Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, for those people who voted for Brexit to take back control and for sovereignty, this Bill shows what a threadbare bargain they received: it completely sidelines Parliament and gives power into the hands of the often nameless and faceless—not bureaucrats in Europe but equally unknown to the man and woman on the Clapham omnibus—Ministers. Others have made that case far better than I can. I want to concentrate on the environmental impacts of this legislation, which the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, so powerfully described as “bad government”.

As others have said, over half of all the pieces of legislation on the dashboard come down to Defra, a small department in the scheme of things. The opportunity costs are really far too high at a time when our environment here in the UK is so under threat and has been laid bare by the OEP to such a degree, particularly when you consider that environmental legislation is difficult, complex, interconnected and long-term.

Equally, we do not know what the process is. There is no guarantee that some of the very powerful protections that the EU has given us over the last 50 years will remain. We may see more people swimming in sewage on British beaches. The Minister may shake his head, but I pick up the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, who asked: why do we say that Europe has done so much for us? Before the EU, we were known as the dirty man of Europe when it came to beaches. We might be able to do better, but the Bill stops us getting better legislation. I will come on to that in a moment.

Our bees and pollinators may be subject to neonicotinoids, which kill them. We may get cattle-fed beef in British farming, let alone it being imported, if we get rid of the hormone regulations. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, rightly said, the regulations on habitats are critical pieces of legislation which fundamentally protect our wildlife. It is no good for the Government to set brilliant targets to reverse the effects of species decline—I applaud them for doing so—if we do not protect the habitats where those species live, breed and feed. It is absolutely critical.

As I have said, and as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, said so powerfully in her excellent maiden speech, the Bill says that we cannot make legislation better. That applies to workers’ rights and environmental rights, because of the fundamental point in Clause 15 about how profitability is the underlying element. Indeed, the Minister talked about profitability in his opening remarks. So we have no guarantee that we can improve our legislation in the future. I am delighted that the Minister is shaking his head. Perhaps he can give us in his summing-up some firm guarantees that we can find ways within the scope of the Bill to enhance legislation. That would be an important statement if he could make it.

Other noble Lords have made the point that businesses do not want this. I will not repeat the point, but I will add another person who has said that they do not want this legislation: Chris Skidmore, who was commissioned by this Government to look at how we will bring forward the net-zero targets. This Government desperately need to do this, and I know that the Minister is personally very committed to it. Chris Skidmore’s review said that the Government wants consistency in regulation, yet the Bill does exactly the opposite.

I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Bray of Coln. I am sure we may not always agree, but I look forward to speaking to and debating with her as she joins our Environment and Climate Change Committee.

The Bill is putting ideology above Parliament, people and our precious planet. This House must muster all its efforts to oppose it.

Climate Change: Behaviour Change

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The effects of climate change are of course different in different parts of the world. We need to work with developing countries, which we are doing through our extensive programme of international climate change work, to help them to both mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, the Government’s own net-zero strategy is underpinned by six principles, one of which is to motivate and build public acceptance for major change. While the Minister cites the energy-saving website, I challenge him to produce any other examples from this Government of trying to give consumers the advice that they need about heating their homes, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, and about the food they eat and buy and how they travel. During the pandemic, which was a successful example of behaviour change, we saw the importance of sustained, clear communication with the public. Will the Government introduce a public engagement strategy, as the noble Lord has so rightly articulated?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

If the noble Baroness wants another example, the Help for Households campaign provides tailored advice on the three cheapest and quickest ways to save energy in your home, No. 1 being to turn the boiler flow temperature down. We are very clear that we are not going to get into telling people what to eat and how to live their lives. We want to provide them with the options to make greener choices.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, it would be hard to argue that this Queen’s Speech has sufficient urgency to deal with the climate crisis and the nature crisis that we are facing. We need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 50% within the next decade and we are among the most nature-depleted countries in the world.

