Convention on Biodiversity COP15: Outcomes

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. That is why it was important that when the Prime Minister went to Sharm el-Sheikh for COP27, building on our COP26 presidency where we included nature as a full day of the climate change conference, he referred specifically to the fact that £3 billion of the £11 billion total climate financing will be dedicated to nature. He recognises how critical it is, and we will continue to endeavour to improve the natural environment not only in this country, but around the world.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The agreement on a framework that commits to halting and reversing biodiversity loss is of course very welcome. However, it is a bit staggering that the Government’s own environment targets, smuggled out late last week, will fail to deliver on that goal. They do not even include goals to improve the condition of protected nature sites or overall water quality. As a priority, will the right hon. Lady align the Environment Act 2021 with the new commitments made in Montreal? Specifically, with just 38% of SSSIs and 14% of rivers in good condition, will she now commit to consulting on and setting those crucial targets next year?

[Dr Coffey]

The hon. Lady is right to congratulate the world on recognising that and the UK on its role in making sure that nature and restoration were included in the text—and if she did not mention our role, I can assure her that that was the reason it was put back into the text early this morning. The indicators we consulted on set out very clearly that the apex indicator was species abundance. There are a number of other targets that will aim towards that, and by achieving that, I am confident that we will achieve some of the other targets to which she refers, including of course increasing the number of hectares of habitat for nature in this country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mark Spencer)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. She will be aware that planning policy is a matter for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and solar policy is a matter for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but she should be assured that my officials are working closely with those Departments to ensure that we get the right balance between boosting our food production and delivering long-term energy security.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Can the Secretary of State guarantee that the outstanding statutory deadlines we have spoken about on air, water and so forth will be published before COP15, so that we can lead by example? If she cannot guarantee that, does she agree that that bodes incredibly ill for the deadlines in the utterly misguided and reckless Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill? If we cannot meet these deadlines, how will we meet those?

[Dr Coffey]

I completely understand why Members of the House are concerned that the Government have not come forward with the secondary legislation as set out in primary legislation, and I have already expressed my disappointment. I assure the hon. Lady that we are working at pace to get those targets in place. I am conscious that we are still working on certain aspects of that, but I hope to try to get them done as quickly as possible.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

I will speak to amendment 12; I hope to be commendably brief. A fundamental principle of veterinary science is that procedures should be carried out in the interests of the animal and animal welfare. Many of the proposals brought forward will, I believe, be in the interests of animal welfare, and I have no problem with them whatever. I simply seek an assurance from the Minister that, if it becomes apparent that a change that is to be made would have an adverse effect on animal welfare, no licence for the change would be granted. That is all I ask for.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to follow the important speech by the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), with which I agreed. As I said on Second Reading, this is a flawed Bill; it is unclear and it is not robust, and legal experts have said that it is staggeringly imprecise. Nothing that has happened since Second Reading has caused me to change my mind, so I have tabled a number of amendments, and welcome the opportunity to speak to them, starting with amendments 1 and 2, which would remove animals from the Bill’s scope and title. For the record, it is my intention to press amendment 1 to a vote.

As I say, amendment 1 would remove animals from the scope of the Bill, but the intention is not, as the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) suggested, to kick the can down the road; I genuinely believe that we need more time to look more carefully at what kind of regulatory framework we need, so that we can make the most of potential benefits, but also safeguard ourselves against risk. I acknowledge that there may well be potential benefits to the legislation, but I hope that others will acknowledge that there may well be serious risks, and I do not think that the work has been done to get the balance right in the Bill. We need more safeguards that are commensurate with the risks. That is why—for the moment, at least—we should remove animals from its scope. If the Government wish to legislate on gene editing of animals, they need to give much more thought to defining the circumstances in which that is acceptable, and to provide much more detail on how it will be regulated.

I recognise that clauses 10 to 15 are an attempt to prevent the significant risks that are associated with precision breeding, but I do not think that those measures are sufficient. When we debated the animal sentience legislation, the Government were prepared to accept that there should be a mechanism, via the animal welfare hub, through which the impact of animal sentience legislation could be properly considered by independent experts with the relevant skills. There is an urgent need for something similar that allows us to judge whether genetic engineering will be harmful to animals, how it can be better regulated, and how that can be done transparently. The model in clause 11, however, gives the person applying for authorisation and the Secretary of State far too much authority and responsibility, and the proposed animal welfare advisory body is given only a weak, secondary, advisory role. I worry that that suggests that welfare considerations will carry very limited weight in decision making.

It is also of concern that, under the Bill, the full regulatory system is supposed to be set through secondary legislation. That vastly reduces the scope for vital parliamentary scrutiny on issues of animal welfare and gene editing.

The claims made for gene editing mainly focus on increasing productivity and disease resistance. The Government argue that gene editing is simply an extension of traditional breeding, such as selective breeding, but is more precise and efficient. I assume that is intended to be reassuring, but over the last 50 years selective breeding has itself caused substantial health and welfare problems in most of the main farmed species. We have already heard about the concerns about broiler chickens who have been bred to grow so quickly that many suffer from leg disorders, while others succumb to heart disease. Hens have been bred to lay over 300 eggs a year. They have to draw on their own bone calcium to produce egg shells. This results in osteoporosis, leaving them susceptible to bone fracture. A cow producing milk for her calf would normally produce just over 1,000 litres in her 10-month lactation. Many of today’s dairy cows have been bred to produce 10,000, or even 11,000 or 12,000 litres of milk a year. That contributes, unsurprisingly, to many suffering from lameness, mastitis and reproductive disorders, and the animals live with those welfare problems for a substantial part of their lives.

Gene editing for even faster growth and higher yields would exacerbate the suffering caused by selective breeding. I believe it would be unethical to permit it for increased productivity, and it simply should not be necessary for disease resistance. The proper way to reduce diseases that are generated by keeping animals in poor conditions is to move instead to health-oriented farming systems, in which good health is inherent in the farming methods. Indeed, gene editing could lead to animals being kept in even more crowded and stressful conditions, as they would be resistant to the disease risks that are inherent in those conditions.

I cannot be the only Member who has been lobbied hard to remove animals from the Bill’s scope. I urge the Government to listen to the public and look again at this. They should return the legislation on this subject only once they have given much more detailed consideration to the issues that I have raised. Another of those issues is that nobody involved in drafting this legislation could, I imagine, have honestly envisaged it applying to, for example, domestic cats and dogs. Yet, without clarification, that is exactly what the current drafting could result in.

Our constituents want to be confident that there is consistency in the Government’s ambition for improving animal welfare. They want to know that gene editing cannot be used as some kind of techno-fix and that it will not entrench intensive farming, with its inherent environmental and animal welfare shortcomings. If my amendments are a step too far, I would urge Ministers, as a form of compromise, to bring forward an amendment of their own in the other place that will at the very least limit the scope much more explicitly to farmed animals. In the meantime, my amendments 1 and 2 would remove animals from the scope of the Bill.

Let me move on briefly to a few other amendments in my name. New clause 7 is about informing consumers about what they are buying. It would require the Secretary of State to make regulations on the labelling of this new class of GMO and to do so in consultation with key named stakeholders. Clear labelling is something that we know consumers want. The Food Standards Agency found that:

“Consumers wanted transparent labelling…if genome edited foods reach the UK market.”

My new clause does not prescribe what form that labelling should take; the groups and organisations that it lists for consultation are much better placed to determine that. They include the FSA, food producers, retailers, consumers and anyone else the Government think appropriate. In other words, it would allow for co-operative, sensible, well-informed approaches. I hope Members will back new clause 7 on that basis. Finally, labelling—in either the form set out in my clause or some other form—could represent a step towards resolving the differences with the devolved Governments, which we have already heard about, for whom, for example, alignment with EU standards is a major priority and a current source of disagreement with Westminster.

