Environment Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I will be brief. I put my name down to speak on this group expressly to support Amendment 103—because, given our earlier debates on the office for environmental protection and its independence, I want to test the extreme limits of Defra’s control, if there are any. I would have thought that it is a given that Amendment 103 should be accepted. If it is not, that tells us something about Defra’s controlling nature regarding the work of the office for environmental protection. That is the only point that I want to make.

A subsidiary point is that I also support Amendment 114, and, later today, I will also speak to Amendment 114A, which is effectively a fallback position for the amendment in this group.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, Amendment 114 operates in close relationship to Amendment 78, which we debated on Monday, to which I had attached my name. Both amendments address the relationship between the Armed Forces and the Treasury in the Bill and certain exemptions provided to them.

Amendment 78 and our debate on it talked about exemptions for action; Amendment 114 talks about removing exemptions for disclosure of or access to information. The arguments for the Government to hold their current position and not include this amendment are even weaker when we talk about information—because we are not talking about actual action.

However, it is worth going back to what the Minister said in the debate on Monday, which can help to inform this amendment. He said that including Amendment 78

“could restrict our response to urgent threats. Policy decisions concerning defence are often made rapidly, or even in real time”—[Official Report, 28/6/21; col. 579.]

due to “urgent … operational imperatives”. In that debate, we talked about a couple of interesting case studies: a new housing estate and, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned, a pile being driven into a creek because it might assist in the mooring of submarines. Neither of these in any way fits the definition of urgent defence imperative.

However, I acknowledge that there are occasions on which there may be a need to, perhaps, put in some very urgent flood defences or build a pandemic hospital—the kinds of security threats that we are now facing on a regular basis—so it may be necessary to act urgently. However, I come back to that debate on Amendment 78, in which the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, cited some detailed legal material, saying that the precautionary principle, which those who are seeking to amend the Bill desire, “already includes proportionality”. Of course, if something is needed for an urgent matter of national defence, clearly it would be proportionate to act as necessary. It would not be unreasonable to then provide information about what damage had been done in terms of defence. I cannot think what one might conceivably claim regarding why information should not be provided about the damage that the Treasury might have had to do to the environment for whatever reason, if one can possibly imagine such a thing.

We are talking a lot today about openness and informing the public about what is being done to the environment. In that context, Amendment 114—I still stand by Amendment 78 in some combination when we get to Report—is essential.

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[The Duke of Montrose (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Curry, with his deep scientific knowledge of agriculture and soils. I declare my interests: my family runs a livestock farm and owns a series of SSSIs in two areas of nature reserves.

In this clause, we get to define the extent and, where necessary, the boundaries of what we want the Bill to influence. On soils, I support my noble friend Lord Caithness’s Amendment 110, which is necessary because the government strategy for carbon sequestration is considerably dependent on the soil and peat. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will respond positively to either of these amendments.

I will produce a quote from a rather different angle: 300 years ago, in Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift expressed the old saying that

“whoever could make ... two blades of grass … grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.”

That was in his day. This has inspired our farmers for 300 years. To me, it is an environmental principle, but in the Bill the Government have given us as their environmental principles a set of prohibitions, protections and penalties.

The judgment, from the measures contained in the Bill, is that that earlier principle has now gone too far. The protections listed will be necessary, but we need to be sure that our purpose is not simply to put all the processes of the countryside into decline. It would be nice if someone could come up with a phrase that would draw all our aspirations together and point the way forward. The outcome will hang on the wording in these clauses and what we interpret as the meaning of “natural environment”.

I support Amendment 113, in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh and the others who have signed it. This draws our attention to the whole marine biosphere, an area that is under great threat at the moment. It is essential that this is not overlooked. The various marine organisations are still drawing up their inventories of what is in the natural environment at present, and a great deal of expense and research will have to be dedicated to that area. I too served on the EU Environment Sub-Committee that my noble friend Lady McIntosh mentioned, and I contributed to the work that was put in. There are huge areas where we have hardly any information.

My noble friend Lady McIntosh spoke of the importance of the marine area to the UK. In December, Scotland published its latest marine assessment report, which has to be updated every three years and which, in turn, covers an area six times greater than the Scottish landmass—so biodiversity is a very important field for that Administration.

At the same time, the Bill will incorporate the policies of species abundance and the encouragement of biodiversity. We have spent so much time discussing targets. Given the role that mankind has taken upon itself over the centuries, targets are necessary. The Secretary of State can introduce almost unlimited targets under the Bill, but Clause 3 has a number of subsections that must be observed if the Secretary of State wishes to reduce them.

However, there is no requirement for the Secretary of State to pay any attention to taking actions if a crisis develops when one element becomes prolific or threatening and the need to cull numbers requires some urgency. The nearest experience that I have had did not have the urgency in question: it was decided that the deer population in the huge Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, which is next door to me, was well above what was good for forestry purposes and that it should be reduced to four deer per square kilometre. They then set about culling 4,000 deer out of this area, which is not something that I would readily support, but it was a necessary management action and is an indication of what might be required if proliferation becomes extreme. In the spirit of the Bill, it will always be preferable to employ nature-based solutions, but, if diseases or threats to biodiversity occur, we must be prepared to act in whatever way will be effective.

My noble friend Lord Caithness’s second amendment raises the important question of defining biodiversity. “Biodiversity” in the Bill seems limited to the abundance of species, particularly in Amendment 22, moved by my noble friend the Minister on day 2 of our deliberations. Amendment 113B would mean that attention could be given to how far biodiversity should be supported.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to offer the Green group’s support for all the amendments in this group, which have given us the opportunity of an important debate about what we are trying to save, what we are trying to protect and what we are trying to improve.

Amendment 110, in the names of the noble Earls, Lord Caithness and Lord Shrewsbury, and my noble friend Lady Jones and myself, proposes that soil be regarded as a habitat. I will address it with Amendment 112 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, that it perhaps does not matter so much where “soil” appears; it needs to appear somewhere. I would suggest that a very simple solution which the department could implement easily would be to go through the Bill and look everywhere where “water” and “air” appear and add “soil”. I doubt that there would be many problems when one looked at the result. We are of course revisiting our debate on day 1 of this Committee—which now feels like quite a long time ago—about Clause 1 and an amendment in my name which would have added soil as an important target. It needs to be in all these places.

I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, will forgive me if I pre-empt a little what she is perhaps going to say, but it is so important that it needs to be highlighted. I saw that she was speaking to the Secretary of State at Groundswell. During that discussion, it was said that soil health was perhaps the most important thing and would be the focus of the sustainable farming initiative. Perhaps the noble Baroness can tell us more about that; it would be very interesting. The Government themselves identify soil as a huge priority. As the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and many others have said, we are talking about how the Agriculture Act and the Environment Bill fit together. The Agriculture Act provides directions on the methods of action; this Bill judges how successful it has been.

I have circulated to a number of noble Lords—I realise that I neglected to circulate it to the Minister, for which I apologise and I will fix it shortly—a briefing paper that I received from a number of farmers, academics and farm advisers on the difficulty of being paid for results in managing soil health. It makes an argument for payment for practice instead, with the three key things identified as minimising soil disturbance, maximising soil cover and maximising diversity of cover. All are clearly good things to work towards, but we need to measure how the results come out, and that has to be in the Bill.

Following the coverage from Groundswell, there was a lot of discussion and excitement about work done on worms. There is perhaps an argument for the number of worms per square metre being a very good measure. I am not putting that forward entirely as a serious proposal although it is certainly something to look at, but I would point the Minister to the publication last week of a volume entitled Advances in Measuring Soil Health, edited by Professor Wilfred Otten from Cranfield University. It is a real sign of how much this field is moving forward. That brings me back to our discussion on Clause 1, when the Minister, in arguing why soil should not be included in the clause, said that

“the Government are working collaboratively with technical experts to identify appropriate soil health metrics … it is a complicated business”—[Official Report, 21/6/21; cols. 94-95.]

and that they were looking to develop a healthy soils indicator as part of the 25-year environment plan. This is a matter of extreme urgency and focus, as identified by the Secretary of State; it cannot wait for something off into the far distance. A great deal of new work is available now; a great deal of ideas are available now. The first metric that we end up with may not be perfect, but we need a metric, and if that needs to be improved in future, so be it. It could be dealt with by regulation, as the Government so like to tell us.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, briefly, I offer my support to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and thank her for tabling it and for sharing the very useful Bar Council briefing. I shall just draw a couple of points from that and make an additional point of my own.

One point to draw from that briefing is that there is a broad definition of environmental information within the Aarhus convention. The briefing rather weighs on some of our earlier debates, noting that it includes a non-exhaustive list of elements of the environment: air, water and soil. It also includes cultural sites and built structures, which very much weighed on a debate on day three perhaps—it all blurs—but one that we had earlier on the inclusion of culture within the frame of the Bill, for which noble Lords on all sides of the Committee strongly argued.

I also wanted to draw attention to the other point of the Aarhus convention, which says that

“public authorities may not withhold information, except for”—

and then follows what one would think of as a fairly standard list of exemptions. There is a very important restriction on those exemptions, which is that

“commercial confidentiality may not be invoked to withhold information that is relevant to the protection of the environment”.

Given the level of privatisation of so many aspects of our management of our environment—water companies come to mind most clearly, but there are many others—that may be a very important protection to ensure that this is fully included and complied with. It is worth noting that we are talking about an international convention to which we signed up, but we have recently had a lot of encounters in which the Government do not seem to regard themselves as being bound by international law and matters to which they have signed up.

My final point is the real, life-and-death seriousness of this. I shall refer to a case to which many people, including my noble friend, have referred to previously, which is the tragic death of nine-year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. I want to quote just one sentence from the coroner’s conclusion, which said:

“There was a lack of information given to Ella’s mother that possibly contributed to her death.”


Very often, when people are thinking about information about the environment being available, they are thinking in broad public health terms—they are thinking of campaigners, whom the Green Party is often supporting, fighting big issues. We are also talking about matters of life and death, and people being able to protect themselves and their children if information is available to them.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for allowing us to have this brief debate. She has rightly raised the fact that the OEP should have some continuing role in monitoring and factoring in our obligations under international environmental law. These obligations, including Aarhus, still exist despite us leaving the EU—and these are not technical questions, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, as just illustrated so vividly. If the Government are not minded to accept this amendment, it would be helpful if they could spell out how the role of the OEP and its enforcement functions with regard to our international obligations will appear in the Bill. I therefore look forward to the Minister’s response.

However, since I have the floor, I briefly echo the concerns of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, about all the business on the Bill ending up at Report. I just say very kindly to the Minister that, in the past, it has been a much more iterative process. It is really not very helpful that the Minister seems to be giving us a blanket no to all the amendments we are debating. Normally, there is a little more give and take. Everyone has their own way of doing things, and he must develop his own style, but I fear that he is storing up more problems than is necessary at Report if he does not take the Chamber with him. This might just be a matter of tone, but I give him just a little helpful advice about how we might proceed.

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[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I want to speak to my own Amendment 128, which goes back even further into the depths of this Bill to Schedule 6. It is a probing amendment in many ways, and very mild, just to tease out where the Government stand on this. Although, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said so well, this seems to be a very technical area, these issues are absolutely essential in making the future circular economy, and everything we want in terms of resource efficiency, actually to work and become public friendly—and the way that it faces the public becoming friendly as well.

It comes down to labels. We have had some mention of labels already, particularly from my noble friends Lady Scott and Lord Bradshaw. What I am trying to get at here is that there are provisions, rightly, for the Secretary of State to be able to make regulations about such things as labels on products, but what it does not do is suggest that there should be some consistency about that labelling so that we all find that interface useful, friendly and usable.

I am thinking of two other areas in particular. When I put the laundry into the washing machine at home, there is the occasional garment that I do not have a clue how it should be washed. So what do I do? I look at the label on the garment that has all those little symbols that tell me how I should wash this—at what temperature and all that sort of information. It might tell me not to wash it at all, but to dry-clean it instead. Over the years, I have got to know those symbols. Everybody else has: they are actually fairly international rather than national; I am not even asking for them to be international. Through that, we get to know what we should do.

I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who mentioned electrical appliances. Whether it be a dishwasher or a dryer, they also have labels that give an energy efficiency rating. That has been so successful that we have had to reinvent or restate what the most efficient levels are, because people have got to know them and simply go for green rather than red.

