Water Pollution

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Boycott]

To ask His Majesty’s Government, following the BBC “Panorama” documentary “The Water Pollution Cover-Up”, what assessment they have made of the ability of the Environment Agency to regulate and police water companies, and what steps they plan to take to stop sewage entering watercourses.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Douglas-Miller) (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. The Government are clear that the current volume of sewage being discharged into our waters is unacceptable. Our plan for water is addressing this and delivering more investment, stronger regulation and tougher enforcement to clean up our water and water environment. Where there is evidence of wrongdoing, the Environment Agency will not hesitate to act.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box and I too declare my interests.

The “Panorama” programme threw up a lot of issues. It has not had quite the effect of “Mr Bates vs The Post Office”—although I wish it had, because there is a lot of covering up going on at the moment in terms of sewerage works in this country. I would like to raise one point; others will be raised as the Question goes on.

Campaigners and journalists have been using freedom of information requests or environmental information requests to water companies, to explore and expose the illegal sewage discharges. But, increasingly, the companies are refusing to comply. In fact, nine out of 11 water and sewerage companies in England and Wales have said that the ongoing Ofwat and Environment Agency investigations mean that they do not have to hand over any data. This is completely contrary to what David Black, the CEO of Ofwat, told the Public Accounts Committee just four weeks ago. He said this was not a good enough reason. Do the Government not agree that this data should be provided for the sake of transparency, public health and the protection of the environment? Sewage in our rivers is something that everyone in this country cares about.

Land Use in England Committee Report

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 25th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-chair of Peers for the Planet. I thoroughly welcome the report from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and thoroughly support all his recommendations.

As a country, we have made a number of crucial commitments. One is to net zero, and another is to nature recovery and biodiversity gain. There is no way we can deliver on those two goals without a radical change in how we use our land because, as other noble Lords have pointed out, they are not the only challenges facing our land. As the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, has just said, there is the question of public access. As other noble Lords have said, there is the challenge of building enough houses, and there is also the challenge of growing enough food. However, given how we are going about this—lax building regulations, houses being tossed up in areas without adequate resources—it will not be possible to do all we need to do on our tiny, precious island. There are also the two big new demands of restoring biodiversity and nature and decarbonising the economy, along with, as we heard in last night’s debate, adapting to climate change, and all the other things we need to do.

You would not build a house without first having a floor plan; indeed, you would not try to redesign a house without a floor plan. You would not design a new town without thinking about where to put the amenities, and you would not design a transport system without a plan—although in the past we have. London is a great case in point, with no tubes going to the south of the city. Noble Lords may say, “Well, how do you retrofit on to an existing situation where we have towns and counties and roads and fields and everything is organised?” The point is that we have now reached a watershed, and it is pretty simple: we are faced with a climate emergency and a natural resources and biodiversity emergency. Unless, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and others have said, we figure out how to use the land—how we eat from it, grow from it; how we use it in all its different ways—there is no way we can muddle our way through this. You cannot do it without a proper system. As much as many noble Lords have attested to the right of private landowners to do what they like, I do not believe that we will do it without very clear government guidance.

We must have a land use framework for England which will deliver integrated, collaborative and place-based decision-making, optimising the multifunctional benefits that our land can give us. At a national level, we need to join up land use policy-making across government departments, especially between land use planning, agriculture and the natural environment. This is a pressing concern for local leaders around the country who want to see a more strategic approach to allow better land use decision-making at local authority, catchment and landscape scales, which will support more proactive, integrated action to deliver net zero. The local nature recovery strategies are only a small part of this picture.

In addition, this will help individual landowners and farmers to make long-term plans, to help assess what their land is best for. As we speak, innovative farmers and landowners are trying to join up their land to create essential nature corridors in which wildlife can move freely. A framework would make this essential task, which is in everyone’s interest, including farmers, that much easier. However, already land is being purchased by private equity and business for particular purposes such as forestry and carbon sequestration, without any strategic or democratic assessment of whether that land could be better used for another purpose, such as agroecological farming, which could deliver multiple benefits—food, biodiversity, reduced greenhouse gases and green jobs, or enabling people to live and work right there in their communities. This would enable many more government targets to be achieved, joining up the delivery of many complementary goals for food, jobs, housing, nature and net zero. The most appropriate land would be used for a mix of uses that it is best suited to. It would also deliver process benefits, reducing conflicts over land use, which will save us time and money. We do not have much time and we are always being told that we have no money. Collaborative approaches would help to align and pool resources and share data, knowledge and skills. Finally, a framework could help to corral and align private finance—currently widely described in some quarters as a “wild west”—as well as philanthropic funds in support of transparent, democratic, fair and sustainable investments.

