Water Bill

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Selborne (Con)]

My Lords, I should start by declaring that I am another farmer with an abstraction licence, although I am delighted to report that, unlike the Minister, I have not been flooded.

A number of speakers have already referred to the Water for Life White Paper of December 2011. I remind your Lordships of the earlier White Paper of the same year, the natural environment White Paper. I shall restrict my remarks to broad issues identified in those two White Papers and consider to what extent this Bill meets the agendas set out in them: first, the need to innovate and develop expertise in the management of our water and sewerage resources to deliver the required contribution to our green economy; secondly, the need to halt and reverse the damage that we have done to water ecosystems which provide essential services such as flood abatement, pure water, carbon storage and much else; and, thirdly, the need to increase competition for the ultimate benefit of all water users.

As we have heard, this last objective is to be promoted in the Bill by increasing choice in the retail market for non-household customers, by making it easier for new entrants to contribute new sources of water or new approaches to treating water and sewage, by measures which would allow water companies to buy and sell water from each other, and by measures which would clarify the right of developers to connect new developments to the water supply and sewerage system.

As the Minister reminded us, the Bill is only one part of a much wider water-related agenda. The issues which still need to be addressed, which many have touched on, before we have a coherent, long-term, sustainable national water management policy, include the following. There is the reform of the abstraction system—much referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, my noble friend Lord Crickhowell and others. There is the delivery of basin management plans with suitable mechanisms for community participation. I recognise that since 1996, we have made very little progress from the start made by my noble friend Lord Crickhowell. There is the resolution of long-standing management issues concerning sustainable drainage systems and investment in catchment-sensitive farming schemes. All those are outside the Bill but essential components if we are to put our water management at a national level on to a coherent basis.

Increased choice in the retail sector and a more joined-up approach to regulation are certainly valuable contributions which the Bill makes. The new duty of resilience imposed on Ofwat is a crucial contribution to address long-term pressures on the water sector and the environment. Frankly, in previous years, after the time of the NRA but during the time of the Environment Agency, far too often there was an unhelpful struggle between Ofwat and the Environment Agency. I did not think that I would ever feel sorry for the water companies, but I did when I understood to what extent they were being regulated in contrary directions by those two regulators. We now have the opportunity for the fault line between the two regulatory authorities to be finally eliminated.

England and Wales must, in all humility, recognise that Scotland has been ahead of us—and indeed of most of the rest of the world—in promoting competition at the retail level, having introduced a retail market for the supply of water and sewerage systems to non-household customers in 2008. I was interested to hear from the Water Industry Commission for Scotland of the significant benefits. We have heard some figures cited. Those benefits have permeated not just to commercial customers but down to household customers indirectly in terms of better services, innovation, reduced environmental impacts and lower bills. Indeed, one could say that the water companies in England have benefited, because they have been able to compete as new entrants in the Scottish retail market, and a number of them have done so. The lessons learnt will no doubt prove invaluable once competition is opened up in the English and Welsh retail markets.

It is important that we now at last achieve consistency between the Scottish and English markets so that there can be a fair cross-border retail water market. We must take note of the lessons learnt in Scotland in the past five years in operating a competitive retail market. The Water Industry Commission for Scotland and, indeed, Scottish water companies, have drawn attention to four issues which need to be addressed in the Bill adequately to reflect the lessons learnt in Scotland.

The first and foremost is an issue referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, which is the failure to have an exit provision for retail companies which have, frankly, either lost interest, are losing money or have failed adequately to provide a service that customers want. The Government for some mysterious reason simply bottled out of the inevitable conclusion of what happens when you introduce competition and encourage innovation: some companies just have to drop out. The EFRA committee, in its pre-legislative scrutiny, strongly recommended that those companies should be allowed to exit the market, but the Government—I simply do not follow this—have said that they cannot accept that that is the sensible thing to do, but they should contract out their retail services. Having read carefully the Government’s response to the pre-legislative scrutiny, I remain to be convinced and I am sure that we will have to look at that carefully.

The other three issues raised by the Water Industry Commission for Scotland are matters of more detail, concerning what is implied by a level playing field between incumbent companies and new participants, and the need to protect customers in remote areas from being discriminated against by a two-tier pricing system. I recognise that the Government have it much in mind to prevent just these things happening but there are some detailed recommendations, which are perhaps best left for Committee. I simply note that these concerns come from a background of the successful delivery in Scotland of precisely what the Bill seeks to deliver in England and Wales on retail competition. Any improvement to the Bill suggested as a result of this experience should be helpful.

The White Paper, Water for Life, promoted the need to manage water catchment areas in a way which embraces partnerships with a range of interests: the water companies themselves; local authorities; regulators; landowners and farmers; conservation organisations; internal drainage boards, where they exist; and local resilience forums and the like. Each has a role to play if new ways are to be developed for achieving effective water management and mitigating the risk of surface water flooding. Increased water storage, water trading and abstraction reform will all help but unless local communities can be made part of the process in developing these catchment plans and the water companies’ water management plans, there is a real danger that we will not have policies which ultimately carry the confidence of all parts of the community. They will therefore inevitably fail in the end.

