Water Companies: Pollution Penalties

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Through the regulator, Ofwat, we have provided for water companies to be held to account where they are rewarding people in a way that is disproportionate to the service that they provide. That is a change that this Government have made, and it is being followed through by the regulator.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister says that there will be a review of the £250 million cap. Is lowering the amount being considered? Most people would be appalled if that is the case. Will it be a minimum of £250 million or are the Government thinking of having it higher? Can they reassure us about the scale of the review that is taking place?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The review is looking at everything. There is no attempt to resile from that figure. That figure relates to one area of sanction. It may be that we should look at unlimited fines to be decided by the courts. We are not suggesting a floor or a ceiling at this stage, but we want to ensure that water companies that knowingly, incompetently and against permitted agreements release sewage into our water and environment are sanctioned. I assure the noble Baroness that there is no attempt to resile from this.

Agricultural Transition Plan

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for reminding me that I should have drawn noble Lords’ attention to my entry in the register as a farmer. As he knows, and as I have said frequently from this Dispatch Box, it is the Government’s policy that all trade deals should reflect our own high standards in environment and animal welfare, and that remains the policy of the Government.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister said that the Government were ring-fencing the £2.4 billion for ELMS, but the fact is that the basic payment scheme has been going down much more quickly than the sustainable farming incentive has been going up, so there is an inevitable gap in farmers’ incomes as a result of all that.

So I ask the Minister: how much of the £1 billion cut from farmers so far will they be able to get back this year through the ELM scheme? If he finds that the take-up is not the 70% that the Government aspire to, at what point will they go back and look at whether or not the factors are right and whether or not the payments are right? We all want it to be a success, but there is an awful lot of finger in the air at the moment, and we need to make sure that all that money does go back to the farming community to have long-term, sustainable farming enterprises in this country. So how much will they get, and at what point will the Government reconsider whether the amount should go up further?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We have tried to help farmers in as many ways as possible. For example, we have brought forward to a half-yearly payment what they are currently receiving in the basic payment scheme, so what they were receiving in one lump sum they now receive six- monthly. That has helped their cash flow.

There are other things, such as the extra money we have put into Countryside Stewardship, which has drawn many more people into the scheme and front-loaded some of that money. The fact that we are setting six new standards now as opposed to the original three that we were going to announce is another example of how we are pulling the money forward. We want to make sure that it is going into farmers’ pockets as quickly and as easily as possible, keeping the application for it simple and getting the money to them through the Rural Payments Agency as quickly as possible.

I cannot answer the noble Baroness precisely, for the simple reason that it is different for every farm. As a farmer looks at the proposals that we have announced, they will be able to see on each standard that there are different things that they can do that fit in with the ecosystem that they farm in—the water management that they want to achieve and the wildlife that they want to encourage, while still producing food—and every single farm will be different. We are also helping through the announcement we made on landscape recovery, allowing farmers to work together in clusters to bring forward schemes. That has been really effective at drawing people into that scheme as well. So I cannot tell her precisely because every farm is different, but that amount is ring-fenced and farmers will be supported through the scheme.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for her amendments, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and—in the case of the first of the amendments—the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, have added their names.

The amendments require the animal welfare advisory body, when assessing precision-bred animal marketing authorisation applications, to also consider and report on the notifier’s history of compliance with relevant provisions of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and other legislation it deems relevant. However, the purpose of the animal welfare declaration process is not to vet notifiers themselves, but to assess their applications for marketing authorisations. The role of the welfare advisory body is to use its scientific expertise to evaluate the notifier’s animal welfare declaration. It would not be an appropriate body to assess compliance history.

We expect notifiers, as with any other keepers of animals, to ensure they are in full compliance with all applicable animal welfare laws. The Animal Welfare Act, as mentioned in the noble Baroness’s amendment, will continue to apply to all vertebrate animals subject to precision breeding. Under the Act, it is already an offence either to cause any captive animal unnecessary suffering or to fail to provide for the welfare needs of the animal. Persons found to have committed certain serious offences under the Animal Welfare Act may be disqualified from keeping animals. Such persons would therefore be unable to keep animals that have been precision-bred.

Similarly, other animal welfare legislation provides for appropriate sanctions for non-compliance. For example, notifiers may also be licence holders for research under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, known as ASPA. It is in the interest of such notifiers to ensure that any research involving animals carried out in the UK complies with the requirements of the ASPA licences relating to that research; these licences may be revoked or suspended if their conditions are not complied with.

Furthermore, the Bill provides powers under Clause 15 for regulations to enable the Secretary of State to suspend or revoke a precision-bred animal marketing authorisation if new information about the health or welfare of the animal or, crucially, its qualifying progeny comes to light, or if the notifier fails to comply with a legal requirement to report information about a relevant animal’s health and welfare under Clause 14. Regulations will describe the procedures to be followed when a marketing authorisation is suspended or revoked, and the consequences of such suspension or revocation.

Amendment 21 reflects ones put forward during previous stages, in this House and the other place. We intend to explore these matters further as we develop the technical details underpinning the animal welfare declaration process. The Government agree that safeguarding animal welfare is crucial, and I acknowledge the high level of interest in this topic. That is why, as I mentioned previously, we have commissioned an external research project to gather the evidence required to develop the health and welfare assessment that underpins the declaration process. This will enable us to set out, in regulations and guidance, the information that a notifier must provide to support their declaration that the health and welfare of a precision-bred vertebrate animal is not expected to be adversely affected.

Furthermore, Clause 13 already ensures that the Secretary of State will need to be satisfied with the animal welfare declaration before issuing a marketing authorisation. That is why we do not consider the amendment to be necessary. In addition, as I mentioned before, the power in Clause 25 allows us to set out in regulations what constitutes an adverse effect on health or welfare. This includes any parameters needed for assessing that and could include consideration of any known health and welfare issues in selectively bred animals.

