Environment Bill

Bim Afolami Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I rise—and I think that virtually all Members on both sides of the House have risen—to support the principles of the Bill. It is a groundbreaking Bill which will enable us to make long-term environmental improvements between 2025 and 2030, generational improvements that will make our country better, cleaner and safer for all of us for many years to come.

As I read the Bill, I noted ways in which it would improve the lives of my constituents, and I thought that the Minister would be interested to hear about them. The first involves air quality. At last there will be a legally binding target in relation to fine particulate matter, and in my constituency that will help us with the work that I am doing to establish clean air zones around schools. It will also help the fight against the expansion of Luton airport, which would mean much fine particulate matter in some of the most rural parts of my constituency.

The Bill will also improve waste resource management. As any Member who represents a rural constituency will know, fly-tipping is a scourge in rural areas. In my constituency, the work that will be done by local regulators and local authorities will strengthen the fight against it.

The Government clearly envisage a change in our economic model. A more circular economic model will enable us to keep our resources in use for much longer. Not throwing those resources away quickly will benefit all of us in the long run, and will also help our economy. Let me give a shout-out to some young guys in my constituency who have set up a business called @BambuuBrush, which makes 100% biodegradable toothbrushes containing no plastic. I urge every Member to buy them, because they are really good, and they are great for our environment. That is the sort of business that the Bill will strengthen.

The Bill will also improve water management. The chalk streams in my constituency, such as the River Mimram, will benefit from it, because the Government recognise the need to reform abstraction licensing so that we can help chalk streams to improve and thrive. I am working closely with the Ver Valley Society, and I hope to continue to do so over the coming weeks, months and years, with the Government’s help.

The last thing I will say is about nature. Biodiversity net gain as a concept is groundbreaking: it is important and it helps us deliver more housing more sustainably over the long term and helps our wildlife. I think all of us can recognise that, and a very good example again happens to be in my constituency. The Heartwood forest, built by the Woodland Trust just north of the village of Sandridge, is a very good example of the sort of new forest that could be envisaged and helped and strengthened by the measures in the Bill.

In her summing up I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will comment on the climate change conference I held recently in my constituency at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden. It was attended by well over 150 people, including experts and constituents, who came up with some of the very measures that we now find in this Bill.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Time is up.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley]

The hon. Gentleman can be assured that I have regular meetings—each week—with the main stakeholders in the food industry to prepare for no deal. We are looking at all eventualities. Primarily, we are looking at how we can ensure the flow of trade; that is our vital priority.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

5. What steps he is taking to tackle late agri-environment payments.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Michael Gove)]

Yesterday, the Rural Payments Agency announced that it will make payments next month to all those who have been waiting on the historical revenue payments, and therefore every farmer who has been taking part in environmental and countryside stewardship schemes, which deliver important benefits for our environment, will receive the money that they deserve.

[Bim Afolami]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, because many farmers in my constituency have regularly complained to me about the delays in countryside stewardship scheme payments. Will he expand on that answer for those who, in some instances, have had to wait more than 600 days for payments?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is a brilliant advocate for Hertfordshire farmers and indeed for workers across the English countryside. He is absolutely right: past performance has not been good enough. That is why I am so pleased that the RPA’s chief executive, Paul Caldwell, will make sure that all back payments are cleared next month.

Environment and Climate Change

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

First, I congratulate my constituent Maddie Evans from St George’s School, Harpenden, who has managed to make it out of school to come to this debate. I think she is somewhere up in the Gallery, or at least I was told she was. I congratulate her on that, and I hope she will not get into trouble for doing so. [Interruption.] Let us move on.

I do not want to repeat what has already been said in this debate, but it is important that we recognise that no party has a monopoly on virtue on this subject, and most of the speeches so far in the debate have made that clear. There are some things to celebrate: 2018 was a record year for renewable energy, and CO₂ emissions have reduced year on year in every year of the life of this Government. This is the Government who banned microbeads and who have reduced plastic bag usage by over 85%. It is also the Government who support nuclear power, which helps us in our overall aims in this area.

However, I was very taken by the excellent speech by the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). He talked compellingly about the act of political persuasion. We need to take our constituents with us on this journey; people from “planet politics” should not be telling them how they should be taxed more or have their cars taken away. We have to take our constituents with us. How do we do that? We need to show them that their lives can be better and richer—richer in both the social and economic senses—as a result of making the changes towards decarbonising our economy. How do we do that?

I thought I would give some examples of what we are doing in Hitchin and Harpenden. We are installing many more electric car charging points. We are improving our cycle routes, such as the Nickey line, which connects the village of Redbourn with Harpenden. That not only reduces car usage, but makes people fitter and happier through cycling. We are protecting our chalk streams such as the River Mimram. Heartwood forest, a new forest of almost 1,000 hectares, is just north of the village of Sandridge in my constituency and protects biodiversity in Hertfordshire.

I am listing all those things not only because I am a very proud constituency MP but to say that if we can show people how their day-to-day lives can be better and richer as a result of taking into account the climate emergency that we are declaring today, we can persuade them to make the larger, more systemic changes that I think we all realise we need to see.

Waste Incineration: Regulation

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Grogan]

The way I would help local authorities to recycle more would be to tax incinerators, just as landfill is taxed, to give them the money to increase recycling rates. That is being considered by the Treasury at the moment. The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury said recently that the Treasury

“would be willing to consider a future incineration tax once further infrastructure has been put in place to reduce…the amount of plastics that are incinerated, further improving the environment and reducing the amount of throwaway single-use plastics.”––[Official Report, Finance (No. 3) Public Bill Committee, 6 December 2018; c. 299.]

