Official Controls (Plant Health) and Phytosanitary Conditions (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Lord Lilley

Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

To be honest, I am not going to take any interventions; it has gone 11 pm.

On plant health threats, the UK Plant Health Service, as I mentioned earlier, has Defra, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, the Northern Ireland Executive, DAERA and the Forestry Commission as part of it. So it is properly considered and looked at. The noble Lords, Lord Dodds and Lord Roborough, talked about the removal of border checks putting biosecurity at risk, looking in particular at the rising pest risk in the EU. The agreement will explicitly allow for the UK to take action to protect biosecurity. This will mean that the UK has access to EU databases and other systems to help us do this. This is a big benefit. The common understanding is that the UK should be able to take targeted action to protect its biosecurity in public health, in the same way as member states can in the EU.

The noble Lord, Lord Dodds, mentioned FMD protection for Northern Ireland. As he said, Northern Ireland is protected under the biosecurity regime of the EU. Northern Ireland implements official controls and additional protections in response to risk, such as measures related to pest-free areas, traceability and additional notification requirements for the highest- risk goods in order to maintain the island of Ireland’s biosecurity.

The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, asked about Popillia japonica. The noble Baroness rightly said that the reason these pests are mentioned in this SI is that the new requirements are already in place in Northern Ireland, so this is bringing the rest of GB into alignment with Northern Ireland; that is what the SI does.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I have said I am not taking any interventions.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

The Minister has not replied to a single point I made. If the bug does not exist in Ireland, why are we inspecting goods coming from Ireland?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

There are plenty of bugs that do not exist in our other countries and are far away that still have the propensity to come here or could possibly arrive here. Therefore, we need to be absolutely vigilant regarding any new potential pests and diseases. The noble Lord, Lord Roborough, talked about the devastating consequences if we do not do that, so we absolutely need to be doing this.

I just have a couple of points and then I am going to wind up, because it is getting late. I will go to Hansard and write on any outstanding points. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, mentioned the trade and co-operation agreement and that its review is due next year. I will take that back to the department and speak about the noble Lord’s concerns on this, because he made a very sensible and relevant point. I completely agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Bew, regarding compromise. It is an extremely important point to make and, if we are to move forward, compromise is going to be critical.

In conclusion, I emphasise that this instrument is a routine update that ensures that risk-based and proportionate biosecurity controls are in operation in Great Britain. Northern Ireland continues to be able to respond to pest risks specifically for Northern Ireland where needed, and will continue to play a full and comprehensive role in technical and policy decisions affecting the UK as a whole.

I remind noble Lords that I meet regularly with DAERA and the Northern Ireland Ministers and their team. Also, I understand that we have a regular meeting of our Northern Ireland Peers this Wednesday, so I am sure that we can pick up many of these issues and continue further at that meeting.

Finally, it is very late. It has gone 11 pm, so I thank all the staff who have stayed and supported us in the House at this late hour.

Waste: Incineration

Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Lord Lilley

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

It is a really important point that the noble Lord makes. If we are moving to a more circular economy, as this Government want, we have to see less residual waste being generated —in fact, less waste as a whole. There is a statutory target to effectively halve residual waste by 2042 from 2019 levels, but there still will be an estimated 17.6 million tonnes of residual waste to manage in 2042. Therefore, we have to look at the bigger picture. How do we actually reduce waste overall?

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, is not the biggest incinerator in the country the Drax power station? It receives eye-watering subsidies for burning wood that has been transported across the oceans, creating emissions, which has had to be dried and cut into chips, also making emissions, and which emits, on being burned, more CO₂ than coal. This is justified on the grounds that, over the next half-century to a century, trees replanted in those forests will absorb CO₂. If we can take this leisurely approach to reducing CO₂, is there really a climate emergency?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I do not consider the Government to be taking a leisurely approach on this aspect. What is really important is that we look at how we decarbonise our energy from waste facilities going forward. We have consulted on expanding the UK Emissions Trading Scheme to waste incineration and energy from waste, and we are taking on board the responses to that and will bring forward detailed final policy in due course. We plan to include energy from waste under decarbonisation readiness requirements.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Lord Lilley

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sue Hayman]

I am talking about what constituents who actually work in the industry are telling me. To be honest, I would trust the judgment of my own constituents. In an intervention, I mentioned a constituent who works at the National Nuclear Laboratory, who says that leaving will impair his ability to collaborate with leading scientists and engineers across Europe, to the detriment of science and technology in this country. This is what my constituents are telling me. The hon. Gentleman can choose to disbelieve them—I do not. I trust my constituents.

I do not understand why, when we have conflicting legal opinion on why we have to leave, the Government are insisting so much that we have to. We need to make sure that a rapid exit does not do serious harm to our nuclear industry. We have so much to lose, with so little to gain. I therefore ask Members to support new clause 192.

[Mr Lilley]

For the sake of brevity, I will focus, if I may, on new clause 11, which is entitled “Tariff-free trade in goods and services”. Of course, there are no tariffs on services worldwide, so that should be fairly easy to achieve. I take it to mean tariff-free trade in goods and the minimum of barriers to services.

With regard to trade, there are only two realistic outcomes to the negotiations we will have: first, that we negotiate a free-trade agreement continuing tariff-free trade—more or less what we have at present—and secondly, that we move to trading on the basis of most favoured nation tariffs under WTO rules, which is basically what America, China, Japan and Russia, the four most successful countries exporting to the EU, do.

From what I have heard in this House and what I know of the Government’s position, everybody would like us to negotiate continuing tariff-free trade with our European partners. We do not particularly need any clause in this Bill to try to achieve that. Moreover, it is very simple to negotiate. It is very easy to go from zero tariffs to zero tariffs—it can be done in an afternoon. It is not like negotiating the removal of tariffs, as the EU has had to do with Canada. Canada had 5,000 different tariffs, the EU had 12,500 different tariffs, and they had to trade off one against the other.

Tariff-free trade is very simple to negotiate. As far as barriers and services are concerned, if our regulatory systems began to diverge, all we would have to negotiate—after assessing whether or not the matter was serious—is the normal dispute resolution procedure, because after the great repeal Bill we will start with identical regulatory arrangements.