Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right, and I am sure that the source of that misinformation will not be a surprise to him or anyone else. It is a regular source of misinformation, and it was quite correctly shot down in flames by the Botswanan Government.

My noble friend raised an important point, on which I will end. We should use the Bill to improve conservation by getting rid of bad trophy hunting practices, while at the same time keeping the good and improving standards and welfare for all. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, for bringing the Bill to the House and championing it. For the Green group, I express my strongest possible support for the Bill as it stands—and opposition to all the amendments.

I have been in your Lordships’ House for nearly four years, and I have to admit that I was rather surprised when I looked at the misnamed “grouping of amendments”. I have never seen this before: it is a list of 62 amendments in 62 groups. It is surprising that people who might perhaps regard themselves as champions of the traditions of the House have produced something that has not been seen in recent history—and I checked with someone who has been around the House for much longer. It could keep this House going for several days. Those who would champion the traditions and progress of the House appear to be heading in the opposite direction with this.

It is interesting to look at the gender balance of the names on the amendments: every single one is male. There is something to be said there. Only the other day, I had a conversation with a noble Lord about how it has often been put forward that, if we could hand over some countries in the global south to the women, and let the women run things, they would look different. That might be an interesting case study tonight.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Report stage
Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I fully support what the noble Lord said about the need for climate change to be in the Bill. I will speak to my Amendment 246A in this group. It is on the topical issue of wildfires, which have been exacerbated by climate change. As all your Lordships will know, wildfires have caused an enormous amount of death and disruption, with huge social, economic and environmental impact, across the world this year. You only have to see the regular news about what is happening in Greece and Canada to know what a problem it is. This year, we in the UK have been fortunate that we have not had fires on quite that scale—although we have had fires.

This debate slightly follows on from Committee, since when I have been in correspondence with the Home Office. We have a Minister for Fire there, but, in his reply—I think it was to me; it was addressed wrongly but it landed at my address, so I guess it was—he immediately referred me to Defra. So we have at least two departments in government involved, and although there is a Minister he is not in the department of most interest: Defra. That is why I have tabled Amendment 246A. Subsection (1) of its proposed new clause would require the Secretary of State, together with the Home Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to produce

“a national wildfire strategy and action plan”

within six months of the passing of the Bill. It is ludicrous that, in a country that has suffered, and continues to suffer, the wildfires that we have, we do not have an overall action plan.

Action plans are all very well and good, but they have to be implemented at local level. Therefore, in proposed new subsection (3) I suggest that each local planning authority produces a wildfire risk assessment plan in conjunction with the fire and rescue services. This is a local matter in the end, and it is vital that the local authority and local people are involved, as we have heard in two recent amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, waxed lyrical about it. My noble friends Lord Deben and Lord Lansley also mentioned how important it was to have up-to-date plans that were approved by local people.

In proposed new subsection (4), I list some of the things that need to be included in the proposed strategy and action plan. One of the issues is

“a map identifying the areas of current risk produced in accordance with the Met Office Fire Severity Index”.

At this stage, I ask my noble friend on the Front Bench—I think my noble friend Lord Howe is going to answer this—whether he considers this to be a valid index.

The current index, known as the MOFSI, helps us to plan for and react to fires but, unlike a fire danger rating system, MOFSI gives an indication of fire severity based only on the meteorological data and does not fully account for the varied fuel types that we see across the UK. Although MOFSI can indicate whether conditions are worsening or improving, its primary role is to determine whether open-access land should be closed to prevent the spread of fire. However, MOFSI does not always work effectively. For example, during the dry summer of 2018, in some regions the indices did not rise sufficiently to trigger land closures in areas that went on to experience severe wildfires. That proves to me that we need a different system of assessment and a fire danger rating system. Does my noble friend agree with me on that?

I do not want to pursue the arguments I used in Committee. I want to look at this issue briefly from another point of view—the insurance point of view. I do not know whether the Government have given any thought to insurance. We have had huge insurance problems with floods. There is a lesson to be learned from that, which is that we must act in advance when it comes to fires.

As I said, we have not had a repeat of the fires of last year, but on 18 and 19 July last year there were 84 wildfires affecting 28 of the 46 response areas, and it overwhelmed the fire and rescue services to such an extent that there was very little spare capacity for other emergencies. If that was not a warning to us that we need to improve the situation, I do not know what other action the Government need to be presented with.

That brings us to the question of insurance. The insurance industry is beginning to look at this in a serious way. As we continue to build, the urban/rural fringe is going to be hugely important. This will be the critical area of damage to the most property. There will be, and has been, damage to properties in rural areas, but the urban area is now most at risk. The expert report on wildfire in the UK for the third climate change risk assessment advised that wildfire and sources of ignition from outside of buildings should be considered in future planning actions and in building regulations and mitigation measures put into action. That is a relevant issue. Marsh McLennan, one of the experts on this, has quantified the benefit of fire buffer zones for the rural/urban interface. In the report it produced, it stated that wildfire

“risks can be greatly mitigated and reduced to a level that is both livable and insurable”.

