Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Worthington and Lord Judd

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Worthington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is my pleasure to speak to Amendment 73 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and Amendment 274. I also strongly support the other amendments in this group.

Like many, I have been listening to the many varied and fascinating debates that have surrounded the Bill in Committee. I am holding myself back and contributing only to this group of amendments. This is partly because, while this is not my area of expertise, I look at this through the lens of the need for us to take a whole-economy approach to climate change. This is therefore the group on which I thought I had the most relevant comments to make. I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I speak for a little longer than others have on this group, just to articulate why it is so fundamental to the Bill’s success that we address climate change front and centre in the Bill.

The Agriculture Bill is essentially a framework piece of legislation, but the collection of measures in it lack an overriding purpose and an overriding legislative goal for which we can hold the Government to account. The function of moving from the current system of the common agricultural policy to a new set of parameters and rules that the UK can set for itself is welcome. We all know that the current system of subsidies for agriculture has had many impacts, many of them environmental but many of them social, and this has affected how we interact with our land. We now have an opportunity to set a new path, and the Government should be commended for the policy statements they have made and the signals they have given about this new change in direction. That is very timely and will be very significant for generations to come.

With that, I ask the Minister if the Government could seriously consider adding a clause to the Bill that would make it perfectly clear that it is part of an endeavour to realign our agricultural and food sector with that goal of being climate-compatible and net zero by 2050. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has eloquently made the point that this sector, more than any other, will feel the impact of a disturbed climate—a climate that can no longer be predicted, where extreme weather events impact our ability to grow food and sustain our land in the way that we have been accustomed to. It is imperative that we take action in the long term to secure a stable climate.

The other interesting fact about agriculture and food is that both are a source of climate change emissions and greenhouse gases but also a significant sink—a way of absorbing more of the excess greenhouse gases back into our soils, our forestry and our land. So the sector is in a unique position, both to reduce its own impact and to increase its ability to be a central part of the solution for getting to net zero. For those reasons, it is imperative that we make that clear in the objectives of the Bill. Clause 1 says that future payments will be tied to environmental sustainability, but that is not precise or clear enough to give the Bill the direction of travel that it really needs or to give clarity about the purpose of the Bill and this change of direction.

At the moment, when we think about tackling climate change, one of the most politically difficult issues is that of who will pay for taking actions that at the moment may cost more but that we know will be beneficial for future generations. With agriculture, we are in a unique position in that we already see large sums of public money going into the sector. There is no need to discuss how we introduce a carbon price and no need to talk about taxation. We have a system that already sees a large amount of money from taxpayers flowing into the sector. It is fully understood that that can continue through a transition period, but we will be attaching a requirement that those payments deliver a public good. That public good, as defined through the lens of climate change, would see large amounts of money being given to farmers who found innovative ways and solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance our ability to store carbon in our land.

This is a huge and exciting opportunity for the Government. We have set out for this net-zero target, we have legislated for it and we have led the world in doing so, but now we really need to demonstrate that we understand what that means and we know what policies we will need to get us there. The more cost-effective those policies are, the more we can point to our success and see other countries follow that path. We have an opportunity with this redirection of public money to demonstrate that it is eminently possible and hugely exciting to achieve net zero in our agriculture, food and forestry sectors at an accelerated pace.

If the Government are able to craft their own version of this group of amendments, clearly setting out that it is a core aim and we will see net-zero provided through this sector, it will be a fantastic opportunity to provide clarity for the sector. As we approach the next conference of parties of the UNFCCC in Glasgow next year, which we are hosting, we will also be able to point to our own domestic legislation to show that when we talk about the need to drastically reduce emissions and stabilise the climate, we are not just talking about it but doing it. We are putting in place the sectoral policies and sectoral laws that will drive investment.

This will be an opportunity. There is no doubt in my mind that, as we transition from the current subsidy system to a new system, it will be greatly beneficial to have a carbon target for the sector because it will draw in investment from other parts of the economy. If we wish to reduce our taxpayers’ subsidy into the sector, what better way than to do so through private sector investment paying for the public good of carbon reduction, carbon removal and carbon abatement in this sector? It will relieve pressure on the public purse and enable money to flow into the sector from those sectors finding it harder to abate. That is a wonderful opportunity, and with a bit of thought we can make that explicit in the Bill.

To summarise, this group of amendments deserves careful attention from the Government. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply, and we hope to see the Government take this on and bring something forward. This is not just about climate change; it is an opportunity to create clarity and drive inward investment and private money into the sector. It is an opportunity for the UK to develop a set of framework legislation that we can be duly proud of and which we can announce and discuss in the global context in Glasgow next year.

I, too, pay tribute to the NFU and all the farmers who are potentially running ahead of many in government and many commentators in acknowledging that this can be done and that it is an exciting opportunity. They believe that we can get to net zero in this sector earlier than 2050. We should be giving them legislation that makes it completely clear that we as a society, as a whole, are backing them in that and want to create the right framework to enable them to do it.

I will not detain the House any longer, but I hope I have conveyed my enthusiasm for this group of amendments. It would be fantastic to see a version of any of the four of them in the Bill in its next stage. I very much look forward to the reply from the Front Bench.