This amendment is merely offering a suggestion to the Government. It would give the Secretary of State the power to ensure that labelling on goods in the system that will become part of the circular economy is consistent, so that everybody gets to understand the symbols and they are therefore effective. We should not have a wide range of different labels from different manufacturers, or different systems, which would confuse consumers. In labelling, we need consistency, good design and systems that have been tried and tested, and last. As, I think, my noble friend Lady Scott said, this will make sure that people who want to do right can achieve that.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I rise chiefly to speak to Amendment 292, which appears in my name and has the backing of the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott and Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I thank them all for their support and note that a number of other noble Lords would have signed this amendment had there been space.

I was simply going to speak to my amendment, but I must briefly and strongly commend Amendment 119, which was so ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, highlighted in a previous group that I had focused on the word “urgent” a lot. With this amendment the noble Baroness has really driven home the need for urgent action. We have a plastic and waste-choked planet and nation that cannot take any more: it cannot take the volumes we are imposing on it every day.

Amendment 292 is about nappies. That might sound like a minor issue but I hope that by the time I have finished, noble Lords will understand that it is not. Before I begin, I declare my position as vice-president of the Local Government Association, since that will become relevant. For full transparency, I declare that I have worked on this amendment with, and many noble Lords will have received briefings from, the Nappy Alliance, which represents makers of reusable nappies. Supporting a green industry and working with it is not something I am going to make any apologies for, but I think it is important we acknowledge such ties and where the resources come from.

On average, each single-use or disposable nappy generates 550 kilos of carbon dioxide throughout its whole lifecycle, from production to disposal. From birth to stopping using nappies, an average child will use the equivalent of 15,000 plastic bags and half a tree in fluff. This is why the Local Government Association is relevant: at a local level, single-use nappies account for some 4% of residual waste in England. That is 3 billion nappies each year, and it costs local authorities £600 million a year to dispose of them. When such nappies are sent to landfill it takes 300 years—roughly 12 generations—for them to break down. Incinerating them gives rise to significant carbon emissions and local air pollution levels, an issue we keep coming back to. This is where my amendment links to that tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw: single-use nappies often end up contaminating waste for recycling because of misleading labels and consumer confusion. Many people do not realise they contain plastic, and think they are a kind of paper.

By way of contrast, reusable nappies use 98% fewer raw materials and generate 99% less waste. They save the equivalent of 17 plastic bags per day. Here, I think I need to dispel some misunderstandings. As we have seen in many other areas of health and environment where there are powerful industry interests, there has been a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about environmental impacts and comparative environmental impacts. In March 2021, in a report I would be happy to share with any noble Lord who is interested, the United Nations Environment Programme published a comparison between single-use nappies and reusables. It concluded that reusable nappies had a lower environmental impact across all trial scenarios when compared to single-use nappies.

Michael Gove seems to be coming up a lot this evening. Back in 2018, he did actually suggest that disposable nappies might be banned. In a very rare occurrence, I am not going to go as far as Michael Gove did in 2018. When people are travelling or when there is a new babysitter, for example, there may be an argument for the occasional use of single-use nappies, but it should not be the norm.

This brings me to some other aspects of the amendment that really start to address how we change the situation. There are some really good local authority small-scale practical schemes that are helping people change to using reusable nappies and get away from single-use nappies. Often, they are based on nappy libraries—frequently run by volunteers, most usually women—which have a range of nappies that families can try out. People can see which ones are suitable before they spend money. Many local authorities—by no means all and by no means extensively—offer schemes that can help families to purchase reusable nappies. The problem is, of course, that when you have a new and growing baby, you need a set of nappies, which is a big initial outlay beyond the reach of many people. Subsection (8) of my amendment would allow the Secretary of State to make regulations for a levy to be paid by nappy manufacturers to fund a scheme to help people use reusable nappies. We are talking about ensuring that people can afford to buy them and that they have access to understanding and knowledge—nappy libraries also share information about how to use nappies and what the best ones are.

There is a comparison here. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, talked about energy labels on packaging, and that is partly what this amendment calls for. But in fact, it is a bit like cigarette packets, for which we have labelling and pricing that acknowledges the cost of the product that applies to all of us.

So, I strongly commend this amendment to the Minister. I point out that I have probably been approached by more noble Lords on this amendment than on any other I have tabled—and I have tabled some with very wide-reaching effects. This issue is of great interest to people for many reasons. One, of course, is something I am sure we will be referring to a lot in the next few hours: litter. There is a big problem with litter from single-use nappies. It is a deeply unpleasant thing. I am sure most noble Lords have been volunteer litter pickers in some form or another, and it is not a pleasant thing to encounter when doing that.

What we are talking about here is changing things to make life better. It is about the kind of systems thinking that I very often refer to. This is the Environment Bill, and when we talk about the environment people ask if we can we afford the cost of this or that measure. If we can help most families to use single-use nappies, that would save them, on average, £11 a week. That is a lot of money to many families—money that could be spent on healthier food or on taking off some of the stress and pressure. This amendment has environmental and social benefits: it is a win-win. If the Minister is being pressured to offer some yeses, here is an easy win.

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[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I have spoken on fly-tipping many times before in your Lordships’ House, so I will not repeat that. Given what other noble Lords have said, there is little left to say. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for introducing these amendments. She has my total support.

My noble friend Lord Ridley is absolutely right: the problem has got worse in the last 15 months. It was bad when I talked about it on the Agriculture Bill, but it is considerably worse now. I can only add to what the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, just said, and that, if a farmer finds somebody dumping stuff in their field, they are often threatened. I know of a farmer who accosted somebody who was dumping rubbish in their field. The person turned on him and said, “Don’t do anything. We know your children. We know your children’s names and where they go to school”. These amendments are very necessary.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I join every speaker in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for tabling these amendments and offer my support. Rather than repeating what has been said, I will make a few extra points.

The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, referred to fridges. There is a term I am not sure I have heard mentioned in this debate and an issue that needs to come up the agenda, which is planned obsolescence. We have seen many products last less and less time. I had a fridge that died after seven years, and I went on social media to have a big grumble about it. Lots of people told me I was lucky it had lasted that long. We are seeing lots of fridges being dumped, but for how long were they made to last? If we go back to the manufacturer or maker of the product, we are heading in the right direction.

How much farmers are suffering from this problem has been stressed already. According to a 2020 NFU survey, nearly 50% of farmer respondents had suffered from fly-tipping. So it is a huge issue for farmers, but also for many other people responsible for land. Since the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, is not speaking on this group, I will refer to the Woodland Trust which, in the seven years to June 2020, had spent more than £1 million cleaning up fly-tipping. We are looking at organisations like that.

We also have not mentioned manufacturers and commercial companies—not just fake disposal companies but companies not disposing of industrial waste appropriately. I refer to a case that just came up in the last few days. For the third time, in a similar location, Colchester council found a leaking drum containing what was clearly a noxious substance. It cost £2,000 each time to dispose of that drum properly—I should declare my vice-presidency of the LGA here—costs that the council has to bear. We have a widespread problem. We tend to say that it is individual householders but, as this debate has brought out, it is important to say that this problem is much broader.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB) [V]]

My Lords, as a rural resident and minor landowner, I very much welcome the opportunity to debate this issue. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for raising it. Fly-tipping is by any standards a national scourge, and in places it occurs on what might be called an industrial scale. It really is a problem that we have to address.

My noble kinsman, the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, made all the points I would have made, except that I will reiterate something I mentioned at Second Reading. This business of landowner responsibility comes about by virtue of the environment Act of I think 1990. It was not just a question of polluter pays; if the polluter could not be found then the owner of the land was responsible. This always seemed manifestly unjust. It really does need to be dealt with.

I very much appreciate the notion that there should be some sort of co-responsibility, perhaps by putting sums into a fund that would enable this to be funded and operated by an NGO or by local government—I am not sure which; I do not wish to impose burdens on anybody. That seems to be one of the principles.

Some fly-tipping does not involve grab lorries that disgorge 20-tonne loads at a time, which is clearly an industrial-type process. People must have HGV licences and there are operators in places where these vehicles are legally stationed and parked up. There is quite a lot at stake for them if they are caught out. CCTV footage having to be disclosed should be unnecessary for this sort of thing. After all, one is dealing with the apprehension of a criminal act. It should be exposed as that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, referred to obsolescence. I quite agree with that point. Having nursed a domestic appliance to its 27th year before it finally had to be taken away when its replacement arrived, I know exactly what she means. One of the ways that we need to deal with waste in particular, and plastic especially, is to lengthen the life of the product or make it multiuse or dual purpose. I am not saying that is the case for a washing machine or a household white good, but it can be for many other things.

I admit that I am a beneficiary of some of this perhaps less criminal but less well-informed fly-tipping. One of my gateways greatly benefited from a pile of clean rubble dumped in my woodland. I scooped it up and stuck it where it was actually useful. On another occasion not so very many months ago, I gained a clean and unruptured bag of cement, which, in this time of cement shortages and shortages of many other building materials, I was quite glad of.

However, this rather suggests that there is a huge amount of ignorance. If we had better sorting and recycling of some of this material, we would all be better off, but many household and other recycling facilities do not allow commercial vehicles in. As I said, if you are a householder you might have to book a slot to deposit your waste. This seems a significant indicator of a lack of capacity, but there is also a lack of imagination in how we deal with these things.

Ultimately, it has to become socially unacceptable to do this, so that the only socially acceptable thing is to ring up or look through Yellow Pages, for example, to get somebody to remove your household waste. There has be a certification process, rather like Checkatrade, that tells you that these people are certified, have the proper credentials and will dispose of your stuff safely and not just dump it somewhere between here and the municipal disposal facility, because they can save themselves £100 or £200 in so doing. We need to be a bit more alert when setting about dealing with this issue.

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[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I will be brief. I just want to point out that we have apparently thrown away—I have checked this in lots of sources—3 million face masks every minute across the world. It means, in a way, that we cannot trust ourselves in what we think about plastic. We have to get firm and do something very serious about this, which is why I have put my name to Amendment 139.

I also support Amendment 141A about getting rid of sachets. If we do not legislate, we do not innovate. Unilever, for instance, has come up with a new seaweed-based thing to make sachets out of, which genuinely completely composts or fades away in water without any damage. Right now, the supermarkets have a free rein. Iceland has done its best but voluntary contributions never work. I have spoken about this before, but the relationship of single-use plastic to food waste is massive, because vegetables are wrapped up and you get too many—for example, you get five courgettes in a packet when you wanted one. This is a great way to get you to spend more money and creates waste all the way down the line.

I shall not go on with the statistics; everyone has come up with so many of them. All I want to say is that I once sat next to Liam Donaldson and he said that he did not sleep the night before he announced the smoking ban in Great Britain. He thought he would be the most unpopular man in Britain, but by lunchtime the next day he was the most popular man in Britain because it was what everyone wanted. The truth is, people hate plastic. Everybody moans about it; it does not matter whether you are talking to a reader of the Sun or the Daily Mail. This is a universal dislike and we want the Government to do something serious.

It needs a combination of taxes and a complete ban on single-use plastic. Around the world, 69 countries have done just that: they have banned it. If you ban it, you get innovation. Just before the pandemic, I was in India. The amount of plastic plus waste in India, which is introducing a ban from next year, is quite astonishing. One of the disastrous reasons is that there are no vultures left; they have all died because they have eaten plastic as well as the various antibiotics that were fed into cattle. One of the bizarre consequences is that at the Tower of Silence in Mumbai, a Parsi temple, there are no longer any vultures to eat the dead, so they have to be fried by solar panels. This is a really weird consequence and we are doing this with masks at the moment. Three million a minute are going into our system.

This is why you cannot trust voluntary regulations of any nature and why the Government have to seize this year of COP and the biodiversity conference and do something. We know what plastic does to our nature. We will all be proud—noble Lords will be proud and will all wake up as the most popular men in Britain.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. Since she started on international issues, in speaking to Amendment 140 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, also signed by my noble friend, I will point out that in April Washington state became the seventh US state to ban takeaway polystyrene containers. Australia is planning to be rid of them by mid-2022 and Costa Rica has a ban coming in this year, so I will have to come back to that much loved government phrase “world-leading” as there is some catching up to do here on polystyrene takeaway containers in particular. I will also point out that the National Research Council in the US has found these containers can

“reasonably be anticipated to be a human carcinogen”.