It would be sad if the Government put us in a predicament in which people could not get insurance.

I have stressed the urban/rural fringe for one particular reason. Part of Defra’s agricultural policy is rewilding land, which leads to more abandonment, trees closer to rural areas and a much higher fuel load. It is the fuel load that is absolutely critical. We are blessed in this country with a wide diversity of geological stratas of soil, reflecting the countryside. Because of our maritime climate, we have very high fuel loads at certain times of the year and in certain places. The concern is that these are not assessed at the moment.

If we want to consider whether the fuel load matters, we can take a brief look back at the Saddleworth Moor fire, which was on peat and on very long, unmanaged and unkempt heather. When it burned, it produced something like 36,720 tonnes of carbon. In real figures, that equates to the annual emissions of 86,000 passenger cars—and that was one fire alone. The key in all this is the fuel load and how it is best managed. To do that, it is important that the local planning authorities have the appropriate plans underneath an overriding national fire strategy for England and Wales. I hope that the Government will support this amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for all the amendments in this group, but in the interests of time I will restrict myself to commenting on just two of them. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. Due to my Australian origins, I feel I am constitutionally obliged to make a contribution on wildfires, which for most of my youth I would have called bush-fires. In the British context, from 2009 to 2021 there were 362,000 wildfires, with nearly 80,000 hectares burned. The estimate is that, if we were to go to 2 degrees of global warming—something that we cannot afford—the number of very high fire risk days would double. That is because there is less rain in summer and it gets hotter and drier. As the noble Earl just said, if you have a wet winter and a spring that has a great flush of growth, that presents one set of risks—and, of course, peatlands, in which it is extremely difficult to extinguish fires, are another area of serious risk.

When people assess the risk in the UK, we think about those rural areas—those uplands and peatlands—but there is very serious risk, particularly in the south of England. I point noble Lords to the desperate and horrendous events in Hawaii. Noble Lords may have seen the photo of the now famous red-roofed house, which was one house that was not burned in the midst of blocks and blocks of houses. The two key things with that house were that it had a tin roof, rather than the asphalt roofs that most of the houses had, and they had cut back the vegetation. That is a demonstration of how preparation is so crucial in planning and guiding the thinking of people in the UK, who are really not very used to thinking about fires, to prepare for the risks ahead.

I point to a not terribly recent example but one that demonstrates the dangers, as Hawaii did, to urban areas—the peri-urban fringe but extending quite a way into urban areas. The Swinley Forest fire in Berkshire in 2011 burnt 300 hectares and 300 firefighters had to work to stop it getting into Bracknell, population 110,000. So, this is a modest but really important amendment that really is for the age of shocks, the age of the climate emergency we now live in.

Financial Services and Markets Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Report stage
Tuesday 6th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to express Green support for the non- government amendments in this group and acknowledge the way in which the weakness of the government amendment has already been acknowledged. Noble Lords will note that the explicitly environmental amendments, from Amendment 15 onwards, do not have a Green name on them. I am delighted about that because there was not space for one, because the amendments have cross-party support from right across the House, which really shows how far we have come in these debates.

I shall make four brief points, because I am very aware of the time. They are building on the points just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and reflecting on an article published last week in Nature, which demonstrated that in seven of eight key measures, including climate, biodiversity and water, we are outside the safe and just operating space of this planet. We are absolutely at crisis point and I pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that we cannot afford to wait. We cannot wait for the next Bill, the Bill after that and the Bill after that. I very much agree with the point just made by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, that the country should not have to wait for the House of Lords to insert these things into Bills; they should be there in government Bills as a matter of absolute, basic course.

I have a particular point about Amendments 93 and 113, which strengthen the fiduciary duty of pension funds to ensure investors consider the impact of their investments on environment and society. The case has already been made that there is no finance on a dead planet and there are no pensions on a dead planet, but the society element also deserves to be noted. We have had a huge amount of discussion of the problem of the large number of people of apparently working age who are not engaged in our labour force at the moment, and the public health crisis that is associated with that. It is the kind of thing that Green councillors have been going on about, as members of governing boards of pension funds for years: such things as tobacco and the kinds of food products that are being supported are all issues that have an impact on pension returns.

On deforestation, the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Boycott, among others, have already made points about this, but there is £300 billion of UK pension money in high deforestation risk companies and financial institutions—that is a figure from Make My Money Matter. Again, there is a point about risk. The financial sector in the UK faces up to £200 billion of risk in Brazilian beef and soya and Indonesian palm oil supplies alone.

Finally, there is another risk in terms of our international reputation. We are of course enthusiastic signatories of the global biodiversity framework, which promises, under target 14, that the UK will align

“all relevant public and private activities, [fiscal] and financial flows with the goals and targets of this framework”.

How could the Government not be accepting all the amendments in this group?

