Animal Welfare (Import of Dogs, Cats and Ferrets) Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 5th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, when I first read the Title of this Bill, I did wonder about the ferrets, but now I understand, because dogs, cats and ferrets can carry rabies and are kept as pets—although I have never kept a ferret, but, obviously, who knows about the future?

I do not often agree with the noble Lord, Lord Black, but I agreed with his closing statement about the need for speed. This is obviously an outline; it will need a lot of subsequent work from all sorts of stakeholders to make sure that it becomes binding legislation, so that it is clear that we can catch criminal gangs and put disturbed, traumatised, vulnerable animals out of their desperate straits.

I strongly support this Bill, as does the Green Party. It seeks to improve animal welfare and reduce the illegal, criminal exploitation of non-commercial pet travel rules. This Bill is apparently also known as the puppy smuggling Bill, because criminal gangs have been exploiting loopholes in the law and avoiding health and welfare checks that the UK strongly requires. This process is going to need a lot of work in future to stop all further illegal exploitation. To stop animals being imported, having experienced great cruelty and becoming very traumatised, is going to be a lot of work. I loathe the whole idea of subsequent legislation that we never get to comment on, but it is, in this case, absolutely crucial.

We know that heavily pregnant bitches are sent in cramped conditions without concern for their well-being or their future. Puppies are removed from their mothers at too young an age, transported in unsafe conditions, possibly unvaccinated, often with mutilations such as docked ears or tails, or cats are declawed. When I first read that, and even reading it now, it made me feel quite ill that we can treat animals in this way.

Having read the background to this Bill, the many emails and briefings, I thank people who have written to me to say that they have fears about the legislation. I understand those fears, and I accept that there could be problems going forward, but I am afraid that this is a Bill that has its time, and its time is now. When I read about animals in war zones that need rescuing and rehoming, I feel incredibly sad for them, but at the same time we have to be sure that here in the UK we have stringent welfare conditions for our animals. Of course, I thank Battersea Dogs & Cats Home for its excellent briefing and strong push to support this Bill. Similar Bills have failed in the past, but we cannot afford to let this Bill not be passed and become legislation, and I look forward to co-operation on all sides of the House. How unusual to have a Bill that everybody supports. It is a real pleasure.

Independent Water Commission

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

On the timetabling, clearly, it is not something we can bring in this Session. We do not yet know when the end of the Session will be—we have not been informed about that—but when we have reached the end we will look to see when it will be practically possible to bring in such a Bill. All I can say to the noble Baroness is that this is a government priority.

The run-off from roads and agricultural run-off is being taken very seriously, and our response and how we will manage it as part of our overall approach to water pollution is being worked on.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister will know that Sir Jon Cunliffe was not given the option to look at renationalisation. In the other place, the Secretary of State for Defra has twice replied to Green MPs Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, saying that his department looked at the cost of renationalisation and it came out at £100 billion. I have two sheets of paper here with lots of ideas about how we could renationalise without that sort of figure being necessary. The most exciting one suggests that, if we stack the liabilities against the assets of these companies, they would be worthless. So, perhaps the Minister could tell the Secretary of State to get new accountants or consult the professor of accounting we have here in your Lordships’ House. I would be pleased to give him these two sheets of paper with all these different ideas.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is correct: we have ruled out nationalisation. But if she would like to share the paperwork, I would be more than happy to look at it.

Thames Water

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government do not have any intention for consumers to pay towards this. We do not see that consumer bills need to go up to cover these debts. It is not for consumers to pay for the mistakes and poor behaviour of the water companies. In response to the second question, within the regime, we will look at it in detail, but it is, again, not our intention for the water companies to basically get away with it.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, we are already paying more for our water because Thames Water has put up our bills. I declare an interest as a Thames Water bill-payer. How much higher are our bills going to go before the Government actually accept that they have to put public ownership before private profit?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

One of the reasons that bills are going up—not just for Thames Water customers but for other consumers—is the lack of investment for years and years by the water companies in infrastructure, which is why we have so many problems with pollution, for example. While it is not something that the Government want to see continue—we do not want to see consumer bills going up unnecessarily—it is important that, with the PR24 settlement that was made, that money goes directly into investment, which is why we are stopping dividends and unnecessary bonuses being paid.

