Environment Bill

Tim Farron Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab) [V]]

I am pleased to support the amendments in the name of the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas).

The Government said they had a desire to have a “world-leading watchdog”. I wonder whether there was a misprint and it should have said a “world-leading lapdog”. Do they really mean it? I was on the hearing that met Dame Glenys Stacey, and she is a robust regulator, with a proven record of independence, and I trust her. The Secretary of State should set the criteria and the parameters that he expects the Office for Environmental Protection to work to, but he should then leave it to the regulator to regulate. Dame Glenys, I believe, has been appointed as the right person, so let her do the job without further interference. Let her also have the benefit of interim targets, because for someone regulating, targets can be really helpful. I listened to the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and he is absolutely right. We need interim targets to be able to hold people to account, but also to be able to incentivise businesses and give them clarity about what they have to achieve.

When we are talking about enforcement, it is perhaps salutary if I remind colleagues of those who were there when, as chair of the then all-party group on biodiversity, I worked with Friends of the Earth to organise a photo opportunity for colleagues who came to support ensuring there was no relaxation of the ban on neonicotinoids. It was incredibly well supported: over 100 Members of Parliament came to support that campaign, and I have the photos to prove it. So for those Members who go into the Lobby tonight saying they will support the Government on lifting the ban, perhaps we, with Friends of the Earth, should dig out those photographs and start publishing them one by one to show just how much Members meant it when they had their photograph taken with that bee.

On deforestation, the Government are saying that there should be an imposition on companies to look at the legality of the sourcing of their materials, such as soy and timber. Legality is not enough. Yesterday I met a number of people representing the Brazilian interests as well as the commercial interests, and it is clear that what has happened already in Brazil is that the laws have been reduced because of the pressure. Companies must be asked to look at the sustainability of their supply chain, not just the legality of it.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD) [V]]

The Office for Environmental Protection concerns me greatly, because I think it is going to offer us very little protection. Its powers include the terrifying capacity to point out that the Government have failed to safeguard environmental protections or to maintain standards, but it cannot force the Government to comply, it cannot fine and it cannot prosecute. It can shame the Government, but if I could be so flippant, Madam Deputy Speaker, this appears to be a Government who know no shame, as demonstrated by the last-minute decision to delay this already criminally overdue Bill by maybe six months or more.

This is outrageous, but the Government will tough it out and will probably bear no consequences for doing so. However, there will be huge consequences for our environment, for biodiversity, for future generations and, indeed, for farmers and food producers. No formal regulation over these months and pretty much toothless enforcement thereafter will mean the steady erosion of animal welfare and environmental protections just, as it happens, as the Government are engaging in negotiating trade deals around the world. Some might consider this to be a rather convenient hiatus that will allow them to throw British farming under a bus once again. Farmers will lose the ability to look at our regulation as something that they can use to strengthen their hand when it comes to those negotiations. The undermining of our land management community—of our farmers—is a massive threat to our environment. Without them, we lose the practical capacity to deliver biodiversity gains.

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[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I had high hopes of being able to start my speech by speaking the words of Margaret Thatcher in 1989 when she addressed the United Nations on the issue of climate change—she outlined the destruction and damage that was facing the world unless action was taken—but, sadly, there is not enough time to be able to read out the full quotation. However, those words are true now, and there is more that can be done.

I welcome the Government’s announcement today, their report and their Bill for what they do in addressing waste, water and air quality. These are all things that, as a triumvirate, must be addressed so that we are able to regain our control over the environment and help it to flourish in years to come. Of course, the Government have already set a number of ambitious targets—from net zero for 2050 to ending the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2030, eradicating gas boilers, planting more trees and looking at new agricultural regenerative techniques. These are the ambitious things that we must do.

I would like to start by talking a little bit about waste. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) has already mentioned, there is an important element here about ending single-use plastics, but we can do more. I ask whether the Government might consider incentivising businesses to ensure that we have full-cycle plastics that are used from cradle to grave, and then recycled. We can incentivise the industries that pollute this world to make sure that they are adhering more to the rules and regulations of countries across the world.