One of the great distractions in the past has come from inappropriate measures that have turned off all co-operation from householders. The hosepipe ban is usually imposed with good intentions, yet the amount that this restriction does to reduce demand is not as much as one would imagine. However, it does an awful lot to dissipate good will—and without the good will of all people to try to ensure that the catchment is adequately managed, we will run into trouble. I am sure that innovative and sensible alternative proposals, not least those coming through advertising and other public relations measures, could be much more effective than the dreaded hosepipe ban.

The provisions in the Bill which enable licensing to become more flexible and demand management to be more appropriately handled are to be greatly welcomed. I was privileged to play a small role in a project led by the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership on sustainable water stewardship, which was sponsored by Anglian Water. This looked at innovative ways of involving all the local community in making a contribution in specific water catchments. We have a lot still to learn and the social sciences have a great contribution to make in involving the wider community.

The Cave review of April 2009 identified problems with the way that developers are charged for connecting to water and sewerage services. The water companies themselves say that they can deliver SUDS—sustainable urban drainage systems—only if that is accompanied by the right to discharge surface water. Clause 21 clarifies the functions of a sewerage undertaker to include the building and maintenance of SUDS features, which is welcome, but there remains the issue that the undertaker has to negotiate the right to discharge or else compulsorily acquire the rights to discharge. Before 1989 sewerage undertakers had a statutory right to discharge, as still exists for highway authorities. If the Bill could extend that right again to sewerage undertakers, it would encourage them to build and adopt SUDS rather than surface-water sewers, and explore hybrid designs that combine more traditional methods with SUDS. It would also resolve the current legal uncertainties that have arisen since 1989 with regard to discharges.

I return to the thrust of the Bill, which declares that it is there to promote innovation. Innovation ultimately relies on research and development. The UK water industry has its own research capacity in UK Water Industry Research, but it is true to say that it is very much reduced from its capacity of some 20 years ago. Some of the water and sewerage operators conduct in-house research but in the public sector, important scientific underpinning, including vital long-term data sets, is provided by the research councils and Defra. I declare an interest as chair of the advisory board of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, a Natural Environment Research Council research centre. If we are to deliver this resilient, sustainable and competitive water management, we must retain a national capacity in our relevant research base. The Government must recognise that the public sector plays a key role and that this publicly funded research is a key component for the long-term delivery of this water agenda.

Golden Rice

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, of course the noble Countess makes a really important point. However, we have to say that developing countries are capable, and are proceeding and doing a lot of work themselves to feed their populations. We are talking specifically about how we can help them in the area of genetically modified food, which will increase the vitamin A that is so necessary, in particular to reduce blindness.

[The Earl of Selborne (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept that the exciting new technologies owe much to research in this country, and does he therefore accept that funding research here is a very effective way for us to tackle the urgent issue of food security around the globe?

[Lord De Mauley]

Yes, my Lords.

Bees

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

I am grateful. These are not covered by the restrictions as they are of relatively low acute toxicity to bees. The restrictions apply to the remaining three neonicotinoids—which I hope noble Lords will permit me not to pronounce—and are intended to remove those uses that might cause bees to be exposed to the compounds. Therefore, uses permitted include spray applications made to crops after they have flowered.

[The Earl of Selborne]

I declare an interest as food grower; my living therefore depends on pollination. Does the Minister accept that, while it is very important to protect bees, it is equally important to protect all insect pollinators? Therefore we have to make sure that their habitat is conserved, which is a much wider issue than just protecting honey bees.

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, yes. We have had this discussion in your Lordships’ House before. I was pleased to announce recently that we are developing a national pollinator strategy precisely because of the concerns my noble friend raised.

Thames Tideway Tunnel

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Selborne]

My Lords, surely an infrastructure project of this lifespan, expense and complexity should deliver more than just a cleaner river. Is my noble friend confident that the project will deliver flood-risk management, drought management, nature conservation and reuse of water, all of which future generations would certainly expect from a project of this size?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, my noble friend makes an important point. Of course, the primary purpose of the tunnel is to reduce the impact of sewage pollution on the river, thus, I think, indirectly contributing to recreation by giving us a cleaner river. However, my noble friend’s question leads me to the broader point, which is that the tunnel on its own is not enough. We also need sustainable drainage systems. I was visiting some very innovative solutions today in Herne Hill. Those solutions are not able to deal with the whole problem on their own either, but they can directly contribute to flood—particularly surface water—and drought management, conservation, recreation and better public places.

