Agricultural Tenancies

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement. I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Rock for her report. I do not agree with all of it—I expect that none of us does—but I agree with its general thrust.

I was interested in what my noble friend the Minister said about the farm tenancy forum. I am slightly worried that it will become a talking shop. How will it work with the proposal for a tenant farming commissioner? There will be a clash, and one will get a bit sidelined.

Woodland is an important but hugely tricky area. Woodland is generally excluded from an agricultural tenancy, but hedgerows are not, and the hedgerows are as good at absorbing carbon as the woodland. I hope the Government will be able to devise a way forward whereby tenancy agreements can be altered to allow tenants to have bushier, wider hedgerows and plant trees in them without breaking their tenancy agreement.

Can my noble friend explain a bit more about what the RICS exercise is all about? I declare an interest as a former agent. There are indeed some bad agents, but there are bad landlords and bad tenants, and some pretty awful politicians. It happens in every trade, and I was slightly disturbed by my noble friend Lady Rock’s generalisation about how bad agents are. Agents only do what the landlord or tenant tells them to do. This will be particularly concerning in future as more and more firms that have absolutely no interest in agriculture buy up land in order to get carbon credentials into their portfolio and instruct their agent to do exactly what they want. Some accountant in Croydon will be crunching the figures and, unless the agent performs, he will be sacked. Can my noble friend tell me a little more about that?

Underlying the whole of this landlord-tenant relationship is the worry about what a future Government would do. The Labour Party, and indeed the Government, with the levelling-up Bill, are committed to buying land from landowners at below market value. If that continues, landlords will be very wary of letting any land to tenants in future.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. One of the greatest criticisms of the Tenancy Reform Industry Group—I pay tribute to the many hours many people sat on that organisation—was that it was a talking shop. People did not feel they were being listened to, and it was a way of getting off their chest concerns they knew existed. We want to make sure that the new forum is not that; that it is executive and has a snap to it. As I have said, it will meet every quarter and the Farming Minister will be one of the co-chairs. Its remit and the determination to keep it close to Ministers shows that it will be more than that.

My noble friend makes valid points about trees and hedgerows. We have published guidance on how tenants can approach tree planting and woodland schemes such as the England woodland creation offer, and we have made sure that both the tenant and landlord will need to agree to any EWCO proposal on tenanted land. I do not think that is wrong—it is absolutely right that if a major change in land use is being promoted, the landlord’s interests matter. If they do not, it will be another incentive for landlords not to let land, or indeed to bring to an end a letting arrangement when a farm becomes available and take it in hand. We want to make sure we are still providing the incentives.

My noble friend is entirely right about hedgerows. That is why we have published our new hedgerow standard as part of the new six standards for the sustainable farming initiative. But he is absolutely right that a hedge no higher than this table does not really achieve very much in terms of carbon and biodiversity. If it is much wider, much higher and preferably has an unploughed, unfarmed cultivated headland, it will be immensely more important.

My noble friend is absolutely right, of course, that a lot of agents are excellent people—I think I was when I was one—but we should not create legislation around trying to put everybody in the same boat as the bad ones. Agents are undoubtedly advising their clients as to what is best for them to secure their interests for the future and the future generations of their family. That is why we want to see the kind of changes we are making to inheritance tax, which give the incentive to landowners, on the advice of their agents, to do the right thing and encourage that. I have received inspiration from my colleague, the Minister. I might have misled the House. He is not the co-chair but, importantly, he will attend every meeting of the tenants’ forum.

Woodland Cover Protection and Grey Squirrel Control

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, for initiating this important debate.

If we want to promote and protect our woodlands, we need to get much better at forestry in this country. I have said many times that we are overall pretty bad at it. Most of our woodlands are in poor condition and not managed to the proper standard. Our foresters need much better training, especially for continuous cover, which is something that I have been promoting in this House for over 50 years—I hope that its time has come.

