Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Boycott

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 24th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I thank the Minister very much for his sort of co-operation through the passage of the Bill. It is hugely important. It was introduced about 16 months ago, and I do not wish to delay it any further. But I speak with great regret that the Government find themselves unable to agree to my simple and incredibly uncontroversial amendment, which just seeks to clarify the Government’s commitment to consult on the barriers that community energy schemes face. I am very pleased that the Minister went to visit one that was working, but I assure him that a lot are not.

While I welcome the steps the Government have taken to re-establish the community energy fund—for instance, reporting to Parliament and consulting—it is important to put a timescale on these plans; 18 months is fair and reasonable. Without a timescale there is a risk that this will not happen. It has been demonstrated that this issue has widespread support across both Houses. When we have something that we agree on, we ought to just get on with it and do it. I fear that this small but significant issue will get drowned out in next year’s general election. I would appreciate reassurance from the Minister that this is a needless worry and that the Government are committed.

I would just like to get some clarity on a couple of points. What will be the basis of this annual report to Parliament? Is it simply to report on the progress of projects, or will it address the challenges that we face and the best route to sort them out? My amendment also sought to ensure that, should any consultation find that there are barriers—new barriers, for instance—the Government will commit to taking steps to address these. Being candid, we know that there are barriers, and I appreciate the argument that you should not legislate for the unknown, but I am simply trying to get an assurance that they would plan to lift barriers that we know are there—including ones that we do not know.

To return to the issue of the consultation, we have rehearsed what issues need to be resolved; thanks to the Bill committee in the other place, there are many views on record. I do not believe that much is likely to change in the next year. While I agree that we should follow due process here, it must not be used as a reason for delay. I urge the Minister to open this consultation ASAP, so that we can get this ball rolling.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly and with great pleasure following the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, who has done such an enormous amount of work on this issue—I pay tribute to that.

I was the person who started these amendments on their way back in December 2022, after we started work on this Bill last July. A consultation is something but what we really need is action, so I have a simple question for the Minister. As he said, this consultation has already started this month; if the Government see or identify through that consultation some simple, easy-to-remove barriers, will they act on them immediately rather than waiting for the end of the formal process? Surely, if action can be taken then projects, such as the one in Kensington to which the Minister referred, can go forward.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Boycott

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 481, I shall also speak briefly to Amendment 483, the other amendment in this group. It has not been introduced yet, so we can regard this as perhaps an amuse-bouche—a taster of what is to come—given that we are talking about growing food, as well as other things. Last week, I was at the Sheffield Festival of Debate, talking about just access to land. People were saying that what we should be doing in the House of Lords was speaking up for the right to grow food. I am looking forward to the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and others speaking to that amendment, which really sets out an important principle.

Amendment 481 is my second attempt to bring in what is generally known as Zane’s law, named after Zane Gbangbola. The Truth About Zane campaign is still working, with a wide range of support, to get on the record the truth about the seven year-old’s death in Chertsey in 2014, when floods swept hideously toxic hydrogen cyanide into the family home. That is not what the inquest verdict concluded in 2016, but the inequality of arms in legal representation in that inquest and the illogic of the verdict—given that Zane’s father, Kye, was at the same time left paralysed by hydrogen cyanide—means that it will surely have to go back. That very much highlights a broader issue, which is why I, the family and many others are campaigning for Zane’s law.

To go back in history to set out the legal background to this issue, in 1974 the Control of Pollution Act first took control over waste disposal. When that came into effect, many historical dumps were quietly closed and, essentially, forgotten about, except perhaps by people in the local community. EU regulations on waste and pollution came in through the Environmental Protection Act 1990, tightening up controls. In particular, Section 143 provided an obligation for local authorities to investigate their area and draw up public registers of land that may be contaminated. Section 31 of that Act also gave local authorities powers to inspect and close landfills and clean them up if necessary.

The fact is that lots of housing developments are and continue to be on old landfill sites. There were three consultations between 1991 and 1993, which eventually decided that Section 143 of the 1990 Act would not be implemented and all plans for public registers of contaminated sites were to be dropped. The explanation was that it was about the cost and desire not to place “new regulatory burdens” on the private sector. Limited powers were brought back in 1995, although they did not come into force until five years later, which meant that when developers found contamination problems, public authorities had to pay. But the situation further worsened in 2011. As part of the Cameron Government’s bonfire of red tape to reduce statutory burdens, the right of the enforcement authorities to use the law was further reduced. The emphasis was on voluntary clean-up by developers, with no real power to check that it had been done.

Amendment 481 attempts to return to the situation that we would have been in if Section 143 had been implemented. In discussion about this, a noble Lord asked me who was going to pay for this measure—the big question. Being in your Lordships’ House, where we are not allowed to allocate spending, I have not addressed that issue directly in this amendment. However, proposed new subsection (2)(c) would make it the law to

“identify the resources required to bring all land contamination in England to safe levels”.

I would therefore say in answer to that question that I am going as far as I can.

The last time I brought Zane’s law before your Lordships’ House was during a debate on the Building Safety Bill in this very Room. The Labour Front Bench, albeit different from today, expressed some interest and support for the amendment—as did the Lib Dem Front Bench—but asked, “Is this really a problem?” Of course, we have the tragic death of Zane to point to and we are in a climate emergency situation, seeing increasing levels of flooding, increasing temperatures and erosion around the sea where there have often been landfill sites at sea level. These are increasing problems.

I will give the Committee some practical examples—just three cases that have been highlighted in the media in recent weeks. First, near Cedar Avenue in Coseley, Dudley, there are plans to build 72 homes on a former landfill site that was once home to hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste. It was an old open-cut coal mine that became a fishing site and then, in the 1970s, became a landfill site. Some of the things that locals recall being dumped there were fruit machines, vegetable and medical waste and up to 220 tonnes of toxic metal compounds, including industrial waste products such as mercury, arsenic, cyanide and asbestos, all of which, as I do not need to tell the Committee, are seriously concerning. There are plans to put 72 affordable homes on that site, which are currently on hold because of local controversy, as far as I am able to establish.

