Grand Committee
Environmental Principles Policy Statement
(2 years, 4 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Parminter
That the Grand Committee takes note of the draft environmental principles policy statement, laid before Parliament on 11 May, and the requirement in Section 17(4) of the Environment Act 2021 that the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the statement will contribute to the improvement of environmental protection and sustainable development.
Relevant document: 3rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument).
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, the environmental principles policy statement is one of the four cornerstones of achieving the Government’s environmental ambitions enshrined in the Environment Act, alongside the long-term targets, the OEP—the independent regulator—and the environmental improvement plan, which will chart and drive progress. It is the means to put the environment at the heart of government decision-making, setting out how internationally recognised principles should be interpreted and, as importantly, showing the Government’s ambition for what its use should deliver.
I called for this debate because I have significant concerns that the draft jeopardises delivering on this potential and on the Government’s environmental ambition, which I think we all share: to leave the environment in a better state than that in which we found it. It is not just me who has those concerns. I am privileged to chair the Environment and Climate Change Committee, which had concerns, as did the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, in his place today. His committee drew this to the special attention of the House in its third report of this Session. This debate and the EPPS—I shall use the shortened form or we shall be here all afternoon—are undoubtedly worthy of the scrutiny that the Environment Act affords the opportunity for.
I am extremely grateful to the Government, first, to Minister Pow and her officials for coming before the Environment and Climate Change Committee on 9 June and for engaging with other parliamentary committees. I am also grateful to the Government for finding time for this debate today and for their commitment, despite our now being beyond the allotted time for parliamentary scrutiny, to consider the responses as they draft the final statement.
I was particularly pleased when we had our meeting with Minister Pow to hear of the steps being taken by the MoD to take forward the intentions of the principles, consistent with its role. The exclusion of certain areas of fiscal and defence policy from the duty to have regard to the EPPS was initially of extreme concern to Members of both Houses during the passage of the Environment Act. I therefore applaud the work of the MoD and Defra, which I am sure has been chivvying the MoD along, to pick this up. I say with some degree of confidence that my committee will be keen to look at the progress the departments are making in due course.
The Government have made some welcome changes in light of the consultation they undertook on the first draft, but significant concerns remain, first, about whether it provides clarity to Ministers to know how to interpret the five internationally recognised principles and in so doing achieve the Government’s ambition; and secondly, about their failure to propose any effective monitoring. In a letter to the Minister of 23 June, my committee highlighted a number of areas where we had concerns and I shall focus on a handful today.
First, what constitutes a proportionate approach in applying the principles to policy-making? There is an extremely strong case that the environment remains insufficiently weighted in the articulation of what is a proportionate response. The concern about encouraging an excessive degree of proportionality was raised in debates on the environmental principles during the passage of the Environment Bill and again by many respondents to the Government’s consultation on the first draft. It is disappointing, therefore, that this latest draft does not sufficiently address this. Indeed, it is arguable that the intent is further weakened in the draft EPPS in its definition of what constitutes a proportionate response by Ministers when considering the potential effects of a policy option. The draft says that it depends on whether
“the environmental effects of a policy … are both a) likely to occur, and b) likely to have a significant effect.”
Surely, if we want to capture the consideration of environmental effects into decision-making, the wording should be if they are “possible”, rather than likely to occur and have serious environmental consequences.
The draft is also far clearer on what policymakers should not do rather than what they should. For example, it says:
“Policymakers are not expected to carry out a ‘deep-dive’ assessment into all environmental effects … Nor are policymakers required to replicate the environmental impact assessment process”,
and goes on to allow policymakers to
“apply the policy statement in a lighter-touch way, where appropriate”.
Without any examples of what policymakers should do, the overriding impression is that the intent is to minimise the effort for policymakers to consider the environmental impacts. It is therefore imperative that the proposed toolkit of resources for government departments, to support them in implementing that duty, makes crystal clear what is required.
Therefore, although I appreciate that the interpretation and application of the environmental principles by the Minister should be appropriately balanced between the environmental, social and economic considerations, it is fair to say that I am not yet confident that the articulation of what constitutes a proportionate response in the draft statement protects environmental concerns from being consistently overridden by economic and social interests.
Secondly, my committee agreed with the OEP, which expressed in its letter from Dame Glenys Stacey to Minister Pow, on 8 June, that the interpretation of the precautionary principle creates a risk of allowing preventable environmental harm. The interpretation of the precautionary principle in the draft is different from its established use as a means to deal with uncertainty. It is usually understood to apply where there is a risk of serious or irreversible damage, and where potentially damaging action or inaction should be avoided—this is the crucial bit—even if there is a lack of full scientific certainty. The draft seriously qualifies this, however, by stating that
“there must be sufficient evidence that the risk of serious or irreversible damage is plausible and real, and where choices are considered to prevent or reduce the environmental degradation … they should be cost-effective.”
This worrying reinterpretation of the precautionary principle continues in the new duty given to it to incentivise innovation. Incentivising innovation is an entirely laudable policy objective but not an integral part of the precautionary principle itself. The former is an approach to appropriately weigh up and manage the benefits and risks inherent in the latter.
To me, this reinterpretation exposes the tension in the Government over what post-Brexit Britain means. The battle rages on over whether we are to have a bonfire of regulations, moving to a US proof-of-harm approach, or our own version of the EU regulatory model, which supports environmental and social outcomes while creating a level playing field for business. We have Ministers openly and actively criticising the environmental principles, particularly the precautionary principle. It is therefore arguable that this wording is an attempt to reconcile the unreconcilable and meet the divergent aims of the respective wings of the Tory Party. I will not ask the Minister to comment on that but I ask him whether he accepts that, although promoting innovation is an entirely laudable policy objective, it is not by any stretch of the imagination an integral part of the precautionary principle itself.
Thirdly, there is not a sufficient sense of urgency in the description of the prevention principle. It sets out that it would be preferable for environmental damage to be prevented, but that does not appear to be a priority. The need for timeliness and urgency of action could be more ambitiously worded in the description of when to use the principle.
Concerns were raised during the passage of the Environment Act about the urgent need to tackle the appalling environmental and human health impacts of sewage releases into our rivers and streams. In the absence of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, who cannot be with us today, I contend—though not as well as he could—that there is an extremely strong case for strengthening the phrase:
“The principle is most effective when it is considered at an early stage”
by the addition of:
“Where environmental harm is already occurring, prevention should be applied without delay and as soon as possible.”
