Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

Yes, I am well aware that all politicians can get it wrong at various times, and she was wrong there.

What has happened to the Conservative Party in the meantime? We have a Government who resist onshore wind installations, which would supply cheap, clean energy, while supporting dirty, expensive fracking. Fracking is not the answer: it is a way to pump more fossil fuels into the atmosphere and, in the process, allow a rapacious private company, Cuadrilla, to stifle legitimate, peaceful protest. The Government push a steep VAT increase—from 5% to 20%—for new solar battery systems while coal remains at a discounted rate, and propose a third runway at Heathrow and more roadbuilding. We seem to be in a topsy-turvy world where the Government do not understand what is happening.

At the same time, three children—three climate protesters—from the Albany Academy, are being punished for attending the youth strike for climate protests. Children fighting for their future is not a crime. A brave planet protector, Angie Zelter, has been in court this week for protesting with Extinction Rebellion. She says:

“I cannot really understand why those in power have refused to act. After all, it is their world, too”.


It is noble Lords’ world, too. Many will have children and grandchildren who will be massively affected by this issue. I wish noble Lords over there would be a little quieter. Is that possible?

Fine words are not enough to fight erratic weather patterns that cause disasters in rich and poor countries. They are not enough to clean our rivers and seas of plastic pollution, to clean our polluted air, to save the curlew and the red squirrel up north, and certainly not enough to guarantee supplies of clean water, uncontaminated food and to resist global economic collapse. Can we please have some policies that will make a difference? As the protesters outside are saying, the time is now.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on introducing the order today, including what from our debate are proving challenging targets. I shall restrict my remarks to putting a specific question to my noble friend. Is it not the case that, in the short term, emissions will rise, particularly in the context of hydraulic fracturing for methane gas—an issue raised by other noble Lords? It is generally recognised that it is an inevitable result of fracking that methane will leak out of the natural gas wells at two stages: first, during the well being hydraulically fractured and the methane escaping; and, secondly, during the drill-out following the fracturing, when methane is released into the atmosphere. It is also generally understood that methane can be far more powerful than CO₂ in its role in increasing greenhouse gas emissions, which leads to the inevitable warming of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Will my noble friend take the opportunity in summing up the debate on the statutory instrument this afternoon to explain how we are going to meet our targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and global warming by 2020 without inevitably increasing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming by continuing to pledge to fracture in the immediate future?

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 5th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this very amendment has been debated in the other House and was voted down by 18 votes. I think the Government were shocked by the public outcry at the amendment being lost.

EU law puts an obligation on the Government and devolved Administrations to “pay full regard” to the welfare requirements of animals when Ministers make decisions and implement policies. This means that Ministers have to think carefully about how their decisions might harm animals.

The British Government played a key role in making this law during our term of EU presidency. It has influenced more than 20 pieces of EU law, including the ban on conventional battery cages for chickens and the ban on cosmetics testing on animals. Certain lobby groups claim that protecting the animal sentience laws will be disastrous; for example, that farmers will not be able to control agricultural pests or to go out and shoot pigeons. This simply cannot be true. If it is not the case with the law as exists today, then nothing will change tomorrow if we retain it.

The Government’s stated intention in the White Paper was for the withdrawal Bill to bring all EU law into UK law and then only amend retained EU law in future legislation. I have raised this issue previously and find it rather offensive that the Government would make such a promise and then not honour it.

Ministers have admitted that these animal protections will be lost as the Bill is currently worded. I understand that it is unfortunate to have to make “single issue” amendments to the Bill, but unless and until we are able to fix the Bill properly to retain all EU law, I have little option but to propose this amendment.

As a compromise when the amendment was proposed in the other place, the Government said that a new Bill would be created to include protections relating to animal sentience—I am sure that they will claim today that my amendment is not needed because of that new Bill. However, the Government’s proposals are weaker than the EU law. They have changed the wording in the draft Bill and included a much broader list of exceptions. Ministers would have only to have “regard” rather than “full regard” for animal welfare, and there is a massive loophole whereby a Minister can make decisions harmful to animal welfare whenever there are other matters of public interest.