The ideas have been brilliantly set out by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, but they are not new. The National Food Strategy, written by Henry Dimbleby along with a bunch of advisers, of whom I was one, states as recommendation 9 that the only way the UK will meet those targets—on net zero and nature recovery—is

“to change the way we use the land”.

He recommends developing

“a Rural Land Use Framework”,

with all the ministries being involved. The new regulations and payment systems, as has been noted by other noble Lords, are confusing at the best of times, so a clear land strategy would really help.

The wonderful Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, which I recommend to anyone who does not know its work, has recently been running two trials on how to make a land use framework work. Its conclusions are really heartening:

“The need for change is most often expressed around joining up the planning system for the built environment with other land use changes and enabling planners and other decision makers to take a more holistic approach to decision-making. If a Framework is given statutory weight, alongside those policies that it should help join up (such as Local Nature Recovery Strategies, Biodiversity Net Gain and the planning system), that would enable it to do this … Land use frameworks can facilitate the creation of a shared, long-term vision for an area—setting out what combination of housing, employment, transport, landscape, seascape, biodiversity, food production, natural beauty etc. future generations should enjoy”.


There is no other way to do it.

It is not unprecedented to have these. We have national targets for many areas of policy which are delivered locally. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about the progress the Government will make towards producing this vital strategy.

Climate Change

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I have no knowledge of plans to produce such data, but I will certainly find out from the relevant department and contact the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

Given the information we have heard in the previous questions on how destructive a rise of even 2 degrees centigrade could be, why are we still considering licensing a new oilfield in the North Sea?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Oil as part of our economy is seen as a transition, and we want to make sure that we move our whole energy production to a renewable and non-carbon basis. The continued use of oil is inevitable, but we will continue to make sure that the economy is based on as much renewable as possible. If the noble Baroness, like me, goes on to the National Grid app, she can see that as of today, at this precise moment, energy from renewable way exceeds energy from oil and gas.

Water: Wales and England

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend. There are a number of different actions in the Wales Act which will see more control over these issues in the Senedd when Section 48 is put into place—that is under negotiation now. On a small island such as this, there is a free-flowing use of services by businesses and individuals, and that will always continue.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, it is very sad that there is not more messaging around how precious and finite a commodity water is. When the British public were asked how much they use, they guessed between 20 and 40 litres a day; in actual fact, it is 145 litres a day. The Environment Act set a target of a 20% reduction within the next 10 years, but last year our use went up by 3.7%. What are the Government going to do in terms of public messaging to encourage people to use less of this precious stuff, whether we get it from Wales or from the water-stressed east?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises a crucial point. Household consumption amounts, on average, to 60% of public water supply and has decreased 5.2% since last year from 152 to 144 litres per person per day. This remains above the forecast of 136, but our environment improvement plan gives very strict targets for further reduction. Some of that is about communication, but it is also about demand-led measures, which can cause the dramatic reductions that we want to promote.

Oil Spill: Poole Harbour

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, it is really good to hear that we will have the polluter pays principle, but I can see that being only for specific things such as tourism. What about the FSA and the other agencies that will have to stop doing other work to go to Poole harbour and spend time sorting this out? Will the owners of this oil compensate them for their time?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point, and I am not entirely sure what the precedent is in such circumstances. Undoubtedly, an enormous amount of taxpayers’ money is being spent with all the agencies I listed. I will have to reflect on that and talk to colleagues not only in my department but in those responsible for such facilities to see what the precedent is in the circumstances.

Direct Payments to Farmers (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2023

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Lords Chamber

Another important point, which I made during the Agriculture Bill, is that farmers need to have their hand held during this transition. Any change is difficult, particularly when the situation is affecting the whole of Europe because of low yields of wheat in France and the problems with water in Spain, but at the end of this dark tunnel will be a better farming system. Some of the big farmers will adapt more quickly; it is the smaller farmers that I am worried about. I hope that my noble friend can reassure me that his ELM scheme will give a helping hand to smaller farmers and to the agents trying to help them, who are still a bit confused as to what the final picture will look like. Having said that, I firmly support the direction in which the Government are heading, and I hope that the House will resoundingly defeat any attempt to divide on either of these amendments.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I too support the ELM scheme, and, broadly, I support everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, said. I understand what the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, but I do not believe for a second that we should effectively cancel the ELM scheme at this moment.

I think it is important to put another point of view, to do with the food price situation. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, talked about when we were progressing the then Agriculture Bill and we debated the ELM scheme. It was decided that sustainable food growing would not be classed as something that could get any sort of payment. It was thought that if you grow food, you have a means of making money; that is fundamentally correct but, at that time, the reckoning was that about 8p in every pound got to the farmer; the rest disappeared into supermarket profit, packaging, production, processing and all the different things up the chain. New figures that have come through in the last year—compounded by issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, set out to do with the war in Ukraine and energy costs—reveal that UK farmers receive less than 1% of the retail price for goods that go through our main supermarkets.

