Avian Influenza

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I will pursue with my noble friend the Minister the question of what is happening in Scotland. There is deep unease that Scotland is not following the same measures as England. Will he keep this under review and use his best offices in that regard? The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, referred to the impact of migratory birds. How can we prevent the spread of wildfowl entering the system in future years?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We have a devolved system of government, and the Scottish Government have this decision in their hands. They will be talking to the Scottish NFU, Scottish research establishments and other interests in Scotland while making their decision. As I said, we are consulting them on a regular basis. On my noble friend’s second point, migratory birds are the reason this disease came to this country. It is a tragedy that is very hard to control because migratory birds are coming from all over Europe and beyond, and we now have the problem that the disease is within our own wild bird population. Whereas in the past it started to flare up at this time of year and more or less ended towards the end of February, it is now established in the kinds of species that I described earlier. All we can do is monitor this and see whether we can find areas of change. This is a flu—an influenza like many others—and, after a while, these viruses diminish in their effect, and great abilities to withstand their impacts start to occur. We must hope that this happens quickly. We are all united in this House in wanting this country to fulfil its desire to see no net loss of biodiversity by 2030, although factors like this make it more difficult. Nevertheless, these species can be extremely resilient: if we can get over this, their numbers can start to recover. I assure noble Lords that we are monitoring this carefully.

Water Companies: Pollution

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I take what the noble Baroness says about the level these sanctions are set at. If she thinks that there are areas that could be improved on, we will work with Ofwat to do that. She talks about this as though it is the only area of enforcement. Where water companies have failed to achieve their environmental standards and illegally pumped sewage into rivers, enormous fines have been applied, which have had a dramatic impact on the amounts of dividends that they have been able to award.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend estimate for the House the contribution that the 300,000 new houses being built will make to the problem? When will we have an end to the automatic right to connect so that we will have antiquated, antediluvian pipes replaced with modern pipes that can actually take sewage from these new houses?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Enormous amounts of money have been spent on new water infrastructure, but sewage companies are responsible for the maintenance and resilience of drainage and wastewater networks. To address current and future pressures on drainage networks, we are making drainage and wastewater management plans statutory through the Environment Act, so they will be consulted. They have to put these forward as a legal measure to ensure that they take into account the pressure of new housing.

Environmental Targets

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I think there is a collective clunk of realisation of what it would actually take to replace that. That legislation was created for an environment that goes from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. I am sure she understands, being the expert that she is, that it is a bit clunky when it comes to dealing with the bespoke environment of these islands. It can be improved, but in a way that is at least no worse for nature, and which preferably improves it.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, that “collective clunk” took hours of time of the Minister’s department and both Houses of Parliament. Is he saying that, at the stroke of a pen, the Government are going to write off all the environmental protections that we spent hours in this place writing into retained EU law?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

No, that is not what we are saying at all. Most of the protections we have are written into law in the Climate Change Act, the Environment Act and many other provisions that no Administration in recent months—of any form—have talked about trying to tamper with. The habitats directive and other measures are very important; we will not be able to hit our 2030 target for no net loss of biodiversity if we were somehow to sweep those away.

So, if we are going to get rid of them, we have got to replace them with something that is meaningful and bespoke for these islands, and that cannot be done overnight. The Government want to hit our target for 2030, our 30by30 target and many other measures that are written into the Environment Act. The directives we have transposed into UK law have got to be dealt with carefully and in a way that results in no net loss of benefit for the environment, preferably improving it.

Environment Act 2021: Targets

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Soils are a fundamental part of our environmental land management schemes. The soil standard in the sustainable farming incentive is key to getting those ecological systems functioning properly and to their not being viewed, as they have too often been in recent decades, as just a medium into which you can add synthetic products to produce crops or grow stock. Soils are absolutely fundamental, as is our peat standard. There will be targets to restore peatland and ensure that soils are properly functioning ecosystems. The noble Baroness is absolutely right to raise this issue.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that improving water quality is vital? Can he tell us where we are with storm water overflows and ending the automatic right to connect?

