River Ecosystems
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The noble Lord raises the point that we are bringing back environmental law. We the British have been some of the pioneers of that within the European context and we are very pleased to have that environmental enhancement, wherever it comes from.
Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, the Northumberland Rivers Trust, of which I was at the time a trustee, tried to solve the problem of poor water quality in the River Blyth in spring and summer, when it went turbid and cloudy and there was a detrimental impact on the ecosystem. After doing a lot of work on farms, it was concluded that the main problem was the invasive alien signal crayfish. Does my noble friend agree that invasive alien species are a form of pollution that can be even more damaging than other forms?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, even invasive species usually need good-quality water in which to, unfortunately, flourish. I am very strong on this—invasive species have caused great harm to our natural ecosystems, and we need to manage those species properly, because otherwise we will lose our natural ecosystems.
Recycling
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The right reverend Prelate referred to research. Innovation and research is a considerable part of the resources and waste strategy, and there is £20 million for the plastic research and innovation fund. This is about finding not only better forms of plastic but compostable alternatives. We have the exciting prospect of recycling and reusing more in dealing with our waste in this country.
Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, does not the evidence strongly suggest that where we cannot eliminate the use of plastic we ought to incinerate it, rather than send it for so-called recycling to the Far East, where much of it ends up in rivers and thereby in the ocean?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My noble friend is right. This is why waste incineration for energy has increased to 41.4% whereas landfill, for instance, has fallen from 79% in 2000 to 12.5% currently. We are now increasing considerably the amount of energy recovery from incineration. If it is not to be reused or recycled then this is a much better option than any of the others, including landfill.
Invasive Non-native Species (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, one of the privileges I have in this House is to chair your Lordships’ EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee. We were very grateful to the Minister for giving evidence for the Brexit and biosecurity report we produced, and part of biosecurity is invasive species. One thing that particularly stood out for the committee was the cost of getting it wrong in this area, with the example given of the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease: it cost us some £8 billion to solve that crisis over many weeks, to say nothing of the misery caused to the farming community. As we have not yet managed to debate that report—and I suspect we will not do so for some months—perhaps I could ask one or two questions that came out of it concerning invasive species.
My first question is on notification, which has been touched on by other Members. The Minister said that, once we leave the EU, this would be a responsibility for the Secretary of State. But what will happen during the implementation period, if there is one, and after that in terms of the divergence of the European list that we have at the moment? Will we just copy that current list when we start afresh as a third country? But that list will change rapidly over time, so how will we deal with that divergence, particularly when it comes to border control?
On border control, at the moment, one of the fundamental building blocks of protection is an IT system called TRACES, which concerns the transfer of animal products, animals and vegetable products, and whatever bugs and insects they happen to have with them. Are we still looking to try to integrate that system and use it ourselves? Post Brexit, particularly if there is no deal, how will we replicate IT systems for the import and export of these types of materials? That is absolutely fundamental to being able to control the management of this.
We were shocked—and shocked is the right word—by one thing that the Minister from the other end, George Eustice, told us when he appeared before us. We suggested that, if there was no deal, we would have huge border issues around transit times. The Minister said that, in that case, the phytosanitary checks would not be done. That is a pretty dangerous approach, to be honest, and one that is, I suspect, contrary to WHO rules—to WTO rules, sorry; although perhaps it may be contrary to WHO rules too. Can the Minister help me understand how we will approach phytosanitary controls, particularly in the case of no deal—an option that the Government have not taken off the table?
On the island of Ireland, there is clearly no barrier or sea border—ineffective as that might be against certain things, as my noble friend Lady Parminter said when she talked about species coming across the channel. But our committee felt strongly that Ireland as an island should be treated as a single econological area, as it is at present, to some degree. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s view on that. A lot of trade goes between the two parts of Ireland but obviously there are no natural barriers at all.