The control of grey squirrels should be grant funded, given their impact on the delivery of key ecosystems and services such as carbon sequestration budgets and biodiversity, as well as the loss of timbers. However, grey squirrels are not the only problem and I want to focus on some of the others.

Forestry is not easy. It is easy to say, “Let’s plant more trees”, but it is a jolly sight more difficult to do that in reality. Besides grey squirrels, there are deer and, of our six species, every single one is destructive. At over 1.5 billion deer, there are far too many in this country. They cause an estimated 74,000 car accidents a year, costing £10 million in car repairs alone. Deer kill about 20 people a year and there has been no decline in human injuries in the last 20 years. The sadness is that any deer involved in a car accident will probably die a long, lingering death well away from the scene of the accident.

Those are not all the problems; there are others. I have a list of at least 25 pests or diseases, either in this country or on our doorstep, attacking every single one of our native trees: oak, ash, birch, chestnut, spruce, pine—the list could go on. In fact, one could get quite depressed about forestry, but one needs to look at it more positively.

I turn to hedgerows. I plead with the Minister to include hedgerows in the ambit of woodland. Hedgerows absorb 30 to 80 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare. The Government need to encourage farmers to have taller and wider hedgerows. The Wildlife Conservation Trust estimates that, if a farmer planted a tree every 20 metres in half the hedgerows in this country, we would plant another 14 million new trees. Farmers need to be encouraged but also their tenancies need to be looked at, because by and large with tenancies any timber is reserved to the landlord.

Those would be amenity trees but I also have a concern about commercial timber. We have a conflict between the area where commercial timber can be grown and where ground-nesting birds are, particularly species on the red list such as curlew and black grouse. Science has clearly told us that there is an increase of predation for any ground-nesting bird within woodland. It is not only about predation; there is fragmentation of the breeding sites as we plant more and more timber. As I said about chalk streams, it is about a balance in the environment. The Minister has a heck of a job to keep everyone happy, because there will always be at least one NGO that will complain.

Land Use Commission

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am not entirely sure what the noble Baroness is talking about; she might have given me some examples. It is important that a land use framework gives land managers the ability to plan into the future, knowing what is predisposed from the land, where it is best to plant trees, where we will concentrate our desperate economic and environmental imperative of reversing the declines in species, and where we will produce food. We will have a real attempt at giving land managers the understanding they need to take their businesses forward in this new and changing world.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, we welcome Defra’s appreciation of the need for land use. It has taken some years in getting there, but it appears that no other department is as keen as Defra to do this. Can my noble friend tell us a bit more about his discussions with the other departments and whether they are looking constructively at this matter?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We are having very good discussions across government. You cannot have a land use framework that does not address planning—I know that we will be talking about planning later today and into the night. You cannot have this conversation without talking to that department, for example, and you cannot have net zero without talking about trees. There is an absolute link-up. I reassure my noble friend that we are very serious about our conversations across government.

Microchipping of Cats and Dogs (England) Regulations 2023

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as declared in the register and as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare and as a veterinary surgeon.

I very much welcome this statutory instrument and the inclusion of cats. I also welcome the fact that there is no legal requirement in these regulations that vets must scan a dog prior to euthanasia. This matter has been of some considerable public interest, but the Government deserve credit for recognising that not only the veterinary profession but many of the dog and cat bodies—such as Cats Protection, Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, Dogs Trust, PDSA and others—have similarly opposed a legal requirement to scan prior to euthanasia. All these bodies have advocated that that should be a matter for professional codes of practice. Indeed, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons has done so and has incorporated in its code of practice appropriate advice but ultimately gives veterinary surgeons powers to use their discretion. The reason is that a legal requirement could adversely affect animal welfare. In certain circumstances, it could deter individuals from bringing sick or injured animals to a veterinary surgeon if they thought the veterinary surgeons were essentially policing this microchipping requirement. That would be adverse for animal welfare.

