Gibraltar: UK-EU Negotiations

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
Tuesday 12th March 2024

(2 weeks, 2 days ago)

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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon Portrait Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
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The noble Lord speaks with great insight. I can give him a cast-iron assurance that I agree with every word he has said. We work closely with the Chief Minister and his team. I believe he will also be visiting London this month and meeting various committees in that respect. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, the UK is steadfast, and it will not agree anything that compromises Gibraltar’s sovereignty.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, one of the many areas that cause conflict between Spain and the UK over the issue of Gibraltar is tobacco smuggling. Gibraltar does not apply sales tax or other levies, while Spain says that smuggling costs it €400 million a year in lost import duties. This and a number of other dubious business practices associated with Gibraltar have an impact both on the EU and on the UK. Are the Government looking at how some of these issues might be addressed to help to progress the negotiations?

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon Portrait Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
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As the noble Baroness will know, there are provisions within the political framework for a level playing field. That will allow for mutual standards on matters covering labour, the environment and taxation, and it will cover all sectors.

Foreign Affairs

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Tuesday 5th March 2024

(3 weeks, 2 days ago)

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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and to welcome both his final comments and those on our relationship with Europe, which I will come back to.

It is tempting to focus, as many noble Lords have, on the situation in Palestine now: the hideous human suffering in the Gaza Strip; the terrible circumstances of the Israeli hostages; and the invention of a new acronym —WCNSF—meaning “wounded child, no surviving family”. UNICEF estimates that there are now 17,000 children in Gaza who are unaccompanied or separated from any relatives. That is about 1% of the entire population. Yet still we sell arms to the Israeli Government.

The topic of today’s debate is a broad one: the UK’s position on foreign affairs. I am in the lucky position that I can recycle material, because tomorrow I will be in Brussels with the Green European Foundation— I declare I have an unremunerated position on its board—to chair a debate at the Press Club on a major report, Geopolitics of a Post-Growth Europe. I urge noble Lords who seek new answers in a world where the old approaches—the approaches used for decades and continuing to be used by this Government—have delivered the conditions we have today to take a look at this report. Many will be pleased to note that in the introductory essay, the Dutch GreenLeft analyst Richard Wouters concludes that the EU

“should keep the United Kingdom close and underline that the door is open for re-entry. EU membership offers the closest form of alliance”.

However, in terms of our relationship with the nations of the global South—a growing, still relatively young part of the global population, as opposed to ours—the important point is made that it pays for them to sit on the fence, to play off the US, the EU and China, as well as the UK, against one another to secure trade, aid, investment and even security protection. There are many reasons for them to not prefer us and our allies. Many nations and peoples do not see the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the imperialist, colonialist attack that it is, because they associate such behaviour with western Europe and the US. They see, rightly, that much of the injustice and suffering they experience today originates from us. They see the enforced austerity of the IMF, the predatory actions of western lenders, the corrupt behaviour of western mining companies, the refusal to open up the use of climate technologies and, crucially, the refusal to allow affordable access to essential medicines and vaccines with manufacturing close to where they are needed.

History is not pre-written but made by the actions of people. Where we are today is the result of past actions over decades and centuries. Men sitting on these very Benches imposed starvation on India, forced 1.5 million Kenyans into concentration camps between 1952 and 1960, and imposed similar conditions in the so-called Malaya emergency. What should be at the heart of our foreign policy is, first, acknowledging the many abuses of the past and then that we need to act to stop the continuing oppression that arises from our own actions.

Debt cancellation is an obvious area of urgent need. Through that we would, as Wouters points out, ease the pressure on global South countries to sell off their biospheres and their lithospheres, and reduce the pressure to promote often exploitative labour conditions in export-orientated industries, when the efforts of their people could instead be directed towards delivering resilience and security, particularly food security, in the age of climate shocks.

I finish with a reflection on normative power—the power to exports one’s values—as an integral part of geopolitics and how living up to those values is crucial to being able to use that power for constructive good. With that in mind, I have two direct questions to the Minister for his summing up.