Lastly, I am interested in reference laboratories. I do not know whether they come into this area—they certainly come under biosecurity. I am interested to hear from the Minister whether we should be concerned about reference laboratories in terms of invasive species. This is an area where, as the Minister says, we have great expertise, but it covers only certain areas that other parts of the European Union also cover. Will we up our game through Defra funding to be able to ensure that our scientific and research base is sufficient for this area?
Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, I walked through Hyde Park this morning and saw three invasive alien species: Egyptian geese, ring-necked parakeets and, of course, grey squirrels. That reminded me that there is quite a gap between the way we talk about the issue in this place as mainly a bureaucratic issue of getting the right regulations, committees and quangos in place, and what is actually needed on the ground, which is to control and, where possible, eradicate these species. The grey squirrel is doing terrible harm to the position of the red squirrel in this country. Will my noble friend confirm that, in this case, we are not changing policy at all and this is a simple tidying-up exercise, and what needs to follow is more effort going into actually doing something about these creatures?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my interests as set out in the register. I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the intention of this SI so clearly and for meeting with us prior to today, and to all noble Lords who raised important questions about the consequences of this SI. I share the concern raised about the scale and outcome of the consultations that allegedly have taken place. I agree that it would have been useful to have known the outcome because it might well have informed our debate this afternoon. But I pay tribute to the Minister, who I know takes a lead on this subject in the department. I know that he is passionate about the importance of effective biosecurity measures in the UK and he has been assiduous in his role in that. I know that he will share that expertise in his response to the many questions raised today.
Undoubtedly, biosecurity issues are critical to protecting animal, plant and human health, which in turn protect our environment, economy and food supply chain. As we know, invasive species alone already cost the UK economy at least £1.7 billion a year. Past outbreaks of diseases imported from overseas have killed millions of animals and trees, with new fears on the horizon including ash dieback and African swine fever. Those examples illustrate just how important biosecurity is and the devastating impact that animal and plant diseases can have if they are not controlled. But it is also true that we cannot tackle biosecurity issues alone. We have benefited in the past from EU data-sharing and collaboration and we will continue to need that cross-border liaison if we are to keep our flora and fauna safe in the future.
We debated the widespread consequences for the environment of leaving the EU during the EU withdrawal Bill, and many of those issues remain unresolved. It is a concern that will apply to this SI as well as many others that we will debate in the weeks and months ahead. At this time, with no deal on the horizon, there is a real risk that we will crash out of the EU on 29 March without a transition period. In those circumstances, as several noble Lords have said, we face a real governance gap as there will be no independent authority to which reports on actions on invasive species can be given and any UK biosecurity failings held to account. The promised office of environmental protection, which is supposed to replicate the functions of the European Commission, will not be operational until at least 2020 and we have yet to determine its precise duties, so will the Minister explain how that governance gap will be filled in the interim? Is it intended to revisit this, and other SIs that will also lose out from a lack of governance, to add the oversight of the OEP once the environment (principles and governance) Bill is passed?
In this SI, the obligation to report to the European Commission by 1 June 2019 and every six years thereafter is replaced by an obligation for Ministers to make and publish a report on the same timescales. That is all well and good, but where will those reports go and who will assess their validity? Does the Minister recognise that it is not acceptable simply to publish a report without any independent scrutiny of it, or is it assumed that we will have to rely on our good friends ClientEarth to take the Government to court when there are perceived failings?
I will revisit the EU environmental principles and preambles which we also debated at length in during scrutiny of the EU withdrawal Bill. They set a very important context for the scrutiny of this SI, especially as the EU invasive alien species regulation constitutes a key manifestation of the principle of preventive action. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, praised it today. As the Minister will know, Greener UK has expressed concern that the preamble of the IAS regulation is not included in this SI. It quite rightly makes the point that the preamble has a significant purpose in framing the intention and ecological context of the regulation’s articles, thereby guiding its implementation. Indeed, during the passage of the EU withdrawal Bill, the Government clarified that the future use of preambles and recitals is key to ensuring that the withdrawal Act meets its aim of providing legal certainty and stability within our domestic statute book. The Government also said that policy and decision-makers are likely to want to have regard to supporting material, such as recitals and preambles, to assist them in addressing questions of how policy might be made and how decisions might be taken in future, so they ought to be in SIs such as this so that we can be assured that they apply.
