Environment Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

I have received one request to speak after the Minister. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I would be most grateful if the Minister could tell us what financial assessment has been made of the short-term benefit from these amendments, particularly the one on light pollution. There is a high cost to the NHS of the human health conditions that are aggravated by excessive light pollution exposure, especially in mental health disorders, and probably obesity and some cancers. There is also the financial benefit of decreasing the contamination of our marine waters, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, highlighted. That contamination seriously damages our seafood production. The financial benefit in the short term could therefore go hand in hand with a longer-term benefit from both these amendments of meeting our other targets.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. On the first point about the cost assessments in relation to light pollution, I do not know whether that data exists. If it does, I have not seen it but I will ask the department whether it exists. If it does, I will make that information available by putting it in the Library—but I am not convinced that it does. On the broader point, in a sense this goes to the heart of the Bill. There are enormous cost savings in doing right by the environment. We know that if we do not use chemicals on our farms and allow them to wash into rivers, we will not have to spend money cleaning up our rivers downstream. If we manage land in a way that slows down the flow of water, we will need to spend less on concrete flood defences further downstream. It goes on and on. Perhaps the biggest saving of all relates, as the noble Baroness says, to human health. It is not an exact science; there is no data that we can point to and say, “This is exactly what we’re going to save by doing this or that”. But there is no doubt that if we take care of our environment in a way that, frankly, we have not for many decades, there will be an enormous saving to society in many different respects as a consequence.