Secondly, in the village of Somercotes in Derbyshire there are plans to develop hundreds of homes on a patch of land dubbed the most contaminated site in England. It is supposed to include particularly highly toxic dioxins, which have been illegally dumped there in the past. My third case study is the 263-home Coppenhall Place development in Crewe, Cheshire, where it is feared that the homes have been built on a contaminated site.

We have a very clear issue here, and an approaching issue with the Government talking about building hundreds of thousands of new homes and the rightful desire to put them on brownfield sites. The first thing we have to know is what is on those brownfield sites and whether they are suitable for housing, in view of the potential contamination problems. That is what this amendment would do. It is not particularly new or creative; it simply seeks to bring in something that decades ago was thought necessary and is clearly even more necessary now.

I will keep pushing this. I would love to think that the Minister will leap up and say, “Yes, you’re absolutely right”, but I ask the Government at least to look at this issue, because there is a problem here that clearly affects many people and presents an enormous risk to their lives. Surely, a basic duty of the Government is to ensure the security of people in their own homes, which, quite frankly, they are unable to do now because they are not empowering, directing and resourcing local authorities to ensure that they know what is in their land. I beg to move.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 483, which is in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott of Needham Market and Lady Young of Old Scone, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I am very glad that this group of amendments has been reached today, because otherwise we would not have had the noble Earl with us. That is great.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

It is a bonus.

Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Boycott

Report stage
Monday 17th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 134 and 135, about community energy. In the midst of an energy crisis, when cheap and clean home-produced energy has never been more vital, as we have heard in this debate, we are far behind where we could be with the amount of small-scale renewable energy, especially community energy schemes, which are simply community-owned and community-run renewable energy projects. Our limited number of schemes has been massively welcomed by politicians of all parties because they provide cheaper and greener power, and they distribute benefits locally, rather than up to the big power companies.

The feed-in tariff briefly created rapid growth in these schemes, but that has dwindled to almost nothing—despite renewable technologies being cheaper than ever. The lack of growth is largely the result of the prohibitive cost that the small-scale generators face. The problem is well recognised, and 318 MPs from all major parties back the Local Electricity Bill, which would enable community energy schemes to sell electricity they generate to their local customers.

The potential is enormous. According to the Environmental Audit Committee, community energy could grow by 12 to 20 times by 2030, power 2.2 million homes and save 2.5 million tonnes of CO² emissions every year. This would take our renewable energy generation from community schemes to almost 10% of our entire needs, and the substantial benefits of enabling this can barely be overstated. However, community energy has seen a trickle of minimal growth, amounting to less than half a per cent.

The problem can be solved without subsidy, and this seems to be the key point. Small-scale renewable energy generators need to receive only a guaranteed fair price for the electricity they contribute to an energy system in desperate need of homegrown energy, as we have heard. Amendment 134 establishes a

“Community and Smaller-scale Electricity Export Guarantee Scheme”.


It would provide a guaranteed income for the electricity from small-scale low-carbon energy generators, with “small” defined as “a capacity below 5MW”. This would mean that communities get properly remunerated for their contribution to the system, and they can therefore go to their banks and raise the funds to expand or establish. This guaranteed price could be set by regulations, revised annually by Ofgem, with the initial contract guaranteed for at least five years—not that long.

Amendment 135 establishes a

“Community and Smaller-scale Electricity Supplier Services Scheme”.


This, again, would allow community schemes that registered under the electricity export guarantee scheme also to sell the electricity they generate locally. No requirement is placed on community schemes to do this, so, if they wish, they could operate simply using the proceeds of the export guarantee. For some, such returns would be sufficient to encourage local people to invest in new energy schemes—such was the case when we had a feed-in tariff.

But, if a community wants, it can sell the electricity it generates directly to households and businesses in its community. It can do so, for example, as an additional incentive for local people to invest or because it believes it can offer a lower tariff to the less well off in the community—this point was made on previous amendments this afternoon. This means that the community, which knows its people and what is going on, can flex its tariffs, and everyone can buy in to the project.

As with the clause created by Amendment 134, this would all be monitored by Ofgem and reported on annually. This is a nationwide campaign backed by a coalition of over 80 organisations—the Church of England, the CPRE, the Energy Saving Trust et cetera; I will not name them all—and 100 councils have already stated their support. Four of the six major distribution network operators—basically, our regional energy grid monopolies: Electricity North West, SP Energy, UK Power and Western Power—are supportive. As has been mentioned before, the Skidmore review supports all such organisations and ideas that will help green renewable energy, so I am completely puzzled as to why Ministers are not falling over themselves to make this thing happen.

In Committee, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said that the amendments would create a subsidy to community energy schemes. However, we need to be really clear—in saying this, I want to pre-empt a response from the Minister—that the amendments do not establish subsidies for community energy schemes. Renewable energy can stand on its own two feet now; it has been successful in cutting costs over the last two decades and is now completely viable without the need for feed-in tariffs. We just need to set up the right market system for the energy for people to buy it and for people to be responsible for it. I will be completely puzzled if the Minister does not accept that, and I warn him now that I intend to test the opinion of the House later.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the three amendments have been extremely ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. It is a pleasure to speak after them, having attached my name to all three amendments.

