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.

Common Agricultural Policy (Cross-Compliance Exemptions and Transitional Regulation) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2022

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Grand Committee

I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I greatly enjoyed my noble friend’s presentation of the instrument before us. I think that paragraphs 7.7 and 7.8 set out exactly what my noble friend said. I would just like to ask for a point of clarification. We were informed last week about this dashboard. I have had great amusement trying to find the dashboard and identify the 570—I am told—Defra regulations, of which I assume this is one.

Is my noble friend of the view that this instrument will come back before us within the next year? That would greatly help me. A close reading of today’s House of Lords Business will show that I have tabled a Question to help me to understand. If 570 Defra items are listed on the retained EU law dashboard, published on 22 June, which relate to phytosanitary, plant or animal health, welfare and hygiene measures? Presumably we will have the opportunity to consider each in turn when they come before us, but as a general rule many of them will fall because, like this one, they fall within a transitional period. As the CAP comes to a close and Brexit kicks in to a greater extent there will presumably be retained EU legislation such as this that will fall. Will we come back to this particular instrument in the next year or two for those purposes?

There must be other pieces of retained EU legislation that we spent hours going through in this very Room or remotely to see how they would apply, many of which I imagine we would wish to retain. Do we have to wait for the Brexit freedoms Bill—I am not quite sure what it is called—to come before us, or will we approach this on an ad hoc basis? It would certainly help me to understand, since I committed so many hours to my greater knowledge and understanding of what the EU retained legislation was at the time, what the situation will be with this and other instruments.

It strikes me that it will take up an inordinate amount of Defra officials’ time to go through this exercise. If such instruments will fall anyway, will we have to meet physically to confirm that they are redundant and that they have fallen out of use or will that happen naturally? Will we be required to go through every single regulation that we adopted as part of our retained EU law that we wish to keep on the statute book?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to this SI and for the helpful briefing beforehand. I accept that the majority of these changes are technical in nature.

First, although it is not ideal, I understand why the changes to EU regulation 2020/2220 could not be made at this time, given that it was passed so close to the end of the transition period. It therefore makes sense to take this opportunity to remove the provisions to minimise ambiguity and potential confusion. I also accept that it is helpful to remove redundant references to the EU and member states where they no longer apply in UK law.

Secondly, with regard to the changes to cross-compliance regulations, I can see why it might be necessary to widen the scope of the existing cross-compliance exemptions as set out in Schedule 3. However, I have some specific questions about this. These new exemptions to the schedule are very specific and refer only to the specific changes we made to Section 98 of the Environment Act 1995 and Section 1 of the Agriculture Act 2020. Can we be sure that these two provisions are the only two occasions where exemptions to the cross-compliance rules should be necessary?

I am struggling with some of the detail here, but I do not think many farmers will be operating exclusively under those agreements. That raises the question of what happens if, for example, their environmental work is, say, 20% but also has a direct impact on other activities, such as food production, at 80%. Would they be penalised, or is there an element of discretion? If so, what would that look like? In other words, what is the interface between the old cross-compliance and the new arrangements? How much discretion is there in all that or is it absolutely fixed in stone?

I still do not feel, having read the SI several times, that the application of the cross-compliance rules is clear, notwithstanding double negatives and so on. I would not relish being a farmer and having to try to understand and apply them. To be absolutely clear about this, are they to be applied only to claims under the old basic payment scheme? Therefore, will the cross- compliance rules be phased out as any claims under the old CAP scheme are phased out?

Given that there is wide acknowledgement that the CAP was too rigid and the financial penalties for non-compliances were too onerous, why are the Government not taking this opportunity to introduce the lighter-touch regime we were promised when we debated the then Agriculture Bill? Can we be assured that the roll-out of ELMS and any future UK agricultural and rural payment schemes will be assessed without cross-compliance penalties? How is that all going to work in future?

I look forward to the Minister’s response. I also look forward to the Minister’s response to the very interesting questions from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, which I would like to know the answers to as well.

Plant Health etc. (Miscellaneous Fees) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, this instrument makes amendments to plant health fees established in the Plant Health etc. (Fees) (England) Regulations 2018 to ensure that there is no underrecovery or overrecovery of costs.

