Environmental Targets (Fine Particulate Matter) (England) Regulations 2022
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Lord Benyon
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 19 December 2022 be approved.
Relevant document: 25th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, this instrument sets two legally binding targets for air quality, as required under the Environment Act 2021. Along with the five other environmental target instruments, this instrument implements the Government’s commitment to leave the environment in a better state than we found it.
The two targets both relate to fine particulate matter or PM2.5—the pollutant most harmful to human health. They will work in tandem to drive improvements in the parts of England with the highest concentrations, while reducing average exposure across the country, driving public health benefits.
The Government take air quality and its effects extremely seriously. Although we have achieved significant reductions in air pollution, it remains the largest environmental risk to public health in the UK. The tragic death of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah in 2013 continues to remind us that, when it comes to improving air quality, there is absolutely no room for complacency. I thank Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. I pay tribute to her family and friends who campaigned so tirelessly on this issue and continue to do so.
Achieving our targets will make a significant contribution to public health and in reducing burdens on the NHS. Our modelling indicates that, over the course of 18 years, achieving the targets would result in 214,000 fewer cases of cardiovascular disease, 56,000 fewer strokes, 70,000 fewer cases of asthma and 23,000 fewer cases of lung cancer. Our analysis also indicates that achieving the targets could save £38 billion in social costs associated with human health, productivity and ecosystems between 2023 and 2040.
PM2.5 is a complex pollutant emitted from many different sources. Reducing levels means driving action across our society and economy. This includes emissions from all sectors—agriculture, road transport, domestic combustion and industry. Businesses and individuals will also have a role to play.
We followed a rigorous, evidence-based process, working with internationally recognised experts to set targets which are stretching, achievable and specific to our national circumstances. The first target set out in the instrument is the annual mean concentration target. This sets a maximum concentration of 10 micrograms per cubic metre to be met across England by 31 December 2040.
I turn to the regret amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. If she were able to wave a magic wand and switch off the UK economy, she would not achieve 5 micrograms per cubic metre. PM2.5 exists naturally in our environment. It is blown to parts of the UK from abroad or through factors beyond our control, such as shipping. She knows that Section 4 of the Environment Act requires that all these targets must be achievable. The ambition that she demands is unachievable. If I were to be churlish, I should say that it is no more than a gesture—one which would put us in breach of the Act. She is actually asking the Government to break the law, because we could not hit these targets.
I understand that the noble Baroness has got this 5-microgram figure from the World Health Organization, a pan-national body which, for perfectly understandable reasons, encourages a very high level of ambition that seeks to drive change in countries across the world. But Governments are different. In creating targets or regulations, we have to operate within our own laws and live in the land of the possible. What parts of the economy does she want to snuff out in order to hit her target? What behaviour change does she want to impose on citizens for her figure to be a reality?
I have huge respect for the noble Baroness. She is good at holding me and the Government to account, but I suggest that this is not her finest hour. I have been in opposition, and I accept that it is the job of the Opposition to push the Government to the greatest degree possible, but this regret amendment is not good opposition. As with her regret amendment last week on water quality, it is based on an entirely false premise. The evidence for the negative effects on health of PM2.5 is clear. I well understand the dangers. I assure noble Lords—and the noble Baroness—that we are absolutely committed to action to reduce air pollution, but we need to do this in a proportionate and achievable manner. I emphasise “achievable”.
PM2.5 is a complex pollutant and there are no easy solutions. An earlier target date would mean significant restrictions and costs on businesses and on people’s lives. The noble Baroness must be frank with the people of this country and tell them what activities she wants them to stop doing. The shortest of discussions with air-quality experts reveals that a particular challenge exists in urban areas, where the highest number of people live. For example, we expect most of England to meet the 10-microgram target by 2030. She mentions the EU in her amendment. I have no doubt that the EU will fail to hit its target figure by 2030, because many countries in the EU have worse challenges than we do. Meeting the target everywhere for a lower particulate matter is not realistically achievable. It would require new technological innovation to progress more quickly than can reasonably be expected. It would likely require bans on all domestic solid fuel burning, and significant restrictions on personal car use in our towns and cities and on commercial deliveries and vehicle use as well. We are working across the economy to try to clean up our transport network provision and to focus on pollution hotspots, working with bodies such as local authorities and Highways England.
We do not believe that it would be reasonable or fair to impose these kinds of restrictions on people now or in the immediate future. If political parties are proposing measures which will seriously restrict some pretty basic freedoms, they must be up front and honest with the electorate. Our evidence indicates that 5 micrograms per cubic metre is not possible as a nationwide target. It shows that between 6 and 8 micrograms per cubic metre—or 2018 levels in the south-east of England—are not from emissions that we can control in this country. This is the point. These levels come from a combination of natural sources, emissions from other countries—such as air blown across the English Channel from Europe and from shipping. I repeat: even if everyone in England left the country, it would not just be challenging to meet 5 micrograms per cubic metre everywhere; it would be impossible.
As important is to drive down the highest concentrations. It is also essential that we ensure that action is taken across the whole of England, because there is no safe level of PM2.5.
This instrument also makes our innovative population exposure reduction target law. This sets a 35% reduction in average population exposure by 31 December 2040, compared with a baseline period of 2016 to 2018. This is perhaps the most meaningful target. It focuses on health outcomes and reflects the fact that all improvements to PM2.5 exposure will result in health benefits. The target therefore drives action to reduce exposure for all, maximising public health benefits.
The instrument also sets out the framework for assessing compliance with the two targets. Assessment will be carried out through PM2.5 monitors on our national network. To facilitate this, we are investing over £10 million up to 2025 to expand the existing network to more than double its current size. This adds well over 100 monitors across England from December 2021.
In conclusion, this instrument is an essential first step in ensuring that the environment is left in a better state than we found it, by requiring the Government to drive down levels of this harmful pollutant. Having legislated for this ambition, we will set out our delivery plan in the forthcoming environmental improvement plan. I beg to move.
Amendment to the Motion
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, can I challenge the noble Baroness on what she said? While it was very interesting, she focused entirely on outdoor pollution from PM. There is a much greater problem of indoor pollution from PM, about which we know much less. There is much less monitoring of it but it comes from damp houses and from the chemicals we use; it comes from a whole range of issues. She referred specifically to the outdoors and then to people suffering from asthma. They are going to be suffering indoors as well, given the pollution inside our houses. This is why the whole of air pollution is so difficult. Theoretically, we know much more about outside pollution, which is much more heavily monitored. Even the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said how difficult it has been to reduce particulates in the City of London, despite how much the traffic has reduced. Yes, this is a hugely complex and very difficult and sensitive issue, but we need to look at it in the round. I have no doubt that by 2030 we will have a huge reduction, but it is going to be totally impossible to get to the required level for every single area in England.
Lord Benyon (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to everyone for their valuable contributions to this debate. To answer directly the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, I say that this is not about a lack of ambition. I have had many opportunities to speak in the House on this issue and I share entirely noble Lords’ ambition to achieve it, but we have to comply with the law. That is why the regret amendment, praying in aid 5 micrograms per cubic metre, is not achievable.
The World Health Organization is entirely right to push countries to be ever more ambitious, but we have to comply with Section 4 of the Environment Act. To do that, anybody who is in government or aspires to government cannot just stand up and say, “We want to achieve more”, in the full knowledge that it is impossible. We would therefore be breaking the law and I am not prepared to do that. However, I entirely accept that there are real and genuine concerns and I want our Environment Act, which is world-leading, to deliver ever greener and more environmentally friendly measures.
The EU is also mentioned in the regret amendment and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, is absolutely right: it seeks to achieve 5 micrograms per cubic metre, but we have to achieve the target that we set. We cannot just pluck one out that sounds good and makes the Government look as if they are listening to every single campaigner who wants a reduction, quite understandably. We want to produce a target that we can achieve, and we can set out clearly how we are going to do it.
To say that Ministers have somehow fiddled with the evidence to be less ambitious, for whatever reason, is absolute nonsense. The suite of targets that we consulted on was the result of significant scientific evidence, collected and developed over preceding years, and included input from evidence partners and independent experts, supported by over 800 pages of published evidence. We have full confidence in the final suite of targets, which represents a robust analysis of that. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said that this was a pessimistic view, but in government you can set a target and seek to achieve it before the date. We think we can get to the low-hanging fruit and show a trajectory much earlier than the date of 2040.