That is not a percentage on the production cost but a percentage of the total price; it is pathetic and tiny. For example—I am referring to the research—for a wrapped, sliced loaf of bread, a cereal farmer will spend 9.03p yet will receive a negligible profit of 0.09p on something sold as a unit for £l.14. If they sold it as a loaf of “real bread” through an independent bakery they would make 0.5p profit; that is not much but it is something. For four beefburgers, the processor gains 10 times the profit of the beef farmer. A carrot grower spending about 14p per bag and selling to the supermarket will get virtually no money in return.

This leaves them with nothing to fund the transition. We all know that we need to have this transition. The agri-food sector currently makes up a third of UK greenhouse gas emissions, while agriculture accounts for 10% or possibly more. Farming drives 70% of terrestrial biodiversity loss. Intensive livestock farming poses a serious threat to climate change—we have debated many times in this House what industrial chicken farming does—and 85% of our land is used to graze livestock or produce crops to feed animals rather than feed us.

Everyone in this House agrees that we have to reform the farming sector, but if we are to reform it through the ELM system, people will need some reason to put in the herbal leys and they need to make some decent money out of food. This is driven by our commercial and rubbish food system dominated by supermarkets, which are driving farmers—especially small farmers—completely out of business.

So I have three small ideas: accelerate ELMS—madly so, putting more money in—introduce a land use framework that supports farm diversity, and support the transition to agroecological farming. Farming can be nature-friendly; it does not need to be industrial. We are pushing big farmers in the middle of England towards being more industrial rather than thinking, “I will grow some hedgerows”.

The Government should set up new, legally binding sector-based supply chain with codes of practice and use data to help farmers deliver more public goods and get supermarkets to help by giving farmers a much fairer deal. Given what we know about the two big supermarkets that recently distributed £1 billion to their shareholders, we could do something; we could have some higher prices paid to the farmers.

Given all that we have learned from recent shortages in fruit and vegetables, the UK must have a coherent and ambitious horticulture strategy to improve our nutritional food security. We are already importing large amounts of fruit and veg from climate and water-stressed countries. As it worsens, this threatens our own food security. As many people have said, we need to support our small and family farmers; but we need also to support our big farmers so that they see a proper advantage in transitioning out of industrial farming methods that cause so much damage.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

I ought perhaps to draw the attention of the House to my interests as in the register. I am also president of the Institute of Agricultural Management and I have the good fortune to be involved in a horticultural and farming business. I consider it good fortune because that business has grown. As my noble friend Lord Caithness would say, we are in some of the most fertile parts of England, and we have flexibility available to us that is not available to everybody involved in farming.

It is inevitable that we will talk about farming in general as we talk about this SI. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, spoke particularly about the strains that face farmers—the difficulties that they have in marketing their produce—but we can all agree that we want to take the industry forward. We want to see the agricultural and horticultural industries going forward.

There may be a certain amount of frustration in the criticism of this SI. Change is, of course, difficult. Nobody likes change, least of all farmers, but we are blessed in this House in that I always feel that we generally have a consensus on this issue. I am slightly distressed to suddenly find that we are talking about a “fatal Motion” and a “regret Motion”. We have in my noble friend the Minister someone who was a colleague of mine in Defra some 11 years ago and whom we can rely on to make sure that the interests that we express here this evening are expressed within government.

I know that change is a difficult matter, but what are we trying to achieve? We are trying to achieve a diversity in farming that has not existed before. We are trying to induce a situation where farmers realise that what is environmentally beneficial to this country is also part and parcel of the way that the state, the Government, funds farming and gives farmers a chance. This SI is a step on the way. It is only the beginning of a continuing process, but we should support it at this stage. This change will be to the benefit of the country and to the benefit of the industry of which I consider myself through my family connections to be a part, and I consider it to be to the benefit of the world in which the majority of our fellow citizens want to live.

I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, has proposed this amendment. I cannot agree with her. I think it is looking backwards when we need to be looking forwards. I know that we and the Labour Party are both anxious to make sure that we have a policy for agriculture and horticulture which builds on where we are and what we want to achieve; it is something that I think we share.

Imported Beef

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I will follow up my noble friend’s request. I am mystified by some science that gets thrown at me occasionally in this place which suggests that beef reared 12,000 miles away, transported in refrigerated trucks and ships and then distributed to retailers here can have a lower carbon footprint than beef or lamb produced on grass fields here and going just a few miles to a retailer. When I hear that, one word comes into my head. It is an unparliamentary one and begins with B.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, as the Minister outlined, the Conservative Party pledged:

“In all of our trade negotiations, we will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare … standards”.