In my own constituency, air quality has remained an incredibly important issue. The A385 runs through my patch, next to a school, which has some of the highest levels of pollution in south Devon, and planning development alongside it is likely to further add to that problem. It is the same in Brixham, where the new Inglewood development would see roads and traffic increased, leading to further pollution of air quality. These are the things that we must take into account when we are building, improving infrastructure and developing for our entire community.

On water, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) has done so impressively well on his private Member’s Bill, something I have supported since I coming to this place. I look forward to seeing what he brings back to the House and how the Government work further with him, but as a keen swimmer all year round—without a wetsuit, I hasten to add—I am very keen that we do all we can to improve the quality of our waterways and of our coastline, and to ensure that we are able to improve the way in which we engage on these issues, especially with groups such as Surfers Against Sewage.

The need to be able to discuss how reports might be put into this place was raised under new clause 6, but I would say that we do have the Environment Agency reports that come to Parliament and are reported on, but we also have the OEP, which I think is very welcome as it enables us to take a hold on our environment and improve it.

[Tim Farron [V]]

On the air quality amendments, the targets in this Bill do not even meet those recommended by the World Health Organisation, as has been said by other Members. That should rightly alarm all of us, especially given that the UK has such a terrible track record in recent years. When we were a member of the EU, it fined us regularly for failing to meet the targets set at that point. Air quality standards are of the utmost importance, and for the Government to under aim and be under-ambitious here is deeply troubling. We are being asked to accept not only decreased air quality standards, but delayed standards, as this Bill is pushed back once again, after years of delay. Yet, tragically, we now increasingly see “poor air quality” cited as a cause of death on the death certificates of many, many people. As many colleagues from both sides of the House, have said, this is a matter of life and death, Delayed action at this time, in the hiatus between the strong targets and standards we had up to the end of 2020 and the point at which we get whatever standards we will get when this Bill is finally agreed, allows bad habits to build up and bed in, and it makes Britain’s poor air quality harder still to clear up.

On waste, the absence of plastic reduction targets beggars belief, given the rhetoric we have heard from many in the Government. The Conservative manifesto made a specific reference—a promise even—to

“ban the export of plastic waste”

to developing countries. The Government have broken that promise. So not only are they not tackling our plastic problem here at home, but we are adding to the plastic problem of poorer countries overseas.

My amendment 30 related to water quality. We simply want the Government to monitor the impact of the abstraction of water on biodiversity in chalk streams and in other waterways. This Bill does not do that, and it is a simple and obvious request. Only 14% of England’s rivers and lakes are in a good quality water position at the moment, so the need for this measure is clear.

So we see an unambitious Bill and a delay, which means even this poor ambition will be hard to bring to fruition, given that we will have to wait many months. This takes commitment to underachievement to new heights, undermining the quality of our environment and animal welfare. These are times when we need to be setting clear and ambitious targets if we are going to lead the world, but I am afraid that we are lagging far behind.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

It has been a pleasure to serve on the Environmental Audit Committee and discuss a number of topics that form part of this landmark Environment Bill through our inquiries. Our Chair, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), has campaigned tirelessly for better water quality and no doubt through his work we have in this Bill sewerage undertakers now being required to produce a statutory drainage and sewerage management plan to actively address environmental risks such as sewer overflows and their impact on water quality.

Without doubt, this Bill paves the way for the Government to continue putting the environment at the very heart of their decision making, with legally binding targets on biodiversity, air quality and waste efficiency just a few of a plethora of new ambitions. I was heartened by the Minister’s opening comments on plastic pollution and new clause 11. As an MP for 50 miles of stunning North Norfolk coast, I am glad that provisions in this Bill will help to reduce plastics on our beaches. This new clause would require the Secretary of State to set targets to reduce plastic pollution and reduce the volume of non-essential single-use plastic products sold. If plastic pollution continues at current rates, plastic in the oceans will outweigh fish by 2050. There is a strong public appetite for action: 63% of people want to reduce their consumption of plastic, and 77% want the Government to take more action to protect the ocean, so I am glad that this is being covered.