Pollution: Rivers and Beaches
Lord Benyon Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Wyre Forest
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect rivers and beaches from pollution.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, I declare my farming interests as set out in the register. The Government are committed to protecting our water bodies from pollution. In December we announced our ambitious suite of legally binding Environment Act targets, including four targets to address pressures on the water environment. To tackle agricultural pollution, in November we published a grant scheme to improve slurry storage on farms, alongside almost doubling the budget for our catchment-sensitive farming partnership. In August 2022, we also published our £56 billion plan to reduce sewage discharges.
Lord Watson of Wyre Forest (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that Answer, but in the light of increasing public alarm, Thames Water now provides live information on pollution caused by combined sewage overflow spills. When will the Government mandate all water companies to provide their customers with this information?
Lord Benyon (Con)
By the end of this year. I am grateful for the noble Lord’s interest in this subject. In 2013, I wrote to every water company in England and was amazed to find that only 5% of combined sewage outflows were registered anywhere. We did not know, and the reason we now know and are able to hold them to account is that we now have over 90% of those, and by the end of this year we will have 100%, so all the concerns people have can be measured in real time. We are also requiring water companies to put telemetry just below outflows so we can see precisely the impact of legal outflows and use it for enforcement for when there are illegal discharges into rivers.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I refer to my interest as listed in the register. Does my noble friend agree that sustainable drainage systems have a vital role to play in preventing sewage entering these surface water overflows and combined sewers? Will he therefore bring forward the deadline to this year to ensure that Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, on obligatory, mandatory sustainable sewage drains, is put in place as it has been in Wales?
Lord Benyon (Con)
Yes, we have announced that we will be consulting this year with a view to making an announcement about implementation of the Flood and Water Management Act.
The Duke of Wellington (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is shameful and indeed embarrassing that a British windsurfer, Sarah Jackson, has had to leave Britain because she cannot train in British waters due to the amount of sewage pollution in so many of our coastal areas? She has had to go to Spain in order to train.
Lord Benyon (Con)
That is highly regrettable. I am not aware of that case but no doubt the noble Duke will make me aware of it. One of our targets is about bathing waters, and the classification figures for 2022 were that 72.1% of them were in excellent condition, 20.8% good, 4.3% insufficient and 2.9% poor. Either there is a discrepancy in the information individuals hold on where they can swim, or a discrepancy in the statistics the Government are receiving from very eminent sources. However, I am happy to discuss this further with the noble Duke.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I am sure the Minister knows that as of last Saturday, 28 January, Thames Water’s sewage overflow at Stratfield Mortimer had been dumping sewage non-stop for a total of 944 hours and 15 minutes—that is, dumping sewage continuously since 19 December last year. Does the Minister agree that, since Thames Water’s national television advertising must be costing quite a lot of money, that money would be better spent on renewing its sewage outflow pipes?
Lord Benyon (Con)
Stratfield Mortimer is well known to me and others in this Chamber. That is an appalling statistic, and it is why the Government have brought in strict measures that no other Government have ever brought in before. Through our regulator, Ofwat, we are requiring water companies to address this problem. We are requiring them to spend £56 billion of capex on improvements, and we are taking other measures, including enforcement. We have increased money to the Environment Agency and increased the number of inspectors, recognising that it is not just water companies; there are problems that come from farming and from poor connections. There are also a host of different other measures. That is why we are looking at water quality in our rivers holistically and are determined to see the improvements that the public desire.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I declare my interest as a Church Commissioner in the farming industry. What attention are the Government paying to pollution as we get more and more extreme weather events, with climate change being upon us?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The right reverend Prelate is right to raise this issue. We are seeing more extremes of climate, and that is resulting in a lot of runoff into our rivers at particular times. That is why, for example, we are introducing in our environmental land management schemes a determination to use soil more effectively by binding it together with green cover crops, thus preventing it going into the rivers. I am keen to have a conversation with the Church Commissioners, one of the biggest landowners in the country, about how they are interacting with their farmers and supporting them in taking up these schemes, and about how we can work together with large and small landowners and farmers to ensure that we are improving the quality of our environment, particularly our rivers.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, on Thursday the Leader of the House of Commons said that in 2010, only 6% of storm overflows were monitored but the figure is now 100%. However, it is not true that all overflows are monitored, so can the Minister confirm the actual figure today? Can he also confirm whether the department or the regulator collects data on the number of monitors that are offline and the reasons for them being unavailable? My noble friend Lord Watson mentioned Thames Water. According to its map, some two dozen of its monitors were out of action this morning.
Lord Benyon (Con)
The statistic is absolutely right—I can remember seeing it and being stunned that the Government prior to the coalition Government had no idea about this. They knew about only 5% of the storm overflows, so we set about getting that data. If the person quoted in the other place said 100%, it is not quite that but it is nearly there: we are in the 90s, and by the end of this year the figure will be 100%. If the telemetry we require to measure the quality is not working, I am happy to take any cases up with the Environment Agency and make sure that we are applying this.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
Can the Minister tell me how long this will take? I believe the £56 billion that he referred to will take about 25 years to roll out and invest. When will we be able to see a visible difference?
Lord Benyon (Con)
We have announced our targets in the provisions of the Environment Act—some of those are for 2035, and some are for 2038—and we will review them in 2027 to see how they are going. There are others that are more long term. There was an unfortunate mistake in a regret amendment last week, in which it was claimed, somehow, that we are pushing this out to 2063. What is absolutely true is that we are sticking to the requirements of the water framework directive, as we did when we were in the EU. We are emboldening that with other provisions, such as the ones in the amendments to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. So, there is a degree of urgency because we want these matters to be dealt with as quickly as possible. I urge the noble Lord not to listen to what was claimed in the regret amendment last week.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, Southern Water is a persistent offender and has been fined in the past for discharging sewage into coastal seas and waterways. Despite this, there has been no change in its working practices. People are suffering stomach upsets and ear infections—the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, has referred to this. As heavy fines appear to make no difference, ahead of summer, does the Minister believe that the measures he has mentioned today will make a real difference to the quality of water around our coasts and keep our children and swimmers safe?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The measures we are bringing in can lead to fines of up to 10% of water companies’ turnover, and the inflicting of fines of over £100 million on a single water company. This will see a real drive towards raising standards across the piece, and not just in the area of enforcement. We have more enforcement officers in the Environment Agency to take up any complaints people have about water quality, but we are also making sure that we tie this in holistically. For example, our requirement that water companies get to net zero means no longer allowing sludge to be improperly applied to the land, and looking at such areas as a resource, rather than something that, ultimately, can pollute. We are working holistically across the water sector to improve the situation.
Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill
Lord Benyon ExcerptsWednesday 25th January 2023
(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB)
My Lords, I will briefly respond to the noble Lord, Lord Winston, on that point. It is a fair question, which we do need to respond to: what happens if we narrow the gene pool and expose animals to genetic risk? There has been evidence in the past that by narrowing the gene pool in dairy cows, we have had lameness problems; there has been an issue in other species. That is because we have not properly understood; indeed, random breeding, as the noble Lord, Lord Trees, has said, has resulted in that kind of action. Through better understanding of the genes, and through ensuring that we retain as wide a gene pool as possible from which to choose, but being selective and more careful and intelligent about the use of those genes, we should avoid that consequence.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, I start by reminding noble Lords of my entry in the register. This has been a fascinating opener for this afternoon’s proceedings. I know that this is an area of great importance to this House. I want to take account of the concerns raised in the debate and more clearly show our intention on this issue. Perhaps I should start by saying that, having been in, then out and now back in Defra over about a decade or more—and not being a scientist—I absolutely do take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. I try never to use the words that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, attributed to me, which was that I was following the science. The science is imprecise, and what we have to do as policy- makers is take a view, listen to reputable people who advise us and organisations both here and around the world, and hope we get it right.
I shall say just two things at this stage of the proceedings on what my involvement in the Bill is not about. First, to tackle what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, said—that this is somehow to satisfy the demands of the global agricultural corporations—no, it is not that. As far as I know, we have had no lobbying from any of those organisations, and this is about something else which I shall come to. Secondly, it is not about taking back control. For me, it is about looking at crops that I see frying in heatwaves that we never had when I was younger. It is about talking to farmers who have Belgian Blue cattle that can give birth to calves only by Caesarean section because they have been bred through traditional breeding methods in a way that makes natural calving impossible. It is about correcting some of those aberrations that have existed, as well pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Trees. We can tie ourselves down with negativity about this, but the opportunities for this legislation, what it offers for animal welfare and for tackling issues such as climate change, are immense.