Fourthly, on the implementation and monitoring of the EPPS, clearly it is not just the statement itself that is important; the guidance, support and resources will help Ministers and departments to implement it, making clear what they should do to seize the opportunities for the environment rather than just limiting environmental damage. At the meeting with the Minister and her team, we learned that they are still discussing how to roll this out and implement it, with a team working on producing resources such as training, videos and case studies. That is a really important job—arguably as important as the statement itself—and it is critical that it does the job that we need it to do. To ensure that it does so, will the Government commit to asking the OEP to review those resources before they are finalised?
There is, in addition, a deeply worrying omission: a failure to monitor how departments are taking forward the principles and the impacts of their introduction. We all know that what is measured matters. Here I agree with the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I will be brief, given that its chair and other members are here to, I am sure, make the case far more eloquently than I ever could. It is essential that the practical implementation and effectiveness of the policy statement, and indeed the principles themselves, are properly monitored and evaluated. If there is no audit trail, it is hard to assess whether the principles or the policy statement have had any effect. Therefore, it is hard not to conclude that the Government are not sufficiently committed to ensuring that they are implemented and deliver the environmental outcomes that the Government say they want.
Getting this EPPS right really matters. The environmental situation we are in requires urgent attention; consider the health of our rivers, our depleted soils and our crashing insect populations, to name but three problems. Last month the OEP produced its first review of the Government’s plan for environmental improvement. It called for a much sharper focus, spelling out that success rests on all government departments —everyone across Whitehall—working well to deliver those goals. A strong EPPS is critical to making that a reality.
The Government really need to get on with it. Progress on implementing is slower than the urgency of the task to turn this around demands. It is unclear what the timetable is for producing a final statement and how much time is allowed for departments to prepare for the duty. It is not just Greener UK which has been championing this. The business group Aldersgate, with members including BT, Nestlé, Siemens, IKEA and Scottish Power, has been calling for rapid implementation. When do we anticipate that it will come into effect?
The EPPS could have enormous potential to deliver on the Government’s ambitions but, as it stands, it is insufficiently clear to Ministers what they need to do and it lacks a necessary audit trail. The Government need to take the chance to revise it further as it moves to a final version. Without that, it is hard to see how the Secretary of State could meet requirement of Section 17 of the Environment Act—that they are satisfied that this policy statement will
“contribute to … the improvement of environmental protection, and … sustainable development.”
I beg to move.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, made clear, I am not a member of her committee, so I shall not say much about the purpose of this regulation other than that, as she explained in her very interesting and wide-ranging speech, it is very significant. It has very significant consequences for the environment, about which so many people feel very strongly.
In my few minutes, I want to concentrate on process. Let me use the hackneyed phrase “You have the hand of history on your shoulder”. This afternoon, noble Lords are creating a precedent. This is the first time we have discussed a statement such as this. The way that it is being scrutinised will be used by the Government as a precedent for why future such arrangements should follow the same routine. It is a precedent which, I regret to have to say to my noble friend the Minister, represents another power grab by the Government and will contribute to the growing imbalance in power between the Executive and the two Houses of Parliament. It is not Lords versus Commons; it is Lords and Commons versus the Government.
As the noble Baroness said, I chair the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It is a cross-party committee—the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, whom we shall hear from in a few minutes, is one of our number. We have a terrific staff, and we meet weekly to scrutinise the 600 to 700 regulations made every year, each one of which imposes the law on every citizen of this country. We produce reports every Thursday following our meetings on Tuesdays—one has been published today—drawing the attention of the House to issues in the current crop of regulations for the week that we think might be of particular interest to your Lordships.
I emphasise that we are not concerned about actual policy. That is for the electorate to decide when the general election comes. However, we are concerned inter alia about whether the implications of the policy have been thought through, whether it has been adequately consulted on and whether it is likely to fulfil its primary policy objectives. Your Lordships will have seen from our report, which the noble Baroness quoted, that we felt that the regulation fell short of those and other objectives in several significant aspects. In its way, this is another example of the Government’s increasingly cavalier attitude towards Parliament and its duties of scrutiny.
Some noble Lords will recall a childhood game called “Grandmother’s Footsteps”. The child who was it had to face the wall and the other children playing the game would try to creep up behind. The child who was it could turn round at any moment, and if it caught the other children moving, they had to go back to the beginning. I am sure that several members of the Committee will have played that. That is what is happening here. While Parliament is looking the other way, the Government are creeping up on it, and we need to consider what we are going to do about it.
The seriousness of what Parliament faces varies. First, some of the problems could be solved by Ministers taking a better and tougher administrative grip by ensuring, for example, that impact assessments are available every time a regulation comes before your Lordships’ House. Your Lordships will not be aware of this, but last October we gave permission to a Department for Transport SI for which the impact assessment was published six months later, in April. What use is that? Secondly, departments could do a great deal better planning so that fewer instruments arrive in a rush, with the almost inevitable consequence that there has been inadequate consultation.
Some of the problems could be solved by greater clarity in policy, by, for example, distinguishing between regulation—the law—and guidance. I ask noble Lords to cast their minds back to the first month of the Covid outbreak. Do your Lordships remember being told that you could exercise only once a day? That was not true. Exercising once a day was in the guidance. The regulation—the law—put no limit on the number of times you should exercise. There was this wash-over between regulation and guidance, determinations, protocols and all sorts of other semi-legal pieces of government policy.
The Government could also improve things by not increasing the use of tertiary legislation, in which powers are passed down outside Parliament to bodies over which there is no democratic observance or control. The College of Policing, which is extremely important to the way our police service operates, has no statutory role at all but has a great deal of influence in the policy followed in that area.
All the really fundamental challenges come from the Government’s increasing use of what we have come to call framework Bills, in which the statute has only the broadest sense of policy travel and all the detail, which is what really matters to us all, is left to secondary legislation. In essence, the regulation before us is an example of what happens when you have a framework Bill. The parent Act, the Environment Act 2021, will have gone through the careful, helpful, thorough scrutiny afforded to primary legislation, both here in your Lordships’ House and in the House of Commons. But no one then knew the way in which the Act would be brought into force and the detail that would follow.
