Water Framework Directive

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Yes.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

Three weeks ago, I asked my noble friend what was happening to change building regulations to reduce the volume of water needing disposal, which would thus be an advantage with things such as storm overflows. My noble friend told me that there were discussions going on, but I realise that this is a cross-cutting matter between departments, and that always makes me nervous. I wonder whether my noble friend would write to me, and put a copy in the Library, about exactly what discussions are going on and what plans there are to change building regulations to reduce the capacity of water, and with some sort of timetable that is being given to developers to make sure that it is complied with.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

This comes down to the thorny issue of nutrient neutrality. The problem that we have in this country is that most of our houses have mixed clean water and dirty water going into the same sewer. This is what is causing the problems in the sewage overflows. We have a new legal duty on water companies in England to upgrade wastewater treatment works. A new nutrient mitigation scheme established by Natural England is helping wildlife and boosting access to nature. But the cost to retrofit a separated system would be somewhere around £345 billion to £600 billion, which would be quite a considerable hit on individual households. But there has to be a plan to resolve nutrient neutrality, or the backlog of houses that are needed by people will not be able to be built—so I will certainly write to my noble friend.

Water Companies: Pollution

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am very pleased to make the noble Baroness’s day by saying that we have increased a thousandfold, from £250,000 to £250 million, the upper limit on which water companies can be fined.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, have the Government given consideration to changing the building regulations, particularly with regard to rainwater run-off, so that the water is recycled and not taken into the system, thus reducing the volume going out of the system?

[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.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Browning Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I very much welcome the commitment given by my noble friend in his opening remarks to the pledges made in the letter of 5 June from the two Secretaries of State about food standards, particularly in relation to food imports. It is worth remembering that, across a range of areas, the benchmark of EU standards, which we will incorporate into UK law and adhere to, is one that we have signed up to in the EU. But in addition to EU rules, several measures have been taken unilaterally by the UK Government in the past—such as the banning of sow stalls and tethers, and veal crates—which were not universally welcomed within the EU. I say to my noble friend: do not just rest on the laurels of the EU. Let us look across the piece at how we can improve and enhance our standards as we go forward, both for the domestic market and for imports. Pesticides, veterinary medicines and issues relating to zoonotic diseases all have to be monitored and need ongoing improvement

Turning to food supply, the Bill makes welcome reference to the small producer. In his opening remarks, my noble friend referred to producer organisations. These have been tried over many years: some have been very successful, and others have failed. The farming community in particular has everything to gain from adding value to food products at the farm gate, rather than leaving a long chain of people to take a slice of the profit. But my noble friend should note the very small producers—farms that produce regional, local food products with which those areas are familiar. Over the years, we have very much admired this in continental countries such as France. There is benefit in adding value at the farm gate, before the product leaves.

This is true not just for supermarket sales but for those very important farmers’ markets, farm shops and food boxes, all of which have grown in popularity in recent years. I hope we will build on that. The advantages are enormous: the food is fresh; it saves on transport costs, which helps the environment; and the people who buy the food get to talk to the very people who produce it. There is an educational element to this. I am a former cookery teacher who is appalled that cookery classes, such as we used to know them, were banned—I am afraid that that was done by a Conservative Government. Domestic science is often derided, but, my gosh, it is a very important life skill. I hope my noble friend will give attention to those who are producing all the raw ingredients that not only help economically but help the health of the nation.

I want to add a word of support for the point made by my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach. As an Agriculture Minister, I introduced the first GM product in this country, way back in the 1990s. It all fell apart, as we know, for all sorts of reasons. But with the right controls I believe that there is much to be gained from looking at this science, particularly in respect of plants. We must make sure that we are not left behind because of people’s fear of the word “gene”.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her contribution to the debate on the gracious Speech today, but she will know all too well that we are being asked to participate in a charade, in which the Queen’s Speech is not a serious plan for government and in which most of these Bills will never see the light of day. It is quite clear from everything that the Prime Minister has said that he intends to call a general election at the earliest opportunity. We will then find ourselves back here, with a different Government, we hope, and certainly with a new Queen’s Speech. So, we cannot be asked to consider this proposition seriously. It is as near to an election broadcast as we are likely to see, with uncosted promises, sweeteners and posturing that do nothing to address the real economic and climate change crises that challenge this country.