Greener UK has also advised that unless the letter and spirit of domestic legislation reflect this core focus in future, we would fail adequately to reflect Article 8 of the Convention on Biological Diversity domestically. Can the Minister tell us why these essential principles and provisions have been omitted in the transposing process? Will he commit to addressing this omission to ensure effective transposition in future?
Turning to the UK structures set out in this SI, we are concerned that the EU structures and governance mechanisms currently in place are not simple or straightforward to replicate domestically; for example, where decisions required for the effective application of EU regulations and directives are currently made by Ministers from the 28 EU member states, with all that breadth of knowledge and input, this SI will assign that role to Ministers from just the three UK countries. On the one hand, we are losing expertise from across the EU and, on the other hand, there is an assumption that the devolved Administrations will co-operate seamlessly. Can the Minister reassure us that mechanisms will be in place on day one after exit day to ensure full co-ordination between the devolved nations?
We are also concerned about the interplay between devolved and reserved competencies, given that each part of the UK has responsibility for its own biosecurity but also contributes to the UK’s overall biosecurity. Does the Minister agree that it would be undesirable for an invasive non-native species to be legally imported and/or kept and traded in one part of the UK while those activities were restricted in another part? Does the Minister share my concern that a lack of internal border controls could undermine the goals of one or more of the UK’s Administrations if differences were allowed to develop?
At the same time, we are concerned about whether Defra’s proposal to replace current access to the EU IAS scientific forum with a UK forum risks creating a knowledge and data gap—another issue raised by my noble friend Lady Young. What assessment have the Government made of the expertise and data-processing capacity of the UK agencies and organisations that will take over these new duties? Also, which organisation will gain responsibility for implementing the invasive non-native species legislation after the UK leaves the EU, and what checks will be put in place to ensure that it has the relevant expertise and resources?
Sustainable Fisheries for Future Generations
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, I welcome this ambitious and sensible Statement, with its candid recognition that the European common fisheries policy has been a disaster for both ecological and economic sustainability. I also welcome the ambition to regulate fisheries more sustainably, and particularly the reference to effort control. But will my noble friend confirm that the Government will learn from elsewhere in the world the important techniques of the transferable quotas that give fishermen themselves skin in the game of conservation, as that is a crucial element in such management?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, one point that has come to light is the importance of contemporary scientific advice. That is why Cefas will be so important. The problem with the common fisheries policy is that so much was predicated on something that may have been appropriate in the 1970s, but is no longer appropriate in the light of climate change and changes in fish stocks. This is a welcome opportunity for us to have more contemporary research and to learn, as my noble friend said, how better technology and science can furnish us with ways in which to care for the ecosystems in our waters, for which we will become responsible.
Bee Population
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, like others, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Bloomfield on securing this debate and join her in paying tribute to the Hymenoptera and other pollinators. I declare my interest as the owner of a farm. Actually, this is a bit of a humble brag of a declaration because I am proud of having created, at my own expense, the largest new wildflower meadow in the north-east of England—about 50 acres. Last week it was a riot of honey bees, bumble bees, solitary bees, hoverflies and butterflies, feasting on vetch, trefoil, daisies, buttercups and other flowers. It was indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, said, a blooming field. There you go.
Our farm and others that I know have also started creating flower-rich margins around arable fields as part of high-level stewardship schemes. That is my first point: farmers are doing a lot for pollinators these days, certainly much more than they once did. That is a huge change from 10 years ago, and one on which we can surely build.