One regret I have, which I think I share with many in our profession and many who are required to scan animals, is that there has been no attempt to reduce or limit the number of databases holding microchip information. I understand that currently, there are 22 different databases for dogs, which are fulfilling the Government’s current requirements to hold data. That creates an unnecessary and excessive burden, both on those required to put in chips and record the information and on those who need to recover the information from scanning. However, I note that there are now two portals to assist one in determining which database contains the relevant information for any particular animal. One is run by the Kennel Club and one by AVID, a manufacturer of microchips, but these are private initiatives. One hopes that they are maintained to facilitate the examination and identification of microchips.

I very much welcome this instrument, which makes a significant contribution to reuniting dogs and cats with their owners and, importantly, to the rapid identification and potential treatment of injured dogs and cats.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this long-overdue statutory instrument. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Benyon for introducing it. I have one specific question for him, to which I really do not know the answer. Why has he chosen 20 weeks for a cat under Regulation 3(2)(a)? A cat must be older than 20 weeks, whereas a dog must be older than eight weeks. Why is there a difference?

We do not often talk about cats—it is a long time since we have had a debate on them. I am a great admirer of those lovely animals, because there is no better animal for putting a human being back in their place than a cat. However, as I have spoken about before, I am concerned by the damage they can do to wildlife in gardens, particularly birds. That problem has been exacerbated by avian flu and by humans in the way we feed birds. Research has shown that a lot of small garden birds are catching disease because, through our very best intentions, we put out a feeder and fill it up weekly but do not clean the feeder, which is what is spreading the disease to birds. Therefore, birds will be weaker and easier for cats to catch. A responsible owner will of course put a bell on their cat; excellent research has been done on this by SongBird Survival and the University of Exeter. Can my noble friend comment on whether the department is taking any more action on this or encouraging us humans to behave better? It is quite easy with domesticated cats; feral cats are a different problem. Is my noble friend taking a different attitude towards them?

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, I too very much welcome this instrument, which is long overdue. I was quite shocked when I looked up the figures for how pet theft has rocketed: in my part of the world, south-west London, Metropolitan Police figures show that between 2016 and 2021 dog theft went up by 81% while cat theft went up by 325%, which I found extraordinary. Someone must be making quite a lot of money out of this.

I welcome most of the recommendations, which are very good, but I am concerned that the Government’s review of dog microchipping found quite a few areas that needed to be addressed, which I wonder if the Minister will respond to. One is the fact that the database system is so complicated, particularly for vets. When they have a life-or-death situation where an injured animal is brought in, sometimes it is very difficult for them to contact the owner and they have to go to multiple places to find this out.

Owners also need to be made much more aware that it is not a question of just microchipping their cat or dog; they then have to update the information. The number of owners who think that, once they have microchipped the animal, they do not need to do anything else is amazing. There are huge numbers of cats and dogs and other animals that have been microchipped whose owners’ information is about 10 years out of date, because they have moved house or changed their telephone number, and there is no way of getting hold of them.

In the USA, they have an annual Check the Chip Day, which sounds like a good idea. An even better idea, in Australia, is that you have your cat or dog chipped and then get an email reminder. It is very simple for one of the microchip companies just to email everyone on their database once a year just to remind them to update their details; I would have thought that that would be a good idea.

Direct Payments to Farmers (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2023

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I first declare my interest, as set out in the register, as president of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. The statutory instrument on direct payments that we are considering today is very short, and should be straightforward, but I have tabled an amendment, as we have some reservations about how the agricultural transition is being managed. This was done with no intention to confuse farmers.

Farm businesses have been facing increased volatility, uncertainty and instability and have been expressing concerns about the phase-out of direct payments against a backdrop of huge cost inflation. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, talked about the huge extra costs being faced. According to the NFU, agricultural inputs have risen by almost 50% since 2019. It says that fertilisers are up by 169%, energy by 79% and animal feed by 57%.

During a time of fresh food shortages, it is worrying that the production of salad ingredients such as tomatoes and cucumbers is expected to fall to the lowest levels since records began back in 1985. Is Defra talking to supermarkets about the need to support British farmers? The NFU survey of livestock producers found that 40% of beef farmers and 36% of sheep farmers are planning to reduce, with input costs given overwhelmingly as the main reason.

