Oral Answers to Questions

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

4. What steps he is taking to ensure that untreated sewage is not discharged into rivers, inland waterways and the sea.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

10. What steps he is taking to help ensure sewage is not discharged into UK waterways.

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[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Ranil Jayawardena)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The volume of sewage spewed out by water companies is completely unacceptable, and the public have rightly shown their outrage. Yesterday, in my first day in office, I told water chief executives that it is not good enough, and I have instructed them to write to me formally by 21 September with a plan for how they will make significant improvements. I also met the Environment Agency and Ofwat, and I told them that they should use every enforcement power available to them to make sure that there is compliance. I will not hesitate to take further action if I do not see the pace of change that this House expects.

[Catherine West]

Over the summer, I had the pleasure of meeting those from the Hampstead and Highgate Angling Society, who fish in all 32 London boroughs. The River Wandle has had a very bad incident of water pollution, which included human sewage, and in the past the Environment Agency itself has said that the fines meted out to Thames Water were “not sufficient”. What is the Secretary of State going to do to improve this desperate situation?

[Mr Jayawardena]

First, it is this Government who introduced the monitoring that allows us to know what is going on. Secondly, it was this Government who introduced the Environment Act 2021, which allows the Environment Agency to levy unlimited fines on water companies.

COP26: Limiting Global Temperature Rises

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

Let me just make a little bit of progress, and I promise that I will let others in.

The UK presidency has identified four goals for COP26. The first is to secure global net zero by mid-century and keep 1.5°C within reach, but I want to say to the House that the climate does not actually care much about target dates. What matters is how much carbon has been emitted into the atmosphere and how much will be emitted over the rest of this century. The figures are quite stark, so I hope that the House will indulge me while I go through them.

Based on the IPCC’s calculations, the global remaining carbon budget—the total we can afford to burn between now and the time we reach net zero if we want to give ourselves a two thirds chance of staying within 1.5°C of warming—is just 320 billion tonnes from the start of next year. Given that we are currently burning through that at a rate of 40 billion tonnes a year, it does not take much to do the maths and to conclude that, by 2030, it will be gone if we do not rapidly rid ourselves of fossil fuels. That is the global picture.

To replay that in the domestic picture for our own carbon targets, if we divide the global budget equally on a per capita basis, but also allow for our disproportionate responsibility for the cumulative emissions in the atmosphere—after all, we were the leaders of the industrial revolution—it has been calculated that it would leave the UK a budget of just 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. That is a vanishingly small amount in the wider scheme of things when we adjust still further to allow for the carbon burned overseas in the service of UK consumption as well as our territorial emissions. Measured like that, our total carbon footprint is about 500 million tonnes a year. Again, I say to the House: do the maths. That gives us barely five years before our 2.4 billion tonne budget is gone. That is the reality. That is the inconvenient truth.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

The hon. Member is making an excellent beginning to this great debate, and it is so good to see so many people speaking. What does she make of the cuts to international aid, which have made the problem for the future outlook even worse?

[Caroline Lucas]

I will certainly be coming to that shortly, because I cannot think of a more damaging thing to have done a matter of months, as it was, before the COP26—a big global summit at which we need to have the trust of the developing countries. I think the idea that one of the richest countries in the world would just slash our aid budget is absolutely unforgivable, and we cannot be surprised that some of the poorest countries do not have confidence in us.

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[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) in probably the most important debate that we could hold on any topic, notwithstanding what we have been discussing earlier today and all the other important issues that we have to face up to.

I agree with the analysis of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), so I will not repeat it; I will get straight to the heart of what must we do rather than discussing what the problems are. Even a former sceptic, as I believe the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex is—clearly, he is not a sceptic now—has cottoned on that the question is what we do now and what issues we should be addressing.

I freely acknowledge that there are strengths in the Government’s approach, but there are also weaknesses, so I will use my time to focus on a few of those. While I am getting myself into trouble, however, may I welcome the former Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)? He has been a constant campaigner on these issues and has led the way for the rest of us.

The weaknesses on the Government’s side include the question of home insulation. I am proud to have been one of the lead sponsors of the Labour party’s Opposition day motion in 2019 declaring a national climate and environment emergency, which made our country the first in the world to do so. I want a green recovery and a green industrial strategy. I want it for the north-east of England, just as I am sure, Dame Rosie, you want it for Yorkshire. There are jobs in this; there is a positive contribution that we can make.

I wish to draw attention to the position of our great oceans in all this. I do not think the effect that we are having on the sea gets the attention it deserves. The oceans act as a natural climate moderator, mediating temperature, driving the weather and determining rainfall, droughts and floods. Crucially, they are also effective in absorbing heat and carbon dioxide.