I take one example from the noble Baroness’s speech a few minutes ago. She talked about the definition of “proportionate”. I ask members of the Committee to hold that word in their mind for a second. The challenge we face with secondary legislation scrutiny is that, while we can discuss it—as we are doing this afternoon—say what is wrong with it and question my noble friend about what he is going to do about it, no matter how unsatisfactory his answer is, we cannot amend it. We can only accept or reject it. Since the latter is a pretty nuclear option, not surprisingly your Lordships’ House has been reluctant to finger the reject button.
I go back to the word that I asked the Committee to hold in their mind a minute ago. If “proportionate” had been in the primary legislation, think of the discussion there would have been about it and what would have gone on in the House. There would almost certainly have been some amendments about it, some definitions sought and clarity requested. The Government’s thinking would have been teased out in all sorts of ways. This afternoon, an hour from now, it will be through—done and dusted. The House will have no further say about it except and until a Minister—I do not mean my noble friend—says, “Well, I think we’ll change this a bit and put through another regulation”, which we will also be able to discuss and debate but not change. I hope my noble friend’s officials will not pass him a note saying, “Minister, when you come to wind up, just remind the Committee that all the regulations have to be approved”. They do, but the way they have to be approved is a sophistry. There is no reality to it at all.
Why are these draft framework Bills being brought forward? First, the world is moving faster and the rather stately pace of primary legislation is finding it hard to keep up. I recognise that. Secondly—and perhaps less attractively—the Government have brought forward legislation on which they have not been able or willing to undertake the intellectual heavy lifting to think through the policy before the parent Bill is brought before your Lordships’ House. It is a policy you might describe as making it up as you go along. Thirdly—and worst of all—Ministers are seduced by their civil servants, who say, “Minister, don’t let’s write this into the primary legislation. It is awfully inflexible if we do. Let’s just take some powers and then if we don’t like it, we can change it. We know neither House can amend those regulations, whereas if the primary Act gets stuck, goodness me, there’s going to be trouble. We’d need a new Act and the Prime Minister will ask why we’re stuck on this silly thing and who got it wrong in the first place.” Therefore, the tendency is to let this all pass by and appear at a lower level, as we are seeing this afternoon.
I said I have some sympathy with the view that the world is moving faster and primary legislation cannot keep up. But if the Government want to grab a little, as they are doing this afternoon, they need to give a little. They must help establish a new procedure for scrutinising framework Bills. In fact, I do not mean framework Bills but Bills in which there are framework clauses. Most of what we do with secondary legislation is fine, but there are an increasing number of areas—we have seen some this afternoon, as set out in the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter—where we need the ability to dig in and, where necessary, amend.
I said at the beginning of my remarks—I must end them shortly—that this regulation represents a precedent. Well, we are going to see a lot of precedents in the next few months. We have the Schools Bill, the Online Safety Bill and the Brexit freedoms Bill. If that is as I am told, I do not think that those who voted for Brexit, saying that it would mean we were taking back control, thought that meant taking control from Brussels and handing it to Whitehall without Parliament even seeing it on the way through, but that is what that Bill sounds as though it will do.
My noble friend the Minister may be tempted to respond by saying to me, “Look, guv, it is nothing to do with me. I am a junior Minister in Defra and this is all above my pay grade. This is the wrong speech to be making here; go to the Cabinet Office and try it again.” With great respect to my noble friend, I am afraid he is wrong. The bedrock of our democratic system is trust and confidence, leading to the key ingredient of informed consent. Every government Minister has a duty and role to make sure that principle of informed consent is adhered to and strengthened. These regulations, the Schools Bill, the Online Safety Bill and the Brexit freedoms Bill are stretching that principle of informed consent to breaking point, and so risk undermining public confidence in the way our governmental system operates. I am sure the Committee and, I hope, my noble friend accept that that would be a disastrous outcome.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, and I agree with the vast majority of what he said.
Since the publication of the Government’s 25-year environment plan, we have become familiar with the five environmental principles. They, and the effect they would have, were debated at length during the passage of the Environment Bill. Politicians of all political persuasions and none, along with the public, set great store by these principles in the hope that they would save, if not the planet, our small but significant corner of it. I looked forward with anticipation to the policy statement that would set out the stall for the five principles.
Sadly, I was disappointed, as were many others. My noble friend Lady Parminter set out clearly, as always, her disappointment and that of the Environment and Climate Change Committee with the lack of enforceable commitments in the policy statement. On behalf of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, of which I am a member, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, set out its concerns.
The environmental principles will be the first piece of legislation in the form of a policy statement to come before the House and, as such, are something of a trailblazer. It is therefore vital that sufficient weight and debate are attached to how they are dealt with; a precedent is being created. This is the first such draft policy statement and of enormous significance.
The purpose of the principles is to change the way in which the whole of our legislative process is to operate and make our country into a world leader in its environmental credentials. The Government’s desire is to leave the environment in a better state than they found it. The public have emotionally signed up to trying to save the planet, thanks to the tremendous work of David Attenborough. Thousands of residents now know what happens to the creatures in our oceans and that it is our fault that they are suffering from huge microplastic pollution. Thanks to the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, nearly every village in the land is now aware of sewage discharges, both deliberate and accidental. There are many other incidents where information has been circulated and the voting public are now saying, “This is not right. This should not be happening. We need to clean up our act.”
The Environment Act was a landmark piece of legislation, underpinned by the five environmental principles. I will not repeat these, as they have already been laid out by my noble friend and others will obviously refer to them, but they cannot be changed without primary legislation. They should have the necessary teeth to make changes to our biodiversity, climate and carbon outputs. The draft EPP statement says the five principles should be considered when Ministers make policy and where relevant. Who will decide when a policy is relevant? The document also says:
“However, the principles are not rules and they cannot dictate policy decisions by ministers.”
Just what is the point of the principles and the hours and hours of debate we had during the passage of the Environment Act? Sometimes I despair.
Under “Proportionality” is the following paragraph, which my noble friend Lady Parminter referred to:
“Policymakers are not expected to carry out a ‘deep-dive’ assessment into all environmental effects, as these may not be known.”
This is undoubtedly true, but skating over the surface is not likely to flag up some extremely damaging impact that may lurk under the surface. The document goes on:
“Nor are policymakers required to replicate the environmental impact assessment process.”