Following the survey results, and with the SI reducing payments to farmers by between 35% and 55%, I was perturbed by paragraph 12 of the Explanatory Notes, headlined Impact, which states:

“There is no or no significant impact on business, charities or voluntary bodies”.


How can there not be an impact? I also draw attention to paragraph 7.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which indicates that the Government intend this to be last year of the current direct payment scheme in England. It is being replaced by the delinked payment. Will that process require a further SI, or will what is in front of us today be sufficient to make that transition?

I would also appreciate clarification of the claims in paragraph 7.2, which states that direct payments are untargeted, can inflate land rent prices and can stand in the way of new entrants to the farming industry. These are quite sweeping assertions. What is the evidence base for this and what impact has the reduction in basic payments so far had on land prices and new entrants?

As the Minister knows, we have always supported the introduction of new ELM schemes and we clearly want to see them succeed, but between 2018 and 2022, Defra struggled to provide farmers with sufficient information. This unsurprisingly led to concerns, particularly against the backdrop of changes to our trading relationship with Europe, the Covid-19 pandemic, the impact of the war in Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis.

There has been a huge number of differing pressures and uncertainty. It is no surprise that farmers are concerned and worried about all the changes that are happening. But it was very welcome that in January this year, Defra finally published the details of the three ELM schemes and provided much needed clarity to the farming sector. As we have heard, this includes a sustainable farming incentive, an expanded countryside stewardship scheme and a further round of the landscape recovery pilots.

It is important for the different options to be attractive to farmers, enabling them to produce food while helping to protect and enhance our natural environment. We have heard that this year, Defra has increased countryside stewardship payment rates and removed the caps, so that farmers can access more capital to invest in farm infrastructure, improve air and water quality and restore habitats. This is very welcome, but we believe that Defra could go further in offering support. One way could be to increase access to the higher tier options, including for hill farmers. Currently, only about 300 to 500 farmers a year benefit from this, but it has the potential to provide a flexible, effective and more attractive offer to many more farmers. Is this something the department would perhaps consider? Defra has stated that it will manage the budget in a flexible and transparent way but has not made firm allocations to each scheme. When is that information likely to be available?

We know that the successful rollout of ELMS is critical to meeting our domestic and international commitments to tackle the nature and climate crisis we face. Following COP 15, we now have international commitments to pursue more nature-friendly farming. So, while we have concerns about the lack of long-term certainty about the future that farmers are struggling with, and we still need to know details of how all this will work in practice, we do not support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville.

Analysis by the Green Alliance has demonstrated that a two-year delay to the phase-out of direct payments would halve the contribution of ELMS to the fifth carbon budget, leaving a substantial gap in the UK’s net zero plans. The analysis also found that retaining the previous EU scheme for an extra two years would mean that at least £1.2 billion—that is £770 million in 2023—would continue to be spent on the wealthiest farms in England: in other words, those already receiving more than £100,000 each in public subsidy in exchange for carrying out no public goods whatsoever.

Unfortunately, the Government have dithered for a number of years over the future of ELMS, which has been significantly delayed from the original start date of 2020. There was also uncertainty when Liz Truss even looked at axing it. So, January’s announcement was very helpful, but everything has been moving far too slowly, both for farmers and for our environment. Many farmers are also concerned about a gap in funding as they work out which schemes they are eligible to apply for.

My colleague in the other place, Daniel Zeichner MP, said:

“Unfortunately, it’s hard to imagine the money that’s been lost in direct payments will now be replaced through environmental schemes. Farmers are losing thousands and thousands. Labour is committed to making these schemes work and unfortunately it appears there is no such commitment from this government”.


I know that the Minister is personally very committed.

