European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to be helpful to the Minister because I think Amendment 66, to which I have added my name, merely ensures that we do what the Government have said they want to do. I speak as chairman of the Committee on Climate Change because this amendment, as the noble Baroness mentioned, refers to international obligations beyond the European Union, one of which is the Convention on Climate Change.

I am particularly interested in this because for four years I was Secretary of State for the Environment at a time when the British did not have a great reputation for environmental action. I have to say to the Committee that I found the presence of EU law, particularly on bathing waters and water quality, extremely helpful. It was not always easy to convince my colleagues that we really did have less good drinking water than much of the rest of the European Union. They rather took my mother’s view, which was that the reason that people had bottled water in France was because their ordinary water was unacceptable. There was a general view, much promoted in the Daily Telegraph, that there was no need for improvement. I have to say that there was need. There was even more need, as Surfers Against Sewage made clear, to do something about our appalling bathing water standards. We were, after all, in much of the country pouring unreformed ordure—I do try very hard to use phrases that the Committee will not object to—into the sea. We were able to change that, not, I may say, without very considerable difficulty and arguments about the price and cost of doing it. It was within a context of EU law, and not just precise pieces of law but the context in which we accepted certain standards and values to which we could refer when it came to making our own legislation.

I have looked at this amendment very carefully, and I cannot find anything in it to which the Government could possibly object. If my noble friend is busy looking it up at the moment, no doubt he may find something, but I do not see anything to which the Government could object. There is nothing here which does not pass from EU law into our law, and that, after all, is the purpose of the withdrawal Bill. My noble friend has sometimes been somewhat sharp with me in suggesting that I am asking for something more, so I have not put my name to those things which have asked for something more—mind you, I might well come back and ask for that—but this amendment asks for nothing more than that which has been promised by the Prime Minister, by the Secretary of State for Defra and by other Ministers: namely, that our standards would be at least those of the European Union were we to leave the EU. This merely puts down that contention.

Frankly, I think that my noble friend, if he were to say that we cannot have this amendment—I very much hope that he is not going to say that—has to explain, first, what in it is additional to the mere passing of the law from the EU into our national law. Secondly, he must explain why it is unacceptable to the Government for this House to repeat what the Government have themselves said: not an unreasonable thing, I think, for it to do.

I said earlier that I rose to be helpful, and I meant it. There is very considerable concern throughout the country, not just from environmental organisations but from civic society generally, that the Government will not be bound in the future, were we to leave the European Union, in the same way as they are bound now within the European Union. There is widespread concern, felt not just by those who are opposed to our leaving the EU but also by people who voted to leave because they were promised that leaving would not make a difference, in any sense, to these things. I want to be helpful because, if we do not do this, very large numbers of people will vote with their feet because they will not trust any Government. I do not trust any Government on these issues. I do not just mean that I do not trust this Government: I have not trusted previous Governments. I have fought with all of them one way or another on these principles. That is why this amendment is so important.

The vital issue is that the environment needs to have a framework within which people can have confidence that their interests will in fact be met. In the past, we have had the framework of the European Union. The Government say we can have just as good a framework outside the European Union—well, this is the framework, and there is no reason why they should refuse it.

In the Pope’s encyclical Laudato Si’, he makes the absolutely fascinating statement that climate change is in fact to be seen as a symptom of the way human beings have dealt with each other and the planet upon which we live. He goes on to express his desire that we should learn again how we should behave not only to each other but also to the world. The very best series of explanations of how we should behave are to be found in this amendment. They have been honed and argued over the years in the European Union, and I spent a good number of years of my life debating them both in the Environment Council and in the Agriculture Council.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

Before the noble Lord, Lord Deben, finishes, does he agree that one essential EU measure is the urban wastewater directive of 1991, without which we would not have built the Thames super-sewer? I am less reticent than the noble Lord because, on a weekly basis, untreated raw sewage flows into the Thames right outside this House. We are already nearly two decades overdue in implementing that directive, and without EU law we would not be doing so at all.

[Lord Deben]

I am very glad to acknowledge the noble Baroness’s point, but I have tried hard not to stray into other things because I want the Minister to accept this amendment. If he does not, I have a fundamental question to ask him, because I do not think the Government are serious about what they have promised. If they are, they cannot oppose this amendment, and if they do not oppose it, why on earth can they not accept it? If the Minister tells me that we do not need it because of this, that and the other, he will have to go through each item and explain how it is totally passed into our law without this amendment. He will also have to explain it in such a way that it can be understood by all those people outside this House who are worried and concerned about this change from our membership of the EU.