European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendments 112 and 113, which are in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Byford, and my noble friend Lady Brown of Cambridge.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, I hate to interrupt my noble friend but he is not moving his amendment now; he is speaking to it. The same applies to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley.

[Lord Krebs]

I thank my noble friend Lady Mar for that correction. As well as speaking to my amendment, I shall be supporting Amendments 66 and 108, with which my name is associated and to which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, has already spoken.

It was very encouraging to hear the Prime Minister reaffirm in her Mansion House speech on Friday that:

“As we leave the EU we will uphold environmental standards and go further to protect our shared natural heritage”.


As the Chief Medical Officer for England made clear in her annual report published last week, our own health is intimately dependent on the health of our environment. We all recognise that the improvements over past decades in the UK’s environmental standards have been driven primarily by EU laws that cover roughly 80% of environmental legislation in this country, and a key part of that has been enforcement. There is no point in having high aspirations unless you have an effective mechanism to ensure that you deliver. As a member of the European Union, we have been subject to scrutiny and enforcement by the Commission, ultimately through infraction notices. As I pointed out at Second Reading, 46% of the judgments handed down by the European Court of Justice on UK infringements since 2003 related to the environment.

The Government have accepted that after Brexit there will be a governance gap and that therefore a new green watchdog will be required to hold the Government to account on their environmental performance. The purpose of Amendments 112 and 113 is to ensure that this new green watchdog is in place by exit day and that it will mirror as closely as possible the current arrangements that we have as a member of the EU.

When the Energy and Environment Sub-Committee of the EU Select Committee, of which I am a member, took evidence on this, the very strong view was that a new watchdog would be essential. I quote from our report:

“The importance of the role of EU institutions in ensuring effective enforcement of environmental protection and standards, underpinned as it is by the power to take infraction proceedings against the United Kingdom or against any other Member State, cannot be overstated ... The evidence we have heard strongly suggests that an effective and independent domestic enforcement mechanism will be necessary, in order to fill the vacuum left by the European Commission in ensuring the compliance of the Government and public authorities with environmental obligations ... It will be important for any effective domestic enforcement mechanism to have both regular oversight of the Government’s progress towards its environmental objectives, and the ability, through the courts, to sanction non-compliance as necessary”.


I can imagine that in his reply at the end of this debate the Minister will say that we are going out to consultation on a new green watchdog. Indeed, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has already indicated that there will be a consultation on a new statutory body early in 2018. Just checking my clock, “early” is moving quickly beyond us. In the Committee debate in the other place, Dominic Raab said on 15 November 2017 that the consultation was “coming imminently”. If one of my students at Oxford said that her essay would arrive imminently but nearly four months later it had not appeared, it would be a case for disciplinary action. Monsieur Barnier has repeatedly said that the clock is ticking, so can the Minister assure the Committee that the new green watchdog will be in place on a statutory basis by exit day?

Amendments 112 and 113 set out a number of key requirements for the new watchdog. First, as I have already said, it should be in place by exit day. Secondly—this resonates with what the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, has just said—the UK Government and the devolved Administrations should work together to ensure that the watchdog functions apply to the whole of the UK. If there are different watchdogs for the four countries of the UK, they should operate according to the same principles and should be established jointly and in the same timescale. Thirdly, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, the Government should consult on incorporating EU environmental principles into primary legislation, support decision-making by the watchdog or watchdogs and ensure that the principles inform decision-making more broadly. Fourthly, there should be absolute transparency about the environmental governance functions that are transferred to the new watchdog or watchdogs by creating a publicly available register of functions.

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[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 66, to which I have added my name; Amendment 67 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Judd; and Amendment 67A in the name of my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer. These amendments are key to ensuring that the protection of our environmental heritage is enshrined in law in the Bill. This group of amendments is crux to the environmental agenda and must be included in the Bill. I fully support the thorough introduction to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and I am grateful to Rescue, the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists, the Environmental Policy Forum and Greener UK for their briefings.

As we all know, on 29 March 2019 key pieces of legislation such as the environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental directives will be transposed into domestic law, with the aim that planning policy will continue to function as currently. However, the Bill does not directly reference some important overarching principles established in the EU treaty, potentially weakening environmental protections which underpin planning-led archaeology. This process is difficult—not least because of the perceived weakness in the Bill, which may prevent its stated ambition of ensuring a smooth transition and avoiding a black hole in the statute book on the day of the UK’s exit next year.

For the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists and the Council for British Archaeology, the key issues are: the de facto weakening of environmental principles enshrined in the European treaty, which are not within the scope of the Bill as proposed; the loss of supranational jurisdiction to provide opportunities to bring legal challenges on environmental principles; the uncertainty over how the Government will use so-called Henry VIII powers to amend technical aspects of EU law when transposed, to ensure that they remain workable in a domestic context; and the uncertainty over how previously held EU powers—brought back to the UK after Brexit—will be reserved to devolve to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

In February, during the recess, I went to Cyprus for a holiday. During the week, my husband and I visited the marvellous and numerous archaeological remains on the island, including Aphrodite’s Temple, Aphrodite’s Rock, the Tombs of the Kings and the main archaeological site in Paphos. The Cypriot Government have spent considerable sums of money over many years excavating these sites and preserving the wonderful mosaics uncovered and other historical artefacts. I was struck by the number of non-Cypriot archaeologists who had funded and worked on the sites over the decades to bring the history to life for future generations. Many of these came from the UK.

To be clear on how important archaeological heritage is, we must turn to the survey of adults in England called Taking Part Focus On: Heritage. This was a DCMS survey of 2017 demonstrating both the cultural and economic value that heritage provides to our society and community. Some 74.2% of adults visited a heritage site in 2016-17, with a remarkable 94.2% of adults agreeing that it is important to them that,

“heritage buildings or places are well looked after”.