But the Australians said of Liz Truss’s trade deal that tariff elimination on such a scale through a free trade agreement was almost unprecedented, and it is not clear what on earth the UK negotiators extracted in reciprocal concessions. The Australians’ welfare standards are lower. They have battery cages for laying hens, still legal, as are sow pens, as is the technique of mulesing on lambs, which I will not go into because it is too distressing. These are not permitted here. Although this deal may not amount to much—Australia is very far away—it is a really dangerous precedent, so can the Government assure the House that we will not be signing any more deals that undercut our welfare standards?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I can assure the noble Baroness, who knows a lot about these matters, that animal welfare and environmental standards will be absolutely at the forefront of all future trade negotiations. I just say that these deals balance open and free trade with protections for the agricultural industry. Australia and New Zealand will remove customs duties on 100% of tariff lines for originating products in line with agreed treatments that will be set out in respective tariff schedules on the day the agreements enter into force. There are huge opportunities, particularly for the dairy sector. Imports of dairy products into Australia and New Zealand have increased by around 30%, and I hope our farmers will be able to benefit from that.

Environmental Improvement Plan 2023

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I share my noble friend’s delight that we are taking forward this part of the Flood and Water Management Act. I know that it has been a long time coming. There are a lot of different players in this and we want to get it right, but we are now on the home run. I will be able to give her more details on timings in the very near future.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister explain why the Government have decided to relicense neonicotinoids for this year? They were banned here and are banned across other countries that have similar soil structures to ours. As I understand it, this was brought in a few years ago only as an emergency, yet now they have been relicensed again. That slightly goes in the face of what the Minister was saying about banning chemicals.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We have certainly not gone back on the commitment to ban neonicotinoids. As has happened in the last two years, we have given an indication that we might be in favour of the application of something called Cruiser SB, a plant protection product containing the active substance thiamethoxam, for the sugar beet industry. It will be allowed to be applied only if winter data shows that there will be a considerable loss of crop. If there is a considerable loss of crop, the sugar that would have been produced would have to come from other parts of the world at a higher carbon cost, and probably grown in circumstances where neonicotinoids are allowed. We will not allow spraying when the plant is in flower, so it will not be as damaging as the seed dressing that caused such a problem. It is a very rare circumstance; in the years in which this derogation has been allowed, on many occasions it has not actually been used because the threshold of potential crop loss was not reached.

Sustainable Farming Incentive Grants

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

This year we have rolled out our arable and horticultural soil standard, our improved grassland and moorland standards and the annual health and welfare review for animals. Next year we will roll out nutrient management, integrated pest management, hedgerows and advanced levels for the two soils standards, so farmers will start to see what they are doing. They will also receive £265 to cover the cost of the time it takes to fill in the forms. We want to make sure this is as easy as possible. As farmers see the benefits that will accrue to their businesses from the standards that will be applied, I think they will readily accept that this bedrock scheme is of great interest.

I should add that 36,000 farmers—nearly half the farmers in England—are already in agri-environment in the Countryside Stewardship scheme, which will morph into our mid-tier system, which is local nature recovery. So I hope that over the next few months noble Lords will see a really thoughtful, environmentally based system that is attractive to farmers and shows them they can get an income in return for good environmental actions that will support their businesses and give them a future in this business.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, the Secretary of State said in a recent speech at the CLA conference that the scheme the Minister just mentioned, the local nature recovery scheme, was not going ahead but its aims would be incorporated into the Countryside Stewardship scheme. Can the Minister comment on how on earth this is going to work in practice? Will there be extra money, or will the Countryside Stewardship money be divvied up yet further?

Water Companies: Pollution

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right to raise this. One of the problems is that water coming off roofs and driveways—absolutely clean water—goes into the same sewerage system. To separate foul water from clean water has been estimated at costing between £350 billion and £600 billion, which would have a dramatic effect on people’s bills. However, there is nothing to stop us trying to do this with new housing, as well as retrofitting it into existing housing, and ongoing discussions are taking place with other government departments to see if this can happen.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, by no means wanting to excuse the water companies anything, I say that, certainly in the west of England, a lot of the river pollution comes from industrial food farming, particularly chickens and nitrates. What are the Government doing to fine it for its contribution to the pollution in our rivers?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises a very severe problem. We rightly hold water companies to account, but they are only part of the problem. Phosphates from the poultry industry have caused rivers such as the Wye—one of the great rivers of our country—to become, in part and at certain times of the year, practically ecologically dead. We have to recognise that there is a planning issue, alongside the way in which we support and incentivise farmers, and the way in which we enforce these issues, which all have to be brought together. We all want to see things such as food security, free-range eggs and broiler houses in this country, but not at the price that we are now paying in rivers such as the Wye.