Since the word used is “replicate”, it is fair to assume that someone somewhere is carrying out this environmental impact assessment. Can the Minister say who will have responsibility for doing this?
Under the section relating to the “polluter pays” principle and deciding just what or who is the polluter, there are many words that indicate that basic economics may decide whether the polluter pays. There is a definite watering down of this principle and an attempt to spread the cost to those affected, rather than those causing the environmental pollution and possible health implications. For a cynic like me, the whole of this section can be summed up as arguing over how many gnats can dance on the head of a pin. It is a charter for “get out of jail free”. I hope the Minister can reassure me that this is not the case.
I could go on, but others wish to speak after me and I am keen to hear what they have to say. Monitoring and tracing are vital if the environmental principles are to have any effect. Audit has to be everything. I reiterate that I remain deeply disappointed by this document. In its current form it is unlikely to deliver what the Government have claimed to be its aim: to make the UK a world leader on environmental matters.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on securing this debate. As others have said, these principles are unbelievably important. Without them, we will not have a chance of meeting the greatest crisis that humanity has ever faced.
I sit on the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and I completely agree with her about how few enforceable standards and commitments there are. Indeed, many of the submissions we have had from government departments have shown a lack of joined-up thinking, commitment and follow-through. It has been pretty frightening, and it continues to be a frightening state of affairs.
Let us talk about the principles here. Ministers have a statutory duty to have due regard to the policy statement when designing the policy and embedding the environmental principles into policy-making, but it seems quite extraordinary that there are total exemptions for the Armed Forces, defence, national security, taxation, spending or the allocation of resources within government. There are basically no policies, or very few, that do not involve spending, so can the Minister give an assurance today that these exemptions about spending will not simply be used as a loophole by departments if they want to do something not in the spirit of the principles? This is a point that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, made when he talked about these vast framework Bills under which an awful lot of things about which we know nothing can go on.
When asked what scrutiny there would be of the implementation of the principles, Defra responded to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee:
“It is primarily for Government Departments to ensure the duty is implemented effectively in their policy making. The Office for Environmental Protection will monitor the implementation of environmental law, which will include the requirement to have due regard to the policy statement.”
I do not see how it is at all clear how government departments will monitor whether new policies are consistently supportive of positive environmental outcomes, how they are to report on the implementation of the duty in their policy-making or, indeed, how its impacts are driving environmental improvements. What is the assessment process going to be?
The issue of monitoring constantly raises its head, most recently this week in the Climate Change Committee’s latest progress report to Parliament, which warned that without a clear way to monitor areas such as peatland restoration or tree planting, we just will not meet our targets. It also said that there was a clear lack of cross-departmental consistency in policy, a point I have just made and which has come up over and over in the committee. In fact, we have seen it recently, with the Minister’s own department and the trade department squabbling over trade standards with regard to Australia, and with health wanting to reduce the intake of junk food but DCMS overturning that to protect the interests of advertisers, couched in some idea about the cost of living crisis. I simply do not see why this measure will be different.
I do not doubt that the Minister wants it rolled out properly, and perhaps he shares my doubts about some of the other departments, but, without proper monitoring and reporting, there is really very little hope that it will be a success. If it is left to the individual discretion of individual Ministers with no accountability, recent history teaches us that it is unlikely to work.
The recent OEP report, Taking Stock: Protecting, Restoring and Improving the Environment in England, stressed the importance of urgent action to deliver environmental improvements. On the Government’s overarching ambition that this should be the first generation to leave the natural environment in a better state than it inherited, it says that
“we are concerned this vision does not have cross-government support or the same urgency, gravitas and awareness as the vision for Net Zero.”
Those are all points that have come from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who said earlier this week in relation to the CCC report that
“although the Government is doing well on some things”—
everyone acknowledges, recognises and congratulates them on EV rollouts and on the bid for alternative energy—
“right across the board there are serious gaps, and under the present proposals”—
this is the noble Lord, Lord Deben, not me—
“we don’t believe that you can reach the statutory, legal targets which we need to reach.”
He was very clear that ambition is one thing, and it is welcome and necessary, but it is implementation that the Government have to focus on—something that the OEP agrees with. Again, I know that Defra Ministers get the issues and want to take bold actions, but I worry that some of their colleagues across government do not share their desire for rapid implementation. It is worth noting, as other noble Lords have done, that the public, right across the political spectrum, are overwhelmingly now in favour of bold action.
The Environmental Audit Committee 2021 report, Biodiversity in the UK: Bloom or Bust?, found that excluding the Treasury from being bound by environmental principles would mean that
“the impact of Government policies and projects on nature is not adequately factored into spending decisions”
and that if we are to
“achieve the transformational change necessary to address biodiversity loss, nature must be considered to ensure the best balance in policy-and decision making. Failure to do so will mean we continue to over-exploit nature, to the detriment of the natural world and ourselves.”
As we all know, the CBD conference is coming up this year and there will be binding targets. I do not feel that very much is yet in place, in our Government or in our finances, to be able to implement the type of targets that will be agreed. We do not want to see the same thing happening as happened before with the Aichi targets.
The Environmental Audit Committee followed up by writing to the Secretary of State in March, reiterating its calls for a net-zero stress test on the 2021 Budget and all subsequent fiscal events, and for the development of nature tests to be applied to spending decisions as a means for the Treasury to demonstrate its continued commitment to integrating the lessons of the Dasgupta review into policy-making. Where is this? What is it, and where can we find it?
Defra aims to publish the final environmental principles policy statement in the autumn, but no date has been given for when the “due regard” duty will commence. How will the environmental principles inform policy development and decision-making pending publication of the final policy commitments of the duty? Greener UK has raised a number of concerns about the draft policy statement watering down principles around proportionality and how the precautionary principle is implemented, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, has spoken about.
I will say a few words about the “polluter pays” principle. In this situation pollution is synonymous with environmental damage, but it is extremely unclear who is meant by this. The document states:
“The polluter pays principle is applicable where there is evidence of, or potential for, environmental harm”.
Who judges what is proportionate? If a chicken farm is polluting a local river to the extent where it is harmful for animals and humans to be in it, but the argument of food security is posed, who is allowed to go ahead and what is considered proportionate? I know this has been raised by other noble Lords, but it is a very important point.
