Hunting Act 2004

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

Does the noble Lord accept that an amendment to the Hunting Act which makes the number of dogs allowed to chase a wild animal limitless will make the Bill unenforceable? It has done that in Scotland, where there have been zero prosecutions for mounted hunts.

[Lord Bates]

I do not think that it will make it unworkable. There has been concern, which has been expressed in representations from farmers, particularly in upland areas, that the current provisions and exemptions for pest control are unworkable, causing them problems and resulting in the loss of livestock as a result of attacks by foxes. So the question was: can they bring it into line with that which is already the case in Scotland? The view was that that was a reasonable request and something which should be done.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, it is a matter of regret that the gracious Speech is bereft of measures to protect and enhance the natural environment. I fully accept that this is not a coalition Government’s programme, which would have contained such measures, but it is disappointing that the Conservative manifesto’s commitments to draw up a 25-year plan to restore the UK’s biodiversity and to keep the public forests and woodlands in trust for the nation are not included.

I do welcome, however, the strong line on securing a global deal on climate change. Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury, in his excellent maiden speech, I agree that a successful outcome to the December meeting in Paris is crucial if we are to address the risks posed by rising average global temperatures. The Government are right to prioritise that international focus, although this parliamentary year will see key national decisions, such as the fifth carbon budget, having to be agreed. Given that the Tory manifesto opposed the introduction of a power sector decarbonisation target—something supported by the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party—I look forward to lively debates over the coming months in this House.

The measure in the gracious Speech that I wish to focus on, however, is the in/out referendum on our membership of the EU. Since the 1970s, Europe has become the core framework in most areas of environmental policy. It covers issues from air to water pollution, from biodiversity conservation to marine protection, the regulation of chemicals, waste and recycling, energy conservation and climate change mitigation, environmental liability and justice. In short, it is the most developed and influential body of environmental law and policy on the global stage. The advantages of an EU-wide approach are clear. Many environmental problems require concerted action because they are essentially cross-border issues, such as air pollution, migratory species or maritime management. Further, where the issues are global, such as climate change mitigation or deforestation, European nations have much greater influence and leverage when working together.

Successive British Governments have rightly taken the view that European policy is the most effective and efficient means of addressing much of the environmental and climate agenda. The UK has exerted a significant influence on the evolution of that policy in terms of the priorities set, the scientific evidence, the policy tools employed and some of the key measures adopted. The EU’s adoption of a 40% cut in greenhouse gas levels by 2030, which is critical in the ongoing climate negotiations, is one example where Britain played a pivotal role.

Of course, with an increasingly diverse group of countries, decisions can be slower and compromises can be uncomfortable. Noble Lords need no further reminder from me, given the excellent reminders from the noble Lords, Lord Plumb and Lord Curry, that implementation and enforcement are constant issues. It is not a perfect Union, but these drawbacks, while they should not be glossed over, are substantially outweighed by the multiple benefits to the environment and, indeed, to the economy. At the RSPCA and the CPRE I saw the value of the birds and habitats directives in protecting nature-rich habitats and species. While a member of this House’s EU Committee in its inquiry into energy policy, I heard how business values the level playing field and reasonable level of policy certainty that the stability of EU policy offers—particularly those companies and utilities investing in large projects with long payback periods, such as renewable energy plants and transmission lines. EU environmental measures have helped to stimulate innovation, for example in the car industry—as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, mentioned earlier in Questions—following the introduction of binding standards on emissions.

The overall impact of EU membership in the environmental domain can be judged to be strongly positive to the UK. With the gracious Speech firing the starting gun on a race towards a possible exit from Europe, it is time now for all those who recognise its value for the environment to speak out loud and clear. It is poignant to say that on a day when we have lost a friend such as Charles Kennedy, who was such a passionate pro-European and committed environmentalist. I hope that the environment movement as a whole will join Members on all sides of this House—it is a great sadness that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, is no longer in his place—who stand up for the environment and are prepared to make the case for Britain to stay in Europe.

Food Security Policy

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter]

My Lords, I, too, thank my colleague, my noble friend Lady Miller, for initiating this debate. As another member of the aforementioned EU Sub-Committee D, I know that we are only too aware of the challenge of providing nutritious food in the face of a growing population, increasing resource constraints and the effects of climate change.

It has been estimated that food accounts for a third of Europe’s greenhouse gas impacts. Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and methane produced from agriculture is key if we are to make food production more sustainable. To that end, I welcome the £12.6 million committed by Defra and the devolved Administrations to research the impacts of greenhouse gases in agriculture. The UK Government need to co-ordinate and work with private and public partners to ensure research and development priorities support sustainable diets, looking at how we can grow crops using less water, delivering greater nutritional benefit and reducing reliance on fertiliser and pesticides. Research priorities must support both agro-ecological farming practices as well as projects for agricultural development based on cutting-edge science. Why? Because GM technology is no silver bullet, as the Foresight report, The Future of Food and Farming, rightly concludes.