Thames Water: Bids

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

As I am sure the noble Baroness is aware, a special administration order is the mechanism to ensure that the company continues to operate and customers continue to receive their water and wastewater services. However, the bar for entering special administration is understandably high; the law states that it can be initiated only if the company becomes insolvent, can no longer fulfil its statutory duties or seriously breaches an enforcement order, and Thames Water does not fit those criteria, despite all its other problems. All I can say to the noble Baroness is that we are currently monitoring the situation closely.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, 90% of England’s water and sewerage services are owned by foreign investors. Can the Minister explain why the Government are so happy for that to happen but not happy to allow us to buy our own vital resources back? It seems madness to allow our vital infrastructure to be owned by foreign states.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Obviously, water privatisation happened quite a long time ago now, which was when different foreign states came in and invested in our water system. I am sure the noble Baroness is very aware of the work going on through the Cunliffe review at the moment in order to try to get our water companies into a better state. The Government are very keen that we sort out the problem with Thames Water, but that is Ofwat’s and the company’s responsibility at present and we are just watching to ensure that Thames Water does not fail, because we cannot afford to have water companies failing.

UK Fishers: EU Agreement

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I am sure the noble Baroness is aware—because we have talked about it in relation to other issues with Defra—that we are working closely with other departments in this area, including DESNZ, to address exactly the kinds of issues she raises. I will go back to the department and talk to my colleague the Fisheries Minister, Daniel Zeichner, specifically about the point that she just raised.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister knows that we have French and Danish fishing fleets not only fishing in our waters, as per the agreement, but bottom trawling in our marine protected areas. Are the Government going to start protecting those marine protected areas, or shall we call them something else?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The Government are looking with different groups and industry to increase protections across MPAs and at the best way to move that forward. Around 100 of our MPAs have by-laws which are in place to protect designated species and habitats from fishing gear that we know is damaging, including bottom trawling. As I have said before, we are looking at how we can move forward in this area.

Biodiversity and Conservation

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Grayling, on getting this debate. I am sad to say that nature does not seem to play much of a role in Labour’s aspirations for its term of office. The Prime Minister cannot stand tree-huggers like me and Rachel Reeves talks as if she wants to squash frogs and newts under the wheels of progress. It does not look good at the moment. Lots of people enjoy the countryside, litter-pick and clear paths. I do not think that they understand where Labour is going regarding biodiversity and nature; they see this as an issue that Labour cannot connect with.

Only yesterday, riverside campaigners discovered that, under new rules proposed by this Government, the precious waterways that they seek to clean up and protect would be unlikely ever to achieve bathing water status and thereby win the extra testing and safeguards of the Environment Agency. If these rivers are not safe for people, they are definitely not safe for wildlife. They are not great for fish and all the other ecosystems there. This is only a small issue, I guess, but this Government are aiming to undermine attempts by campaigners to use the EU-derived Bathing Water Regulations as a driver to clean up our toxic rivers, which of course suffer from sewage pollution, agricultural run-off and urban run-off.

Another proposed change by the Government is in their Planning and Infrastructure Bill. They want to move away from individual ecological assessments in the planning process and look at big plans, with lots of money being spent on nature somewhere else. This could inflict significant damage on UK biodiversity, as the developer will be allowed to erase biodiversity in one place as long as they do something that looks good in another place. I saw this at work when I was a councillor. It is a scam. Nature always loses out. Labour is moving in absolutely the wrong direction. Of course, this approach would violate international and domestic, legally binding commitments to restore and protect nature.

I want houses built and I want our energy system upgraded to cope with a massive increase in renewable energy. I also want those houses and renewable energy sources to be owned by local communities, not by developers who slow the whole system down. However, this Government appear to want to bypass the communities that protect their local landscapes and their rivers and biodiversity. When we are already one of the most nature-deprived countries in Europe, I am worried that the changes to the planning system in favour of developers—as well as the other backward steps that this Government are planning to take—will make things much worse. This is not what I expected from a Labour Government, and I do not think it is what a lot of Labour voters expected either.

I have two questions. First, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that the urgency in tackling toxic pollution continues against the ongoing threat to our coastlines from underreported spills from oil and gas developments in the North Sea? We really are not protecting our marine protected areas. As I said earlier this week in the Chamber, only 5% of marine protected areas are actually protected, while the others are vulnerable to bottom trawling.

Secondly, the tanker collision is another shocking reminder of the polluting power of big oil, so I am curious as to why the Government have gone ahead with the last round of offshore oil licences in and around marine protected areas. I am more than happy to help Labour in any way if it would like some of our Green Party policies, which are so superb at protecting nature and biodiversity.

High Seas Treaty

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Supporting our fisheries is an important part of the work that Defra does. We must ensure that when we work on areas of conservation those who fish are also talked to and understand the implications—and that we understand the impact that any decision has on our fishing fleet. My honourable friend Daniel Zeichner MP, the Fisheries Minister, speaks regularly to those who fish so that we hear their voices as loudly as we hear others.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am sure that the Minister is well aware that of our marine protected areas only 5% are protected from bottom trawling. Does the high seas treaty mean that when some of our allies, such as Denmark or France, assert that they are okay to bottom trawl in our MPAs, we can stop them?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The key thing that we are doing around bottom trawling is looking specifically at the areas that are most important and need conserving the most. When we look at making agreements with other countries, that is clearly an important consideration, because there is no point in designating somewhere a marine protected area if we do not look carefully at which parts need protecting the most and ensure that damage does not take place. It is good that we have 60% of our MPAs protected, but, clearly, we need to move forward and do more.