Finally, the welfare declaration and the welfare advisory body’s assessment will be based on the principle that relevant precision-bred animals will need to be kept in conditions which satisfy existing requirements in the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and, where relevant, the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007. I fully understand the noble Baroness’s concerns. None the less, existing animal welfare legislation is in place and the Bill is intended to work alongside that to enable responsible innovation.

I will now address Amendments 17, 18 and 26 in my name. It is essential that the animal welfare protections under this Bill command strong public and stakeholder confidence. To that end, we have listened carefully to the points raised by the Opposition and stakeholders about the need for strong animal welfare protections. We understand that noble Lords feel that there should be more opportunity for parliamentary oversight of these vital elements of the legislation. Consequently, we are tabling these amendments so that regulations made under the powers in Clauses 11(5) and 22(3) will need to be debated and actively approved by both Houses of Parliament through the affirmative resolution procedure before they come into effect.

Amendment 17 relates to Clause 11(5). The amendment provides an increased opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny when powers are used to lay out the form and content of the animal welfare declaration and accompanying documents, and the information that must accompany the declaration.

Regulations under Clause 11(9) regarding provisions for an application for a precision-bred marketing authorisation to be made by a person other than the notifier are a technical and administrative matter and not of significant public interest. They will therefore remain subject to negative procedure.

Amendment 26 relates to Clause 22(3). This amendment will provide Parliament with an increased opportunity to scrutinise and debate the body which is to be designated as the animal welfare advisory body, while retaining the flexibility the Bill provides on how the advisory body can be established. We expect there to be strong public interest in the requirements set out in the animal welfare declarations, and we want to come to Parliament with a robust set of proposals informed by expert advice. Indeed, that is why we have already commissioned in Scotland’s Rural College to run an independent research project to set criteria for the animal welfare assessment and the evidence that will be required to accompany it.

The research will involve experts from the Animal Welfare Committee and a wide range of organisations with expertise in animal welfare, genetics and industry practice. This is a growing, innovative sector, and the regulatory system that oversees it is likely to need to evolve over time. Establishing the regulations in secondary legislation subject to the affirmative procedure will allow the Government to ensure that the regulatory system continues to achieve its goals in the long run, while maintaining proportionate parliamentary oversight of its design and future development. I hope noble Lords will be content to accept these amendments.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I should first declare an interest through my involvement at Rothamsted, as in the register. I have tabled Amendments 19, 20 and 21 in this group. They all focus on the welfare advisory body in protecting animal welfare. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for their support.

Amendments 19 and 20 would require the welfare advisory body to look beyond the information provided by applicants to ensure that they have a consistent record of meeting animal welfare standards, as set out in previous legislation. Amendment 21 would require the welfare advisory body or the Secretary of State to consider wider health and welfare issues before granting a marketing authorisation. These factors, set out in the new clause, include the direct and indirect effects on the health of the animal or its offspring, whether there might be pain or suffering arising from increased yields or faster growth, and whether the precision-bred traits may result in the animal being kept in worse conditions. These amendments reflect the widespread concern raised in Committee about the consequences for animal welfare of extending precision-breeding techniques from plants to animals, and they also express the concerns of many animal welfare organisations, including the RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming, as well as the report from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.

As we discussed before, British farming and traditional breeding techniques have not always had a great record on considering animal welfare. Without going back over all the arguments raised in Committee, I will say that there remains a fundamental concern that the genetic editing of animals will be used for the wrong purpose. Once we understand that there could be benefits from improved disease resistance in animals, we need better guarantees that this will not result in animals being kept in more crowded, stressful conditions, which in turn could result in the spread of new and emerging pathogens. Similarly, we need better guarantees that precision-breeding techniques will not be used to speed up selective breeding for fast growth, high yields and large litters, when they have historically caused a great deal of suffering to farm animals, despite the animal welfare legislation already in place.

All these concerns are raised against the backdrop that so much of the detail in this Bill is left to secondary legislation, so we do not know how its provisions will work in practice. I hope the Minister will understand why we are trying to spell out in more detail the specific animal welfare protections in this Bill. I shall make a further point: this is specifically about animal welfare. It is not a criticism of the whole Bill. It is about the specifics and our widespread concern about wanting to get animal welfare protections right.

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[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, during the proceedings on the Bill—I spoke at Second Reading—it has been clear that some people, both inside and outside the House, do not want anything to do with genetics in terms of food production, and think that its application is anathema. I understand that and I do not blame them in the least, although I do not agree with it, but I have been looking at Amendment 21 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and I ask her whether she thinks that the provision in proposed new subsection (3)(b) might well give an opportunity for one of those people. Its wording is about progeny being

“likely to experience … lasting harm”

resulting from “faster growth” If you take that to its logical conclusion and encourage faster growth in an animal used in the meat trade, it is fairly clear that the animal will become suitable for slaughter at an earlier stage than if it had not had the influence of genetics. If you create faster growth by the application of genetics that ends up with the animal having a shorter life, is that not lasting harm? Some people could argue that, and I ask the noble Baroness if she would like to comment on that question.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I am not sure if this is the right moment to speak, but, in answer to the noble Lord’s specific question, the amendment is saying only that the welfare advisory body should take that into account. If there were other overriding reasons why we would want to have faster growth, for example, then that would be a balanced decision that it would make. However, if the faster growth were indeed leading to more pain, we hope it would take that into account. That is what the animal welfare role ought to be about. In Committee we heard lots of examples of new breeding techniques causing considerable pain, but I hope we are moving away from that now and can have a more generous attitude towards both conventional breeding and, potentially, the genetic breeding of animals where it does not have that effect. So it is all about the balance, and this is just one factor that the welfare advisory body will take into account.