Public opinion in the UK remains sceptical of the technology and without public consent products will not be sold in supermarkets. As a representative of the retail industry put it to me recently, “The public will accept GM foods only when they are on a cliff edge with nowhere else to go”. Before any decisions about GM cultivation in the UK are made, two things must happen. First, the UK Government must have the evidence on the environmental impacts and potential for cross-contamination of other farming regimes by GM crops. Two weeks ago, the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee called on the Government to set up an independent body to research, evaluate and report on the potential impacts of GM crops on the environment, farming and global food systems. The committee is right that an initial focus of such research should be on the scope for, and risks of, the co-existence of GM crops with conventional and organic farming regimes. As my noble friend Lord Taverne rightly said, this would enable us to make the science-based decisions required.

Secondly, no decisions about GMOs should be made without clear evidence of public acceptance of GM food. Food is essential to all citizens and they have the right to be part of the decision-making process. Next year marks a decade since the previous Government’s national conversation on GM food. This Government must engage now with a sceptical public in a way that ensures that they are well informed on this issue.

Consumers are central to the issue of food security in another way, too. We need to reduce global consumer demand for and consumption of resource-intensive meats and dairy and move towards a larger share of diets being plant-based. To do that, we need to empower consumers to make positive food choices. In the past decade, the Food Standards Agency created its eatwell plate to promote a healthy, balanced diet, and last year WWF produced the livewell plate, which shows the proportions of different food groups that people should consume to achieve both a sustainable and a healthy diet. Does the Minister agree that, as the right reverend Prelate suggested, this Government have a role in producing public advice and guidance on what to eat to be healthy and sustainable?

What we waste is as important as what we eat. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, rightly highlighted that 40% of food in the UK is wasted. Up to half of that food waste comes from households. Good progress has been made by retailers and local authorities, with government support, to cut that figure, but we need to reuse food that does not need to be thrown away and recycle that which is not fit for consumption. Charities such as FareShare and FoodCycle are working hard to reduce food waste and food poverty by taking surplus food and delivering it as food parcels and warm healthy meals to people in the local community. The Government should do all that they can to promote the redistribution of surplus food to charities.

There needs to be more focus on stopping food waste going to landfill. If placed in landfill, food waste releases methane, which is 21 times more powerful than CO₂. In reviewing the UK’s waste policy, the Government should set a target date for their stated aim of no food waste to landfill. A deadline of 2020 would certainly focus minds. In the mean time, local authorities should be encouraged to increase the separate collection of food waste as well as increasing the resilience of their local food economies.

A number of major towns, cities and counties, including London, Sheffield, Kent and Brighton, are working hard to promote local food security. Bristol City Council, through its food plan, is pioneering in the UK a food systems planning process that supports the development of a resilient food system: safeguarding land for food; increasing urban food production and distribution; protecting key infrastructure for local food supply; supporting community food enterprise models; and safeguarding the diversity of food retail. I would like to see the Government encouraging every city to produce a food plan as a means to increase food resilience, support local food businesses and help more people get involved with food production.

In conclusion, tackling the challenge of delivering food security in the UK will require action at all levels: the Government, local authorities, industry and consumers. An important step to delivering co-ordinated action by all those players would be for the coalition Government to produce their own national food strategy. There is widespread support for such an initiative, including from producer representatives such as the NFU and major retailers. In his reply, I hope that the Minister will comment on whether the Government intend to produce such a strategy and a delivery plan that should focus on both the sustainable production and the sustainable consumption of the UK’s food.

Electricity and Gas (Carbon Emissions and Community Energy Saving) (Amendment) Order 2011

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland)]

My Lords, these are minor and technical amendments that I hope will not delay the Committee for too long, but which have the potential for a profound impact for all small energy suppliers, being pro-growth and pro-competition. The amendments are deregulatory in nature, cutting red tape for smaller companies to enable them to compete on a more equal footing with the large, established suppliers.

The order gives effect to the outcome of a public consultation process earlier this year, and makes changes to the carbon emissions reduction target, CERT, and the community energy saving programme, CESP. Its primary effect is to increase the threshold at which suppliers are obliged to participate in both schemes from 50,000 customers to 250,000 customers. It further ensures that obligated parties under CERT, as is already allowed under CESP, can trade completed qualifying activity to the end of the programme. This will provide suppliers with flexibility for longer in terms of the options they have to meet their binding obligations. I emphasise that increasing the threshold for CERT and CESP does not mean that customers of small suppliers will lose out. Customers of small suppliers can still benefit from CESP and CERT because suppliers are free to promote these schemes to any householder, not only those customers they supply.

I am sure we can all agree on the importance of increasing competition in the domestic retail market. Competition is key to keeping prices as low as possible for consumers. However, with six large, established suppliers currently supplying 99 per cent of all households, it is clear that we need to take action to reduce barriers to market entry and growth so that smaller companies can begin to challenge the dominance of these big players. This measure is one step to enabling just that.