Amendments 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are a group designed to ensure that regulation is sufficiently robust when it comes to authorising activities involving so-called precision-bred organisms. They seek to convert the powers afforded to the Secretary of State into requirements. In addition, amendment 8, alongside amendment 7, would require obligations relating to supply chain traceability. Without amendment 7, the Bill fails to mandate any such traceability for the new category of precision-bred organisms.

That would be inconsistent with the current long-standing requirement for mandatory traceability for GMOs and would create significant trade barriers for organic businesses in the UK wanting to export products to, for example, the EU or Northern Ireland. The UK organic sector is worth £3 billion, so it makes no economic sense not to amend the Bill and ensure mandatory supply chain traceability. Traceability of genetically engineered organisms is also essential to support recall in the event that novel allergens or toxins, or other safety issues emerge after release.

I believe the Bill is badly conceived and badly drafted. My amendments are all designed with one of two things in mind: to bring either clarity or robustness to the regulatory framework for precision-bred organisms. It is with that intention that I lent my name to a number of other amendments, on behalf of the official Opposition in particular. I hope that they might support mine in the same spirit.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who is a passionate advocate for the environment and animal welfare issues.

I firmly believe that this Bill is an important piece of legislation. I first declare an interest: as a veterinary surgeon, I am passionate about animal health and welfare. I also represent Penrith and The Border, a huge rural constituency with a huge farming footprint. We have the most fantastic farmers in Cumbria, and across the UK, who farm to the highest animal welfare standards. I firmly believe that we do not have anything to fear from this legislation, but I do understand some of the concerns that have been raised, and I will speak to some of the amendments and new clauses.

It is important to reaffirm from the outset that this Bill is to do with gene editing, which is very different from genetic modification, where genetic material from an exogenous species is potentially inserted. That is not the case with what this Bill is concerned with. Gene editing is very different from genetic modification. When the Government move forward with this Bill, it is important that they keep articulating and communicating that to the public, to try to alleviate some of those concerns.

I firmly believe that there are huge benefits to be gained from this legislation to animals, plants, the environment and the human race. I respectfully disagree with amendment 1, because I firmly believe that it is important that animals are included within the scope of the legislation. I will try to articulate why I believe that. There will be huge benefits to animal health and welfare from the development of animals and potentially birds that have more resistance to diseases, as colleagues have touched on. As a veterinary surgeon, I firmly believe that is a good cause, because if we can reduce the incidence of disease, that is an animal health and welfare gain.

We have talked about birds becoming more resistant to avian flu, and we have seen how this country is being ravaged at the moment by avian influenza. Technology that helps us to mitigate that is to be welcomed. In addition, in the pig world, pigs with resistance to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, PRRS, will be another good development. Anything that can reduce morbidity and mortality in the animal world is something to be welcomed. As some Members have touched on in interventions, ultimately that could also lead to a reduction in the use of veterinary medicines. That will be of benefit to the animals, but it will also be of indirect benefit to humans. If we can reduce the amount of antimicrobials used, that will mitigate the blight of antimicrobial resistance that is affecting the whole world. I firmly believe that there are indirect benefits to the human race as well.

As I have touched on, we are seeing widespread cases of avian flu across the UK, which leads me to stress to the new ministerial team that we really need DEFRA to adequately fund the Animal and Plant Health Agency. Certainly, the Weybridge headquarters in Surrey is in urgent need of refurbishment, which has been estimated at £2.8 billion. The Public Accounts Committee has looked at that, as has the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. I really push the Government to invest in the APHA to try to prevent diseases and outbreaks in the future. That is very important.

I firmly welcome anything that can reduce morbidity and mortality in farming. I speak as a vet with a lot of first-hand experience through the patients I have treated, but also through my experiences in the foot and mouth crisis of 2001. The trauma that infectious diseases can create for rural communities is something that we are still living with in Cumbria and other parts of the UK. When a farmer who is farming his or her stock gets the vets involved to treat disease, that has a toll on the vets and on the farmer. No one working there wants to see animals suffering from disease.

I firmly believe that if we can improve animal health and welfare with such technology, that will have an indirect benefit on human mental health. We on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee have looked at that in our rural mental health inquiry. If we reduce the amount of medicines, that will help animals and people.

Sewage Pollution

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if he will make a statement on sewage outflows into our beautiful waterways and on our beaches.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

As a Cornish MP, I have long been aware of the challenges created for our aquatic environment by storm overflows. When I became Secretary of State in February 2020, I instructed officials to change the strategic policy statement for Ofwat to give the issue greater priority.

This is the first Government to set a clear requirement for water companies to reduce the harm caused by sewage discharges: we have set that in law through the Environment Act 2021. We are taking action now on a scale never seen before. Water companies are investing £3.1 billion now to deliver 800 storm overflow improvements across England by 2025. This will deliver an average 25% reduction in discharges by 2025.

We have also increased monitoring. In 2016, only 5% of storm overflows were monitored. Following the action of this Government, almost 90% are now monitored, and by next year 100% of all storm overflows will be required to have monitors fitted. This new information has allowed our regulators to take action against water companies. The Environment Agency and Ofwat have launched the largest criminal and civil investigations into water companies ever, at more than 2,200 treatment works, following the improvements that we have made to monitoring data. That follows 54 prosecutions against water companies since 2015, securing fines of nearly £140 million.

Water companies should consider themselves on notice. We will not let them get away with illegal activity. Where permits are breached, we are taking action and bringing prosecutions. Under our landmark Environment Act, we have also made it a legal requirement for companies to provide discharge data to the Environment Agency and make it available to the public in near real time: within an hour. This is what Conservative Members have voted for: an Environment Act that will clean up our rivers and restore our water environment; that has increased monitoring and strengthened accountability; and that adds tough new duties to tackle sewage overflows for the first time.

The Government have also been clear that companies cannot profit from environmental damage, so we have provided new powers to Ofwat under the Environment Act to modify water company licence conditions. Ofwat is currently consulting on proposals that will enable it to take enforcement action against companies that do not link dividend payments to their environmental performance or that are failing to be transparent about their dividend payouts.

Yesterday, I laid before Parliament the storm overflows discharge reduction plan. The plan will start the largest investment in infrastructure ever undertaken by the water industry: an estimated £56 billion of capital investment over the next 25 years. It sets strict new targets for water companies to reduce sewage discharges. Designated bathing waters will be the first sites to see change. By 2035, water companies must ensure that overflows affecting designated bathing waters meet strict standards to protect public health. We will also see significant reductions in discharges at 75% of high-priority sites.

Water is one of our most precious commodities. Water companies must clean up their act and bring these harmful discharges to an end. I commend our storm overflow report, which was published yesterday, to the House.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the Secretary of State for his response, but I am utterly staggered by his complacency. Following the news over the summer that raw sewage was being pumped into our waterways and along our beautiful beaches, I have received so many messages from constituents who are horrified that water companies are polluting in such a revolting way. Does the Secretary of State recognise that, after 12 years, people rightly hold his Government responsible for this risk to human and environmental health, and for allowing the twin failures of weak regulation and Government cuts, together with the continuation of a privatisation process that has lined the pockets of shareholders at the expense of investment in the infrastructure that we so desperately need?

Where is the urgency from Ministers? We have a so-called plan that allows water companies to continue polluting until 2035 in areas of significant importance to human and ecological health and until 2050 elsewhere, which means sanctioning nearly 30 more years of pollution. Is that genuinely what the Secretary of State considers to be an urgent response? Will he strengthen it to a 90% reduction in storm overflows by 2030 at the latest? Worse still, it was previously illegal for water companies to discharge sewage when there was no heavy rainfall, but under the Government’s new plan, that is now permitted until 2050. Why are this Government going backwards?