Let us be honest: the crises that face us today are all of this Government’s own making—nine wasted years of failed economic policies, a divided nation and the madness of a Brexit policy that will rip up our trading relations with our closest partners, undermining our trade with 500 million consumers across 27 countries. This is the inevitable consequence of leaving the single market and the customs union, which, Mark Carney has made clear, will lead to escalating job losses and business closures. Just as inevitably, it will lead to lower food, consumer, employment and environmental standards in the push to do cheap trade deals with free-market cowboys and protectionist-in-chief Donald Trump.

Let us look at the economic legacy an incoming Government will inherit. Nine years of ruthless austerity Budgets have squeezed the life out of public services and left local government unable to fund even its statutory services. There is a crisis of low pay and stagnating wages, with workers’ real wages still lower than they were before the financial crisis. The productivity of British workers fell at the fastest pace for five years in the second quarter of 2019. A struggling construction sector faces a growing skills crisis. The Government’s botched business-rate revaluation has created a huge destabilising burden for businesses, with many high streets becoming ghost towns. And the UK’s longer-term economic outlook is darkening, as years of uncertainty have prevented businesses investing in people or capital.

As ever, the Government’s response has been too little, too late. On 4 September the Chancellor announced his spending plans for 2020-21, with departmental spending increases of 4.1%. However, the £13 billion that this plan represents is less than one-third of the £47 billion of cuts introduced by the Government since 2010. It goes nowhere towards resolving the backlog of funding in the NHS and social care, for example, which is seeing standards falling and the elderly suffering alone. No wonder it was met with a universal shrug of the shoulders when it was announced.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

I am listening very carefully to what the noble Baroness is saying but, when she goes back to 2010, does she not remember that little note left by one of her Ministers at the Treasury that said, “There’s no money left”?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

Absolutely. That was a world crisis that we were dealing with, and would have carried on dealing with if we had been given the opportunity. The Government’s response to that crisis, which was to drive down austerity for nine years, has done nothing to improve the economy, as we have seen and as I have just outlined. So I do not think we can take lessons from the current Government on how to maintain economic security.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I am always pleased to follow the noble Lord. I am pleased also to welcome the two maiden speeches in today’s debate. I will focus on a really quite narrow area. In some ways it follows on from what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said about health and safety in the workplace. My focus is on agriculture and the food chain.

I welcome the fact that we shall see an agriculture Bill, although we do not know the exact form it will take, but in reading the briefing, I see that the Government are proposing support for,

“farmers and land managers to ensure a smooth and gradual transition away from the … Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to a system where farming efficiently and improving the environment go hand and hand”.

Of course that is to be welcomed, but I am particularly focused on the fact that it also says that the Government will champion British food,

“with a transparent and fair supply chain from farm to fork”,

and that they will also recognise producer organisations.

Many years ago, when I was an Agriculture Minister—and, I have to say, probably responsible for much of the regulation that still applies to the food sector today—one of the first things I did was to say at a conference that I thought that British food was the best, only to be told by officials that I was not allowed to say that. I carried on saying it. I notice several former Agriculture Ministers in the Chamber today, so I hope they will know where I am coming from on this.

