Environment Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 9th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to congratulate the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, on bringing us this far and I add my congratulations to my noble friend the Minister.

I want to ask two small questions. My noble friend said that he would look for the water companies to achieve a progressive reduction in the discharge of sewage over a period and admitted that this would go beyond one price review. As we are so far into the current price review, what will the level of expenditure be within this review, and does he admit that the majority of expenditure will probably fall in the next price review?

He is aware of my concern about the delay in introducing the regulations under Schedule 3 of the water Act 2020. Does he not share my concern that we will still potentially be front-loading raw sewage as surface water will be allowed to mix with the overflow from the combined sewers, pumping more raw sewage into the rivers? I am deeply unhappy that we have not yet fulfilled one of the outstanding requests of the Michael Pitt report from 2007, when surface water flooding first became an issue, and even after the awful floods that we have had since. We have not managed to achieve an ending to the automatic right to connect and, until these regulations are introduced, we will not do so.

Is my noble friend able to put a timetable on when these regulations will finally come into place, so that we can have a pincer movement on the raw sewage going upstream and downstream, as addressed by the amendments before us this afternoon?

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Motion C1. I know enough about military strategy to know that where a Duke of Wellington does not lead a forward manoeuvre, it may be unwise to try to advance when he is not leading. So I am very mindful of the views of the House, and other noble Lords will speak before I decide whether to press Motion C1.

The point he made, which I think still holds, is that, although there has been movement on the part of the Government, in two key respects—the scope of the duty on water companies and the timescale in which it is intended to be met and in which we are intended to see improvements—the amendment that the Government have moved is unsatisfactory. I think there is general recognition in the House that we are not talking about a minor matter. We are talking about 400,000 discharges of raw sewage into Britain’s rivers in the last year alone. All the evidence is that the number is increasing, not reducing. We are not moving in the right direction; we are moving in the wrong direction and indeed, because of the impact of Brexit and the supply chain problems and all of that, and the shortage of relevant chemicals, the Environment Agency has issued formal advice exempting water undertakings from having to meet their prior conditions.

The noble Duke’s first amendment referred to taking “all reasonable steps”, which would imply a short timescale, and my amendment refers to

“a period specified by the Secretary of State”

in which defined objectives are to be met. My question to the Minister, which I think will be of great importance to the House since there is no reference to any timescale in his amendment, is: in what timescale does he envisage that there will be significant reductions in sewage discharges?

The second issue relates to scope. The noble Duke’s amendment put a direct duty on water companies to improve the performance of sewerage systems to get at the heart of the problem—inadequate sewage treatment facilities to reduce discharges of raw sewage. Now, the Government’s amendment refers to reducing

“the adverse impact of discharges”,

which is an indirect duty and does not require at all, necessarily—but certainly not in a defined timescale—significant improvements in the performance of sewerage systems. I ask the Minister why the Government are so focused on the indirect impacts—which we accept are important, and the noble Duke referred to that—rather than a direct duty on water companies to improve the performance of their sewerage systems?

A final point of some significance is: who can enforce this duty? Because, as everyone has accepted, without enforcement the duty will probably go unfulfilled. Philip Dunne—to whom we pay tribute and who has done great work in the other place on this issue—in his speech yesterday referred to his continuing concerns about enforcement, particularly in the context of a cut in the Environment Agency’s staffing and budget of two-thirds in the last 10 years, which has dramatically reduced its capacity to enforce or indeed even to inspect—and of course, unless you have inspected, you cannot enforce.

The noble Duke’s amendments would have given any individual or body corporate the power to enforce or to bring enforcement action or legal action because of the non-fulfilment by a water company of the duty. I think in particular of local authorities. Of course, it is local authorities that best know what is going on in their area and have the professional staff who are able to make assessments. Under the Government’s amendment, only the Secretary of State and defined state institutions can hold water companies to account for the enforcement of their duties. That is a very significant limitation on the noble Duke’s amendment.

So my third question to the Minister is: why are the Government not prepared to allow local authorities and non-state bodies, many of which are highly expert in this area, to bring proceedings against water companies that are not fulfilling the duty that is now set out in the Government’s amendment?

To me, these are three very significant issues: timescale, the scope of the duty and enforcement. In all three respects, the Government’s amendment is wanting at the moment. It does not lead me to have any expectation that the noble Duke’s aspirations, which we all share, will actually be fulfilled, because the timescale for meeting these objectives could be inordinately long. I look forward to hearing the contributions of other noble Lords, and in particular of the Minister at the end of the debate, before I decide whether, even if the noble Duke himself is retiring from the field, others of us might feel that it is in the public interest that we should attempt to advance none the less.

