European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

Not at the moment.

Lords amendment 3 would create a risk-averse approach to the design of better and more effective environmental standards. For example, it would require the Government to extend the scope to all public authorities—the hon. Lady’s point. That goes much further than the European Commission, which can take action only against a member state, not individual public authorities within that state. The Government therefore have instead proposed that the body should focus on national Government, to retain that focus on the most significant national issues. The requirement of a direct duty in Lords amendment 3 to apply those environment principles listed in the amendment across a wide range of Government activities goes far beyond the way it works at EU level currently. Such a far-reaching duty does not exist anywhere in EU law, so instead of replicating and bringing down those principles, we are in danger of creating some intended consequences that would cause concern to Members across this House. However, we recognise that an early reassurance of our intentions is needed, and we therefore move to support the amendment in lieu.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

I was tempted by their lordships’ amendment, but I do think we have managed to produce something that can satisfy everybody in this House, because, as my hon. and learned Friend has just said, there is subsequent legislation that we can build on. This is the framework; the principles will be in the Bill and we will be able to construct a national policy in the way that my hon. and learned Friend has just outlined.

[The Solicitor General]

My right hon. Friend is right. He was an outstanding Minister in the Department and I am grateful to him for his continued passion for the causes he represents so eloquently.

The amendment in lieu provides further reassurance for the House and sets out that the Government will publish draft legislation no later than six months after Royal Assent to this Bill.

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[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry). I rise to speak to Plaid Cymru’s amendments to Lords amendment 2, which would clarify that “a customs union” was the customs union. Plaid Cymru campaigned to remain, and we have been consistent in our support for remaining within the customs union and the single market and, for that matter, for looking at the EEA.

The Government and the Labour party are facing some pretty difficult problems, and that is because reality is intruding. Labour is split, as the Secretary of State said the other day, and I am sure we all marvelled yesterday at the bit of negotiation in the Chamber between the Solicitor General and the former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). That shows me that both parties are intent on pursuing their own internal conversations as well as the matter in hand.

It is not quite one minute to midnight, but it is pretty close. Our European interlocutors are asking us to tell them what we want and they are still not getting an answer. I can say that for industry in Wales, for universities in Wales and for health in Wales, we certainly need an answer, and pretty sharply too. The question for us is this: what is happening in respect of divergence as time progresses? We are getting no real answers.

Last night, I was here late and I took a taxi home. On the way, I asked the taxi driver what he thought of yesterday’s proceedings. His answer, predictably, was, “Why haven’t we left yet? Just get on with it.” I then asked him what he would do about the Land Rover jobs and the problems with the Galileo programme, at which point he said, “You’re from Wales aren’t you? I went up Snowdon once.” That suggests to me that he has a promising career ahead of him as a Brexiteering MP evading the real questions that face us.

As I said in an earlier intervention, the arrangements for the north-south border in Ireland will be very instructive for the arrangements between the EU and the United Kingdom in general. We will see the adoption of certain north-south arrangements, which will inevitably mean that they are adopted in the rest of the UK. I think all Unionists would agree with me in that respect. I asked Pascal Lammy, when he gave evidence to the Brexit Committee, if he knew of any two countries with two customs regimes for different parts of their states. Of course, he said no. To me, that means the arrangements between Dublin and Belfast will be the same as the arrangements between Dublin and Holyhead, and for that matter between Dover and Boulogne. By the way, he was also asked about the effect of having no controls at all, which has been suggested by some Conservative Members. Quite reasonably, he said that abandoning all controls means we would have nothing to bargain with in trade negotiations.

We have heard of a cake Brexit, a red, white and blue Brexit, a hard Brexit, a Brexit for jobs and a green Brexit. My suggestion is for a Welsh cake Brexit, which would entail staying in the single market and the customs union. We have been consistently in favour of that, and it would suit our economy and the requirements we have for health, industry, universities and so on.