Flooding: Insurance

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I had hoped we might have a constructive debate about this. However, since the noble Lord has raised the common agricultural policy, perhaps I should say that it was Labour’s leadership in the last round of CAP reform that cost us €550 million in disallowance and led us to the disastrous administration of the single farm payment. We, by contrast, are tackling another immensely complex negotiation on flood insurance in a measured and sensible way. We have to balance the interests of those at high risk of flood, wider policyholders and taxpayers, while the ABI is a membership organisation with a lot of interests to represent. The noble Lord asks about an opportunity to debate the eventual outcome. I would be pleased about that; it is not my role to guarantee it, but I am sure that we will have a chance to do that.

[The Earl of Selborne]

My Lords, to bring the question back to flood insurance, has my noble friend looked at the precedent in America, and are there lessons to be learnt as to how to deal with flood insurance from the treatment of vulnerable homeowners in America?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, that is something to which we have given considerable thought. However, international comparisons provide no clear model. The state-backed national disaster insurance system in the US was in debt to the taxpayer by $17 billion even before Hurricane Sandy struck. Emergency legislation was required in January 2013 to increase the fund’s borrowing by $9.7 billion when the scheme was days from running out of money, to enable claims to be paid. So we have considered it, but it has its limitations.

Trees: British Ash Tree

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[The Earl of Selborne]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect the future of the British ash tree.

[The Earl of Selborne]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who put their names down to speak in this debate, which comes at a slightly later hour than perhaps we expected. I declare an interest as chairman of a farming company that has woodlands and a fruit nursery.

The word “crisis” is often overused in the context of environmental concerns, but the sudden realisation that the British ash could go the way of the elm in the 1970s is without doubt the recognition of a crisis. I will start by setting out the facts as I understand them. I am sure that if I get them wrong, the many experts who are due to speak will be able to put me right. Ash dieback disease is caused by a fungus called Chalara fraxinea. The disease was probably introduced to northern Europe on nursery stocks from Asia. Over the past decade it has had a devastating effect on the ash trees of northern Europe. It was first confirmed in Britain in March 2012, on young ash trees in a nursery in Buckinghamshire. Subsequently, other sites of infection were discovered, linked to imported nursery stock from Europe.

Last month, ash dieback was identified in older, native trees in woodlands in East Anglia. I will bring noble Lords right up to date by saying that today the Forestry Commission and Defra reported that after a weekend of intense activity by volunteers and experts, Chalara had been identified in 82 locations, including 14 nurseries, 36 planting sites and 32 forests and woodlands, including some in Kent and Essex. Last Friday, the count was 52 rather than 82, so the expectation must be that as surveillance and monitoring extend, many more sites will be identified.

While cases of infection in nurseries are clearly caused by importing infected stock, cases in mature trees in woodlands in the east and south-east of England are thought to have been caused by spores that were blown from the continent, or which possibly were brought in by migrating birds. In August, the United Kingdom plant health authorities undertook a pest risk analysis on ash dieback, which concluded that once trees are infected, they cannot be cured. However, the analysis also stated that not all trees die of the infection; a number are likely to have genetic resistance. Swedish research suggests that this number might be significant.

The pest risk analysis formed the basis of a fast-track consultation that ended on 26 October. On 29 October the Government introduced a ban on ash imports and the movement of trees. At the same time, Defra’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Ian Boyd, was asked to convene a tree health and plant biosecurity expert taskforce. A number of companies have proposed treatment solutions for Chalara, which Defra has promised its scientists will rapidly evaluate. So much for history; I recognise that this is almost a running commentary on a fast-moving epidemic.

The public reaction has been one of disbelief that once again we have been caught by surprise by yet another threat to a native tree species from invasive pests and diseases. After the disastrous outbreak of Dutch elm disease in the 1970s, when we lost more than 30 million elms to a new and more virulent fungus spread by beetles, we were challenged by a plethora of tree pests and diseases, including acute oak decline, which is of great concern, particularly in the east of England; plane wilt; chestnut blight; and bleeding canker of horse chestnut, to name just four from a much longer list. Time and again we seem to act too late. For all those diseases, as for ash dieback, we put in place policies once we had found that the diseases were already with us. What we need are measures aimed at keeping out these serious pests and pathogens and such measures need putting in place years ahead of the anticipated arrival of the disease.

We knew years ago that ash dieback was a threat. We discussed four years ago with the European Commission's standing committee for plant health whether an import ban might be appropriate, but it seems that we were not able to produce the scientific evidence to justify a ban then. Instead of a ban on imports, which we now have, we carried out a small-scale survey. By the time Defra launched its Tree Health and Plant Biosecurity Action Plan in October 2011, ash dieback seems to have been relegated to a low priority. Indeed, there were plenty of problems in this country on the tree health front to deal with. This allocation plan allocated £7 million over three years to tackle tree diseases. That is not just on research, but on all other measures that might together address these issues.