Food: Imports and Security

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the current level of the pound on food imports and food security.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question in my name on the Order Paper and refer to my interests as set out in the register.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary 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. The depreciation of the pound should not have a direct impact on household food security; however, it may have an indirect effect if increased import costs cause the price of food to rise. It is not for His Majesty’s Government to set retail food prices. Through regular engagement, Defra will continue to work with food retailers to explore the range of measures they can take to ensure the availability of affordable food.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Given the unprecedented food inflation we have seen—the highest level for 40 years—and the fact that farmers and consumers are facing unprecedented challenges, will my noble friend the Minister take this opportunity to boost farm productivity at home to stabilise food security and to boost self-sufficiency in food, which for fruit and vegetables is a woeful 16%? This is a one-off opportunity to help farmers and consumers with both their budgets and food productivity and growth.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, we enjoy a high degree of domestic food security and self-sufficiency but we are not complacent about it. We have responded to recent events, as in the food strategy, putting food security at the heart of the Government’s vision for the food sector. It is absolutely our intention to help farmers become much more productive in the two sectors that the noble Baroness mentioned, particularly in horticulture but also in areas such as seafood. Our farming reforms are designed to support farmers to produce food sustainably and productively alongside delivering environmental improvements, which of course we all benefit from.

Nitrate-free Bacon and Ham

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I think the company to which the noble Baroness refers produces something called Better Naked, which is a very worthy product and has a lot of innovative approaches. However, we are following the evidence on this: while the IARC published a report that said that processed meats can be carcinogenic in some cases, it does not make a direct link between the consumption of nitrates and nitrites in processed meats and colorectal cancer. We must be very mindful of the fact that these products in meats inhibit the growth of conditions such as clostridium botulinum, which can of course be fatal.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend accept that the pig industry is suffering a crisis that is unprecedented in its history? Will he join me in regretting the closure of the Vale of Mowbray facility at Leeming Bar—a 100 year-old facility involved in world-famous pork pies—with the loss of 171 jobs? What future does he see for the pig industry in this country going forward?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We want a good future for the pig industry, which has struggled for many years. As a Government we have stepped in where we can: we introduced more visas for butchers, private storage aid and the slaughter incentive payment scheme. Over 760 tonnes of pigmeat was put into the Government’s freezer storage plan, and this has ended, to the greatest extent, the backlog of pigmeat that was on farms.

Water Companies: Environmental Pollution

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The Environment Agency is part of Defra, so absolutely I agree with what the chair of the Environment Agency said in relation to a report that was published on Thursday. I shall read a section of it:

“The sector’s performance on pollution was shocking, much worse than previous years … Company directors let this occur and it is simply unacceptable. Over the years the public have seen water company executives and investors rewarded handsomely while the environment pays the price. The water companies are behaving like this for a simple reason: because they can. We intend to make it too painful for them to continue as they are.”


That report speaks for the Government.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that there would be less environmental pollution if developers were not allowed to connect wastewater to inappropriate pipes? When will my noble friend enforce the provision to make sure that water companies will be allowed to invest in adequate pipes and force developers to create natural flood prevention schemes to stop wastewater entering rivers in the first place? It is an unacceptable situation and developers must be prevented from contributing to it.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend will be pleased to know that we are undertaking a review of the case for implementing Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act. We will report on this in September, and I hope that will bring my noble friend to the realisation that the Government are determined to act on it.

Sewage Disposal in Rivers and Coastal Waters

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, who we do not hear from very often. I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Oates, on calling the debate today, and join with him in a heartfelt tribute to the late Lord Chidgey. I remember not just his work on chalk streams but his knowledge of and work on international development in South Africa and other areas. I also declare my interests as on the register. I am vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities and I will be taking up the chairmanship of the project advisory board of a study of bioresources in England, which I will come on to in a moment.