Environment Bill

Tim Farron Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 26th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will restrict my remarks to amendments 47 and 49, which stand in my name, and amendment 29, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). The amendments have in common the aim of protecting the landscape and the environment both in very rural areas like mine and in urban and suburban parts of the UK that are threatened by the Government’s planning reforms.

Amendments 47 and 49 would ensure that environmental land management schemes contain a mechanism to deliver adequate financial support to our farmers for delivering landscape benefits, in particular species conservation and protected site strategies, and so rewarding our farmers for maintaining the beauty of our landscape. We have done that inadvertently through various funding schemes over the past few decades, but it is about to drop by the wayside. It is hard to put a price on landscape beauty, but it is vital that we do so.

In the lake district and the Yorkshire dales, in a normal year our Cumbria tourism economy is worth more than £3 billion and employs 60,000 people in our county—tourism is comfortably the biggest employer in Cumbria. Underpinning that economy is the beauty of the landscape.

[Neil Parish]

I agree very much with the hon. Gentleman. Farming, landscape and tourism are closely integrated. As we deal with the Environment Bill, we have to remember that agriculture and tourism are interlinked, especially in the rural parts of this great country of ours.

[Tim Farron]

The Select Committee Chair is absolutely right, and I completely agree. We have to find a mechanism to make sure that we reward those who maintain the beauty of our landscape.

I have often been in places such as Barbondale, Dentdale, Langdale, Kentmere, Longsleddale and other glorious bits of my part of the world. I almost feel compelled to express envy of the hill farmer I am with in his or her glorious environment, but often the response is a slightly sad look that says, “I can’t eat the view.” It is all very well having a beautiful place, but if those who work there make a pittance, what good is it to them? That is what is happening in the uplands, where people are steadily moving away as farms fail and close. The Government’s plan to offer early retirement to farmers offers no mechanism to get young people in to replace them, and just in the last few days, the only agricultural college in Cumbria has closed.

I am desperate to ensure that the ELMS rewards farmers for landscape value, but there is currently no effective mechanism to do that. That should be added, which is why the amendment matters. I am also concerned about what the Bill means for the status of some of the beautiful parts of the United Kingdom. UNESCO awarded world heritage site status to the lake district just a few years ago. The report that resulted in the award of that status gave as much credit to the farmers as it did to the glaciers. These are managed, crafted landscapes, and we should reward the farmers who provide them.

There are many bad things about our not being in the EU, but one good thing is that we do not need to borrow EU measures. We do not need to borrow the plan for funding ELMS through the mechanism of income forgone. We should be rewarding farmers for the value of what they do, not paying the pittance they were paid in the first place.

In the time left, I will speak to amendment 29. Local nature resource strategies are a good idea. They are welcome, but they are weak, and they will not be worth the paper they are written on if they are not material to the considerations and decisions made by local planning committees. If we are to protect our green belt, whether it be in such places as the constituency of the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda), other parts of the ring around London, or indeed a very rural area like mine, we must not put planners in a situation where they have no power to prevent developers from damaging the countryside or, as is the case in a place like mine, to prevent developers from delivering up to 50 houses without having to deliver a single affordable property.

Nine out of 10 planning permission applications get passed. More than a million planning applications for homes have not been delivered. Planning is not the problem; planning is the protection for our communities and our environment. That is why this amendment is important to try to undo and mitigate some of the Government’s attack on our rural communities.

[Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), and it is a real pleasure to speak in this debate. It was over a year ago that I made my maiden speech specifically so that I had the opportunity to contribute to the Second Reading of this Bill, so it is a pleasure to be back here again.

It is worth reflecting on the context of where we are now, because in the intervening time, the pieces of our country and the world have been almost thrown into the air, and we still do not quite know where they will land. The pandemic makes the Bill even more important than it was over a year ago. It is fair to say that all of us have had time to reassess priorities. We have considered our priorities in life—our quality of life, our family, our health and our friends—and this Bill has become even more important, because many of us, with the roads quiet and having limited time to get out, have reflected on the importance of our natural environment and what is around us. Our appreciation of nature and the need to focus on species loss and the things that make our environment unique to our localities are even more important than they were.