Environment Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, on his determination and persistence on this issue. Equally, I thank my noble friend the Minister, my honourable friend Rebecca Pow and the officials who have engaged so sincerely and robustly with us in exploring ways forward.

I am grateful for the progress we have made so far. However, before the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, laid amendments to this Bill, the Government seemed reluctant to place an actual duty on companies. I am hopeful that we can be extremely proud of the changes that we in this House have made in bringing this issue to the forefront of public opinion and prompting action from the Government.

I too express my abhorrence for any vitriol levelled against honourable Members in the other place. Have we not learned in recent weeks the dangers of that type of discourse and personal abuse? I implore noble Lords and those who may still have significant concerns about this Bill to accept that the progress we have made has been made in good faith by Ministers and officials who sincerely wish to make this a landmark piece of legislation—I believe it will be—and are committed to the environmental causes that are so important to so many of us.

Without the duty that the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, proposes, it is entirely possible that little or nothing would happen. That is not safe for public health. I declare my interests as in the register. I recognise the importance of private water utilities to many pension funds and institutional portfolios, which rely on their generous dividends. I have no interest in seeing these companies pushed into bankruptcy or public ownership, but I believe they have neglected their sewage overflow problems for years. They have failed to invest sufficiently to limit the problem and have even played fast and loose with the requirements to report overflows and allowed many illegal discharges. It is time to legislate to force them to spend significant sums to make up for past underspending and egregious behaviour, rather than relying on further promises which leave us with horribly polluted waters.

As the Rivers Trust said—I commend it on its work—more than half of Britain’s rivers are in poor ecological condition due to sewage discharges. This amendment does not call for the immediate elimination of sewage discharges but for ongoing reductions. Clearly, this will take time, but a new duty is so important as we have not really even started.

I noticed this afternoon that the Government have just announced and released on the Defra website plans to further strengthen the Bill with their own amendment to be enshrined in law, which I am led to believe will ensure that water companies have a duty to progressively reduce the adverse impact of sewage discharges from storm overflows. I sincerely hope that that is the case. For that to happen we will need to pass this amendment in this House tonight. I also congratulate my right honourable friend Philip Dunne and my honourable friend Richard Graham and others in the other place who have been working so hard behind the scenes to ensure that we move to a much better place on this amendment.

I therefore hope that noble Lords will support the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, in this important amendment, and I hope and believe that the Minister and the Government will take us to the right place very soon.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, in view of the Minister’s remarks, I should intervene briefly. The noble Baroness just made the crucial point that there appears to have been a major change of government policy. Let us not delude ourselves: that is because of the strength of parliamentary and public opinion. We have been doing our job in making it clear that the disgraceful situation which my noble friend Lord West, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and others have referred to, should not continue.

The Minister was so busy criticising me that he did not say explicitly that he is accepting the amendment in the name of the noble Duke. Are the Government accepting it? I see that the noble Baroness is shaking her head. Is it the case that they are not accepting the amendment? So we will have to vote. That is quite a significant point. The Government are still not in a situation where they are clearly accepting what the noble Duke said. The Government could, procedurally, accept the amendment in the name of the noble Duke, it would go back, and they could then move a further amendment.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I will give the noble Lord an answer. The Government encourage the noble Duke, the Duke of Westminster—I have done it again. I will go to jail voluntarily after this. The Government encourage the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, to press his amendment to a Division. The reason for doing so is because we will then be able to send it back to the House of Commons so that the Commons can then table our amendment in lieu. I would have thought the noble Lord would be aware of that and I suspect—in the same way that he continues to send absurd messages on Twitter in the last few minutes—that he probably already knew the answer.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I am well aware of the procedure of the House; I have been here rather longer than the noble Lord. The question is whether the Government are accepting it. Are they going to vote? No? So they are not voting. If they are not voting, that means that the amendment in the name of the noble Duke will go back to the House of Commons, and the right thing to do then is for it to be accepted or for them to move whatever technical changes they want.

On the substance of this issue, obviously the House congratulates the noble Duke on the stand he has taken. It is because of that stand that we are in this position this evening. On the business of criticisms of the Minister, let us make this very clear. Speaker after speaker in this debate has pointed out that unless there is this duty—an actual duty on water companies to reduce these illegal or unacceptable discharges—the current unsatisfactory position would not only continue but would probably get worse. The noble Earl referred to this.