Our soon-to-be Prime Minister has claimed that she will “deliver, deliver, deliver”, but all that she did deliver when she was Environment Secretary were devastating cuts to the Environment Agency. Has the Secretary of State asked whether she regrets those cuts, and will the Government reverse them? Is the Secretary of State proud of a situation in which 24% of sewage overflow pipes at popular resorts have monitors that are faulty, or do not have monitors at all? Since privatisation in 1991, water companies have made a staggering £50 billion in dividends for their shareholders. Why does the Secretary of State’s plan include imposing costs on customers to pay for improvements—a bill that the companies themselves should be footing?

Coastal communities are still recovering from the pandemic. Local beaches are at the heart of these communities, and they are critical to our constituents’ wellbeing as well as to local economies. However, one local firm in Brighton told me that on the August bank holiday weekend, when it would normally see a 30% increase in business, it saw a 70% decrease. What compensation will there be for such businesses?

Will the Secretary of State now cut the crap, commit himself to strengthening the Government’s plan, and bring our failing system back into public hands, which is where it belongs?

Protecting and Restoring Nature: COP15 and Beyond

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered protecting and restoring nature at COP15 and beyond.

I am delighted to open today’s debate and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for its support in securing this important debate. I also welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) to his new post. I look forward to working with him and hope he will be a champion for nature in the most crucial of years.

COP15 is the most significant biodiversity summit in a decade. As we all know, it has been delayed multiple times, because of the covid-19 pandemic, and it is now due to take place in Montreal from 5 to 17 December, while China still retains the presidency. If the negotiating process has been slowed down, environmental decline most certainly has not. Deforestation in the Amazon, for example, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, has now reached a six-year high. Recent satellite observation suggests that it could fast be approaching a tipping point beyond which the forest could be lost in its entirety.

The sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from working group II showed that climate change is already causing what it calls

“dangerous and widespread disruption in nature.”

A new UN report published in April warned that human activities have already altered 70% of the Earth’s land surface, degrading up to 40% of it. The truth is that our only home is not only on fire, but being bulldozed before our very eyes. That is why COP15 must agree a framework not just to halt biodiversity loss by 2030, but to reverse it. Our world desperately needs a nature-positive decade, so that by 2030 species and ecosystems are on a measurable path to recovery and biodiversity loss has started to be reversed.

By now, we all know the facts that, globally, 1 million species are at risk of extinction, and that the UK has lost, or I should say destroyed, almost half of its biodiversity since the industrial revolution, more than any other G7 country. A report published just this week by the Environment Agency showed that a quarter of mammals in England and almost a fifth of UK plants are now threatened with extinction.

Let me focus very briefly on what that actually means, because it is very easy to stand here and quote global or national statistics. I want to see it through the lens of one of my favourite species, which is the swift. Since 1995, we have seen a decline of more than a half in the population of that bird. As the Minister may know, in December they were added to the UK’s red list of endangered birds along with the house martin and the greenfinch, joining the cuckoo and nightingale whose songs are now very rarely heard.

Swifts are summer visitors from Africa arriving in the UK in the last week of April or in early May, staying only long enough to breed. They are the most amazing, beautiful creatures and they are the fastest of all birds in level flight, reaching speeds of almost 70 miles an hour. A single bird can fly more than 1 million miles in its lifetime. That is why it is honestly heartbreaking that we are seeing them less and less in our skies, and a profound tragedy that, without urgent action, our children and grandchildren are running out of time to discover the wonders that nature holds.

In that context, it is therefore extremely concerning to hear about the lack of progress at the recent COP15 meeting in Nairobi, with just two targets finalised and ongoing disagreements about finance and the headline nature loss targets in particular. The post-2020 global biodiversity framework, due to be adopted in Montreal, should be setting out a vision of a world living in harmony with nature by 2050 at the very latest. It should be setting out a vision of reversing biodiversity loss, with a series of targets and milestones for 2030. As others have noted, it must be a Paris agreement for nature and mark a turning point in our relationship with the natural world.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the goals that we need to secure at this and future conferences is protection for the world’s peatlands, as crucially important carbon sinks and a source of great biodiversity, supporting many species?

[Caroline Lucas]

I could not agree more with the right hon. Lady. In fact, I will come on to say a few words about peat very shortly. It sometimes feels that with all the focus on planting trees, which is very important, people sometimes forget that, actually, there is far more carbon sequestered in our peatlands than we will replace with our trees.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am listening very carefully to what the hon. Lady has to say. Does she agree that one of the most important things that we can do is reduce the amount of waste that we send for incineration? In that respect, will she welcome the targets set out in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs consultation document of 16 March, which look as if they are taking the Government towards reducing the amount of waste that goes to incineration? Does she agree particularly that the incinerator at Westbury has no place in our waste disposal strategy going forward and does she hope that the Government will place a moratorium on these horrible things?

[Caroline Lucas]

I am delighted to agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the Westbury incinerator in particular and about incineration in general. He is absolutely right. The sooner that we can move towards a genuinely circular economy, where we are not producing the waste in the first place, the better.

I was talking about the progress at the pre-meeting of COP15 in Nairobi just a few weeks ago. Frankly, it was woeful. In the closing plenary, non-governmental organisations warned:

“Biodiversity and the ecosystems across our planet are on the brink of collapse, and so is the CBD process itself right now. If nothing changes, we are heading towards failure at COP15. We cannot afford for that to happen.”

Indeed, while Nairobi saw positive development on the goal for halting extinctions and the mission to achieve a nature-positive world by 2030, even those proposals are absolutely littered with brackets, meaning that they have yet to be agreed multilaterally. As a reminder, following the earlier talks in Geneva, Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the executive secretary of the UN convention on biological diversity noted:

“Most of the recommendations…have many brackets. Not few—many brackets.”

According to observers there was an apparent lack of political leadership and urgency in those negotiating rooms in Nairobi, with countries failing to build consensus and with the text as a consequence being described as “messy and lacklustre”. As one campaigner with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds put it, “We have a marathon to finish before we can say that we are close to a successful outcome, but no one seems to be running let alone sprinting.”

As the Minister will know, the world failed to fully achieve any of the 20 UN biodiversity targets that were agreed back in 2010. Here in the UK, we missed a shocking 17 out of 20 targets, again leading the RSPB to declare that we had seen a “lost decade for nature.” The world simply cannot afford another lost decade. It is essential that an ambitious framework is agreed at COP15 and that we learn from the failed efforts of the past to ensure that its targets are met.

Here in Parliament today, there has been far less scrutiny of this summit in comparison with November’s COP26 summit in Glasgow. In some ways that is understandable given that COP26 was a UK-hosted summit, but it is still concerning that, to date, there have been no debates or ministerial statements on COP15 in the House of Commons, all the more so given that Ministers have themselves acknowledged that nature and climate are two sides of the same coin and that we needed a joined-up strategy both for COP26 and indeed for COP15.

While MPs have been able to engage with the COP26 President at COP26 oral questions for which I am very grateful, no parallel mechanism exists for COP15. As a consequence, I just do not think that we have the same familiarity with the UK’s negotiating objectives or, indeed, the milestones in the run-up to that Montreal summit.

I have some crucial questions for the Minister. Ahead of the summit in Nairobi, it was reported that the UK Government were helping to co-ordinate a High Ambition statement, which called for, among other things:

“An ambitious global biodiversity framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss globally, with goals for 2050 and targets for 2030 and strong reporting and review mechanisms.”

That, of course, is very welcome, but will the Minister provide us with a more specific breakdown of the UK’s negotiating objectives? What steps is his Department taking to secure them? Will he commit to regularly updating this House as we progress towards the summit in December? Will he commit to raising the profile of the summit across government?