First, it ensures that the fees charged for plant health checks on regulated commodities imported into England from all third countries reflect the frequencies of those checks established under the new risk-targeted inspection scheme set out in the Official Controls (Plant Health) (Frequency of Checks) Regulations 2022, which will be laid in Parliament on 30 June and apply from July 2022. This approach to fees does not apply to a new flat rate fee, which this instrument also introduces and which I will discuss shortly.

It is our responsibility to protect biosecurity across plant and animal health and the wider ecosystem. To that end, plant health checks, encompassing documentary, identity and physical checks, are carried out on certain regulated consignments imported into England from third countries that may carry pests or diseases that could pose a risk to our biosecurity.

Currently, the highest-risk commodities are subject to 100% plant health checks. The level of identity and physical checks on other commodities is based on risk. The new risk-targeted inspection scheme will provide a risk-based method to determine the frequency of plant health checks, focusing specifically on risks to GB biosecurity. This scheme will apply equally to certain regulated imports from non-EU countries and from EU member states, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

It is UK government policy to charge for many publicly provided goods and services. The standard approach is to set fees to recover the full costs of service delivery. This relieves the general taxpayer of costs so that they are borne by users who benefit from a service. This allows for a more equitable distribution of public resources and enables lower public expenditure and borrowing.

Charging for plant health services is consistent with the principle that businesses using these services should bear the costs of any measures to prevent harm that businesses might otherwise cause by their actions or non-actions, since most serious plant pests and diseases that arrive and spread in this country do so via commercial trade in plants and plant produce.

In line with the standard approach that the full cost of service delivery be recovered from businesses using these services, fees for physical and identity checks will reflect the frequencies established under the Official Controls (Plant Health) (Frequency of Checks) Regulations 2022. For commodities subject to reduced levels of physical and identity checks, a proportionally reduced fee is applied.

This statutory instrument applies to England only. The Scottish and Welsh Governments are following the same approach in terms of applying fees to recover the full costs of their respective inspections. The Scottish and Welsh Governments laid corresponding legislation on 20 May and 21 June respectively.

Secondly, this instrument provides for a flat rate fee on certain plants for plants imported to England from all third countries. The new risk-targeted inspection regime will see plants intended for final users subjected to lower frequencies of checks, compared with 100% frequencies for plants not intended for final users. This flat rate fee aims to prevent plants that have completed their production stage in a third country and are ready to be sold to consumers after import benefiting from a cost advantage over plants imported to complete their production in Great Britain, while maintaining full cost recovery. The policy for a flat rate fee was proposed following stakeholder concerns. The Welsh Government have laid a similar piece of legislation to implement the flat rate fee.

We have worked closely with industry bodies, including the Horticultural Trades Association and the National Farmers’ Union, on developing our approach to the flat rate fee. Following a consultation, it was decided that a new flat rate fee should be applied to plants for planting and cuttings. After feedback that a switch to a flat rate fee would significantly increase fees for importing bulbs and seeds for the final user, we have restricted the flat rate fee to commodities where there is a clear benefit to trade. This excludes bulbs and seeds from the proposed flat rate fee.

Thirdly, this instrument extends an exemption from the payment of fees for pre-export and export certification services where goods are moving from England to a business or private individual in Northern Ireland. This will continue to enable trade between England and Northern Ireland in line with the Government’s movement assistance scheme. The Welsh and Scottish Governments are extending these exemptions in a similar fashion.

Finally, an error is corrected to reinstate in the fees regulations a provision for fees for samples taken on imports, which was omitted by the Plant Health etc. (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021.

This instrument is necessary because it ensures that there is no over-recovery of fees charged for plant health checks on commodities imported from third countries and maintains the full cost recovery of plant health services. If this instrument is not made, it would lead to over-recovery of fees from businesses, which would mean that proposals agreed with stakeholders on a flat rate fee for certain categories of plants would not be implemented. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing the regulations before us. I broadly welcome them, but I have a number of questions.

Paragraph 12.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:

“The impact on business … is that these changes are estimated to save businesses c. £1.2m per annum due to lower levels of checks and subsequent impact on fees.”


Obviously, a lower level of fees will be pleasing for the industry, but I had not grasped that we are introducing a lower level of checks through this instrument.

One of the difficulties of this instrument, which my noble friend just introduced, was also set out in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s fifth report. As my noble friend stated at the outset, there will be a second statutory instrument at the end of June that will set out the regime. Why has the way in which the fees have been structured been separated from the regime? Why have we not had an opportunity to consider them both together? I would have thought that the regime was probably of most interest. When might we expect to see that statutory instrument, as today is already 28 June?