I welcome the fact that we hear today that the Prime Minister has secured a deal. There are many steps to go, we know, but after three years that is to be welcomed. But regulation in the EU has been fraught. We have heard the myths of EU regulation as far as the food chain is concerned, and, to be honest, some of them are myths. Some of them, though, are quite deliberate ploys. I am not always sure that the general public really understand how the EU has worked, particularly when we are faced with new regulations. I remember having to defend the right of the British milk chocolate industry, of which we have many brand leaders, to continue to call its products milk chocolate when the EU tried to stop that because they did not contain a high enough percentage of cocoa solids. That was not just overregulation for the sake of it; it was down to raw competition. Sometimes, when other countries and other manufacturers saw that the UK had a lead in certain sectors, things would be brought forward which one had to defend against very robustly. It is true that there have been real problems with regulation in the food chain as far as the EU is concerned but, in the main, I believe that the EU-based regulation we currently have, which covers our whole food and production sector, is good. It protects not only the consumer but the wider interests of this country.

I am not really worried about having to sell our food products to the EU in the future because it will be like any other trade deal. If the people buying from you set the terms and conditions under which they wish to buy that product, it is a very simple commercial decision on the part of manufacturers: are you or are you not going to provide that product with that specification? It is something that goes on worldwide and has done for centuries. I think that, in practice, we will see that in the food chain manufacturers and processers will stick very closely to the rules that already exist in the EU, if only to protect the markets. There are other issues, such as taxes and tariffs, and of course the Government come into those areas as well.

However, I am very concerned about imports and the home-based market. I say this as a word of caution to my noble friends on the Front Bench. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, talked about getting rid of lots of red tape and regulation. If we were to take that sort of slash-and-burn approach to our existing regulations in the food chain, it would not only damage the home market but would, I believe, be an open door to imports which would potentially damage not only the consumer but the safety of this country.

I hope that I am not overexaggerating this but we all know, for example, that campylobacter and salmonella in eggs and poultry is a danger—it is not good either for the industry or for the human beings who end up consuming it. There have been warnings, particularly from the British Egg Industry Council, which has expressed concern about the importation of liquid and dried eggs. Of course, we rely too on the protection of brands, of both manufacturers and those established by supermarket chains in this country, which will almost certainly want to protect their consumers. However, that leaves open the whole big industry of catering, where very often the lack of labelling and information means that people do not know what they are eating.

In making sure that that regulation is maintained, I hope my noble friends will take into account the protection from animal and plant diseases that regulation affords; animal welfare, of which we have a very high standard—it is about time the European Union got rid of its veal crates like we did; environmental damage, which can also be caused; and of course the safety of consumers’ health. Nobody wants to see products on supermarket shelves or in our restaurants which lead to a situation where there are diseases that we all know have a dangerous effect. I am thinking in particular of things such as veterinary medicines, which we may not know are in products and which are retained in animal carcasses; at the moment, we have regulations that protect the food chain from that. I look to the Front Bench to give assurances on those sorts of things. Let us not have a bonfire of regulation; it is a bonfire of vanities.

Animal Products: Labelling and Packaging

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

In a similar vein, would my noble friend ensure, particularly post-Brexit, that animal feed is also labelled and that such labelling is shown to be as accurate as possible, to make sure that cattle feed in particular is also something the consumer can rely upon?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I shall certainly take back what my noble friend has said. It is clear that we have some of the best food standards in the world. We are exporting much larger numbers— £22 billion in the food and drink sector—so it is vital for our reputation that all provenance of seeds and food is of the highest order.

Winter Floods

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

The noble Lord has a habit of bowling fast constitutional balls. Of course, coastal regions right across the United Kingdom, including in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have been affected by flooding and severe weather conditions. Responsibility for flood management is, as he suspects, devolved to the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is for those bodies and their agencies to determine how best to allocate resources to support affected areas.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

I declare an interest as a former resident of beautiful Dawlish; the railway line from Exeter to the outskirts of Dawlish went through the constituency that I was very honoured to represent. I am therefore very familiar with the problems and quite horrified to see the size of the waves—with which, again, I am very familiar. May I reinforce to my noble friend the request of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, to look at alternative railway access to the far south-west? May I also urge my noble friend to encourage the Department for Transport to urgently reassess the need for more dualling of roads into the far south-west—the A30 immediately comes to mind— and to make sure that the economies of, particularly, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall are not impaired in this way if this is the sort of weather pattern we are to expect in the future?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I have got the message and will take it back to the Department for Transport.