On the amendment to remove animals from the Bill completely, as was highlighted in Committee and in today’s debate, I say that it is vital that animals remain part of the Bill. We focused on farmed animals in debate because there is already research in the UK and abroad showing the exciting potential of precision breeding to help tackle some of the most pressing challenges to our food system, the environment and animal welfare. These challenges are significant, and while these technologies are not a silver bullet, they can work alongside other approaches to help us to improve animal health and welfare, enhance the sustainability of farming, and strengthen food security and resilience. It is vital that we create an enabling regulatory environment to translate the research that we have already highlighted in debates into practical, tangible benefits.
It is equally vital that these technologies are used responsibly. That is why we have included specific measures in the Bill to safeguard animal welfare. These go beyond what is required for traditional breeding and under current GMO requirements. We therefore do not see this legislation as a route to lowering welfare standards. Instead, we see it as a real opportunity to improve animal welfare and our food system.
The debate about outliers was fascinating. As a policymaker, I quite like challenging Defra scientists and those who advise us by pushing an outlying piece of science, something that may not even be peer-reviewed. It is one of my criticisms of the scientific lobby that, to get peer-reviewed papers, you have to be in the centre. In this case, I have looked at the broad range of views in the scientific community. I entirely endorse the sentiments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. However, I understand concerns raised in the debate about the use of precision-breeding technologies in certain groups of animals, such as companion animals, and I recognise and agree with noble Lords on the importance of building confidence in the regulatory system.
There is a case for prioritising where there is the greatest research interest and where there are greatest potential benefits for animal welfare in our food system. That is why I want to make a commitment on the Floor of this House that we will adopt a phased approach to commencing the measures in the Bill in relation to animals. In other words, we will commence the measures in the Bill for only a select group of animal species in the first instance before commencing them in relation to other species. For example, in the first phase it is likely to be animals typically used in agriculture or aquaculture.
As indicated during Committee, we intend to use the commencement powers within the Bill to achieve that. These powers allow us to bring the provisions in the Bill into force in relation to a specific list of species or group of animals; for example, we can apply the provisions to cattle by stating the species name as Bos taurus—domestic cows. That means that until the relevant commencement regulations applicable to them are made, some species or groups of animals, such as companion animals, will not be affected by changes in the Bill. Likewise, GMO rules would continue to apply to them if they are produced using precision-breeding technology. Taking this approach allows us to limit the practical effect of the Bill for a time, while retaining the flexibility and durability needed to capture the potential benefits in other species in the future.
The Duke of Montrose (Con)
It is encouraging to think that the Minister would pick one genus of defined animal such as Bos taurus, but how long would it remain the only race being investigated? Moreover, they are only about half of the cattle beasts; there are also all the beasts descended from Bos indicus that occupy tropical areas.
Lord Benyon (Con)
I understand the point that my noble friend is making. I cited Bos taurus as perhaps the greatest priority in our minds, but I have also mentioned the benefits that would accrue if we could tackle conditions such as PRRS in pigs. He is right that there are other genuses across farm animal species that we must consider.
As I said, we also intend to produce guidance on the animal marketing authorisation process outlined in the Bill. That will include guidance on the evidence that regulations will require to be submitted alongside the animal welfare declaration by the breeder and, if necessary, more specific guidance relevant to particular species. Through that consideration of evidence and clear guidance, we will ensure that the regulatory system works effectively for different species of animals. I hope that the Government’s intended approach, our commitment to phase the introduction of animals under this legislation and the words that I have said from this Dispatch Box are clear and reassuring for noble Lords. I ask noble Lords to consider not pressing their amendments.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answer. I thank everyone who has participated in, as he said, this fascinating, detailed and high-quality debate.
I will start with the small bombshell that the Minister that just dropped. We appear to have had a new outline for the way in which the Bill is to be implemented presented to us at the final stage of Report on the Floor of the House—and, as the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, pointed out, with some very unclear elements where we suddenly appear to be covering half the cattle but not the other half. I question whether this is the way in which we should be making legislation.
I want to raise a point on something the Minister said which has not been raised before: why is aquaculture here? As the noble Lord, Lord Winston, said, the reality of land animals is that at least you can keep control of them and muster them fairly well. If we include aquaculture in the early stages, we have to realise that once you release something into the sea, as we know from farmed salmon, there will of course be escapes. We have not had a chance to debate all the things the Minister just said.
I want to go back to first principles. I return to the immensely powerful and important speech by the noble Lord, Lord Winston. As he said, he has 40 years’ experience of working with genes. He is your Lordships’ House’s absolute expert. The noble Lord said that we are embarking on a massive experiment with potential global repercussions, but we do not understand what we are doing. Before I go further, I want to put those words to the Minister. My understanding is that the precautionary principle is part of government policy. How does this Bill fit with that principle?
Lord Benyon (Con)
Let me address some of the points that the noble Baroness has made. The Government have always said that our priority for the rollout of this technology will be plants, then animals. I have added to that the reassurance, in frequent meetings that I have held with noble Lords before today, that we can phase that part of it as well. So I do not consider that to be a bombshell.
ACRE, the body that advises the Government on releases into the environment, has recommended that precision-bred organisms pose no greater risk than their traditionally-bred counterparts. Its advice is supported by the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Biology and the Roslin Institute. As for food and feed, consumer safety will be ensured through a case-by-case assessment by the FSA to ensure that products are safe for consumption.
So I hope the noble Baroness feels that his is not a bombshell, that clear processes are involved and that we have been, in every way, precautionary about how we do this. I put it to her that surely it is being precautionary to tackle some of the problems we face. The greatest challenge ever for humanity is to adapt to climate change and to produce food in a way that a modern society, a civilised society, wants—to make sure we address issues such as animal welfare. That is the opportunity of this Bill.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I thank the Minister for his answer. I will pick up that point about animal welfare, and indeed pick up the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, about pigs in the US that have been gene-engineered—or, rather, gene-disrupted— to make them resistant to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome.
This is a case of knocking out one gene in these pigs. We know that any given strain of a virus mutates at a rapid rate—we only need to look at Covid-19. Where we have pigs held in the kind of crowded, dangerous conditions in which we know pigs are held in the US, the virus will mutate very quickly. We have been through this many times. We had it with resistance to pesticides: we got rid of a single disease with one gene and then, of course, it goes. This is the way that biology works, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, said. We hold those pigs in the kind of crowded, dangerous conditions where PRRS is a concern. Let us remember that this genetic change is only against that one disease. When swine flu arrives, there is nothing in those pigs that will protect them against it, or prevent it becoming a zoonosis and crossing the species barrier into humans. Yet we continue those farming practices.
I pick up the point from the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who said that this is the only way we will feed the world and the only way to get more production. That is what we were saying in the 20th century. The discussion on Friday that I referred is only a preprint, but it reflects the direction of the new biology. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said that there is a centre of gravity, but we also know there are tipping points. The new biology acknowledges that a wheat plant and every other complex organism is a holobiont; it operates as a complex of what we think of as the plant, bacteria and fungi that work together. The preprint showed that when a wheat crop is dealing with drought, the epigenetic changes—the kind of changes that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, was talking about, where the plant adapts to circumstances and has its genes expressed in different ways—were happening overwhelmingly in the bacteria and fungi. It is not the genetics of the wheat plant at all. I do not accept that this is the way to feed the world, without tackling the issues of poverty, inequality, food waste and feeding perfectly good food to animals. We need good management of soils and crop diversity—that is how we feed the world.
I feel a sense of despair at this point; I have no alternative but to withdraw my amendment with great reluctance. I really hope that your Lordships’ House has listened, particularly to the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, and that the Government listen to this as we go forward from here.
Lord Benyon
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would limit the test in Clause 1(2)(c) to features of a precision bred organism’s genome that result from the application of modern biotechnology and would require them to be capable of resulting just from traditional processes (whether or not in conjunction with selection techniques).
Lord Benyon (Con)
My Lords, I will begin by speaking to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, whom I thank for his amendments and his ongoing support for the Bill. I will come on to the government amendments in due course.
