Environmental Policies: Timeliness and Effectiveness

Monday 22nd January 2024 Lords Chamber

Question

14:59

Tabled by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the timeliness and effectiveness of the implementation of their environmental policies.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

On behalf of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock, and with her permission, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I refer the House to my entry in the register. The Government are committed to leaving the environment in a better state than we found it. Following the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023, we have stepped up our action, including announcing our multimillion-pound species survival fund and 34 landscape recovery scheme projects. Our annual reports on the 25-year environment plan and the outcome indicator framework assess our actions to improve the environment. The next annual report will be published this summer.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, it is ironic that some noble Lords who would like to have participated in this Question, including my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock, will be unable to do so due to disruption caused by the ninth named storm of this winter. As we adjust to a world where extreme weather events are more frequent and other effects of climate change are more apparent, there can be little surprise that Dame Glenys Stacey has warned that the Government

“needs to speed up, scale up and make sure its plans stack up”.

The positive picture painted by the Minister bears little resemblance to the OEP’s report from last week, which found that UK environmental ambitions are “largely off track”. Does the Minister accept the finding that while the Government may be good at announcing major initiatives, they are less effective at developing and delivering them?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not agree with that. The report said that 25 areas were improving, 10 were static and eight were deteriorating, and we take these extremely seriously. The OEP said that the EIP targets are welcome but that scale and pace, as the noble Baroness says, have to be improved. That was reporting on the year to March 2023; our environmental improvement plan was announced only last January, so the report was only three months into that period. There is a real sense of urgency among Ministers, through Defra and across government to make sure that we hit our no-net-loss targets by 2030. You do not achieve that by taking action in 2029; you take action now, and we have been doing so over a number of years, to make sure that the multiple decades of decline of nature in this country are stopped and reversed. That is our absolute ambition across government.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that part of the reason for sewage spilling into people’s homes is that we still do not have an end to the automatic right to connect, and a greater use of SUDS? When does he intend to bring forward the consultation on Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 to permit greater use of these facilities?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I have written to my noble friend to give her a detailed answer to that question, which is the same one she asked quite recently. I assure her that I asked whether we really had to consult again, and apparently we do; it is a statutory requirement under the Flood and Water Management Act. I suspect we will bring in those measures later this year.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I heard the Minister speak about the Government’s urgency, but I will make reference here to actual policies and plans that have been delayed. I will mention a few; this is not an exhaustive list. The horticultural peat ban, which was promised by this year, is not here yet. The implementing regulations for the introduction of due diligence measures on forest risk commodities are still not before Parliament. The UK chemicals strategy was promised last year, the deposit returns scheme has just been delayed until whenever, and there are the replacement protections for hedgerows, which followed the loss of cross-compliance at the end of last year. That is just five. Can the Minister comment?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

On hedgerows, I refer the noble Baroness to the fact that an enormous quantity of new hedgerows has been planted, and we have 11,000 kilometres of hedgerows under new management as a result of the sustainable farming incentive. On other measures, I am very happy to write to the noble Baroness to tell her the timetable for when those measures will be brought in. On forest risk commodities, it is important that we are in step with other countries; we are absolutely determined to make sure that consumers can know whether the commodity they are buying is putting forests at risk. The UK is a leader in making sure that happens.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, the Office for Environmental Protection’s annual report shows that the environmental improvement plan, which sets out legally binding targets, is meeting only four out of 40 of them. With the OEP keeping legal action under active consideration, the Government taking almost a full year to respond to the first OEP report, and the Minister in the other place saying only that the Government will respond in due course, will the Minister give a firm date for when they will provide a formal response to this serious report?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The Environment Act requires the Government to respond within 12 months, and we will respond considerably more quickly than that. I know that the noble Earl is asking me a question, but does he agree with me that this is without any measure of doubt the greenest Government ever? I am proud of that and happy to be held accountable for all these measures. We brought in a landmark piece of legislation in the Environment Act. We have brought in so many other measures that have addressed long-awaited needs in this environment, and without doubt we have the greenest Government ever.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Government not using the wrong benchmark? If they were to benchmark to, say, 13 years ago, and look at the improvements, that would be a different matter from looking at the last couple of years.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not understand the noble Lord’s position. Working off a baseline, we have to make sure that we are sharing data. We are publishing 800 pages of data so that the noble Lord, NGOs, parliamentarians and others can hold us to account on this. We use an accepted baseline in order to show an improvement. No net loss by 2030 and 10% improvement on that by 2042—those are pushing targets.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the tone adopted by the Minister is in stark contrast—180 degrees opposite—to that of the OEP report. That talks of Britain being locked in an irreversible spiral of decline of nature. We have what the Minister calls landmark pieces of legislation. Can he put his hand on his heart and say that Defra has adequate capacity to deliver the absolute flood of material that needs to be done to get anywhere near delivering what he is suggesting is needed?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I think we can. We have put more resources into our agencies, particularly Natural England. We have a sense of complete determination to hit this, which comes from Ministers and goes down to the Natural England or Environment Agency individual who is dealing with a particular group of farmers. But for all the resources that we could put into government, we would fail if we doubled them. What is important is that we weaponise land managers and people who really know about this on the ground. That is why clusters of farmers working together—for example, in environmental farming groups—are the way forward to deliver an increase in abundance of species and protection of nature, which is not just an environmental or societal matter. It is an economic one as well, as the Dasgupta report proved.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

How is the programme going to provide shore power in our ports and harbours so that visiting ships do not have to run their diesel generators?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That is a very good question from the noble Lord. I should always come armed with a list of marine shipping questions. I have not, but I will make sure that he gets an answer to that in due course.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, to implement effective policies, you need reliable and accurate data. For water, if an incident is reported but not inspected, or inspected too late, it becomes a category 3 or 4. The Environment Agency has reduced its responses to those categories, saying:

“You get the environment you pay for”.


With this in mind, does the Minister have confidence that the official water pollution figures are accurate? If he has doubts, what are the Government going to do to ensure better monitoring?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

When we came into government, we knew about 10% of the sewage outflows from water companies into rivers. We now know 100%, because we require them to report them. Technology is our friend here: we are able to use telemetry, which can now do the work of hundreds of people in real time, producing a message to a phone requiring an instant response. I think we are much better equipped to deal with it. Is it perfect? No.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government and my noble friend, who I know is passionate about protecting the environment and the need to do so. I support his claim that this is the most environmentally friendly Government we have had. Before 2010, no Government took this matter particularly seriously. However, will he take on board some of the issues that have been noted about resourcing, particularly of the Environment Agency? It is apparently not attending all the sewage outflows, so it could well be that significant numbers are happening without us knowing. Will he take the issue of resourcing back to the department?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. In my absolute belief in what we have achieved over the last decade and a bit, I am absolutely not complacent—none of us is. The OEP’s report is really important. We set up the OEP to hold this Government and future Governments to account on this. On the issue my noble friend raises, we have increased the number of Environment Agency officers who should and must respond to all such reports. On water quality as a whole, we have put in place, through our plan for water, the most comprehensive list of measures possible to make sure that not only water companies but farmers, home owners and others who are responsible for the quality of the water in our rivers are held to account when they get it wrong.