Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lord Inglewood

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Parminter clearly set out the arguments for Amendment 126, which I fully support. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, ably introduced her Amendment 130, to which I have added my name. I will speak briefly to that amendment.

The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, made it clear that he is personally committed to ensuring that environmental standards are maintained, that biosecurity is improved, and that the Government leave the environment in a better state than they found it. However, this commitment and aim are not shared by all in the current Government.

The Bill is worded in such a way as to provide a very large degree of what can be called “wriggle room”. We have debated in Clause 15 the meaning of “appropriate” and how this will be interpreted by both officials and Ministers when it comes to individual pieces of legislation.

Clause 15 allows Ministers to amend important retained EU environmental law on nature, water and chemicals, ensuring that there is no reduction in environmental protection. This has to be achieved without extra bureaucracy, taxes or burdens being incurred. My noble friend Lady Parminter has spoken on this issue.

In evidence to the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, the Secretary of State referred to the Environment Agency’s wish

“to change quite a lot of the water framework directive”.

The quality of our water has featured in our debates more often than many of us would care to mention. To be informed that a lot of changes are likely to come to the water framework directive without any indication of what they may be is extremely worrying for many in this Chamber. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, also raised this.

Amendment 130 would insert a new clause whose aim is to maintain environmental standards across a range of regulations and directives, which the country has taken for granted and which have protected the health of the population, our environment, wildlife and the marine environment over the years. Proposed new subsection (4) lists those laws that we believe are essential to keep. Others are also important, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, also raised, but those five are vital and should be included in the Bill. There is consensus on this across the Committee.

We have debated these issues on previous days in Committee without the Minister giving any comfort. On this occasion, we are all looking for the Minister to realise that the vital issue of protecting the environment and the population is not going to trickle away. Unless he wants to see a flood of opposition from all quarters, both inside and outside Parliament, he will accept the amendment before we come to Report. I look forward to his agreement.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have been listening to this debate with interest. Obviously, it relates to environmental standards, but is also about the way in which the legislation that deals with environmental standards is cast. I am sure we are all agreed that some of the things that the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, described could be substantially mitigated, to the benefit of everybody.

Having said that, what we see with the two amendments we are considering is the introduction of legal certainty into the legislation. That, it seems to me, is actually quite important because, as has been described on previous days in Committee, the underlying rationale behind the kind of approach being adopted by the Government is what I might describe as the operation of a compensatory principle. This, it seems to me, is a very attractive notion. But how is it going to work? In particular, as has been debated previously, what is the currency you use to determine whether or not something is compensation? It has to be equivalent, it seems to me. That is the basic meaning of the word in the English language.

Then there has been discussion about “Well, it’ll be done on the whim of a civil servant or a Minister”. But I do not think this is going to be the end of the story—this is what my concern is—because any change that comes about will produce winners and losers. Wherever there are winners and losers, not least in this area of policy, the law gets dragged in. I can see that the whole scheme on which this particular approach has been adopted is going to lead to an absolute abundance of applications for judicial review, because any change that is made on the basis of this compensatory principle is going to have a winner and a loser, and is going to be the hinge on which the legislation depends. I would be very interested to know the views of the Front Bench on this, because I can see that what sounds superficially like a siren song of easy administration may well end up providing an absolute bonanza for lawyers. I suppose that, as one myself, I should declare an interest.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lord Inglewood

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. I will speak briefly to Amendment 146 but will refer in passing to quite a number of other amendments.

Before the CAP was even a glimmer in the eye of the founder of the European Union, the agricultural sector was operating in a regulated marketplace, which makes it quite different from almost all other kinds of business and commerce. In such a marketplace there is a need for all those involved to have a degree of certainty, which is as important from the Government’s perspective as it is from the agricultural sector’s. The parties need to know what the lie of the land might be, if I may put it thus. That is why Clause 4 is so important, because it sets the framework of the way the land lies for the transitional period and points to the world beyond it.