The noble Lord’s amendment highlights some of the challenges in maximising the potential of plant and animal genomes using traditional breeding methods. The crucial issue is whether the types of genetic features under discussion could, in principle, occur in the genome of the organism by traditional processes. In other places in the Bill, where we intended to refer to outcomes that
“could reasonably be expected to result”
from a process, rather than outcomes that could in principle so result, we have expressly said so. This means that it is unnecessary to add further descriptions to the word “could” in Clause 1. Consequently, the existing wording—“could” have resulted from traditional breeding —already achieves the Government’s intended ambition, without the need for further descriptors in the definition. I believe that it achieves the outcome that the noble Lord wants it to.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, having spoken a great deal on the last group, I will be extremely brief now. What we have is the Government still trying to define what the Bill is about at this incredibly late stage. We have been through Committee, Report and the other stages in the other place and here, and here we are still trying to find the wording. Neither the science nor the law is stable enough for this to become an Act and we have just seen a very useful demonstration in this short debate of how this is very likely to be a field day for lawyers, so the lawyers in your Lordships’ House can get ready.
Lord Benyon (Con)
My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for his continuing help in trying to get this right. I hope the eyes of not too many noble Lords glazed over. I had to get on the record, about what is undoubtedly a very technical piece of legislation, what we were seeking to do by the changes that we were putting in.
The noble Lord makes a very good point about “modern biotechnology” as a term. I am at great pains not to throw in new definitions that could one day come back to bite us, but “modern technology” is widely recognised to cover a specific set of technologies for regulatory purposes. In particular, it is used in the UN’s Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. The definition of modern biotechnology can be updated—to be probably even more modern technology—subject to the affirmative procedure under powers in the Bill if required.
I hope that the government amendments, which aim to clarify which kinds of genetic features are permissible in a precision-bred organism and the techniques by which they may be introduced, will provide assurance to the noble Lord not to press his amendments. I hope that noble Lords are confident in accepting these government amendments.
Lord Benyon
(d) its genome does not contain any feature that results from the application of any artificial modification technique other than modern biotechnology.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would introduce a new requirement to ensure that the genome of a precision bred organism could not contain features that result from artificial modification techniques that are not modern biotechnology within the meaning of the Bill.
Lord Benyon
“(7A) An “artificial modification technique” means any technique by which genes or other genetic material can be artificially modified within the meaning of Part 6 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (as it has effect from time to time).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would define artificial modification techniques in line with Part 6 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (which deals with genetically modified organisms).
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has tabled two amendments. Amendment 12 concerns the publicly available register. Clearly, transparency and information for the public will be important if we are to carry people with us, so we need to look at how we develop registers and information to reassure people and to give them the information that they need to have confidence in the legislation.
In Committee, my noble friend Lord Winston and the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, drew attention to the parallel piece of legislation, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, in which there is a requirement for the surrender of ongoing records containing the information about the impacts, both the positive and the adverse outcomes, on individuals used under the terms of that Act. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, read out an opinion which emphasised the importance of an audit trail, so there is a general feeling in this House that information and a public register are important.
Amendment 13 is also in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I thank the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for its report on the Bill, which was very helpful. I reassure the Minister, who knows that we support the Bill, that what concerns us is that so much is left to an unknown number of SIs over an unspecified timescale. If the regulations in Clause 3 are under the affirmative procedure, Parliament will rightly have a formal role in improving the finer details of the release and marketing notices, crucially ensuring that we have proper political consensus on this. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, the Government have moved a number of clauses from the negative to the affirmative procedure. I will not go into all the detail, as she covered everything that I was going to ask about on this, since some of it is not crystal clear. We know that the Government can see that there is merit in moving from the negative to affirmative. Can the Minister clarify why not this clause as well if that is not the case, as this is important?
Lord Benyon (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for her Amendment 12, which would require details of the specific gene editing event and the whole-genome sequence of a qualifying precision-bred organism to be made publicly available for its release into the environment. The noble Baroness’s Amendment 13 to Clause 3 would require that regulations made under this clause to establish a public register containing this information are subject to the affirmative procedure.
It is not our intention to require breeders to include sequence data as part of their release or marketing notices. I have discussed this previously following an amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, in Committee. We have since had a very useful meeting with the noble Lord and our scientific advisors, ACRE, to explore why whole- genome sequencing information has limited value in most cases, and the noble Lord has not retabled his amendment on Report.
This type of information has limited value because there is a significant degree of genetic variation between individual plants and animals within a species, which is more or less the point that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was making. This amount of background noise means that the value in requiring whole-genome sequences is limited in terms of addressing regulatory questions; for example, questions about the precision-bred status of a plant or animal. Additionally, the release notice that researchers are required to submit to Defra will be in line with the requirements of the Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022, which were agreed by the affirmative procedure.
Our intention is that information provided in release notices will be published on the precision breeding register and will include the relevant and necessary information about the precision-bred organism in it. We also intend to require developers to confirm that the organisms that they intend to release in research trials meet the criteria in the Bill. The technical details of this notice will be prescribed by regulations, prepared with input from the advisory committee appointed to advise the Secretary of State on the regulatory status of these organisms and, in accordance with the amendments to Clause 4 that I have tabled, our intention is that such regulations will be scrutinised using the affirmative procedure before they are made.
I hope that this reassures noble Lords and that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is persuaded to withdraw this amendment and not move her additional amendment to Clause 3, which would specify the parliamentary procedure for the delegated power that her substantive amendment would insert.
I always pay particular attention to points raised on secondary legislation by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. As a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, she is very good at holding me to account on these. I did not quite understand her point about Clause 3 because there are no regulations in Clause 3 and therefore no requirement for it to be affirmative or negative.
We remain of the belief that the matters to be set out in the regulations under the powers in Clauses 4(3) and 6(2) are administrative in nature. However, the Government acknowledge that these provisions are of significant public interest. We have heard this previously in the House and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has raised this as well. We have considered these matters closely and have decided to change the procedure from negative to affirmative for both powers. These changes will increase the scrutiny when these powers are used to prescribe the information which must be provided to the Secretary of State by a person who wishes to release or market a precision-bred organism. I hope that noble Lords feel that I was serious in Committee when I said that I had listened to them. I hope that they feel that this improves the Bill. Regulations under Clause 4(1)(b) would be administrative in nature, not of significant public interest, and will remain subject to the negative procedure. I hope that this reassures noble Lords.
Amendments 24 and 25 will increase the level of scrutiny when powers are used to prescribe information that must be included in the precision breeding register. The Government acknowledge that these provisions are of significant public interest. We accept noble Lords’ concerns about the level of scrutiny for such provisions. Therefore, we will change the parliamentary procedure from negative to affirmative for the power in Clause 18(1). Regulations under Clause 18(6) regarding the keeping of the register, which is an administrative matter and, again, not of significant public interest, will remain under the negative procedure.
Lord Winston (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for what he has just said, but can he answer this question about whole-genome sequencing?
When we first started genome sequencing, it was laborious, expensive, time-consuming, and so on. It is now a pretty rapid process and can be done without huge expense. Does the Minister not agree that one of the reasons for doing this is not just marketing—because of course there are different issues there, which is how we are addressing this—but the advantage of getting more knowledge about what we are doing? The advantage there would be seeing where things are moving within the organisms that we are trying to edit. That is important as a research tool because, ultimately, we are doing something that—admittedly—we do not fully understand, and this would greatly increase knowledge. Does he feel that this is a relevant point?
Lord Benyon (Con)
It is entirely a relevant point, and was much on our minds when we debated some months ago a research measure in secondary legislation to allow the development of plant precision editing but not for it to be taken forward to market. The noble Lord is absolutely right that this is fast-moving and that we therefore need to be clear about how we regulate: that we are regulating a research process and a process to take products to market. Ministers will have to be clear about the intention of the organisation taking that forward. I hope, through the changes that we made, that there will be greater parliamentary scrutiny, that people with real knowledge, particularly in this place, will be able to scrutinise that, and that the Secretary of State of the day will have the best available information about what is being taken forward and why—whether it is just for research. The point made by the noble Lord about the value of research of products that will never go to market, that it is just to understand a particular aspect of genomic sequencing, is crucial.
Lord Benyon
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s next amendment to Clause 4.
Lord Benyon
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would provide for regulations under Clause 6(2) to be subject to the affirmative procedure.
Lord Benyon
“(9A) Regulations under subsection (5) are subject to the affirmative procedure.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would provide for regulations under Clause 11(5) to be subject to the affirmative procedure.