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I have my name to Amendment 15, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I thank her for her very clear exposition of it and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for her little additions just to fill in some of the other parts of this important subject. I thank the Minister for her time yesterday when I came to discuss this amendment with her: it makes a lot of difference that a Minister is so receptive to a discussion, even though we did not part any closer than when I walked through the door.

I congratulate the Government on their world-leading position on green finance. That is a nice position to be in, but we need to work very hard on that if we are to retain it.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Report stage
Monday 17th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I commend the government amendments, and congratulate the right reverend Prelate on his successful campaigning and all those behind it. It is great that we are seeing an awareness of the huge issues around wildlife crime, but this is very much a piecemeal approach, addressing one small element of wildlife crime, as important as it is. As the right reverend Prelate said, this is about the welfare of hares, as well as what is happening to people living in the countryside.

I ask the Minister—if he cannot respond now, I would appreciate a response by letter—whether the Government are considering doing something about the welfare of hares, particularly those being caught in spring and snare traps. There is a particular issue around Fenn traps approached by tunnels. There is guidance that says they should be restricted in size to the target species, but there is no legal provision on that. I am afraid there is some very disturbing documentation of hares, and pieces of hares, being found in such traps, and in Perdix traps. Think about what happens to an animal trapped by a paw and left to die, possibly for days, in terror and pain; I hope that that is something the Government are thinking about dealing with.

Briefly, on the wider issue of wildlife crime, I point any noble Lords interested in this to the Wildlife and Countryside Link’s annual report—there have been four of them now—on wildlife crime. It is the only summary available on the scale of the problem. As pointed out by that organisation, which is a coalition of 64 groups around the country, there is currently no recording of wildlife crime as a special category by the Home Office. That group is campaigning for that to happen. I hope the Minister might think about taking action on that.

Finally, we have a very solid law against the persecution of raptors, but we have to think about the use and application of that law, given that 60 hen harriers have been killed illegally or disappeared under suspicious circumstances on and around grouse moors since 2018.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate on his success in persuading the Government to change the rather difficult attitude they had in Committee towards his amendment. I also congratulate my noble friend on the Front Bench on his work in getting these amendments on the Order Paper. Amendment 109H refers to hares, but if somebody is accused of searching for or pursuing a hare and defends himself by saying, “Actually, it was a rabbit I was after”, what action can be taken? Does the word “etc” in the title of the new clause,

“pursue hares with dogs, etc”

cover the case of hares, squirrels or any other excuse that somebody might have?

I also follow the right reverend Prelate in congratulating and paying tribute to our police forces, who have a very difficult time. They will be at the sharp end of seizing and detaining dogs. Can my noble friend assure me that those who go in to seize and detain dogs will be given adequate protection? The people they are dealing with are some very nasty criminals, where high-money stakes are being played for, and in many cases they will stop at virtually nothing in order to get the dogs back, so the protection of those who go in to do that work is very important.

Environment Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and to agree with every word that he just said. I thank the Minister for his introduction to this debate and thank him and his officials for the very detailed and useful discussion this morning, particularly with such a lively avian accompaniment.

I shall take a second to reflect on the place of your Lordships’ House. I had a discussion a couple of days ago with a Cross-Bench Peer for whom I have the greatest respect, who expressed great frustration at the huge amount of work done in your Lordships’ House, which so often—as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has just said—gets casually dismissed in the other place. Yet we are so often told, “Oh, we can’t send too many things back to them; we can’t resist too hard; we’re the unelected House.” That, of course, raises a whole other question about the constitution. None the less I fear—and we have seen some cases of this already—that many of our strong, fine Peers are getting fed up and really considering whether they are going to continue to devote their time to your Lordships’ House. It is crucial that we recognise that we are in a different political time and that we are crucial to the future of this country, its environment and people, and we need to stand firm.

I have come under strong pressure, as I am sure many are aware, not to push forward with the soils amendment. Those looking closely will notice that I have not pushed forward with the same amendment as was sent to the other place. My amendment in lieu simply refers to soil quality rather than soil quality and soil health, as in the amendment sent to the other place. Health very often talks about the biology of the soil; quality is frequently used to refer to the structure. I am guided here particularly by the Sustainable Soils Alliance but also by academics, independent experts and farmers, who say that it is possible to use the metrics from the soil structure monitoring scheme to establish a target specifically for soil structure which would fit the definition of quality. As the Minister said on Report, targets can be iterative—they can be developed, evolved and finessed over time.

I acknowledge that the Minister here and those in the other place have spoken often and very clearly, and clearly are engaged with the issues of soil that are so crucial, but we all know that Ministers change. The only thing that will guarantee a way forward is with soil being on the face of the Bill. I put it to noble Lords that this Bill will be fundamentally deficient if we do not have soils there with equal weighting and place alongside air and water. I am afraid that the Minister in debate also said at one point that, if we were looking after air and water, we will sort of be looking after soils as well. I am afraid that very powerfully makes the argument for me—that soil risks falling into a second order unless it is given the same status.