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Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

21: After Clause 12, insert the following new Clause—
“Additional factors to be considered in relation to a precision bred animal marketing authorisation(1) When producing a report under section 12, the welfare advisory body may choose to consider the factors listed in subsection (3).(2) In the event that a report of the welfare advisory body does not consider the factors listed in subsection (3), the Secretary of State must do so prior to making a decision under section 13(1) regarding the issuing of a precision bred animal marketing authorisation.(3) The additional factors to be considered in relation to a precision bred animal marketing authorisation are—(a) whether the precision bred traits will have a direct or indirect adverse effect on the health or welfare of the relevant animal or its qualifying progeny,(b) whether the relevant animal or its qualifying progeny are likely to experience pain, suffering or lasting harm arising from or connected with precision bred traits that aim to produce increased yields, faster growth or any other increase in productivity, and(c) whether the precision bred traits may facilitate the keeping of the relevant animal or its qualifying progeny in conditions that are likely to have an adverse effect on animal health or welfare.”Member's explanatory statement
This new Clause would introduce a small number of additional animal welfare factors to be considered by the welfare advisory body or Secretary of State prior to the granting of a precision bred animal marketing authorisation.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to pursue Amendment 21. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken and I have listened very carefully to what the Minister has said. My amendments are fundamental to animal welfare issues and, as a number of noble Lords have said, they already have huge public support externally—not only in this House.

I still feel that we are being asked to take far too much on trust. The Minister said that it is not a skeleton Bill and he tried to reassure us on that. I would say on the animal welfare protections it is skeleton and it is sketchy, for the very good reasons that he has outlined in the past, which is that the Government have not decided what they want to do about animal welfare legislation going forward. So, we are being asked to take a great deal on trust. That is why we feel there need to be some minimum protections built into the Bill.

My Amendment 21 is not comprehensive, and I do not pretend it is, but it is the beginning of some basic protections on animal welfare, which in the absence of any other legislation we feel is absolutely necessary. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and my noble friend Lady Hayman, who both made the correct point that at the moment the notifier is in the driving seat on all this. They are providing the information, and they have considerable vested interests in providing a selective range of information to the animal welfare body. There is not an external role for audit and check on the information they provide. We would not get this with any other regulator. Any other regulator the Government set up would be expected to have a wide-ranging role, not just to accept the information they were given. I think the logic of what we are proposing is common sense and it fundamentally addresses animal welfare legislation. I therefore beg to move.

Environmental Targets (Water) (England) Regulations 2022

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. As always, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, has given a very thorough introduction to this statutory instrument. I thank the Minister for his time in providing a briefing.

The environmental targets, which were delayed from 31 October and eventually published on 19 December, are now being somewhat hurriedly debated before the end of January. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee debated all the environmental target SIs on 17 January. The committee did not feel that the original Explanatory Memorandum explained the four water targets very well or how they will be assessed and reported. The Minister has laid out very passionately the rationale behind the water targets.

I have received a briefing from Wildlife and Countryside Link and Greener UK, for which I am grateful, which makes the very valid point that only 16% of water bodies are in a good ecological condition. Therefore, ambition is needed to move this forward. The targets for pollutants—nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment—represent a siloed approach, which I will comment on later. Overall, the lack of ambition is worrying. It is some time since the 25-year environment plan was launched. The subsequent Environment Act should have supported fully that plan, with the environmental targets playing a wholly supportive role.

I have looked at the summary of responses to the government consultation. There were over 56,132 answers to the questions on water posed by the Government, and the government response can loosely be described as “No change”. The date for achieving the targets, however, has changed from 2037 to 2038. The rationale for this is that it will allow targets to span a 15-year minimum timeframe, and this will then tie in with the five-year reporting cycle of the environment improvement plan. This is eminently sensible and straightforward, provided that the targets are ambitious.

The abandoned metal mines target for a 50% reduction by 2038 is, however, not ambitious enough. Some 91% of the responses on this target disagreed with it. As far as I was able to ascertain, there is no detail on how the pollution substances target will be monitored. The Government, in their response to the disagreeing 91%, said that tackling pollution by the largest substances will lead to these rivers achieving good status, since there are few reasons for failure. However, they do not say how they are going to achieve this.

Further down in the document—I fear I quote here—the Government say:

“This ambition will require at least a 10-fold increase in the number of projects operated by the current Water and Abandoned Metal Mines Programme. We considered calls to increase our target ambition, however we concluded this would not be feasible given significant additional funding required, supply chain constraints and long lead-in times to secure the additional capability and to plan schemes. Ultimately, the additional costs would reduce the cost to benefit ratio”.


I repeat: they say that the additional costs would reduce the cost-benefit ratio. We are talking about cadmium, lead, copper, zinc and arsenic. These poisons are leaching out of abandoned mines into our watercourses, in which children are playing and adults may be swimming—but they say that cleaning this up does not meet the cost-benefit ratio. It would seem that silo working can justify almost anything. Undoubtedly, the cost to the water industry will be reduced by this unambitious target. What about the cost to the NHS of dealing with the health issues of those poisoned by exposure to toxic chemicals—workers off sick, children off school? The health impacts are enormous.

I turn now to the target on agricultural nutrients. Some of the respondents wanted more pollutants included in the target scope. The Government reject this because nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment are, by a considerable margin, the agricultural pollutants causing the most harm. Regardless of just how many pollutants are covered or not, the target to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment from agriculture by 40% by 2038 is just not good enough. We have had many debates in this Chamber about the pollution of our major rivers, including the Wye polluted by chicken manure. It really is time for Defra to be taking this matter seriously and dealing with this toxic pollution on a permanent basis.

Much is made in the document of that fact that the majority of responses came from campaigns by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the RSPB and the Woodland Trust. However, each of the responders under these campaigns were individual members of the public who felt passionately about the issues.

The pollution from wastewater target is poor, allowing the water companies flexibility to deliver on it. The consultation response document states that 98% disagreed with the target on pollution from wastewater, preferring a more ambitious target. The document also stated that, of the non-campaign answers, 44% agreed with the outlined flexibility in the target. This means that 56% still disagreed with that target. However you attempt to translate the responses to the consultation questions, the overwhelming response all round is “Not ambitious enough”.