This is a real no-brainer.

In 2016 a group of chefs, including some of the usual celebrity names you might expect, were calling on the London mayor to ban polystyrene as the scourge of Soho. This problem is urban, rural, marine and general—it is truly a problem everywhere. All of plastic is a problem but polystyrene is a particularly pernicious problem and this would be an easy win, as we now all keep offering the Minister.

Finally, to pick up the point of the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, he perhaps underestimates the degree to which plastic really is a much-hated material. None the less, I entirely agree with him that when it comes to the waste pyramid, “reduce” is by far the best option. I hope that when we get to Report, he might think about backing my amendment, which I will be revisiting in some form. Rather than talking about resource efficiency, we should be talking about a reduction of resources.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has withdrawn, so the next speaker will be the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, wishes to speak after the Minister, so I call her now.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have a very simple question. The Minister referred to the Government already having power to ban materials such as certain sorts of polystyrene containers. Do they have any plans to take such action?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

Do we have plans? We are committed to extending our bans on unnecessary single-use packaging and have a 25-year environment plan to phase out all unnecessary use of plastic, not just single-use plastic, so in that sense, yes, we do have a plan. The noble Baroness is right that there will need to be continuous pressure. I think that pressure will continue to grow from consumers, voters and from parliamentarians of all parties to accelerate those bans and expand their remit. From my point of view, I have ambition and hope that we will expand that approach as far and wide as we possibly can and as quickly as we can.

Environment Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 28th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. I rise to support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I completely agree with her that to “have due regard” to environmental principles is absolutely not enough and we have to insert the words that we must “adhere” to them.

The fact that environmental protection is not yet integrated into all other policy areas makes it impossible for us to reach our net-zero targets. The fact that, for instance, it does not apply to the Treasury leads the cynic in me to say, “Why on earth did they commission the extraordinary review—the Dasgupta review, which the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, referenced in her excellent speech? Is it just a cynical operation so we have some good window-dressing leading up to the COP?” Otherwise, why leave the Treasury out? It is, at the end of the day, probably the most important government department to ensure that we carry this out.

I want to speak quickly and specifically about the integration principle a bit more. I have spoken here before about the absurdity of putting houses up on the edge of Knepp, the rewilding estate. Just this morning I read the Times:

“More than 60,000 oak, beech and other native trees planted to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee are to be chopped down … to build up to 4,000 homes.”


This is on military land at the Prince William of Gloucester barracks in Grantham. It has been commissioned by Homes England—another body referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. The Government are apparently eating up their own plans.

The point about these trees is that 88,000 of them were planted between 2012 and 2013 to celebrate the Jubilee, and, as anyone will know, this means that the trees are just coming into their maximum moment to be wonderful carbon sinks. It is a fantastic time for trees. The trees were planted by a group of people in the area, including 15 year-old Call McLelland, who yesterday asked what kind of message this sends out to people. He said:

“I planted a tree at the Grantham Diamond Jubilee Wood with my family when I was seven years old. I can remember looking forward to seeing the trees fully grown and feeling we’d done something worthwhile … I would be devastated”


if this goes ahead.

We cannot have this; we must have consistency. These environmental principles are here for a point. Do we want to lose people like Call—the people we are going to need? I will point out to the Government what happened to them in Amersham recently. People do not like it; they have woken up, and they care about the land and biodiversity. We have targets to meet and integration is where we have to start.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and to thank her for putting that important case study on our record. I rise to speak chiefly to Amendment 78 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, to which I have also attached my name, as have the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Young of Old Scone.

Before I get to it, my noble friend Lady Jones has already covered the amendments opening this group and they have been powerfully supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, but I want to briefly address Amendments 77A, 79 and 80A, because those three amendments—as we have just heard very powerfully, in the case of 77A from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh—are about the need for the OEP to have teeth. Her important change does that, and this is something I suspect we will be discussing for a good part of the rest of the day. To the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, I say that of course Wales needs equal protection from the environmental principles that are applied in England. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, clearly identified a really important issue. I would like to offer support to all of those.

I will come specifically to Amendment 78. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, did a great job of introducing this. We are talking a great deal about security at the moment and I want to focus on two elements of this amendment, addressing the Armed Forces and defence policy, and also a little bit on the Treasury—as others have already. When we heard the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, read out the letter from the Minister in the other place, it seemed that we have that great catch-out, security: “Oh, it’s security—we can’t question any of that.” Well, I point noble Lords to the recent integrated review and its foreword, written by the Prime Minister, which says:

“In 2021 and beyond, Her Majesty’s Government will make tackling climate change and biodiversity loss its number one international priority.”


It further points out that

“the UN Security Council recently held its first ever high-level meeting on the impact of climate change on peace and security.”

So we should not be saying, “Here’s security and here’s the environment and security’s going to overrule the environment”. We are talking about the same thing here. The Government say that they grasp this, but I think it is very clear from the wording that they do not.

The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, referred to the fact that the MoD has so many SSSI sites. That is really not surprising, when the MoD controls nearly 2% of the UK. Looking at what that is, 82% is training areas and firing ranges, which we might think are natural sources of biodiversity and natural spaces where there is a great deal of nature—and similarly with the 4% that is airfields.

It is useful to note that the Armed Forces themselves regard this as really important. Noble Lords might be aware of the sanctuary awards, which are awarded every year within the defence sector, aiming to showcase sustainability efforts across defence. Last year, the silver otter trophy went to the Chicksands historic walled garden project, which brings us back to an earlier debate about heritage being included in “nature”. I also note that the sustainable business award was won by the Portsmouth naval base’s Princess Royal Jetty and Victory Jetty project, which aimed to create sustainable moorings in Portsmouth. It would be well if we saw the same thing happening in Oman, where we built a large new military base without any environmental assessment at all. None the less, we are doing this here in the UK. It is really important that we get the Government to see that security and the environment are not in opposition to each other but joined up.

On that point, I apologise to noble Lords because I will mention something that I have mentioned many times before. When we come to the Treasury not being covered by the Bill, let us look at New Zealand: the New Zealand Treasury puts at its absolute heart a living standards framework informed by the sustainable development goals, putting the environment, economy and security together. If the Government want to be world-leading, we need all aspects of their activities, and particularly the Treasury’s activities, covered by the Bill.

[The Duke of Wellington (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to Amendment 76 tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Young of Old Scone. The whole Bill legislates on the way in which we look after, and improve where possible, the environment, both natural and manmade. I looked at the government website over the weekend and saw that, currently, it lists 20 non-ministerial departments and no fewer than 414 agencies and other public bodies, plus 13 public corporations. These public authorities—I assume that we must add to them the local authorities in a certain sense—control almost every aspect of our lives.

The Bill is, in a certain sense, a framework Bill, from which will come many pieces of secondary legislation and various policy decisions. Clause 18(1) requires a Minister, when making policy, to

“have due regard to the policy statement on environmental principles”.

Given the large number of public authorities that make policy, it seems to me both logical and necessary that they should also have regard to the statement on environmental principles. Having listened to the debate this afternoon, I am not sure that the words “must adhere” are not better than “have due regard”, but that is a matter on which I am sure the Minister will comment.

However, the point of Amendment 76 is to add “public authorities” to the organisms of government that must take account of these principles. Therefore, I look forward to the response of the Minister on why this amendment is not one that the Government could and should accept.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I understood that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, had withdrawn from this debate—but she is shaking her head at me, so I assume that she wishes to speak. I think I should make it clear that her name is listed as having withdrawn; however, I will call her now.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Thank you. There was an administrative snafu, which I understood had been sorted out. I apologise. I did not mean to withdraw from this debate and thought that it had been fixed.

I will be very brief anyway. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and to thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, for this amendment. I wish to speak to it briefly to highlight the way in which it helps to stress and shows the interaction between this Bill and so many other Bills, and the fact that the environment is now part of everything we do and there will be environmental impacts on all legislation.

What we are talking about here is a way of finding joined-up government, so that we do not have the siloed thinking that says, “This is environment and this is security and this is education”. My understanding of what the noble Lords who tabled this amendment are trying to do is get a functional way to do this—and it is very important that we do, so I thank them for their efforts. We need to make sure that Clause 19 really works for the future operation of the law and of government.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

I call the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Thank you, Deputy Chairman. My Lords, I offer support for all these amendments, but particularly on whether Clause 24 should stand part. Opposing it is the obvious way forward here. I want to pick up on the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who was not entirely consistent in suggesting that we should not worry about how the Bill was structured because there is a strong person as the first head of the OEP, Dame Glenys Stacey. However, then she said, “But we don’t want it too independent because then it might get too strong and dynamic, and take too much control”. That really highlighted the issue.

Many people are saying “Isn’t it great that we have that person as the first chair of the OEP?”, but structures should not depend on individuals. Those individuals change; they go to different places as roles change over time. Often when we talk about what is in the Bill the Government tell us, “Trust us, we don’t have any ill intentions”, but the point is not who the current Minister is or what the Government of the moment’s intentions are. We are setting up something new and important here, which is likely to continue for decades. We are talking here about the environmental review process and the OEP being able to state what the remedies for that are. There has been a lot of talk about carrots and sticks, and soft and hard powers. These things are really quite subtle and need to be used with great independence to have real force over long periods.

We have heard a lot of comparisons with other government bodies, such as the National Audit Office, the Electoral Commission and the Office for Budget Responsibility, all of which have stronger levels of independence. They have real independence from Ministers and departmental structures. It is quite telling that two of them are financial structures. When we talk about spending money, we have to have some independent oversight of that; but when we talk about the environment, somehow it is good enough to leave it with Ministers and the Government. It is a question of what we regard as important and what we really value and guard. That is what we are looking for.

I think it may have been the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who quoted the Secretary of State as saying, “If we do not have these controls, there is a risk of making it up as it goes along.” Surely that is the point. The OEP needs to create new structures, not to be directed by the Minister in those structures.

The noble Lord, Lord Curry, speaking just before the break, asked a very important question: what is the point of having guidance if there is no impact? We are being told that the Minister can provide some advice, some offering, but if that is not going to have an impact, why does it need to be in the Bill and why does it need to be given? We think about spending government money very carefully with real independent oversight. When we are looking after our environment, our natural world, and tackling the climate emergency, we need that same kind of independent oversight.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I cannot help feeling that there is an air of unreality about this debate. Everyone on all sides agrees about the need to preserve the independence of the OEP. The Government’s position is set out quite clearly in paragraph 17 of Schedule 1, to which I referred earlier today. The phrase is “must have regard:

“the Secretary of State must have regard to the need to protect its independence.”

As my noble friend Lord Anderson of Ipswich said, there is much to be said for the view that it is no business of the Secretary of State to give guidance on these matters and that Clause 24 should not be there so that the OEP can make up its own mind about the policies it needs to follow. Much depends on the meaning and choice of words, so let us reflect for a moment on that.

Is it really being suggested, as I think someone mentioned earlier, that Clause 24 can live with paragraph 17 of Schedule 1 because there is no requirement to follow the guidance that has been talked about in Clause 24? Do the words of Clause 24 really have that meaning? Does the phrase “must have regard” change its meaning according to the context in which those words are found? As I have mentioned, paragraph 17 contains the same formula. Are we really to read it as imposing no requirement to have regard to protect the independence of the OEP? That would be an astonishing position to take and I am sure the Minister will not be taking it, but if it means what it appears to mean, the word “must” imposing an obligation that must be fulfilled, why not so in Clause 24?

I hope that the Minister was listening very carefully to what I said in the debate about Section 14(2) of the Scottish continuity Act. It is difficult for me, far away, looking through a lens, as I am, to observe closely what the Minister is doing to know whether he really was listening very carefully. I very much hope he was, and his closing words suggest that he was, and I am glad of that. He will have noticed that the reason why I was supporting him was because of the meaning that I gave to the phrase

“Ministers of the Crown must … have due regard”


in Section 14 of the Scottish Act to Scottish environmental policies. I made it clear in my remarks that it was because I read those words as giving a direction to UK Ministers, imposing an obligation on them, that I felt that Amendment 80 had to be supported because it was correcting a mistake in the Scottish legislation. If I had been told that there was no requirement on UK Ministers to follow these policies, the position would have been quite different. One cannot pick and choose. The words in each context are perfectly clear and they must have the same meaning.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said that, as worded, Clause 24 “drives a coach and horses” through paragraph 17. I must confess that, taking the words according to their ordinary meaning, that seems to be absolutely right. So I agree with my noble friend Lord Anderson that the Bill would be much better without Clause 24, but, if it is to remain, its wording must surely be adjusted so as to preserve the independence of the OEP, which the Secretary of State is, I suggest, under an obligation—in terms of paragraph 17—to do.