I will briefly sum up what they seek to achieve. Amendments 134 and 135 are about community energy, which is where people can get together as a community, decide what they want their local energy system to look like and deliver it. There is no need for any involvement from Westminster or big multinational companies; it is a chance for communities to get together. Surely, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has signed both Amendments 134 and 135, this would be seen to be utterly in line with Conservative approaches. I note that, in the other place, among the hundreds of signatories is Sir Graham Brady, so if you want a full political spread, perhaps from me to Sir Graham Brady will pretty well cover the breadth of support for community energy.

On Amendment 94, we know that there is huge concentration of power and resources, and that the reins are held very tightly by Westminster. As the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, set out, Wales and Scotland have already seen the importance of local decision-making to solve local problems to ensure that they are able to deliver renewables, with local people making the decisions about where they go, what they look like and how they are distributed. Indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said, this could be a local poverty alleviation issue and a levelling-up type of approach.

I acknowledge that the Minister has very kindly had meetings with us to discuss the amendments. We keep being told that this is something that the Government would like to do eventually but it is all too difficult. However, I think it is all worked out and set out in the amendments. Clearly, many people in the other place and here have been convinced that now is the time to go for community energy.

I will offer a final reflection. I happened to be in a bed and breakfast in Norfolk this morning, chatting across the table to some residents of Herefordshire who had just driven across the country and were about to drive back. They asked me, “Where are all the solar panels? We can’t see solar panels where we know we should see solar panels.” I said that the answer to scale this up quickly could be community energy.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Boycott

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 118L in my name and I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Although we were too late to get him on the list, this is also supported by the noble Lord, Lord Field of Birkenhead. He was the first chair of Feeding Britain, a job he passed on to me.

This is a very simple amendment which would mean that families of pupils who are eligible to receive free school meals are automatically registered rather than having to opt in. By the Government’s best estimate, 11% of children who are eligible are not registered. This could mean that up to 200,000 children in England are missing out on both a nutritious meal and the pupil premium.

We have investigated this a great deal at Feeding Britain. We know that it works. When the noble Lord, Lord Field of Birkenhead, was in the other place he attracted cross-party support from 125 Members, but that Session drew to a close before his Bill could receive a Second Reading. As well as the support, my amendment has the advantage of being proven to work. When automatic registration has been piloted, as it was under the old housing benefit regime in the Wirral, more than 600 additional children were automatically signed up.

The Children’s Commissioner, the Local Government Association and Henry Dimbleby, in the national food strategy, have all supported this, and this amendment really goes with the grain of government policy in other areas, such as the warm home discount and cost of living payments. Even my own pension arrives automatically, whether I want it or not. It seems quite extraordinary that a child has to opt in to get a meal, especially now in the cost of living crisis. This is a very simple and straightforward amendment and I urge the Government to accept it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am aware of the hour and will be extremely brief. I just want to speak in favour of Amendment 118L, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. I want to make two points in addition to what she said, while associating myself with what she said and noting that the noble Lord, Lord Field, has also shown his support for this.

First, the children who are the most vulnerable, from families which for whatever reason—language difficulties, other disadvantages—may find it difficult to navigate the system, are those who need those free school meals the most. If we do not have an automatic opt-out system, the people who miss out will include the most vulnerable.

The other point is that, a couple of weeks ago, a survey by LACA, the school caterers’ trade body, demonstrated that despite the number of pupils eligible for free school meals rising very significantly, more than half of the caterers surveyed were seeing the number of free school meals that they were providing going down. As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said, we know that so many families are struggling with the cost of living crisis. This very modest amendment would at least ensure that those who are eligible for free school meals are getting them. I would like to see free school meals expanded much further and perhaps renamed to take away some of the stigma. This would simply ensure that people who are entitled to something get it. They are not only entitled to it; people desperately need these healthy school meals.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Boycott

Report stage
Monday 13th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to offer support to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and others, on this cross-party, broadly backed amendment and to encourage noble Lords to press it to a vote if we do not see progress.

We are in a situation rather like the “dieselgate” scandal, where we saw encouragement of a shift to diesel vehicles, with severe deleterious effects on human and environmental health. Those effects were multiplied by corruption and fraud in the car companies, but there was an underlying error in the decision being made. We need systems thinking to look holistically at the environmental impacts of laws, regulations and policies. The waste pyramid tells us that the first thing we should be doing is reducing the use of all materials—plastic is particularly pernicious, but all materials have an environmental cost—and then looking to reuse, with recycling a poor third choice.

It is important that the House offers strong support for this amendment in light of the article that appeared in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday. We were told—indeed, we seemed to be pressured by the Government—that too many amendments might embarrass Alok Sharma as chair of the COP 26 talks. Well, it is terribly important that we acknowledge—I hope the Minister will—that just as a puppy is not just for Christmas, the Environment Bill is not just for COP. A strong Environment Bill to show the world at COP is a positive side-effect, but what we are actually doing is creating the framework for the next decade and beyond in the UK. The Government’s focus must be on getting the strongest possible Environment Bill, as has clearly been the focus of this House.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Colville has today had to go to a family funeral, so he asked me to deliver his speech. I am very happy to do so, and I absolutely support this amendment. It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and I completely agree with her about the shocking revelations in the press yesterday.

My noble friend Lord Colville says that many of our single-use items, particularly drinks containers, are made of aluminium. Not only does the manufacture of aluminium create 1% of global carbon emissions but the mining of bauxite, from which aluminium is refined, leaves behind a toxic waste called red mud. Its high alkalinity is extremely corrosive, damaging soil and destroying life forms. Aluminium smelters generate an additional 150 million tonnes of red mud each year. We must work to reduce such emissions; I believe this amendment would do that.

On the first day of Report, the Minister said:

“Globally, we extract three times the amount of resources from nature as we did in 1970, and that figure is set to double again within a generation”.—[Official Report, 6/9/21; col. 706.]