Lord Benyon (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for her amendments, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and—in the case of the first of the amendments—the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, have added their names.
The amendments require the animal welfare advisory body, when assessing precision-bred animal marketing authorisation applications, to also consider and report on the notifier’s history of compliance with relevant provisions of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and other legislation it deems relevant. However, the purpose of the animal welfare declaration process is not to vet notifiers themselves, but to assess their applications for marketing authorisations. The role of the welfare advisory body is to use its scientific expertise to evaluate the notifier’s animal welfare declaration. It would not be an appropriate body to assess compliance history.
We expect notifiers, as with any other keepers of animals, to ensure they are in full compliance with all applicable animal welfare laws. The Animal Welfare Act, as mentioned in the noble Baroness’s amendment, will continue to apply to all vertebrate animals subject to precision breeding. Under the Act, it is already an offence either to cause any captive animal unnecessary suffering or to fail to provide for the welfare needs of the animal. Persons found to have committed certain serious offences under the Animal Welfare Act may be disqualified from keeping animals. Such persons would therefore be unable to keep animals that have been precision-bred.
Similarly, other animal welfare legislation provides for appropriate sanctions for non-compliance. For example, notifiers may also be licence holders for research under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, known as ASPA. It is in the interest of such notifiers to ensure that any research involving animals carried out in the UK complies with the requirements of the ASPA licences relating to that research; these licences may be revoked or suspended if their conditions are not complied with.
Furthermore, the Bill provides powers under Clause 15 for regulations to enable the Secretary of State to suspend or revoke a precision-bred animal marketing authorisation if new information about the health or welfare of the animal or, crucially, its qualifying progeny comes to light, or if the notifier fails to comply with a legal requirement to report information about a relevant animal’s health and welfare under Clause 14. Regulations will describe the procedures to be followed when a marketing authorisation is suspended or revoked, and the consequences of such suspension or revocation.
Amendment 21 reflects ones put forward during previous stages, in this House and the other place. We intend to explore these matters further as we develop the technical details underpinning the animal welfare declaration process. The Government agree that safeguarding animal welfare is crucial, and I acknowledge the high level of interest in this topic. That is why, as I mentioned previously, we have commissioned an external research project to gather the evidence required to develop the health and welfare assessment that underpins the declaration process. This will enable us to set out, in regulations and guidance, the information that a notifier must provide to support their declaration that the health and welfare of a precision-bred vertebrate animal is not expected to be adversely affected.
Furthermore, Clause 13 already ensures that the Secretary of State will need to be satisfied with the animal welfare declaration before issuing a marketing authorisation. That is why we do not consider the amendment to be necessary. In addition, as I mentioned before, the power in Clause 25 allows us to set out in regulations what constitutes an adverse effect on health or welfare. This includes any parameters needed for assessing that and could include consideration of any known health and welfare issues in selectively bred animals.
Finally, the welfare declaration and the welfare advisory body’s assessment will be based on the principle that relevant precision-bred animals will need to be kept in conditions which satisfy existing requirements in the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and, where relevant, the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007. I fully understand the noble Baroness’s concerns. None the less, existing animal welfare legislation is in place and the Bill is intended to work alongside that to enable responsible innovation.
I will now address Amendments 17, 18 and 26 in my name. It is essential that the animal welfare protections under this Bill command strong public and stakeholder confidence. To that end, we have listened carefully to the points raised by the Opposition and stakeholders about the need for strong animal welfare protections. We understand that noble Lords feel that there should be more opportunity for parliamentary oversight of these vital elements of the legislation. Consequently, we are tabling these amendments so that regulations made under the powers in Clauses 11(5) and 22(3) will need to be debated and actively approved by both Houses of Parliament through the affirmative resolution procedure before they come into effect.
Amendment 17 relates to Clause 11(5). The amendment provides an increased opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny when powers are used to lay out the form and content of the animal welfare declaration and accompanying documents, and the information that must accompany the declaration.
Regulations under Clause 11(9) regarding provisions for an application for a precision-bred marketing authorisation to be made by a person other than the notifier are a technical and administrative matter and not of significant public interest. They will therefore remain subject to negative procedure.
Amendment 26 relates to Clause 22(3). This amendment will provide Parliament with an increased opportunity to scrutinise and debate the body which is to be designated as the animal welfare advisory body, while retaining the flexibility the Bill provides on how the advisory body can be established. We expect there to be strong public interest in the requirements set out in the animal welfare declarations, and we want to come to Parliament with a robust set of proposals informed by expert advice. Indeed, that is why we have already commissioned in Scotland’s Rural College to run an independent research project to set criteria for the animal welfare assessment and the evidence that will be required to accompany it.
The research will involve experts from the Animal Welfare Committee and a wide range of organisations with expertise in animal welfare, genetics and industry practice. This is a growing, innovative sector, and the regulatory system that oversees it is likely to need to evolve over time. Establishing the regulations in secondary legislation subject to the affirmative procedure will allow the Government to ensure that the regulatory system continues to achieve its goals in the long run, while maintaining proportionate parliamentary oversight of its design and future development. I hope noble Lords will be content to accept these amendments.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I should first declare an interest through my involvement at Rothamsted, as in the register. I have tabled Amendments 19, 20 and 21 in this group. They all focus on the welfare advisory body in protecting animal welfare. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for their support.
Amendments 19 and 20 would require the welfare advisory body to look beyond the information provided by applicants to ensure that they have a consistent record of meeting animal welfare standards, as set out in previous legislation. Amendment 21 would require the welfare advisory body or the Secretary of State to consider wider health and welfare issues before granting a marketing authorisation. These factors, set out in the new clause, include the direct and indirect effects on the health of the animal or its offspring, whether there might be pain or suffering arising from increased yields or faster growth, and whether the precision-bred traits may result in the animal being kept in worse conditions. These amendments reflect the widespread concern raised in Committee about the consequences for animal welfare of extending precision-breeding techniques from plants to animals, and they also express the concerns of many animal welfare organisations, including the RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming, as well as the report from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.
As we discussed before, British farming and traditional breeding techniques have not always had a great record on considering animal welfare. Without going back over all the arguments raised in Committee, I will say that there remains a fundamental concern that the genetic editing of animals will be used for the wrong purpose. Once we understand that there could be benefits from improved disease resistance in animals, we need better guarantees that this will not result in animals being kept in more crowded, stressful conditions, which in turn could result in the spread of new and emerging pathogens. Similarly, we need better guarantees that precision-breeding techniques will not be used to speed up selective breeding for fast growth, high yields and large litters, when they have historically caused a great deal of suffering to farm animals, despite the animal welfare legislation already in place.
All these concerns are raised against the backdrop that so much of the detail in this Bill is left to secondary legislation, so we do not know how its provisions will work in practice. I hope the Minister will understand why we are trying to spell out in more detail the specific animal welfare protections in this Bill. I shall make a further point: this is specifically about animal welfare. It is not a criticism of the whole Bill. It is about the specifics and our widespread concern about wanting to get animal welfare protections right.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the government amendments that move the regulations to the affirmative procedure; they are extremely welcome.
I thank my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch for her thorough introduction to her Amendments 19 to 21. I am sure noble Lords will remember that in Committee I tabled a number of amendments relating to the welfare advisory body, so we are very pleased to see my noble friend Lady Jones tabling similar amendments today. I spoke at length on this issue in Committee, my noble friend has introduced her concerns and we have heard from across the House, so I shall be brief.
Amendment 19 makes it clear that, in addition to considering information submitted by the notifier, the welfare advisory body should satisfy itself that the notifier has a record of acting in a manner that is consistent with research and animal welfare requirements across other Acts of Parliament. That really should be part of the body’s role. We do not want any confusion or different decision-making across different bodies.
I may have this recollection wrong, but I thought that in an earlier meeting a flow chart was mentioned showing how different animal welfare bodies, in Defra and the Home Office, would interact. I had been hoping to receive a copy of that to get some clarification about precedence and how this was all going to work together. It may have gone into my spam folder and I may have missed it, but if the Minister could check on that, that would be very helpful.
Currently, the Bill states that the welfare advisory body has to determine whether in the animal welfare declaration the notifier has paid regard to the risks to an animal. One of my concerns has always been that it is the notifier who is driving the process and is in the driving seat, rather than the welfare advisory body, which is why we were all very concerned about more checks and balances. We know the Bill says that the notifier has to take reasonable steps to assess those risks, but we do not believe that is a strong enough protection for animals in the Bill.