I note that, in your Lordships’ House on Report, the margin by which this vote was won was equal top with that for the amendment on sewage tabled by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. This was a very clear voice from your Lordships’ House on Report.

I also particularly wish to acknowledge the very strong efforts in this area by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who has done a tremendous job and has seen some steps forward from the Government. But those steps are still not enough.

I finish, given the pressure of time, by noting that I do not believe that the amendments we are looking at today are either/or. All the amendments that have been retabled today are crucial. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb will address interim targets in more detail, but I stress that that is crucial as well. I also want to acknowledge the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, in supporting my amendment last time. I urge your Lordships to show that we are really here to make a difference. I give notice of my intention to push this Motion to a vote.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment on soil from the noble Baroness who has just spoken. This is a crucial issue. But first I want to ask my noble friend the Minister a question about what he said when he introduced the discussion on this. He quoted the Prime Minister, who said that there is a climate crisis that will be solved but not by panicked measures. That seemed to indicate that he thought some of the amendments put forward by this House were “panicked measures.” If that is the case, I would be grateful if my noble friend could tell us which of these amendments, which we so carefully debated in Committee and on Report, could be classed as a “panicked measure”.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, was absolutely right to tell us that the Prime Minister did not acknowledge that there is a biodiversity crisis. One-quarter of the world’s biodiversity crisis is in the soil, and that is a major problem for us. There ought to be an alignment between the Environment Bill and the Agriculture Act. We got soil into the Agriculture Act and we were then told that that was not the right place for it and that it ought to go in the Environment Bill; now we have got to the Environment Bill and my noble friend tells us it is not necessary in this Bill. It is necessary in this Bill. It should be put into this Bill.

Only 0.4% of 1% of England’s environmental monitoring budget is spent on soil. That is derisory. Could my noble friend tell me what he anticipates that spend to be within one year and within five years? Soil is the basis of everything. The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, which has done a huge amount of research over many years on soil, says that we cannot reach net zero without dealing with soil. That has been taken up by the Climate Change Committee, which has said exactly the same thing, and even my noble friend the Minister has said that we cannot solve the problem without addressing soil; yet soil is not going to be in this Bill.

I remember my noble friend Lord Deben said something on Report to the effect of: unless it is in the Bill, it is not going to be done. At that stage, I backed my noble friend the Minister against my noble friend Lord Deben’s advice. This time, I back my noble friend Lord Deben and say that this ought to be in the Bill.

Environment Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Monday 13th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group. They have a common theme because they are based on the fact that, very sadly, a lot of the good intentions of this Bill are going to fail. Although I support the Bill and support the drift of where we are going, they are going to fail because they are based on, and are building on, the existing system that is already a failure.

Let me give some examples. Since 2000, Defra has spent £10.3 billion or thereabouts on biodiversity. Agri-environment schemes have cost us £8.5 billion in the last 25 years. Roughly 28% of our land is designated for nature and biodiversity, and yet we have an appalling and increasingly bad record. Why? Because the current system is failing. Let me give just a couple of examples. Because of climate change we have gone for bioenergy and we have planted more maize. That has caused huge environmental problems and been very damaging for biodiversity. We are encouraging people to plant trees on what they call unproductive farmland, but that unproductive farmland is the haven for many of the red-list species, and we are damaging those. This Bill is going to build on those failures, and I believe we need to change tack. I know my noble friend will not accept that that is the right way to go but, nevertheless, I believe it is worth putting on the record that it is the right way to go.

We have to accept that there is more to improving biodiversity than just habitats. In the last amendment, my noble friend Lord Goldsmith said that habitats were very important and that we had to improve them. Yes, habitats are important, but they are not the only thing that is important. Equally important, as I have said many times, is winter feed, early spring feed and farming practices and management, in particular predator control. I give the example of the Allerton Project, which is entirely devoted to improving biodiversity and has hugely increased songbird numbers, but it cannot get waders and curlews back because of the lack of predatory control. We need to alter our stance on that.

I have three amendments: Amendment 92A refers to “nature-friendly farming”. These are the people who are managing the land. The noble Lord, Lord Oates, is right that the local authorities have a role, but the bulk of the land is in the hands of the farmers and we need the farmers on side. We need to encourage those that are nature-friendly-oriented. Farming and nature cannot be divided or separated; they have been separated for too long and here is a good chance in the Bill to put the farmers in the position they ought to be in.

Amendment 98 relates to wildlife conservation licences. I tweak the Bill in this respect, in that I propose the use of the word “status” instead of “survival”, as effectively a single individual of a species could be considered to be survival. Population can mean anything from an individual site colony to the total number of that species in the UK. Therefore, scale comes into any definition of detrimental to survival, as reducing the population at the local level may not actually have a bearing on the overall population due, for example, to infill from the current year’s young of the species.