Yet we are told that bees especially are in peril and that farmers are, at least in part, the cause of that peril. Is this true? Let us start with honey bees. Globally, there have never been more hives of honey bees; there are about 90 million in the world compared with about 60 million 50 years ago. In Europe and the UK, too, we are near to a record number of hives. There are of course continuing problems with Varroa mites, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, and Nosema and other pests, but there is no evidence of a decline in honey bees. It is true that there was colony collapse disorder 12 years ago, mostly in the United States, but it was a brief episode and is now reckoned to have been something to do with diseases or pests, not farming.
Presumably, that is why the opponents of neonicotinoids stopped talking about honey bees a few years ago and started talking more about wild bees. But where is the evidence that any decline in wild bees is recent or related to pesticides rather than to land management and habitat change? One recent study found that wild bees declined significantly before 1990 because of agricultural intensification but that the decline has since ceased or possibly reversed. I quote from that paper:
“these negative trends became substantially less accentuated during recent decades, being partially reversed for certain taxa (e.g. bees in Great Britain and Netherlands)”.
Even the 2016 Centre for Ecology and Hydrology modelling study by Woodcock et al showed that the most prolific crop pollinators among wild bees, which are the bumble bees, are not declining and some are increasing.
I am sure the Minister is aware of an important study published in Nature in 2015 that was conducted by 58 researchers across five continents. It found that,
“the species that are the dominant crop pollinators are the most widespread and abundant species in agricultural landscapes in general”.
It found that only about 2% of wild bee species are responsible for 80% of the crop pollination performed by wild bees. These are of course the wild bees that would come most into contact with neonicotinoid pesticides, yet the study finds that these 2% of species are actually ones that are thriving. Is the Minister also aware that leaf-cutter bees, which should be especially vulnerable to neonics because they eat leaves and because they are non-social, are thriving in neonic-treated canola fields in North America? Indeed they are used as commercial pollinators in western Canada.
I turn to the neonicotinoid issue. Neonicotinoids can kill bees; of course they can. They are insecticides—the clue is in the name—so lab studies showing that they can kill or harm bees are beside the point. Every farming system, as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, said, uses pesticides, even organic systems—neem oil, nicotine, spinosad, pyrethrin and copper sulphate are all used on organic farms. So it is a question of which insecticides do the least harm to non-target insects such as bees. Here, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, said, neonicotinoids have one advantage over their main alternative, pyrethroids: they are almost always used as seed dressings, not sprays, so only an insect that eats the plant gets poisoned. When I raised some of these points with an official from Defra, I was told that the persistence of neonics in the soil is a new worry that we have to take into account. However, I have researched the literature and can find no evidence to support that point, so I would be grateful if the Minister could enlighten me on it. Is he also aware that some 18 major field studies and nine review articles published over 10 years have overwhelmingly shown that under realistic conditions neonicotinoids have no effect on honey bees at the hive level, and that the EU’s bee guidance document was effectively constructed so that tier 3 field studies, which show no negative effects at the hive level, have been discounted or dismissed?
On my own farm we stopped using insecticide sprays almost entirely after the introduction of neonicotinoid seed dressings. We also stopped using slug pellets because, again, neonics are good for protection against slugs. We may now have to go back to using both to prevent slug damage and to prevent barley yellow dwarf virus, which is spread by aphids. If so, we will be using pyrethroids, which are probably worse. Even the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety—ANSES—says that of the 130 uses for neonics, 89% will be replaced by other pesticides, often pyrethroids. It said that it,
“has not been possible to identify substances or families of chemical substances that generally have a less unfavourable risk profile than neonicotinoids”.
In other words, the replacements will all be worse than the environment. So please will my noble friend the Minister promise that a proper unbiased study is done to check whether the ban on neonics makes things better or worse for bees? As the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, said, we just do not know the answer to that.