Lastly, the water demand target increases the target for leakage reduction in domestic supplies from 31.3% to an amazing 36.9%. This is on the basis that it will align with industry targets. This is also at a time when household bills are increasing. Surely to goodness the water companies can do better on their percentage of leakages than 36.9%. Who is paying for all this leaked water? The consumer, of course.

All round, I regret that I am disappointed in the water targets. I look forward to the Minister’s response to this debate.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hayman for drawing these substandard water environment targets to the attention of the House. As has been said, they arise from the requirement of the Environment Act 2021 to publish these targets. As my noble friend has said, they are late and already put Defra in breach of its statutory obligation. But, more importantly, neither these water targets nor the remaining statutory targets which have been published are sufficient to address the persistent trends of environmental decline that we have been hearing about this evening.

The excellent progress report from the Office for Environmental Protection, which was published last week, illustrated well just how big the gap between ambition and delivery has become. As the OEP chair, Dame Glenys Stacey, said:

“Progress on delivery of the 25 Year Environment Plan has fallen far short of what is needed to meet Government’s ambition to leave the environment in a better state for future generations.”


The report went on to say that, of 23 environmental targets assessed, none was found where the Government’s progress was demonstrably on track. It does make you wonder what Defra has been doing for the last four years.

I am grateful to the Minister for reminding us of his previous stint as the Water Minister. I do not doubt what he said, which is that we have more information on water pollution now than we had in the past. But does that not just demonstrate the fact that the Government have been falling asleep on the job? They have known about this, they have been seeing the data coming through, and what exactly have they been doing over the last 13 years—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones? As that evidence came through, why was it not matched by action? Why are we still having to raise these issues now?

It is also hugely frustrating that all of us who were involved in the debates on the then Environment Bill heard the promises made at that time by the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, about focused and ambitious targets that would be truly transformative, yet all that seems to have come to nothing. These water targets appear to focus on very partial elements of the overall water quality challenge. It is not clear to me why these particular targets have been selected. As the OEP identified in its report, there is already a proliferation of targets to which the Government need to bring some sort of order; again, noble Lords have made reference to those other targets. What we need now is an ambitious, long-term, overarching statutory target that provides a proper direction and pulls all the other targets together so that there are proper priorities for our environmental challenges. However, these water targets completely fail to do this.

I agree with many of the submissions to the consultation that what we need is an overall water quality target. That should be the focus of our statutory obligations. We know that not one English waterway, including rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters, is in good ecological and chemical health at the moment. Tackling agricultural pollution is one part of the solution but so is tackling the ongoing crisis of sewage pollution from water treatment works, which we have heard about this evening. This is being exacerbated by the impact of climate change: a mixture of record-breaking temperatures and higher rainfall is leading to the increased use of storm overflows to release raw sewage into rivers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said, storm overflows have become a constant flow rather than occurring as a result of any particular temperature or weather impact.

If the Minister’s response to all this is that there are other measures in place to tackle water pollution, can he please explain how they add up to a total water quality target? What is the overall target and how are we to measure progress on it? That is what is missing from the targets set out in this document. Based on the current trajectories, we are not going to see healthy rivers and lakes in our lifetime.

The Government also make the argument that they already have targets under the water framework directive but, of course, they are proposing scrapping all those European pieces of legislation under the REUL Bill. Can the Minster explain what the longer-term intention is for the water framework directive and, indeed, all the other water directives to which the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, referred? I would have thought that they are essential for us to protect and take forward our environmental ambitions for water in the longer term. Can the Minister clarify whether the Government intend to keep all that legislation?

As my noble friend Lady Hayman said, Greener UK and Wildlife and Countryside Link made the point that the specific water demand target is relative and based on water abstracted, divided by population numbers. The Government have already admitted that it may measure and improve water efficiency levels, but this does not necessarily mean that there is any environmental improvement. Why was this target not linked to a parallel target focusing on controls on water abstraction, with an overarching outcome of improving water quality? That is what we are looking for: a “big picture”, overarching target.

The targets we are debating today are just one example of the inadequacy of the Government’s target-setting process. I hope the Minister and the Government will heed the advice of the Office for Environmental Protection and come back with more ambitious and coherent targets for the future, so that we can see real progress in reversing the environmental crisis we have heard about this evening. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

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My last point is on the perennial issue of water companies and their status, whether in the private sector or the public sector. I have seen independent evaluations which have shown that water bills would be higher if water companies were still nationalised, and everyone knows that if they were nationalised businesses, they would have to get in the queue outside the Chancellor’s office behind the health service, the Armed Forces, the police and hospitals. Any money that was left available in the tin would trickle down, and it would be much less than they are able to leverage on the markets in the way a private company does. Now, am I here to defend all private water companies? No. Some of them have behaved badly, and we have the means to deal with them when they do, but the model is right. The model is a way of ensuring that we get the investment we need to be spent on what people in this country want, which is continued supply of clean water for them at little or no damage to the environment. We want to make sure that these targets fit within that framework, so with those comments, I commend these draft regulations to the House.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

Before the Minister sits down, can I take him back to the need for an overall ambition and overall target? The Environment Act says that it should be long-term. We understand that is what the Government are doing, so we might have other targets—and there is an awful lot of targets being floated around at the moment—but we also have the hope of a long-term target for water. So let us say within 15 years, which is what the Environment Act is talking about, could we say, notwithstanding pollutants that are leaching into the water that you cannot do anything about, which the Minister was specific about and will take longer, could we then have a guarantee that we will have clean water in our rivers, waterways and coastal waters within that 15-year deadline? That is doable, I would have thought, and I do not know why the Government do not say that and do not actually set that out as an ambition.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That will, of course, be our aim. Dates are just dates; they are moments in time. The idea that we are going to allow pollution to carry on and then it is suddenly going to fall off a cliff is of course nonsense. Whoever is responsible, whether it is the Government, their agencies, private landowners, water companies, farmers or whoever it is will be tackling this either because they are forced to do it or because they are incentivised to do it, and they will get the graph moving, as they have already, downwards. They will deal, like we all do, with the low-hanging fruit first, and then they will move on to the more difficult and the hardest to reach.