My noble friend’s amendment would mean that the welfare advisory body had to assess the impact on animals where a precision-bred trait was developed, with the aim, as she said, of achieving fast growth, high yields or other increases in productivity. As we have heard, we have seen that too often in traditional breeding methods, so we need to bring in these protections. We have heard many examples of traditional selective breeding producing animals that were highly efficient but this was often at the expense of animal welfare, and we need to ensure that that is not an unfortunate consequence of the Bill. The RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming have raised serious concerns about the lack of safeguards in the Bill to prevent that happening. In addition, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics has drawn our attention to the fact that many of the effects of selective breeding have been unintended.
We agree with our noble friend that it is reasonable that welfare impacts should be assessed here. Without the amendment, it is not clear exactly how that would be part of that process with the advisory body, particularly in relation to other bodies that already exist. So we strongly support my noble friend and believe that her amendments should be in the Bill.
Lord Benyon (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for another useful debate. I assure the noble Baroness that we sent her a copy of my flow chart, so it must have ended up in her spam folder. I hope none of my other correspondence to her will be rejected into the ether. It sets out in five clear steps the process of taking something through to authorisation.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that I am not one of those people who repel all boarders when it comes to amendments; we have actually moved considerably on the scrutiny of the Bill, and we want to ensure that there is as much agreement as possible. I concede that we might have a problem on Amendment 19, but I will come on to that.
I repeat that the welfare declaration and the welfare advisory body’s assessment will be based on the principle that precision-bred relevant animals will need to be kept in conditions that satisfy existing requirements in the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and, where relevant, the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007. So existing animal welfare legislation is in place, and the Bill is intended to work alongside it to enable responsible innovation.
An accusation was made, although I cannot remember who by, that this was an enabling Bill and was somehow a forest of Henry VIII clauses. I reject that. It is not a skeleton Bill. We have set out our substantive policy proposals in the Bill and have included appropriate delegated powers to supplement those provisions. Delegated powers serve a valuable purpose and it is always important to assess them in context. Simply counting up the number of powers in a given Bill is not necessarily always meaningful, but I hope we have shifted the balance in terms of those that are affirmative and those that are negative.
There has been talk of belt and braces. I think you can overdo caution in these circumstances, and you can clog up the system. I really feel it would be difficult to accept Amendment 19 as it would pre-empt the Scottish royal college research project. The Bill already outlines a regulatory framework to safeguard animal welfare that goes beyond existing requirements in traditional breeding.
I hope that my words, and the government amendments to increase the degree of parliamentary scrutiny on the animal welfare provisions in the Bill, provide noble Lords with sufficient reassurance not to press their amendments.
Lord Benyon
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s previous amendment to Clause 11.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I repeat, again, that I am a very strong supporter of this Bill and everything it stands for. However, again, as I have said at every stage and indeed a moment ago on the previous grouping, the one weakness of the Bill is around animal welfare. Anyone reading the Hansard of the passage of this Bill through the Commons will note that it was the greatest concern of MPs too, but they failed to make even a dent in the Government’s protective carapace on this issue.
In Committee, many noble Lords from all sides of the House—myself included—put down amendments to try to minimise the possibility of any genetic change being proposed or implemented that could result in the future suffering or discomfort of, or distress to, animals or their progeny involved in the process. However, none of these amendments was put to the vote. We now have a well-thought-out amendment—or two—which precisely covers the worries that we all had and attempts to avoid them. The Government should think seriously before they reject them.
Lord Benyon (Con)
I thank noble Lords for their engagement on this important issue. I am grateful for the meetings that I have had with noble Lords from across the House on this and for them taking the time to share their thoughts with me and with the House on this occasion. I have found it constructive and enlightening.
We recognise that there is a need to safeguard animal welfare in the new regulatory regime; we are all united on this. That is why we are taking a step-by-step approach with regulatory changes for plants first, followed by animals. The measures in this Bill in relation to precision-bred animals will come into force, as I said before, only when safeguards for animal welfare are in place. This will include a monitoring and reporting system for the precision-bred animals once they are placed on the market.
The Bill will give us the ability to place a time-limited and proportionate duty on breeders and developers to monitor for significant health and welfare outcomes in animals that could be linked to their new traits and to report such outcomes to Defra. This monitoring and reporting system will be informed by research that we intend to carry out—which I have already spoken about—to help us identify the specific outcomes that must be reported, as well as appropriate timeframes and numbers of generations that must be monitored for each species or type of animal.
We believe that the powers in the Bill are sufficient to enable us to put this monitoring system in place. Clause 14 sets out that regulations may require the notifier, or any other person specified, to provide information to the Secretary of State about the welfare of the relevant animal and its qualifying progeny. The regulations may set requirements on the information that must be collected, and they allow the Secretary of State to apply reporting requirements in a bespoke manner. This flexibility is essential to ensure that any obligations placed on businesses are proportionate to risk—this is the key point that I hope I may be successful in getting across.
Lord Benyon
“(6A) Regulations under subsection (1) are subject to the affirmative procedure.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would provide for regulations under Clause 18(1) to be subject to the affirmative procedure.
Lord Benyon
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would provide for regulations under Clause 22(3) to be subject to the affirmative procedure.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for her thorough introduction to her amendment. I completely understand why she is bringing it forward. There are areas of the Bill around implementation, oversight and the step-by-step process that we have discussed time and time again that people are still concerned about. The requirement of the amendment for a report to be published that identifies any gaps in scientific evidence is an interesting one. It will be good to hear the Minister’s thoughts on this.
Lord Benyon (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for this amendment. I am keen to have a much wider conversation with people. My learning curve has been incredibly steep as I have gone through this—the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, is nodding as well. It is an area of science which is not understood by an awful lot of people. While I have sought to bring in as many safeguards as possible, there is a continuing job to do for all sorts of parties, not just the Government, to explain the benefits of this technology and the safeguards that the Government are introducing. However, I do not think that a priority setting partnership should be established in or under this Bill.
The Bill places science at its core. ACRE advised that precision-bred organisms pose no greater risk than traditionally-bred counterparts. As I said earlier, its advice is supported by the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Biology, the Roslin Institute and a wealth of peer-reviewed literature. The Royal Society stated that
“these are no more likely to pose a risk to human health or the environment than non-editing derived mutations, which occur spontaneously in each new generation”.
In earlier debates, I have sought to make it clear that if we inserted regulatory measures or language into the Bill that somehow elevated this technology beyond where it is, we risk misleading the public and we have to be really careful about that.
ACRE’s expertise in precision-breeding technologies is considerable, having first advised on them in 2013. We used this as a basis for our intervention in a pivotal European Court of Justice case in 2018 and for our consultation on genetic technologies in 2021.
The Secretary of State will be required to make decisions based on the advice of expert committees. As part of its current role as adviser on genetically modified organisms, ACRE will also advise the Secretary of State on whether an organism is precision bred. A comprehensive understanding of the underlying science is essential for this process and ACRE members have a wealth of experience in the regulation of genetic technologies. Moreover, this Bill will sit alongside existing legislation that deals with human, animal, and environmental health.
I understand the noble Baroness’s reservations. However, where we have identified evidence is incomplete, we have taken steps to address this. The regulations under the Bill will not come forward until the relevant measures are in place, and Parliament will have the opportunity to further scrutinise them.
Environmental Targets (Residual Waste) (England) Regulations 2022
Lord Benyon Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Benyon
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 19 and 20 December 2022 be approved.
Relevant document: 25th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instruments). Considered in Grand Committee on 24 January.
Environmental Targets (Marine Protected Areas) Regulations 2022
Lord Benyon Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Benyon
That the Grand Committee do consider the Environmental Targets (Marine Protected Areas) Regulations 2022.
Relevant document: 25th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument).
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move that the statutory instrument, which sets a target for the recovery of features in marine protected areas, be approved.
MPAs are one of the most important tools we have for protecting the wide range of precious and sensitive habitats and species in our waters. In England, we have established a comprehensive MPA network covering 40% of English waters. Establishing this network is an important step in achieving our goal of conserving our protected species and habitats. Now that they have been designated, we need to increase the protections for these valuable marine environments to help them recover, which is why we are setting this target.
The regulations create a legally binding target that requires at least 70% of protected features in MPAs to be in a favourable condition by 31 December 2042, with the remaining features to be in a recovering condition. This target will set, for the first time, a time-bound target for the recovery of protected features. Currently, only 44% of protected features in MPAs are assessed as being in a favourable condition.