Ahead of that biosecurity action plan, the Forestry Commission produced in May 2011 a revised table of top pests and pathogens that threaten tree health in Great Britain—a list of about 16 species. This listed the prioritisation criteria for potential impact for each disease: its risk or probability of entry and its expected economic, social or environmental damage. Those were the right questions to ask. The problem is that having asked the right questions no one seems to have answered the questions correctly or alerted the Secretary of State that ash dieback, although not yet thought to be in this country, like many of these other diseases, was an imminent threat, that its economic, social and environmental damage could be enormous and that we should act immediately to ban imports of ash plants. Defra got permission for the ban in October. Why on earth could the scientific evidence for justifying the ban not have been produced three or four years ago when the Horticultural Trades Association and others were asking for a ban on ash imports?

We do have a taskforce convened by Professor Ian Boyd charged with reviewing our approach to plant health. Rather than dwell on our failures in protecting plant health let me list what this taskforce now needs to recommend. Landowners and the public need to be assured that whenever a suspected incidence of an infection of whatever disease is reported, a rapid identification service will be provided. Detection and identification methods using molecular approaches such as the portable DNA tests have undergone rapid development and tight targets for response rates must be set. We need greatly to increase the surveillance, monitoring and inspection of nurseries and plantations.

The Forestry Commission has lost a significant proportion of its staff in the field. Its regional staff used to be able to spend much more time in the woodlands and forests, and they knew their forests. Likewise, its research capacity has declined. Research on pests and pathogens of trees is woefully underfunded, whether in universities or research institutes, and bears no correlation with the cost to the economy of woodland pests and diseases or to their impact on society. An assessment must be made of eradication and containment methods for ash dieback and indeed for other diseases, reviewing the role of a quarantine system for plants and plant passports for species for which the import ban does not apply. We need to develop biological control approaches such as looking for natural enemies to these new pathogens.

Trees are a long-term crop and amenity. Our approach to this sudden threat must be long term. We need to recognise that within our ash population there will possibly be some strains of ash with resistance to dieback. We need to protect this diversity. I hope that the Minister will assure the House that tree health will in future be given the priority it deserves and that if the taskforce comes up both with short-term and long-term recommendations that command the confidence of experts, the forestry sector and the public, the Government will without reservation commit to implementing those measures.

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords that, unlike previous debates this evening, this is a strictly time-limited debate and that, therefore, when the clock reaches six minutes, noble Lords have had their full time.

Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Selborne]

My Lords, like others, I shall confine my remarks to Clause 2. As has been noted already in this short debate, I chaired the Thames Tunnel Commission, which was set up by five London boroughs, when it sat in July, August, September and October.

Although we have been discussing the Thames tunnel since the urban waste water treatment directive was brought into national law in the 1990s—indeed, we have been in breach of that directive since 2000—things have moved on since then. Many ideas had remained fixed as to what is the most up-to-date and appropriate technology and there were concerns, of course, about the escalating costs, so we were asked to review the previous studies; to reassess the assumptions of those studies in the light of subsequent research and data; to look at what other cities—not only in the European Union but elsewhere around the world—had done when faced with much the same situations; to hear from interested parties; and to reassess the requirements in order to meet the urban waste water directive in the light of subsequent directives, not least the water framework directive, and other national government policies such as the national ecosystem assessment. The concern was not only about the cost of £2.3 billion in 2006 going up to £4.1 billion. When we were doing the exercise the cost was £3.6 billion, but it went up to £4.1 billion within three days of us reporting.

It is not fair to say, as Thames Water tends to do, as has just been noted, that the Thames is an open sewer because there have been some successes. The Lee tunnel, which is under construction at the moment at a cost of £600 million, and the upgrade of the sewage treatment works, some of which have been heavily implicated in fish kills, have and will achieve, irrespective of the combined sewer overflows, considerable improvements in the quality of the river. However, it is undisputed that 20 million tonnes of sewage going into the river is unacceptable. The figure is roughly half if you include the sewage treatment works and the Lee tunnel CSOs but, nevertheless, it is common ground that 20 million tonnes is unacceptable.

It is worrying that when the cost was a mere £2.3 billion, which was to include the Lee tunnel, Ofwat’s review of the costs and benefits found that there was only a marginal benefit. The cost has now gone up to £4.1 billion —and this is after having spent £900 million, so you could say that the cost has actually gone up to somewhere nearer £5 billion—and, surprise, surprise, the cost-benefit analysis carried out by Defra in November 2011 once more establishes that there is just about a case to be made in terms of cost and benefit.

The way in which these figures have been adjusted in order to ensure that the answer comes out correctly is by altering the goalposts. The assumption in the first cost-benefit analysis was that it should be paid off over 60 years; now it is going to be paid off over 100 years, which makes it much easier. There is also now an assumption that because we are now richer we can afford more, so the ability and willingness to pay increases. I find these cost-benefit analyses extremely suspicious. Defra knows what the answer should be and has commissioned the cost-benefit analysis. I hope that the National Audit Office, or some other body, will look carefully at these figures, which I think are spurious.