Of course, the environmental movement would prefer that we used fewer insecticides altogether—and so would I—so why on earth does it still oppose the introduction of genetically modified crops? That is the one proven way in which to farm with fewer insecticides and still produce competitive yields. Twenty-five years of increasing GMO use all around the world has shown that they unambiguously and undeniably reduce insecticide use. Wherever the Bt GMO technology has been applied, in maize, cotton, soybean and canola, it results in less insecticide use. We now know that we made a huge mistake in listening to the greens on this issue; they shot themselves and us in the foot. Had we developed insect-resistant GMO wheat, by now we would be using far fewer insecticides in the British countryside. Why are not the Government saying that out loud? Why is not Buglife saying it out loud? Why is not the organic movement saying this?
Since others have done so, I end with a little bee story. I was sitting on a river bank about a month ago and noticed that there was a very big colony of solitary mining bees digging holes in the bank. I lay down and watched them for a happy hour in the sunshine; then I noticed that there were also some very pretty little wasps hanging around—like ordinary wasps, except smaller and with red legs and red antennae. They were not digging their own holes but just hanging around the mining bee holes. I went back and looked them up and found that it was not a wasp but a bee called the nomad cuckoo bee. It sneaks in when the mining bee is not looking and lays an egg which eats the mining bee baby and then takes over the hole. I do not know what lesson I am drawing from that for your Lordships’ House—none, I hope.
Agriculture: Gene Editing
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Viscount Ridley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to encourage the use of gene editing in agriculture.
Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and, in doing so, I refer to my farming interests as listed in the register.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)
My Lords, the Government welcome research involving gene editing in this country and overseas in helping to breed pest and disease resistance into crops and animals more efficiently than is possible using traditional breeding methods. We see technological innovation as key in increasing productivity and sustainability in agriculture. This research is being carried out under the appropriate controls. We are committed to proportionate regulation that protects people, animals and the environment.
Viscount Ridley
I thank my noble friend for that reply. On the point about regulation, is he aware that Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Canada, the US and Sweden all now say that CRISPR and other gene-editing technologies should be regulated like any other plant-breeding technology—only faster and safer—and that Australia is about to follow suit? The Advocate-General of the European Court of Justice has strongly recommended the same course of action. Therefore, does my noble friend agree that the UK should urgently make a similar announcement to encourage the development of this economically and environmentally beneficial technology here in the UK?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, we are in communication with the regulators in the countries that my noble friend has referred to and are aware of the decisions that they have made. Those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis and that is the approach that we are taking. We agree that gene-edited plants, for instance, which could have been produced by traditional breeding do not need to be regulated as GMOs. In fact, the Government intervened in the ECJ case. I am aware of what the Advocate-General said and thank the United Kingdom for the helpful intervention. We are now waiting for the court’s judgment.
Plastic: Recycling
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I am a unionist and therefore, wherever things are going well, wherever it is in the country, I am delighted. I have looked into this. In Wales a lot of the recycling percentage—it comes down to weight—is down to the fact that it has done far more food and garden waste recycling. That is why it has a higher recycling rate: 58% compared with 44.9% in England. I am very pleased that there is success in Wales on that. We certainly want to improve that, but there are plenty of local authorities in England with recycling rates of over 60% and I congratulate all local authorities that are recycling, whether it is plastic, food or other materials.
Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, with respect to marine pollution, will my noble friend also take a look at the issue of PCBs—polychlorinated biphenyls—and in particular at the work of Paul Jepson of the Zoological Society of London? He concluded that, although PCBs were banned in the 1980s, they are still getting into European seas and are responsible for the fact that the resident pod of killer whales has not been able to have babies around the British Isles for many years.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I take that very seriously indeed. It is fair to say in marine and across the piece that international collaboration is key. Whether it is the G7, the G20, the UN, OSPAR—
Environment: 25-year Plan
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, it is always an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. I declare an interest as a landowner with a strong interest in practical conservation—for which, two years ago, I was proud to win the Bledisloe Gold Medal from the Royal Agricultural Society of England. That, I believe, is what is known as a humble brag.