With respect, I must disagree with the shadow Secretary of State’s characterisation of this as not being a landmark Bill, because it is a landmark Bill. It is a bold Bill. I particularly reject the characterisation that it is a mark of a Government or, indeed, any Member on the Government Benches not caring about the environment, because it absolutely is not that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I put on record my thanks and pay tribute to the officials and Clerks who have been involved throughout this whole lengthy process. I will not be churlish; I will say thanks to the Ministers as well. Whether we agree with everything in the Bill or not, it is a tough job to pilot a Bill, particularly over the period of time we have been discussing it in this place.

I suspect, as the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) said, that this is not the last we will hear of this, because I think our friends in the other place may have a thing or two to say about the Bill and seek to strengthen what, in principle at least, is not a bad Bill. There are plenty of things in it where there is great consensus and where we can agree. I shall focus on three areas where I do not agree so much. In particular, I will focus on my concerns about where the Bill is good in theory, but may be very weak in practice. Those concerns relate to regulation, the delivery of environmental goods through land management, and our ability to control and protect local environments.

First, on regulation, I am greatly concerned that the Office for Environmental Protection looks to be a relatively weak watchdog with few teeth and whose key figures are to be directly appointed by the Government. It will be funded by and not sufficiently independent from Government. It will therefore always be considered to be speaking with some level of restriction. The power, independence and penalties available to it do not look anything like as strong as what we had before we left the European Union. We could have easily been able to match that level of independence and robustness. The protections and firewalls have not been put in, so I fear very much that we will have perhaps great policies, poorly regulated.

Nothing highlights that more than the current discussion we are having about the potential Australian trade deal. If we are deeply committed to protecting almost uniquely high-level British animal welfare and environmental standards, how can we go ahead and do a deal with a country with significantly lower environmental and animal welfare standards? That surely undermines our ability to enact those standards throughout the whole United Kingdom and undermines British farming. British farming is the best in the world. We say that a lot, don’t we? It is important to understand why it is the best in the world. It is the best because of the regulation, but it is the best mostly because of our culture of the family farm and the unit of the family farm, which means we have close husbandry—almost hefted human beings, never mind hefted Herdwicks.

That is of massive importance to my second area of concern. Poor protections that would allow a trade deal with Australia could be a precedent for trade deals with other countries that undercut the quality of British produce and undermine British farmers. The concern is about not just weak regulation and a lack of independence, rigour and sanctions in that regulation, but the delivery of environmental goods through land management. The amendment in my name that I spoke to earlier is about ensuring that environmental land management schemes include significant and adequate rewards for maintaining the aesthetics and the beauty, as well as the biodiversity, of our landscape. That is crucial, but so far it is missing. Mr Deputy Speaker, I worry about your constituency, mine and many like them. They are absolutely natural environments, but they are managed, crafted landscapes that have been worked by our farmers over centuries. They are as beautiful as they are because they are managed. If we have a situation where they are not rewarded through the new scheme directly for the preservation of those landscapes, the risk to the world heritage site status of the Lake District is there, the risk to our tourism economy is there and the risk to biodiversity is there.

I would add that the Government’s movement towards ELM, which in theory we are all in favour of, is potentially risky because they are insisting on phasing out the basic payment scheme much more quickly than they are going to bring in ELM. That will leave upland farmers, for example, losing half their income in the next few years. Many of them will leave the industry. Indeed, the Government wish to facilitate them leaving the industry through the retirement package they announced last week, but they have no plans to bring anybody new and young into the industry to replace them. As they preside over the closure of Newton Rigg College in Penrith, for example, where are we getting our young farmers from to deliver these environmental goods? All the best environmental policies in the world are meaningless if we do not have the hands to enact them. It is like the England manager Gareth Southgate drawing a fantastic strategy in the dressing room and then having no players on the pitch. The danger is that the Environment Bill may be a great strategy, but with no players on the pitch we will not score any goals.