A legal opinion commissioned by Friends of the Earth concluded that the Government’s proposals make it far too easy for Ministers to ignore animals, and their decisions would be subject to legal challenge only where they were so irrational that no reasonable authority could have come to them. That is a rather broad exception. The Government’s proposals do a very good job of appearing to protect animal rights, while actually reducing them to near zero.

The House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee looked at the Government’s draft animal sentience legislation and tore it to shreds. It basically said that it should be removed from the animal welfare Bill and kicked into the long grass. So it looks likely that, despite the Government’s best intentions, their draft legislation on animal sentience might never see the light of day, let alone reach the statute book. We need to keep this in the withdrawal Bill: it is essential that we retain the existing provisions of EU law. We cannot allow a gap in protections between Brexit day and the point at which the Government are able to provide a suitable animal protection Bill. Ministers have been telling various people that animal sentience is already protected in UK law and that we do not need my amendment. If so, why have the Government drafted their own proposal on the issue? The situation is very simple: this protection does not exist in UK law, it stems from EU law.

Without this amendment to retain Article 13, animals will lose these protections, there being only the vague hope that the Government might one day bring forward a Bill. Once it is retained, we can always go back to it and change it with a future Bill—I would be happy to work with the Government to improve these animal protections—but in the meantime my amendment will keep these animal protections once we leave the EU. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness—I am sure we will have another opportunity to consider the contents of her amendment—and to speak to my own Amendment 212, which inserts a new clause. I hope that I am not responsible for the typo in subsection (3), which refers to, “the Untied Kingdom”. It is not in my interest or that of the country to untie all the arrangements that we have in the United Kingdom.

The purpose of this amendment is to consider,

“border arrangements relating to animal welfare”,

and broaden it out to other themes as well. I am delighted to see my noble friends the Minister for Exiting the European Union and the Minister with responsibility for agriculture in their place to hear these concerns. As of 11 pm on 29 March 2019 the UK becomes a third country and will be treated as such until the new relationship and other arrangements are in place. In her speech on Friday the Prime Minister set out five tests, one of which is that any agreement on our future relationship must protect people’s jobs and security. I wish to consider these remarks in the context, specifically, of the border between Northern Ireland and southern Ireland.

In our debates on Amendment 18 in Committee last week we were told, including by the Minister, that the Bill represents a snapshot. That snapshot would mean that there are no checks at borders between Northern Ireland and southern Ireland because of the common travel area. Indeed, the first scenario that exists today is that the Belfast agreement of 1998 setting up the common travel area means that there are currently no checks on the border between Northern Ireland and southern Ireland. The second scenario assumes that there will have to be a border if we have either a free trade area or, worse still, WTO rules, in which case there will be border checks. I reminded the Committee that that border is 300 miles long.

In preparing for today I came across a rather useful piece which I found, I regret to say, on Twitter, and which I bring to the attention of the Committee. It is by Katy Hayward, whom I believe teaches and lectures at Queen’s University Belfast. She looks at the case of Britain being outside the single market and the customs union, either in a free trade agreement with the EU or under no deal, and it appears that agricultural products would have to be checked at the border. Assuming that animals are moving across the Irish border, I put to the Committee that this cannot be done by technology, either for this category or indeed for food, farming and agricultural products. Instead, there will have to be physical checks and inspections by veterinary surgeons and other enforcement officers. This will also be because we have very high standards of animal welfare, animal health and animal hygiene in this country—which I am immensely proud of—which mean that goods passing across the border will have to meet EU requirements going into Ireland and our requirements coming into the United Kingdom from Ireland.

I draw the Committee’s attention to what Article 5.1 of the draft protocol published by the European Commission last Wednesday, 28 April, says about agricultural trade:

“The provisions of Union law on sanitary and phytosanitary rules”—


please do not ask me what phytosanitary rules are because I have not had time to find out—

“listed in Annex 2.5 to this Protocol shall apply to and in the United Kingdom in respect of Northern Ireland”.

For the other 27 European Union member states, food and other agricultural products coming into Ireland from the UK, whether from Northern Ireland or Great Britain, will be in free circulation within the remaining single market. The remaining 27 member states will demand reassurance on standards, not least because some may seek economic and competitive opportunities from the Irish authorities in these circumstances.

The purpose of the amendment is to seek reassurance from the Minister that the Food Standards Agency will have the staff and resources it needs to ensure that these cross-border arrangements, when in place, will be policed properly.