That is not to say there are not things in this Queen’s Speech that we welcome. It is quite clear that the transport Bill and the energy Bill could bring much-needed green investment to support our net-zero goals, but Members right around this House—the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Bennett, the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Moynihan—have all said that there is a gaping hole in the energy Bill around energy efficiency, helping people to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels at the same time as cutting costs and helping them address the cost of living crisis. It is a major gap. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that the Government seem pathologically determined not to go anywhere near anything to do with behaviour change in order to tackle the climate crisis. The Climate Change Committee has said we cannot get to net zero purely by technological innovation; we have to address behaviour change as well. Therefore, I am sure this is something that Members in this House will wish to address when we see the energy Bill in due course.

I welcome that the UK Infrastructure Bank has a mandate not just to support economic growth but to meet net-zero goals. That is a welcome step, and therefore it is a disappointment that the financial services and markets Bill does not have that dual mandate. There is no alignment, request or even an obligation on the regulator to align the financial services markets with our net-zero and nature goals. That is a major oversight. As is the fact that, somewhere along the line, we seem to have lost the sustainable disclosure regulations, trumpeted loudly by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last year as a means to be ground-breaking globally and bring our companies forward on the move towards net zero. They seem to have disappeared into the ether. That is a very retrograde step which shows that, when push comes to shove with this Government, they will put minimising regulation ahead of meeting net-zero obligations, which is very worrying.

One Bill in particular is not just insufficiently fast-paced but a significant threat to our nature in future—the planning Bill. I am delighted to see that the Government have seen sense and removed the zoning requirements. I credit the Liberal Democrats a little, with our by-election victory in Chesham and Amersham, for helping push them gently that way, but I know that plenty on the Back Benches opposite feel as strongly as many on these Benches do that zoning is completely detrimental to our future as a sustainable country and would have been a developers’ charter. It is good to see that that has disappeared. However, what remains is the rather nebulous phrase “a new approach” to environmental assessments. As I have said, we are one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and it is the regulatory framework in the planning system that has protected so many habitats, wildlife areas, green spaces and trees—coming soon after the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, I ought to get in the word “trees”. Environmental assessments have done so much to protect all those valued habitats and landscapes in the past.

If he were to reply to this point, I am sure the Minister would say, “Of course, you always look on the bleak side.” I think I have due cause to do so when it comes in the same Queen’s Speech that contains the Brexit freedoms Bill, which seeks—for no apparent reason—to rip up the regulations we have had from the European Union in recent decades, 80% of which were environmental. Some of them, such as the habitats directive, have been the cornerstone of environmental protection for our nightingales and bitterns and all our most precious wildlife. Noble Lords can see why I am concerned, with a Queen’s Speech that has both a planning Bill and a Brexit freedoms Bill, about what that might mean for our planning.

In the last couple of seconds before I sit down, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, there is nothing in that Bill on animal welfare, removing foie gras or banning fur. We have a genetic precision technology Bill, which people in this country have consistently said they do not want. In opening, the Minister said the reason for doing this was to ally with other major economies. Our biggest market for food is the European Union, which has banned this completely, so I presume she means America. I for one do not want to take animal welfare lessons from a country which has growth hormones in its meat and chlorine-washes its chicken. We can do better than that.

Behaviour Change for Net Zero

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As we said before, we already have considerable investment in renewables, and there will be a forthcoming energy security strategy in the near future, which will expand on some of those commitments. The noble Lord will be aware that we already have one of the largest offshore wind industries in the world, and extremely ambitious plans for scaling up offshore wind, hydrogen, solar and other forms of renewable energy. We want to continue that.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, the Welsh are shortly to consult on a behaviour change engagement strategy, and the Scottish already have one. So what plans do our Government have to publish a behaviour change engagement strategy, so that everyone can understand the challenges that we face, and take their part in their role for the transition to net zero?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As I mentioned in earlier answers, we have a range of strategies in place to support people to make their green choices. We have the boiler upgrade scheme, which is launching next month with £450 million-worth of support over three years, to help people to make a green choice in their heating. We have the phase-out of petrol and diesel cars by 2030 to help people to make green choices in their transport. We have the jet-zero initiative, to help people to make green choices in flying and transportation. So we think the better approach, rather than trying to dictate people’s behaviour, is to support them to enable them to make green choices.