[Catherine West]

My right hon. Friend mentioned his own track record in relation to the amount of work that needs to be done. Is he aware of the enormous amount of people who need to be trained even to install heat pumps, which is the Government’s current proposal? The umbrella body says that we need thousands more workers to be trained for that. What assessment has he made of the challenge to the workforce and the people who will install all this new technology?

Environment Bill

Catherine West Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 26th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

What a pleasure it is to be back to continue our consideration of this vital legislation, which will set us on a sustainable trajectory for the future. I know that so many colleagues have been looking forward to today with great anticipation, as indeed have I.

Although the journey of this Bill may have seemed a little lengthy, I assure the House that we have not been resting on our laurels. During this time, there has been a huge amount of constructive, dedicated work, and I will outline some of it: a draft environmental principles policy statement, which will guide the Government in applying environmental principles, was published for consultation on 10 March; and on 24 March we launched consultations on the deposit return scheme and the extended producer responsibility scheme for packaging, and these are two key initiatives in the resource and waste measures of the Bill.

We are working at pace to ensure that the Office for Environmental Protection will be operationally ready to stand up as soon as the Bill receives Royal Assent. We have also announced that new measures to reduce the harm from storm overflows on our precious aquatic environment will be added in the other place.

At this point, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) for his dedicated work on this issue. It has been a tremendous joint effort.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Will the Minister also pay tribute to Surfers Against Sewage, which has done a marvellous job of lobbying and achieving a great outcome?

[Rebecca Pow]

I am pleased the hon. Lady made that intervention, because of course I would like to pay tribute to Surfers Against Sewage, which has played a key role in all this for such a long time. Coming from the south-west, as I do, I very much know about the good work done by Surfers Against Sewage.

Today we are debating the nature parts of the Bill, which provide a framework of measures to support nature’s recovery in line with the ambition set out in our 25-year environment plan.

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

Two years ago this month, it was Parliament that declared a climate and an ecological emergency. We were the first Parliament in the world to do so in what was a truly landmark moment in the fight against the climate and ecological crisis. I was proud to work on that declaration and proud that it was a Labour motion. We need more landmark moments such as that if we are to tackle the climate and ecological emergency in a meaningful way. We were promised that the Environment Bill would be a landmark Bill.

“Landmark” is what the Government kept saying, seemingly until England’s rolling hills were littered with press releases as far as the eye could see, but, sadly, it is not a landmark Bill.

Let us be clear about what the climate crisis means. If we do not take the bold action now that is required, the freak weather, the destruction of homes, job losses, food shortages, habitat loss and species extinction will only get worse. Since Parliament declared that climate emergency, the Department for Food and Rural Affairs has issued 508 press releases about the environment. The group plural for a set of press releases evades me. It could be a discombobulation, a tedium, or a wafer. None the less, the Government seem to have been more focused on the spin than the substance of the matter. The press releases, ambitions, targets and soundbites are no substitute for the bold action that we need on the climate.

[Catherine West]

What does my hon. Friend make of the World Wildlife Fund’s statement that the Bill does not go far enough to protect the world’s forests and oceans? Specifically, I know that there is interest across the House in what is happening in neighbourhoods and suburbs. In my own constituency of Muswell Hill, Highgate and Stroud Green, there is a lot of concern about trees coming down unnecessarily. How can we make that vision a reality?

[Luke Pollard]

Both my hon. Friend and the WWF are right that we need to see bolder action on forests and the oceans. It is a shocking indictment of this Bill that there is barely a mention of the oceans, which is a really important part of our environment.

Ministers must act in a quicker and more decisive way on the environment than we have seen to date. I hoped that the delay in the Bill would have given Ministers that time to be bolder, but I am afraid that they have not used their time as wisely as I would have liked. I welcome the steps forward that the Minister has announced, but they are not enough. The pace and urgency seem to be absent. Our rivers are polluted. There is not a single river in England safe to swim in. More species face extinction at home and abroad; more bees are dying from bee-killing pesticides, the use of which is legitimised by this Government; more plastics are entering our oceans; and dangerous particulates are entering the lungs of some of our most vulnerable. Where is the vision? Where is the landmark boldness that we were promised? Where is the rock-the-boat carbon cutting innovation? Where is the determination to push harder and harder to clean our air, protect our species, plant more trees and get us back on a course for nature recovery? Where is the World Health Organisation’s air quality targets in the Bill? Where is the boldness on ocean protection? We need that bold action not only to cut carbon, but to step up and protect our natural environment as well. If we have this approach that we can either solve a carbon crisis or an ecological crisis, we will solve neither. We need to solve both of them together, or neither of them at all.