In responding to some of the points raised in what has been an excellent debate covering many of the issues, it is important to note that of course, the current sewage disposal rates into rivers are unacceptable. However, they are unacceptable for a number of reasons, and there is a range of people with responsibilities. In particular, I want to highlight the responsibilities that the Government and developers have. I welcome my noble friend the Minister to his place—we are fortunate that he has his current responsibilities; long may that continue.

My concern is that the Government are wedded to a programme of building 300,000 houses a year, often in inappropriate places such as areas prone to flooding or that take excess surface water. That water, in turn, is then displaced into existing developments or rivers, as we have heard in the debate.

Then, we have the issue of combined sewers. Surface water flooding is a relatively recent problem, alongside the much older problem of fluvial, pluvial, coastal and more regular forms of flooding. It was first identified by Sir Michael Pitt in his review following the dreadful floods in 2007, the damage resulting from which I am very familiar with, as the then MP for Vale of York. His recommendations were spot on but sadly, many of them have still not been implemented. He called for more natural forms of flood prevention such as Slowing the Flow—the Pickering pilot scheme which is preventing the flooding of the town of Pickering and downstream communities. He was in favour of creating more sustainable drains and ensuring that they were maintained, and he insisted that we should stop connecting surface water to public sewers—probably the single most disgusting practice, which is still perpetrated. He also recommended ending the automatic right to connect the wastewater—that is, sewage—coming out of these new houses to pipes that are certainly not fit for purpose. I add that water companies should be made statutory consultees on all future major developments, and as noble Lords have said, we must stop unflushables such as wet wipes, fat, oil and grease blocking sewerage systems.

The problem with building 300,000 houses a year is that the wastewater—the sewage coming out of those houses—simply cannot connect to antiquated, ill-fitting pipes built in Victorian and Edwardian times, which means that raw sewage is spilling into combined sewer overflows that then run into rivers, on to roads and even into people’s homes, causing public health issues.

Will my noble friend use his good offices after today to ensure that finally, Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 will enter into force, end the automatic right to connect from these houses and set up a proper sustainable drainage system? It is unbelievable that 12 years on from passing that legislation, it has still not been brought into effect. Will my noble friend also allow the next price review that is currently being considered, which will take effect from 2024-29, enabling water companies to raise money and invest in and introduce the necessary innovation measures, which I will set out in a moment?

I would like to share with your Lordships what is happening and the work being undertaken by the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, which is looking to develop a long-term strategy for bioresources in England. Essentially, without putting too fine a point on it, this is treating the sludge—the solids after the liquids have been taken out of the sewage. I will be chairing a project advisory board, so no doubt, I will become quite an expert in this area. I am delighted to say that among those who will be involved are Defra, BEIS, Energy UK, the Environment Agency, the Institute of Air Quality Management, the National Farmers’ Union, the Country Land and Business Association, the CLA, the British Retail Consortium, the Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association, the Rivers Trust, the renewable energy association, water companies as individuals, Water UK and a host of others. I am delighted to be associated with that project.

I make a plea to my noble friend today: we need input from Defra at not just a technical level but a more senior management level, working alongside the Environment Agency and Ofwat to deliver this strategy in order to ensure that finally, we are aligning the investment being made with the regulatory framework. To date, that has not been achieved.

I am working with a number of Members next door, including Philip Dunne, on a cross-party basis, through Westminster Sustainable Business Forum, on Bricks and Water 3—the third report looking to reduce all forms of flooding. I hope that that will help to inform how the planning regime can be amended through the forthcoming levelling-up Bill. Much can be achieved through building regulations, but it is extremely important that we look at the planning regime as well. I look forward to engaging with that Bill in due course.