I wish to make two points. The first is that this 25-year plan makes a promising start towards recognising that environmental improvements are achieved mainly by people on the ground such as farmers and gamekeepers rather than commanded by officials in offices, but that it needs to go further in this direction. Secondly, science, technology and innovation must be encouraged to deliver better environmental outcomes. They are on the whole the solution, not the problem. Instead of going back to nature, we must go forward to nature.
The Government are right to reject proposals from those who lobbied strongly for greater statutory regulation, inspection and punitive fines for farmers, an approach that has often failed to help wildlife very much. We need to make sure that landowners are not left worse off if rare species turn up on their land. Voluntary conservation encouraged by carrots will achieve more than enforcement of compulsory schemes with sticks. If I read the plan right, it will aim to encourage rapid take-up, with minimal red tape, of prescriptions like conservation headlands, which are working well on my farm and others for the return of tree sparrows, linnets, yellowhammers and the like. I particularly welcome the inclusion of so many recommendations made by farmer-facing organisations such as the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust with its first-hand experience at its experimental Leicestershire farm, Allerton, of how to combine profitable farming with increasing biodiversity. So it is refreshing to read the recognition in the plan that biodiversity depends on productive farming.
Sustainable intensification is the key concept here. On a global scale, you cannot have space for wilderness and biodiversity unless you also have highly productive agriculture. Since 1960 we have reduced by 68% the amount of land globally needed to produce a given quantity of food. That spares land for nature. Likewise, in the British countryside, a productive wheat field with a bird-seed crop around its edges, like I saw some examples of from my train window this morning, is far better for birds than a messy bit of bad farming or abandoned land.
In this respect, can I ask my noble friend the Minister to clarify how conservation covenants, mentioned on page 62 of the 25-year plan, would work? If a landowner commits to manage part of his land permanently for conservation, by agreement with conservation bodies, might there be, as there is in the United States, a tax incentive like gift aid or a grant? If not, what is the incentive that will drive the take-up of such covenants? Could he also say how he plans to make sure that environmental subsidies to farmers and landowners are paid by results and not by intentions, as is the case today? This has been mentioned in the debate by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and others. Surely a farmer or indeed a bird charity should have to prove that lapwings on their land are breeding successfully, rearing chicks to fledging, rather than just being attracted to breed there and then having their nests destroyed by crows or ploughs or seeing their chicks starve for lack of suitable brood-rearing habitat. Could he therefore confirm what all landowners know, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, that a vital tool of conservation is predator control of grey squirrels, mink, foxes, crows and other species living at unnatural densities, and that this will be recognised in any new environmental subsidy regimes?
I welcome the concept of environmental net gain. It is essential that we emulate successful conservation elsewhere in the world by offsetting development with habitat creation off-site. This is a far more effective tool than trying to avoid hurting every individual newt or bat that happens to live in a spot zoned for development merely to provide employment to bat inspectors and newt inspectors.
On the matter of science and technology, I hope that the Government recognise the fantastic opportunities that innovation represents for helping the environment. This is something conservation organisations do not always fully grasp, in my experience. No-till farming, made possible by cheap herbicides, can vastly improve soils. Precision weeding with robots will soon be able to reduce the use of chemicals. Autonomous machinery can replace heavy tractors with platoons of smaller, lightweight robots that work at night and cause less soil compaction. The indoor production of salads and herbs using LED lights can greatly reduce the land take of some kinds of farming. In Japan there are warehouses producing 30,000 lettuce heads a day with no chemicals and using less water and energy than if they were produced out of doors.
Genetic modification has demonstrably cut the use of insecticides, improved the yield of crops throughout the world, and can do so here. We now import vast quantities of GM soybeans for animal feed, having failed to genetically modify our homegrown peas. An exciting invention from Nottingham University called N-Fix coats plant seeds with beneficial bacteria to enable cereals to fix nitrogen from the air, reducing the need for synthetic fertiliser. There is growing evidence that the new technique of CRISPR gene editing can improve yields, spare land and reduce the need for sprays or ploughing. Gene editing can also lead to solutions to the growing problem of how to eradicate invasive species, as can the development of contraceptive vaccines, including the vital work of the Animal and Plant Health Agency.