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[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I will make a couple of brief points in relation to Amendment 96 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. First, a system exists that I think would meet what the noble Lord is asking for: I refer, of course, to the guidelines developed by Lord May of Oxford when he was the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser. These guidelines have three core principles governing the use of evidence in policy-making, which is partly what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was talking about. They are: first, seek a wide range of expert opinion; secondly, recognise uncertainties in the evidence; and thirdly, openness and transparency in the use of evidence. These guidelines will be especially important for the OEP because many, if not most, of the environmental issues that it will deal with will be ones where the evidence is contested. People will have strongly held opposing views, or they will claim that the evidence is incomplete or that there is uncertainty.

The answer to the request from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is for the OEP to follow the Government Chief Scientific Adviser’s guidelines. At the same time, the OEP may wish to follow the example of many other public bodies in conducting as much of its business as possible in public meetings so that the decision-making processes can be directly observed and the evidence, as it is being evaluated, can be studied by the public. Does the Minister agree that it would be valuable if the OEP operated under the guidelines set out by the Chief Scientific Adviser?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. As always, his contribution has made a useful addition to the debate and he has put down a useful specific question.

I rise to speak in favour of the ideas and aims behind the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, although I come at this from a somewhat different direction. The noble Lord suggested that this was the way the Government, or the OEP, could lead the public; I suggest that we look at it from the other way around. On many environmental issues, whether you look at the climate strikers or last year’s people’s assembly on the climate, the public have in fact been leading and pushing companies and the Government to act. It is very helpful to the public to have available the information and published material, but rather than thinking about this as us leading the public, let us see it in other terms: as more of a partnership.

This amendment also takes us back to some of our debates on the Agriculture Bill, when we talked about the lack of agricultural extension and of independent advice to farmers. Indeed, a group of farmers I talked to last week were bemoaning the lack of independent advice available to farmers. A great deal of the information that might be collected and put together by the office for environmental protection would also be of great use to farmers. I think here of what the noble Lord, Lord Curry, said on the last group of amendments about regulatory capture. We want this to be available.

As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, a lot of research is behind paywalls. We are lucky enough in your Lordships’ House to have the wonderful Library; we can ask it to get anything we want, but that is not available to the public. It is a great pity that far too much publicly funded research is still hidden behind paywalls. The research that guides the OEP should be publicly available.

Finally, I turn to the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, about oat milk. I remind him that the practical reality of our economy is that a great many externalised costs are not paid by the producers or sellers of a product and are therefore not reflected in the price tag. Many farmers are barely being paid, or not being paid, the production costs of their milk, reflecting the economic power of the supermarkets. I also point out that you can of course make your own oat milk, which would cut out the middle person, save you a great deal of money and cut out a great deal of packaging as well.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the Minister invited me to welcome government amendment 95, which of course I do and I imagine that, if he were here, the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, would do the same. It is particularly encouraging, if I may say so, that this amendment comes from the Government. It has not been necessary for me or the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, to struggle to get an amendment in these terms through the House. It is an example of a welcome and increasing recognition throughout government at Westminster that the devolved Administrations really do matter and need to be respected as equal partners in the various endeavours we are engaged in to maintain the integrity and standing of our country. That is particularly so in relation to the environment, where we are so dependent upon each other.

I am grateful to the Government for taking the initiative. This is a welcome amendment and it has my full support.

Environment Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, one of our priority areas for targets is waste, so we are committed to introducing at least one target, but, as I said, we can introduce targets on other issues as well. We are looking very closely at where targets are likely to have the best and biggest impact, and Defra is currently looking very closely at the issue that the noble Baroness has raised. I am not sure whether it was in the noble Baroness’s speech, but we heard from a few people, including in the opening speech, about the negative impacts of throw-away face wipes that contain plastic. We in the department are looking very closely at this as well; we are gathering information to see where we can have the biggest impact. I do not want to prejudge that process, but we are clearly committed to moving to a zero-waste economy, which will be reflected in the targets and is reflected in the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in his answer to the debate on this group of amendments, the Minister said that the Government are relying on extended producer responsibility to see a reduction in waste, particularly plastic waste; indeed, he said, “We will see less waste”. I was thinking about a company that produces some of our most expensive electronic goods and which does not have a particularly good environmental record—everyone will know which company I am talking about. If it produces a telephone or device that is worth £1,000 or more, the packaging cost would have to be very large to discourage it from making it look as fancy and as flash as you could possibly want.

Then there is the other end of the market—supermarkets, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, just mentioned. They are saving a lot of money by selling plastic-wrapped vegetables, which forces people to buy more. I did a little price comparison in Lidl in Sheffield, and the loose vegetables were roughly twice the price of the plastic-wrapped ones. That is certainly a reflection in part of the fact that they are cheaper for supermarkets to handle: they need fewer staff and plastic-packed goods can be more roughly handled. You would have to put a very major cost on that plastic to ensure that there is a truly significant deterrent effect. I ask the Minister to respond on his claim that “We will see less waste”—how can he be certain about that?

To pick up the other point, the Minister said that the plastic ban has a risk of encouraging the use of other equally, or similarly, damaging materials. I come back to our debate on day 1, when we talked about the need for a limit on, or reduction to, our resource use in total, and a target to see a total resource-use loss.

Finally, my noble friend has asked me to tell noble Lords—she has been having conversations on Twitter—that if you are now wearing a blue plastic face mask, you can wash these several times and they will survive several washes. Having given that important information, I will sit down.

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[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 15. The targets the Government intend to set will impose substantial costs and obligations on us, one way or another. Any costs imposed on a business ends up with the consumer. These may well require substantial changes in our behaviour. I would like the Government to commit to empowering us, to taking us along with the process they have followed in arriving at those targets, and to telling us why they have chosen those targets and accompanying dates. I would also like them to set out in full and make accessible to us the evidence on which those targets are based.

If we empower people in this way, they become fellows—people who are with us in setting out to tackle the problem, rather than being compelled, often unwillingly, to go along with government diktats. The more we can persuade people, the more we can take them with us, the easier it will be and the further we can go. I would like a system which would clearly incentivise the production of evidence. Where it is weak—regarding the harm done by microplastics, for example—there should be a clear incentive for the Government to sponsor research and investigation to underpin any target they may wish to put in place.

We have a history of legislating in this area based on inadequate evidence. For instance, the original decision to ban tungsten lightbulbs in favour of other systems was based on the idea that the heat they create is wasted. In this country, this is only true during four months of the year; during the other eight months, the heat is extremely useful. The decision to allow only low-powered vacuum cleaners was based on extremely thin evidence and may well have resulted in people expending a lot more energy and time than would have been necessary, had they had higher-powered vacuum cleaners. If we are to use resources effectively in dealing with pollution and other problems, we absolutely must base it on evidence. This evidence, and our thinking, must be shared with the people we want to take along with that decision.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords I shall speak chiefly to Amendments 16 and 18 in my name. I also want briefly to support the sentiments behind Amendment 15 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. However, generally speaking, history shows us that, as more evidence is collected, regulations and restrictions are far too weak at the outset and need to be strengthened further. I question the two examples he gave but I will not disappear into the weeds of those details.

I also support Amendment 43 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, to which my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has added her name. This partly relates to my amendments. Amendment 43 talks about a statutory duty to meet interim targets. My two amendments—particularly Amendment 16—say that there should be

“at least one interim target”.

We are talking about targets of 15 years or more.

I asked the House of Lords Library—it is an invaluable resource, and I thank it—to find out how many Secretaries of State in the last 100 years held that single post for more than 10 years. It came up with a list of two: Gordon Brown, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, both of whom were Chancellors. No other Secretary of State held that post for longer than 10 years.

This is a question of responsibility and of people taking action, and being able to demonstrate that they are taking action, over a relatively short period of time. I will not reopen Monday’s debate about our being in a climate, biodiversity and environmental crisis. We are in a crisis, and we need action quickly. Fifteen years is a very long time. If the target is that far away—a minimum of three Governments away and, based on current case studies, perhaps considerably more—it is very easy for it not to be addressed and for no real progress to be made. That is why I am suggesting at least one interim target in those 15 years.

That brings me to my second amendment, Amendment 18, which states that these long-term targets should be no longer than 20 years. In my reading of the Bill—I should be very interested if anyone can tell me I am wrong; I do not claim to be a lawyer—it says that targets will be at least 15 years away; there is no maximum target. The Bill—we are talking about what is written in it—could allow the Government to set a 50-year target for water pollution or biodiversity, which, of course, is no kind of target at all.

These amendments are small and modest, and I am not necessarily wedded to the numbers in them. They are an attempt to open up the debate about the fact that we cannot just say, “Right, here’s a 15-year target, and we can all sit back and worry in 12 years’ time where we have got to.” We need targets set with appropriate reporting towards them. I point out a situation where we have interim targets set. This is by the Committee on Climate Change. In its most recent reports, it has set out the fourth and fifth carbon budgets, which run from 2023 to 2027 and 2028 to 2032 respectively. We are not on track to meet either of those. That demonstrates the importance of setting statutory interim targets and committing to their delivery.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

There are a couple in. Indeed, one of the reasons why so many millions voted to leave the EU—not Europe—inspired by the democratic spirit, was to escape top-down, immovable regulations imposed from on high. What grated was that any challenge to subsequent policies was met with a shrug: “There is no alternative—they are the EU rules”, given an extra moral force when associated with international agreements. In that context I support the very sensible amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, maybe with a different reasoning, but I thought he put forward an excellent explanation of his thoughts.

These amendments all contain the spirit of flexibility and call for us to consider, as well as environmental concerns, what the social and economic costs of meeting targets in the Bill might be, to ensure that they are not disproportionate to the alleged benefits. The amendments ask us to take into consideration the possibility not just that circumstances might change but that evidence might mean a rethink, and that would mean a different cost-benefit analysis. Cost-benefit analyses are essential in a democracy to give both politicians and, more importantly, voters a choice of priorities—a sense that there is always an alternative. I therefore want to address targets, not so much missing them or whether they should be long-term or interim, but rather the dangers of making them overbinding.

It is important to ensure that citizens know what is being legislated for in their name, that the social and economic costs and trade-offs of environmental targets are not removed from public debate with a “There is no alternative; it’s binding and in the law” dismissal. Make no mistake: targets in one area regularly have a cost elsewhere. For example, the net-zero target is regularly bandied about as an aspiration we all agree on reaching at any costs, but when Andrew Neil asked the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, on GB News last week to break down those costs and put figures on them, that was not so comfortable, and there is no transparency when there are no figures. What is clear is that net zero as a target will have a cost, not only for the Treasury—potentially at the expense of other spending priorities such as social care or job creation—but it will land exorbitant costs on householders in terms of making their homes net-zero compliant, such as the compulsory demand to replace gas boilers. I have noticed when I have raised this issue in the House that the regular reply is: “We need to take the public with us. We need to educate the public so that they understand why they need to change their behaviour and why we need to reach net zero”; in other words, reaching the target is treated as a given—a fait accompli. I note that this means the target usurps choice, so I want to reflect a little on choice.

If you say to the public, “You should support this net-zero target because it’s necessary to save the planet from climate catastrophe”, of course it is a no-brainer. However, if you say, “Do you support the net-zero target with its trade-offs, which could mean reducing living standards?”, or if you say, “We’ll abolish every petrol or diesel car and discourage driving in general, but if you insist on driving we’ll make it an expensive electric car”—and, by the way, yesterday I googled electric cars and the cheapest I could find was £18,500, and the most popular UK electric, Tesla, is an eye-watering £42,000, which for most people would be quite a challenge—or if you describe in detail the impacts on individual lives of decarbonising the economy, there may be less enthusiasm for the target once the trade-offs are known. People have a right to know.

With this Environment Bill, if we tell the public that it is about reducing fly-tipping and toxic pollution, stopping sewage being dumped in rivers, reducing flooding or protecting wildlife in the country, I am sure there will be lots of nods of approval, including from me. But if you explain that legal targets throughout the Bill could mean regulatory barriers to economic bounce-back, holding back industrialisation, and creating material limits to much-needed housebuilding and economic development, there might be a different response.