First, as Prime Minister in 2015, he made a public call to halt the planned execution of child defendant Ali Mohammed al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia. Ali was ultimately spared and has been released from prison. There are at least three such child defendants now in Saudi Arabia, despite its promises to stop sentencing child defendants to death. Will the Minister tonight publicly call on the Saudi authorities to prevent the executions of Abdullah al-Derazi, Youssef al-Manasif and Abdullah al-Howaiti? Secondly, the published value of UK arms sales licensed to Saudi Arabia since the bombing of Yemen began in March 2015 is £8.2 billion; the Campaign Against the Arms Trade says that it is much more than that. What is the world reading of Britain’s values when we export those arms and hand them over to one of the world’s regimes that is most abusive of human rights, particularly the rights of women and vulnerable migrants?

Myanmar: Health System

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
Thursday 29th February 2024

(4 weeks ago)

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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, it is a pleasure, as always, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and to very much agree with his points in terms of the need for more diplomatic action on sanctions on aviation fuel and small steps we can take to stop the flow of arms that are being used to repress the Burmese population. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, for securing this debate. Unfortunately, I was not on that call with the nurses but, given what I heard today, I can only pay tribute to them. I have encountered other people in similar situations who can be utterly amazing.

My connection is that I was in Rakhine state in the late 1990s, up country in the amazing archaeological site of Mrauk-U, where the only other westerners in town were two Médecins Sans Frontières doctors. That was a testimony to the state of the medical system then in that poverty-stricken part of Burma.

I do not wish to repeat the points that others have made but will focus on two issues. One of them arises from what I was doing last night: I was with the High Commissioners of Barbados and Bangladesh, the Ineos Oxford Institute, the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and the APPG on Antimicrobial Resistance. The meeting was preparing for the forthcoming high-level meeting in September of the General Assembly on the issue of antimicrobial resistance. I wish to cross-reference that with a couple of matters. One is the fact that there is increasing research coming mostly out of the Middle East that shows how AMR can be amplified by the impact of modern, heavy weapons, involving heavy metals going into the environment. That can induce resistance to antibiotics in microbes in the environment. There is also an increasingly amount of research that shows how AMR is strongly related to conflict. Obviously, that is partly due to the breakdown of medical systems, wounds that become infected for long periods, and so on. However, there is also increasing understanding about the impact of weapons.

As regards the issue of antimicrobial resistance, a figure that I suspect may shock even the knowledgeable noble Lords in this Committee is that about 50% of medical facilities in the world do not have running water. Wash water and sanitation are crucial. One would think that they are basic in 2024 but I have no doubt that these fundamental issues are enormous in Burma.

My direct question to the Minister—I will understand if he does not have an answer now—is: what are the Government doing as regards three key matters in the AMR area in terms of Burma? What is being done to support the provision of wash facilities, water and sanitation? What can be done to support provision of the appropriate antibiotics? Often in those situations, people just buy whatever antibiotics they can find, which may amplify problems. What can be done to increase the capacity for diagnostics that can operate at a small level, so that, crucially, one can test infections and find what antibiotics they are susceptible to and which they are resistant to? Then one can use the correct antibiotics. So, either now or later, perhaps the Minister can tell me of any work being done in that AMR space, which is getting much global focus this year, in terms of Burma.

I want to look at that, too, in the broader sense. I was in Burma many years ago with the World Health Organization, looking at the process of writing a report on women’s health. One of my more unusual claims to fame is that I appeared on the front page of the New Light of Myanmar shaking hands with the Health Minister. One might say that that was the previous junta’s propaganda rag. I did not have any choice in that. However, seriously, my question is about focus on women’s health and the efforts being made. We know that that issue is crucial to the health of whole communities but it often gets ignored. Rather more broadly, the focus on women’s education and the provision of support for women in those conflict zones and circumstances can be tremendously difficult.

Just as an example, some women from Afghanistan who I have heard from recently were working very hard to provide education—where girls are being denied it—by Zoom. Those technological means are open practically anywhere now. Is any work being done to support women’s education in Burma?

Death of Alexei Navalny

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
Monday 19th February 2024

(1 month, 1 week ago)

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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon Portrait Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
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I totally endorse the noble Lord’s statement, views and indeed sentiments. He brings a valuable dimension to the discussion and questions that we have about the strength of UK soft power, including the use of the incredible service that the BBC provides to many countries, including the Russian people. I certainly take on board what he said. As my noble friend said earlier, our fight is not with the Russian people. Indeed, Russian culture through history has enriched not just the Russian people but the world.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, I associate the Green Party with the expressions of condolence from all around the House to Alexei Navalny’s family, friends and supporters.