Today, the Labour party has an opportunity to defeat the Government. I think we would all love to see that. Instead, however, it seems to have decided to try to water down the Lords amendments and pave the way, eventually, for the Tories to steamroller through a hard Brexit. I do not think we will be supporting them in that.

[Richard Benyon]

This may sound breathtakingly naive to some Members, but I think there is an opportunity to reboot the debate on immigration. I think what concerned many of our constituents was the inability to control the numbers coming in. Now that they, rightly, believe there is an opportunity to have that control, it is up to us, on all sides of the House, to make the case for the reasoned and controlled immigration from which our economy and society benefits.

I rise to talk about environmental measures. In all the weighty subjects discussed today, some may say that is a trivial issue by comparison. I would say that it is not trivial at all: it is about the air we breathe, the rivers from which we get our drinking water and the kind of society we bequeath to future generations. The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), who is sadly not in her place, is a magnificent champion of the environment. She and I started on this issue from exactly the same point: we felt there was a lacuna, a vast hole or governance gap as some have called it, in the Bill.

In my few remarks on Second Reading, I talked about the importance of putting into British law the regulations and laws that have seen our beaches cleaned up and our rivers start to get to a stage where we can be proud of them, where they are achieving what they are supposed to as functioning ecosystems. We are protecting landscapes and doing something to reverse the disaster, the tragedy and the crisis of species decline. We need to replicate, in a bespoke British way, the kind of measures we have benefited from in recent years. The Lords had a pretty good pitch at it, but there were flaws in their amendment.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Neil Gray]

Absolutely. I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s very good point.

We support new clause 67, which stands in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, which would protect environmental provisions. This is linked to a constituency concern that I have. Last week, I visited the Tarmac quarry at Cairneyhill, near Caldercruix in my constituency. It provides 30 good jobs and some of its staff have worked there for decades. Aggregate industry businesses such as Tarmac are energy and carbon-intensive, but they are working hard to reduce their carbon footprint as responsible operators. The EU emissions trading system has underpinned the UK’s carbon reduction commitments for many years and provided a basis from which companies such as Tarmac operate. They need to know whether we will be in or out of the EU ETS. If we are out, what will the new rules be? Will they be linked to the EU ETS or to schemes such as the one in California? How will that be paid for? Who will police the rules?

It is simply not good enough for the UK Government just to say, as they have so far, that this is subject to the negotiations, and here is why: businesses such as Tarmac make very long-term investment decisions that are based on their certainty of legislation and regulation. At my visit last week, we talked about Tarmac’s plans for the Cairneyhill site 20 years down the line. It is not just for its own business’s benefit that it does this; it is to protect the supply chain for infrastructure projects commissioned by Governments across these isles. Will the Minister guarantee that EU ETS allowances issued to UK operators for 2018 will be accepted for compliance purposes at the end of the EU ETS accounting year? Without such a guarantee, UK companies will face a bill that might run into millions. This uncertainty and lack of detail is concerning businesses and stakeholders across industry and civic life, especially with the ramping up of the Government’s nonsensical no-deal rhetoric.

We have before us a mess of a Bill, but that is little wonder given that, from the start of the process, the Government have made a mess of Brexit. From taking the electorate for granted before the referendum to assuming they did not need to plan for a leave vote, triggering article 50 before they were prepared, and calling a snap election to strengthen their position but in fact creating chaos, they have made a mess of Brexit. Our amendments would provide certainty in areas of confusion, confirming our existing rights and protecting them from those who wish to sweep them away, and would finally lift EU nationals living here from their tortuous limbo. We must give them protection and the lifeline assurance of the right to remain that the Government have disgracefully denied them. I commend amendment 70 to the Committee.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

I say to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and others, perhaps as one remainer to another, that to suggest everything EU for the environment good; everything outside—

[Caroline Lucas]

indicated dissent.