Water Companies: Fines

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, on this very topical Question. It is such a pleasure to see a Labour colleague, a Lib Dem colleague, a Conservative colleague and, I have no doubt, a Bishop colleague standing up and saying things that I completely agree with—it is so rare.

I am going to take a slightly different tack from my colleagues. It is very hard to convey the anger felt by not just hundreds of thousands but millions of people at the mess the water companies have made over the past 30 years. I say “mess”, because that is what the public have had had to deal with. This is about sewage-filled seawater, dirty beaches, polluted rivers, chalk stream ecosystems destroyed and sometimes even E. coli in our water supply. Of course, water companies have been amazingly efficient at siphoning off money for shareholders and employees. But this week, the public are fighting back.

I will focus on Thames Water, not least because last week I had a letter from it demanding £19 extra per month on my bill to pay for the work it should have been doing over the past decades and has not done. But my anger with it pre-dates that by quite a long way. Thames Water has £17 billion of debt and is at the centre of a public backlash against Britain’s privatised water industry, which created monopolies, so customers have no choice. It has increasingly polluted our environment with sewage amid justified accusations that profit has been prioritised over the environment.

Windrush Against Sewage Pollution is one of 34 clean river groups involved in a legal challenge in the High Court this week, in an attempt to push for temporary nationalisation of Thames Water. Obviously, I strongly support this. In court, the campaign groups will argue that Thames Water should be put into a government-handled special administration. The court hearing will decide whether to approve the £3 billion in emergency funding that Thames Water has been allowed so far. The judge will hear campaigners argue that the emergency loan will be far too costly for customers. I would add: why should we pay twice for goods and services that we have not had? Again, let us remember that Thames Water already has a debt of £17 billion.

The High Court judge will also hear from Britain’s biggest water supplier and groups of rival creditors on Monday before deciding whether to approve the rescue of this close-to-bankrupt company. Without the debt lifeline, Thames Water has said it could run out of cash by March. Last month, Thames Water was granted Government approval to seek the £3 billion cash loan, which the troubled company said was crucial to ensure that it had enough money to stave off temporary nationalisation.

Clean river campaigners led by Charlie Maynard, the Liberal Democrat MP for Witney, have made a written submission to the court. The case is closing today, with the decision in mid-March. Charlie Maynard, whose constituency has been at the centre of mounting anger over raw sewage pollution being pumped into the River Windrush, is backed by other MPs in the water company region, and 28 parish councils. Maynard said in the submission that he was opposed to the restructuring plan in the interests of the company’s 16 million customers and argued that servicing the emergency fund would not be financially sustainable in the mid or long term for the company, and that it did not make appropriate provision for the company to fulfil its legal obligations to provide water and sewerage services and not to pollute rivers. Ultimately customers will be forced to pay for the emergency loan, which comes with a 9.75% interest rate—absolutely staggering.

Thames Water said it was confident that its plan would succeed as it had the backing of creditors holding more than 90% of its secured debt, despite opposition from a group of much lower-ranked creditors. The judge must decide whether the dissenting creditors would be no worse off in the most likely alternative to the plan, which Thames Water has said is that the company is placed in special administration. Under government proposals, Thames Water would get access to additional funding, cash reserves and debt extensions, giving it breathing space to secure its survival in the long term. A lot of people would say that it did not deserve that, and that it actually deserves to go bankrupt.

Evidence provided to the court by Dieter Helm, professor of economic policy at Oxford University, said that Thames Water had failed on the capital maintenance of its assets and had

“profit maximised by gearing up its balance sheet at the outer limits of what was sustainable”.

He added:

“Thames used the balance sheet to mortgage the assets and pay out the proceeds in special dividends and other benefits to shareholders”.


Then, only today, another Thames Water fail: bottled water is being delivered to homes in parts of Surrey, after residents have been left without water. Supply problems in the area are said to have been caused by “multiple bursts” on the same pipe. People in that area may have low pressure or no water, Thames Water has said. In its latest update, it said:

“We remain on site, working to fix the pipe that has been damaged during the bursts”.


That is a considerate statement to its customers, who are quite used to it failing them completely. But it has promised that

“additional supplies of bottled water are available”.

There is absolutely no doubt that Thames Water did this damage, so presumably it has to pay to clean it up—in which case, the money that it pays in fines really has to go to the clean-up. It is not possible to repair all the damage to nature and people, because ecosystems have been destroyed. I really hope the Minister can explain to the Treasury just how annoyed millions of people are that this has not yet happened.