To conclude, I urge my noble friend to take away from the House today a number of actions that could immediately be taken: modernising and updating the drainage legislation; increasing nature-based solutions such as Slowing the Flow, which works so successfully; ending the automatic right to connect; stopping enabling housing developers to allow surface water to connect into the public sewers; and creating sustainable drainage systems and making one body responsible for maintaining them. We need to educate water customers to change their behaviour on unflushables, including wet wipes, and to reduce their use of fats, oils and grease that create fat balls, or fatbergs, which cause sewage blockages. Even a simple label on a package saying “Not fit to flush” would work. As I have said, I hope that this could be achieved through amendments to the levelling-up Bill in due course.

Will my noble friend look favourably on removing the automatic right for housing developers to connect surface water to public sewers and eliminate from the system in homes the unflushables I have mentioned? These two single measures alone would reduce the ability for blockages to form and reduce surface water which leads to storm overflow spills such as the ones we have heard about from, among others, the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. I fully supported the amendment brought forward by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, in this place and my honourable friend Philip Dunne in the other place, but that on its own in the Environment Act is not sufficient. I put to your Lordships today that we cannot continue to have inadequate pipes allowing sewage overflows to immediately go into the rivers upstream and causing tremendous environmental damage—often coming on to public highways but also causing a public health issue by entering existing developments.

I am delighted to have had the opportunity to debate these issues today, but I think there will be opportunities in the forthcoming legislation to bring forward real change in this regard.

Food Strategy White Paper

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I always defer to the noble Baroness because of her great experience and passion on this issue. However, this is absolutely a cross-government initiative. We have set up our cross-government food group, which brings together senior civil servants across government departments and the FSA to examine our strategy and monitor it on key delivery points. We will bring together the monitoring and evaluation of individual policies to enable us, and the wider population, to evaluate the food strategy and how we are performing against our targets.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend explain how the food strategy addresses the very urgent need to increase our self-sufficiency in food, particularly the parlous state of fruit and vegetable production in this country?

Environmental Principles Policy Statement

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness and her eloquent, thoughtful contribution. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on giving us this opportunity to debate the first statement on environmental principles.

I start by following some of the points my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts contributed. In particular, I look forward to hearing my noble friend’s response to the call of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report. It says in paragraph 40 that, as

“this is the first policy statement under the Act, it is essential that the practical implementation and effectiveness of the policy statement … be properly monitored and evaluated by all government departments”.

That was touched on by most of the contributions this afternoon.

When I was in the other place chairing the EFRA committee, I was at my wits’ end because so many of the regulations that came through were from Europe, and we could only—as my noble friend has explained—rubber-stamp them. They contained all the policy provisions. As we know, we often gold-plated them. One of the benefits of leaving the European Union is that we can no longer gold-plate policy from that particular quarter. It is very important, as my noble friend Lord Hodgson explained, that we have the opportunity to think through—this is the role of that committee—not only whether the policy has been adequately consulted on but whether it fits in with the primary policy objective. So often we find that not to be the case.

We have taken an awful lot on trust in the last two years. We have adopted very important Acts of Parliament with huge powers under Henry VIII clauses. Possibly—I say this as a very brave Back-Bencher—we ought to take the nuclear option more often, because we are imposing real obligations on businesses. I am thinking in particular of farmers and landowners. Perhaps we will leave it to the main opposition parties to do that on more occasions and we can cower behind them.