I appreciate, particularly this afternoon, that we have no idea who the Prime Minister will be in December, but regardless of who wins the Conservative leadership race, they should attend in person as a practical and tangible way of demonstrating their commitment to securing an ambitious global agreement. As we know from Glasgow, attendance of world leaders focuses minds and sets the pace of negotiations, and all of the evidence suggests that that will be much needed in Montreal.

Let me highlight several critical elements that will be essential in ensuring that that global biodiversity framework does indeed reverse nature loss. I welcome the strengthening of the 2030 mission, which now includes words on “halting” and “reversing” biodiversity loss, meaning that it is aligned with the Leaders Pledge for Nature, which is a vast improvement on the previous draft that aimed only to put biodiversity on a “path” to recovery by 2030. We also need to see specific and ambitious commitments from Governments to ensure that that mission is delivered, underpinned by robust accountability mechanisms and, of course, the necessary finance.

Looking at the agreement first, there should be a set of 2030 targets to prevent extinctions, recover species populations, and to retain and restore the extent and quality of habitats. Secondly, we need accompanying 2030 action targets that genuinely tackle the key pressures and drivers of biodiversity loss. Thirdly, we need agreement on the prominent target to effectively and equitably protect and conserve at least 30% of land, inland waters, seas, and coasts by 2030. I welcome the fact that the Government have championed this goal in negotiations so far. I hope in their role as a member of the High Ambition Coalition and as Ocean co-chair they continue to persuade others to do so.

Fourthly, in addition to a strong implementation mechanism, the UK Government should also champion a ratchet mechanism similar to that enshrined in the Paris agreement, to encourage countries to strengthen their plans over time.

Fifthly, the framework must recognise the important role of indigenous peoples and local communities in protecting biodiversity. Globally, their lands cover one third of the Earth’s land surface and 85% of biodiversity conservation areas. It is essential that the global framework respects and strengthens their land rights.

Sixthly, while target 16 includes some positive language on consumption, it is notable that the framework is missing a clear target to reduce countries’ ecological footprint. That is particularly crucial for our food systems, which are responsible for 80% of deforestation. The Environmental Audit Committee, of which I am a member, has recommended that the UK advocate for stronger wording on developed countries’ reducing unsustainable consumption and production, but as well as stronger language we need a clear target. I ask the Minister whether the Government will champion the need for an outcome on halving our global production and consumption footprint by 2030.

Then we come to funding. Any framework must be underpinned by the resources necessary to implement the targets and hold countries accountable for their progress towards achieving them, yet finance has been one of the most challenging parts of the negotiation so far. When he appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee last month, the Minister of State for the Pacific and the International Environment in the other place told us that, on finance:

“The UK has a particular role to play, given the networks and relationships that we built in the run up to COP 26… We intend to use and are using those networks to try to plug at least that part of the gap.”

That is welcome, but can the Minister tell us what kind of financial figures the Government are looking at? Can he tell us if that will be enough to meet the so-called biodiversity funding gap?

In the final plenary session in Geneva, developing countries called for richer countries to provide at least $100 billion a year for biodiversity, rising to $700 billion by 2030. That is obviously a large sum but, as the Minister for the International Environment reminded us, the top 50 food-producing countries spend about the same amount every year in subsidising often destructive land use. Regardless of the final figure, funding for biodiversity must of course be new and be additional to climate finance and overseas development aid and, at the very least, harmful subsidies must be redirected towards nature-positive activities and investments.

It may be that in his response the Minister will point to the fact that the Global Environment Facility saw its funding increase by almost 30% for 2022 to 2026. That is welcome, but let us remember that that funding supports countries to meet their obligations under not only the convention on biodiversity, but several other agreements, including the climate change agreement. Totalling just $5.25 billion, its funding remains vastly insufficient to respond to the growing crisis.

Domestically, the UK must meet the Paris agreement for nature with renewed commitment and determination to deliver on the ambition of the 25-year environment plan, to leave the environment in a better state. We all know that the Government are not short of warm words when it comes to being a global leader on the environment, but too often the reality tells a different story. Nature in this country is under pressure from every angle: industrial agriculture, climate change, pollution such as microplastics, which are now widespread in our environment, and untreated sewage regularly dumped in UK waters, creating a risk for the environment and public health.

The Government’s failure to ban peat burning meant that vital carbon stores were set alight just weeks before COP26, and its Environment Act 2021 targets fundamentally lack ambition, with a target of increasing species abundance by just 10% by 2042 compared with 2030 levels leading some to say that England will have less nature in 20 years’ time than we do today. That is hardly a helpful target, and it has led the Office for Environmental Protection to conclude that it

“will not deliver nature recovery”,

or achieve the aims set out in the 25-year plan.

Warm words need to be replaced with meaningful action. Given the scale of the biodiversity crisis, the Government must also go further and faster than the commitment in the Environment Act to halt the decline of species by 2030, strengthening it to reversing biodiversity loss by 2030. Simply stopping things getting worse is no longer enough. The pledge to protect 30% of land and sea for nature was welcomed by the environment sector, but research shows that as little as 5% of land is currently effectively managed for nature, not the 26% the Government sometimes suggest. For 30 by 30 to genuinely deliver, it must ensure that protective areas are effectively managed for nature in the long term, with effective monitoring.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Member recall that we set out a biodiversity target to halt the decline in nature by 2010, and we set out a target again in 2010 under the Aichi targets to halt the decline in nature loss by 2020, but we achieved neither? Is there anything in the papers in advance of COP15 that gives her any hope that our ability to implement a reverse or even a halt in the decline in nature by 2030 is more likely this time than it was in the previous two decades?

[Caroline Lucas]

I am genuinely struggling to know how to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question. I want to say yes, and in a sense awareness is greater now and the general public’s anger at seeing nature decline before their eyes is perhaps stronger. However, although there are some good words, unless we get rid of all the brackets in the texts and get them agreed, and unless, crucially, we have both the finance and the implementation, with a real focus on putting this stuff into practice, I am afraid I cannot stand here and tell him with any degree of certainty that we will have a better outcome.

I am coming to the end of my comments, as I am sure you will be pleased to hear, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will touch briefly on the marine environment, because I do not want us to leave that out. I was lucky enough to join Greenpeace as part of its Operation Ocean Witness to see for myself the destructive fishing practices that are still happening, even in our supposed marine protected areas. We came across a French-flagged industrial fly shooter fishing vessel in the Bassurelle Sandbank MPA, and it was shocking to see the destruction in its wake. Fly shooting is hugely damaging not only for our marine ecosystems, but for local fishing communities, including those in my constituency, who are increasingly unable to make ends meet.

Will the Government finally please use their powers under the Fisheries Act 2020 and take action to restore our depleted seas? Will they make all MPAs in UK waters fully protected and immediately restrict the fishing licences of industrial vessels so that they cannot fish in those precious ecosystems?

I also want to underline how crucial it is that we address climate and nature together. They are two sides of the same coin. In Parliament I have championed the climate and ecological emergency Bill, which would address the climate and ecological crises in a holistic way, and I urge the Government to pick up that Bill in this new Session.

Finally, at the core of the climate and ecological crisis is our broken economic model, which prioritises growth above all else, including the health of people and planet. There is a growing body of evidence showing the dangers of our current economic model, with a report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services by 82 of the world’s top scientists and experts saying that the

“focus on short-term profits and economic growth”,

often excludes the value of nature.

The Minister will be aware that the Treasury-commissioned Dasgupta review called for an

“urgent and transformative change in how we think, act and measure economic success to protect and enhance our prosperity and the natural world”.

Yet we are still not really seeing what follow-up there will be to the Dasgupta review. Another inquiry by the Environmental Audit Committee on biodiversity in the UK made it clear that

“Alternatives to GDP urgently need to be adopted as more appropriate ways to measure economic success”.