The Bill has so many laudable aspects, but it still does not bear down hard enough on the problem of our excessive and wasteful use of the planet’s resources and our careless discarding of single-use items. The attention the Bill gives to recycling is crucial and very welcome, but I urge the Minister to be more ambitious.

Like many noble Lords, I welcome the power in Schedule 9 to charge for single-use plastic items, but the Government already have plans to confront much of that problem, through the existing ban on plastic stirrers and cotton buds and the launch of a consultation this autumn on banning plastic cutlery and plates. If these are successful, the power in Schedule 9 to charge for single-use plastics will hardly be needed, but it does not deal with the threat of the substitution of single-use plastics with aluminium, wood or other precious materials.

The extended power put forward in the amendment for a charge to cover plastics or any other single-use material would deal with the problem quickly and reduce our resource use dramatically. When asked to support the amendment in Committee, the Minister responded that it was not necessary and said:

“Items that are not captured by Clause 54 could be captured by other measures, such as EPR or resource efficiency.”—[Official Report, 30/6/21; col. 914.]


Resource efficiency can do much to make producers responsible for the reduction in the use of raw materials, but to implement a scheme for each category of single-use item will take an amazing amount of work to design and a great deal of time and difficulty to implement. Look at the excellent ecodesign that introduces resource efficiency into energy-related products; it has taken four years of consultation and co-operation with stakeholders to get to a final scheme. That is a long time when we are threatened with the facts.

I am concerned that, as the Government progresses through resource efficiency schemes for big product areas such as textiles, they are never going to get round to the efficiency of wooden stirrers or paper plates. So will the Minister explain why he believes the amendment would not deal with this problem much more quickly and efficiently?

Wildlife and Countryside Link, representing a wide range of environmental organisations from CPRE to Keep Britain Tidy, said in its response to the consultation that there needs to be

“a clear focus on reduction and waste prevention to meet the UK’s ambitious climate change targets.”

The EPR policy could change its focus to emphasise further reduction of single-use items, or the Government could just accept this amendment, which would quickly and effectively mitigate many of these concerns. I ask noble Lords for their support on the amendment, because I do not want the good work of the Bill to be undermined by unintended consequences.

That is my noble friend Lord Colville’s excellent speech, which I was very pleased to deliver. Before I sit down, I would like to add a couple of points myself about the involvement of the fossil fuel industry in the world of plastics, which I think is often missed. The raw materials used to make fossil fuels and plastics are one and the same, but demand for fossil fuels is now on the decline in many parts of the world, so we see these two industries coming closer together. In fact, in the face of decreasing profit margins and the increasing demand for renewable energy, fossil fuels are finding new ways to keep themselves afloat—and, unfortunately, they have found plastic production.

Plastics are the fossil fuel industry’s new plan B. Most plastic is made from fossil fuels: we extract oil or gas from land and the seabed and transport it to something that is known as a cracker. Crackers are plants that use huge amounts of heat and pressure to break fossil fuels into the molecules that become the building blocks of polymers. For instance, propane gets cracked into propylene, which is turned into polypropylene, and then you have a plastic bottle. In the past, the industries were fairly separate, but now they are trying to integrate. Both face challenges.

According to UNEP, more than 127 countries have introduced regulation, but way more is needed. Every day it seems we can learn a new thing about what bad stuff plastics do. I did not know until recently that plastic aids the transmission of antibiotic-resistant genes, or that traces of plastic are found in human wombs—so babies can be swimming in microplastics. No country has fully banned it to my knowledge. There are so many kinds of single-use plastic that it is like cutting one of Medusa’s snakes just for three more heads to pop up. But we need something more systemic, and the Bill puts us on the right foot. We need to halt subsidies for petrochemicals, internalise the cost of plastics through taxes and extended producer responsibility, and consider the climate and biodiversity aspects of the plastics lifecycle before we grant permits for the construction and operation of these plants. We need to pass this amendment, and I am very happy to support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak first to Amendment 52, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, to which I was pleased to attach my name. It also has the cross-party and non-party support of the noble Lord, Lord Randall, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I will also briefly address the other two amendments here.

Your Lordships’ House might not be surprised to know that my arguments around Amendment 123 might be slightly differently expressed, and I might have drafted the amendment slightly differently. None the less, the fact that we are still pumping lead out into our environment is disgraceful. We hear the phrase “world-leading” a great deal. As we have heard, Denmark banned lead shot for hunting 25 years ago. California did it last year. If you look around the world, it has taken an unconscionably long time but we have just seen Algeria become the last country in the world to stop selling leaded petrol. We have known for a long time the damage lead does. We cannot justify continuing to use it in this way. This might have been an amendment for which the term “no-brainer” was invented, when you think about the fact that this is damaging the brains of children in particular. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne, said, we have banned lead-shot game here in this House but have not acted outside the House. That really cannot be defended. It is untenable.

Amendment 53 looks at protecting nature from the toxic, disastrous chemicals that are pesticides, but I really want to focus on Amendment 52. We have been debating for some time and I want to come back to briefly highlight the powerful points made particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. Many Members of your Lordships’ House, particularly those sitting opposite, will be able to picture the scene: an air-conditioned cab with air filtration; an operator equipped with a whole range of complex, high-tech protective equipment; and a child playing in a garden right beside where the person in all that protective equipment is applying chemicals.

The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said she sees the other side of this in her professional practice. People—sometimes young people, sometimes very young people—with cancers, with neurodegenerative diseases. Once the noble Baroness sees them, it is essentially too late. We cannot allow this to continue. This House has many times expressed its strong support for this amendment. I stress that these three amendments are not an either/or, pick-and-match lot. All these amendments should be in the Bill.

I very much hope that, given the direction of travel and where push pressure is coming from, the noble Lord will concede on Amendment 123. We have to vote. I urge the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, to put this to the vote. We have to get both Amendments 52 and 53 through. This is not an either/or option.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I just want to say a few words about these chemicals and to talk about it from the point of view of the industry and cheap food.