My noble friend came out with this idea of having a new procedure to scrutinise these framework Bills in the first place, but surely we could just make more use of the procedure we have of considering draft Bills. It is incumbent on the Government to explain why we are not using that procedure. We are running into enormous problems in this Session as well, where we have passed down the opportunity to consider things at the stage of a draft Bill. Perhaps ask a scrutiny committee or a Select Committee in each House to do this as part of their regular work. I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and her committee would do that.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I absolutely accept what my noble friend says. I was not suggesting that this was the only way to skin the cat; I was just trying to say that this was one way it could be skinned. The important thing is to get a discussion going about the fact that the cat needs skinning. We have not got to that but we need to get to it. The procedure is of secondary importance; the first thing is to persuade the Government and the Opposition Front Bench that this issue needs addressing.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I put on the record that I do not wish to skin any cat, for obvious reasons. I am just trying to support my noble friend’s proposal and the noble Baroness. Peace has broken out on the Committee.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on the ground she covered in her opening remarks. I do not wish to comment where I agree, but I take issue with one thing—my noble friend the Duke of Wellington is very aware of this. I believe it is unacceptable to continue to have the possibility of raw sewage entering the river or bathing waters at an earlier stage. I know this is a different department; this is one of the problems we have identified this afternoon. If you are to have a commitment, which I think all parties agree to, of building 300,000 houses a year on land that is prone to flooding, in inappropriate places and connected to pipes that are not fit for purpose—the Government and the department accept that they are Victorian pipes—we need to allow a massive investment in the next AMP round, the price review in 2024, for the water companies to do this. I challenge my noble friend to bring forward Section 23 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 to enable us to do so. In 2007 Michael Pitt called for an end to the automatic right to connect. It is inappropriate that someone living in an existing development should face the possibility of raw sewage coming into their home because the wastewater does not fit into the existing pipes. We have to end this disgusting practice, and now.

I am a big supporter of Surfers Against Sewage but it is missing the point. We are dealing with this at the wrong stage, and much as I welcomed my noble friend the Duke of Wellington’s amendment, that is too late. If we have this housing commitment—I do not disagree with it; I just do not know where all these people are coming from—we need the investment in wastewater. Bring forward Schedule 3, give us a date and ensure that we end the automatic right to connect with no provisos, ifs or buts—just completely end it—allow water companies to disconnect until the investment has been made and recognise water companies as statutory consultees. Then we will no longer be pumping raw sewage into rivers and bathing waters in the first place. I shall calm down now.

I invite my noble friend and the department—as my noble friend Lord Hodgson asked us—to make sure that there is joined-up thinking between the different policies coming out of one department. I make a plea that food production, as the NFU president asked for today, be recognised as a top priority of the department. I have heard my noble friend either respond to Questions or make Statements in this regard on a number of occasions and I wholeheartedly support him in that, but we are currently only on 60% self-sufficiency in food. The NFU pointed out today in the publication of its survey that farmers’ confidence to invest has been severely dented by all the reasons the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, rehearsed before us this afternoon. It has been dented by the spiralling costs of energy and fuel in this country, which are not within our control; they are the result of the war in Ukraine. That is a challenge to the Government; we have to have more storage of gas. We cannot have just 30 days —or was it 60 days?—of storage. It is clearly insufficient before we go into another autumn.

How does my noble friend respond? I invite him to support the call from the NFU for the Government to introduce a duty on Ministers to assess the impact of any new policy—I take the environmental statement of principles to be a new policy—on food production.

The survey results from the NFU show that a third of arable farmers have made changes to their cropping plans in the last quarter or four months, which 90% of growers attributed to rocketing fertiliser costs. Growers are now switching from growing milling wheat for bread to growing feed wheat for animals, because it has a lower fertiliser requirement. Also, over the next two years dairy farmers were most concerned about prices of feed, with a 93% increase; fuel, with a 91% increase; energy, with an 89% increase; and, as my noble friend the Minister knows, fertiliser, with an 88% increase.

Why is this important? As we consider the environmental principles policy statement today, the Government are putting the finishing touches—I hope—to the environmental land management schemes. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has spoken eloquently on this on a number of occasions. There are simply too many competing uses for land. Will my noble friend confirm that farming and food production are public goods for the purposes of environmental land management schemes, and that the five environmental principles before us—the integration, prevention, rectification, polluter pays and precautionary principles—will have a crossover to ELMS, with the sustainable farming incentive, local nature recovery and landscape recovery uses? Without that, it will be totally confusing for our farmers and growers to know what they have to do.

I welcome the opportunity to debate these issues today. I hope we will be able to give confidence to farmers, growers and consumers and have greater clarity, not just on what the environmental principles will be but on how these will impact on ELMS and other aspects of Defra work.