With the scale of further development, the cutback of two-thirds in the Environment Agency—I am not giving way to the noble Lord; he can make his own remarks in a moment if he wishes to. I was criticised by the Minister so it is perfectly reasonable that I should reply. There has been a cutback of two-thirds in the staff of the Environment Agency over the last 10 years. In addition, the new guidance from the Environment Agency says that because of Brexit—yes, Brexit—where water companies cannot get the chemicals they need because of the HGV crisis, they are allowed exemptions from current rules. For all those reasons there is very good reason to believe that without the amendment in the name of the noble Duke, the situation would get worse and not better. My statement was clear, that without the change which the noble Duke is proposing, the situation over which the Government are presiding—the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, is the Minister responsible—would get worse.

We are doing the right thing in supporting the noble Duke. The House has shown itself in its best lights in supporting him so strongly, I am glad that the Government have come to this position and now, I hope, they will start moving in the right direction rather than the wrong direction.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, had any part at all in encouraging the deluging of some of our colleagues in verbal sewage, he should apologise.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, who I imagine has not read any of this, is making totally unfounded allegations and he should withdraw them.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I said that if the noble Lord has any part in it, he should apologise.

Water Industry (Specified Infrastructure Projects) (English Undertakers) (Amendment) Regulations 2020

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, this is my first opportunity in the House to congratulate the Minister on his appointment and I do so very warmly. I welcome these regulations, but I will ask two questions and raise one wider concern about them. First, as the Minister said, the Thames tideway tunnel—which predates these regulations—is the model on which the new system is based. Will the Minister update the House on what is happening with the tunnel? The record of the structuring and letting of the contract for it was a success. It got a lower cost of capital because it was a self-contained project with the risks clearly enumerated, separating it from Thames Water.

My second question is about the Abingdon reservoir, to which the Minister referred. As noble Lords will be aware, this not only is the first reservoir that has been proposed in the last generation but has a long history of great controversy. In particular, when it was last proposed 20 years ago, Ofwat essentially—if I can mix my metaphors—pulled the plug on it by ruling that it did not meet its own planning requirements for water supply. All the work that had gone in to preparing the case for the reservoir therefore came to nought. What is Ofwat’s attitude to the new proposal for the Abingdon reservoir? Is it likely to go ahead?

Speaking as a former chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, which did a lot of work on water resilience, I have one broader comment to make. The Minister did not refer to the commission’s 2018 report, Preparing for a Drier Future, which set out the background to these wider plans. It called on the Government to put in place additional supply and demand reduction measures, equivalent to at least 4,000 million litres a day, and to have plans in place by the end of 2019—last year—for at least 1,300 million litres a day provided through a national natural water network and additional supply infrastructure, as well as measures to halve leakages and progressing further with compulsory metering, to which the Minister referred. How far have the Government gone towards meeting the target of at least 1,300 million litres a day of additional supply being commissioned through a natural water network and additional supply infrastructure? If we have not yet got those proposals sufficiently in place, what measures will the Government take to meet that target, over and above the ones that the Minister has just announced?

Yemen

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

In answer to the noble Lord’s final question, it is extremely challenging to be able to ascertain that data, not least because of the challenges to our ability to access the most vulnerable, which I raised earlier in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. I agree on the specific statistics. I do not have the detail in front of me, but those figures resonate with the figures we have been using at DfID. When I spoke of 80% of the population, that is 24.1 million people in Yemen who need humanitarian assistance. On calling time, yes, absolutely; we are supporting UN efforts and imploring all sides—including, indeed, those operating through proxies and those with influence, namely the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Iran—to call time. People are suffering, people need help and it should happen now.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister think it would help the situation in Yemen if the United Kingdom did not sell arms to Saudi Arabia?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, that question has come up before. We operate a very rigorous regime in this regard. I note, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, is in his place, that I have written specifically on that. There was an issue about licences being issued by the Department for International Trade. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Trade has responded and there is a detailed report in that regard laid in the Library of the House.

United Kingdom’s Ambassador to the United States: Leaked Messages

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, Sir Kim Darroch is a great public servant. All noble Lords who have had the privilege of dealing with him as ambassador to Washington, and before that at UKREP, would support that view. UKREP is at the cutting edge of the practical application of government policy. As a Minister, I dealt with him frequently when he was head of UKREP; I would not have been nearly as effective in my post without him. We pay unreserved tribute to him. His reputation has not been damaged in any way by what happened. He was doing his job to the best of his ability. An ambassador who did not send back cables of the kind Sir Kim sent would not have been doing their job, and that is the end of the matter.