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

On the point about incinerator tax, does the hon. Gentleman agree that in situations where, as in my constituency, there is a proposal for a major incinerator yards outside the constituency boundary, and local people feel they have no ownership to enable them to affect the outcome, whether through their MP or councillors, it is particularly important that any tax that might come in should be shared broadly with neighbouring communities, and not just in the council area where the incinerator is?

[John Grogan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. There are precedents that can be looked at, such as the landfill tax. However, I hope that the Government—any Government—will rapidly bring the matter to a conclusion, to give certainty. Instead of just flirting with the idea of taxation it is now time to act on it.

If the House will indulge me, in my remaining couple of minutes I need to refer to the outstanding application in the Keighley area. I commend the work of Aire Valley Against Incineration, which has campaigned hard on the issue. There is planning permission. It is quite unusual to apply for planning permission and not to apply at the same stage for an environmental permit. I do not know whether the Minister would have a comment to make on that. The application for an environmental permit bears little resemblance to the original planning application. Fifty per cent. more waste is envisaged. There is planning permission for 100,000 tonnes, and an extra 48,000 tonnes is now being added. The layout of the buildings and chimney stack has changed. The nature of the waste that might be burned has changed. The planning committee was told that only residual waste in the form of refuse-derived fuel would be included. Now the Environment Agency is being told that the facility will accept residual, commercial and industrial waste of a similar nature to unsorted municipal solid waste.

There is therefore great concern in the community. We hope that the Environment Agency will do a rigorous job. There is even more concern because of the nature of the company involved—Endless Energy, which is not even a member of the trade association. It is based in the Isle of Man. It has two directors who have been named by the Environment Agency. One of them, Rajinder Singh Chatha, was the controlling force behind Oddbins, which has recently gone into administration. A tax tribunal recently found that he was

“intentionally misleading about some of the explicit lies that the tribunal has found were told to HMRC”.

It decided that he was not a fit and proper person to be allowed to sell or distribute duty suspended alcohol. He is not a fit and proper person to sell alcohol! Despite the pleadings of my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) that this industry should be given a fair chance, these people are cowboys. Until recently cowboys were running Keighley Cougars, our proud rugby league team, but they have now gone. I will be writing to the chair of the Environment Agency to ask how it can possibly trust a man who the tax authorities say cannot be trusted.

Agriculture Bill

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I have listened to much of the debate, and have heard a great many contributions from Members on both sides of the House—but particularly on this side—who are farmers or farmers’ wives, and who have a history of farming in this country. Unfortunately, I have none of those qualifications. What I do have, though, are some constituents who are farmers and who care deeply about the countryside and the environment. They have spent much time with me talking about the issues that they face and about the Bill, particularly over the last couple of weeks. Let me take this opportunity to mention a few of them: Ed Phillips, Tom Williams, Will Dickinson, Stuart Roberts, Jamie Burrows, Richard Pleydell-Bouverie, Paul Cherry and Ian Piggott. They, among many others, have helped me to understand how the good things in the Bill will help them in their lives as farmers over the years to come.

As I see it, there are two major aspects of the Bill for farmers and for farming in the countryside. The first is the way in which we farm, and, in particular, how we manage our land environmentally so that it continues for our children, our grandchildren, and our grandchildren’s children. We must remember that we need to enable our farmers to compete better in a domestic and international market. They have struggled at times, and continue to do so. The Bill does a lot in both those respects.

Clause 1(2) makes clear that the Government will be able to improve the productivity of individual farmers by allowing them to invest in equipment so that they can farm as effectively as possible. The Bill will also facilitate better, more efficient and more transparent supply chains, and that too will help our farmers to engage in the market. Moreover—I do not think that this has been mentioned so far, but perhaps I missed it—the Bill will encourage collaboration among growers, to ensure that we are not subject to certain competition-law restrictions to which we are currently subject under the common agricultural policy. It will help farmers to have a stronger voice in the market, and will help to deal with the problems and distortions in the market that are generated by supermarkets and others.

We have heard a great deal in the debate so far about the way in which we farm and manage our land. That, as well as ensuring that our farmers can compete, is the thrust of the Bill. We often hear about hard Brexit, soft Brexit, Chequers, “chuck Chequers” and a no-deal Brexit, but the Bill gives us a green Brexit. That is a fundamental move that constitutes a real, positive change of direction. Not only farmers or inhabitants of the countryside in my constituency or anywhere else, but everyone in the country can be proud of that, and I commend the Minister and the Secretary of State for their work. The Bill rewards farmers for improving air and water quality, soil health, animal welfare standards and flood prevention. There are all sorts of respects in which it, and public money, will improve how we manage our land, and I think we can all commend that.

However, I urge the Minister and the Secretary of State also to keep in mind that, once the Bill is—hopefully—passed and we proceed to secondary legislation, our farmers will want to know that the Government care deeply about food production. I hope that they will continue to make clear the ways in which we care about it. I know that everyone in the House cares about it, but we need to ensure that our farmers understand that, and help them to understand how the Bill will aid their production. I also urge the Government to explain further their strategic objectives for the national security of food and water, and also to bear in mind that our farmers need to compete with producers throughout the world, often in places without our commitment to high environmental standards.

Overall, this is a good Bill. It will lead to a green Brexit, and we will have great British farms and countryside for generations to come.

[Several hon. Members rose—]