My third and final concern is that, when we look at the Government’s plan for local nature resource strategies, it is a good plan and it is a weak plan. There is no mechanism to ensure that those strategies have any impact on decision making locally. That is of particular relevance, given the Government’s plans to undermine planning, democracy and local communities, and to surrender the local environment to developers without proper accountability. In a community such as mine that depends so much on the beauty of our environment, that is a danger. The average number of homes built in a new development is usually fewer than 50 and the Government are looking to give developers the opportunity to do pretty much what they like up to a development of that size.

Put together, all those things draw a picture of a Bill that is broadly well-intentioned and does a lot of good, but, when it comes down to it, it does not provide itself with the mechanisms to actually deliver what it says in the first place. Good in principle—weak in practice.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Environment Bill

Tim Farron Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I will be brief, because I know we want to end. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) and my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) for articulating what I would have wanted to say, had I had longer to speak. I also thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for their accessibility in this ongoing negotiation on sewage storm overflows.

This issue has been a passion of mine since childhood, when I grew up on the Yorkshire coast and swam in said sewage. Now I have the great privilege of representing two coastlines in Cornwall, as well as inland waterways, and to have been a member of Surfers Against Sewage since before I moved to Cornwall. It has been a great regret that the organisation has been at the centre of a very nasty campaign, supported by hon. Members on the Opposition side, accusing me of having voted to pump raw sewage into the oceans, which I have not. All of us in this Chamber can agree that we want to put an end to that. If anybody accuses me of that again, I would be grateful if they wrote to my office so that I can provide them with a detailed answer.

I look forward to seeing Truro and Falmouth benefit from the myriad of measures within the Bill, which I do not have time to go into. I am grateful to Members of both Houses of Parliament, of all political persuasions, for showing how well this House works and how it is possible to get the Government to move on something that is extremely important to everyone. I will leave my comments there, because I know that we are short of time.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I will finish within a minute and 20 seconds, Madam Deputy Speaker. Let us just focus on the sewage, then, given that that is the time available to us.

We have, thanks to the Government amendment, now a duty on water companies to progressively reduce the amount of sewage discharged through storm overflows —but there are no targets for either volume or timescale. That leaves water companies with the power to continue doing what they do now. This amendment is something to get Conservative Back Benchers off the hook, rather than to give water companies the direction they need.

I represent the English Lake District. I am disgusted that there is raw sewage being dumped into Lake Windermere for 71 days, collectively, in any given year. This amendment will do nothing to stop that. Currently, a water company dumps 40% of all the phosphates in Windermere. If that goes down to 39%, there is no measure to say whether that is okay, so I assume the water companies will think that it is okay.

What about timescale? What if the amount goes down over five years or over 10 years? All the Government amendment does is give the Back Benchers of the Conservative party an excuse to write to their constituents and say, “There has been further movement in the right direction.” It allows the Government to let the water companies off the hook, while doing nothing at all to demand what is necessary to clean up our lakes and our rivers.

[Rebecca Pow]

We have been two and a quarter years bringing this enormous Bill through Parliament. I want to thank all hon. Members and hon. Friends for their contributions, particularly those who have approached me personally over the past few days: my hon. Friends the Members for Redcar (Jacob Young), for Workington (Mark Jenkinson), for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), for North Cornwall (Scott Mann), for Devizes (Danny Kruger), for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton), for Yeovil (Mr Fysh), for Havant (Alan Mak), for Keighley (Robbie Moore), for Hertford and Stortford (Julie Marson), for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford), for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) and for Watford (Dean Russell).

I also thank many others from all around our coasts, including my hon. Friends the Members for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory), for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray), for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) and for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie). If I have left anybody out, I will be writing to them—[Interruption.] And my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely). Yes, we will be looking at ecological sites and bathing waters first when we bring in the storm overflows legislation. That should placate the wild swimmer from the Opposition Benches, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard).

I have outlined in enormous detail why we should vote for these amendments—