We must now look to build an economy for the future, following countries such as New Zealand, which is already leading the way with the world’s first ever wellbeing budget. The nature of our economy must be on the agenda at COP15 and the Government should join other countries in showing leadership by urgently introducing alternative indicators of economic success that prioritise the health of people and planet.

Much of this debate is around global challenges, but I want to end by focusing on the local and talking about the round-headed rampion, of which I am a proud species champion. The round-headed rampion is a beautiful blue wildflower, which is known as the “Pride of Sussex” and is the official county flower. However, it is increasingly rare, since it grows only on chalk grasslands such as those on the South Downs, and those chalk grasslands have declined by 80% just since world war two. Its fate relies on the protection, preservation and restoration of these important habitats.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and I agree with her on protecting habitats, grasslands and other places. However, does she also accept that isolated protection does not really work, and that there has to be a connectivity between preserved areas, just as there has to be a connectivity between forests and natural grasslands?

[Caroline Lucas]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is absolutely right: that connectivity is crucial to a thriving natural environment. Unless we ensure that we have not just isolated protection areas, but a genuinely joined-up corridor of environmental improvement and even widen out from that, we will not be successful in our aims.

I will just wind up by saying that as we head towards COP15, let us remember the beauty of this world and what we risk losing by failing to protect it for ourselves, for our children and for future generations. I urge the Minister once again to do all he can to ensure a positive outcome from this important summit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

I do not often agree with the right hon. Gentleman, but I absolutely agree with him on that point. None of us in this country should be buying tropical hardwoods for furniture or other purposes.

At the same time—this is perhaps where I differ slightly from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion—for communities in developing countries where we want to see the restoration of the natural habitats that are so crucial to some of the world’s most iconic endangered species, our starting point should be the people themselves. We have to ensure that there are proper livelihoods, so that people can earn a living and at the same time benefit from the restoration of nature. That means helping them to establish proper, viable farming on part of that land, on a much larger scale and more efficiently, it means ecotourism to bring wealth into those areas, and it means sustainable logging and the sustainable management of forests. All those things are necessary. This is, to some extent, about GDP growth, because that is how we give those people the sense that, by properly managing that land, they benefit from it and also benefit from the restoration of nature.

[Caroline Lucas]

Just to be clear on the record, I absolutely agree that people in developing countries who would otherwise be deprived of their livelihoods if current unsustainable practices are not stopped should be supported into more sustainable practices. We have an absolute responsibility to do that, but the idea that we should go out there and treat increasing GDP as an overall abstract aim is wrong. If GDP happens to go up, then fine, but surely our aim should be to allow those people to thrive by giving them sustainable livelihoods, not chasing some kind of GDP figure, which is what I worry about both here and there.

[Chris Grayling]

But if we do not help them to grow their GDP—and do that in a sustainable, nature-friendly way that enables them to derive real benefits from the proper stewardship of that land, the restoration of natural habitats and the restoration of degraded land for other purposes—in the end, we will not create the kind of local ownership that will break the cycle of illegal logging, poaching, the illegal wildlife trade and the rest.

My message to the Minister is this. This COP is enormously important. It is a vital moment for the world. In my view, it is as important a moment for the world as COP26 was last year. The hon. Lady is right: climate and nature are two sides of the same coin. We have played a really important leadership role at COP in securing agreements, which might not do everything we wanted but took us a step forwards. We need to do the same this year. We need to send a senior delegation, we need to push for a proper agreement, and we need to be leaders ourselves in what we do in this country, but we cannot let the global community miss this opportunity. So my message to him, as he takes up this role and as we prepare for a reshaped Administration—I hope he stays where he is—is this. Will he please do everything he can to ensure that the United Kingdom plays the cornerstone role in the COP discussions this autumn, which will be so important to ensuring that we manage to reverse a global decline in nature that should be a matter of shame to the whole of mankind?

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I am hugely grateful to all hon. and right hon. Members who have taken part in this debate. What we have not had in quantity of contributions, we have certainly more than made up for in quality. One theme that has come out is individuals’ love for nature. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) talked about how it is central to our souls—nothing less. That, to me, is hugely important. I am struck by the words of the US writer Richard Louv, who said:

“We cannot protect something we do not love, we cannot love what we do not know”.

Therefore, getting more access for young people and all of us to nature, the kind of young people the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) spoke about, is absolutely crucial to protecting it.

While we talked about our love for nature, we had some hard economics, too. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) for reminding us that we will not have the transformative change we need unless we change our economic system.

I am very grateful for the Minister’s response and for his commitment to work for the success of COP15 and, in particular, the funding necessary to make it a success. He explained why he cannot commit future Ministers to future actions, which I completely understand. What I hope he can do is undertake to urge his Conservative leadership colleagues not to step away from net zero. There have been some deeply worrying statements in the last few days around that. I hope he will play a role in trying to urge them not to put net zero in question.

A number of questions still remain unanswered about the detail of the UK’s negotiating objectives, for example its position on the global ratchet when it comes to policy ambition and on increasing our domestic environmental targets in the Environment Act 2021. We need to be more ambitious at home if we are to have credible leadership abroad. I look forward to the opportunity for further conversations with the Minister over the coming weeks and months to ensure we can make a success of COP15. All of us have said, from every angle of this House, how important that is. It has been underlined by today’s debate and I am very grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing me to hold it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered protecting and restoring nature at COP15 and beyond.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Health Service Journal is reporting that the Minister of State, Department for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) incorrectly told the House yesterday that a contract was in place to provide surge capacity for ambulance services, despite the contract not having been awarded yet. Have you, Mr Deputy Speaker, had any notification from the Minister that she plans to come to the House to clarify the record?

Badger Culling

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The hon. Lady is a champion on this issue and I congratulate her on securing the debate. Does she agree that it is absolutely key that the Government fund both more cattle vaccination and a much larger programme of badger vaccination, to provide farmers with the evidence that badger vaccination can actually work at scale? That will give them the confidence to embrace it. Ministers have a real role to show leadership in getting farmers on board.

[Tracey Crouch]

I agree. I appreciate that it is very easy for us as Back Benchers, without the controls of the Treasury, to always call for extra funding, but I do think there is real merit in ensuring that we fund these things exceptionally well.

On vaccination specifically, in their response to the Godfray review the Government announced a move to vaccinate both cattle and badgers. With a large-scale badger vaccination trial currently taking place in East Sussex—the hon. Lady’s area, I believe—the Vaccinating East Sussex Badgers, or VESBA, project will vaccinate badgers across 250 sq km of east Sussex every year for four years, with an annual vaccination target of 675 badgers. Although East Sussex is in the edge area, the Cuckmere valley in the county has long been a TB hotspot; I understand that the first vaccination waves have primarily been focused there. I hope that such a Government-backed study can independently determine whether the vaccination of the wildlife reservoir will in turn reduce TB numbers in cattle. I would be grateful if the Minister indicated whether the Department has already seen evidence of movement in the early stages of the trial.

From an animal welfare perspective, I would much rather see badgers vaccinated than shot. However, the process of identifying badger setts, laying bait, setting traps and then vaccinating the badgers is an exercise that is not only costly and time-consuming but cannot effectively be expanded throughout the country. May I impress on the Minister that if we are going to vaccinate, let us vaccinate the cattle? By contrast to the wildlife, we know how many cows we have and where they are. Will the Minister update us on where we currently are regarding the research studies announced in response to the Godfray review of the candidate cattle vaccine and subsequent improved skin test, with the ambition of introduction within the next five years?

Back in 2019, I spoke in a similar debate in Westminster Hall on the badger cull. That was before more positive announcements from the Government that were welcomed by animal welfare organisations and charities alike. In that debate, I spoke about the success of the Gatcombe strategy used at a farm in south Devon, where the farmer Dick Sibley has worked with the animal welfare group the Save Me Trust to change a farm rife with TB into one with an official TB-free status in just three years. The core element of the strategy is based on identifying and cutting off the roots of infection in the herd through enhanced testing, which is much more sensitive than the notorious skin test. This allows the farm to identify the infected cow and remove it before the disease takes hold of the herd.