Am I right to assume that paragraph 28 talks about the inspection fees being corrected, as they are being reinstated, when samples of imported consignments are taken for lab testing to confirm the presence of certain plant pests? Can my noble friend elaborate on whether that is done on an ad hoc basis or responding to intelligence? Does it include such laboratories as FERA, which I had the honour to represent in North Yorkshire for the last five years I was in the other place?

Also, is this one of the instruments that appears on the famous dashboard that we heard about last week? Is it one of the 570 statutory instruments that is retained EU law or is it a stand-alone instrument? Will we come back to look at this in a different context? I welcome the opportunity to debate and approve the regulations this afternoon.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction and for the helpful briefing that he organised beforehand.

The Explanatory Memorandum makes it clear that the purpose of the regulations is to help reduce biosecurity risk and to protect the environment from the spread of harmful pests and diseases. Obviously, these are objectives that we can all aspire to, but I would like to explore in more detail whether the proposed changes will achieve that result.

The new fees structure set out in this SI is based on a new risk-targeted inspections scheme which is set out in a separate SI, the Official Controls (Plant Health) (Frequency of Checks) Regulations, which this SI says will apply from July 2022, and to which the Minister referred as well. However, that SI has not been published yet. When I queried this with the department, I was told that it would be published on 30 June, which happens to be a couple of days after this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, also raised this point. Where is the parliamentary scrutiny in this process? We are being asked to agree the fees without seeing the risk-based scheme in the first place.

The basis of the proposed changes was set out in a government consultation. In the Government’s response to the consultation, dated 31 March 2022, they concluded that imposing full checks on all categories of plants needed to be balanced with the impact on regulators and trade. In effect, it appears that this is a watering down of our biosecurity risk regime at a time when the threat of importing new plants and diseases with new and emerging pathogens is increasing.

I think it is fair to say that this is not a very reassuring SI in terms of the impact on biosecurity, and that the proposed changes were not greeted with unanimous support during the consultation. For example, the Government’s response to the consultation flags up that concerns were raised about the ability of the plant health risk group to respond quickly to new outbreaks. Obviously, there are different sorts of outbreak; some can be predictable, as can some disease threats, but some occur unusually and out of the blue. Is the plant health risk group really in a position to be able to judge and assess that risk, and to measure the right plants that are coming across our borders? There was a feeling that the inspection methods and technology applications were out of date and that we needed to modernise them. Concerns were also raised about the need for more transparency on the interception of pests and diseases and that, if a new pest or disease had been identified on UK shores, it needed to be shared more immediately.

These are all real challenges that Parliament has not yet had the chance to discuss, so I hope that the Minister can clarify why we have had such limited opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny on a very important issue that we have debated on a number of occasions in the past. Quite rightly, everyone has said that there is an acute need to take biosecurity more seriously.

Returning to this SI, first, it acknowledges that some commodities will be subject to reduced levels of physical and identity checks, leading to a lower fee being applied. However, nowhere does it really say that those at higher risk levels will have to pay a higher fee. I am interested to know how that will work in terms of our biosecurity protection.

Water Companies: Sewage Discharge Monitoring

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The public are right to feel very strongly about this and we try to reflect that in the priority we give to this. The target will be to concentrate on bathing waters and special environmental waterways, such as chalk streams. They will be the Government’s absolute priority and by 2035, under our plans, we will have eliminated nearly all outflows into those waterways.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that if he introduced Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, the amount of discharge would be immediately reduced? What plans have the Government got to do so?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

From memory, I think that Schedule 3 refers to water companies being statutory consultees. I am very happy to follow that up with my noble friend in the near future.

Pig Farming

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the right reverend Prelate, whom I thank, together with the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, my neighbour in North Yorkshire, for calling this debate. I am delighted to sit on what I think is now called the Rural Interest Group of the Church of England General Synod with the right reverend Prelate.

I hope that my noble friend the Minister, whom I welcome to his place today, is listening carefully to the tenor of this debate, because the state of the pig industry is parlous and perilous. We have heard about the loss of workers and abattoirs and post-Brexit skilled labour shortages. There is a lack of butchers and vets; I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Trees, will spell out why vets are needed in this process.