A number of noble Lords have talked about extending sanctions. There is obviously work to consider there, but I want to focus on what is happening in the UK. In December, Transparency International Russia, operating in exile, produced an important report about illegal money transfers for fictitious or overpriced invoices, which is what is known as trade-based money laundering. They total hundreds of millions of pounds, and a very large percentage of that involves UK-based shell companies. We are about to see the long-awaited reforms of Companies House, but the second point raised by the report was about the role of enablers—that is, professional companies and individuals in the UK that are facilitating what is known as the London laundromat. We have been through two economic crime Bills since the Russian invasion, but a Minister conceded to me that we needed to do more. Are the Government planning to do more about the enablers who are not just enabling corruption but enabling Putin’s war?

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon Portrait Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
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The short answer to the noble Baroness’s question is yes. She is right to raise the issue of those who profiteer. I mentioned earlier those who look for innovative ways of circumventing the legislation that has been imposed and the steps that have been taken. We need to ensure that the new bodies that have been set up and the new structures and powers that have been given are applied. There will always be deterrence, but there will always be those who seek to circumvent it. We need to close down the loopholes, including the ones that the noble Baroness has highlighted.

Recycled Plastics

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
Tuesday 13th February 2024

(1 month, 2 weeks ago)

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Asked by
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
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To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of reports that a global oversupply of petrochemicals has led to recycled plastics failing to compete with new, and whether they plan to take any action in response.

Lord Benyon Portrait The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Benyon) (Con)
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My Lords, we are aware of the oversupply of petrochemicals in the global market, but this is a matter for industry to lead on. It is estimated that businesses which are members of the UK Plastics Pact have, on average, increased the recycling content of their packaging from 8.5% in 2018 to 24.1% in 2023. The Government will continue to readdress the balance through measures such as the coalition and packaging reforms and the plastic packaging tax.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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I thank the Minister for his Answer. However, there was, for example, three times as much ethylene produced last year as there was demand for it. As with fossil fuels used for energy, is it not time to look seriously on a global scale at restrictions on production, not just working on the demand side, particularly given that we are all bearing the externalised costs imposed environmentally and financially in terms of waste disposal and the companies are taking away profits for unnecessary products?

Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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The noble Baroness raises a very good point. Domestically, we are seeking to increase the supply of recycled plastics and reduce the demand, through regulation and tax, for virgin plastics, but we recognise that whatever we do domestically will not help to solve this global problem. That is why we are a founding member of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution. At the United Nations Environment Assembly in March, we drove through, with Rwanda and Peru, a commitment to see an end to plastic pollution by 2042.

--- Later in debate ---
Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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Our restrictions on straws, stirrers and cotton buds have had a big impact. These items used to appear on the top-10 littered items lists but no longer do so. According to estimates in our impact assessment, England used 1.1 billion single-use plates and 4.25 billion items of single-use cutlery per year, most of which were plastic but only 10% were recycled, so banning these items will have a significant impact on reducing plastic waste.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, the Minister referred to strong public support for recycled plastics rather than virgin plastics, yet it is clear that the market mechanisms are simply not delivering the products that people can buy. Individual action will not work here. Do we not need to go much further and faster to ensure that we get to the circular economy that the Government stand for, and, indeed, the position where the polluter pays, which is the Government’s position?

Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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Absolutely. The Government’s 25-year environment plan sets out our ambition to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste by 2042. The resources and waste strategy, which was published in 2018, sets out how we are going to achieve that ambition, mainly by creating precisely what the noble Baroness said—a circular economy. We are not the single repository of good ideas here so, if the noble Baroness has a suggestion that works with business and the end-user, particularly households, we would be glad to hear it.

Children in Gaza

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts
Tuesday 13th February 2024

(1 month, 2 weeks ago)

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Asked by
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
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To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs what his Department is doing to ensure the lives and security of the children of Gaza.

Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton Portrait The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton) (Con)
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My Lords, the best way to address the humanitarian situation is by ending the fighting as soon as possible. That is why I have repeatedly said that an immediate pause in fighting is necessary. UK aid is saving children’s lives. We are doing everything we can to get more aid into Gaza and have trebled our aid commitment to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This includes targeted support for children through our £5.75 million contribution to UNICEF. Children are also benefiting from life-saving food, shelter and health support that we are providing through partnerships with other UN agencies, NGOs and the Red Crescent societies.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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I thank the noble Lord, but surely a pause in fighting is not enough. We need a permanent ceasefire now. Specifically, I am sure he is aware of the awful fate of six year-old Hind Rajab, calling for help in the midst of the bodies of her dead relatives, who appears to have died with two would-be rescuers from the Red Crescent. Have the Government demanded answers from the Israeli Government—or will they—about what happened to Hind, her family and the rescuers? Are the Government challenging the Israeli Government on the risks to hundreds of thousands of children in Rafah who are now in the path of the Israeli offensive? Surely it is time to stop all arms shipments to Israel, as a Dutch court has demanded that the Netherlands does, and implement targeted sanctions against members of the Israeli leadership, particularly those calling for new settlements in Gaza and on the West Bank.

Environmental Policies: Timeliness and Effectiveness

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Monday 22nd January 2024

(2 months ago)

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Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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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 Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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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 Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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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.

Rohingya Refugees

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Tuesday 16th January 2024

(2 months, 1 week ago)

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Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton Portrait Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
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The issue of the responsibility to protect is one we have taken forward and discuss with allies and partners. It is developing a doctrine, as it were. When it comes to this issue, we have a role; we are making a contribution and we are, I think, doing more than many countries of our size and scale. I think that there is a lot we should do to sort support ASEAN. It has set out its five principles for dealing with Myanmar, which we support, and has a co-ordinator from Laos who we want to work with. Ultimately, we should respect the fact that, in its region, ASEAN should take the lead on this issue and we can support where we can.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, on or about 28 December, it was widely reported that Indonesia had pushed back a boat containing a significant number of Rohingya refugees out of its territorial waters. I have not been able to find any report of what has happened since to the people on that boat. Would the Minister agree that that is absolutely unacceptable behaviour, out of line with international law? Have the Government made, or will they make, any representations on this to Indonesia? Do we not have to make sure that refugees are safe?

Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton Portrait Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)
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I am not aware of that report; I will certainly go away and look into it. What we would say is that Bangladesh should be praised for the role that it is playing in taking quite so many refugees. Obviously, there are huge pressures—there are worries about conditions in the camps and whether there is enough food—but, ultimately, Bangladesh is looking after a million people, and that is why we are supporting it to the extent that we are. Every country should take its responsibilities towards refugees very seriously.

Climate Change: Impact on Developing Nations

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Thursday 11th January 2024

(2 months, 2 weeks ago)

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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, who made a very powerful point about externalised costs. Currently, the few in many sectors—the few giant multi-national companies—are making a financial killing, while the rest of the human and non-human world pay.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for securing this debate and introducing it so clearly. Like many, I am tempted to talk about the inadequate, non-manifesto compliant level of UK official development assistance. The fact is that we would all be more secure in a more stable world if we were spending more on ODA. The Green Party says double the Government’s current level, and that should be applied to real development assistance, not housing refugees in the UK—as much as we should be doing that as well.

After the year we have just had, the warmest in probably 100,000 years, I was tempted, like the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, to focus on the extreme urgency of climate mitigation. That is roughly half the time our species has been on this planet, and this is the warmest year. It is certainly, by a substantial margin, the hottest since records began. I was also tempted, as Debt Justice has been doing, to focus on the way the global debt crisis is preventing climate action, particularly in the 54 hardest-hit global south nations. Global south countries are currently spending 12.5 times more on debt repayment than they are on climate adaptation.

The Minister might be surprised to hear that in the short time available to me, I am going to focus instead on some money that the Government could stop spending on official development assistance, money that might instead be redirected towards supporting women and girls’ grassroots organisations as a foundation of a feminist foreign policy, for example. This area is of particular interest to the Minister: agriculture. I am relying in part on a briefing from Compassion in World Farming and on some excellent research for which I credit the House of Lords Library, which conducted it for me at speed. Compassion in World Farming, as the name suggests, is focused on the well-being and welfare of non-human animals. It points to an independent review for the FCDO that suggests that the department should

“work through its programmes, with the Governments in programmes’ countries of operation, to establish agreed levels of animal welfare”.

My direct question to the Minister is: will the Government be doing that?