The extra £1,000 that has been mentioned is not exactly a huge sum for struggling farmers, but this SI is part of the next stage in the transition to the “public money for public goods” approach to agricultural support. We strongly support that transition, and we want it to work. We need to move to a more environmentally friendly and nature-positive food production system, but we remain concerned that the complexity of the schemes currently proposed may hamper take-up. The noble Baroness mentioned the slow uptake of the scheme so far. In terms of food supply and environmental gain, that is something we simply cannot afford. We support the Government’s aims, but they just need to get on now with delivering what both our farmers and the environment so badly need.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, this has been an interesting discussion so far. Both noble Baronesses talked about farmers in general, as if all farmers are struggling. That is not the case. A number of farmers in this country are doing very well at the moment because of the nature of the land. There are roughly 45 million acres of farmable land in the UK. Of that, 15 million acres constitute very good land, and its farmers are able to adapt and grow high-value crops at good yields. There are about 15 million acres of moderate land, and they are a serious problem; my noble friend and Defra are tackling it, and ELMS will undoubtedly help. There are 15 million acres of hill land, which again present a very difficult problem. The challenge facing my noble friend and Defra is sorting out the two less productive areas. The way they are going with ELMS is absolutely the right direction.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, who up until today has been a great supporter of the farmers, said that the high cost of fertiliser is causing farmers a lot of problems. She is right in one way, but quite wrong in another. It is entirely due to the high cost of fertiliser that more and more farmers are putting in leys and cover crops, and hill farmers are looking, probably for the first time, at soil quality—the most important thing for farmers and for us. So the situation is not all bad.

I share some of the concerns that have been raised. One reason that there has not been greater take-up—although, as my noble friend rightly said, the Countryside Stewardship scheme has just about doubled in the past three years—is that it is quite natural for farmers to think there is a better scheme coming in the next couple of months. That is causing a lot of farmers to sit back and wait to the last possible moment. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will make as clear as possible to farmers what the situation is. If farmers know what the schemes are and what the payments are going to be, they will make a decision. They have to be moved from the position where they think that a better scheme will come in a few weeks’ time.

Food Price Inflation

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. On free school meals, the Government fully support the provision of nutritious food in schools to enable pupils to be well nourished, develop healthy eating habits and concentrate and learn in school. There is so much evidence from a number of different bodies about the importance of the right nutrition to assist with learning and ensure that the school day is as beneficial as possible. We have full confidence that schools and catering suppliers will continue to deliver a quality service. As the noble Baroness will know, under this Government, eligibility for free school meals has been extended several times, and to more groups of children than under any other Government over the past 50 years. This has included the introduction of universal infant free school meals and further education free school meals, as well as the permanent extension of eligibility to children from all families with no recourse to public funds—for example, people with temporary immigration status—which came into effect in April 2022.

We are doing much more to assist households, but she rightly asked where this money is going. It is going directly to those households that need it. Farmers and producers, who are at that end of the supply chain, are being assisted, supported and incentivised in a number of ways. She will have seen measures brought in in the Budget to help farmers through fiscal changes. We are securing and ring-fencing the £2.4 billion a year that we spend supporting farmers, but encouraging them to move towards a system of sustainable farming so that they are protecting our natural capital. This secures the food supply in the long term; it is not just dealing with a temporary problem that has emanated from the alarming effect of the war in Ukraine. Of course, we need to take further long-term measures to make sure that we are incentivising farmers to continue to produce food close to those who eat it.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Government for their generous support, but what further measures beyond the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill are they planning to help science enable farmers to produce more in this country while at the same time improving the environment?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. Technology is our friend in tackling the needs of future generations. As part of seeing how the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill would work, I went to a laboratory in Oxford and spoke to real experts in this field. I came away extremely optimistic that, through the changes we are bringing in through such Bills, but also the incredible work happening across institutions in the United Kingdom and abroad, our ability to feed ourselves in future is perfectly feasible. It needs will from government, investment and continued support for the scientific community, which is driving this change. Also, that scientific evidence needs to feed through to the farmers, producers and processors so that they can continue to produce food affordably and in a sustainable way. I can absolutely assure my noble friend that science is at the heart of government policy on this.

