Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Developed Countries

Debate between Baroness Boycott and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Monday 7th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his constructive suggestion. I believe in the power of technology. The point he makes about carbon capture and storage is absolutely on the money. We have seen leaps forward which have helped us with tackling climate change on everything from electric vehicles to wind turbines, solar power, LED lighting, hydrogen and new nuclear. Carbon capture and storage are in the same category. Areas like these are where businesses can come together with Governments to innovate, drive things forward and then get them copied in lots of different countries around the world. Climate change is an international phenomenon; sadly, carbon and greenhouse gas emissions have no borders.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, last week we had a briefing from the President of the Maldives. He pointed out that, of the 100% of GDP, they spend 30% on adaptation due to the fact that the islands are being trashed by hurricanes and sea-level rises, and they are spending a further 25% on debt relief—the debt that they incurred in building infrastructure, roads and hospitals, which are now being washed away by the climate crisis. Do the Government think that there is any value in trying to work towards debt relief for nations such as this, given that the international community cannot yet come up with the £100 billion that we agreed last year in Glasgow for situations just like this?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

We are open to innovative solutions. This is another one that has come forward from the Maldives, which I have only just heard about. It is obviously right that hurricanes and monsoons and things make it difficult for countries such as the Maldives and other small islands to deal with their debts; in any financing, we would need to make sure that the result helped with climate change alleviation, but I am very happy to learn more.

COP 27

Debate between Baroness Boycott and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Thursday 27th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Noble Lords will know that this is a matter for His Majesty.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I add my voice to agreeing that the King should be going, but to build on what the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, yesterday, António Guterres said that this was the catastrophe and that all other catastrophes we are living through will only get worse. Why have the Government downgraded Alok Sharma’s post from the Cabinet, and can the Minister assure the House that a new Cabinet post will be created specifically to look at the climate crisis?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

It is the case that Alok Sharma is no longer a Minister nor in the Cabinet. However, the Prime Minister has appointed him as COP president, and that provides continuity and retains his expertise in this important role. I have been struck by his tireless work over the past year, and he is always particularly focused on implementation and the international perspective, as well as other issues. The thing is to get COP 27 done in a brilliant way in Sharm el-Sheikh from 6 to 18 November 2022. I cannot comment on appointments by the Prime Minister.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Boycott and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Report stage
Monday 13th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I have campaigned against plastic and support most of the Government’s plans because of the permanent damage that plastic can cause, especially to our seas and rivers. I support the wide powers that the Government are taking in this area. However, focusing on single use is not sensible. I remember that, when I was in retail, a single bag for life needed to be used 80 times to match the efficiency of the light single-use plastic bag. We also need to think about the consumer. I feel there will be similar nonsenses if we try to ban the single use of other items. What is wrong with a coloured paper straw or a paper spoon to eat an ice cream? It will rot afterwards. I am also happy to see cans of Coke, especially if they can be recycled, as they would be if we made it a great deal easier for people to recycle. So I may be in a minority of one, but I think this amendment goes too far.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Boycott and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I echo the thanks for the Ministers’ patience and the brilliance of the technicians who have helped so much in these last weeks. I will speak in support of Amendment 276 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and Amendment 279 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Curry.

On Amendment 276, I add only that any treaty or trade agreement that we enter into obviously must take into account our goal of net zero. It seems ridiculous that we should countenance anything else. On Amendment 279, I am very pleased to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Curry, says about the new Trade and Agriculture Committee. I have read it described as a fig leaf and a trojan horse. The RSPCA said:

“We fear this industry-heavy commission will not have animal welfare at its heart”.


I urge the Government to support this amendment, which seeks to beef up the role, status and longevity of the new commission.

After listening to this debate and realising how much agreement there is and that everyone knows that we cannot let our food standards slide, I want to bring into play one other factor. A report from the Nature Friendly Farming Network survey last week said that 96% of people want higher environmental standards to be a key requirement of all future trade deals, to combat the threat of cheap imports. What thought have the Government given to the court of public opinion? There can be little doubt that the majority of this House and many in the other place who supported Neil Parish believe that we should retain our current standards in all our trade deals. However, we are not the only people who matter.

For the record, when I was editor of the Daily Express and Monsanto was poised to move into Britain, having done secret deals with many of our seed companies, I joined forces with Malcolm Walker, the founder and owner of Iceland. We ran a huge public campaign that defeated Monsanto’s endeavour. I am not against genetic modification across the board, but we were against Monsanto’s bullying tactics, which seemed to threaten the stability and independence of our Parliament. This campaign gathered force across the left, the right and the centre and in the end, Monsanto was stopped.

Our Government gave a manifesto commitment to uphold our standards and I believe that they will be taken aback by the level of public anger towards the end of this year. There are very few people—pretty much no one, as far as I can see—who actually want to do anything to jeopardise our food standards. It seems an extraordinary irony that our Prime Minister should yesterday have launched an anti-obesity strategy and an encouragement to get us all to eat healthier, better and fresher food, and tomorrow Henry Dimbleby launches the first draft of his food report, also commissioned by the Government, yet the Government are suggesting that we might adopt lower food standards which will harm not just our farmers but our health, our planet, the animals who live on it and the environmental standards for which so many people have fought for so long. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, where will this cheaper food end up? He is right that it will be in cheaper stores and chicken shops, which will only add to the health inequalities which have such an impact on Covid survival rates. This is not joined-up government thinking—quite the contrary.

We should never be a country that, in the words of my noble friend Lord Curry, exports its cruelty to others. We should not be the buyers of products that have necessitated cutting down rainforest, sentencing pigs to live in farrowing crates or chicken to lie in their own excrement for their whole miserable little life. If we fail on these amendments, we should be ashamed, but your Lordships should rest assured that nothing short of a legally binding agreement will satisfy the British public.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe [V]]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. Like her, I thank the Minister, my noble friend Lady Bloomfield and the Bill team for their patience and productivity. We need to complete Committee today, so I will be brief and confine myself to expressing doubts about Amendment 270. I am looking forward to hearing from my noble friend the Minister, but I think that this amendment and some of the others in this group would in practice lead to problems in trade negotiations in a way that would cause insurmountable problems of compliance with the World Trade Organization. I cannot see a way around this. Noble Lords do not pay enough attention to the importance of trade, wherever it takes place, at a time when we face recessionary shock. We must tread a careful path.

Since the Bill was first presented in the other place, the Government have gone a long way. They have established the Trade and Agriculture Commission, which was launched publicly today, and as Red Tractor is involved in its work, I should again register my interest as its chair. It is a victory for the farming unions which fought for it. It is a well-judged move by the Secretary of State for Trade to get it off the ground quickly in time to provide a sounding board and have an impact on current trade negotiations. In these circumstances, I really cannot see the value in the proposal before us today.