A great deal of concern was expressed by the people who took the trouble to speak to us that the agenda was being driven by the infraction proceedings. That, of course, would concentrate the minds of Defra enormously, and the implications of the fine which could be accrued well before 2023, when the tunnel will eventually deliver, are horrendous. I have no doubt that if I were a Defra Minister I would do anything to try to ensure that that day of judgment was postponed in some way.

In the Bill before us today the taxpayer is being asked to underwrite part of the cost without any assurance that it will meet the requirements of the Commission or the interpretation of what the urban waste water treatment directive requires. It is certainly not the fastest solution. My noble friend on the Front Bench described it as timely and cost-effective but the onus is going to be on Defra, or on Thames Water or whichever company is going to eventually own the tunnel, to demonstrate just that. It certainly has not been demonstrated yet. We need to know whether it is the most cost-effective, the fastest and the most comprehensive solution. By comprehensive, I mean that it gives to society as a whole the benefits that we all look for from major water infrastructure proposals.

When Richard Benyon, the Defra Minister, announced in early November that the cost was going up to £4.1 billion from £3.6 billion and that a Bill such as this was to allow the taxpayer to underwrite part of the cost, he said:

“Financing a tunnel of this size at a cost that is value for money for customers is a challenge. The Government believe that the private sector can and should finance this project but accept that there are some risks that are not likely to be borne by the private sector at an acceptable cost. It is willing in principle to provide contingent financial support for exceptional project risks where this offers best value for money for customers and taxpayers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/11/11; col. 42WS.]

That is precisely the issue—what does offer best value for customers and taxpayers? Who will demonstrate that this provides best value for money? When this application comes before the planning authority, that is the information that Defra, the Environment Agency and Thames Water must surely be required to produce. It is not just the customers from Gloucestershire to Essex who will pay, all of whom will be paying up to £70 per household more than they are at the moment; it is of course now the taxpayer throughout the country.

If you say often enough that the tunnel is nearly full in dry weather and there is no other solution than a full-length tunnel, it becomes accepted wisdom and is unchallengeable; but this is exactly what we tried to determine. We do not dispute or doubt that parts of this Victorian tunnel system are indeed overloaded and running full even in dry weather. However, you have to assess the need for a full-length tunnel— 24 kilometres—against the alternatives, which would be dispersed water treatment plants, sustainable urban drainage systems, storm water disconnection, distributed storage of sewage waste in a storage tunnel for later release, and the enhancement of the existing sewerage network bottlenecks.

In other words, you have to ask the question of how you would cope with this problem without the tunnel. We agree that the problem is to have something in place as quickly as or more quickly than the tunnel, which will discharge no more than the 2.3 million tonnes that the tunnel is likely to discharge. However, if that is the criterion that you have to meet, you have to establish that these other options that I have mentioned cannot deliver that at less cost and more quickly. The Minister has said that the tunnel will do just that, but until someone demonstrates that these other options simply will not be able to deliver, then those people who question whether we have been given the information that we are entitled to have as customers of Thames Water and taxpayers are entitled to continue to complain.

All these hypotheses as to what will happen in different weather events in different combined sewer overflows ultimately depend on the efficacy of the modelling. However, we were very concerned that when we asked to see Thames Water’s computational models we could not verify that as the modelling reports and results were not provided despite repeated requests. The tunnel will reduce the discharges to about 2.6 million tonnes, and it would be perfectly reasonable to ask that that is the criterion that all other systems should meet.

The water White Paper that came out in December might never have been written, as far as this Thames water project is concerned. It is an excellent White Paper that talks about water for energy recovery, flood risk management schemes, surface water management plans, protection and enhancement of ecosystems and green infrastructure—and, of course, what local authorities and others could do to reduce storm flows with a green infrastructure. None of that in any way, shape or form is aided or abetted by the Thames tunnel, which is essentially a Victorian solution that worked well in Victorian times, when the method of transport was horses. The residue from horses was not very different from sewage, so you treated the two the same. Now when you separate storm water from sewage you reduce immediately the load in these tunnels. While we are always told that separation and SUDS are uneconomic, with regard specifically to the targeted areas—the CSOs with which we are particularly concerned—it may well be cost-effective to turn them off by such measures rather than connect them to a tunnel. It cannot be done with the big CSOs. There were 10, but one of them is being dealt with now by the Lee tunnel. There are still nine large pumped CSOs, and there is simply no doubt but that they have to be dealt with either by a treatment works or a shorter tunnel—or, indeed, by a full-length tunnel. It is no good thinking that they can be turned off by SUDS or by other measures.