There is absolutely that target that we should achieve. We set ourselves a really difficult target with continuing with the water framework directive in its form because a river will be divided under that regulation into reaches. If it fails on one factor in one of those reaches, the whole river fails. That is why only 16% of our rivers qualify. Some reaches of those rivers are in quite good condition. I do not mind that target being demanding, but we need to understand that it is very hard to achieve what we are setting out. We think it is achievable and is doable, but if there is one point-source pollution incident resulting in a spike in phosphorus on one reach of a very long river, that river fails. So these are hard targets to hit, but we are determined to achieve that, and that is why I commend these regulations to the House.

National Parks

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Our ambition is to reverse any decline in species. We have policies that will see, across the country, an end to the decline of species by 2030 and an uptick in the populations that we see across our islands. On the particular point, we want to see 35,000 hectares of peat restored by 2025 and 280,000 hectares by 2050. AONBs and national parks will be fundamental to that, because they are where most of it lies.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest on national parks as in the register. Returning to the 40% cut in real terms that national parks have received over the last decade—at a time, I should say, when they have never been more popular or had more demand on their services—the Minister has talked about other funds that are going into the national parks, but does he accept that that is not core funding and is going to other organisations in the parks? It is the national parks themselves—the rangers, the services and the visitor centres—that are core to providing a good visitor experience and encouraging more people to go into the parks. Does he accept that we should be more ambitious about the role that national parks can play? If we are to do that then they will need more core funding, not the supplementary funding that the Minister is talking about.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I think national parks are very good at getting that money in, whether from the private sector or blended finance. There is a very good arrangement with Palladium called Revere, which sees some money going into supporting, for example, core personnel in national parks to do projects right across those parks. All areas of government have challenges at the moment, particularly in the light of inflationary pressures. The national parks have proved themselves very resilient. I want to make sure that we can find more for money for them in the future. That is a key part of our decisions into the next spending round.

Environmental Principles Policy Statement

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I have not read the article that the noble Baroness refers to, but I will, and I will discuss it with ministerial colleagues. We will incorporate the principles into the guidance that the Cabinet Office gives on legislation once we have published them, which will be in the next few weeks. We will incorporate them into the Treasury’s Green Book at the same time.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has acknowledged that there has been a considerable delay in publishing the final version of the environmental principles. He talked about an implementation period. Given the delay that has already taken place, can he assure us that it will be a short implementation period and that within three months there will be a statutory obligation on all Ministers across all departments to abide by the environmental principles that we still await?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I think the noble Baroness is referring to a recommendation by the Environmental Audit Committee. I understand the urgency, but three months is too short. I do not think that much longer than that is necessary. We have considerable experience in putting in other duties across government and trying to assist departments in the creation of policies that take into account the five principles. It is really important that we get that right. I do not expect it to take much longer than three months. It will certainly be up and running across government towards the end of this year.

Traffic-related Air Pollution

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government’s own watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection, said that the Government’s proposed PM2.5 air pollution targets are “unambitious” and

“lack sufficient urgency to reflect the scale of change needed”.

What message does that send to the one in five people in the UK living with respiratory conditions?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness will be pleased to know that our ambitious targets under the Environment Act will be set out under the environmental improvement plan, which will include really stretching targets on the most damaging pollutants. There has been a good news story in the last decade about how we have reduced them, but that is not enough, and she is right to say that this still affects the health and life chances of many people, particularly some in deprived areas. This is about making sure that local authorities have the funds necessary to introduce schemes, and about having stretching national targets that will be respected around the world.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th December 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, after “plant” insert “, where that plant’s purpose relates to agriculture,”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is designed to probe how widely the Government expects gene editing technologies to be applied to plants, and whether the absence of any limitations may lead to unforeseen consequences for wild plants.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 2 and speak to Amendment 31 in my name. At the outset, I declare an interest through my involvement in Rothamsted agricultural institute, as in the register.

This group follows on quite neatly from our earlier debate, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Winston and others for setting out some of the risks inherent in this technology. It is the balance of those risks that we are struggling with as we go through the Bill, because, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, nothing is risk free. We can all see the potential advantages of this technology, but we have to get the balance right.

Amendment 2 is a probing amendment which tests out whether the Government intend gene-editing techniques in plants to be used more widely than simply for agricultural purposes. For example, is it also envisaged that this could be used for ornamental horticulture—to speed up the shapes or the colours of flowers? Is this desirable? Is it really what we want the technology to be available for? Would that wider use of the technology make more work for the regulators? I am sure that it would. As the demand for authorisation soared, would we have the capacity to manage it properly? Do we really want the regulators to be bogged down in authorising the new shade of a rose? This is simply one example. Noble Lords could think of many others which would go beyond the very specific application of the technology to agricultural purposes.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

With respect, I would not want to do that. In the same way that we are insisting that these measures can be achieved over a longer period of time through traditional plant-breeding techniques, if they are safe, it can be applied for food crops and in protection of our trees and woodlands, and it may have applications in other areas which will help our economy, particularly our green economy. I would not want to restrict it from those sectors.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. I accept, as several noble Lords have said, that there is a role for gene-editing techniques in breeding disease-resistant trees. My noble friend Lady Wilcox gave the good example of ash dieback and we can think of other examples of such applications.