[Richard Benyon]

I know that that was not quite what the hon. Lady said, but I have the scars on my back. When the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) was Environment Secretary, he rightly made Britain stand up for the conservation of the seas by opposing the over-fishing of tuna in the Atlantic. The first thing sitting in my in-tray when I arrived at DEFRA in 2010, however, was a very big infraction fine against the UK for going against the EU’s direction to fish unsustainably. I also remember working with organisations such as the International Whaling Commission and sitting for hours in a meeting of the EU co-ordination body before putting our case for better whale and cetacean conservation, only to have Britain’s pro-environmental polices watered down. We have an opportunity, if we can get this right, to be more ambitious than that.

On Second Reading, I looked for measures that would secure for the long term the environmental protections we have learned to value—I entirely agree with the hon. Lady and others that measures such as the water framework directive need to be transposed into UK provision—and for a replacement mechanism following the loss of infraction. Infraction keeps Ministers awake at night, but what is the position for a sovereign nation on its own, outside a pan-national body? I have looked for an alternative, and I was tempted by her new clause, and by the Leader of the Opposition’s new clause, because I thought they might tie future Governments. However, after consultation with my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), we looked for another mechanism.

Working with the Environment Secretary has been a textbook lesson in how to improve law. He and the Government recognise that there is a governance gap that we have to fill. One suggestion is the belt-and-braces but perhaps over-complicated arrangement that the hon. Lady and others have suggested, but there is an alternative that I find intensely attractive. When we took the issue to the Secretary of State, he listened and then asked questions—the process was rather like a university tutorial—and he then asked us back to tell us what he had done. His suggestion, which has been backed up by the Minister today, is something that green groups such as Greener UK and the Green Alliance have been asking for: a proposal that really locks in these measures.

The Secretary of State first suggested that we set up this new body. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset is absolutely right, because we need, through this consultation, to ensure that the body is independent, that we know its remit, that its sanctions are in place, and that it has the level of independence of the Children’s Commissioner, for example. The Secretary of State seems determined that that is what it should be, so I think we have the offer of a very good measure, because it will secure the vital ingredient, which is the national policy statement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith]

I shall move on, because I will otherwise fail to address the key issues that I wish to address. Before I first gave way, I was talking about the discussions between Government Members, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State’s advisers and the Greener UK representatives. Those discussions were meaningful—in some cases they lasted a long time—and they led to a broad agreement on a solution. I am delighted to say that that is the solution the Secretary of State has presented in the past few days.

The Committee has heard most of the details already, but my right hon. Friend has committed not only to creating a strong, independent body with teeth that can hold the Government and their successor Governments to account on the environment, but a policy statement—the policy statement we have already been debating—that will set out and define those key environmental principles.

There is a hierarchy of national policy statements. They are not all the same, and some have sharper teeth than others. My right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury knows more about that than I do, and I invite him to intervene.

[Richard Benyon]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. The marine policy statement that came as part of the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009—the right hon. Member for Leeds Central will feel extremely proprietorial about this—is a good example of how Government can set policy, and of the tortuous discussions about how Government can adhere to that policy. It is a good model to take forward as part of this policy statement.

[Zac Goldsmith]

My right hon. Friend has a closer experience of this issue than I do.

The solution presented by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State reflects a consensus reached between parliamentary colleagues and between his Department and the main representatives of Greener UK, who by and large have publicly welcomed the policy. I invite Members to look through the Twitter accounts of some of this country’s leading environmental campaigners and lawyers to see that, generally speaking, there is a high level of enthusiasm for the Secretary of State’s promises.

I agree very strongly with the sentiments behind many of the amendments that have been tabled, and to which hon. Members have already spoken. I am delighted the amendments were tabled, because they have had the effect of sharpening and focusing minds. I found them useful in my discussions with the Secretary of State, but I hope it will at least be acknowledged, particularly by Opposition Members, as it has been by the key pressure groups, that the amendments have already done their job.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is not in his place at the moment but, if he is listening, I put on record my very sincere thanks to him for stepping up and giving nature the voice that it so badly needs.