I suspect we can much reduce reliance on chemicals over the next few decades, not by going back to organic agriculture with its destructive reliance on repeated cultivation and its use of toxic copper-based pesticides, but by going forward to nature with the new technologies of precision farming and gene editing. We can have more prosperous British farming with less subsidy and more flourishing wildlife with a few carefully targeted incentives. We can save the taxpayer money, boost wildlife and preserve the best of the British countryside all at the same time.
Plans to Improve the Natural Environment and Animal Welfare
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, with the indulgence of the House I will speak briefly in the gap. I had not put my name down because I did not think that I would make it to the start of the debate, but as it happens I just made it. I will speak briefly and will confine myself to one point; I promise not to be what my noble friend Lord Framlingham might call a Back-Bench borer.
My point is simply to say that we must not on this issue sound like what Spiro Agnew called the “nattering nabobs of negativism”. We have heard negative things about the environment throughout this afternoon, and all too often this is how we talk about the environment, in terms of things getting worse. While there is a lot wrong with the environmental condition of the planet and the country, some things are going in the right direction, and we should build our policy on the successes there have been.
When I was a child, the River Tyne had no salmon in it or otters or ospreys, but now it has all three. That is a dramatic improvement that I have seen in my lifetime. I now farm my own farm in such a way that tree sparrows have come back. I have planted the largest wildflower meadow in the north of England, which I am proud of; it is absolutely buzzing with bees and other things. We also have hares and curlews breeding again. So you can improve the environment while farming—not profitably, in my case, but at least not with significant losses.
I spent a glorious couple of dawns this spring in Weardale watching the lekking display of the blackcock. If none of your Lordships have seen this, it is our British bird of paradise. These males gather together and do sex and violence for about three hours in the dawn light. The place I went to had five males 10 years ago; it now has over 100. The noise of the curlews calling was continuous—there was literally not a moment during those dawns when you could not hear a curlew in the background. That is largely because of gamekeepers in that area. My noble friend Lord Caithness mentioned Allerton, where the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust is showing that profitable farming can live alongside great conservation and great improvement in soil quality. I was taken there recently by Alastair Leake of the trust in Loddington, who dug his spade into the ground and showed me how deep the worms go there because of low-till or min-till agriculture.
My noble friend mentioned South Georgia; I was lucky enough to go there last year and it is a paradise of wildlife: there are unbelievable numbers of king penguins, fur seals, elephant seals, albatrosses and petrels. But it is not a pristine wilderness—it is a restored masterpiece. A hundred years ago there were no fur seals, almost no elephant seals, hardly any king penguins and no whales—we saw right whales and humpback whales around the coast. Why? Because we used those things as a renewable energy resource. That is what we were doing to that ecosystem. We have now restored it, so it can be done.
We should remember to build our policy on the environment on the success stories of how we have solved these problems rather than simply continue to talk about them as if they were insoluble and as if there was nothing we can do.
Brexit: Food Prices
Viscount Ridley Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Clearly, the Government are very conscious of the need to ensure that there is a safety net for vulnerable parts of the community; it is why we have the triple lock for pensions and why we spend more than £50 billion a year on benefits to support disabled people. Indeed, with the getting of many more people into employment, the number of workless households with children has decreased enormously. In many ways the matters the noble Baroness raises are matters for the Chancellor—but, as I say, we are very strongly of the view that all we are doing is providing a safety net and encouraging employment.
Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the EU external tariff punishes producers in poor countries and consumers here in wealthier countries and that cancelling it on Brexit on products such as oranges, coffee and rice that we do not grow here would cut the cost of living for British people dramatically?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, as I say, we want a unique and very special relationship with our EU friends and the continent of Europe, but the United Kingdom has always sourced food from a variety of sources and there is a high degree of diversity of foodstuffs—so we are looking to work with our European partners and also to seek deals across the globe.