My third amendment is Amendment 105. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, spoke on the last amendment in support of what I have said. She feared we would be going backwards if we do not get this right. The purpose of Amendment 105, which is a sunset clause, is to allow us to take a deep breath and stop us going backward if we are. My noble friend Lord Goldsmith said on the last amendment that there would be serious trouble if habitats in 2050 are not in the state we want them to be in. The purpose of this clause is to allow the Secretary of State to stand back, take a look and say “We were well intentioned, but we got it wrong. We need to change and go in a slightly different direction for the sake of biodiversity and the environment.”

We now have binding targets in the Bill but, as my noble friend Lord Benyon, who was in his place a moment ago, said on 25 May in this House:

“We are always wary of targets”.—[Official Report, 25/5/2021; col. 890.]


I am extremely wary of targets when it comes to biodiversity, because every target we have aimed at in the last 25 years has been missed. The purpose of Amendment 105 is therefore to give the Minister a chance to stand back, have a rational look and, if necessary, take a different direction.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, whose passion for improving the Bill from the government Back Benches is evident even at this hour. I commend him for that. I declare my role as a vice-president of the LGA and the NALC.

I shall deal with Amendments 90, 91 and 94 together. Amendment 90 appears in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and is also signed by the noble Lord, Lord Oates, while Amendment 94 is also signed by the noble Lord, Lord Oates, and my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. They all deal with the fact that the people who know best about a local natural environment are local people. We confront again, as we do in so many different areas, the fact that the UK—and England in particular—is one of the most centralised polities on this planet. That has many negative effects for people, but it also has negative effects for nature.

On Amendment 90, as the noble Lord, Lord Oates, said, we keep giving local government responsibilities but, through a decade of austerity we have seen fewer resources in local communitiesw available to deal with those responsibilities. We have gone through a cycle where local authorities barely have enough funds to meet their statutory responsibilities—those dictated from here in Westminster. They do not really have enough funds for that, let alone to reflect local priorities and desire for action.

The amendment signed by my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb is particularly telling. We can think of so many case studies; the noble Lord, Lord Oates, gave one. I was also struck thinking about the case of the River Lugg in Herefordshire last year, where we saw trees felled, the river bridged and a reprofiling of the riverbanks along a 1.5 kilometre stretch, to the shock and horror of local people. Investigations are still ongoing, so I will not go too far into this, but the country was alerted to this through local people using social media and through the local media outlets picking up this story. Of course, it was at local level that the knowledge arose, and perhaps at local level some action could have saved some biodiversity or nature there.

I was up in Kendal a few years ago in a village that was struck by flooding, and the vehicles driving along a particular road were pushing flood water into people’s homes. The local people were shaking with anger and frustration; if they had been allowed to close that road, they could have stopped those homes being flooded, but they were told they would face police action if they did so. That is the kind of emergency situation where we need to ensure that local people are able to act, whether it is a biodiversity emergency or a flooding emergency affecting people’s homes.

I really hope that we might see some progress on Amendments 90, 91 and 94. I also want to mention Amendment 92A, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. The Nature Friendly Farming Network represents a really activist group of farmers; I have met quite a number of them. They are doing some very strong things at that nexus between acknowledging the need to produce food and looking out for nature. Here we have a very modest addition to the Bill that would acknowledge and put on the statute book recognition of, and support for, the important work of nature-friendly farming. I hope that we will hear from the Minister about that amendment.

Environment Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I briefly offer my support for Amendment 7 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, to which I thought I had attached my name; it was an administrative failure on my part that I did not. I also support Amendment 9 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. Both amendments have strong cross-party support. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. Indeed, his questions about how the Government plan to define and measure biodiversity are questions that we canvassed extensively in Committee. I do not believe—I would be happy to be corrected if I am wrong—that we have received any answers to them. It is essential for the understanding of this Bill that those things are defined and set out because, as we discussed in Committee, there are many different aspects of diversity, from genetic variance within a population to the number and range of species, and indeed the range of their habitats.

I will comment briefly on Amendment 6. Like other noble Lords, I welcome it, in that one always has to welcome progress and acknowledge the huge amount of work done by campaigning NGOs and campaign groups to get us this far. There is, however, a thing called “shifting baseline syndrome”. In the brilliant State of Nature reports, which are issued regularly by our NGOs, the baseline is often the 1970s. To quote one figure, more than 40% of species have declined since the 1970s. However, based on the figure from 50 years earlier than that there has been a massive decline. If you go further back, it becomes evident that we live in an incredibly impoverished landscape. In the UK we have lost 133 species since the 1500s. These include obviously charismatic species like the lynx and wolf, but also the apple bumblebee, Mitten’s beardless moss and the common tree frog, which fails to live up to its name.

I was reading, in preparation for this debate, a book called An Environmental History of Wildlife in England, by Tom Williamson. It speaks of 17th century England teeming with wildlife. The polecat and pine marten were present in every county. The great bustard was still a common sight on open land. We should be aiming to restore those kinds of wild landscapes, at least in part, and stopping decline does absolutely nothing to get us to that destination. That is where the habitats amendment, Amendment 9, is really important.