The Minister seems to be going gung-ho for all markets, if I could put it like that. I caution against that. As I said earlier, we need to do this step by step. We all understand the pressure to feed the nation more productively, but I am not sure that it is a priority to go beyond that to things that are more decorative, for example, even if there is a market at this time. I would have liked the Government to have had a more balanced view to this, but I will study what the Minister said more carefully in Hansard.

Moving on to Amendment 31, I do not think the Minister actually answered the fundamental question, which is whether the advisory committee will be asked to look at the wider implications for agriculture of these particular techniques. Will it be looking purely at whether the individual genome is safe or at how it might impact on the wider landscape, if it is planted in the wider landscape? All we were asking is whether the advisory committee will be given that role. The noble Lord mentioned other pieces of legislation, but we should not have to rely on them to make sure that the environment is protected. It would be nice to see that written into the Bill.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I will just answer that precise point. That is very much what ACRE does. It would not just be restricted to looking at a narrow area of science but the wider implications of the release into the environment and any impacts that that could have.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord and therefore wish to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Trees (CB)]

I acknowledge that work has been done on that, but it is not in widespread commercial use.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 3, and I support the consequential amendments. The Government’s relatively late decision to add animals into the scope of the legislation has made what would have been a more routine Bill into something we believe is far more contentious. As many of us said on Second Reading, this has been compounded by the lack of detail as to how the regulations will work.

The Government have themselves admitted that the understanding of the impact of these new provisions is not fully developed. In fact, I believe the chief scientific adviser gave evidence in the Commons that it would take at least a couple of years to enact the animal-related clauses. So there is no urgency in adding them to the Bill at this time, and it seems that the only reason this is being done is because Defra is not sure when it will next get a legislative slot. That does not seem a very good basis for making legislation, particularly when we have so little information with which to make a judgment. For example, the factors that the welfare advisory board will consider have yet to be spelled out. We do not even know who will be tasked with making those decisions. We will return to these arguments when we consider other amendments about the composition and terms of reference of the regulators.

On Second Reading, several noble Lords sought to highlight the potential benefits of gene editing for animal welfare, and the noble Lord, Lord Trees, has done that again. No doubt there could be benefits—for example, in breeding out male chicks or tackling pig respiratory disease. But for every advantage there is a counterargument for the disadvantages. We have heard some of them from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. It could be used to enable more intensive livestock breeding or to create fashionable designer dogs with health defects.

The fact is that scientists have not always used their breeding skills to altruistic effect. Hence, as we have heard, we now have chickens whose breast meat is so heavy that they are unable to stand, and farm animals bred for fast growth and high yields at the expense of their welfare. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has also raised concerns about animals being created to live packed together in more crowded spaces—another point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. So it is not surprising that the major animal welfare charities are sounding the alarm.

So far, the debate around gene editing has concentrated on crops and seeds, and it has received cautious public support. But the introduction of animals raises much deeper ethical and moral challenges, which have not been explored in the public sphere. We are therefore in real danger of a backlash when this element of the Bill becomes more public.

The British public deserve to have a proper, thoughtful debate about how we want to coexist with farmed and domestic animals and the extent to which we should manipulate their breeding for our own ends. So I believe that these clauses inserting animals into the Bill are premature. We are being asked to take too much on trust at a time when the Government’s own thinking is not clear, and we all know the limitations of the secondary legislation system and the inability of Parliament to make real change at that stage. It is not good enough to expect us to pass this authority back to the Secretary of State when we know so little within the Bill at this time. This is why I believe we need to pause these clauses until Parliament can have a full debate on the fundamental issues at stake. I therefore support Amendment 3.

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[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I never thought I would be a member of the Green Party, but I clearly am this evening. I must agree with the noble Baroness, because we have to understand that gene editing is a new technique and has been on the books for only about eight or 10 years, which seems a long time but is not at all—in science, that is a very short time.

It was 40 years ago that we genetically modified organisms for the first time. The noble Lord is proposing that we speed this process up when we do not fully understand what is happening with procedures such as CRISPR-Cas9 and other methods. We need much more data before we can be sure about the progeny of these animals. That is one of the problems, and it will not be simple.

Of course, I appreciate that it takes quite a long time to breed an animal. As a human, I understand that quite well—I have dealt with a few humans myself, and no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has also had children—but we have to accept that it takes time before you can really work out the status of an animal. It is a complex process.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, in one of the earlier debates the Minister sought to categorise some of us as people who are fundamentally opposed to the Bill and trying to find any way we can to derail it. I assure him that I am not in that camp, and I hope that the amendment I will speak to will give some illustration of that.

I will speak to Amendment 88 in my name, which is a very particular amendment about the status of GMOs; this seems a very odd group of amendments that have been put together. It follows on slightly from the comments just made by my noble friend Lord Winston because it recognises that it has been many years since the regulations relating to GMOs have been reviewed. As a result, we appear to be legislating in silos rather than looking at the impact of genetic technology as a whole. We already have the GMO legislation on the statute and now we are looking at GE, but how do those two bits of legislation interrelate?

When the Government announced their plans to roll out gene editing, they also committed to a review of the wider GMO rules, but so far there does not seem to be any sign that the review is taking place—unless I have missed it. Amendment 88 probes whether the impact of Clause 41, which amends the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to exclude precision-bred organisms and differentiates them from GMOs, is likely to require further review.

This is all about the interrelation between genetic engineering and GMOs. Where is that review taking place? Is the wording of the legislation as it stands in Clause 41 how we want it to be? When and how will that wider review of GMOs take place? How will the Minister synchronise any result of that with the provisions of the Bill? It seems rather odd that scientific institutions could be potentially following two different routes for technology that in many ways is very similar.

--- Later in debate ---

As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, this should be uncontroversial, but it is a really powerful amendment and I applaud the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for introducing it. I apologise, because I got up before the noble Lord, Lord Winston, and I do not like to do that, but I am sure that he will introduce his amendment equally well. Having read what he has put down, I entirely support it, as it looks like it follows closely an amendment of mine that we will come to in group 8.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 19 and I very much support the arguments put forward by my noble friend Lady Hayman. She made a powerful case for why there should be a clear public benefit written into the Bill, which is why her emphasis and the detail in the amendment are important. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said that the Minister has already said that he agrees with this. That is fine, but having it written down in the way set out here would be an important addition.