Another report, Heritage and the Economy 2017, by Historic England—again reporting English statistics—shows that,

“heritage directly contributed £11.9 billion in GVA”,

equivalent to 2% of our national GVA, and that:

“Heritage tourism generated £16.4 billion in spending by domestic and international visitors”.


The Welsh equivalent showed that it contributed 1.6% of GVA and Scotland’s Historic Environment Audit 2016 showed that heritage contributed,

“in excess of £2.3 billion to Scotland’s economy”.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness, but these amendments are about environment, not heritage. Does she have her right speech?

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville]

I thank the noble Countess for that intervention, but I believe I have the right speech and I hope she will bear with me until I get to the end.

With this in mind, it is important that the UK retains at least an equivalent provision for environmental protection in domestic legislation and policy to compensate for the loss of EU funding to the historic environment with domestic funding, ensure free movement of skilled and accredited archaeologists between the EU and the UK—

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness again, but this is an amendment about the environment. We are asked in Committee to pay our attentions to the particular amendments that we are looking at. I have looked through the list of amendments and none of them applies to architectural heritage. Will the noble Baroness kindly let noble Lords who wish to speak on the environment have their turn?

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville]

I am sorry that the noble Countess is frustrated with me trying to link the environment to archaeology. However, Article 191 aims for a “high level” protection of the environment and is based on “preventive action” in which,

“environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at source and that the polluter should pay”.

The principles, including the polluter pays principle, the prevention principle and the precautionary principle, have all been the fundamental base of environmental—

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[The Earl of Caithness]

That is a very valid point. Whatever Government are in power have always found funding bodies an extremely difficult thing to do on a continuous basis.

I was going to come to my noble friend Lord Deben and say just a couple of things to him. He should read what my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern said on the previous amendment, on principles. Also, when he was Secretary of State he took on an improving situation—and, of course, he forgot to mention that we were world leaders in combating the damage to the ozone layer.

We are speaking to Amendment 67, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I am sure we all agree with him on the question of biodiversity, but whether it is relevant to have that in the Bill is debatable. I disagree with him, however, on how good the EU has been about biodiversity. If he is giving so much praise to the EU, why has biodiversity continued to decline? Why have the wild birds he mentioned continued to decline? It is largely due to EU policies, particularly the common agricultural policy. One benefit from getting out of the EU is that we will be able to do something quite positive and new for biodiversity and our wildlife, but that will mean a divergence from Europe.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I support Amendment 66 and the words of my noble friend Lord Krebs. I put in a note of caution here. The noble Lord asked that we mirror European law as it stands. Hot off the press came an announcement yesterday—I thank the European Environmental Bureau for this—with the headline, “Precautionary in principle, flawed in fact: European Commission review accepts environmental groups’ criticism of chemical regulation”.

The noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, whom I am pleased to see is in his seat, knows how I have campaigned tirelessly about Roundup and glyphosate. I cite some of the points that have been made. There was a five-year review of the REACH regulation—the manner by which chemicals are regulated in the European Union. These are usually single chemicals, not mixtures. The licensing of mixtures depends on each country individually. It says:

“However, the Commission review highlights problems with substance registration dossiers, the failure to correctly apply the crucial precautionary and burden of proof principles and specific issues with REACH processes, particularly evaluation, restriction and authorisation”.


In the case of glyphosate, Monsanto has consistently hidden research that has shown that it is carcinogenic and affects the kidneys and liver. It is only now coming out after huge freedom of information requests in the United States. The European Union has chosen to ignore all that evidence; it has not asked Monsanto for it. As a result, we are being exposed to glyphosate; something like 90% of the population has glyphosate in their urine. We do not really know what the health effects are. We do know that the effects on the environment are not good. I therefore support the amendment, but I also ask that we do not mirror the behaviour of the REACH organisation and that we tighten up our own principles and make sure that we get it right.

[Baroness Featherstone]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 108, to which I added my name. We have become used to relying on the EU to oversee our compliance with directives—including those highlighted in Amendment 108—and that what we commit to is delivered. We are tested and, if we are found wanting, there are consequences. However, as the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee said in its 19th report:

“The UK’s withdrawal from the EU raises questions about the effectiveness of oversight and enforcement of these commitments in the longer term”.


As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, without enforcement, what is the point of the law?

Given that in Amendment 108 we are talking about a range of pollutants, including the five main air pollutants, the ambient air quality directive—which sets legally binding limits for concentrations in outdoor air of major air pollutants that impact public health, such as particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide—and other directives, this is a really crucial issue. We know from Defra that some of the existing mechanisms that we currently rely on to scrutinise whether we are keeping up to the environmental standards to which we are signed up are not being carried across.

As has been raised by other noble Lords, the Government said when they presented the 25-year development plan, “Don’t worry, we are setting up a new body to oversee all of that”, but what will it comprise? To what standard will it be judging? What powers will it have? If the consultation on all that is yet to start, what is the timetable for it to be up and running? And where is it in the Bill? Surely we need it in the Bill. Maybe the Government will come forward with an air quality Bill, but how on earth will that get into our law in time?

This amendment makes certain that we cannot fall foul of not having thought of something or set up new arrangements in a timely manner. It means that those of us who are concerned in this regard can cease our concern. The Government must not leave us in a situation where there is any chance or ability to lessen—whether by accident, desire or timing—the environmental protections that we currently enjoy, and I hope that the Minister can give us assurance on that.

On Amendments 66, 112 and 113, I simply say that, if the Government are sincere in their stated commitment —as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said—to uphold all the environmental commitments that we are signed up to and to uphold the spirit of the transfer of EU law into UK law, they should have absolutely no hesitation in supporting all these amendments.