Green Economy

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Parminter]

To move that this House takes note of the case for investing in, and embracing, a green economy that promotes resource efficiency and zero carbon usage.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, climate change is the greatest threat that humanity faces. Scientists have been warning us for years that disasters of all kinds—wildfires, floods, droughts and storms—will become increasingly common as the planet heats up. Alongside this climate emergency, we face a nature emergency. Last year’s State of Nature report found that one-quarter of UK mammals and nearly half the birds assessed are now at risk of extinction. On a global scale, the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services concluded that nature is being eroded at rates unprecedented in human history. This is not only a tragedy for the wildlife and wild areas that humanity is destroying, but another threat to the economic prosperity, health and well-being of human societies.

If we are to respond effectively to both these emergencies, our whole economy must be re-engineered to a green economy. UK low-carbon businesses already directly employ 400,000 people, but the green economy must move beyond being a subset of the economy at large. This does not mean shrinking the economy. As the Government themselves argue in their Clean Growth Strategy, we can grow the economy while improving environmental standards and meeting our international obligations to reduce carbon emissions. But it does mean accepting that the environment places limits on sustainable economic activity.

To embrace a green economy, we need targets. I am pleased the Government’s Environment Bill commits to setting targets for improving air, water, biodiversity, resource efficiency and waste reduction. Liberal Democrats have argued for more than 10 years for the UK to adopt a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions target; we therefore welcome the Government’s belated conversion to that cause last year.

So far, however, we have seen far too little action to meet the new target. The Government’s announcement of a review of the UK’s transition to a net-zero economy and how it will be funded is welcome, but I cannot understand why this review will not publish its findings until the autumn. The House is aware that the UK is hosting this year’s UN Climate Conference in November. The key task for that conference, and for the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy as its president, will be to raise countries’ ambitions as expressed through their nationally determined contributions, or NDCs. At present, the likely outcome of the NDCs put forward at the Paris conference in 2015 would be to see global temperatures rise by more than three degrees by the end of the century. This would be catastrophic.

The UK, as host of the conference, could best persuade other parties to the Paris Agreement to raise these ambitions by publishing its own NDC—a major economy not just setting an ambitious target, but explaining in detail how it intends to achieve it. How is the need for ambitious targets as soon as possible, to lay the foundations for a successful conference, compatible with the review that will not be published until the autumn? We need to send the signal as soon as possible to encourage other countries to raise their own levels of ambition and give them the time they need to formulate their plans.

Setting targets, however, is only the first step in moving to a green economy. Achieving it will require a massive and complex effort to accelerate the deployment of zero-carbon infrastructure, vehicles and product development, commercialise new technologies and change behaviour. This will require the Government to set a comprehensive framework for action, regulating, taxing and providing financial support to create incentives and send signals to decision-makers, industry, communities and, indeed, households.

So, I ask the Minister, when will all elements of this framework be in place? There have been some welcome recent announcements from the Government: the 2035 end date for the sale of fossil fuel cars and the ending of the self-defeating ban on onshore wind. In yesterday’s Budget, the tax on plastic products not containing at least 30% recycled plastic creates a direct financial incentive to use recycled content in new plastic packaging. This is a step towards doubling our resource productivity by 2050, given that it incentivises refill business model development and gives industry the confidence to invest in UK recycling infrastructure. Indeed, Veolia has announced on the back of this that it is investing in a new £50 million facility in the Midlands to ensure that any plastic bottles and trays used to protect food can be reprocessed and used again.