All the examples in the amendment have been cited by Ministers and supporters of the Bill, in various debates, as advantages that could accrue from it. The Minister believes in and is committed to issues such as the environment, climate change mitigation, food safety and animal welfare. As my noble friend said, we have talked many times about the potential to develop a world-class reputation for our science and innovation, and this would be a way of stating, publicly and internationally, what this research is about—so it is not just buried away in Hansard but is in a more public domain. That is very important.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, these preconditions very much reflect those that were spelled out in the Agriculture Act. It is not as though it is not legislative practice to have that amount of detail; it is, as it was done in a different Bill. So why can we not have it in this Bill as well? That would have the great advantage of putting the public good at the heart of the Bill.

It would also ensure that public money for gene-editing research, particularly in public institutions—I am involved in one of them—is firmly anchored and focused on the public good benefits. It would give the funding allocation something to measure against, which is an advantage. I am sure that the vast majority of research institutions in the UK would welcome this clarity; it would fit with the ethos of their operations anyway, and, in a sense, play to their strengths. It would be good to have measures in place on how that money is being spent, much as there are for ELMS funding in the Agriculture Act. We wanted to see what we would get for our investment with the farmers, so it was no longer just a free handout.

The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, made the important point that we need to reassure the public that this is not a backdoor to further environmental damage and exploitation. We come back to the subject we have already debated, which is how we can make sure that we take the public with us. This is certainly one way we can make sure of that. We have to learn the lessons from the GM crop row of over 30 years ago, when one of the main criticisms was that it would allow the multinational seed companies to exploit farmers in developing countries by locking them into seed contracts in which the seeds could not be naturally regenerated for future use. We need to reassure people that that sort of exploitation is not part of our agenda on this occasion, so it is important to write that public benefit and use into the Bill.

It is important that we provide public reassurance. If it is good enough for the Agriculture Act, why can we not adopt a similar policy here? I urge the Minister to think about this; it would provide a great deal of public reassurance on an issue that we know is still quite sensitive. I hope he feels able, if not in my noble friend’s terms then in his own terms, to come back with an amendment that reflects the detail of that amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 19, which noble Lords will see already has a full complement of signatures. I thought the signature of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was far more useful than mine, so I was pleased to leave that space. If the Minister cannot agree to make some commitment such as that which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, of Whitchurch, just asked for, it might well be possible to find a Conservative Back-Bencher to make a complete set on Report, should we get to that stage. I would have attached my name to this and I think it has already very been powerfully argued for, but I want to make two additional points.

Both the Environment Act and the Agriculture Act were built around the idea of public money for public good. Here, surely the Conservative Government would embrace the idea of public good for no public money at all. This is the Government able to make the rules, and they can ensure that there is public good without a penny having to be spent. That would be very much in line with the Environment Act and the Agriculture Act.

I want to highlight a couple of the elements in Amendment 19 that I think are particularly important, including sub-paragraph (x),

“supporting or improving human health and well-being”.

I note that the Government, in promoting the Bill, talk a great deal about sugar beet. Given the massive overconsumption of sugar in the UK diet—if we produced by volume only two-thirds of the sugar we produce in the UK, that would be more than enough for a sufficient, healthy level of diet without importing a single gram of sugar—and the fact that sugar beet is associated with massive loss of fertile topsoil from some of the richest lands in the UK, if we could gene-edit sugar beet to be more productive on less land, it would be ideal to combine that with ensuring that we produce only a healthy amount of sugar and free up the land for other purposes.

I also note that the Minister talked about sub-paragraph (ii), mitigating and adapting to climate change—indeed, he talked about the climate emergency quite a lot this afternoon. Of course, when we are talking about animals, we talk about engineering cattle to release less methane; we are looking at a whole-systems approach here, and having fewer cattle would be by far the easiest way to produce less methane. Further, they would not be consuming grains and proteins, such as soya from the Amazon, which we could be consuming as human food instead. It is a complex issue, but what we are getting at here is trying to deliver, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, what the Minister said is the purpose of the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Winston, has not spoken yet, but I will venture to make one comment on his Amendment 21. The wording is not terribly clear, and the noble Lord could answer now or later, or think about this amendment on Report. It says that the genome should be sequenced and the changes recorded and reported to the Secretary of State. My question is whether that should be published and publicly available. We are talking about licensing something that the Government are giving companies the right and the chance to potentially make money out of, so it is perfectly reasonable to demand an increase in public knowledge to make accessible those genomes that would then be available to other researchers for all kinds of possibly very different purposes, not necessarily productivity or seed-producing purposes. The knowledge of all those genome sequences would be a very useful thing. I think that should perhaps be written into the amendment.