I said at Second Reading that a tension is already being posited between this Bill and the planning Bill, or planning reforms. I fear that the result of the Chesham and Amersham by-election may fuel this, with an unholy alliance of shire nimbyism and green activism. I am very much on the side of relaxing planning regulations and releasing land for new building, infrastructure and housing and, yes, even some building on the green belt. That is not because I want to concrete over the countryside or because I am opposed to protection of green spaces per se but because the green belt is being treated as sacrosanct or untouchable, yet is 13% of England’s total land and is much larger than the 7% of developed land. So it at least needs to be looked at again.

For me, the social priorities are solving homelessness, tackling the problem of young people excluded from the housing ladder, and the distorted and ever-growing costs for renters. But that is all just my opinion. Many people here do not support it, and that may not be a popular set of opinions outside of here. However, it is precisely these sorts of arguments, weighing up the costs and benefits and the trade-offs of policies, that we need to have in the public sphere. I fear that immovable and overbinding targets in law can only obscure transparency and rule debate on the implications of this Environment Bill off limits.

My final thought is that targets can too easily become the end, not the means to an end. During the 15 months of the pandemic we have seen targets taking an almost Soviet-style command and control form, with daily reports of numbers tested and Nightingale hospitals built—even if not used. Too easily, targets can be bean-counting exercises: the impression of activity but often a cover for the lack of transparency over detail.

I therefore hope that these amendments are adopted and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, does not mind me backing him. I am sure we will not agree on many things but I thought they were very important. These amendments could at least remind the Government to conduct cost-benefit analyses of actions associated with the legislation, and they are an important acknowledgement of the importance of social and economic challenges, as well as solving the practical problems in relation to the environment. It is also an antidote to the ubiquitous demand here, in every amendment that I have heard, that there should be ever more binding targets, because I fear that these could undermine democratic accountability.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, I should briefly offer a defence of targets—particularly the target of ensuring that everyone in the UK has a warm, comfortable and affordable-to-heat home. I hope that no one would disagree with the target of ending our utterly disgraceful excess winter deaths that come largely as a result of the poor quality of our housing stock. I also wish to defend the targets that we are talking about here in terms of our natural environment, on which our entire economy and lives depend.

I will be fairly brief. I want to speak in favour of Amendment 34 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, that would seem to be an easy, obvious amendment for the Government to accept. As the noble Baroness said, their ability to ask the office for environmental protection for guidance on the targets is simply not good enough and does not reflect the provisions of the Climate Change Act. We are very much creating a parallel here between action on climate and action on biodiversity. To mirror those two things would seem to be an obvious, simple and not difficult step.

On Amendment 19 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I would go broader than consulting the Department of Health and Social Care. The noble Lord in his introduction spoke particularly about recreation and the value of the natural environment to recreation. When we think about the health of human beings, the health of the natural environment is related in much deeper ways. I should point noble Lords to an interesting United Nations scheme called HUMI—the Healthy Urban Microbiome Initiative—which addresses a fast-growing and developing area of science: understanding the human microbiome and how it is related to our physical and mental health, and how what is happening around us in the natural world is utterly integral to a healthy microbiome.

I also wish to speak in favour of Amendments 41A and 41B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. Again, we are in what could be described as no-brainer territory. We surely should not be imposing anything in terms of environmental regulation on the devolved nations without their “prior consent”—words that are important. This matter also raises a subject that we have not broadly discussed and might like to think about further. As the noble Lord said, rivers and waters do not suddenly get to a national border, stop and turn around, saying “Oh, I’m Welsh water and am staying in Wales”. That is also true of birds, insects, mammals and the whole ecosystem. A question to the Minister, either for today or a future date, is on how the Bill, this Act-to-be, will fit within the common framework and co-ordinating efforts of the nations of these islands. How will that work? I think also of many of our debates on the internal market Bill, now an Act.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I will be brief. It is a delight to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

When I first read this series of amendments, I wondered whether they were really necessary. However, the more I reflect, the more I have become concerned and I now believe that these amendments, or something like them, are required. The Government will set targets as permitted within the Bill and we will debate that matter again later. However, it will be difficult to determine the unintended consequences of setting targets, which can distort behaviour, as we know. We have seen this in the NHS and other sectors in which the Government have intervened and set targets.

I understand the need to have a clear sense of direction and the discipline of knowing what we are driving to achieve within a given period. However, let us be clear, as far as possible, on the need to be aware of the costs involved and the consequences of fixing targets. Even the best-researched impact assessments with a range of assumptions can be wrong. I therefore encourage the Minister to take this issue seriously and establish systems with which to monitor the potential negative consequences as well as the benefits.

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Amendment 24, requiring a target to be set that will “meet” the objective of halting the decline of biodiversity rather than the very unambitious “further”, would be a simple and achievable way for the Government to inspire the action and investment needed to help avert continuing ecological decline and begin to restore our natural world. I have to say that this issue will not go away and that I intend to pursue it if the Government do not move further. However, I have every hope that they will do so in order to ensure their credibility on this issue.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, and to commend him, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on Amendment 24, to which the Green group would have certainly given its support, had there been space on the paper for it.

I will, however, go back briefly to Amendment 23 from the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, because it is crucial that we acknowledge the importance of chalk streams. It is something I have in the past done a great deal of work on, with concern about the arrival of what has been called unconventional oil and gas extraction and its potential impact on them. I will admit that seeing the noble Lord’s amendment also made me want to revisit amendments that I tabled to the then Agriculture Bill on meadows and hedgerows. They are all things we need to include when we are talking about the species abundance target more broadly.

However, what I mostly want to address is new subsection (4) in the Government’s amendment and the proposed amendments to that subsection. As the noble Lord, Lord Randall, has already set out extremely clearly, this simply does not live up to the promises that the Government made on the species abundance target: the words we heard from the Secretary of State in what was billed as a landmark speech.

Amendment 24 would leave out the word “further”. The Government’s amendment states that they will “further the objective”, and Amendment 24 says “meet” the objective, which is a considerable improvement. However, I have tabled Amendment 26, which would go further. I apologise to noble Lords, because I realise, looking at it, that in the Explanatory Statement I did not really get on top of the complexities of explaining it. The key difference in this context is that I say, rather than to “further” or to “meet” a target, “delivering an improvement”. We have the Government saying, “We’re going to try to at least not get worse”; Amendment 24 says, “We’re going to at least meet a target for species abundance”; and I say, “We have to see an improvement.” That is what would be written into the Bill.

I shall go back, as did the noble Lord, Lord Randall, to the speech of George Eustice in Delamere Forest. I have a couple of quotes from it. It used the phrase “building back greener”. I put the stress on the “er” in that: an improvement. He said that

“restoring nature is going to be crucial”—

we are restoring, we are improving. He said:

“We want to not only stem the tide of this loss but to turn it around and to leave the environment in a better state.”


I would say that to deliver on what the Government say they want to achieve, they need the words “delivering an improvement”, or words very similar to those, in the Bill to commit to seeing an improvement.

I shall give just a short reflection on what that means, and I shall go to the RSPB:

“More than 40 million birds have disappeared from UK skies”


since 1970. What the Government are offering is, “We’re going to try and stop losing more”; Amendment 24 says, “We guarantee to at least stay where we are”; my amendment says, “We’re going to bring at least some of those 40 million birds back.” That is what it is aiming to do.

We can reflect on a phrase which has been very much popularised by George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist and writer: “shifting baseline syndrome”. Older Members of your Lordships’ House may well say, “Well, nature just doesn’t look like it used to when I was a child”—but their grandparents would have said exactly the same thing. We have had a long-term, centuries-long collapse, and if you could get someone in a time machine from 200 years ago and put them into our countryside now, they just would not recognise it, with its total lack of wildlife.

It is also worth looking at the Government’s reaction. The noble Lord, Lord Randall, referred to the Dasgupta review. The Government have, of course, already put out a formal response to that in which they talk about a “nature-positive future”, which I suggest implies that there has to be an improvement: if you are going to do something positive, you are increasing it. That explains why I have worded Amendment 26 in this way, in terms of delivering improvement.

I want briefly to address the rest of Amendments 26 and 27 on the issue of species abundance. I have talked to some of the NGOs that have been instrumental in the petition that the noble Lord, Lord Randall, referred to—250,000 people had signed it the last time I looked to say that they want an improved species abundance target—I will be very happy if the Minister can correct me, but no one has actually defined what a species abundance target means. We go back to our debate on Monday about what biodiversity means: whether it is biodiversity of genes in a large population which has a large diversity of genes, one hopes; whether it is species; whether it is the fact that to have abundant species, you need a rich ecological environment. All those things fit together. Amendments 26 and 27 are my attempt to get the Minister to reflect now, or if not now, later, and explain to us what the Government really mean by a species abundance target.

What I have suggested, in trying to address those different aspects of biodiversity, is to look at the mass of wild species—we are talking about bioabundance. Keeping a few handfuls of tiny populations of every species going is not enough; we need to have lots of the popular species, lots of all species and also population numbers of red and amber list species, trying to address those rarer species on which a lot of the attention in terms of extinction is focused. I am sure all noble Lords have received many representations about Amendment 24, which is certainly a great improvement on government Amendment 22, but I ask your Lordships’ House, as we go forward to the next stage, to think about some wording in the Bill that guarantees building in improvement, not just ensuring no decline.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She and her colleague from the Green Party can certainly never be accused of falling down on the job. They are persistent; I do not always agree with them, but I salute them for keeping their cause going.

I was greatly impressed by my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge’s speech but I must say to my noble friend, whose personal credentials I do not question for a moment, that his amendments this evening are disappointing, to put it mildly. The speech of the Secretary of State, George Eustice, to which reference has already been made, excited expectations. The amendments that my noble friend has tabled do not—if they will fulfil those expectations, there is a great difference between promise and performance. It is not just the road to hell that is paved with good intentions; in this context, the road to extinction is paved with good intentions. It is not a question of my noble friend’s intentions but of the performance that I think will follow.

I suggest that on Report my noble friend should toughen this up. I ask him to convene a meeting of those are speaking in this debate and others to see whether we can come to a consensus and amendments that will really reflect what I believe is his genuine intention, and what is certainly the desire of a large majority of your Lordships’ House. I urge him to do that, because I do not want this to become a politically contentious Bill; it is one that ought to command the allegiance of people in all parts of the country and in all political parties. I salute the Government for bringing it forward, but say to them, please do not fall down on this. It is crucial that in 10 years’ time, looking back upon 2030, people do not say, “There was a great opportunity that was badly missed.”

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

May I remind noble Lords that questions after the Minister are short questions for elucidation.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister suggested that my proposed amendments and my approach were perhaps too ambitious, and that bending the curve was very difficult. He also said that interventions cannot be made in isolation, but does he agree that over decades and centuries, we have made many interventions that could be stopped?

I refer specifically to the issue of predators. The noble Earls, Lord Devon and Lord Caithness, the noble Lord, Lord Curry, and the Minister, referred to the problem of predators and the impact on populations of waders, for example. Until at least 2019, one of the interventions being made was the release of 4 million captive reared pheasants and 9 million red-legged partridges, which, inevitably, is essentially laying out a feast for predators. Stopping that intervention would have an immediate and strong impact; indeed, Wild Justice has already had such an impact.

Again, there is also No Mow May, a hashtag that many may be aware of. I think it was the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who referred to all the insects hitting the windscreen. We are seeing big changes happening already, so did—

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Could the noble Baroness get to her question of elucidation?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Is the Minister taking sufficient account of the fact that some interventions that are causing damage now could be stopped, and that other things like No Mow May could be introduced very simply?

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[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 55 in my name. In doing so, I shall express my support for Amendments 52 and 53.

The purpose of Amendment 55 is to give investors greater clarity and confidence about their potential or expected role and contribution. For businesses to be able to play their full part in delivering future environmental objectives, they need a clear line of sight that covers both national targets and a single delivery plan that sets out the policies and activities needed to achieve those targets. They need to know not only what needs to be achieved but, crucially, how and when implementing measures will be put in place. That knowledge, line of sight and predictability will give businesses the greater degree of confidence and certainty that they need to plan for the future and, more importantly, to invest in the future. Amendment 55 seeks to achieve this by making explicit that environmental improvement plans must include the policies and actions that the Government intend to take to enable long-term environmental targets to be met.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, and indeed to build slightly on his points. I speak particularly in favour of Amendment 52, to which I would have attached my name had there been space. I note the strong cross-party support for it. The other amendments in this group also take us in the right direction.