I very much support the whole idea of the restoration fund, and I hope that this Government go for it.

Global Warming

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on this debate. I agree with almost every word he said, but when he starts telling the House that the Labour Government are to be congratulated on their climate change actions, I am afraid that I disagree really strongly. In a debate on an existential crisis for the human race and the planet, we have one Labour Back-Bencher—albeit an excellent one. At least we have three Tories, most of whom will talk some sense—but not completely, obviously. I just do not understand how this Government can take this so casually. It is absolutely appalling and I have been sitting here fuming since we started.

We need nature and we need biodiversity. It is not a nice thing to have but absolutely necessary for human life. Biodiversity, in particular, is nature’s safety blanket; it cushions the shocks and creates resilience. We have been shredding that security blanket for decades with an industrialised agricultural system that is overly dependent on chemical life support.

Human actions have raised global temperatures by 1.5 degrees. We have done that a decade ahead of when we thought we would. Climate science is constantly wrong because it is constantly cautious in talking about impacts and because it is constantly running to catch up with real-time impacts that scientists are measuring. For example, last year the UN issued its big climate report that brings together all the other reports. It was its sixth assessment, and it declared that things were far worse and disaster much closer than it thought in its fifth assessment. Its fifth was worse than its fourth, and that was worse than its third. We have had decades of these reports and emissions are still going up.

The science that went into the UN report last year is already out of date. First, the rate of increase in global temperatures has accelerated and broken barriers that we thought we had over a decade to reach. It might be why Trump is so interested in the sovereignty of Greenland; as the ice sheets melt, zinc and all the other minerals and precious metals will be available for grabbing. His rich friends know that the climate is changing. Their denial is simply greed; they want to carry on making money while the rest of us have to swim to our lifeboats.

Secondly, the scientists who work on the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation—the Gulf Stream is part of that—are saying that it could fail because of all the freshwater running off the Greenland ice sheet, and a lot of those scientists are now saying that it could fail in the next few years, rather than in the next few decades. That research is important, as it talks about Britain losing the warm waters coming north and having the same climate as Newfoundland. Imagine icebergs floating off the coast of Cornwall and you will get the picture. That research will not appear until the UN’s seventh assessment report in 2029. We can see that the science is constantly behind in reporting.

I used to worry about what a seven metre rise in water levels would do to our coastlines and major cities when the Greenland ice sheet melts, but it turns out that, well before that happens, we will be very, very cold. That cold will probably destroy our farming industry and wildlife. This Government and the last—I blame the previous Government just as much—are unprepared for any of this because their plans are based on the out-of-date science of the last UN report, rather than on what the latest research is telling us. I hope that Government Ministers can get more up-to-date advisers. Please talk to scientists and find out the latest research.

Building up the countryside’s national resilience to the potential shocks of climate chaos should be a priority for our Government, farmers and planning system. The talk of constant growth does not fit with human survival. Capitalism places no value on nature, other than destroying it as fast as possible to create more wealth. We are destroying parts of the planet that we need for our own lives and well-being. That is utterly stupid.

I want to bring up a nationally important case for rivers. Labour committed in its manifesto to clean up rivers. There is a river in North Yorkshire—with a nice name, but I cannot find it in my notes—over which the Pickering Fishery Association, a club in North Yorkshire, won a landmark legal case against the previous Government and the Environment Agency. The anglers successfully argued that the Government and the Environment Agency had failed in their legal duties to clean up and protect the Costa Beck, a former trout stream near Pickering. Please can the Minister tell me what the change is? The previous Government put in an appeal against that ruling. This Government, through Steve Reed—who the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, congratulated—have continued with that appeal. This Government are refusing to clean up a river that the courts have said they should.

I do not understand why this Government cannot see that they should be the face of change—and they are not. We might as well have the Tory Government still in power—though I do not want that.

Water Bills

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

As I said, we are working very closely with water companies to ensure that bills do not increase unnecessarily. There are many challenges in the farming industry, and the Farming Minister is working across the piece to try to support farmers. For example, the farming budget was not reduced in the Budget this year.

On ability to pay bills, we know that all water companies have measures in place for people who struggle to pay for their water and waste services, and we encourage water companies to work with customers to apply for those whenever it is appropriate.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this House debated the Water (Special Measures) Bill yesterday, and presumably the Government thought it might bring bills down for bill payers and taxpayers—yet it will not. Where is the justification for passing a Bill that makes it more difficult for people to pay bills?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I do not really understand the noble Baroness’s logic in thinking that it is going to increase bills. That piece of legislation is to ensure that water companies are better held to account and to drive behaviour change from what we have seen in recent years.