Against that background, we hear of rising costs: the large increases in the cost of fuel and wheat, and feedstuffs—a major part of a pig’s diet—going up from £150 a tonne to more than £300. There is mounting concern both for the welfare of pigs, which the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, referred to, being kept on the farm for much longer—for too long—and for pig farmers, who are losing money every single week.

In preparing for today, I received a number of briefings for which I am extremely grateful, particularly from Karro, Cranswick, Pilgrim’s and the National Pig Association and its indefatigable chief executive, Dr Zoe Davies. For me, the starting point of the debate today is clearly the excellent report earlier this year from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on such food and labour shortages. I want to pay tribute to its work and in passing, on a sad note, to recognise the role of the then chairman, Neil Parish, who succeeded me as chair of the committee. Its conclusion 15 is absolutely damning:

“The evidence we have taken leaves us in no doubt about the seriousness of the issues facing the food and farming sector caused by labour shortages. These include food security, animal welfare and the mental health of those working in the sector. In contrast, the Government has not demonstrated a strong understanding of these issues, and even on occasion sought to pass the blame onto the sector on the basis of incorrect information about its own immigration system.”


It ends with a plea:

“The Government must radically shift its attitude and work together with the sector to devise solutions that speedily help address the problems it faces.”


I support the conclusions and recommendations it reached.

It is true—and I am sure my noble friend will reiterate it again today—that Defra has provided a package of measures to support the pig industry, such as temporary work visas for pork butchers, private storage aid and a slaughter incentive payment scheme, which helped to increase the number of pigs going through abattoirs, but I argue that these measures are simply not enough and do not address the problem adequately.

As my noble friend the Minister stated in the debate on Monday, repeating the Statement on the national food strategy, the food sector

“is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK—bigger than automotive and aerospace combined.”—[Official Report, 13/6/22; col. 1423.]

I argue that the pig sector is still a very large part of the food and farming sector. It has been of particular significance in North and east Yorkshire in contributing to the rural economy and employment. Sadly, that is less so since the foot and mouth outbreak of 2000 and 2001.

Prior to that, the pig sector was also dramatically affected by the decision in the late 1990s unilaterally to ban sow stalls and tethers, which meant that 50% of pig producers went out of business. More recently, there is great concern that UK standards of production may be further compromised if imports from third countries are permitted that are produced to lower standards than our own.

I reiterate the problems of the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushing up the cost of feed and energy, but I pay tribute to the potential for exports to China, which for the moment have, sadly, been temporarily shut down. I recognise and pay tribute to the earlier work of the now Foreign Secretary, the right honourable Liz Truss, who, when she was Defra Secretary of State, opened up the Chinese market to UK exports and for the first time placed an agricultural attaché in the British embassy in Beijing. Finally, it seemed that we were learning from other countries, such as Denmark, that are brilliant at marketing their produce, not least their pig produce.

At the time, I represented the Malton bacon factory, now called Karro, in the Thirsk and Malton constituency, which contains Filey. This export contract to China massively increased the exports that it was able to provide of pig parts. I kid you not: trotters and such, while British consumers do not deem them very edible, are deemed to be a delicacy and are eaten in huge numbers in China. So I put it to my noble friend that the temporary loss of that trade is keenly felt by the pig sector at this time.

I take this opportunity to ask my noble friend to consider a few urgent measures that the Government could introduce. In particular, I will look at the situation in China. That is compounded by the fact that political conflict in areas where human rights and trade disputes are foremost has resulted in plants being delisted, and we are unable to have them reapproved for export to the Chinese market. All this is massively impacting the ability of processors to pay the price that our farmers require.

Due to the red tape around exporting pig meat to Europe, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, alluded, and the lack of checks and regulation into the UK, the processing industry is facing an unfair situation into Europe, causing cheap European meat to enter the market here and further suppress the price paid for UK pigs. I hope that my noble friend will take the opportunity to look at that.

Cranswick and Pilgrim’s have also opined on this theme, saying:

“The inability to export pigs to China is having a direct impact on the number of pigs that can be processed, and therefore contributes to the remaining backlog”,


to which the right reverend Prelate and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, referred. This is because carcasses exported to China require less skilled butchery, thus allowing for greater numbers to be processed through the sites even with fewer butchers available. They would also like to see the licences to China replaced, but they are very concerned that more than 100 US meat and poultry plants have been granted export licences, demonstrating that approvals are being issued elsewhere but simply not in this country. Perhaps my noble friend could explain why that is the case.