It seems that the problem surrounding Clause 4 is essentially twofold. First, the process of Brexit has been so drawn out that the length of time to effect a seamless move to the new era is too curtailed for it to be achieved as originally envisaged. Secondly, the coming into being of the ELMS—the environmental land management scheme—which was intended to replace the basic payment scheme, has been so delayed, as a number of noble Lords have said, that it is no longer available for farmers and land managers to transition into it and into the new economic and agricultural environment, which is the heart of the new era. As well is it seeming inherently unjust, it is not part of the basic political and policy proposition that was put to the British people as to how we left the CAP.

Moreover, there is a real risk that it may end up causing a muddle in terms of public policy outputs. If you oversimplify it, under the basic payments scheme, the public goods which the state paid for were farming, and everything else was a kind of bolt-on extra. We are now moving into a brave new world where everything else is public goods and food production is a bolt-on extra. That is quite a turnaround.

Against that background, there is, as several noble Lords have said, a chasm—or what might be described as the valley of the shadow of death—that lies between the two eras and into which a significant amount of both farm businesses and land may fall. This will get in the way of implementing the policies we are discussing; indeed, it may put certain parts of them into reverse.

Although, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said on a previous occasion when discussing the Bill, we must not be frightened of failure, surely the underlying intended purpose is to effect a successful transition from the old to the new. That is why the amendment of the noble Lords, Lord Carrington and Lord Curry, is important, as is that of the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, because they recognise, as was recognised by the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, that things may not actually turn out as planned and intended. You need to build into your system a way of modifying your arrangements, and an escape route.

It is clear from our discussion of this clause that the present transitional process is flawed, and those flaws need ironing out, because if we are to make a successful journey from the old world to the new, we have to get to the destination in one piece and not have a car crash.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Teverson has tabled Amendments 130 and 142, which would reduce the transition period between farmers receiving direct payments under the CAP and moving on to the ELM scheme. He is concerned about the length of time that will elapse before the farming community has become fully environmentally aware and responds to the Bill’s ethos of public money for public goods. Both COPs 26 and 15 have been postponed. The number of species facing extinction is growing, and biodiversity, which includes pollination and soil quality, is very important. The current financial systems work against biodiversity. This is not satisfactory.

Most Peers are concerned that the period before ELMS becomes fully operational should be further away, giving farmers more time to adjust to the change. The noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh of Pickering and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Earls, Lord Devon and Lord Caithness, support this view. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, spoke about the gap between phasing out direct payments and introducing ELMS, and said that no farmer should have more than a 25% cut in their direct payments until ELMS is introduced.

The funding of less favoured areas has again been raised by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and I fully support him in in his concerns. I ask the Minister to give a categoric undertaking that the so-called less favoured areas will receive funding. Unless he does, noble Lords on all sides of the House will continue to raise this important subject.

The noble Baroness, Lady Rock, has tabled a number of important amendments related to timescales, cash flows and delinked payments—all extremely important in reassuring the farming community of just how and when they will receive financial assistance—which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans has supported. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, again raises the issue of animal welfare, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. We have debated animal welfare on previous amendments, and it is essential that that theme be a thread that runs through the Bill and thus be included in a number of clauses.

The noble Earl, Lord Devon, believes that Defra will not be ready in 2021 to move to ELMS, and so wishes to put this off until 2022, and he is supported by other Peers. I share his concern about Defra’s preparedness. However, giving it more time is unlikely to assist. Moving deadlines does not always produce results, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, said. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, lets Defra off the hook for not having met the deadlines; I am afraid I am not quite so generous.

Finally, farmers are left in the dark on what is approaching, despite its being trailed well in advance. I fully support the move to ELMS, but I am very concerned that insufficient information is available to give your Lordships and farmers confidence that their future will be secured. The Minister needs to provide reassurance that Defra and the RPA can cope, because from what I have heard this afternoon, I do not believe they can.