On the impact of the leak, I slightly part company with my noble friend in her forensic opening speech. I do not think it has done any damage to relations between Britain and the United States. There is nothing in those telegrams that would surprise anybody on either side of the Atlantic. It is no different from the commentary that can be read in the papers.

I severely deprecate any application of the Official Secrets Act to the leak. The leak was, I fear, a very good scoop in journalistic terms. How the leak came to be furnished to the Sunday Times is a matter of acute public interest, but I do not for a moment support any view that the Sunday Times should not have published it. I do not see a national interest in suppressing the views of diplomats on President Trump or, indeed, the views of American diplomats on Mrs May. It became an issue because President Trump chose to politicise the leak. What should have happened, and would have happened had we been dealing with a normal American Administration, is that the President of the United States would have made a joke about the leak, something like, “Goodness, you should hear what our ambassador says about your Prime Minister”. That would have been the end of the matter and Sir Kim would have continued in post. In fact, as it happens, he was due to leave the United States in a few months anyway. The reason it became a diplomatic fracas was because of the way the President of the United States chose to mobilise the leak for a political agenda.

The political agenda was clearly to destabilise Her Majesty’s Government. Let us be very clear what is going on. This is all part of a Brexit strategy, which I am afraid includes the Trumpian part of the United States, President Putin and others in this international nexus, who have leapt on Brexit as a means of destabilising our politics and our policy. We should be cognisant of the fact that the people who are propagating this Brexit policy internationally and mobilising leaks, which may include the secret services of Russia playing some part—we do not know where the inquiry is going to go but I would not be at all surprised if it ended up there—are part of a serious destabilisation strategy. The fact that the leak reached the Sunday Times through the Brexit Party—it is laughable, a 19 year-old journalist claiming to have senior contacts in the Civil Service; that is clearly not the case—which is an established route, we now know, for information and destabilisation from Russia, is a matter for concern.

To touch on the wider issues, the bigger issue underlining this is not the position of Sir Kim Darroch, whose reputation is secure, or the standing of our Diplomatic Service; it is the fact that the Government are conducting a policy—Brexit—that has so little confidence among the diplomatic community and in the Civil Service. The undermining and weakening of the Civil Service, which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, referred to, including the parachuting in of an unprecedented number of special advisers to essentially take over No. 10, and the resignation of the Principal Private Secretary, which is unprecedented in the transition between Prime Ministers, is because of the fundamental unviability of the Brexit policy. That is what underlies this leak. It is the big cancer at the heart of British government and it will not be solved by a leak inquiry. It needs a fundamental change of policy on the part of Her Majesty’s Government.

Council of Europe: House of Lords Members’ Contribution

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the Foreign Secretary has been dismissed and a new one has not yet been appointed, so I think that, at this moment in time, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, is the Foreign Minister of the country. He has supreme power. I hope that he uses it wisely in whatever statements he chooses to make at the end of the debate. Perhaps I may say also that I hope that he is not a member of the next Administration because I am told that, to become so, one has to give a pledge of willingness to contemplate no deal, and I am sure that the noble Lord, whom we respect deeply, would not do anything quite as misguided as that.

I begin with a confession. I have never served on a committee or delegation of the House; I have always taken GK Chesterton’s view:

“I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities—and found no statues of Committees”.


However, I pay tribute to those noble Lords who have taken on this work, which I think is important. The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, alone demonstrates that, because the work of the Council of Europe in monitoring elections and seeing that they are free and fair across Europe is at the bedrock of what it means to have a Europe of civilisation and democracy.

The issue which it is worth us addressing in this debate, and on which I would welcome the Minister’s views, is what benefits we get from the Council of Europe. I am all in favour of its existence, being of the view that the best leader that this country has had by far in the past century was Winston Churchill, who saved Europe and inspired a democratic and free Europe by his own example. Of course, one of the great ways in which he did so was through the foundation of the Council of Europe, and he was its first chairman in 1948. In preparing for this debate, I read his speeches as chairman and they are phenomenal. However, the question as to what we gain is a big one. In two respects, the Council of Europe’s record is ambivalent. The challenge for us—I do not think that anybody thinks that it should end—is how we improve on it.