Finally, what will paying constitute? Is it fines? Is it an environment equivalent of a carbon tax at a flat rate? Will it be set at a level to ensure that organisations or individuals do not just accept the fines and work them into their business models? Will it include a ban on the polluting activity in question? I think we all remember the famous quote from the head of Southern Water who, when asked why he had poured sewage into the sea off Sussex and just accepted a £90 million fine, said it was cheaper to put the sewage into the sea and take the fine than to try to fix the problem. Can the Minister tell us whether these principles will apply in those areas of policy-making as well as across such other areas as procurement and fossil fuel extraction?
I will end by saying more generally that the onus is entirely on the Government within this Parliament, because we do not have a lot of time to turn the rhetoric into ambitious policies that enable business and other sectors to achieve positive tipping points in our economy.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness and her eloquent, thoughtful contribution. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on giving us this opportunity to debate the first statement on environmental principles.
I start by following some of the points my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts contributed. In particular, I look forward to hearing my noble friend’s response to the call of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report. It says in paragraph 40 that, as
“this is the first policy statement under the Act, it is essential that the practical implementation and effectiveness of the policy statement … be properly monitored and evaluated by all government departments”.
That was touched on by most of the contributions this afternoon.
When I was in the other place chairing the EFRA committee, I was at my wits’ end because so many of the regulations that came through were from Europe, and we could only—as my noble friend has explained—rubber-stamp them. They contained all the policy provisions. As we know, we often gold-plated them. One of the benefits of leaving the European Union is that we can no longer gold-plate policy from that particular quarter. It is very important, as my noble friend Lord Hodgson explained, that we have the opportunity to think through—this is the role of that committee—not only whether the policy has been adequately consulted on but whether it fits in with the primary policy objective. So often we find that not to be the case.
We have taken an awful lot on trust in the last two years. We have adopted very important Acts of Parliament with huge powers under Henry VIII clauses. Possibly—I say this as a very brave Back-Bencher—we ought to take the nuclear option more often, because we are imposing real obligations on businesses. I am thinking in particular of farmers and landowners. Perhaps we will leave it to the main opposition parties to do that on more occasions and we can cower behind them.
My noble friend came out with this idea of having a new procedure to scrutinise these framework Bills in the first place, but surely we could just make more use of the procedure we have of considering draft Bills. It is incumbent on the Government to explain why we are not using that procedure. We are running into enormous problems in this Session as well, where we have passed down the opportunity to consider things at the stage of a draft Bill. Perhaps ask a scrutiny committee or a Select Committee in each House to do this as part of their regular work. I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and her committee would do that.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
I absolutely accept what my noble friend says. I was not suggesting that this was the only way to skin the cat; I was just trying to say that this was one way it could be skinned. The important thing is to get a discussion going about the fact that the cat needs skinning. We have not got to that but we need to get to it. The procedure is of secondary importance; the first thing is to persuade the Government and the Opposition Front Bench that this issue needs addressing.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I put on the record that I do not wish to skin any cat, for obvious reasons. I am just trying to support my noble friend’s proposal and the noble Baroness. Peace has broken out on the Committee.
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on the ground she covered in her opening remarks. I do not wish to comment where I agree, but I take issue with one thing—my noble friend the Duke of Wellington is very aware of this. I believe it is unacceptable to continue to have the possibility of raw sewage entering the river or bathing waters at an earlier stage. I know this is a different department; this is one of the problems we have identified this afternoon. If you are to have a commitment, which I think all parties agree to, of building 300,000 houses a year on land that is prone to flooding, in inappropriate places and connected to pipes that are not fit for purpose—the Government and the department accept that they are Victorian pipes—we need to allow a massive investment in the next AMP round, the price review in 2024, for the water companies to do this. I challenge my noble friend to bring forward Section 23 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 to enable us to do so. In 2007 Michael Pitt called for an end to the automatic right to connect. It is inappropriate that someone living in an existing development should face the possibility of raw sewage coming into their home because the wastewater does not fit into the existing pipes. We have to end this disgusting practice, and now.
I am a big supporter of Surfers Against Sewage but it is missing the point. We are dealing with this at the wrong stage, and much as I welcomed my noble friend the Duke of Wellington’s amendment, that is too late. If we have this housing commitment—I do not disagree with it; I just do not know where all these people are coming from—we need the investment in wastewater. Bring forward Schedule 3, give us a date and ensure that we end the automatic right to connect with no provisos, ifs or buts—just completely end it—allow water companies to disconnect until the investment has been made and recognise water companies as statutory consultees. Then we will no longer be pumping raw sewage into rivers and bathing waters in the first place. I shall calm down now.
I invite my noble friend and the department—as my noble friend Lord Hodgson asked us—to make sure that there is joined-up thinking between the different policies coming out of one department. I make a plea that food production, as the NFU president asked for today, be recognised as a top priority of the department. I have heard my noble friend either respond to Questions or make Statements in this regard on a number of occasions and I wholeheartedly support him in that, but we are currently only on 60% self-sufficiency in food. The NFU pointed out today in the publication of its survey that farmers’ confidence to invest has been severely dented by all the reasons the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, rehearsed before us this afternoon. It has been dented by the spiralling costs of energy and fuel in this country, which are not within our control; they are the result of the war in Ukraine. That is a challenge to the Government; we have to have more storage of gas. We cannot have just 30 days —or was it 60 days?—of storage. It is clearly insufficient before we go into another autumn.
How does my noble friend respond? I invite him to support the call from the NFU for the Government to introduce a duty on Ministers to assess the impact of any new policy—I take the environmental statement of principles to be a new policy—on food production.
The survey results from the NFU show that a third of arable farmers have made changes to their cropping plans in the last quarter or four months, which 90% of growers attributed to rocketing fertiliser costs. Growers are now switching from growing milling wheat for bread to growing feed wheat for animals, because it has a lower fertiliser requirement. Also, over the next two years dairy farmers were most concerned about prices of feed, with a 93% increase; fuel, with a 91% increase; energy, with an 89% increase; and, as my noble friend the Minister knows, fertiliser, with an 88% increase.
Why is this important? As we consider the environmental principles policy statement today, the Government are putting the finishing touches—I hope—to the environmental land management schemes. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has spoken eloquently on this on a number of occasions. There are simply too many competing uses for land. Will my noble friend confirm that farming and food production are public goods for the purposes of environmental land management schemes, and that the five environmental principles before us—the integration, prevention, rectification, polluter pays and precautionary principles—will have a crossover to ELMS, with the sustainable farming incentive, local nature recovery and landscape recovery uses? Without that, it will be totally confusing for our farmers and growers to know what they have to do.