I was once lucky enough to visit in France one of 234 sites that are called—I apologise for my French, which I am told I speak with a broad Australian accent— réserves biologiques intégrales. They started in 1953 and that are quite small pockets of land that have essentially just been left untouched. I was lucky enough to visit one of these sites, and what amazed me was a depth of lichen on the trunks of the trees that you could touch; you felt that your hand sank into it and it went on for ever. That is a depth of richness of wildlife that we are so far away from now but need to start to head back to.

I strongly commend Amendments 7 and 9 to the House, but particularly Amendment 7. This is where I am afraid I will disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, in that I do not think that halting decline is an ambitious target. It is holding us in a state of extreme poverty of nature. We have to do better.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate to listen to. I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on bringing forward his amendment. I made up my mind to speak when I listened to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. He put his finger on something very important but then moved off it. Which species are we going to keep? Who is going to decide which species will be protected? One thing that is absolutely certain is that the law of unintended consequences will continue: human beings will get involved in one area that will help some species but will be to the detriment of others. So I hope that my noble friend will tell us how exactly this part of the Bill is going to work.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said that success relies entirely on habitat, but, thank goodness, he changed his mind a little later and went on to say that it is part of a package. Habitat alone will not solve the problem and halt the decline of biodiversity. We need proper farming practices, we need habitats, we need winter feed and spring feed, which farming practices have all but eliminated on agricultural land, and we need predator control. It is a hugely complicated and difficult area. To give a simple example, many of us feed birds in our garden and think that we are doing a great job for nature. We are benefiting some birds; blue tits have certainly increased. But, as a result, a lot of other birds have not increased, because blue tits are quite territorial and quite vicious towards other birds. In this mix, we have some species increase but also some species decline.

To move to a perhaps more rural aspect, one could look at the work that the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust has done with the Allerton Project. It has been trying for years to bring back waders, but unsuccessfully. If my noble friend says that we must bring back waders and even the Allerton Project cannot do so, how will this succeed and what will be the price?

My noble friend the Minister is, I know, terribly keen on white-tailed eagles. They are one of his specialities and he mentioned them in Committee, but they are vicious birds and not terribly good breeders. They are vicious in that, in parts of Scotland that I know, they have driven out the golden eagle. They fight golden eagles and kill hen harriers and peregrines. That is the nature of white-tailed eagles. They are lovely birds to look at, but if you get too many of them you will destroy a whole abundance of species that have been living happily on the moor for hundreds and thousands of years. As they are not terribly good breeders, man will have to intervene to make certain that the numbers were maintained by bringing in hand-reared chicks.

Whatever we do, we are upsetting the balance of nature. Can my noble friend explain how he and the department, and subsequent Ministers, are going to handle this? To me, this is crucial. I thoroughly approve of not only halting the decline but turning it round, but we must be cognisant of the fact that some species will be far worse off. Who will make that decision? Will it be transparent, so that we can all decide whether those are actually the species we want to see decline and the other species increase?

Environment Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I have spoken on fly-tipping many times before in your Lordships’ House, so I will not repeat that. Given what other noble Lords have said, there is little left to say. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for introducing these amendments. She has my total support.

My noble friend Lord Ridley is absolutely right: the problem has got worse in the last 15 months. It was bad when I talked about it on the Agriculture Bill, but it is considerably worse now. I can only add to what the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, just said, and that, if a farmer finds somebody dumping stuff in their field, they are often threatened. I know of a farmer who accosted somebody who was dumping rubbish in their field. The person turned on him and said, “Don’t do anything. We know your children. We know your children’s names and where they go to school”. These amendments are very necessary.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I join every speaker in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for tabling these amendments and offer my support. Rather than repeating what has been said, I will make a few extra points.

The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, referred to fridges. There is a term I am not sure I have heard mentioned in this debate and an issue that needs to come up the agenda, which is planned obsolescence. We have seen many products last less and less time. I had a fridge that died after seven years, and I went on social media to have a big grumble about it. Lots of people told me I was lucky it had lasted that long. We are seeing lots of fridges being dumped, but for how long were they made to last? If we go back to the manufacturer or maker of the product, we are heading in the right direction.

How much farmers are suffering from this problem has been stressed already. According to a 2020 NFU survey, nearly 50% of farmer respondents had suffered from fly-tipping. So it is a huge issue for farmers, but also for many other people responsible for land. Since the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, is not speaking on this group, I will refer to the Woodland Trust which, in the seven years to June 2020, had spent more than £1 million cleaning up fly-tipping. We are looking at organisations like that.

We also have not mentioned manufacturers and commercial companies—not just fake disposal companies but companies not disposing of industrial waste appropriately. I refer to a case that just came up in the last few days. For the third time, in a similar location, Colchester council found a leaking drum containing what was clearly a noxious substance. It cost £2,000 each time to dispose of that drum properly—I should declare my vice-presidency of the LGA here—costs that the council has to bear. We have a widespread problem. We tend to say that it is individual householders but, as this debate has brought out, it is important to say that this problem is much broader.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 15th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Dundee. I thank him for introducing my Amendment 16 so eloquently. He has done a brilliant job and it reduces much of what I have to say.