Other announcements in yesterday’s Budget, however, such as retaining the freeze on fuel duty and building 4,000 miles of new roads suggest that the Government have not grasped the urgency of the task if we are to reach net zero by 2050. When will we see ambitious measures to improve the energy performance of homes and buildings? Not only would this cut emissions, it would reduce household energy bills, tackle fuel poverty and generate employment right around the country. Bluntly, the Government’s performance in this area over the past five years—ending the Green Deal and scrapping the zero-carbon homes standard—has been little short of scandalous.

We need more government action, and quickly, but we also need all government policy, including trade policy, to embrace a green economy. As we rightly ratchet up standards here, it is critical that we apply the same standards to all imports. However, recent government pronouncements suggest that they see Brexit as the opportunity for us to become a buccaneering free trade nation ruthlessly exploiting any openings in the global marketplace and being disdainfully dismissive of the need for a level playing field in standards. That begs the question: why put in the enormous work it will take to create a net zero and environmentally friendly farming economy here if we then just import carbon and contribute to environmental degradation in other countries?

Vital though these and many other steps are, net zero and better environmental protection cannot be achieved by central government alone. Many of the solutions are best tackled by cities, towns and rural communities developing waste reduction strategies and programmes for housing, transport, local energy generation and land use. Innovation often takes place most successfully through constructive partnerships on a local scale, as Liberal Democrat-run local authorities such as Sutton, South Cambridgeshire and Eastleigh have demonstrated.

The Minister will be aware that last week, 10 city council leaders and metropolitan mayors, in an open letter to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, argued against the Government’s proposals to restrict local planning authorities from setting higher energy efficiency standards for dwellings. Why are the Government preventing local councils making faster progress to net zero? What steps do they intend to take to liberate the ingenuity and innovative powers that local communities have to achieve this and the accompanying place-based green jobs?

It is not only government, central and local, that must act. Businesses of all sizes need to incorporate climate impacts in their decisions and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from their supply chains. One topic currently under debate here in the UK and in the EU is the placing of a duty of care—a due diligence obligation—on businesses with regard to commodities whose production is associated with deforestation. I refer to products such as palm oil, soya, beef, cocoa and rubber. The UK is a major importer of these products and our consumption is helping to drive deforestation abroad, with catastrophic impacts for forests, their wildlife and the communities that depend on them, as well as on carbon emissions. All these commodities can be produced sustainably, but voluntary initiatives on the part of the more progressive companies have failed so far to have sufficient impact.

We are familiar with the idea of a due diligence obligation from legislation such as the EU timber regulation, which the Government sensibly transposed into UK law. This applies the concept to illegally sourced timber. Companies are required to have in place a system that enables them to adequately scrutinise their supply chains, including their suppliers and sub- contractors, and take action to ensure that they are not sourcing illegally logged timber. I ask the Minister: will the Government use the opportunity of the Environment Bill, now making its way through the Commons, to introduce a similar obligation with respect to agricultural commodities associated with deforestation?

This is a good example of the type of action that we need to see the Government adopting to tackle both the climate and the nature emergency. In this critical year for the environment, with key international conferences taking place both for climate and for biodiversity, we need the Government to take a lead by setting out their plans for a sustainable economy, sustainable businesses and sustainable communities, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero, protecting landscapes and wildlife, and living in harmony with nature. I can think of no better task for the global Britain that this Government claim to want to lead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Parminter]

I thank the Minister for his response and all noble Lords who have contributed so ably. Like the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, I particularly thank the noble Earl, Lord Selbourne, for contributing, given his imminent retirement from this House. He exemplifies to me everything that is best about this place: he speaks with expertise and has a true zest for life. In a previous debate, he told us about when he was in a Forestry Commission venue near us, in Alice Holt—of course, why would he not be? He then said that he was abseiling down the facilities there; I thought that at his relative age that was just the sort of thing that one should be encouraging. So, many thanks in particular to him.

As the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, said, this is a topic with a very wide waterfront. I am not going to try to sum up all the issues that noble Lords have contributed, but it seems to me that there has been a real agreement about the way ahead; the only area where there are differences seems to be around CCS. I have to share the more pessimistic views of some of my colleagues in the House. People know the way ahead; the question is, are the Government getting there quickly enough?