Protected features include the different marine habitats and species, geological and geomorphological features and assemblages that are specified for protection within our MPAs. “Favourable condition” means that the features are in a good and healthy state and align with the conservation objectives of the relevant MPAs. We will assess “recovering condition” by checking whether damaging activities have been appropriately managed. This will identify exactly what rapid remedial action is required by regulators to ensure that our MPAs are being properly protected. Managing MPAs effectively and in line with their conservation objectives will secure the achievement of this target.
The purpose of this instrument is to set a time-bound target for protected features to reach a favourable condition and for the remaining features to be in a recovering condition. This instrument defines the relevant terminology, such as “favourable” and “recovering condition”. It sets a date for reporting the achievement of the target and lists all the features in MPAs subject to the target. It also sets a date by which the Secretary of State for Environment must report on whether the target is achieved and allows the Secretary of State to request advice from Natural England and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee relating to the target.
To achieve the target, the Marine Management Organisation and the Association of Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities are rolling out an ambitious programme to introduce necessary management measures in MPAs for the most damaging fishing activity, such as bottom trawling, by 2024. Fisheries by-laws have already been introduced in nearly 60% of England’s MPAs, challenging the criticism that MPAs are “paper parks”. By-laws are implemented following public consultation on a site-by-site basis. Once damaging activities have stopped, protected features will begin their recovery. For some of them this will be immediate, but some will take a very long time. Coral gardens, for example, can take decades to recover, which is why the 2042 date is appropriate.
In conclusion, the measures in these regulations are crucial for the improvement of our marine biodiversity. I hope noble Lords will support these measures and their objectives and approve these draft regulations. I beg to move.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, we welcome the target of 70% for the protection of marine protected areas by 2042. Given that the figure at the moment is 44%, 70% is a strong target. For us, the issue with this particular statutory instrument is the monitoring and how we will be clear that we are achieving these targets.
The original consultation said that protection would be monitored by additional reporting on the changes in individual feature conditions. That was then removed from the final targets that we have before us. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee asked about this and got a bit of a non-answer from the Minister as to why there was this change and the removal of the monitoring of the individual sites. However, I was very grateful that, at the Minister’s meeting with me and colleagues last week, the Bill team were very clear that individual monitoring had been removed because of cost. Ship-based monitoring is clearly a very costly matter. Therefore, the targets today will be monitored by checking the pressures and vulnerabilities of the marine protected areas in general, so there will not be on-ship monitoring.
That is a disappointment, first, because when the OEP last week reviewed how the Government have been doing on achieving their 25-year environment plan, there were a number of areas where the OEP could not assess the level of success because the monitoring was not strong enough. In this area, we are again at risk that the monitoring being set in place to see whether the targets will be met will not, because of the cost, be sufficient to see whether the laudable target will be met. The Minister will be aware of this concern. The EIP to be published at the end of the month is proposing to set interim targets for meeting all the environmental targets that are set. Can the Minister say whether there will be a review of whether the monitoring arrangements for marine protected areas will be sufficient to see whether the targets can be met? Targets without effective monitoring are frankly meaningless.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport
It has already been noted that marine protected areas provide a practical and significant contribution to the recovery and conservation of marine species and habitats. As has been pointed out, it is important to protect and conserve the marine environment and safeguard our natural heritage for future generations to enjoy.
When MPAs are designed as a network and supported by wider environment management measures, they promote the recovery and conservation of ecosystem structure and function. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has published its thoughts on the Government’s various latest targets. It noted that it is
“not convinced by the Department’s explanation of the delay”.
Further, it expressed its
“regret that the original Explanatory Memoranda … did not mention or explain Defra’s failure to meet the deadline.”
It also pointed to an emerging pattern of delay from Defra, noting in paragraph 29 that
“the Environmental Principles Policy Statement, which was laid before Parliament for scrutiny in draft form in May 2021, still has not been laid in its final form.”
This pattern of delay was the subject of a Question asked by my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock on our first day back after the Christmas Recess.
The target for at least 70% of protected features in marine protected areas to be “in favourable condition” by 2042 is welcome. However, as has already been noted, the updated proposals for monitoring progress towards meeting this target fall short, focusing on contributors to favourable condition rather than on measuring favourable condition itself. Defra also needs to clarify how the target will align with the existing good environmental status targets set under the UK marine strategy.
Furthermore, marine policy documents, including the joint fisheries statement and the marine spatial prioritisation programme, frequently reference the need to protect and restore marine habitats that store carbon, known as blue carbon. However, there is no central driver towards this goal and no mechanism to measure progress towards it. A blue-carbon target would provide this central impetus, complementing the MPA target to build resilience against climate change and deliver ocean recovery.
The committee further notes that an overwhelming majority—91%—of consultation respondents called for “increased ambition” or an accelerated timescale for achieving the target, yet the headline target is unchanged since the consultation. Does the Minister believe that we could exceed 70% in practice, or is that the very best we can hope for?
Paragraph 10.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that the department has
“removed the reference to ‘additional reporting on changes in individual feature condition’ from the target that we consulted on”,
instead committing to publishing the percentage of features “in recovering condition.”
No rationale is offered for this. Can the Minister offer one or instead commit to writing to me with more detail?
Paragraph 10.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum notes that the target
“is predicated on implementing management measures to halt or manage damaging activities”.
When will the department bring forward more information about these measures? Will they feature in the upcoming environmental improvement plan, or will we have to wait for other documents? When might any other documents be made available? In theory, five-year interim targets will help us to move from the current 44% to the intended 70%, but what will happen if early reviews demonstrate that we are behind the intended pace?
Finally, can the Minister talk about what other resources or powers the department may have to ensure that the process stays on track?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I thank noble Lords for their contributions to today’s debate, and I will endeavour to respond to them. Our target for MPAs will transform our marine biodiversity; I absolutely know that to be true. For the first time, it sets a deadline for the recovery of protected features in MPAs. The target reinforces the statutory obligations of our regulators to manage our MPAs and, through it, we will continuously monitor our MPAs, ensuring that regulators intervene and manage pressures on behalf of our most precious species and habitats.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I do not doubt the Minister’s intentions. I do not even doubt his expertise in this area, but the fact is that science moves on. You need constant updates about what is happening. That is where I feel that the Government might be missing out—that they are not having talks with marine scientists and biologists. This is behind the times; it is already old-fashioned.
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right, which leads me on to my next point. I was not boasting, because I certainly do not know as much as some of the academics with whom I have worked over the years. However, since I wrote my report—it was published only 18 months ago—the understanding of blue carbon has moved on considerably. She will be pleased to know that a number of the marine protected areas that we have designated contain seagrass. In other areas such as maerl beds and kelp, there is enormous potential to lock up and sequester more blue carbon. She is right that our oceans have enormous potential to add to our abilities to achieve our net-zero ambitions. We need to weaponise the oceans to help us to achieve that.
Lord Watson of Wyre Forest (Lab)
I am absolutely certain that this Minister knows more about the oceans than I do, and I am grateful for his patience in allowing a new Member to intervene in a way that I understand might not be conventional, but I have a single question about the report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Its report highlights the additional targets that did not appear in the Explanatory Memorandum. One target is to reduce by 50% the length of waters polluted by
“arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, nickel and zinc from abandoned metal mines”.
I have a personal interest in this with regard to the Cornish coast-line where, as the Minister knows, there is consideration of new lithium mines and, perhaps because of rising commodity prices, bringing abandoned tin mines back into mining. How could emissions from new mines be baselined? Will they be included in these targets? That is obviously quite a big consideration for the people of Cornwall.
Lord Benyon (Con)
Absolutely. I welcome the noble Lord to these proceedings and thank him for his interest in these matters. We debated these targets yesterday on waterways, under the same provision in the Environment Act. One of the four areas in which we are setting ourselves testing targets is on waste from metal mines. Some of the pollutants going into our rivers and thereby into our seas come from mines that ceased production before 1900. Nevertheless, there is a serious problem and there are now means by which you can detect the point source of pollutants. We have set ourselves a taxing target to try to tackle this.