Water Companies: Pollution Penalties

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend tell me whether the increased incidence of storm overflows is due to new developments being put through existing, poor systems, increased monitoring, or poor behaviour by the water authorities?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The number of spills per overflow per year in England in 2021 was 29. That compares, for example, with Wales, where it was 44. It is undoubtedly the case, in a river that I know, that there is a problem. There are eight villages up that valley. Every one of those villages has increased in size—in the number of houses—over the past four decades by between 25% and 40%. There has been a consistent, decadal problem of investment to match that. We are now requiring water companies to play catch-up, and they are, in that catchment and many others. We are complying with regulations such as the urban wastewater treatment directive, which has seen £1.4 billion invested in stopping just 50 storm overflows in the River Thames. There are 14,000 storm overflows in England. To deal with them all is a massive job and will require billions of pounds of investment to restore our rivers.

Agricultural Transition Plan

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Viscount makes a very good point. One of the things that the review looked at was what was going on in the sea at the time. He is absolutely right that there are factors that can affect species and their ability to withstand a pathogen if such a pathogen exists. Those factors can include storm and tide effects and other human effects; they were certainly considered as part of the review and will be considered in any future reviews of this work.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, during the passage of the then Environment Bill, my noble friend’s predecessor as Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, promised the House that there would be a soil health action plan and that it would be a “key plank” of the Government’s policy. When is that promise going to be honoured?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am not sure, because I was not involved in any commitments made at the time of that Bill, but I will certainly look into it and contact my noble friend. I should say that soil is absolutely at the heart of our agricultural reforms. We want farmers to use it in a way that means we are protecting it. There are certain areas, such as lowland peat, where the soil is being depleted at an alarming rate. We want to make sure that the measures we have introduced are used to protect and maintain soils; and that soils can be used for all the things we want, such as cleaning up rivers and protecting our environment.

Environmental Targets (Fine Particulate Matter) (England) Regulations 2022

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to this SI. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has spoken in detail about the lack of ambition and urgency in the Government’s regulations on fine particulates, and previous speakers have made powerful arguments for more ambitious targets.

I fear I feel like a single-track CD that is on continual replay, continuously playing the same track or, in my case, repeating the same arguments. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, of which I am currently a member, has drawn the attention of the House to the issue of reducing concentrations of PM2.5, the pollutant causing the most harm to human health. The extensive consultation carried out by Defra drew responses on this regulation from Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Woodland Trust and Asthma + Lung UK, all of whom jail felt the annual mean concentration target—the AMCT—of 10 micrograms per cubic metre at the sites of the highest level of concentration by December 2040 was not adequate. The Royal College of Physicians has written to me saying:

“Air pollution and poor air quality are a significant and growing public health challenge. In 2016, the RCP alongside the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health published Every Breath We Take. This report examined the impact of exposure to air pollution across the life course.”


The report found that around 40,000 premature deaths every year in the UK were attributable to exposure to outdoor air pollution.

The Healthy Air Coalition stated that the EU Commission proposes that this same target, of 10 micrograms per cubic metre, be reached by 2030 —10 years earlier than Defra’s target of 2040. The Healthy Air Coalition also asked why the requirement for a minimum number of monitoring stations will not come into effect until January 2028. Without these stations it is extremely difficult to have confidence in our ability to monitor the particulates and meet the targets, even at their very unambitious levels. Defra’s response to the questions on this were that it expected the monitor network to be completed in the next three years, but it had allowed for unavoidable slippage in building, networking and testing. Therefore, the legal requirement was going to be 2028.

The consultation responses from all quarters were clear that the targets were unambitious and should be higher. Despite this, as with all the other five areas of environmental targets, no change was made to the final targets. As this is the last of the six target areas to be debated, I ask the Minister how much the consultation exercise has cost in total? How many hours of Defra staff time were spent analysing and collating the responses? Given the very large number of responses—over 181,000—were extra resources deployed and temporary staff employed in order to help deal with the level of responses?