The first respect in which the Council’s record is ambivalent is that it is clear that it has not played much part in reconciling Britain to Europe in any meaningful way. Given what is happening to the country, with us leaving the European Union and having a greater froideur in our relations with Europe than at any time since 1945, we cannot honestly say that the Council of Europe has played much part in making us, or even our political class, more European. I am afraid that I have not read the reports to which the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, referred; all I can say is that they impinge hardly at all on the public debate in this country. As I listened to noble Lords, I wondered whether I could think of any contribution which the Council of Europe has made recently to the public debate in this country, and I can think only of one—which I will come to in a moment.

In his great first speech as chairman of the Council of Europe, Churchill said:

“It is impossible to separate economics and defence from the general political structure. Mutual aid in the economic field and joint military defence must inevitably be accompanied step by step with a parallel policy of closer political unity”.


That is the prospectus for the European Union, and it is the European Union which Britain is in the act of seeking to leave. Churchill’s own legacy and own injunction to the Council of Europe is not being honoured in Britain’s relationship either with the Council or with the other European institutions. That side is clearly very depressing.

It is therefore clear that the Council of Europe has had almost no impact whatever in reconciling Britain to Europe; it has enabled some British politicians to play a role, such as that of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in election monitoring and so on, but it has not had a more fundamental impact. A further question is whether it has played a role in instilling wider human rights, respect for human rights and democratic rights in the wider Europe. That question hangs on whether Turkey and Russia, which are the two most problematic members of the Council of Europe in terms of their respect for human rights and democracy, have a better record and whether we are able to make a more constructive contribution to engaging them in democracy and human rights as members of the Council of Europe than would be the case if they were outside and we were therefore able to be more critical. Listening to this debate, I am not sure what the answer is, and I do not think that noble Lords are sure. We have heard some noble Lords who think that we should engage more closely with Russia and others who think we should not. I am not sure. All I can say is that things are pretty desperate in both cases. We have near-dictatorships in both Turkey and Russia; there is only a figleaf of respect for democracy and human rights in both countries. However, the cause has not yet been completely lost, so maybe one can argue that it is worth continuing with the dialogue as members.

The one undoubted benefit in both cases, it seems to me, is the abolition of the death penalty. My understanding is that it is not possible to be a member of the Council of Europe and have the death penalty. If Turkey and Russia were not members of the Council of Europe, given what has happened to their politics in the last 10 and 20 years, they probably would now have the death penalty. If it is our judgment that that has been an achievement, then all the work of noble Lords in attending these endless committees from 8 am until midnight will have been worth while.

Yemen

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, we all acknowledge the situation and the noble Lord is quite correct: the Syrian conflict and the tragedy we have seen unfolding there is not lost on any of us. The measures deployed by the regime mean that tragically we have seen Bashar al-Assad turn on his own population, not only in preventing humanitarian aid but in the use of chemical weapons, which we have universally, rightly and collectively condemned. We continue to work for a resolution to ensure that all communities of Syria will be rightly represented. We continue to support the talks in Geneva; unfortunately they have been stalled because the regime is not currently inclined to engage. However, there are important players in Syria as in all these conflicts—we call upon key players such as Russia, which can influence and help to reach a formal resolution to conflict. Similarly the Yemeni conflict has gone on for far too long and more can be done to bring different sides to the table.

I have seen through the efforts that have been made in Yemen that the importance of the United Nations cannot be underestimated. The UN Security Council, in the most challenging circumstances, brings the key world powers together. I believe very strongly that when it comes to Syria, resolution can be reached only through a political settlement, where all sides are rightly represented. The key body to provide that resolution is the United Nations.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, we hugely respect the Minister for the efforts that he makes, but does he believe that what he does makes a blind bit of difference to anything that is going on in Yemen?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

Absolutely.

Jamal Khashoggi

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My noble friend raises an important point. I talked earlier about the situation of Jamal Khashoggi’s family, who for several weeks did not know what his fate was. I assure my noble friend that, with Turkey, we continue to press on this important issue. Indeed, President Erdogan also made this point during his statement earlier today. It is important now to ensure that the full facts of the murder can be brought to the fore. But equally, for the family’s sake more than anyone else’s, we appeal to whoever knows so that good common sense will prevail in this terrible affair and at least some closure can be brought to the family by the body being presented, so that Jamal Khashoggi can at least be given an appropriate funeral.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, why do we not follow the German Government and suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

As the noble Lord will know, the stated position from Germany is not a new one: it is a restatement by Chancellor Merkel of the statement she made earlier. Angela Merkel has been clear in reiterating that she will keep to that approach. As I said earlier in response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Collins, we await the full outcome of the Turkish investigation and once we have all the facts in front of us, we will act accordingly.