The Environment Agency said in its paper, An Assessment of the Frequency of Operation and Environmental Impact of the Tideway CSOs, that if the load from those nine CSOs was removed there would not be a significant effect on dissolved oxygen from the remaining CSOs. That is an important point to bear in mind. We are worried about dissolved oxygen, because that is what is going to kill the fish. We are worried, too, about health and aesthetic impacts. But largely if you remove the big-pump CSOs and use a discrete system, what you have left are the intermittent CSOs, many of which are not going to be connected to the tunnel anyway but will be dealt with by internal adjustments. Of course, that does not remove the necessity for storage of the effluent, but they will not need to be connected nevertheless. Then you are dealing with a very different order of issues.

Of the nine CSOs, seven happen to be on the western extremities. I rather liked the idea in the Jacobs Babtie report of 2006, when Ofwat was concerned about the escalating costs, going up to £2.6 billion, and the shorter tunnel was thought to be a sensible solution. Of course, it would have to be complemented by separation, SUDS, storage, real-time control and the like. It was rejected because it was thought that it would not meet the infraction proceedings, and we have been on the rollercoaster ever since. The cost is now £4.1 billion and increasing. If the Minister of the day had had the courage and sense to look carefully at the data, which may not have been available in those days, as to what discharges were from the other 18 CSOs —not the nine that caused all the problems—we would be looking at a very different order of issues.

While we are criticised in the Thames Tunnel Commission for not coming up with an alternative plan, that was not what we were asked to do. We were asked to make sure that within the public domain there was the sort of information that could be expected to give the sort of background to making a sensible decision. I regret the complacency shown by Defra, the Environment Agency and others, which have repeated time and again that this is the only possible solution, as from their own point of view it is in many ways, because it gives the responsibility to Thames Water. It would not result in the messy business of local authorities being involved with producing the green infrastructure alternatives, which nevertheless in the long run simply have to be part of the mix for dealing with storm water and sewage. When the planning application is finally submitted, Defra has an obligation to ensure that Thames Water’s claims—which, as I say, are often less than helpful—are given impartial, independent assessment, with full transparency of the assumptions made and of the modelling. Now that we have a Bill in front of us and are expecting the taxpayer to underwrite this, that is the very least that the taxpayer is entitled to.

Food: Waste

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Earl of Selborne]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they intend to take to prevent food waste being sent to landfill.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)]

My Lords, to reduce food waste and prevent it going to landfill, we are helping consumers through WRAP and its “Love Food, Hate Waste” campaign by working with industry via the Courtauld commitment and by aiming to launch in May a new voluntary agreement with the hospitality and food service sector. We intend to work towards our other waste review commitments, including developing the evidence base and exploring the role of incentives in reducing waste and managing it sustainably.

[The Earl of Selborne]

My noble friend lists a number of perfectly worthy measures, but is it not totally unacceptable that at the moment 16 million tonnes of food waste ends up in landfill—we must remember that it gives off methane, a very potent greenhouse gas? Should we not be looking at food waste as an energy source and encouraging caterers and commercial food interests to get their act together and ensure that none of this waste ends up in landfill?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am grateful to my noble friend for mentioning the catering industry, because the hospitality and food service commitment, which we are pressing across government, is directed expressly at that sector. Ministers in other departments are ensuring that the Government are taking up the commitment, and Members in another place and in this House are working to ensure that Parliament’s own catering is signed up to this commitment.

Biological Diversity

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[The Earl of Selborne]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they propose to implement the agreement reached at the meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity held in Nagoya, Japan, in October 2010.

[The Earl of Selborne]

My Lords, I start this short debate on the Convention on Biological Diversity by declaring my interest as chairman of the Living With Environmental Change partnership and by thanking those who put their name down to speak this evening.

The recent natural environment White Paper, entitled The Natural Choice: Securing the Value of Nature, describes the 2010 Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, held in Nagoya, Japan, as historic. We all hope that this will prove an accurate assessment and that the outcomes over the next decade deliver a new international deal to protect and enhance biodiversity and ecosystems.

The conference emphasised the value of the natural environment to human welfare and livelihoods and stressed the link between action on biodiversity, climate change and development. We all fervently hope that its new global vision will be achieved. This is stated as follows:

“By 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people.”

The parties also agreed on a shorter-term ambition, which was to:

“Take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of biodiversity in order to ensure that by 2020 ecosystems are resilient and continue to provide essential services, thereby securing the planet’s variety of life, and contributing to human well-being, and poverty eradication”.

To achieve this, the parties agreed on 20 targets and five strategic goals. These commendable aspirations, however, have to be put into the context of the failure of Governments to meet the previous target, which over the previous 10 years was to achieve a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.

The convention’s report, Global Biodiversity Outlook 3, pointed out the failure to do anything of the sort. It warns of critical tipping points that could lead to large-scale rapid changes causing potentially irreversible damage to ecosystem services. The question is therefore whether this new strategic plan, with its 20 targets, will prove more effective.

In summary, the new strategic plan emphasises the need for effective and urgent actions, appropriate and effective policies and evidence-based decision-making. Each member state is required to develop a natural strategy in line with the strategic plan, integrating sustainable resource use across all sectors of policy and meeting biodiversity targets.