I welcome the opportunity to debate these issues today. I hope we will be able to give confidence to farmers, growers and consumers and have greater clarity, not just on what the environmental principles will be but on how these will impact on ELMS and other aspects of Defra work.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for tabling this debate and setting out the concerns of the Environment and Climate Change Committee so clearly and eloquently.
Like other noble Lords, I was extremely interested in the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. He raised some important issues and gave us a bit of a history lesson, looking back, but the challenge for us here is looking forward. He referred several times to the statement as regulations, but I am not sure that is quite the status of this document. The question is: what is its status? The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said it was a new animal, a trailblazing mechanism, and I agree. The problem is that what we have before us is not an SI, which at least has a formal procedure, imperfect though it is—negative, affirmative and all those issues. It is not that. When it was first published, I put down a Written Question asking how Parliament was to scrutinise it. It was passed from pillar to post before I finally got an answer from anyone.
Indeed, I do not think we would have been having this debate if the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, had not tabled this Motion. It seems to me that this is wholly inadequate and that there should be a much more formal process for consideration of these sorts of policy statements. I do not know how often the Government were thinking of replicating this, but I certainly hope the Minister can give us some more assurance that there is a proper, formal process and that we do not have to put these special requests in if we want to debate this. It should be part of an established mechanism.
I suppose that then raises the question of what happens. We are now considering a draft. We have all piled in and made comments, and there have been formal comments from some of the committees, so what is the status of all those comments? How can we be assured that they will be taken on board? What is the status of this discussion here? Without getting into a detailed discussion with the Minister, I hope he is able to give us some assurance on all this that these matters are being taken seriously.
All noble Lords have made the point about how important these principles are and how fundamental they are to all the work we are doing on protecting the environment. It is a crucial wing, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, of the environmental governance system for England, which we spent many happy hours scrutinising during consideration of the Environment Act. If these principles fail to do their job properly, that undermines the other elements of the environmental governance package, so it is crucial that the wording in this document is clear, unambiguous and consistent with the other provisions of the Act.
That is why I very much commend the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for rightly spending time considering in detail the draft and the intent behind it, and I pay tribute to the care with which it has done so. Like the committee, we feel that there is more to be done to strengthen the wording. For example, we share the concerns expressed today about the repeated emphasis in the draft on the need for a proportionate response to the application of environmental policy statements. It sounds like such a reasonable phrase until you dig down into what exactly is meant and how it is being applied in this context.
As the very helpful briefing from Greener UK points out, proportionality gets mentioned 19 times and is a running theme of the draft. In that context, it encourages Ministers to interpret and proportionately apply the principles rather than making them a requirement of the policy direction, which in effect means an element of watering down rather than having a balanced judgment. It also calls on Ministers to balance social, economic and environmental considerations in making policy and to factor in the financial costs and benefits.
This has resonance with our long debates on the Fisheries Act when we were debating sustainability. The Government’s insistence on balancing sustainability with social and economic factors has resulted in continued overfishing and depletion of stocks, and that is just one example. These considerations could well result in a justification for the cheapest policy option being pursued on the grounds of economic concerns, even if it could result in the greatest environmental detriment. That is not the right balance; you do not balance all those things equally. As we tried to argue in the Fisheries Act, sustainability should be the prime factor and the other factors should be secondary. We were not successful then, but in this case the environmental principles and policies should be the primary factors while other factors should be secondary. In effect, what we have here is that Ministers are given an opt-out clause to ignore the environmental principles if they think other factors are more important. I hope the Minister will feel able to take the draft away on that count and revisit the undue emphasis on proportionality.
The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, also rightly raises the committee’s concerns about the new interpretation of the well-established precautionary principle. As she says, the wording has moved away from the established use where there is a risk of serious or irreversible damage, even if it lacks full scientific certainty. It is a question of how you measure the unknown unknowns, if you like. Now the draft introduces new caveats about needing sufficient evidence that there is a threat of serious irreversible damage, and any choices to prevent environmental damage should be cost effective. However, it does not make clear how you can judge whether something is cost effective when the full impact of any future harm clearly cannot be calculated.
Again, that gives Ministers an exit route to ignore the precautionary principle, which has stood us in good stead for so many years. As several noble Lords have said, that is worrying; there has been some quite negative briefing against the precautionary principle over the last few months, but it has stood us in good stead and has proved right on many occasions. It is not something that we should ignore easily. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure us that a wider interpretation of the precautionary principle will be embedded in the final version of the document.
The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, also raised concerns about the watering down of the integration principle. The Environment Act is quite clear that the Government’s policy priorities should be integrated across all departments, with a requirement to act on them. The looser wording in the new draft simply calls on policymakers to look for opportunities to apply the environmental policies.
Again, a number of noble Lords have said this: herein lies the real problem. Although Defra Ministers may be committed to the environmental policies which have been developed by the department, the fact is that they do not have the clout or influence to roll them out across other departments—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, who gave other examples. We also saw this with the Government’s response to the national food strategy, where there were virtually no commitments to act on the Dimbleby recommendations in the health, education and welfare departments’ responsibilities. This is the real danger in being able to roll out other aspects of the Environment Act which require cross-departmental co-operation. It has not been helped by stories in the news recently that the Prime Minister has dropped his commitment to many of the environmental priorities that had previously been on the agenda. I hope the Minister understands why a clear commitment to the integration principle is essential to making the policies reality.
I hope the Minister can give us some assurance about the timescales for implementing the policy statement and the environmental principles. It has taken us a very long time to get to this point and we really should not have to suffer any further delay. When exactly will the final version of the statement be laid before Parliament? What will be the scrutiny process then for us to have a further look at that draft, and can he assure us that there will be only a limited period of formal implementation, given that the statement will have been in the public domain for many months by then? Can he give more details of how the department intends to use the implementation period to educate and ensure that all departments and public bodies are aware of their new obligations to build the environmental statement into their policy-making processes? I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords for their questions and points today, and many congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on introducing this debate so forcefully. I shall endeavour to answer as many of the points as I can.