In 1947, the manufacturers of DDT ran an advert in Time magazine showing smiling cartoon farm animals and a rosy-cheeked housewife who sang “DDT is good for me-e-e!”, along with the claim that DDT was the “benefactor of all humanity”. That same year, they had a British colonialist sprinkling DDT over a bowl of porridge and then eating it in a bid to persuade local people in east Africa that this chemical was harmless.

We can see, if we cut forward to today, that Silent Spring was written in 1962 and DDT became recognised as something that was harmful to animals, nature, biodiversity and, indeed, humans. Yet, today, we see a very different story. In 1990, we treated 45 million hectares with pesticides. By 2016, this had risen to 73 million hectares, although the actual area of crops had remained the same. However, we were putting many times more pesticides on to those same crops, on to a weakening soil, in our attempt to keep producing ever more cheap food to feed our population.

There are very familiar names in the industry—Bayer, Monsanto and Syngenta—and it is reckoned that they make about 35% of their total global revenue by selling these sorts of pesticides around the world. Farmers get trapped into that same cycle. It is something that we have to break.

This amendment is very important to me, because I feel a great distrust of the Government at the moment, for instance over the ban of neonicotinoids. They are now banned in America and across the whole of Europe; indeed, when we were still within the European Union, we banned them as well. However, we have now let them back in and they are allowed to be used on sugar beet. This feels to me like a small open door that could get bigger. I quote Dave Goulson, from the University of Sussex, who wrote a fantastic book about the decline of insects. Mentioning neonicotinoids, he says:

“The toxicity takes your breath away—just five maize seeds treated with neonicotinoids are enough to kill a grey partridge.”


No one can spray 17,000 tonnes of poison across a landscape without doing massive damage as it spreads. As the noble Lord, Lord Randall, so wisely said, we now know about DDT—and, actually, we know about this stuff too. It is no accident that it kills animals, insects and every single small thing around.

These amendments are absolutely imperative, right across so many parts of this Bill: biodiversity, habitats and human health. Also, there are other ways of doing it; there are intelligent, responsible uses of gene editing and many natural solutions to keep crops safe and ensure that we have good, healthy food that does not destroy either our planet or ourselves.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Boycott

Report stage
Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I am very happy to support this amendment. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, I joined up a little too late.

Biodiversity is all too often seen as the poor relation of climate change and somehow less important. It is not. It is just as important and life threatening as any weather patterns, droughts or floods—and they are indeed all connected. So what is it? In essence, it is the variety of life on earth and all its interconnectedness. But it is also the product of millions of years of learning—of trial and error—by all the creatures, flora and fauna on earth to arrive at a system where this planet flourishes and where we can exist on it. Everything is in its place and everything is doing its bit—sometimes large, sometimes microscopic—and it keeps our planet in the healthy state that we want to preserve.

I have heard what we are doing now described as “burning the library of earth”. To take something really complex that we have made, let us think of an aeroplane going to New York, carrying 600 people. Out falls one rivet—not too bad. Out come two—maybe not a big deal. But suppose 10, 20 or 30 come out; at some point that aeroplane is going to come crashing down to earth—and that is what we are doing now with the complex world of our biodiversity. We do not know quite when we will pass the tipping point, but we are clearly very nearly there.

I have a few examples relating to the insect world, which is endlessly dismissed, but—as Einstein, apparently, famously said—the planet would survive without us, but it would not survive without insects. They are essentially the unseen rivers that keep the planet functioning, yet we have not managed to identify them all—and yet we are cutting down their environments. As I said, no one knows how close to the edge we are, but in China they are pollinating apples and pears by hand. In Bengal they are doing the same for squash plants. In Brazil it is passionfruit, and it is blueberries in Canada. Even the French beans in Kenya are now having to be mechanically pollinated because we have trashed the insects.

Clearly, many parts of the world—and, indeed, under the oceans; we have the temerity to think that we should destroy the ocean bed like we have destroyed the land above—have a huge value: trillions of dollars, or around double the world’s current GDP. In Europe alone it costs the 3% of GDP that we get from our natural services.

I thoroughly support the amendment. This is an emergency. That message needs to come from the Prime Minister and it needs to be made clear to everyone that we have only one planet and that we have to protect it. Biodiversity is extraordinary and amazing. It is up to all of us in this House to ensure that this becomes part of the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I support both these amendments: Amendment 1, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and backed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, to which I am pleased to have attached my name; and Amendment 21 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.

In introducing his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, looked at what happened in the timeframe from when we last debated the Bill to today. I will take a different timeframe and go back to when the Bill was first introduced on 15 October 2019. A lot has happened since then. Obviously, we have had, and still have, a global pandemic, which is related to our biodiversity and climate crises, but in reaction to it we have seen enormous, massive and rapid change. We have seen the invention from scratch of highly effective new vaccines from a range of technologies. We have seen billions of doses of those vaccines already delivered. We have seen transformation on an almost daily scale of our entire way of life. The previously obscure word “lockdown” has become daily currency. International travel has almost stopped. “Zoom” has become a verb.

What has happened to the climate in those two years? Emissions fell in 2020, chiefly because of the pandemic, but a lot less than people expected. They then started to rise again. We have seen Extinction Rebellion out on our streets regularly and the climate strikers have become part of the national life of countries all around the world. But we have yet to see the scale of reaction that is needed to these emergencies, which are on the same scale as the pandemic. Just look at the contrast between those two scales of reaction and the fact that the Bill was written two years ago. In the age of shocks, with time moving so fast, that is an age. Amendment 1 would update the Bill to be fit for today, as it must be, and create the frame for it to be fit for the future.

