal communities. From my reading of the provisions, it seems that many of them work for inland communities and river flooding in particular. I would be grateful if he set out how he envisages the provisions working in an environment where there is the risk of both river and coastal flooding, especially with regard to the cost implications that he just spoke about. Clearly, the responsibility for coastal flooding is much more expensive and, with the risk of climate change, can have much bigger impacts.

As I said, the Opposition welcome the Bill. Although we have no problem with the clauses, I have a few questions that I hope will provide some clarity about how the provisions will be implemented. As is outlined in clause 1, a rivers authority established under the Bill will be a locally accountable body with the powers to issue precepts to billing authorities that will collect money from council tax payers for additional local flood management work.

I understand from the Association of Drainage Authorities that the Department is not expecting a flurry of requests for the establishment of rivers authorities. The Bill does not impose rivers authorities on local councils, so it is for those that want them to be proactive. How will that work for councils that have suffered huge cuts and might not have the in-house resource to do that? How does the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome envisage rivers authorities being rolled out? Will there be additional support for the pilot rivers authorities to effectively overcome the early administrative obstacles that will inevitably come with the formation of a new rivers authority, so that pioneer projects can share best practice with the ones that follow?

How will local communities challenge and hold accountable local river and drainage authorities for their actions? It is good to hear that the majority of members of those committees will be from local councils, and so will be elected; that flow through of democratic accountability is important. On Second Reading in the main Chamber, I asked whether the Department would publish guidance on the composition of those boards, particularly on their gender balance. Having observed several such committees, they can be quite bloke-heavy—and, indeed, retired bloke-heavy—which, as a general rule, we should try to avoid when creating new public bodies. I will be grateful if the Minister or the Member in charge sets out whether there will be any guidance to that effect.

Will there be guidance on whether the heads of those authorities should serve for a fixed period, or will that period run and run? In some communities, the people who will be in charge of such bodies have also been in charge of everything else that came before. I just want to understand whether there will be accountability and a rotation of those roles. I assume that there will be the usual registers of interest to avoid any conflicts of interest, especially because these authorities will be dealing with small communities, where expertise is essential. There is a risk of a conflict of interest, so will the Minister set out how we will engineer out any of those risks at an early stage?

It seems that many of the provisions regarding rivers authorities’ proceedings in proposed new section 21D apply to local government, such as access to agendas, inspection of papers and inspection of minutes. Will there be guidance that such meetings should be open to the public to ensure full accountability, and that any private proceedings should be limited and face proper scrutiny? What input will members of the public have into the exercise of the duties of a rivers authority, especially in how the provisions in new section 21D will be implemented?

We know that there is an awful lot of experience in how to deal with flooding in our local communities, especially among farmers who have farmed land affected by flooding for many generations. A yearly flood risk management plan seems like a good option. I will be interested to see how the new bodies interact with water companies, particularly with the upstream thinking pioneered by many water companies that cover water catchment areas. A few of us in the Committee are covered by South West Water, which has pioneered upstream thinking for some time. We need to make sure that we are not setting up two bodies with slightly different agendas. That interaction needs to be there.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Warburton]

I am grateful to the Minister for fielding all the questions so well. My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane is well known as a passionate advocate of environmental matters. She is right that the Somerset biodiversity action plan is exciting and that the IDBs will play an integral part in ensuring that our splendid Somerset heritage is maintained.

[Sandy Martin]

Is it not the case that making more provision for wildlife and helping to keep any possible river flooding upstream also creates savings for people downstream? Will there be any mechanism for those savings to be used to compensate upstream agricultural operations that might lose out financially?

[David Warburton]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Drainage boards operate area by area, and those within the area will benefit. However, of course they work together and they understand the needs of surrounding areas. That brings us back to rivers authorities and the reason, perhaps, why my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness wants to bring them together and create a rivers authority. It is about working together in the best interests of us all.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3

Disclosure of Revenue and Customs information

Amendment made: 1, in clause 3, page 14, line 11, leave out “Data Protection Act 1998” and insert

“data protection legislation (within the meaning of section 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018)”.—(David Warburton.)

This amendment updates an outdated reference to the Data Protection Act 1998.

Clause 3, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 5

Consequential provision

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.