However, we are focused today on the climate emergency, and with that in mind I want to look in particular at the activities of the International Finance Corporation, which is a member of the World Bank Group. Andrew Mitchell MP, in his role as Minister of State for Development, is a member of the IFC board of governors. The IFC has in recent years funded private sector projects including: a multi-storey pig farm in China; industrial pig production in Vietnam; industrial broiler chicken production in Uganda; and industrial pig and chicken production in Ecuador. Will the UK use its influence to stop that damaging funding of factory farming? As I often reflect in your Lordships’ House, it is a huge threat in terms of antimicrobial resistance and is wasting food that could be fed to people, instead feeding it to animals which convert cereals and plant proteins very inefficiently into meat and milk. Globally, 40% of crop calories are used to feed animals when they could be feeding people.

Of course, these factory-farming installations also contribute to massive deforestation and other environmental damage, creating manure as a major pollutant, even though, if we had small-scale agricultural agro-ecological regenerative approaches, it could be a fertiliser on arable crops. Many studies have shown that will not be possible to meet the Paris targets without a reduction in global livestock production. Therefore, will the Government do something—take action to seek to persuade the IFC to stop this damaging funding—and, furthermore, commit to ensuring that no direct UK aid goes to factory farming?

On agriculture more broadly, I am sure the noble Lord is aware of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact paper, UK Aid to Agriculture in a Time of Climate Change, from June 2023. The Government then, in responding to that, committed to

“ensure all new UK bilateral aid spending does no harm to nature”

by ensuring that it is all “nature positive”. That was a commitment in the international development strategy of May 2022. Can the Minister tell me whether that is true of everything that was funded in 2023?

Finally, we have to tie all this together: the welfare of our natural world, of our climate and of people. Food security is one of the crushingly important issues of the coming age. The Government themselves, at least sometimes, acknowledge that small-scale agro-ecological production is crucial both to improving nutritional standards and to ensuring that we live within the Paris Agreement. Are the Government ensuring that they stop funding both industrial agriculture of all forms, and that they are funding the agro-ecological small-scale production the world needs?

Biodiversity Gain Site Register (Financial Penalties and Fees) Regulations 2024

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Wednesday 10th January 2024

(2 months, 2 weeks ago)

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Lord Benyon Portrait The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Benyon) (Con)
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My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register. The draft instruments—the Biodiversity Gain Site Register (Financial Penalties and Fees) Regulations 2024 and the Biodiversity Gain (Town and Country Planning) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2024—were both laid before the House on 30 November. The instruments have been grouped as they are part of a package of regulations which work together to introduce the new framework for mandatory biodiversity net gain. Although biodiversity net gain is a key policy delivered by the Environment Act, some of the policy involves amendments to the planning system. I will speak to both instruments together, given their interlinks, but I will not profess to be an expert om the intricacies of the planning system and commit to writing to noble Lords on points of particular detail.

The instruments laid before the House today form part of a package of SIs that will commence the new, world-leading biodiversity net gain requirement. This is a new approach to development and land management that was legislated for in the Environment Act 2021 and had strong support across both Houses. It aims to leave the natural environment in a measurably better state than it was beforehand through requiring a 10% net gain for biodiversity on each eligible grant of planning permission. These gains must be delivered, first, through on-site habitat enhancement or creation where possible, then through off-site enhancements or through purchasing units from the market and, finally, as a last resort, through purchasing statutory credits sold by the Government.

A public consultation on the policy and implementation of biodiversity net gain was held in 2022. The government response, published at the beginning of 2023, confirmed the policy intention for mandatory biodiversity net gain and has informed the drafting of these regulations.

I turn first to the Biodiversity Gain Site Register (Financial Penalties and Fees) Regulations 2024. The Environment Act 2021 gives the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs the power to make provision for a register of biodiversity gain sites. The core purpose of this publicly available register is to record allocations of off-site biodiversity gains to developments. The register will be established by the Biodiversity Gain Site Register Regulations 2024.

This instrument makes provision for the imposition of a financial penalty and the payment of fees relating to applications to that register. This instrument provides for imposing financial penalties to help ensure that the biodiversity gain site register contains accurate information. The provision for financial penalties will encourage compliance, deter individuals from submitting incorrect information and remove illicit financial benefit—for example, through cost avoidance.