I will briefly address Amendment 21. It is particularly important because we are starting to see the word “resilience” in news coverage, which was once an extremely rare occurrence. It is starting to rise up the news agenda. I speak as a former journalist. Amendment 21 seeks to address the risks, identify them and report on them.

I will focus in particular on proposed new subsection (2)(c), which would ensure that the views of 11 to 25 year-olds in the United Kingdom are continuously engaged in debating these risks. I reflect on that because yesterday I was in Sheffield, where I joined the Young Christian Climate Network, which is on a deliberately very slow pilgrimage from Truro to Glasgow, stopping in as many communities up and down the land as it possibly can to engage communities, particularly young people, on this issue. Climate strikers, young pilgrims and Extinction Rebellion are leading. The amendment would ensure that the Government and the Bill are at least in the right place to catch up.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Boycott

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, this group of amendments is simple and coherent. Both the amendments address the proposed international offence of ecocide. Noble Lords will see that the amendments have cross-party and non-party support. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Whitaker and Lady Boycott, for supporting them.

Amendment 293D sets out the definition of ecocide, which means,

“unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.

The treatment that the planet and many of its people have received is criminal, and it is time that the crime was acknowledged and prevented. We are killing the ecosystems on which we rely and gravely depleting the natural world, putting at risk the many wondrous and beautiful natural systems of which we have so little understanding.

In acknowledgement of that, for more than a decade lawyers have been working on a new international law to protect this fragile planet—a law of ecocide. It is proposed that it becomes part of the Rome statute, which contains the international crime of genocide. Many people will associate this campaign with the late, great barrister and campaigner Polly Higgins. The crime of ecocide has been a topic of debate since the Vietnam War when Agent Orange was used by the US Army to defoliate vast areas of jungle. Since then, incidents of irreversible destruction to ecosystems and the ocean have led to further and ongoing proposals for this crime to be adjudicated by the International Criminal Court.

I first encountered this proposal at a one-day seminar at the British Library in 2008. Work then was already well advanced but, in the decade since, it has advanced much further. The French have already written the crime into their climate law. The Belgians and Dutch are considering doing likewise and nearly a dozen national constitutions include a recognition of ecocide. Research by the European Law Institute seeks to draw up a model law for the EU. In May, the European Parliament encouraged the EU and its members,

“to pave the way within the International Criminal Court (ICC) towards new negotiations between the parties with a view to recognising ‘ecocide’ as an international crime”.

Three of the countries that already recognise this crime are signatories to the Rome statute. Therefore, if, as I suggest, the UK successfully proposed an ecocide amendment, a total of 130 countries would recognise it as a crime, 123 of which could then take a case to the ICC for adjudication. I note, however, that the US, China and India are not state parties. There has also been publicly recorded interest from Bangladesh, Canada, Finland, Luxembourg, the Maldives, Spain and Vanuatu.

Noble Lords will note that Amendment 293D arrived rather late to this Committee. That is because it uses a new, further-developed definition of the law of ecocide that has only just been released by a distinguished expert international panel of jurists. The definition in the amendment, however, differs from the international definition by excluding a reference to outer space. The Public Bill Office declared that that was out of scope of the Bill, and while there is an argument for outer space being part of our environment, I decided to leave that discussion to another day. I note for noble Lords’ interest that the maximum penalty of 30 years’ imprisonment reflects that which applies to genocide under UK law.

When—and I am sure that it is when—the crime is incorporated into the Rome statute, it will eventually make its way into UK law. Surely not even the current Government’s carelessness as regards international law would prevent that. But the world and our nature-depleted, plastic and pollution-choked islands cannot wait, which is why I put forward Amendment 293D.

It is worth noting that, astonishingly, the Bill as it currently stands makes no mention of ecosystems and, therefore, there can be no protection of ecosystems. Amendments contain at least five references to ecosystems, which shows that there is a desire across the House to introduce this, and introducing a crime of ecocide would be a comprehensive way in which to do that.

The lead amendment, Amendment 287, offers the international perspective and calls for the Government to commit to supporting the international Stop Ecocide campaign and within 12 months of the Act coming into force to present—alone or, I expect, with others—a proposal to amend the Rome statute.

I should love to think that the Government will embrace both these amendments but I am a realist. I am aware also that creating a whole new legal offence is something our legal eagles and those across the country are likely to want to chew over for some time. I am very much looking forward to the thoughts of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, on Amendment 293D, which I am sure will help inform future thinking on the UK offence. There is a definite opportunity for a stand-alone Private Member’s Bill here. So I am unlikely to pursue that amendment to Report but regard it as a start to the UK debate.

However, that is not the case with Amendment 287. As countries, campaign groups and lawyers across the globe line up behind the call to amend the Rome statute, the UK needs to be on board. As the chair of the COP 26 climate talks, how could we be anywhere else?

I am almost finished, but I have one final question for the Minister. Will he agree to meet with the ecocide campaign and have his officials look at the outputs from the Independent Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide? I thank other noble Lords who are taking part in this debate and those who have already offered their support. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

It is a great delight to support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in the amendment. I, like her, believe that ecocide will be introduced as a crime on an international basis and will join the Rome statute alongside the more familiar crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The point about ecocide is that it has to be wanton and deliberate. Here are just a few examples that might be able to have that label attached to them. In Jack Harries’s new powerful film “The Breakdown”, he shows us a closed-door meeting with Exxon executives in 1977. Their scientist James Black delivers a presentation called “The Greenhouse Effect” in which he warns that carbon dioxide from the world’s use of fossil fuels is warming the planet and will eventually endanger humanity. He is quoted as saying:

“Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”


Exxon in 1977 took his report seriously and over subsequent years invested millions upon millions of dollars into cutting-edge climate change science and hired the world’s top scientists and engineers to help to get to the bottom of the inconvenient truth. Therefore, weirdly, a lot of early science was done by the fossil fuel companies, in part to understand the impact of their work but in part to understand where their new drilling opportunities might be. It was, strangely, the first golden age of climate research.