It is quite clear that when nature suffers, we all suffer. That is why I believe that nature-friendly farming should be front and centre of the Bill. When anybody coming into farming picks up such a Bill and reads it—as I did when I started way back in the late 1960s, when I read the 1947 Act—it should say that nature-friendly farming is the route forward. It is the only way that agriculture will survive in the long term.

I hope all your Lordships have read the recent Living Planet Report, which is pretty horrific reading. It says that the populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have declined by an alarming 68% since 1970. That is not all farming’s fault, but farming has been a contributor to that decline. For that reason I welcome subsections (a) to (j), but nature-friendly farming should also be in the Bill. I chose to insert it at this point because of its importance. In Committee it was an amendment after (j), but I thought it deserved a paragraph of its own.

I will correct one myth that seems to perpetuate in some quarters: that you cannot farm successfully and profitably if you also farm for nature. Many farmers have signed up to the Nature Friendly Farming Network, but I also draw the House’s attention to the amazing work of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Allerton Project, which I know my noble friend the Minister knows about. It has done years of research on this subject and proved time and again that farmers can improve yields, output and productivity at the same time as improving biodiversity and wildlife on farms.

I will take one example in conclusion: the grey partridge, which is mentioned in the Living Planet Report. There has been a huge decline in this country, of some 85%, in the grey partridge population since 1970. The work of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust has proven that farmers can get the grey partridge back in large numbers, as well as being successful and profitable. I commend that template to all farmers and to the House. I hope that when my noble friend the Minister implements ELMS, he will bear that very much in mind.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has already addressed the Green group’s support for a number of amendments in this group. I will not repeat that, but I will address a number to which I have attached my name, starting with Amendment 8, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, which focuses on the whole-farm agroecological and agroforestry systems. I thank him for tabling it, and the noble Earls, Lord Dundee and Lord Caithness, for supporting it.

It is clear that the age of industrial monoculture has given us the dreadful condition of our countryside that the noble Earl addressed in his speech. Its waters are polluted and its soil degraded, and biodiversity is in collapse. Yet, at the same time, we have a public with an awful diet and poor health. We need a whole new approach. Actually, agroecological farming is the only kind of farming we should see, with whole-farm systems. Agroforestry is a crucial part of that: trees sheltering animals, holding water, storing carbon, supporting biodiversity, and producing healthier food, including fruits and nuts, and healthier and more varied fodder for livestock. We need the Government to support this transformation, although ultimately that needs to be how all our land is managed.

We have already seen a significant move across most of the farming sector in its approach to soils. It has been a rediscovery of the understanding that the natural facility of soils depends on a flourishing ecosystem of microscopic animals, plants and fungi. I hope the Minister will think about this: I continue to hope that the Government will sort out the Bill’s description of fungi to make it scientifically literate—it currently is not—following the issues I raised in Committee, which are in no way political. They merely seek to ensure technical accuracy. When we focus on agroecology and, indeed, agroforestry, we need to move towards crop diversity. That is part of whole-farm varied systems. It means a system that works with nature, rather than trying to cosh it into submission.

I move to Amendment 9, to which I have also attached my name, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and backed by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. We have almost lost track of the fact that this is the Agriculture Bill. We are talking about environmental elements, but agriculture is also about food. We need joined-up thinking and systems thinking. There is really no point in producing more sugar, which the world has and consumes far too much of and does massive damage to rich and valuable soils. By contrast, growing fruit and vegetables is a super-policy—the kind of thing the Government should support and which they will have to, if they are to have regard to health and well-being policies.

Amendment 20, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, focuses on peri-urban land. I have probably done this myself: in the Bill we talk about the countryside, but fringe areas and patches of land in cities, towns and villages that might be quite small are crucial for environmental benefits and healthy food production. I am sure the Minister is aware of an excellent article from 2019 published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, which found that allotments and gardens often had 10 times more bees and other pollinators than even the rich environments, as we regard them, of parks, cemeteries and urban nature reserves. Increasing allotment use and food growing can be a positive sign for nature and, of course, for people.

I also express support for Amendment 6 on food security, to which Amendment 20 relates. Relying on the market to supply us with food has given us a dreadfully unhealthy diet, as the impact of Covid-19 has sadly demonstrated—one more weakness the pandemic has exposed rather than caused. However, it is also an insecure approach to rely on the market to supply food. Hundreds of millions of people in the world go hungry now not because there is a lack of food, but because of a lack of access to it. There is enormous waste in the system, particularly factory farming, feeding what could be perfectly good human food to animals.