What the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said about steps brings us to the core of the problem, and what the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, was just saying reflects what I heard this morning at an event for the Westminster Forum on net zero, climate change and the food, drink and agriculture industries. From the farmers, land managers and the people who advise them, I heard a real sense of confusion and lack of direction—a feeling like we are being pushed in all these directions and asked to do lots of different things, but no one is giving us a route. It is a step here and a step there, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said.

Environment Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Young. I want to speak to and oppose Amendment 2. Using this Bill to mandate that the Prime Minister should declare that there is a biodiversity and climate emergency, both domestically and globally, strikes me as a form of virtue signalling and almost an imperial version of it by declaring on behalf of the globe. I think that that is a bit too much. I am also concerned that its consequences go beyond wordplay and may play into some anti-democratic trends. In recent years it seems that there has been a competition to up the hyperbole and the catastrophist rhetoric across all parties, perhaps to prove green credentials; I do not know that it helps, and I am not sure that this consensus is healthy either.

We are familiar with the approach on climate and biodiversity being added to the mix. The problem with Amendment 2 is that it follows a certain script, with the emphasis on “emergency”. If the Government keep calling everything an emergency, that will become, “Act now or else command”, and dangerously privileges environmental concerns as trumping all others. That rarely puts those concerns into perspective with other possible emergencies or crises. What about the housing emergency, the jobs emergency and the lack of freedom emergency? By the way, I do not think that the trade deal with Australia is a disaster because it will actually solve an emergency. We do not have enough trade deals and we want more.

I recall back in 2009 the book by James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, in which he wrote that surviving climate change

“may require, as in war, the suspension of democratic government for the duration of the survival period.”

At the time, I thought that that sounded extreme, marginal and farfetched, but after the past 15 months, I feel that it is less farfetched. We have just lived through a public health emergency where exactly these things have occurred. We have suspended democratic governance in many ways in order to survive. I am therefore very wary of allowing a statutory nod to ever more emergencies with similar consequences. Many are worried, for example, that lockdown measures will be used in the future under the auspices of environmentalism. I do not think that that fear is unwarranted.

I note that the independent SAGE group, led by Sir David King, has just announced the setting up of another pseudo-scientific body to be called the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, with 14 experts and10 nations. He has said that it is driven by the urgent need to stabilise climatic conditions and to

“protect vital biodiversity and ecosystem functions for the next generation.”

That is because the biggest challenge we face today are these things. I ask: are they really the biggest challenge? I think it is about the elite PR strategy rather than democracy when Sir David King draws attention to the excess of independent SAGE. He says:

“All 12 members have become media personalities. I hope we get the same level of interest on the climate group.”


I am worried about what is going on and whether it is in good faith.

It seems to me that using the language of crisis and emergency and thus presenting everything as an imminent and existential threat can play fast and loose with democratic accountability. When a state of emergency is declared, as we have seen during Covid, there is no time or space for deliberation or debate. According to Greta Thunberg, the house is on fire.

Civil liberties and democratic freedoms can be suspended, and experts, such as Sir David King, main SAGE, independent SAGE and others suddenly become more important on the centre stage than citizens. When a state of emergency is declared, as would happen in a war, we have to ask who the enemy is. When it comes to biodiversity and the environment, my concern is that the enemy is not the virus, foreign foes or whoever, but us, Homo sapiens, and our nasty overconsumption of energy and demands for decent living standards, cars, homes, industrialisation and development.

My objection to Amendment 2 is not a focus on linguistics and the use of the word “emergency”—my concern is political. Any decision this Bill makes about biodiversity or the natural environment must be concrete, specific, proportionate and avoid the pitfall of whipping up fears about imminent catastrophe. I do not think that declaring an emergency solves anything. I am interested in the details of the Bill, not virtue signalling.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to find myself at this place in the debate and to respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. It was certainly a passionate speech, but perhaps not a cohesive one. She spoke about anti-democratic trends and then about there being a consensus. If there is a consensus and local governments are following it, that seems democratic rather than anti-democratic. To point to some figures, a survey was done by the UNDP around the world, of 1.2 million people in 50 countries, published in January this year. It was interesting that in the UK the highest proportion of people—81%—agreed that there is a climate emergency. That is a consensus and, in declaring it, we would be following a democratic path.

My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb noted that your Lordships will be hearing from both of us a great deal. I promise that you will not be hearing from both of us on every amendment, but you will be hearing from us both on Amendment 2, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who introduced it so powerfully. On democracy, the noble Lord pointed out how many local authorities have declared a climate emergency. In fact, 74% of district, county, unitary and metropolitan councils have done that, plus eight combined authorities and city regions. Sheffield Council has just declared a biodiversity emergency, as have Eden District Council and Dorset, so it is spreading around the country.

Perhaps I can offer the Government a little political advice, thinking of the situation in which they find themselves with the blue wall. I note that Henley-on-Thames Town Council, in the heart of what is considered the blue wall, is planning to declare a biodiversity emergency this week. It is going further and plans to back the climate and ecological emergency Bill, so the Government might like to think about not just the science of this but the politics.

I will be brief, because my noble friend has already covered much of this ground, but I want to pick up a point from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering; she said that we have not heard enough from business. I refer to the consultancy firm Deloitte and its environment report a month or so back, which said that there is now, in the combination of environmental, pandemic, social and economic changes, a business emergency. It says that we need cohesive government policies and guidance to tackle this.

This group of amendments, particularly Amendment 2, provides the cohesion that is crucial for this Bill. As we have seen on so many issues, the public are leading here; 81% of the public accept the climate emergency. Local government is not far behind and it is time for the Government, as the chair of COP 26, to catch up.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, and my noble friend Lord Teverson, for their amendments. We support the intentions of the noble Earl but believe that other amendments may equally pick up the issues that he rightly raises. There are amendments later in the Bill on setting legally binding interim targets that, we believe, will give business much of the certainty that it requires. We support the important intentions to ensure that public health is addressed, at the same time as supporting the natural environment, but believe that some of the amendments put down by my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market on Clause 7 will give that certainty to reinforce the link between the natural environment and public health.

We think that the amendment of my noble friend Lord Teverson is absolutely right and are glad that it is in the first grouping, because this is a biodiversity crisis. I am happy to stand with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, in taking a different line from that of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley—“opposing” is too strong a term. My strong view is that if we do not address the two climate and biodiversity threats, we cannot address any of the other threats that society faces. They are the fundamental building blocks on which our society, as individuals and businesses, relies. Therefore, it is right and proper to use the language of crisis.

I would perhaps concede that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, has a point in how we must be careful not to catastrophise. If we want to bring a democratic society with us, catastrophising will not be enough. We have to lead from the front and tell people how we can address the two crises of biodiversity and climate. There is therefore a key issue of communication. That is why I particularly like it that my noble friend’s amendment—supported by the Labour Party and the Green Party—says that

“the Prime Minister must declare that there is a biodiversity and climate emergency”.

This is about communicating with the public. I hope to see, throughout the progress of the Bill in Committee, the Minister make it clear just how the Government are going to communicate with the public. We can stay here today, tomorrow and for the next seven or so sittings and argue about these matters but, unless we take the British public with us, we will not deliver. The Government have to lead the public, as consumers, recyclers and in all their other guises. We need strong leadership from the Government to communicate that joint climate and sustainability challenge, and I hope to hear a lot more from the Minister on that, as we go through Committee.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for initiating it. I think it has been very useful and I truly appreciate the passion with which he desires to see public engagement with, and understanding of, this Bill. I very much appreciate that. A number of noble Lords have said we need this Bill to be both precise and intelligible, and when we draw on the legal side of things I am very much influenced, as I often am, by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, who suggested that in legal terms “nature” would not achieve what “biodiversity” would.

I am going to bring a biological consideration, that being my intellectual foundation to this, and may complicate this debate further by pointing out that where we sit right now at this very moment is, in one definition, a part of nature—we are human animals and the rest of the animal species on this planet are non-human animals—as it is something we created. It is an ecosystem we have created. However, I am not going to go too far down that road, as I fear that may be a debate more fit for the Bishops’ Bar when it re-opens than this Chamber today.

I want to raise the issue that the noble Lord’s amendment brings to the fore, which is the definition of “biodiversity” and, specifically, to explore further what the Government’s understanding of biodiversity is. I can address some questions that have been raised about where this term come from. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, suggested that some things are called “biological diversity” and some things are called “biodiversity”. The term “biodiversity” was coined in 1985, and it is a contraction of “biological diversity”. Without being a lawyer, I do not think there is a legal contradiction between using those two terms interchangeably.

What is not always sufficiently understood is that biodiversity is not just having lots of species. There is sometimes a feeling that we are protecting diversity when there is this really rare moth, and there are three reserves where we are saving it, so that is all right because we are saving biodiversity. If we look at what biodiversity is in a much broader sense, it starts at the level of genes. If you look at a magnificent, enormous murmuration of starlings, should you still be lucky enough to have such a thing, or a wonderful flock of sparrows—ditto—then, although it cannot be seen, in the depths there is great genetic diversity. It is something that keeps that species healthy, and if you get population numbers down to a tiny level a very important part of biodiversity is lost. The interchange of genes is lost if you have a series of isolated populations.

It is really important to have the species to have the genes, but biodiversity is also complete ecosystems. These are systems, such as savannah and woodland, that have developed over billions of years, have complex interrelationships and interrelate to their physical environment. That is all biodiversity as well. This is what has made the earth habitable over billions of years and is what some people call Gaia. To look at this in a way that those of a more literary bent in your Lordships’ House might find familiar, this is a library of life. It a library of ideas and a library of ways of interrelating. It has been said that what we are doing by destroying biodiversity is burning through the library of life. So, I would really like to see, perhaps in the Minister’s answer, or perhaps later in writing, a lot more from the Government about their understanding of what protecting biodiversity means. They must make sure that the target for biodiversity—assuming the Bill goes through in its current form—really addresses the different levels and ways in which we need to understand biodiversity, and does not boil down to “Well, we have three reserves for this rare moth and that will do.”

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s Amendment 5, to which I added my name. It is always good to follow my noble friend in his wise words. I have to say, though, that I rather feel out of my depth in this debate. I thought that it was going to be quite a simple subject, but I should have thought that we have such experts in your Lordships' House. I have been listening to the legal side of things, which I have little understanding of, while making law, and the excellent speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, on a much more scientific, biological aspect.

I come at this with a view that we want to make things simple. We are going to come, in the group following the next, on to a connection with nature. That is my biggest concern. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said that the word “biodiversity” arrived in 1985. I was not a young man, necessarily, when it first appeared, and I had been used to using other words. I have been involved in this environmental field as an amateur for all my life, and I accept “biodiversity”—I use it myself—but I am not sure that the people we want to connect more with nature do understand it. I would say to those noble Lords who have mentioned international things that the European Union introduced Natura 2000; it did not call it “Biodiversitas 2000” or anything else. “Natura” and “nature” have their place. I would regard myself as an amateur naturalist; I do not know how you would say I am an “amateur biodiversity person”.

I think this has been a very useful debate. I end up more confused, though that is a position I often find myself in, listening to debates. But I have to say that there is a real need for us to make sure that our fellow citizens understand that the environment is about what they hold dear—and that is nature. When I was at school, we had nature study; we did not have biodiversity study. But I admit that I am not in the first flush of youth.

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[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 11 in this group, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. I will endorse the comments made by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness; I apologise for speaking in advance of them. I will also comment on Amendment 32, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

I declare my interests as recorded on the register. Specifically, I chair the Cawood Group, which has a large soil-testing facility, so I have a commercial interest in the subject; I am a former chair of the Meat and Livestock Commission; and I was a beef and sheep farmer until two years ago.