This instrument also provides for fees to be charged for different applications to the register. These applications include gain site registration, amendment applications and applications for the allocation of habitat enhancements to development. The fees have been set to achieve cost recovery for the set-up and ongoing maintenance of the register. Developers are not obliged to use the biodiversity net gain register and should first aim to achieve biodiversity gains on site before turning to off-site gains. Landowners who choose to supply off-site gains to developers must apply to register their land. We expect that they will do so only if the benefits from selling units outweigh the costs. Without these regulations setting the requirement for fees to be paid and the amount to be paid, the register would not achieve cost recovery and there would be a significant cost to the Government.

I now turn to the Biodiversity Gain (Town and Country Planning) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2024, which have been ably drafted by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. The Environment Act 2021 amended the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to make provision for biodiversity net gain in the planning system. The Act specifically adds a new Schedule 7A, which sets out the statutory basis for the 10% biodiversity gain objective, the metric and the general biodiversity gain condition which will apply to those planning permissions. It also made consequential changes to other parts of the Town and Country Planning Act.

These regulations will make further consequential changes. First, they provide rules within Schedule 7A for determining the local planning authority which is responsible for the approval of a biodiversity gain plan required under the general biodiversity gain condition. Secondly, they further amend Section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act, which enables the variation of conditions of previous planning permission to cover the circumstances when an earlier biodiversity gain plan is to be regarded as approved where the development’s on-site habitat is irreplaceable habitat. Finally, they make amendments to Section 78 of the Town and Country Planning Act for the purpose of appeals about determinations by planning authorities in respect of the biodiversity gain plan. These are technical amendments to ensure the provisions for biodiversity net gain in the Town and Country Planning Act work.

In conclusion, let me emphasise that the regulations are essential to the successful delivery of the new mandatory net gain requirement, which will help to deliver much-needed gains for nature. Once the regulations are approved by both Houses, we will lay the rest of the biodiversity net gain regulations, which we have published in draft. I commend these draft instruments to the House.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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My Lords, I was expecting more people than this. I thank the Minister for his introduction, and I think it is very clear that what we are looking at here are two instruments from a very major set that will finally implement the idea of biodiversity net gain, which your Lordships’ House and the other place have been debating for what now feels like many years.

Before looking at the detail of these two statutory instruments, I think that it is worth thinking about what we are talking about here. We are trying to deliver a system, however much some of us—I include the Green Party in this—have doubts about it, that means that we do not keep going backwards. As we stand in the House tonight, we are about to see the destruction of a veteran oak tree in Melton Fields in East Riding for the construction of an Amazon warehouse. I have been on the site and seen this happening. The biodiversity net gain that is being offered is “We will have some wetlands over there”—I am not quite sure where the sign that says “Birds, go that way” will be—but there is huge concern and there is still so much that we are losing. I think it is crucial that we see that.

I have a couple of questions about the instruments that I would like to put to the Minister. He talked about ensuring full cost recovery in the fees being charged. What will be the situation for projects for the public good, such as a new hospital for the NHS, a community centre or group? What provision is there to make sure that the people who can afford to pay are paying and that those community projects are not stopped but able to go ahead?

The other point which I think reporting in recent days has raised—this fits in with the levelling-up Bill that your Lordships’ House spent an inordinate of time on last year—is that we are seeing controls being put on for more than 10% biodiversity net gain, and that is overwhelmingly concentrated in the south of England, where there are local area partnerships. In terms of these instruments, but also more broadly, will there be allowance for the regional differences, the regional cost differences and, perhaps even more importantly, the regional ability to pay, in the provision in these statutory instruments?

Lord Deben Portrait Lord Deben (Con)
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My Lords, this is a thoroughly good change and we should be entirely pleased that we are taking this step because it is a step that we have not taken before. I sometimes argue with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, but saying thank you is important if we are to get Governments to do more, so I start by saying thank you.

I recently attended a very interesting conference in Essex in which an expert explained exactly how this system worked. I am now much better informed, but it took some time to explain it in a way that, to put it simply, ordinary people understand. I hope the Minister agrees that we need to explain this much more effectively than we have until now if we are to get people to join in the “thank you” I started with.

I know that the Minister has rightly suggested that he is not an expert on planning, but he will understand when I say that I am disappointed that this Government have still not introduced the necessary overarching element in the planning laws that says that no planning permission should be given unless it fully takes into account the national statutory requirement for net zero in 2050 and the two important promises that we made at COP 26 on the targets for 2030 and 2035. Until the planning system as a whole insists that decisions are made within that context, the planning system will not be working properly for us to be able to deliver what we now, by law, have to deliver.