We missed our targets up to 2010 because of a basic lack of understanding among Governments about the value of nature and the long-term benefits to be derived from its protection. There was a lack of public awareness of how ecosystem functions contribute to human welfare and of their benefits, including goods and services, some of which can be valued economically and others that have a non-economic value. Ecosystem services, such as soil formation, nutrient cycling, flood hazard reduction, water purification and air pollution reduction are all underpinned by biodiversity, and the level and stability of ecosystem services generally improve with increasing levels of biodiversity.

Earlier this month, the UK National Ecosystem Assessment was published by the Government. It was a collaboration of scientists from a number of Living With Environmental Change partners, and could prove to be a massively helpful tool to help decision-makers in government, business and society put in place long-term measures to protect and enhance our ecosystem services, including our biodiversity. Both this report and the recent White Paper are important developments that point in the right direction.

A third document to be launched later this month is the England Biodiversity Strategy, which is to be followed by strategies from the devolved Administrations. Tomorrow, the European Union Environment Ministers will, we hope, adopt the EU biodiversity strategy. Here is a plethora of strategies and documents, and they will all have to spell out just how we are going to deliver on the Nagoya commitments.

Of the 20 targets, I will refer to just a few. Target 6 requires all fish stocks to be managed and harvested sustainably, and target 7 requires areas under agriculture and forestry to be managed to ensure conservation of biodiversity. We could have a full debate on the implications for the common agricultural policy and the common fisheries policy, as perhaps we should, but clearly the EU biodiversity strategy will have to come up with some convincing reasons why that might become a reality.

Target 9, which concerns invasive alien species, is of particular relevance to our overseas territories, in a number of which the accidental importation of species, such as rats, has caused serious damage to the indigenous wildlife: for example, ground-nesting birds. Indeed, programmes are already in place in some of our overseas territories to eliminate such pests, but more programmes will clearly be essential if we are to meet our obligations under this target.

Target 15 commits Governments to restoring 15 per cent of degraded ecosystems by 2020, and the White Paper accepts this commitment. There will have to be a clear evidence-based assessment of what constitutes a degraded ecosystem and an inclusive procedure, by which I mean it should include as many people as possible in the process of determining priorities for restoration.

A key outcome was the Nagoya protocol on access to genetic resources and the sharing of benefits arising from their use. Access and benefit-sharing provisions are critical to countries with exploitable genetic material. Very often that means developing countries, which must at all costs protect their intellectual property. Access agreements are also very important to our national centres of excellence such as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Natural History Museum. Kew's core business is to collect and research plant diversity for conservation purposes and to enhance the sustainable use of plants. The Nagoya protocol encourages research that contributes to conservation and the sustainable use of biodiversity through the establishment of simplified measures for non-commercial research. This protocol is to be welcomed, and particularly the intention to simplify measures for non-commercial research.

Again, whether all this will be practical will depend on whether Governments, the business community and society at large understand and value our biodiversity. In this country, we are short of taxonomists, which means that for many species we lack experts who can identify species before they face extinction. The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has, on three occasions, reported on the need for a national programme to support systematics and taxonomy. There are now grounds for believing that government departments, research councils and the taxonomic community itself are addressing this serious issue. We need to engage the enthusiasm of both urban and rural populations. I pay tribute to such organisations as the open air laboratories, OPAL, which enlist the wider public in such projects as the bugs count undertaken with the Natural History Museum.

The environment White Paper pledges the Government to invest £1.2 million to support the development of the National Biodiversity Network. This network collates a vast amount of records provided largely by knowledgeable volunteers and local organisations around the country, a highly cost-effective way of generating essential data. The long-term support for the National Biodiversity Network is of key importance if we are to meet our targets.

Above all, we need to encourage a new generation of naturalists. We need to ensure that in these difficult times public funds are still available for local museums and natural history societies so that we can continue to generate these biological records.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister that the natural environment White Paper will be followed up by policies and actions that will ensure that by 2020 we have indeed met these challenging targets.

Agriculture: Global Food Security

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Selborne]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests as a farmer and as chair of the partners’ board of the Living with Environmental Change research programme, a collaboration of public funders and research agencies. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Byford on this timely debate. It is extremely appropriate that, only a few weeks after the publication of the Foresight project report on the future of food and farming that she mentioned in her excellent introduction to the debate, we have an opportunity effectively to address the issues that are so well analysed in that report. The Government Office for Science commissioned that report. As my noble friend reminded us, it took advice from all around the world. Now that it has made such an analysis and pointed to the global challenges that are being faced, it is, as I said, extremely appropriate that we should today address the issues of which of these challenges have implications for the United Kingdom, not just in agriculture but wider afield, and of how that should impact on our land management and agricultural policy in Europe as a whole.

