European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Countess of Mar and Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville

Wednesday 7th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

[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—