Such tests are, of course, more expensive for famers than a traditional skin test, which I believe costs around £5 a cow. Can we look at supporting farmers with the cost of administering the most reliable tests available? That makes much more economic and scientific sense in the long run and would help to identify the hidden reservoir in the English cattle herd. The improved testing techniques used by the farm both on cattle and on their immediate environment pointed to slurry in the farm harbouring harmful levels of TB and contributing to the cycle of transmission within the herd.

In response to these points about testing and improved husbandry in cattle in farms, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), told me that he had met Dick Sibley and that from 2015 the Department had had

“a biosecurity plan that included slurry management”.—[Official Report, 23 October 2019; Vol. 666, c. 22WH.]

However, at that point the data was “mixed” in confirming the links between slurry and TB in cattle. My right hon. Friend confirmed that the Department was still in “dialogue with Dick Sibley” at Gatcombe Farm and the Department was “keen” to look at evidence that could show a link between slurry and cattle. Will the Minister confirm whether such work is still being carried out by the Department and whether guidelines for farms will be updated to try to minimise TB outbreaks through measures on farms?

As I have made clear, I welcome the move to gradually withdraw from culling, although I remain concerned that high-intensity culls will continue to be allowed in the already approved areas. I am encouraged by data in Wales, which has ended its badger cull and seen similar levels of TB reduction to cull areas in England.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis]

It is important that we continue to work with our partners in the devolved Administrations wherever we can. There has been a certain amount of angst up the border between England and Wales as a result of the difference in policy—it is a very high-incidence neighbourhood—so it is very important that we work together wherever possible.

The tools available to us include culling where necessary—I have no doubt that it will be necessary during outbreaks; I make no secret of the fact that, where there is an outbreak, culling may be the only answer for both badgers and cattle—and vaccinating cattle, which for me is the goal. Many of us received the vaccination in school; it is not that different in humans. What we need to do is develop a test that does not give a false positive reading if a cow has received a vaccine. The test is currently being trialled and worked on. We started field trials in June last year and hope to have them completed this winter. The results are not yet published. We are still hopeful, though, and we are very much working towards 2025 as the date for having a real vaccine for cattle that can be rolled out widely. For me, that will be the game changer.

Vaccinating badgers is also a solution. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said that the Government need to put some welly into this, if I may put it like that. I say politely that the Animal and Plant Health Agency now has 28 full-time vaccinators working hard to vaccinate badgers in the vaccination window, although not all badgers need to be vaccinated. We need to be clever about this.

As hon. Members can imagine, vaccinating badgers is a very difficult process. Initially at least, it has to be done annually, to make sure that the vaccination is effective. If there has been a significant cull, the badgers that are left can be vaccinated in a targeted way. We vaccinated about 1,500 badgers last year and expect that figure to be higher this year. We have introduced a simplified licence to cut the administrative burden for those who wish to vaccinate badgers.

Vaccinating badgers is definitely one of the tools in the toolbox, but is not a simple thing to do, nor is it entirely great from an animal welfare perspective, because badgers need to be attracted, trapped, vaccinated and then released, and then trapped again, which is not without its difficulties.

[Caroline Lucas]

I appreciate the Minister’s points about vaccination. I appreciate that there are no silver bullets, but vaccination is probably a lot better than culling. Could she clarify one point? The Government have promised an end to badger culling post 2025 but reserved the right to cull beyond 2025 in certain epidemiologically important conditions. What are the criteria for those conditions? My concern is that that is a very big loophole and that, when there are Ministers in post who are perhaps less concerned than she is, it could be used to continue the cull in a rather more indiscriminate way than I think she intends.

[Victoria Prentis]

I do not think I am able or indeed qualified to give the hon. Lady the reassurance she seeks. If a cull were to be licensed, that would be done with the chief veterinary officer, who would be able to advise the Minister at all stages of that process. What I would say is that, certainly as I see it, we are currently experiencing a decline in bovine TB in high-incidence areas and we are pleased by the way the graph is going, although we are by no means happy with the situation. TB remains a real scourge for our cattle farmers, but things are going in the right direction.

If there is an outbreak, it seems right that the Minister, whoever that is, or the chief veterinary officer, depending on the circumstances, is able to take the decision to cull cattle, badgers or other species where necessary, as is the case with other prevalent and harmful diseases. I know from my family experience that TB is a peculiar illness that can manifest itself in different species, at different times, at different speeds and in different ways. I do not think it would be appropriate for me to set out what would cause angst to the chief veterinary officer at any one time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford referred to husbandry, which is also important. We have worked on strengthening cattle testing and movement controls. We have worked to improve biosecurity on farms and when trading, as well as simply keeping badgers away from food and water troughs where we can. We have looked at different forms of double fencing, to ensure that there is not cross-holding contamination. The ibTB website enables farmers to look at the history of the cattle they are buying, and at the disease status of nearby farms.

We have all learned a great deal from the covid pandemic, probably not voluntarily. We have learned to use a range of measures to control disease. It is not all about washing our hands thoroughly and “hands, face, space”; it is about vaccines, lockdowns, antivirals and treatment methods. We need to retain our learning from the pandemic when considering the scourge of bovine TB. I am pleased with the reductions we have seen in high-risk areas, but this remains a difficult disease for the farming industry to cope with. I am determined that we continue to work on all fronts to come up with the right solutions.

Question put and agreed to.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

I beg to move, that the Bill be now read a Second time.

The UK is home to some of the world’s best agricultural research facilities. For some 70 years, plant breeders have used chemical and radiation treatments to generate random mutations in genes, in the hope that these might provide traits that are useful for plant breeding. For decades we have had F1—filial 1—hybrid breeding techniques, which were designed to create far greater genetic consistency in plant varieties that are grown commercially.

Precision breeding techniques such as gene editing are really a natural evolution of conventional approaches to plant breeding. They are simply a modern way of creating more targeted and predictable changes to DNA within a species than would have been possible using induced mutagenesis or natural breeding. They result in nothing that could not occur through natural breeding processes. In that sense, precision breeding techniques are distinct from genetic modification, which can involve moving genes across species boundaries. It is the recognition of this difference that is the reason for this Bill today.

In 2018, the European Court of Justice ruled that all gene-edited organisms should be legally regulated as genetically modified organisms. That has hampered our ability to take advantage of precision breeding techniques and of the clear opportunity to help the environment and food producers.

The UK Government disagreed with that 2018 judgment from the perspective of science. Now that we are outside the European Union we are free to consider what a consistent, coherent and science-based policy looks like. What we really need to achieve as we address today’s challenges is a fusion of the traditional principles of good farm husbandry with some of the best technology available to us in the 21st century.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The Secretary of State keeps using this language about precision breeding, but he will know that that is neither a specific technology nor a scientific principle. It relies on the creation of a hypothetical class of GMOs that could have occurred naturally. He will know that there is opposition to that definition from everyone from the environmental non-governmental organisations right through to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and to the Roslin Institute. Given that level of disagreement about the very principles of how he is framing this Bill, will he take it away and look at it again?

[George Eustice]

We have considered these matters in great depth. We ran a consultation. The overwhelming view of scientists are that these precision-breeding techniques, which do not achieve or do anything that could not be achieved through natural breeding processes, are not in fact GMOs. That is our view. That is why we are bringing this Bill forward today. As the hon. Lady knows, there will no doubt be a debate about these matters in both Houses as the Bill progresses.

Precision breeding techniques give us the ability to produce plant varieties with particular traits far more efficiently than was ever possible with conventional breeding. This opens up huge opportunities for our farmers and growers to produce nutritious food with a lower environmental impact.