However, quite quickly—by 1982—the research had piled up, and it did not look so good. The impact of fossil fuels on climate change was now unquestionable. In a leaked document addressed to “Exxon personnel only”, environmental affairs manager MB Glaser wrote:

“Mitigation of the ‘greenhouse effect’ would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.”


He suggested that if this was not done—again, this was in 1982—there could be “potentially catastrophic events” such as the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet, which would cause a sea level rise in the order of five metres.

The men in charge did not like what they were hearing—it was too big and too bothersome and it was going to threaten their livelihoods—so, in 1983, a year later, they decided to stop listening to the scientists and listen to their accountants instead. Overnight, the troublesome little hitch called climate change effectively ceased to exist in the annals of the coal industry. Overnight, Exxon cut the funding for climate research from $900,000 a year to $150,000 a year—out of a total research budget that stood then at $600 million—and those pessimistic sponges in lab coats stopped being invited to meetings. A culture of denial was born, lifted straight from the tobacco industry—the one that said, “Cigarettes won’t give you lung cancer, keep buying them”. In this case, the industry said, “No, climate change isn’t real, so fill up your tank”.

I know that it is not within our remit—and never will be within anybody’s remit, I think—to prosecute ExxonMobil, which, as Channel 4 revealed a couple of weeks ago, is still at it. It has been pressurising President Biden over his green economy and new deal, to the extent that a lot of the investment in new green jobs has been taken away. As the lobbyist on “Channel 4 News” said, “We’re really happy because he’s sticking to infrastructure and roads and highways as a way of creating new jobs”.

Coming back to our own climate disaster, after the death of young Ella Kissi-Debrah a couple of years ago, the law did find that her death had been made possible or enhanced by the fact that she was breathing bad air. The fact that the fossil fuel companies played a part in this starts to make two parts of the story come together.

As I say, the question of ecocide is a question of intent. The £90 million fine handed out to Southern Water last week is a great step; £90 million is a lot of money. Even so, the company’s profits that year were about £200 million. Its pollution has killed countless fish and destroyed habitats and wildlife, not to mention the sea creatures whose homes have been irreparably damaged by raw sewage. As the Guardian reported:

“Andrew Marshall, appearing at the sentencing hearing for the regulator, told Canterbury crown court that Southern Water, which is ultimately under the control of Greensands Holdings”—


a private company—

opened storm tanks to release raw sewage into coastal waters in north Kent and the Solent to increase its own financial benefits. The company also allowed storm tanks to be kept full and to turn septic, instead of putting millions of litres of raw sewage through the treatment process as required by law.”

This flagrant and wanton act was carried out with the full knowledge of the damage that could ensue. So, yes, £90 million is terrific from one point of view, but is it not also something more? Should not a crime that would send people to prison or really shame them, such as ecocide, be attached to Andrew Marshall, the boss of Southern Water? The threats to nature and wildlife that our current practices present are talked about a lot these days. Finding someone responsible is never easy; we have not even managed to hold anyone responsible for Grenfell yet. Yet here is a case where we are damaging and threatening our natural world every day.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, many countries in Europe are already debating whether to introduce an ecocide law into their home legislation. A number of countries already have their own ecocide laws. For instance, Article 358 of the Russian criminal code states:

“Massive destruction of the animal or plant kingdoms, contamination of the atmosphere or water resources, and also commission of other actions capable of causing an ecological catastrophe, shall be punishable by deprivation of liberty for a term of 12 to 20 years.”


Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and Armenia have also passed laws which mean that the country can send someone to prison for a wanton and knowing act of ecological disaster.

Frankly, it is uncertain how many people will die in the next few years because of climate change and nature depletion, or how many more millions of people will be forced to leave their homes, looking for sanctuary in the remaining kinder climates—but it will be a lot. It will dwarf previous acts of genocide and crimes against humanity. We must start to hold individuals accountable. Obviously, this law needs to be international —I urge the Government to work with others to make it so—but could we start by at least discussing it as a possible national offence, too? We cannot expect the world to adopt this if we do not apply it here. As we all know, on the eighth day of this long and wonderful environment debate, we have only one home; it is very precious and we need tougher laws to protect it.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Boycott

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[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.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Boycott

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.

Trade Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Boycott

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 15th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I am very happy to follow the noble Lord, Lord Oates, and to support the amendment in his name along with the noble Lords, Lord Purvis of Tweed and Lord Hain, as well as supporting the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Both amendments seek to safeguard our environment and are completely consistent with all our international agreements under the Paris Agreement, which turned five at the weekend.

Trade is so much bigger than just imports and exports. It is arguably how we leave our mark on other countries. However, it is not something that most of us think about day to day. Trade deals are not usually rushed through. Many take absolutely years to happen and a lot of thought goes into them. They also last a very long time.

Having high standards is something we should be proud of, and the huge opportunity before us to trade on our own terms means that we must seize this moment to say no to other countries: “We will not trade with you if you are damaging the natural environment and worsening the effects of climate change”. We are at a junction now where it is not enough simply to partake in these practices at home—something we do well. We need to make sure that we are not indirectly causing them to happen abroad. People often use the phrase: “Evil succeeds when good men”—I would say women—“do nothing”. If we fail now to put these provisions in the Bill, we are as good as doing nothing in the face of all that we know.