The analysis points to at least four main tranches of issues, each one of which on its own would present real problems of food security. Put them together and they amount to a powerful combination. The issues are demographic, economic, environmental and political. Never underestimate how little support agriculture gets in the parts of the world where one would assume it would be a high priority. Together, these four pressures amount to substantial challenges, and the UK must consider how we can contribute to meeting them.

What is inescapable, whether at national or global level, is that the only way we are going to be able to meet these food security issues is to produce more food from the same quality of land or less—there will not be any more—using fewer inputs, fewer resources and less demand on natural resources, particularly water; with reduced emissions of greenhouse gases, and indeed of other pollutants; and with a reduced environmental footprint. That sounds like a tall order. It is summed up in the Foresight report as “sustainable intensification”, and I like that expression. The problem is, of course, that most people seem to object to the word “intensification”—illogically so. Rather in the way in which people object to the word “pesticide”, it sounds as though it is a force that should be denied as a tool. You cannot produce the food or achieve food security without increased intensification, but it must be sustainable. We have to think through very carefully what we mean by “sustainable intensification”.

Globally, we are trying to balance future demand and supply, but we are also trying to ensure stability. It is no good having spikes up and down; they are equally disastrous. We have seen two spikes in the past three or four years. We must also ensure that, even if we produce enough food, there is adequate access for those who at the moment are deprived of it. There are areas that are exporting food alongside communities who have no access to that food themselves.

Then there are the environmental issues that have been touched on, which cannot be divorced from the issue of food security. How do we manage these food systems while mitigating the effects of climate change? And, of course, how do we maintain our biodiversity? It is asking too much for every culture to enhance biodiversity, but we must certainly maintain it and, of course, the ecosystem services on which we ultimately all depend. The national ecosystem assessment will, I believe, be published next month. That will be an enormously important document from Defra, which will remind us just what we mean by ecosystem services and what must be done by land managers and others to ensure that we protect these services.

Whatever our contribution back here in Europe, one thing that we cannot go back to is protectionism. We all recognise that. Indeed, during the food spikes in 2009 and later, countries such as Russia imposed export bans on grain, which of course exacerbated the problem. Protectionism is a disastrous reaction. We cannot promote self-sufficiency by that means. However, that does not mean that we should neglect the interests of our own population. It is perfectly legitimate for this country—indeed, it has a moral responsibility—to promote the improvements in productivity that will be needed to meet future increases in demand, always supposing that those increases are sustainable.

Agriculture has always relied on its research base. We farmers tend to take a lot of credit for increasing our yields, but a moment’s thought shows that the agricultural engineer, the animal husbandry and plant sciences and the like have served us very well. When the Prime Minister of the day, my noble friend Lady Thatcher, came to the Royal Show in 1983, she reminded us that if other sectors of the economy had been able to adopt new technology so rapidly and successfully the country would not have faced the problems that it faced then in its balance of payments and economy. Agriculture has a proud record, and it should not allow its reputation of intensification to cloud the fact that, through such intensification, we have helped disprove Malthus, who has already had a mention.

The problem is that for 30 years our research base has been whittled away, although not so much in the basic sciences, such as plant sciences, which in fact have done really rather well. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, who did a lot when he was Science Minister to ensure that the basic sciences were protected. In the 1980s, to which I referred, when the Government of my own party were so impressed by the contribution of agriculture, they were saying at the same time, “Well, really, you should be standing on your own so far as applied research and extension services are concerned. These, in effect, will be privatised”. That is what happened.

Worse than that, whole tranches of research that had been commissioned by what was then the Ministry of Agriculture were simply cut and replaced by research that was deemed more relevant to policy-makers of the day. It was certainly not cut to support agricultural production. I am sure that there was feeling that the cost of the common agricultural policy was running out of control, and that if there was nothing else you could control you could at least hit the applied research budget. That is what happened, and we were left with a research spectrum—research, development and extension—that was patchy, to say the least. It no longer had the regional representation, the experimental husbandry farms and the experimental horticulture stations. They all went, and we were left with an inability, very often, to take the rapid advances in genomics and animal health through to the farm because there was no longer the applied research.

These problems have been recognised in recent years—all too late, given the lack of capacity—not least by the Taylor review, which, again, has been mentioned. It is an excellent report, and I hope that when the Minister responds he will be able to assure us that that, in turn, is being addressed. We are losing disciplines such as agronomy, soil sciences and animal husbandry.

There are enormous opportunities for agriculture to reduce its emissions globally and nationally, and to increase its carbon sequestration. The management of soils, particularly peat soils, can with adequate research demonstrate how much more we can do to reduce carbon dioxide levels. Second-generation biomass is another very exciting prospect. I do not think that any of us are suggesting that research should concentrate on GM, although I recognise that GM will certainly have a contribution to make in global terms, at least. We need to remind ourselves of the gaps in applied research and put together a coherent collaboration between the public and private sectors, something for which there has never been an overarching plan. It is time that we had one now.