On Amendment 11, I endorse the importance of soil health and that soil quality should be included on the face of the Bill as a priority area. As I am sure the Minister will agree, the quality of our soil is a matter of deep concern. The degrading of soil is a worldwide problem with huge consequences for the natural environment. As a soil scientist at Rothamsted Research told me many years ago, once soil has been completely degraded, it cannot be recreated. Its loss can be permanent, with all the consequences that might lead to. We often use “fundamental” rather loosely but, as far as soil is concerned, its quality is of fundamental importance. Without healthy soil, our ability to sustain ourselves, have healthy ecosystems and biodiversity and sustain the entire natural world will be impossible, so it is rather odd that it is not included as a priority in the Bill—especially as it was given significant importance in the Government’s 25-year environment plan. Understanding the health of our soil is crucial if we are to continue on the journey towards more sustainable agricultural production and to capture its carbon sequestration potential, since the organic matter content of soil varies enormously. I hope that the Minister will accept this hugely important small amendment.

On Amendment 32, which is also included in this group, I am sorry but, rather like the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, I must inform the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that I cannot support this amendment. Perhaps we should all join and have a drink afterwards when we can. First, let me say that the idea that the Government will control what we are allowed to eat by regulation would take the nanny state into new territory entirely. So far, successive Governments have failed to compel consumers to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, so their record of managing consumer diets is not a great success story. Obesity continues to spiral out of control; the Government have a huge enough challenge trying to get to grips with that without trying to intrude on the eating of meat and dairy products. I cannot believe that any Government, particularly a Conservative one, would dare to impose such a policy.

Secondly, the amendment bases the regulation of meat and dairy products solely on the emission of methane when we now know that its impact on the environment is nothing like as long-lasting as carbon and without taking into account the huge benefit that the grazing ruminants sector delivers in supporting a vast range of ecosystems and biodiversity, together with vital carbon sequestration capability—not to mention the visual appeal of the British countryside, in which grazing livestock are a big part of the attraction so are important to tourism and the rural economy. Of course, we must continue to reduce the emission of methane and carbon as well as the environmental impact of ruminants, but I am confident that we will achieve that by building on scientific knowledge, which is very encouraging and developing all the time through protogenetics, better management, influence on ruminant diets and the choice of grassland species.

I just add in conclusion that I fully support the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on his Amendment 6, which he presented very confidently. I also have a lot of sympathy with Amendment 31 and the comments of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. Tree health is a huge challenge and we need clear action by government; the Bill is an opportunity to try to improve tree health and reduce disease. I shall listen with interest to the Minister’s response on these issues.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with a very long list of amendments to speak to, and I shall begin by very briefly addressing the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, in response to my noble friend’s Amendment 32. I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, for offering his support for my Amendment 11 on soils. I agree with him that it is rather odd that it is not initially in the Bill.

On Amendment 32, I first point out that this amendment does not seek to impose a diet on anyone; it sets a target to head the national diet in a certain direction. On what the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, said about methane, yes, its impact on the climate is shorter lasting, but it is also more than a score higher than that of carbon dioxide. When we consider the facts that we have an emergency and have to ensure that we stay below 1.5 degrees above industrial warming right now, the next 10 years are absolutely crucial and methane emissions now particularly crucial.

My noble friend will not forgive me if I do not stress that we very much understand that animal agriculture has an important place in the British landscape, but we have to start by tackling factory farming—for many reasons, from antimicrobial resistance through to the point that it is food waste to feed perfectly good food that people could eat to animals to produce much less food as a result.

I shall now get to the list that I started with. I shall briefly speak to Amendment 10 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, on light pollution. We in the Green group would have attached our signature to this amendment, had there been space to do so. Clearly, this is a huge issue. The noble Lord, Lord Randall, referred to what has been called “insectageddon”, the huge loss of insect numbers and species, and light pollution is certainly part of that. I also point out that this is very much a case for joined-up government. So much of the light that we emit and pollute our skies with is utterly unnecessary. For example, the French Government have brought in a law that says that neon shop signs have to be switched off between midnight and dawn, which undoubtedly has benefits for the natural world. I am sure it also has huge benefits for people who live in flats above shops, who live in the environment. We are talking about making the environment benefit people and nature.

I also briefly offer support for the general intentions of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, in focusing on trees, while taking on board the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, that we need the right tree in the right place, to use the buzz-phrase. We talk a great deal about tree planting, but it is important that we think about the natural regeneration of trees, because that is one way in which nature will help to ensure that we get the right tree in the right place. We also need to talk a great deal more about agri-forestry and the possibility of forage crops and crops producing human food—nut and fruit trees and so on—mixed in to our existing agricultural systems.

Now I get to the three amendments that I really want to talk about here. I apologise that this will be rather a long speech, but these are short but very important amendments. I come first to Amendment 7, which appears in my name and changes one of the proposed targets set down by the Government. The target as expressed by the Government is for resource efficiency and waste reduction, but I am calling for the words “resource efficiency” to be replaced by “reduction in resource use”. The current wording essentially says, “We’ll continue to treat the planet as a mine and dumping ground, but we will do it less wastefully”. What I suggest is that the law should acknowledge that we cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet and that a circular economy is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a sustainable world. In the terms of the neat video, “The Story of Stuff”, which has been around since 2007, we must have less stuff in our lives.

I refer to an important report from the Green Alliance, which I encourage noble Lords to read, which points out that resource use drives half the world’s climate emissions and 90% of nature destruction around the world. The UK’s use of resources, renewable and finite, is twice the level considered sustainable. Of natural resources alone, the UK uses three times as much as the planet can sustainably provide. That report, by what is not by any means a radical green group, calls for resource use to be halved. The UK’s material footprint was estimated at 971 million tonnes in 2018, equivalent to 14.6 tonnes per person. In 1997, 40% of that came from domestic extraction, which fell to 27% in 2018. We are taking a huge quantity of resources from the world—far more than the world can bear.

I stress that cutting resource use does not have to mean a lesser quality of life. When we think about the damage that stuff is doing, whether the ocean is turned into a plastic soup, the planet heated dangerously or soils destroyed in producing food then wastefully fed to animals, which then produces health-damaging junk food, we can see that reducing resource use can considerably improve our quality of life—not just using it better but using less of it. Really, there is no alternative. In a debate on the Finance Bill earlier this month, the noble Lord, Lord Agnew of Oulton, for the Treasury, responded to my remarks along these lines, by pointing to the book More from Less by Andrew McAfee, which claims that technology is enabling the dematerialisation of growth. As many critics have pointed out, however, that book ignores the fact that very often material use and exploitation are being exported, not replaced, and the acceleration of planned obsolescence means that more efficient use of resources has very often not meant less use of resources.

The noble Lord, Lord Agnew, pointed us to the United States Geological Survey figures for 72 resources, saying that only six had passed their peak, but that is a reflection of what the known reserves are. What about the damage done to people and nature by extracting them? Mining is by its very nature inevitably destructive. In a world suffering a pandemic of environmental ill health and the biodiversity emergency, more destruction tips us over multiple planetary boundaries, a concept that the response from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, suggests that the Treasury has yet to grasp.

I am well aware that the Minister will find his work cut out in tackling the Treasury on these issues, but I point out that, if this Government want to be—as they so often tell us—world-leading, the European Parliament has demanded that the EU reduce resource use by 2030 and bring it within planetary boundaries, which means cutting it by two-thirds by 2050. That is the target set by the European Parliament. If we are going to be world-leading, that is where the Bill should be going. I am well aware that running the country for the economy instead of running the economy for the well-being of the country is deeply engrained, but that is a challenge for the Minister to take on.

I come to the two other amendments that appear in my name. Before I do, I want to refer back to a comment made in the first group by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, who said that we are inadequately exploring the relationship between the Agriculture Act, the Trade Act and the Environment Bill. I had a meeting last week with farmers and farming advisers who expressed to me exasperation and frustration because they were struggling to understand the Government’s intentions in that process. These two amendments that I am about to speak to attempt to deal with some of those issues.

I come to Amendment 11, on soils—and I hope that I get it through. I express my great thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for attaching his name to this amendment and want to thank the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Lords, Lord Curry and Lord Randall of Uxbridge, for expressing their support for it. As the noble Lord, Lord Randall, said, it is astonishing that it is not in the Bill to start with.

I want to quote Thomas Jefferson:

“While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil.”


I will also refer to a few points in the report The State of the Environment: Soil from the Environment Agency in June 2019. It is really telling that it says:

“There is insufficient data on the health of our soils and investment is needed in soil monitoring”.


It is very clear that we do not know enough, and if we set a target, that will create a framework where we need to do the measuring. In some ways perhaps it is a bit “chicken and egg”—but let us get this started, because it clearly needs to happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

We will return to the noble Lord later. We now move to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and after her the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, as the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, have withdrawn.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I rise to speak to Amendments 8 and 56, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, to which I have attached my name, though I will also offer my support to Amendment 9, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, about connecting people with nature. It is clearly much connected to Amendments 8 and 56.

In introducing this amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, focused on the need to win support for the Bill by allowing people to access nature. I will also focus on the public health elements, and the fact that we now have increasing awareness—with particular credit to many campaigners over the years, and to many researchers who have helped us understand this—that for the human microbiome, mental health or general well-being, exposure to, involvement in and being in nature is good for people’s health. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, was talking about access to small spaces. I will talk much more broadly, and I fear that perhaps I will scare the horses a little here, but I want to draw noble Lords’ attention to the degree of the desire for access to nature that exists out there. I put it to your Lordships’ Committee that we very much need to create more space because there is a push for very great openness.

In talking about that, I will refer, and offer my support, to something known as the Right to Roam campaign. It highlights that, in England, 92% of the countryside and 97% of rivers are not accessible to the public. We often talk about “these overcrowded islands” and how difficult it is for people to get to open space. But some parts of these islands are not very crowded at all. The Right to Roam campaign is calling for an extension to the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, so that people will have much broader and easier access to open space, including hundreds of thousands of acres of woodland, meadows, rivers and their banks. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 gave access to 8% of England. That is mountain, moorland, commons and some downland heath. By the very nature of those spaces, they tend to be very remote. They are not easy to access, particularly with our extraordinary lack of public transport in rural areas—in fact, they are almost totally inaccessible to people who do not have access to a car. There is a real postcode lottery, and a clear inequality and unfairness in our current arrangements.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I can reassure my noble friend that it does not require the Government to have a change of heart, as we fully support access to nature for all the reasons which have been described so well by so many noble Lords. Indeed, just a few months ago the Defra Secretary committed £4 million for a project aimed at tackling mental ill-health through green social prescribing, which goes to the heart of some of the issues raised today. We want everyone to have access to a healthy, abundant and diverse environment, and the Environment Bill as a whole is an attempt to try to improve both our environment and access and enjoyment of it. Of course, we have much more to do and I am interested in the examples he has cited.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in his response the Minister referred to the issue of littering, particularly personal responsibility for littering, but we were earlier talking about waste reduction targets. The people who profit from the production of that litter are of course fast-food companies and multinational food production companies. When it finally arrives, the bottle deposit scheme will be an important area of this. Will the Minister acknowledge that this is not just a personal issue but a case where we have to see system change, that multinational companies and fast-food outlets have to look at the ways their food is sold, and the packaging they produce, and that this needs to be seen as more than a personal problem?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I could not agree more. There is of course an element of personal responsibility; it is not always down to the Government, but the noble Baroness is absolutely right. That is the whole point of our approach to extended producer responsibility, and that can apply to anything. It is very much my hope that we will be at a point not too far off where fast-food companies are financially responsible for the waste generated by their activities. We would see, the moment one creates a financial dynamic of that sort, that companies will do anything they can either to design waste out of the way they do business or to minimise the amount of waste they know they will generate. I do not think there is a better way of doing it, but clearly having created the apparatus, which we will do through this Bill, we then must use it, and use it properly. If we do, we can get where we need to in relation to waste.

China: Muslims

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am fully aware of the noble Lord’s interest in this. At the moment, I cannot give him a definitive answer, but this remains a live issue on the Government’s agenda.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, Amnesty’s report on the treatment of the Uighurs is subtitled China’s mass internment, torture and persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang. Would the Minister categorise the reaction of the UK, the G7 and the world as adequate, given those words?