Energy suppliers with fewer than 50,000 domestic energy customers are already exempt from participation in CERT and CESP. This was to help avoid creating a barrier to new entrant suppliers whereby they would need to commit significant investment to set up CERT and CESP environmental programmes while still at an early stage. We recognise that compliance with some of the Government’s environmental and social programmes places a disproportionate burden on small suppliers as it involves significant fixed costs for which suppliers are not compensated.

The current threshold disincentivises suppliers from growing beyond 50,000 customers. Increasing it to 250,000 will ensure that no small suppliers will be required to participate in the final year of CERT and CESP. This will help boost competition without imposing new costs on the larger suppliers, burdening those suppliers’ customers or reducing the effectiveness of the programmes. Boosting competition is essential to drive innovation, improve the service customers receive from their supplier, and to keep prices as low as possible. I commend this order to the Committee.

[Baroness Parminter]

My Lords, on our Benches we certainly support the measures in the order. I have three quick questions for the Minister.

It is important that the Government are seen to support a fair and workable distribution of conditions for suppliers participating in environmental and social schemes. In looking at the options, did the department consider a more tapered introduction, say with a small 50,000-strong block of customers rather than the cliff edge of 250,000? If it was considered, why was that approach not adopted? If it was not, might it be as the Government look at future schemes in the area?

My second question is: what estimates are there of the number of new suppliers that will enter the market as a result of this change in regulation? There is no guarantee that smaller suppliers will mean a reduction in the price of a householder’s bills, but we all know that we need to try to cut energy bills and end the dominance of the larger six.

In that regard—supplementary to it—I say that the Minister might find it hard to answer that question because, even if we change this regulation, that will not be the only barrier that prevents people coming into the market. Many of the other barriers, such as liquidity, are outside the Government’s control. Might the Minister take this opportunity to comment on what negotiations or discussions he has had with Ofgem about some of those other barriers to entry into the market, and about whether it intends to act on them in the near future?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marland, for his introduction. This change is relatively moderate, minor and technical but it is generally welcomed. The issues that I want to raise are similar to those raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. Although I welcome the change, I am not sure how much impact it will have, and I have given some indication to the noble Lord of the questions with which I shall probe him for explanation.

Raising the threshold of CERT and CESP from 50,000 to 250,000 customers will benefit smaller suppliers that have reached, are about to reach or are just over the threshold and would struggle to meet the obligations imposed on them, but how many energy suppliers will that affect? I assume that the department has made some assessment or estimate of how many energy suppliers have reached that level and will benefit from not having to fulfil the obligation under CERT or CESP at this time. Any information that the Minister has on the scale of the impact and an indication of the number of companies or customers would be welcome.

The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, also raised the issue of the impact there could be on bills. Has any assessment been made of the smaller companies, having been relieved of the obligations, passing on the savings that they make to customers? If smaller companies no longer have those obligations, presumably that will assist them with their profit margin. Is it expected that the customer will receive some benefit? My understanding is that, in effect, the larger companies pick up the tab of the obligations not being undertaken in future by smaller companies. Is there any expectation of additional cost being passed on to the customer from the larger companies?

It may be more to do with my lack of computer skills than the DECC website, but I could not find the consultation there. The Minister rightly laughs at me, but I challenge him to find it. I was interested to see whether any responses to the consultation had not been satisfied by the order. The issue that has been raised already is tapering, but I am not sure about it because I could not access the consultation. Did the Government consider tapering the threshold for obligations? Even under the new proposed higher level, which we welcome, there is still an issue about there being an absolute limit at which substantial obligations come into force. Were there representations and responses from the smaller suppliers about a more gradual and graduated approach? If so, were they considered by the Government and what was their reason for rejecting any such taper?

The impact assessment commented on the costs. Is there any impact on carbon or is this measure carbon- neutral? Paragraph 3 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which is headed: “Matters of Special Interest to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments”, made the point that there was a delay in the Government announcing their intention to pursue this order change —that was announced in June—because they were considering wider possible changes to the CERT scheme. They are ongoing and are being pursued at the same time as the amendments presented here because they are under strict time constraints. If the Minister could expand on that and say anything about the changes that the Government are looking to introduce, that would be helpful.

Finally, I welcome the Minister’s comments about how essential it is to have market reform if we are to do anything to benefit consumers and assist them with energy prices. As he said, this is just one step. It is a small step but it is welcome. If he can reassure me as regards the points that I have raised, I would be grateful.

Health: Animal Testing

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Tuesday 4th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

The noble Lord’s question says it in itself: the important thing is to get the message over to the public that it is very necessary that we do animal research where it is appropriate and that we make the proper leaps forward as are necessary. The Government will do their bit but we hope that everyone in the world of academe, the universities and elsewhere, will do their bit to make it clear that we will do what is necessary and that necessary research is being done.

[Baroness Parminter]

The new EU directive controlling animal experimentation sets standards for laboratory animals which are significantly lower than those that we have presently in the UK. Can the Minister confirm that when it is implemented in the UK our high standards for laboratory animals will not be dropped, given the impact that that would have on animal welfare, on science and on public confidence in scientific experimentation?

[Lord Henley]

I can give an absolute and categorical assurance that we will not be dropping our standards in any way whatever.