Sustainable Farming Incentive Grants

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to increase applications for the Sustainable Farming Initiative grants from farmers.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my farming interests as set out in the register. This June, we opened applications for the sustainable farming incentive, the first of our environmental land management schemes. Though it is early days, we have already seen positive interest. The scheme is being introduced incrementally, and the full offer will be in place by 2025. As the SFI offer is expanded, uptake is expected to accelerate. We are continuing to promote the scheme through our various communications channels to raise awareness of its benefits and to build interest.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the sad fact is that this scheme, which was the bedrock of the Agriculture Act, had hardly got going before the Government announced that it was being reviewed. As a result, fewer than 2,000 farmers have signed up for the new payment scheme, while the old basic payment scheme, on which some 80,000 farmers are reliant, continues to be phased out. This has left an almost £1 billion hole in the rural economy, and we know that farmers are already suffering huge financial costs at this time. The department’s handling of this flagship policy is widely considered to have been a shambles. When will the revised scheme be up and running? Can we be assured that it will maintain the environmental and biodiversity ambitions that underpinned the Act in the first place? How will farmers be compensated for the financial consequences of the delay in rolling it out?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not accept that there has been a delay, with respect to the noble Baroness. We are tapering out the basic payment scheme—which is understood right across this House as being bad for both the environment and farmers, particularly smaller ones—and replacing it with a scheme through which farmers are starting to see how they can fill the gap created by that taper down. As things stand, the standards that we have published give farmers roughly between £22 and £60 per hectare. We are going to roll out another four standards next year, another five the year after and another five the year after that. There has been no greater degree of consultation in the history of Defra in terms of how we have engaged with the farming community here. This is an iterative process. We have improved the scheme as it has gone on. The response we have had from farming organisations and individual farmers has been positive.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I should first declare an interest through my involvement with the Rothamsted Research institute, which is already carrying out authorised genetically edited field trials on wheat in an attempt to tackle some of the global food challenges that we collectively face today.

In previous debates in this House and in the Commons during consideration of this Bill, we on these Benches have made clear that we are pro-science and pro-innovation. We understand that laws designed 30 years ago for GM products need to be updated. It is a process of reform taking place in many countries, including the EU, which, as we know, is undergoing its own consultation process, so nothing we are doing here is unique. It is an opportunity for the UK to be at the forefront of technology, but this will be the case only if our legislation is respected globally as being robust and effective. Sadly, I do not believe the Bill as it stands meets that aspiration: it fails, in its current form, on a number of fronts.

First, as the Minister acknowledged in his letter to us of 1 November, the Regulatory Policy Committee gave the Bill’s impact assessment a red rating. Its reasons included: failure to assess the impact on business; failure to acknowledge and assess competition, innovation, consumer and environmental impacts; and failure to address the impacts from removing labelling and traceability requirements. The Minister’s response in his letter was to say that this rating was not terribly important and it was not a reflection of the quality or ambition of the Bill. I must say I beg to differ, because these factors, which the impact assessment ignored, are fundamental to the quality of the Bill, and hence the problem we have before us today in dealing with a Bill where much of the detail is missing.

Equally, the Minister’s solution to this red rating, as set out in his letter, was to create an enactment impact assessment to be delivered at the end of the Bill’s passage. I have to say that that is simply not acceptable, since it will not inform our deliberations as we scrutinise the Bill through its various stages. We need that information now. Has consideration been given to postponing the passage of the Bill, so that we can have all of the promised documentation before us in a timely manner when we consider the Bill?

Secondly, all the evidence shows that the public support genetically edited foods having a different regulatory regime than genetically modified foods, provided there is effective regulation, transparency and labelling. However, much of the detail in the Bill is left to secondary legislation, so we simply do not have that; we cannot measure it. It is not clear, for example, what information will be disclosed to the public about field trials or product labelling. We are being asked to take a great deal on trust, which has already been stretched to breaking point, given the delays that have followed the passage of the Environment Act, where, as we know and have debated before, all sorts of promised and statutorily required follow-up legislation has not been forthcoming.

That is why our colleagues in the Commons proposed a much more rigorous model of regulation, akin to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, to oversee the process and give that consumer confidence, proportionality and environmental safety, and implementation of the legislation proper oversight. This would give both researchers and businesses confidence in the regulatory system, as well as cementing public confidence in and acceptance of the new regime. I am sorry that the Government did not see fit to accept that proposal; I hope that, even now, the Minister will feel able to reconsider it.

Thirdly, many of the benefits of the Bill highlighted by Ministers focus on the environmental and food security benefits. We welcome the prospect of, for example, creating plants that are resistant to extreme weather conditions and diseases, could reduce the need for pesticides or could create higher yields to address rising food insecurity driven by climate change. Indeed, much of the good work already being carried out in scientific institutions around the country addresses these very issues; I fully acknowledge the critical role that they are playing in addressing our global food challenges.

When we first debated the outline of the Bill, it was focused on crop research. However, a decision has now been made to open up the reforms to the genetic editing of vertebrate animals. I am much less convinced by the need for this provision or that the animal welfare protections currently in the Bill are sufficient. My noble friend Lord Winston set out the concerns better than I could every aspire to but, for example, there is a real danger that animal gene editing could be used to accelerate traditional selective breeding to produce fast growth, high yields and large litters, which we know are capable of causing suffering to farmed animals. The image of chickens unable to stand because their body weight has been steered towards excessive breast meat must be avoided in the future, not exacerbated. We need those guarantees. In the Commons debate, my colleague Daniel Zeichner quoted the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. It is worth repeating. He said that

“animals should not be bred merely to enable them to endure conditions of poor welfare more easily or in a way that would diminish their inherent capacities to live a good life.”—[Official Report, Commons, 31/10/22; col. 678.]

One of the main examples cited for how animals might benefit from genetic editing is that it may cut down on antibiotic use; of course, we all understand the strong arguments for that. However, if the end result is that animals simply live in more confined spaces without infecting each other, it is an unacceptable outcome. In the Commons debate, the ex-Secretary of State, George Eustice, said that he had hesitated before adding animal research into the Bill but had concluded that you should not put off things that are too complex by kicking the can down the road. I am sorry that he did not kick this can down the road, because it is too complex and the Government still do not have the answers as to how this element of the Bill can provide robust animal welfare solutions. Again, we are being asked to take the details of how this will work on trust, as the Government have said that they will consult further on this issue. Meanwhile, the powers to introduce these changes via secondary legislation, without further scrutiny, already exist in the Bill.

So, I do not believe that the Bill is fit for purpose in its current form. It needs to be more clearly underpinned by clear public interest criteria for future research. It needs to have a more robust and accountable regulator. It needs to rethink the application of gene-editing freedoms in animal research. I look forward to the opportunity to debate these issues further in Committee.