The Government have committed that we will be the first generation to leave the environment in a better state than we found it. To do this, we need to put environmental considerations at the heart of policy-making. The environmental principles policy statement will enable us to do so, helping us to achieve the ambitious environmental objectives set out in the Environment Act.
At the risk of sounding oversensitive to some of the points made, it was suggested that I was somehow a journeyman Minister who had just come into this and will be gone tomorrow—I may indeed be gone tomorrow. However, I want to assure noble Lords. The Government brought forward the Environment Act because we mind about leaving the environment in a better state. I have been involved in it from the position of an insignificant Back-Bencher in the other place, working with people such as my noble friend Lord Goldsmith, also then on the Back-Benches, and Sir Oliver Letwin.
Getting these principles in the Bill and then the Act was really important, and their implementation is equally important. I should hate anyone to think that—while I might be put out to grass tomorrow—this is just parliamentary chaff for me. It really matters, and it matters that we get this right and that Parliament can continue to hold Ministers of whatever persuasion to the terms of the Act. It places a legal duty on Ministers of the Crown to have “due regard” to an environmental principles policy statement when making policy. The statement must cover the principles set out in the Act: the integration principle, the prevention principle, the “rectification at source” principle, the “polluter pays” principle and, much spoken about today, the precautionary principle.
The draft statement has been laid before Parliament and has been developed with the input of stakeholders, including environmental NGOs, as well as colleagues from across government. Their feedback and support have been valuable, and we have adapted the statement in response. For example, we have changed the statement so that it guides policymakers towards opportunities to enhance the environment, as well as preventing harm. Text was also added on the links to commitments such as net zero and the 25-year environment plan, as well as further defining the scope of the duty—for example, to arm’s-length bodies.
I would also like to thank the committees that have provided their feedback. We note that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has requested a change to the accompanying Explanatory Memorandum to include the definitions of each of the five principles, which we commit to actioning when we lay the final statement. In answer to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, this will be in the autumn.
The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, asked about the scrutiny process. We have worked with parliamentary clerks throughout our scrutiny process. The Government are open to feedback on that process, both for this piece of legislation and others. The scrutiny process on the principles was stated in the Act, which was, of course, approved by Parliament.
I turn now to points raised about some of the individual principles. The Environment Act states that environmental protection should be integrated into the making of policies. The policy statement builds on and strengthens this by setting out how this should be done. It states that, in applying the integration principle,
“policymakers should look for opportunities to embed environmental protection”
and enhancement in all policies, subject to the exemptions set out in the Act. I will come to talk about some of those that were raised. This emphasises the need for the environment to be considered as a system across all policy areas from the earliest stages of policy design. This will also help us meet our wider environmental targets, such as climate change mitigation via our net-zero commitments.
I am the Minister for Rural Affairs, so I proof write-arounds from all departments that affect rural communities, the rural economy and rural livelihoods. In the same way, Environment Ministers do that for any policy across government. They make sure that the principles about considering the environment are developed as early as possible in the policy process. That is a job Defra has to do. It is our role in government and one that we are happy to be held to account for.
The prevention principle is intended for use at the earliest stages of policy development. For the principles to be most cost effective and lead to better environmental outcomes, it is preferable for environmental damage to be prevented under the prevention principle. If it is to be addressed after it has occurred, the “rectification at source” and “polluter pays” principles should be considered to reduce, mitigate or disincentivise damage.
Our draft policy statement uses the 1992 Rio declaration definition of the precautionary principle. Its definition states that
“Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
I suspect I am one of the few people in this Committee, and possibly in this country, who has actually read the European Union’s guidance on the use of the precautionary principle. It is fundamental to the protection of our environment that we interpret it in the right way and are held to account for that. This principle is an important tool that can be used to manage risk and protect the environment. The principle should not hinder innovation but instead support innovative policy approaches.
I reiterate that evidence is as important as ever within policymaking, and we are not undermining this important and well-established principle. I reiterate that to the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, who made an important and absolutely justified point about the use of words. Sometimes there is one word, whether it is “likely” or “possibly”, and that used in the 1992 Rio declaration definition is “impossible”. We need some evidence of a threat, even where there is lack of certainty of likelihood or severity, to make sure that it is used in the right way.
This principle is being placed on a statutory footing through the Act to reflect its important role in international, as well as domestic, environmental policy. For example, the successful Montreal protocol, which effectively tackled damage to the ozone layer caused by CFC gases, comes right down to these kinds of principles.
The point that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, made about Southern Water was absolutely justified, but I expect its chief executive ate his words when he faced a £96 million fine for what it had released into the Solent. More such fines will come as and when—we hope never—further such acts of what is, effectively, criminality take place.
I reiterate that this is an ambitious policy statement that fully meets the requirements of the Act. This includes the requirement placed on the Secretary of State that the statement will, when it comes into effect, contribute to the improvement of environmental protection—I emphasise that—and, of course, sustainable development.
Taking a proportionate approach plays an important part in policy-making. The new duty will ensure that environmental considerations are factored into policy-making, and this must be done in parallel with other policy considerations. This means that Ministers should balance social, economic, and environmental considerations in making policy. Therefore, we have not substantially altered the role of proportionality in the policy statement from the draft we consulted on. We have reviewed the statement as a whole to ensure that the definition of proportionality is consistent and clear.
We understand how important it is to ensure that government departments are prepared for the duty to have regard to the policy statement when it comes into force. I hope that addresses the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. Engagement is therefore already ongoing ahead of the final statement publication, so we are open and listening to suggestions that are being made.
We have engaged with key departments, such as BEIS, the Department for Transport, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and others. This has included workshops and presentations to build understanding of their approach to the new duty and to identify what support would be useful. Several departments are already looking at developing their own tools, such as their own templates. We are working closely with them to share ideas and identify best practice as we develop a toolkit of resources. Within Defra, we are developing pilot studies to test materials and help establish best practice. That toolkit of resources will be shared across government in advance of the final policy statement. It will contain notes, an introductory video, case studies and other materials to support the application of the principles.
We are also developing an online training package for Civil Service Learning. This is aimed at policymakers and legal professionals and is accessible to civil servants across government.
We are engaging at senior level with other departments through the cross-government 25 Year Environment Plan Board and a network of senior ambassadors. We are working to embed the principles in cross-government guidance and processes, including the Treasury Green Book.