Defra spends a lot of time consulting on various pieces of legislation. I therefore imagine that the consultation department is used to the processes involved and is efficient in collating the resulting responses. On this occasion, to totally ignore and override the submissions received, and stick to the original targets, gives a very strong impression that Defra’s mind was already made up long before the consultation started. Defra was only paying lip service to the process. Meanwhile, those who suffer from asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory tract conditions, long-term and short-term, are left with no hope of improved air quality in the immediate future. That really is unacceptable. Given the level of concern on the total lack of meaningful response to the consultation exercise, if the Minister is not able to answer my questions on costs and staff resources this evening I would be grateful if he could write to me with the necessary information and put a copy of his response in the Library.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, can I challenge the noble Baroness on what she said? While it was very interesting, she focused entirely on outdoor pollution from PM. There is a much greater problem of indoor pollution from PM, about which we know much less. There is much less monitoring of it but it comes from damp houses and from the chemicals we use; it comes from a whole range of issues. She referred specifically to the outdoors and then to people suffering from asthma. They are going to be suffering indoors as well, given the pollution inside our houses. This is why the whole of air pollution is so difficult. Theoretically, we know much more about outside pollution, which is much more heavily monitored. Even the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said how difficult it has been to reduce particulates in the City of London, despite how much the traffic has reduced. Yes, this is a hugely complex and very difficult and sensitive issue, but we need to look at it in the round. I have no doubt that by 2030 we will have a huge reduction, but it is going to be totally impossible to get to the required level for every single area in England.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to everyone for their valuable contributions to this debate. To answer directly the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, I say that this is not about a lack of ambition. I have had many opportunities to speak in the House on this issue and I share entirely noble Lords’ ambition to achieve it, but we have to comply with the law. That is why the regret amendment, praying in aid 5 micrograms per cubic metre, is not achievable.

The World Health Organization is entirely right to push countries to be ever more ambitious, but we have to comply with Section 4 of the Environment Act. To do that, anybody who is in government or aspires to government cannot just stand up and say, “We want to achieve more”, in the full knowledge that it is impossible. We would therefore be breaking the law and I am not prepared to do that. However, I entirely accept that there are real and genuine concerns and I want our Environment Act, which is world-leading, to deliver ever greener and more environmentally friendly measures.

The EU is also mentioned in the regret amendment and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, is absolutely right: it seeks to achieve 5 micrograms per cubic metre, but we have to achieve the target that we set. We cannot just pluck one out that sounds good and makes the Government look as if they are listening to every single campaigner who wants a reduction, quite understandably. We want to produce a target that we can achieve, and we can set out clearly how we are going to do it.

To say that Ministers have somehow fiddled with the evidence to be less ambitious, for whatever reason, is absolute nonsense. The suite of targets that we consulted on was the result of significant scientific evidence, collected and developed over preceding years, and included input from evidence partners and independent experts, supported by over 800 pages of published evidence. We have full confidence in the final suite of targets, which represents a robust analysis of that. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said that this was a pessimistic view, but in government you can set a target and seek to achieve it before the date. We think we can get to the low-hanging fruit and show a trajectory much earlier than the date of 2040.

Avian Influenza: Game Birds

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, would my noble friend confirm that, when decisions are taken, they will be made on the best scientific evidence and not emotion or by those who shout the loudest? Has he seen the latest thorough scientific research which shows that shooting is beneficial to biodiversity in the same area?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend is right to raise this point. My department will make decisions on the basis of evidence. We will not be swayed by those who say we should allow activities like shooting regardless of the risks or by those who use this tragic outbreak as a hook on which to limit shooting or even ban it. We will make evidence-based decisions. However, we better make sure we are thinking of the counterfactuals as well, such as £2 billion of investment to some of the most remote parts of the country and 74,000 jobs. These are factors we also have to consider. If a shoot no longer exists, there will be no predation control, and cover crops being planted and other activities which are of massive benefit to wildlife in this country will no longer take place. That needs to be remembered.