Precision breeding techniques can improve crop resistance to diseases, reduce the need for pesticides, increase crop yields, improve resistance to climate change, promote drought resistance and reduce the need for fertilisers.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

I think consumers want to see fewer pesticides in their food, and technologies such as this open the door for us to achieve that. As part of the notification process that I will come on to describe, we will ensure that there is transparency and that any seed that is marketed is listed in a transparent way. The Food Standards Agency will also conduct a very thorough and comprehensive assessment of any food safety issues. I think that will give people the reassurance they need.

Returning to some other examples of crops, UK Research and Innovation funded a study that has identified promising sources of genetic resistance to virus yellows in sugar beet, a group of viruses that can cause severe yield losses of up to 50% and are at the heart of the controversy around the use of neonicotinoids in sugar beet. Introducing resistance to virus yellows will reduce the need for pesticides, boost our food security and reduce costs to our sugar beet producers.

With food security high on the agenda, we also have the ability to develop wheat that is more resilient to climate change, helping successfully to grow a crop that 2.5 billion people are dependent on globally. Researchers at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have used gene editing techniques to identify a key gene in wheat that can be used to introduce traits such as heat resilience, while maintaining high yields.

These technologies also have potential to improve the health and welfare of animals, as some of my hon. Friends have mentioned. Research in farmed animals is already leading to the development of animals that have increased resistance to some devastating diseases. For instance, the Roslin Institute and Genus have developed gene-edited pigs with natural resistance to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, a disease that causes mortality and major welfare issues in pig populations globally.

I turn now to the contents of the Bill. It will focus on four key areas. First, we will remove precision-bred plants and animals from the regulatory requirements applicable to the environmental release and marketing of genetically modified organisms. That will remove the necessity of adhering to the onerous regulations imposed by the European Union for plants and animals that could also have been produced through traditional breeding. The Bill does that in part 1.

[Caroline Lucas]

The Secretary of State will know that section 20 of the Environment Act 2021 requires him to be able to affirm that this Bill does not weaken any existing environmental protections. Given that he has more or less just said that it precisely does, because it will weaken the EU legislation that we were following and will erode the existing regulatory system, how can he then sign section 20 in good faith?

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I believe that this is a flawed Bill—it is not strategic, it is not clear and it does not do what it says on the tin. Ministers breezily assert that it will deliver access to wonderful new markets, while failing to acknowledge that it actually risks hindering access to our closest significant market, the EU, as we create a divergent regime for regulating genome-edited products. As we have heard, consequences for trade with Northern Ireland are being ignored. With the Scottish and Welsh Governments currently taking a different approach from that of England, the Bill is a recipe for consumer confusion and significant operational difficulties for retailers across the UK.

These big questions are critical, but in the short time that I have, I shall spell out how the Bill falls down on some core principles that render it flawed and not fit for purpose. Those principles are scientific coherence and clarity, properly defined criteria—or the lack of them—and transparency.

On coherence and clarity, in its title and text the Bill uses the phrase “precision breeding”, yet that is neither a specific technology nor a scientific discipline. It is a marketing term: a vague colloquialism for a number of recently developed genetic engineering technologies, which do not form a coherent group of methods, and do not justify being called “precise”—not when the scientific literature contains reports of genetic technologies such as genome editing creating unexpected and unwanted mutations, genetic errors, altered proteins, and extensive deletions and complex rearrangements of DNA in plants. [Interruption.] I will not give way yet.

The Government give a nod to that uncertainty with their caveat that genetic editing of animals will not take place until animal protection can be safeguarded. Engineering the DNA of animals raises major animal welfare and ethical concerns. A wealth of problems are set out by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics report on gene-edited farm animals. As I understand it, there is nothing to prevent biotech-created disease resistance being used as a sticking-plaster for the intensive factory farming practices that are the underlying cause of disease emergence in the first place. That is why, given the current drafting, animals should be removed from the Bill’s scope, full stop.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Nature makes mistakes; that is how evolution comes about. So the mistakes that are reported in the literature are actually further evidence that such technologies effectively replicate a natural process. Does the hon. Lady agree?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. As has been said, she clearly has expertise, but I am looking at the scientific evidence that has been put before me, and it is being suggested that the mistakes that can be made in this area, especially when it comes to nature, appear very different from those that are seen in nature.

I move on to the principle of properly defined criteria. Using a term that lacks any proper definition looks like an attempt to obscure the full scope of the proposed deregulation. The terms “precision breeding” and gene editing help promote a particular narrative—that the process is just a simple “cut” or “tweak”. The Government are also at pains to stress that any changes might have occurred “naturally” and do not involve the insertion of transgenes—so-called “foreign” DNA.

I have read that this is to some extent smoke and mirrors. The Bill seeks to deregulate all manner of genetic manipulations, and genome editing can sometimes involve the insertion of foreign DNA. As I understand it, the argument is that in such cases the inserted DNA gets removed before the product goes to market. That may well be the intention; but by using poorly defined criteria in the title and wording of the Bill, the Government are asking us to pass bad legislation.

[Sir Robert Goodwill]

Is it the case that, if the EU were to allow this technology to go ahead, the hon. Lady would, like the SNP, embrace it?

[Caroline Lucas]

I am not making a blanket statement in that way. I am saying that if a whole load more safeguards were built into the Bill and if it were not based on a set of definitions that are being criticised by the scientific community, I would have rather more confidence in it than I do right now.

As we have heard, several learned organisations have challenged the Government’s creation of this hypothetical class of GMOs that could have “occurred naturally” or could have been created using traditional breeding. The Institute of Food Science & Technology has called the approach “overly simplistic”, and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics was

“not convinced that this is either the most proper or most popular framing”.

The Roslin Institute found it “exceptionally challenging”, while the Royal Society of Biology said:

“No clarity can be achieved using this principle—we would not recommend using it as the basis for regulation.”

In response to last year’s public consultation, there was a clear view that this is a fundamentally flawed and unscientific basis for regulation.

Turning to transparency, there are no provisions in the Bill for the labelling of genetically engineered or so-called precision-bred food, despite this being what a majority of the public want, as the Government consultation made clear. In that consultation, 85% wanted genetic technologies used in farming to continue to be regulated in the same way as other GMOs. There are significant concerns over the commercial drivers of genome editing in farmed animals, for example. This makes labelling really important, not least if Ministers want citizen and market trust, and buy-in to any new regulatory regime. The public register idea is welcome, but it needs to be accessible as well as comprehensive, and it should include all genetic engineering events and organisms used in UK agriculture. Reduced data collection is worrying. Data that is not collected cannot be analysed. Ministers are simply assuming that risks are non-existent or vanishingly slight, but there is nothing scientific about such wishful thinking.

In conclusion, we need a national conversation. Regulation and innovation need not be at odds, but products of agricultural genetic engineering, including newer techniques, should be subject to a robust and transparent regulatory and governance framework. This must include a strong traceability and labelling scheme that protects the interests of organic farms and allows consumers to make a choice in the supermarket. This legislation lets down consumers, farmers, the environment and animals. Rushing ahead with a badly conceived and designed Bill because the Government are simply desperate to claim some kind of success on post-Brexit deregulation is unacceptable, and I urge them to bring back something better.

Bees: Neonicotinoids

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government approval for the use of neonicotinoids and the impact on bees.

It is good to see you in the Chair, Sir Roger. First, I declare an interest, in that my family keep bees on our farm in north Cornwall. I am also a patron of Pollenize, which is a brilliant beekeeping community interest company in Plymouth, and I can tell Members that all the honey it produces is delicious.