I am proud that this country has led and continues to lead the way in decarbonisation. Some of this has been market-led. But 12 years ago we passed a Climate Change Act, and between 2012 and 2017 emissions from energy halved. That is not a coincidence; one logically followed another. Because this was legislated, successive Governments—we are on the fifth since it was passed—have absolutely had to pay attention to the process of decarbonisation. While it has not always been the number one priority, it has been absolutely impossible to ignore. To misquote Benjamin Franklin: “There are three certainties in our life: death, taxes, and now carbon budgets.” The comparison I am trying to draw is that when we have foresight of an issue and put it into legislation, we get the rewards. That is what we must do with our trade policy. We are literally writing the book on blank paper. It would be incredibly remiss of us to miss out this crucial chapter.

At previous stages, Ministers have mused on the importance of halting climate change, but why are they reluctant to put it in the Bill in case there are “unintended consequences”? I argue that the unintended consequences of not placing this in the Bill will be far greater. David Attenborough said to this very House in January, in the Royal Gallery next door, that we are at a tipping point and that “once we pass it, it will be impossible to come back from”. I do not think we have actually reached it yet but, as a responsible global leader, we need to say out loud and clearly, “We will not trade with you if you do not protect the environment.” I worry that without one of these amendments, and given the competing priorities the Government have about so many things, as we are hearing this afternoon, these considerations could end up falling by the wayside. The only way for the Minister to ensure that this remains a priority is to put it in the Bill.

These amendments are fundamentally useful, as they will ensure that whoever is negotiating a free trade agreement will have to stop and think about the impact it has on climate change and, in the case of Amendment 14, find a mutually beneficial way which produces fewer emissions or ensure that in some way they are offset. This could be a key moment when we stand up and say that from now on the UK will not enter anything that increases global emissions. To reach net zero we need to cut our current emissions as well as not making any more.

I understand that Ministers are reluctant to allow certain amendments as they think it would cause a lot of work in the departments, and I understand that a popular Minister may not remain popular for very long if his staff have to do this. However, in the case of Amendment 14, the work will already have been done. I welcome the Written Statement that the Minister’s colleague in the other place laid last Monday, which said that

“the Government will publish an independently verified impact assessment which will cover the economic and environmental impacts of the deal.”—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/20; col. 22WS.]

While I am not sure whether that is the full net-zero assessment I asked the Minister about in July, I recognise that this is progress and I thank him and his colleagues for making this happen. My point is that environment includes climate change and biodiversity. If I understand it correctly, the assessment should cover the work needed for Amendment 14 and for the greater part of Amendment 21. By putting this in the Bill we can give it the permanence that a ministerial Statement, however well meant, absolutely cannot. I do not doubt the Minister’s sincerity or that he takes the issue seriously, but I worry that this conversation will have to be had every single time we have a reshuffle or a change of Government.

I have tried to show that when something is put in legislation it creates certainty and unlocks investments. This will not be a hindrance. The summit we hosted on Saturday shows the direction the world is going in. We have said that we will no longer invest in fossil-fuel projects abroad. Low carbon is our future, and the countries that are not on board risk being left out in the cold—or, indeed, in the increasingly hot world.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and her powerful speech, which clearly outlined why one of these amendments should be on the face of the Bill. Ministerial commitments are just words which apply only to that person in post. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for outlining Amendment 14, for which I express my support, but I will speak to Amendment 21 in my name, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for her support for it.

Given that the noble Lord, Lord Oates, has already outlined Amendment 14 so clearly, I will briefly reflect on the practical reality of it. A radio talk-show host was talking to me and complaining that “Everyone talks green now.” She got a little upset when she saw that I was smiling when she said that. As I said to her, although talk is great, there is a lot of truth in that statement, as it is only hot air until we have delivery and commitment. It is clear that the Government are making these commitments; as the chair of COP 26 they are taking their place at the forefront of the world’s talk on these things. It is therefore hard to see why they would have any objection to either amendment. Amendment 14 in particular is on the climate emergency, on which the Government claim world leadership, and surely that leadership should be reflected in every Bill that goes through your Lordships’ House.

I will focus mostly on Amendment 21. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has already started on this point but I will go back to the words of the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, who on our first day of debate on these amendments answered an Oral Question from the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. The Minister said:

“The key principle of the convention on biological diversity is that biodiversity should be mainstreamed”,—[Official Report, 7/12/20; col. 950.]


which means “present in everything you do and everything that is done”. Biodiversity on its own does not entirely cover every environmental aspect we are looking at—there is obviously the COP next year on biodiversity, matching up with the COP on the climate. There are many other issues to raise, from soil health to plastics, but those are two good places to start.

I admit to your Lordships that Amendment 21 is rather long, so I will not go through it all in great detail. I will refer just to some of the key points. It is about

“the maintenance of the United Kingdom’s levels of statutory protection in relation to … human, animal or plant life or health … animal welfare, and … the environment.”

It is about

“achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050”,

and the

“goals and targets contained in an Environmental Improvement Plan, including the 25 Year Environment Plan”.

It is about the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. What is notable about all those things is that I am not setting out some wonderful Green Party targets for a transformed world. They are all things that I am sure the Government would tell your Lordships they have enthusiastically embraced and signed up to. This is about the Government living up to their own commitments and legal responsibilities.

We know—and your Lordships’ House has played its part in ensuring—that when the Government skated up to dodging their international legal responsibilities in other Bills, they were then pushed away from doing it. That has done real damage to the UK’s international reputation, so putting an amendment such as this into the Bill would go some way towards restoring the UK’s international reputation.

I have one more point to reflect on, because it has been a long afternoon and may be a longer evening. At the moment, in the midst of a global pandemic, there is of course a huge focus on public health. Amendment 21 refers to public health, but it is not that public health and the environment are two separate things. We can have a healthy society, and have our people being healthy, only if they live in a healthy environment. These amendments are closely linked and essential to restoring the public health and well-being of the people of Britain, not just the environment as a separate category.