Horsemeat and Food Fraud

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

Yes, my Lords. I have spoken at some length on bute, which, as I am sure noble Lords are aware, is a substance administered to horses with evidence of lameness or whatever to enable them to go about their business. The whole purpose of the passporting system is to ensure that a substance such as bute does not get into the food chain.

[Baroness Browning]

I very much welcome the Government’s recent announcement that proper cookery lessons are to be reintroduced into our schools, and I hope that there will be more home-made lasagnes rather than those that are pre-bought. However, given the fact that a lot of people rely on convenience foods and trust in brands, and if it is established that there is a problem with equine medicines in the food chain, is there an intention to look at foods such as stock, which is a concentrated product that is widely used domestically and commercially? Is any testing being carried out because of the obvious implications beyond those for beef?

[Lord De Mauley]

My noble friend makes an important point and I agree with her. I can add to my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. Phenylbutazone, known as bute, is a commonly used veterinary product and is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. Bute is not approved for use in food-producing animals because it is not known to be safe for human consumption. An animal that has been treated with bute is not permitted to enter the food chain.

Flooding: Insurance

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I declare an interest, having been flooded in 1997 and 2008. In his discussions with the insurance industry, does my noble friend ever mention not just that those of us who are in that position are very nervous about what will happen to our insurance next year but the fact that our houses are unsellable? There are elderly people who need to go into residential care, but they cannot sell their home. Others, like me, retire and want to move nearer to their families. Those properties are blighted. In a very small lane in rural Devon that has a lot of old thatched houses and cottages, some of which are listed, if they are not insured, eventually they will just be allowed to deteriorate and fall down.

[Lord De Mauley]

My noble friend is of course right that there are concerns about the continued availability of insurance to householders—mortgage holders and those looking to sell their houses. We are working with those involved better to understand what the impact on the mortgage market might be. I am certainly encouraged that the Council of Mortgage Lenders is quoted as saying that the focus needs to be on finding a solution on flood insurance, rather than worrying householders unnecessarily about how lenders might choose to react. That has a knock-on effect on the selling market to which my noble friend refers. I also point out that in July, we published a guide to obtain flood insurance in high-risk areas in collaboration with the National Flood Forum and industry representatives, which I think is helpful.

Bovine Tuberculosis

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, on the first question, I accept what the noble Lord has to say, but ongoing monitoring since the end of those trials indicates that the positive impacts on herd breakdowns within the culled areas have lasted for a considerable number of years after the culls have ended and that those areas have seen a reduction of some 28 per cent in the incidence of TB. So there is a considerable reduction. We have never said that culling is the sole answer. We have always made it clear that we believe that other measures will need to be taken and that we need to use every tool in the toolbox. As I made clear to the noble Lord in Written Answers earlier this year, we have consulted both the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Beddington, and our own chief scientific adviser within the department.

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I was the Minister who set up the committee so ably taken forward by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. Back in 1997, we recognised that bovine tuberculosis was out of control. It had spread down from the moors in the south-west peninsula and has since come south, right down almost to the coast across Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. It has also spread to Gloucestershire, has headed up to Herefordshire and is now up as far as Cumbria. Has my noble friend looked at the research work being carried out in the Republic of Ireland, particularly in East Offaly? Certainly, prior to setting up the inquiry into bovine tuberculosis, the then Government looked at how culling had been used in the Republic of Ireland. I hope that he will take that research work into account.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question. I assure her that we have looked at research carried out in all countries. It is clear that one cannot eradicate bovine TB without also addressing TB in the wild animal population. That seems clear from the evidence in all other countries. My noble friend is also right to emphasise to the House the importance of this issue. Last year more than 25,000 cattle had to be compulsorily slaughtered. We think that bovine TB is Britain’s biggest endemic animal health issue.