I shall end with the food strategy that was announced on Monday, about which my noble friend stated, when repeating the Statement from the House next door, that

“we are clear that we want people at home and abroad to be lining up to buy British. Our food strategy sets out our intention to consult on ensuring that the public sector sources at least 50% of food locally or produced to higher standards.”—[Official Report, 13/6/22; col. 1424.]

I agree, but how can my noble friend ensure that those contracts for tender will happen? We are banned by the GPA, saying that any public contract of over $130,000 has to be put out to tender. I hope my noble friend will take the opportunity to square that circle and put in place the other measures that others have alluded to, such as better border controls, better communication and a renewed government focus on pig farming.

Tree Health in England

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble and right reverend Lord on securing this debate. Will my noble friend the Minister join me in paying tribute to and recognising the work of Fera at Sand Hutton, York, on tree health? I will refer to it in a moment.

In March 2014, in response to the immediate threat of ash tree dieback, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, which I had the honour to chair, published a report, Tree Health and Plant Biosecurity. Its recommendations and conclusions have stood the test of time. I refer in particular to recommendation 18,

“that ring-fenced funding is provided for long-term research and development work that focuses on preparation for future plant health threats”;

recommendation 20, that Defra set up

“immediate initiatives … to address the lack of relevant expertise in the field of plant health”;

and recommendation 22, to develop resistant strains of ash trees without diverting funds from other, more immediate control measures. These recommendations have stood the test of time and I hope that Defra will continue to honour them.

It is a matter of note, as set out by my noble friend Lady Fookes, that there is a very wide range of potential tree and pest combinations that may be of concern heading towards this country. I welcome that Defra, FERA and others, such as Forest Research, contribute to Defra’s risk register, which helps to prioritise action against pests and diseases posing potential threats to UK species.

I take this opportunity to raise a number of questions with my noble friend the Minister. The practice of exporting ash tree seeds from the UK to, for example, Denmark and Poland—areas where trees subsequently reached high levels of infection in the early 2010s—and then reimporting them as saplings contributed at the time to infection of ash tree disease in this country. Will my noble friend consider whether it would be worth banning this practice outright rather than allowing it to continue, potentially contributing to the spread of the disease? Do we need to tighten up tree inspections at borders to ensure the health of trees and that they are safe to import? I refer to the fact that there is no longer a requirement to pre-notify consignments of high-risk trees, yet all plants for planting are effectively pre-notified via the phytosanitary certificate system. I am told that saplings coming into the UK will have been classified as healthy at the country of origin and will likely face an inspection—but how likely? Should we therefore tighten up inspections at the port of entry?

Developing ash trees that prove resistant to future strains has not been that successful so far. Up to 90% of UK ash trees are still at risk of infection. I understand from the Tree Council’s toolkit that only a third of local authorities have signed up to tree strategies. I believe that this should be increased.

Finally, as my noble friend Lord Caithness asked, what is the current funding for the tree strategy and the prevention and control of tree diseases? Will the Minister ensure that FERA has all the tools that it needs at its disposal to ensure that it can keep controls and innovation up to speed to protect us from future infections and diseases from other parts of the world?

Farmers

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I am absolutely convinced that farming is going to be a profession and a skill that will be much in demand in a hungry world. But the noble Lord is absolutely right: there is uncertainty because of commodity price spikes internationally and because of changes to farming systems. We are doing all we can to skill up farmers for a different world—a different world of support, in which they will be incentivised. We want to make sure that they do so in a way that reflects how young people want to go into an industry and to be skilled. I am happy to work with the noble Lord and other noble Lords on making sure that we understand how we can help farmers at this difficult time.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Can my noble friend explain to the House what specific support will be given to tenant farmers, who risk being ineligible under the new schemes?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, tenant farmers can access the sustainable farming incentive, which is the entry-level scheme. Where there are difficulties between landlord and tenant, we are seeking to iron them out with the committee headed by my noble friend Lady Rock, which has representatives of the Tenant Farmers Association, the CLA and others, to make sure that tenant farmers will be a fundamental part of future British agriculture. It is the only way for many people to get into farming, and we want to see it thrive.