We are currently considering arrangements for the implementation period that will follow publication of the policy statement. I understand that noble Lords want clarity on this, but we will have more clarity by the time we publish it and we will be happy to share it, as we know the amount of work that is involved. We are discussing the possible length of that period across government.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked about enforcement and the OEP’s role in it. The duty for Ministers to have due regard to the policy statement on environmental principles falls within the definition of environmental law. As such, once the duty is in force, individuals—any citizen or organisation—could make a complaint to the OEP regarding Ministers’ compliance with this duty. The OEP has powers to investigate and, where necessary, take enforcement action in relation to serious failures by public authorities to comply with environmental law. Nobody doubts its determination or its wonderful chairman’s indefatigable independence. It is flexing its muscles as it develops, and it will be a force for good across government policy-making.
At the end of the implementation period, the legal duty will come into effect and apply to policies made after this date. This includes policies that are in development leading up to this. We must therefore ensure that we balance the importance of bringing the new duty into force as soon as possible with the time needed for departments effectively to implement it. I am sure all noble Lords understand that.
We are discussing and considering internally the best way to evaluate the effectiveness of how the environmental principles are applied—this was the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter—and how they are applied in the future. However, neither the policy statement nor the Act is prescriptive about how departments should apply and document their implementation of the duty. The most appropriate way to do this will depend on the policy. Different government departments may have different approaches.
My concern is not for my tenure in this office but that future Ministers will be held to account if they do not stick to the letter of this law. Ministers will be responsible for implementing the new duty within their departments and our toolkit will provide templates, guidance and support. Departments will need to consider what records should be kept to demonstrate that the due regard duty has been satisfied.
The question of exemptions was raised, and I remember this lengthy debate during the passage of the Environment Act. As for which policy areas will be exempt from the statement, work is already under way in the Ministry of Defence to design processes that will achieve the outcomes required by the principles duty and to report on actions taken. The work is being led in the MoD’s new climate change and sustainability directorate, which is also responsible for its wider environmental sustainability work and will actively work with Defra and other government colleagues to maintain a coherent and robust approach.
Taxation, spending and the allocation of resources within government are excluded from the remit of the duty. The exemption on the allocation of resources refers to central spending decisions only. Individual policies that require spending will be within scope of the duty to have due regard to the policy statement. The Treasury’s world-leading Green Book already mandates the consideration of environmental impacts, climate change and natural capital on spending.
I add that the new duty goes further than corresponding provisions under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which are not legally binding for member states. We want to ensure that these principles not only guide our domestic policy, but that they are used properly and transparently, and on all policies that have an environmental impact—not just on environmental policies.
I say to my noble friend Lady McIntosh that the Agriculture Act says:
“In framing any financial assistance scheme, the Secretary of State must have regard to the need to encourage the production of food by producers in England and its production by them in an environmentally sustainable way.”
No farmer in this country should be in any doubt that we want them to produce food, but to do it sustainably. That is the direction of travel of our farming reforms.
I am grateful for this opportunity to hear views on the environmental principles policy statement, and I thank noble Lords here today for this discussion, which has highlighted some really important considerations. It is important that we are able to agree on and implement the final policy statement quickly and effectively. To put environmental protection and enhancement at the heart of policy-making in government, the Government will consider all comments from within this House and beyond received during the parliamentary scrutiny period and will publish a response alongside the final policy statement in the autumn. By integrating these principles into our policy-making, we will contribute to the wider environmental goals set out in the 25-year environment plan, including reducing carbon emissions, improving biodiversity and helping us to become the first generation to leave the environment in a better state than we found it.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I think it was worth bringing this to the attention of the Committee. As was mentioned by the Labour Front Bench, if I had not, there would not have been any opportunity to debate it because it is a new process. It was worth while and I am grateful to all noble Lords for speaking and for what they said.
I also thank the Minister for his reply. I would particularly like to respond to his very heartfelt point that this really matters to him. We know that; I do not think anyone in this room would doubt it. His actions show that. We know him and absolutely believe that this matters to him. However, it is important for us to discuss this because, as other noble Lords have made clear, there are Ministers in the current Administration—and there may well be future Ministers—not of the same persuasion and who do not treat this as seriously. That is why the wording matters. It is one way to try to drive the environmental concern right across the heart of government. It is important to discuss this and the text matters.
I heard the Minister’s justifications and responses to a number of the comments made. I note them and will go away and reflect on them. For me, the most galling issue in the policy statement as it stands is the undesirable coupling of the precautionary principle with innovation. It is just not possible to achieve that. I asked the Minister to respond to that and he chose not to. I accept why he chose not to, but that odd coupling stands.
It is not just the text. The text is important but so are the resources. I am grateful to the Minister for expanding further on the very significant work that his department will be doing to try to drive this across government. I wish them well in that task, but the Minister did not respond to my point about whether the Government will let the OEP review that. That would give all of us and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, pointed out, the public confidence in the process. If they could see that the OEP has been part of that, that would really drive confidence, so I urge the Minister to think about putting those key resources to the OEP.
Of course, we are not just here to discuss this policy statement’s impact on driving environmental ambitions across government, important though that is. As the noble Lord said, this is a historic document. It is the first of its type in terms of process. It is really important that the House discusses this as a process. I say as a committee chair that we struggled to find the time, given the very tight turnaround in the Environment Act, which we did not spot. I hold my hands up; I am as guilty as anyone, though I was not a committee chair at that time. In no way is 21 days adequate time to enable a robust process of parliamentary scrutiny. The process as it stands in that Act is deficient, to my mind, and we need to make sure it is not deficient in future Bills.
There will be more of these policy statements in future, given that there are so many framework Bills. I cite one example: the Procurement Bill, which starts its Committee stage on Monday and to which I have drafted an amendment, was not even proposing a draft policy statement. It was proposing just going straight from the framework Bill, saying, “We will produce a policy statement about government procurement” —a business of some billions of pounds. It will go straight to a final statement for parliamentary scrutiny and the timings are again unclear. There needs to be a really serious look at the processes around these policy statements in future.
Finally, I do not need to repeat why this is important. We look forward to receiving the Government’s response, which I hear we will have in the autumn. We hope they will consider a number of the points we have made. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, this is one of the four cornerstones of environmental protection that this Government will use in the future. I think it is appropriate to say in this Room that if some amendments are not made, those cornerstones will be part of a house built on sand.