British Council

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

The British Council’s specific budgets will be finalised, but of course I will write to the noble Baroness in that respect. It also plays an important role with other organisations, such as UNESCO, with regard to protecting world heritage sites, and it will continue to co-ordinate in that way.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I should perhaps declare an interest as someone who once did an exam in the British Council office in Bangkok. That is of relevance to the question that I wish to ask the Minister. For the 5.5 million Britons who live abroad, in many ways British Council offices and services are for them a link back that they rely on. More than that, I did that exam as part of a master’s degree through the University of Leicester; this is a hugely valuable export for the UK, and many educational institutions, as well as other institutions and businesses, rely on that British Council link. Will we not damage all those links for Britons abroad and for British businesses making links abroad?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

First, I hope that the noble Baroness passed her exam—as I am sure that she did, based on her very able and notable contributions in your Lordships’ House. On supporting the British Council, I share what she outlined: the importance of the relationships that the British Council has, and the nature of our partnerships with key universities. She mentioned the University of Leicester. I have already alluded to the scholarship programmes, in addition to the work that we do with the British Council, which underline our commitment to education.

Just for clarity, I mentioned the £609 million over the past year that we have secured to ensure the British Council’s future. We have provided £26 million of emergency funding and loan provision facilities to the British Council of another £145 million, and we are currently finalising another £100 million loan facility. So far, the British Council has, I believe, drawn down £50-odd million of that loan facility. Overall, in addition to those loans, we are providing £189 million of grant in aid funding to the council for 2021-22, of which £150 million is ODA.

I hope that that gives a degree of reassurance—although not to the total satisfaction of all noble Lords, I am sure—that we are committed to the British Council. We support it, notwithstanding challenging times and notwithstanding the pandemic. We have stood by the British Council and will continue to do so.

Environment Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has already set out the temporal position of the Bill: it is at the end of a long line of debates on the Agriculture Act, the Fisheries Act, the Trade Act and Brexit. It is the place where the Government told us that many of the issues raised in those debates would finally be dealt with. It would seem that it is also the place where the Dasgupta review’s call for new economic indicators should be acknowledged, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, referred to. It is the place to start the transformation from an economy based on the exploitation of people and the environment to a system based on resilience and regeneration.

Some 25 years after the Act that set up the Environment Agency, the Bill is certainly urgently needed, for that Act and 25 years of Governments of various hues have clearly failed. Our nation ranks 187th globally for the state of our nature. Much of it is a beautiful but sterile green desert, from the burned, shorn land of our first national park in the Peak District to the rapeseed flowers now blanketing chemical-drenched fields.

Yet food security remains an acute and pressing issue. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, I will not posit a third world war, but rather point to our responsibility, as a wealthy nation, not to take food, water, labour and resources from the fields and mouths of others in a world where production is threatened by the climate emergency, the water crisis, the destruction of soils and the massive practice of food waste that is the factory farming of animals.

Many noble Lords have already addressed issues that the Green group—all two of us—will seek to offer our support on. I endorse many things that the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said so eloquently, including on the need for environmental principles to be applied universally, the need for local governments to have the resources they need to protect and enhance nature, and the principle of net biodiversity gain not excluding major infrastructure developments. In fact, I will go further: we need to abolish the principle of biodiversity offsetting. We have so little left that we cannot afford to destroy any national treasure that we have left—certainly not for the uncertain outcome of a few saplings stuck in a field and called a replacement for an ancient forest.

Relatedly, the Secretary of State should not be allowed to amend the habitat regulations at will. The noble Lord, Lord Montrose, spoke of a forest of Henry VIII regulation. This is one forest that should be felled. The noble Lords, Lord Khan and Lord Rooker, focused particularly on the legal weakness—indeed, the legal attack on basic principles contained in the Bill—as so powerfully outlined by the Bingham Centre. We will work on that.

I agree with everything said by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, who is not currently in her place, and thank her for drawing attention to the Knepp planning issue. Drawing a broader point from that, in their planning and agriculture principles, the Government seem to be locked into a sparing rather than a sharing mindset—one of sparing a little land and making it pristine and rich but trashing the rest for industrial agriculture or housing luxury development of a kind that fails to meet urgent community needs. We need to care for all of our land.

The noble Lord, Lord Trees, pointed out an obvious gaping hole in the Bill: the lack of measures on antimicrobial resistance. I do not often quote David Cameron, but I will today:

“With some 25,000 people a year already dying from infections resistant to antibiotic drugs in Europe alone, this is not some distant threat but something happening right now”.


That was in 2014. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, rightly stressed the importance of our marine environment and the non-existence of its protection. The Green group intends to offer support on all these issues and more.

I am afraid that the nature of the rest of my speech is also that of a list—that is, a list of the issues that I have not heard other noble Lords clearly set out. This reflects concerns that my noble friend and I have heard from the millions of voters we do our best to represent and the many industry and campaign groups whose issues are not covered or are badly dealt with by the Bill.

The ordering is roughly in the order of the easiest issues, from those that any sensible Government would surely embrace through to those that require a fundamental philosophical shift and an understanding that there are enough resources on this planet for everyone to have a decent life and for the natural environment to be cared for if we just share them out fairly. This requires a sudden outbreak of understanding of planetary limits—I live in hope.

First, on plastic and packaging materials, an amendment is needed to ensure that the bottle deposit scheme is variable, reflecting the size and impact of bottles, not just their number. An amendment is also needed to tackle the horrendously costly waste of disposable nappies, both to household budgets and the cost we all bear in council waste. However, what is really lacking in the Bill is an understanding of the waste pyramid. Recycling is third best; we have to reduce and reuse, and recycling comes a poor third.

Secondly, on pesticides, we have soaked the planet with poison. We need to protect rural dwellers, and the whole of our land, from pesticide applications.

Briefly, because I am running out of time, human rights have to be linked to environmental rights—due diligence along the lines of the Bribery Act. Then there is the issue of what land is for, which was partially raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. It has to be for the people and for the natural world. Driven grouse shooting, growing food to waste in feeding animals kept in misery, and sugar beet production, which strips soils and produces obesity, are some examples of land uses we do not need.

Finally, we often hear in your Lordships’ House that these are crowded islands. The crowding has one very large cause: 50% of the land is owned by 1% of the people, so 99% of people are excluded from half of our land. An Environment Bill surely has to offer access to more of it—a great deal more—for food growing, nature and recreation. They are not making any more land, so we have to share it out fairly.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made reference to Lord Montrose. He is in fact the Duke of Montrose. I call the next speaker.

Integrated Review: Development Aid

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and to agree with his suggestion of a source of replacement funding. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for securing this debate and join him in marking the principled position of the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, who is here today as Back-Bencher because she stood up for her principles. It would be nice to see some more of it.

In my brief slot, I, like the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, want to highlight, of all the disastrous cuts to the UK overseas development assistance, the slashing of aid to Yemen—poor, war-wracked, famine-tormented and Covid-plagued Yemen. We are, as a nation —or, at least, a handful of multinational companies based in our nation are—making huge profits from selling arms to Saudi Arabia, helping it to continue the disastrous war in Yemen. Here in Westminster, we often see those arms dealers and makers promoting their trade with billboard advertising, which is just a small sign of their lobbying muscle. The starving children of Yemen sadly lack the same vehicles of influence. That shows in the Government’s priorities. Lobbying is about much more than Greensill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, rightly said that these cuts are destroying our reputation in the climate change arena. That matters. As chair of COP 26, the Government need moral authority. The world, and the future, are depending on us. How can we preach the rule of law around the world, or be chair of COP 26, demanding transparency, honesty and practical action from other nations, when we are not following our own laws on overseas development assistance and subjecting government decisions to parliamentary scrutiny or making the promised aid payments that represent scant reparations for centuries of colonial and post-colonial destruction?

The integrated review proclaims our Government’s supposed commitment to the rule of law. In the light of the Government’s actions, it is not worth the energy taken to upload it. I say “upload” as a reminder that the whole world has access to and knowledge of what is happening in the UK. Shouting the words “world leading” means nothing. What counts is action, and the world understands the UK Government through their actions all too well.

Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con) [V]]

My Lords, we take the recommendations seriously and will ensure that, as has been suggested, they are fully evaluated to see how we can further our own domestic regime to ensure that the issue of money laundering can be tackled head on.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on the Statement being open in acknowledging the attraction of the City of London to

“corrupt actors who seek to launder their dirty money through British banks or through businesses.”

As welcome as the individual sanctions announced on Monday are, they are very much one-sided. They target those who take the money, robbing poor communities and global south nations. But of course the ultimate robber barons in the sadly common case of bribery, and those who profit most from the transactions, are those who pay over the money for the favours purchased —they would not pay unless it paid them, often handsomely. So will the Government be actively seeking to identify and sanction those on both sides of these transactions?

The noble Lord, Lord Collins, asked about parliamentary nominations of possible sanctions. Beyond that, will the Government implement a system whereby non-governmental actors, be they from civil society, the private sector or beyond, can submit information about potentially listing targets for consideration, including by creating a secure portal and adequate safeguards to mitigate any risk for those submitting that information?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con) [V]]

The noble Baroness makes some practical suggestions, which I will of consider. On her second point, we are already working with civil society organisations, as well as other actors beyond Parliament. If people put forward the names of certain individuals who should be designated under either the global anti-corruption sanctions regime, which we have just introduced, or the global human rights sanctions regime, we will give them due consideration.

I note what the noble Baroness says about creating portals. The challenge will remain, with increasing cyberthreats and cyberattacks, to ensure not just the robustness of the system provided but that, for anyone being looked at to be designated, an early warning does not result in them being able to abscond or avoid being subject to the sanctions that are intended to be applied to them. Therefore, we keep quite a tight rein on individuals or organisations that will be sanctioned in the future. But I note the noble Baroness’s practical suggestions and will take those back.

I add that we are going through an evolutionary process on the whole concept of sanctions. Two years ago, we did not have anything in this space on the specifics of the framework of sanctions. We now have two distinct sanctions regimes, and I am sure we will see the strengthening of both over the coming months and years.

Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, in many ways the integrated review acknowledges with greater force than we have seen before from a UK Government the arguments that the Green Party has made for decades—that security can be achieved only in a stable environment and that the climate emergency and nature crisis are a threat to all our futures. That is driven home today with the HadCRUT5 global temperature series showing that the average global temperature for 2020 was 1.3 degrees—plus or minus 0.1 degrees—above preindustrial levels.

Much of the overarching rhetoric of the integrated review could have been written by the intellectual thought leaders in this area: the Rethinking Security network. But, as many noble Lords have pointed out, the text fails to acknowledge or make difficult choices. It fails to meet its ambition to set a path for the next 10 years.

I will briefly pick up three elements the Minister highlighted in his introduction. First, on science and technology, the review talks about Britain being a world leader and innovator—something that the Government frequently major on—but in such a narrow range of fields. The Minister referred to artificial intelligence and renewables, and I cannot disagree with the last one. But ask a farmer, crucial to food security, or an ecologist, crucial to the nature-based solutions to the climate emergency that the Government like to talk about, what science they need, and it is not those. Protecting our soils, using agroecological systems for food production, managing our freshwaters and seas and understanding the complexity of life on earth are absolutely fundamental to security. There are an estimated 1.7 million undiscovered types of viruses in vertebrates. We have brilliant experts in this and many other fields; let us celebrate and fund them—not just to treat the diseases after they have arisen but to understand the underlying systems.

Secondly, the Minister spoke in an unqualified way about trade delivering jobs and prosperity. I fundamentally question that assertion. We have come to the end of a period of a massive explosion in global trade and are in an insecure, poverty-stricken and environmentally trashed world. The harm done by some trade is obvious. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute tells us that sales of arms and military services by the largest 25 companies totalled $361 billion in 2019. Of course, included in that are our sales to Saudi Arabia, a regime with one of the worst human rights records on this planet and, of course, a key proponent in the dreadful war destroying Yemen.

Thirdly, I come to aid. I am really quite astonished that the Minister chose to highlight the Government’s prioritising of girls’ education on the day that Save The Children concludes that spending on education for girls will be reduced by 25% in 2021 compared to 2019-20. Perhaps the Minister can confirm whether that is correct. It is a long-time Green Party policy to lift that aid figure to 1%—clearly the direction of greater security.

Finally, I come to the astonishing and deeply disturbing changes in nuclear doctrine and practice. I associate myself particularly with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, and with others who questioned this. Some observers have pointed out that lifting a cap is not lifting numbers. If this is just an empty gesture, a rhetorical firebrand playing tough to a domestic audience in the culture war, then it is a truly dangerous and immoral one. If it is a real plan to increase the number of these hideous weapons of mass destruction, it is also deeply dangerous and immoral, as is the widening of the doctrine for their use.

This review is glancing in a new direction for security, and yet it firmly continues to wade forward through the swamp of inequality, militarism and environmental destruction.