I bloody love bees. Bees might be small creatures, but their contribution to nature and to food production is huge. Up to three quarters of crop species are pollinated by bees and other pollinators. Bees are a symbol of a healthy environment. Bees, whether honeybees or bumblebees, are iconic British species, too. They are a weathervane species, against which we can chart nature’s recovery or decline.

For me, bee health is non-negotiable. We are in the middle of a climate and ecological crisis. That means that we must not only act faster to cut carbon and do so fairly, creating green jobs; we must also protect nature, and that means taking difficult decisions to protect our natural world. We will never be nature positive if we dodge the difficult decisions or turn a blind eye to our role in the erosion of nature.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Does he agree that the legal requirements in the Environment Act 2021 to halt species loss by 2030 will not be worth the paper they are written on if, at the first hurdle, the Government actually fail and give a licence to something that their own scientific advisers are advising against?

[Luke Pollard]

I thank the hon. Lady for summing up my entire speech in one pithy intervention. She is absolutely correct, and I will seek to explain why, using more words, over the next 10 minutes or so.

Bees are not only in more danger every year; they are also more important every year. According to the UN, the volume of agricultural production dependent on pollinators has increased globally by 300% in the past 50 years. The UN also found that greater pollinator density results in better crop yields, so it is also good for farmers. That is why this is such an important and urgent debate, because bee health in this country is not getting better; it is getting worse. Banning bee-killing pesticides will not on its own reverse the decline in bee populations, but if we cannot deal with this most apparent of ills, how will we deal with the hundreds of more difficult decisions that must follow in relation to protecting habitats and providing a guide to bee recovery?

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on securing the debate.

I would like to make it clear that I have enormous sympathy for farmers, who have faced unprecedented challenges in recent years in responding to covid, Brexit and increasingly unpredictable extreme weather events, and I completely understand their determination to protect their crops and livelihoods. None the less, I am profoundly concerned about the Government’s emergency authorisation of Cruiser SB for 2022 to tackle the threat of yellow virus. Thiamethoxam is a banned substance for a reason, and this decision is a retrograde move. It is utterly at odds with the Government’s legal requirement to halt species loss by 2030, as set out in the Environment Act. With COP15, the global biodiversity summit, just months away, the Government should be leading from the front to protect and restore nature, not giving a green light to the use of deadly toxins.

Many Members have set out the overwhelming scientific evidence of the harm caused by these pesticides, and I would like to refer them back to December 2020, when I asked DEFRA what assessment had been made of the potential environmental effects of approving Cruiser SB neonic in 2021. As it transpires, the neonic was not used last year, because an especially cold winter led to a fall in aphid numbers. None the less, the then Minister’s reply assured me that the advice of the HSE and the expert committee on pesticides was being sought, and it implied that it would be respected. The Government’s subsequent and continued disregard for the evidence presented by the very experts they have appointed is, at best, mysterious and, at worst, utterly shameful.

I would also like to remind colleagues of the Environmental Audit Committee’s findings in its 2013 report, “Pollinators and Pesticides”. I sat on that Committee and still do, and I particularly recall this recommendation:

“Defra policy on pesticides must be evidence-based. Where the available scientific evidence is either incomplete or contradictory, Defra must apply the precautionary principle.”

The Government’s decision to approve the use of this neonic flies in the face of the evidence we do have, and it is not consistent with a precautionary approach.

The Government should be giving legal protection to bees and other pollinators. As it stands, pre-approval tests for pesticides focus only on the short-term effects on honeybees, ignoring the long-term effects of pesticides on other wild pollinators altogether—the bumblebees, beetles and moths on which we rely. An amendment to the Environment Act sought to rectify that omission but, sadly, did not win Government support. The Minister could right that wrong now and commit to make consideration of the long-term impacts of the UK’s pesticide use on pollinators a mandatory requirement for the assessment process. That would be an important first step towards embracing a new approach to farming and pest management that works in harmony with nature, not against it.

The Government should be investing in innovative and non-chemical alternatives to pest management, including better forecasting, crop rotation, natural predators and the use of resistant varieties, while at the same time supporting farmers to make the transition away from neonics. That could be done, for example, via the sustainable farming incentive in England and by supporting nature-friendly pest control.

In conclusion, I would like to quote from the Secretary of State’s reply to a cross-party letter that I co-ordinated last year, in which he assured me that

“emergency authorisations for pesticides are only granted in exceptional circumstances where diseases or pests cannot be controlled by any other reasonable means.”

What steps have the Government taken over the last 12 months to support farmers to invest in those other reasonable control measures? I would love to know the details of that. Will the Minister stop putting pollinators in persistent danger? Will she cancel the approval and instead spend the next 12 months ensuring that farmers can access non-chemical alternatives? Will she commit to a national action plan to end the use of pesticides, putting UK nature on a genuine path to recovery? We are all saying how much we like bees—we heard from the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) how much he likes bees—but unless we are prepared to take action to make meaningful change, those are just empty words. With a nature and environmental crisis coming down the line at us, we cannot afford to do that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Jo Churchill)]

Yes, I will. As my hon. Friend knows, I have been up to his part of the world and have looked at some of the challenges there. We need to do more, we will do more, and we will keep monitoring until we get it right.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The Government’s recent decision to authorise a neonic, bee-destroying pesticide runs contrary to the advice of both the Health and Safety Executive and the Government’s expert committee on pesticides. How on earth is this decision compatible with the Government’s legal requirement to halt species loss by 2030, and will the Secretary of State look again at this particular decision?

[George Eustice]

I addressed this issue earlier. The chief scientist gave some analysis, along with others. We took a decision firmly based on the science. Twelve other EU countries have done so, too.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords]

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

We have had many pieces of legislation; I sought in the time I had to list some of the key ones, including the 2006 Act.

How we treat animals, and the legislation we have to govern animal welfare, is a hallmark of a civilised society. We should be constantly looking to improve and refine our legislation in this area. That is why the Government have committed to introducing this new law on animal sentience.

I take this opportunity to thank my noble friend Lord Benyon of Englefield for his work bringing the Bill through the other place. The current version underwent close scrutiny in the other place, as Members would expect. This is a succinct Bill that offers clarity and avoids creating a wide avenue for the judicial review of Government decisions, while ensuring that animal welfare is properly considered as Governments formulate policy.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

As the MP who I think made the first attempt to put sentience recognition into UK law with my amendment to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, I warmly welcome this Bill. I congratulate the A Better Deal for Animals coalition for the work it has put into it. The Secretary of State mentions the scrutiny in the other place. Does he have sympathy with the concern raised there about how the Bill’s current wording would mean that the Animal Sentience Committee can look only at the adverse effects on the welfare of animals as sentient beings? Would he consider looking at the positive opportunities in considering those sentience issues, too?

[George Eustice]

I think this matter was dealt with extensively by my noble Friend, Lord Benyon. The key thing is that an adverse effect can mean a failure to make a change or consider a change that would have a positive impact on the welfare of animals, so I do not share any concerns about that expression.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) for his Committee’s work in scrutinising our proposals.

The Bill proposes four things. First, it establishes an Animal Sentience Committee, whose members the Secretary of State will appoint on the basis of expertise and experience. Secondly, it tasks that committee with scrutinising Ministers’ policy formation and the implementation of decisions. In each instance, it will publish a report containing its views on whether Ministers have had all due regard to the welfare needs of animals as sentient beings.

Thirdly, Ministers will be held to account through a duty to respond to the committee’s reports by means of a written statement to Parliament, and Parliament must receive such responses within three months. Finally, the wording of the Bill offers recognition that non-human vertebrates—that is, animals with a spine—and additionally decapod crustaceans, such as lobsters, and cephalopod molluscs, such as octopuses, are sentient. That means they are capable of experiencing pain or suffering. The Bill contains a delegated power for Ministers to add by regulation other species to the definition of animals. That is to be used if there is good scientific evidence that those particular species are sentient.