However, we are in the age of shocks. We have just seen harvests in the US in particular be hit hard by extreme weather. Sadly, a lot more like that is on the way. The state of soils is parlous. To assume we can just buy what we need is dangerously uncertain. There is also a moral question: why should we take food out of the mouths of people in other countries when we could and should be growing our own? Those are two powerful reasons for the Government to provide direct, clear support for food security. There can be few more foundational roles for a Government then ensuring that people do not starve.

Finally, I support Amendment 48. I note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and I agree with them.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 90, I will also speak to Amendments 196 and 206 in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, which concern animal welfare and which I commend to the Committee, and Amendment 207, which concerns the role of the Groceries Code Adjudicator.

I shall speak to Amendments 90, 184, 188, 189, 286, 287, 288, 292, 293 and 294; I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for her support on them. They are all about references to fungi. I have to credit the campaigning group Plantlife, which identified this issue for me and did all the fine-comb work to produce these amendments. I feel that I am contributing to successful answers to pub quizzes up and down the land in saying that there are three kingdoms in the living world—plants, animals and fungi—which together make up the eukaryotes: the organisms with complex cells with features such as mitochondria and nuclei. In fact, fungi are closer to animals than plants. They are not producers of energy but use external sources of it; indeed, the world would soon be covered in undigested waste if they did not.

On many occasions in your Lordships’ House, I say, tongue in cheek, “I am sure that the Government will agree with me,” but in this case I say it with absolute sincerity. I am sure that the Government want our legislation to be scientifically literate. As this legislation currently says, “‘plants’ includes fungi”, it is not. It is like saying, “For ‘apples’, read ‘pineapples’”. That is very easy to fix—and would, I believe, have the added virtue of legal clarity. I am sure that we all recall the arguments about the classification of Jaffa Cakes as cakes or biscuits with regard to VAT. We do not want to see similar arguments in relation to support under this Bill. This Committee must consider why we currently have such confusion. The importance of fungi is grossly understated and still little understood.

I outsourced this speech in part to social media, where mycologists leapt in to offer some suggestions. To start with the familiar, I point your Lordships to fly agaric, the red and white fairy tale favourite, but until mycologists started talking to me, I did not realise how crucial it is, to the growth of birch trees in particular. I also cannot resist noting Phallus impudicus—I leave noble Lords to look up its common name—which is thought to have a close ecological relationship with badger setts. Its scent attracts blow-flies that quickly clean up the bodies of badgers, which most typically die underground—unless there is a badger cull, of course. I note that up to a third of plants’ products of photosynthesis feed fungi and bacteria in the soil. For example, relationships between bacteria help mycorrhizal fungi to use their hyphae to seek out and scavenge particularly biologically valuable elements such as phosphorus from rocks or decaying organic matter.

These are immensely complex and little-understood natural systems. Other noble Lords have said that they imagine the countryside operating like a giant, human-directed machine, with robots buzzing around and everything controlled by chemical application and genetic modification. I would point to the complexities I just outlined to illustrate how faulty that vision is. We do not understand all that, but we do understand the basic biology and we can get it right in the Bill. I look forward to the Minister’s response and beg to move.

[The Earl of Caithness [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 177, 179, 180, 182, 186, 188, 190, 191, 192, 193 and 194, which are in my name. We are moving away from fungi, but I say this to my noble friend the Minister: it is not helpful to group such a mass of contradictory and different issues together. My amendments deal with the supply chain and the collection and processing of data, which are rather different to what the noble Baroness was just talking about.

The Bill has incorporated some safeguards around the collection and processing of data to ensure that it is clear how information will be used and how it could be used in accordance with data protection legislation. However, I still have concerns that not all the purposes for which information can be processed relate directly to improving supply chain transparency or supporting the development of risk management tools to help farmers to manage volatility. I therefore want to see these purposes drafted in a more focused way to ensure that they achieve the legitimate aims of improving transparency and managing volatility.

The purpose for which information can be processed under this clause should be linked directly to the overarching objective of improving fairness and transparency in the supply chain. The requirements to provide information will inevitably lead to an increased administrative burden for businesses, and it is therefore important that any information collected is focused on helping those in the agri-food supply chain to make improvements—hence the need for Amendment 177.

Turning to Amendment 190, the Bill as currently drafted provides for information to be processed for wider environmental and waste purposes which do not link specifically to assisting those in the agri-food supply chain. This amendment would focus the processing of environmental and waste information and avoid it being used to pursue wider environmental objectives more appropriately pursued under other legislation such as the Environment Bill. It would enable the Government to collect the kind of information they have stated they are interested in, but would curtail the use of the provisions for purposes which go beyond specific issues in the agri-food supply chain in future.

The Minister will know that the data collection provisions are welcomed by farmers. They should be used in a focused and proportionate way to ensure that the additional administrative burden placed on businesses directly improves the fairness and transparency of the agri-food supply chain. Most of us will be able to remember the days when MAFF was notorious for gold-plating regulations. Therefore, it is very important that these regulations and this part of the Bill are sensibly drafted so as not to impinge too much on farmers.