He may want to write to me on this subject, and it may be a long letter, but if it does not say, “Yes, we are going to do it”, it will not be acceptable because we have to do that as a central issue. It is barmy to have a planning system in which we fiddle about with little bits of what my noble friend said were technicalities when we cannot make the fundamental decision that the planning system itself should be beholden to the Government’s and the nation’s commitment to net zero.

Lastly, I hope that the Minister will be very careful about how this thing works. There are real issues about how it will work on the ground. Can he help us by telling us what measures the department has for monitoring how it works and for reporting back, so that we know how that monitoring has worked out? This is a new thing and something we should very much cheer on, but like most new things I would like to know how it is working and how we can improve it in future.

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Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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My Lords, I am very grateful for the contributions to this debate. The regulations debated here today will support the new mandatory net gain requirement, which will help secure positive outcomes for biodiversity, create better places for local communities and support a more consistent, streamlined and transparent planning process. This is very much only part of how we seek to deliver our 2030 targets, which my noble friend Lord Deben mentioned, of no net loss of species, and an increase by 2045. It is really important to make that clear.

We estimate that we are talking about around 6,900 hectares a year, but hundreds of thousands of hectares of other nature improvements are being incentivised by wider biodiversity credit schemes, carbon credit schemes and nature conservation measures that are being led through our environmental land management and other agri-environment schemes. Communities across England will benefit from new developments that work for both wildlife and people and create nature-rich places to live, while ensuring that they have the new homes that they need.

To take the point made clearly by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, there will continue to be a need for development under any party of government, which means that there will continue to be a risk of the loss of biodiversity. We need a system that works and is clear.

I take my noble friend’s point: I suspect that they were talking about the Natural England metric when he was at that conference. I would be the first to admit that that is a very complicated piece of work: it runs to a great many pages, and I have tried to run a competition in my head, if not in the department, about how many people understand it. The point is that, as we develop this and as those metrics are understood by more people—the people advising the businesses that seek to purchase the credits and the land managers who seek to make the land available—we will see a robust scheme that is accountable.

I will try to address the key points raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, quite rightly raised the issue of whether 10% goes far enough—why 10%? We consulted on the percentage gain to be required in the 2018 public consultation. Respondents set out varying views on the appropriate percentage gain, and there were calls for both higher and lower percentages—obviously, there will be people out there who did not want any and people who wanted a great deal more. We maintain the view that 10% strikes the right balance between the Government’s ambition for development and the certainty of achieving environmental outcomes to support the pressing need to reverse environmental decline while being affordable and deliverable for developers.

Developers and local authorities may wish to voluntarily pursue gains higher than 10%—a very good point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. Where higher net gain percentages may be set in local planning policy, careful consideration in those events should be given to the feasibility of requirements above 10%, for example for smaller, self-build and community developments —I think that is really important. To be clear, biodiversity net gain means a strengthening, not a weakening, of the protections for the environment. The existing strong statutory and policy protections for our statutory protected sites, protected species and irreplaceable habitats will remain in place.

My noble friend talked about on-site enhancements and how they will be enforced. Local authorities will have a range of existing planning enforcement tools at their disposal, and the Environment Act includes mechanisms to ensure that commitments through conservation covenants are adhered to. The enforcing body which has entered an agreement to secure the site will play a key role in ensuring enforcement. This may be a local authority or could be a responsible body for a conservation covenant. Significant on-site biodiversity gains must be secured by a planning condition, planning obligation or conservation covenant, all of which bind the land, meaning that they apply to successor landowners as well. Off-site biodiversity gains must be secured, including management, by either a planning obligation or conservation covenant. Failure to deliver, or attempt to deliver, biodiversity net gain outcomes which are secured with conditions or obligations, subject to which planning permission is granted, can result in enforcement action by the planning authority.

The fines, along with the registration fees, will have to be reviewed as time goes by. Of course, we will see how it works. So much of this can and will need to be amended as we work it through. On the point about fines, if the kinds of greenwashers that the noble Baroness was referring to have not built the wetland or planted the trees or the wildflower meadow or whatever it is, the 30-year clock will not start until they have—so it is not only a fine but a delayed benefit to them.