I want to make two points. We have had a number of contributions from noble Lords about not just what the Government need to do but how we can encourage individual behavioural change. Whether we go down the route of nudging—I am not sure that all members of the public will have the self-restraint of the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin—or take a more directive approach, as we are seeing in response to the Covid-19 emergency, where we are rightly listening to experts and then the Government are taking bold measures, I know which route I would prefer as we tackle this climate emergency.

The Government are going to have to face this pretty soon, because Henry Dimbleby’s report on his food strategy is coming soon. This will address the issue of food waste and what to do about the nation’s diet. The Government need to start thinking seriously about how they want to lead our country as we tackle these great climate and nature emergencies, and how they want to lead from the front.

I also want to highlight an issue raised by many noble Lords: what we do in this country relates to the global context, and what we do here in the UK is important in shaping progress for the whole world. Again, this reinforces the need for urgent action, not only before COP 26 but before the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in June. If we are really going to be a global leader on this, the Government have to start acting quickly to show global leadership; only that way can we tackle both the climate emergency and the nature emergency that we face.

Motion agreed.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

About one-quarter of all EU legislation deals with environmental protection—environmental regulations that have given us safe food, clean rivers and beaches, homes for our wildlife and life support for our beleaguered bees. The Government have committed—through the great repeal Bill, as alluded to in the gracious Speech—only to incorporating EU regulations into UK law wherever practicable. Clearly, by itself that is not unreasonable; practicality is an important test and many EU regulations will not be able to be incorporated exactly as they are. While that may be necessary, though, it will not be sufficient. Will the Government commit that any adjustments to EU environmental laws needed to fit the realities of a post-Brexit UK will provide the same or a higher level of environmental protection as those in the original regulations?

I ask that as there are real concerns that a Government who have consistently seen “red tape” as a burdensome and unnecessary initiative will use this to lower environmental standards. We have to think only of the Government’s attempt to oppose air quality standards; how they had to be brought kicking and screaming to produce a plan to bring emissions within EU limits; the dropping of promised legislation to reform water abstraction licences despite the pressures on water supplies from erratic weather patterns and the massive housebuilding programme; or the evidence in the repeal Bill White Paper, which states that the requirement in the Offshore Petroleum Activities (Conservation of Habitats) Regulations to gain an opinion from the European Commission could be removed altogether. While clearly there may be a need to make changes, the removal of the need to seek an independent opinion is not merely a technical change to allow the conversion of EU law into domestic law, and the use of this by the Government as a case study signals a threat to vital protections.

This is a time of acute anxiety in the countryside. Leaving the EU puts farming and agricultural businesses in huge danger, from potential disastrous tariffs on exports to cuts to the support that underpin farmers’ livelihoods, and from an inability to find workers to harvest produce or care for livestock to new trade deals delivering cheaper products with lower standards for animal health and welfare. It is why Liberal Democrats believe that maintaining membership of the single market is fundamental to ensuring that British farming remains competitive. However, we also need early certainty about future support for farmers to replace the common agricultural policy, and I therefore welcome the commitment in the gracious Speech to legislate on both agricultural and fisheries policies.

We need to ally a new agricultural and land management policy to the provision of public goods: providing safe and healthy food, access to the countryside and building up natural resources such as water and healthy soils, delivering carbon storage and preventing flooding. There is no doubt that there will be pressure to divert the £3 billion that our farmers get annually away from agriculture. I noted that the Minister was careful in his opening remarks to say that the funding would be guaranteed only for the lifetime of this Parliament. Currently, the CAP gives to our farmers the equivalent of the sum of £48 a year for every citizen in Britain. We spent £215 for every citizen on administering central government management alone, so to me it would seem remarkably good value if a new policy could deliver clear public goods while maintaining the support critical to sustain farm businesses, particularly those in environmentally sensitive areas, such as the uplands.