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this is a very important amendment. It is a rather historic occasion, because I cannot recall any other occasion on which I have associated myself with the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, politically, but I completely associate myself with him on this occasion. For me it is quite simple: if we will the ends, we have to will the means. It is clear that agriculture not only contributes to the problem but could be doing far more to help solve the problem. We all have to think, wherever we are in society, how we can change our ways in order to play a practical part in this urgent priority for the survival of the human race. I therefore commend the amendment and am very glad to see the other amendments in the group addressing ways in which agriculture can contribute towards the objective—not just how it can restrain itself, but how it can contribute. This is a practical priority, and I hope the Government take it very seriously.

Infrastructure Planning (Radioactive Waste Geological Disposal Facilities) Order 2015

Debate between Baroness Worthington and Lord Judd

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

I appreciate the noble Baroness’s point about getting a debate going on radiation, but we should put this in context. I, like many others, am not from Cumbria, but historically those of us in my part of the United Kingdom saw, over several decades, the flushing of material into the Irish Sea that today would be a criminal offence. We were assured in those days that the levels were perfectly okay and that neither fish nor other wildlife would be affected. However, by today’s standards, such activity would be regarded as outrageous. This is all a continuum. I support what the noble Baroness says, but we have to see where we came from. What I am saying is that, within living memory, vast amounts of toxic material were flushed into the sea, so let us at least take comfort from the fact that that has stopped.

[Lord Judd]

Would the noble Lord agree, on reconsidering what he has said, that this is a matter not of decades but of centuries?

[Baroness Worthington]

It is actually a matter of millennia, if you want to put nuclear into its proper context. I do not dispute that the pendulum of regulatory approaches to nuclear swings. I have visited Oak Ridge, the home of nuclear fission research, where nuclear gases used to be vented into the woods because people did not perceive it to be a risk—indeed, there is something to be said for the view that that was not a very risky activity. We have swung back towards very tight regulation for good reason, but that is not to say that that has to be set in stone and that our approach today is right—there is a constantly shifting understanding. I said that background radiation is natural to make the basic point that we as human beings have evolved in a radioactive environment. People are not always aware of that.

This is about getting back to the basics and having another look at the physics of nuclear, so that we can perhaps defuse some of the fears. There is probably no riskier way of storing nuclear waste—if there is indeed a large risk—than the way we use today. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for pointing out that we seem to be speaking as if there is no waste and that we are suddenly creating waste to put into a depository. The waste exists and it sits around the country, although it is correct to say that a large proportion sits in Sellafield. We need to find a solution, but that is not to say that this is the greatest risk that man has ever faced. The risk is manageable and engineered and we should see it in that context.

I will not detain the Committee any longer. I am grateful for the debate. I reiterate my request from our last debate that we should begin to have a national public conversation about nuclear and the risks involved. As other noble Lords have said, the issue has to be seen in the context of the much broader environmental risks that we face. There is an inherent logic behind the regulations. This is a nationally significant project and, although we do not wish local involvement to be excluded, we need to get the balance right, so we support the regulations.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Worthington and Lord Judd

Monday 10th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I have been glad to put my name to this amendment, which is very wise and prudent. It has been suggested in recent years that the interpretation of welfare capitalism has changed. The original concept was that capitalism had a social responsibility that it should discharge for the well-being of society as a whole. It seems that quite a lot of people have come to believe that perhaps welfare capitalism is about ensuring that while wealth generation and profit is privatised, risk is nationalised and is the responsibility of the taxpayer. The point in the amendment that is particularly important in this context is what happens in the case of insolvency, when all the best predictions can be blown away in the wind in the chaos that follows.

If a scheme is put forward and is being properly costed, the cost of dealing with potential damage, closure or the consequences of that is an essential element in the calculations. We are concentrating today on this new and exciting aspect of shale development but we are beginning to see infrastructure across the country in connection with power generation and its distribution that is no longer required. We need to be very careful that we are ensuring that any adverse results of that are not left just for the taxpayer to settle, but that they are the responsibility of the people who, while they are operating, are receiving the profits that come from that.

[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for tabling his amendment and for continuing the discussion that we started in Committee. I am sympathetic to the intention behind these amendments and am particularly interested in the aspect of liability arising from orphaned sites. We are talking about a potential new industry that will see a large number of distributed sites developed. We may well see smaller companies that perhaps do not have the assets or deep pockets of more traditional extractive companies, and there would be considerable potential for orphaned sites. I am very interested to hear from the Minister how we would address any liability arising from such orphaned sites.

I think my noble friend Lord Whitty said that he is seeking for the Government to demonstrate foresight. It strikes me that the Government are demonstrating foresight in some respects of fracking, in imagining the future benefits and future economic wealth that will come. Over the weekend, we even heard comments about the imagined spending of all this great tax revenue. We shall debate that aspect shortly. That foresight is possible, but perhaps we should apply it in the slightly more realistic context of learning from previous experiences of extractive industries in trying to plan for what happens if everything does not go according to plan. I would have thought that companies would be able to take out insurance against some of these liabilities. Again, I would be interested to hear from the Minister about what type of insurance she might expect companies to undertake and what liabilities would be insured. We are entering uncharted territory in the types of company, the types of project and their distribution across the country. It is right that we should proceed with caution.

There is a lot of merit in the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Whitty. He started by saying that he was trying to help out the Government. A number of us have tried to help out the Government during tonight’s debate. However, I suspect that the Government are not listening and do not want to be helped out, but there we are. I look forward to the comments from the Minister in response to this amendment.