The noble Baroness talked about projects for public good, which was a very good point. On the question of a hospital, the fees will be paid by the landowner, so it will not come out of the cost to the public purse, if you like. There will, of course, be a degree of management of those fees: some of them may find their way into front-ending the costs. There is a key point about nationally significant infrastructure projects: we are delaying the implementation of biodiversity net gain until next year for NSIPs because it is a more complicated matter. These are obviously much larger schemes and we want to make sure that there is biodiversity net gain—but we want to do it in the right way, so we will consult on that.

My noble friend talked about net zero. Our commitment on net zero, as he knows better than anyone, and for no net loss by 2030, are just some of those that are locked in law—we have to do it—so the Government have taken a range of measures, not least this extraordinarily exciting piece of legislation, the Environment Act, to deliver that. It is important that we see it working and we will continue to make sure that we look at all suggestions that can improve the planning system to deliver this.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, talked about monitoring. Integrating the biodiversity net gain requirement into existing planning processes is obviously what we are talking about. The Government are allowing the outcomes to benefit from existing enforcement and monitoring powers in the planning system. Planning application data is routinely published online and will describe how a development is achieving biodiversity net gain. Off-site habitat enhancement will be registered and will need to be secured, including any appropriate monitoring arrangements, through a conservation covenant or planning obligation. Planning authorities are required under the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 to report on the actions they have carried out to meet their biodiversity net gain obligations and the details of biodiversity gains delivered or expected to be delivered.

There are some real-life examples, and here I will big-up Buckinghamshire Council, which this week has put information on its website setting out how landowners and developers should engage with it to seek to enter into Section 106 agreements to secure their land, including the estimates of associated costs. These will be negotiated through the Section 106 agreement process, but should cover the costs of the ongoing monitoring that the local planning authority—in this case Buckinghamshire —will carry out. One such estate, the Iford Estate, has already entered into Section 106 agreements to secure portions of land. In the example of Iford, it has entered into a Section 106 agreement with the local authority—the South Downs National Park Authority. Private sector marketplaces are emerging which list BNG units for sale, operating to join up landowners with developers looking to find off-site units. Examples include Addland, the Environmental Trading Platform and Savills Environmental Exchange. I think the Environment Bank is one of the leaders in this field.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
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It is interesting that the Minister chose the example of Buckinghamshire. I was referring to the apparent difference that is developing between north and south—that, broadly speaking, higher standards appear to be being set in the south. Are the Government planning to monitor the regional impacts of this, and is the north going to get the biodiversity net gain that it urgently needs? Will the Government act if it is not?

Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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The legal requirement is across the country; there is no geographical lessening of the need for it. We will certainly be monitoring which local authorities we think do this properly and which do not, and that will be a matter of public record.

I should just comment on the key question of irreplaceable habitats. These are obviously England’s most valuable habitats. They have a high range of biodiversity value and are so difficult to recreate—ancient semi-natural woodland, peat bogs and that sort of thing. On 29 November, we published the draft irreplaceable habitat regulations, which set out the list of habitats to be considered irreplaceable habitat for biodiversity net gain purposes. The local planning authority must be satisfied that the adverse effect of the development on the biodiversity of the on-site habitat is minimised and that there is an appropriate compensation plan in place. The regulations also set out that losses of irreplaceable habitats cannot be compensated for using statutory biodiversity credits. It is important to note that irreplaceable habitats already have significant protection in the National Planning Policy Framework. Impacts on these habitats from development require the strongest of justifications.

I will address another point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. Off-site gains, which could be biodiversity gains, on other landholdings, or purchasing biodiversity units from the market, are part of the new hierarchy that sets out the draft regulations on biodiversity procedures. This ensures that, where impacts on habitats cannot be avoided or mitigated, compensation should be delivered either through off-site gains, as I say, or through enhancing and creating habitats on site, and, as a last resort, through purchasing statutory credits from the Government.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich speaks with great knowledge—I heard his outstanding maiden speech in this House. He is an ecologist, and I would say that his erstwhile career is now a growth industry, which answers some of the points he made. I do not know the exact number of local authorities that employ their own ecologists; I am very happy to seek that out and to write to noble Lords. It is a growth industry, because developers and local authorities are going to need them. There are a great many local authorities that use a contractual arrangement, and so do not employ them directly, but many still do.