The noble Lord is absolutely right about new mining. As commodity prices change around the world, there is a likelihood that certain areas that were considered redundant from mining in the UK might suddenly become viable. He mentioned tin in the south-west. If a new mine is to be opened, a strict area of regulation requires it to prove to the Environment Agency in the main sense, but other agencies as well, that it is not adding to the problem and is not impeding our ability to hit our target for mines and metals. I hope that reassures him, but there will be many other opportunities to raise these concerns as we go forward.
I will just tackle one or two other issues. This is part of a commitment that we have made, both nationally and internationally, to protect 30% of our oceans by 2030. We seek to do that in a way that stands the test of international oversight, because these should not be paper parks. We have not rolled out management measures as fast as we should, because the EU had to allow us to do this in the past, when other countries in the EU might have had arrangements for their fishers to fish these waters. We are now in a position to move this forward, and the welcome news that we are preventing bottom trawling in areas such as Dogger Bank is just part of this.
I hope I avoid the need to write to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, but, if I fail to satisfy her, I am happy to do that. As she says, the management measures will be in place by 2024. These documents will be publicly available and they have to be clearly understood by all stakeholders.
We have great ambitions for marine energy as well as for other forms of marine activity including carbon capture and storage, which may yet be a few years away; but all this needs to be understood as we talk about the great spatial squeeze of our oceans. When you look at an ocean you think there are miles of it and plenty of room for everyone, but when you look at a map you see what is going on—which areas are favoured by fishermen, which areas will see the rollout of marine energy, which are covered in a cat’s cradle of cables that cross our ocean bed. We have to make sure that marine protection has its full place.
The most important thing I took away from doing my report was the marine environment’s ability to recover quickly. I talked rather depressingly about areas such as coral gardens—which explains our date of 2042—but other areas will recover very quickly. Highly protected marine areas around the world see an extraordinary abundance of biodiversity very quickly if protection is done in the right way. Of course, that needs the support of everyone concerned. In those areas that we saw around the world, their greatest supporters were the fishermen—because the biomass that spills out of them into neighbouring areas of the sea, which they can exploit, is immense if things are done correctly.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, talked about how the statutory deadline of 31 October 2022 for laying these target SIs was missed. In March 2022, the Government launched their consultation on targets relating to the Environment Act, determined to leave our environment in a better state than we found it. It included around 800 pages published following three years of developing the scientific and economic evidence. The consultation closed on 27 June. We received over 180,000 responses, which all needed to be analysed and carefully considered. The volume of material and the significant public response indicated that we would not be able to publish targets by 31 October last year as required. The Secretary of State reassured the other place and all interested parties that we would continue to work at pace to lay draft statutory instruments as soon as practicable. We are now at that point.
The noble Baroness also asked about good environmental status. The Government are already required to work towards good environmental status through our UK marine strategy. This is UK-wide, whereas the targets under the Environment Act are England-only. A UK-wide target makes much more sense for good environmental status given the dynamic nature of the marine environment. Regulators already have legal responsibilities to protect MPAs. The target to achieve a favourable condition by 2042 is based on halting damaging activities by 2024.
The final suite of targets is stretching. To deliver them will require a shared endeavour across the whole of government and all of society. We consider the evidence carefully. In some cases, it is not technically or practically possible to go further. In others, higher targets would involve significant restrictions and costs on businesses and people’s lives, which we do not think would be right to impose at this time. However, the Environment Act requires future Governments to report regularly on progress. If, as time progresses and technology evolves, there is evidence to show that we should be more ambitious, we can increase those ambitions.
MPAs are one of the most important tools we have for protecting the wide range of precious and sensitive habitats and species in our waters. The instrument will ensure that we greatly increase the number of protected features in a favourable condition. The MPA target will focus the efforts of our regulators to manage pressures, and sets a path for the recovery of the diverse habitats and species that live in our MPAs. I hope that I have addressed the issues raised and that the Committee will approve this instrument.
Environmental Targets (Residual Waste) (England) Regulations 2022
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Lord Benyon
That the Grand Committee do consider the Environmental Targets (Residual Waste) (England) Regulations 2022.
Relevant document: 25th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument).
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, we want to make more of our precious resources. As it is, we produce too much waste. Recycling rates for households have stagnated at around 45% for many years, and although we have made significant strides towards reducing our reliance on landfill, we lose far too many valuable materials to incineration.
The purpose of this instrument is to reduce dramatically the amount of these valuable materials we bury or burn. There are several ways to achieve this. We want to reduce waste being produced in the first place, and we can do this by making products last longer, designing them for repair and, of course, in the case of food, driving less wasteful practices. We must also redouble our efforts to maximise what we recycle so that materials can be used again and again in the productive economy.
We will embark on our target pathway by delivering on our commitments to implement the collection and packaging reforms. These include introducing consistent household and business recycling collections in England, extended producer responsibility for packaging and a deposit return scheme for drinks containers, for which we announced the next steps last Friday. Such measures reduce the pressure we place on our precious environment in what we extract, manufacture and then treat as waste.
It is an Environment Act requirement to set in secondary legislation at least one target in the priority area of resource efficiency and waste reduction. Five years ago, the 25-year environment plan committed to work towards the elimination of avoidable waste by 2050. This instrument puts us on the pathway to delivering this commitment by reducing the amount of waste we produce and facilitating more recycling. It enshrines in legislation our commitment to deliver our highly ambitious resources and waste strategy. The core purpose of the strategy is to maximise the value of our resources and minimise the environmental impact of our waste.
I turn now to the details of the instrument. It places a requirement on government to halve the amount of residual waste we produce to 287 kilograms per capita by 2042. This is a fall from the 574 kilograms per capita measured in 2019. We define residual waste as waste that originated in England that is sent to landfill, put through incineration, used in energy recovery in the UK or sent overseas for energy recovery.
We exclude major mineral wastes from our targets, such as concrete, bricks, sand and soil. They are largely inert when treated as waste. We exclude them to focus attention on materials where the environmental impact per tonne of waste treatment is greatest, such as landfilling biodegradable materials or incinerating plastic.
Our target takes a holistic perspective of waste, incorporating a broad range of materials, including plastics. This approach guards against the risk that a target could be reached simply by switching from one material to another environmentally harmful material type. Our target ensures that waste is reduced overall.
We recognise from the consultation a desire to see an additional target that reduces material resource use and improves productivity. We have actively researched this and made large strides forward in our knowledge, but the Secretary of State cannot yet set a long-term target in this area and be satisfied that it is achievable, which the Environment Act requires. We will continue in our efforts to make progress here, working closely with our colleagues in BEIS.
In conclusion, this target to halve residual waste is a crucial legal mechanism to drive materials up the waste hierarchy so we make the best and most productive use of them. It is ambitious. It enshrines in legislation our ambitions in the 25-year environment plan to minimise waste and ensures that we deliver our resources and waste strategy commitments. I beg to move.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I thank my noble friend for presenting the SI and the updated targets this afternoon; they are very helpful indeed. I am just trying to get my head around the government policy.
I accept that I am not completely up to date but, at the time when I left as the MP for Thirsk and Malton, we were selling quite a lot of waste to Holland and paying for it to be transported there. It was waste from North Yorkshire and the City of York, which, as my noble friend said, is the hardest waste to get rid of because it is often timber, window frames and all the itemised materials that he stated. It seemed a huge waste of resource. One reason we did that was because the landfill sites in North Yorkshire were already either full or about to become full.
The reason we exported the waste to Holland was because there was a ready market there for—what is the terminology? My noble friend referred to incineration, which is, of course, a red rag to a bull for many areas of Britain because they think of chimneys and smoke coming out of them. In fact, I am a big proponent of energy from waste. It seems to fall between two stools. My understanding of the Energy Security Bill going through Parliament at the moment is that the Government are looking favourably on energy heat networks; perhaps the old-fashioned term is “energy from waste”. Why are we not recognising energy from waste or energy heat networks as a form whereby we create two streams: we dispose of waste that is difficult to get rid of, as my noble friend said, and create an energy strand? Is that something the Government would look favourably on?
With those few remarks, I approve of this statutory instrument.
Lord Benyon (Con)
I thank noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this debate. The residual waste reduction target put forward in this instrument meets the requirements under the Environment Act to set a target in the areas of resource efficiency and waste reduction. As the Act requires, the Secretary of State has sought appropriate advice from independent experts and is satisfied that this target can be met. I remind noble Lords that satisfaction that the target can be met is absolutely a key requirement. Secretaries of State and their Ministers cannot just come before a committee such as this to seek a good headline or try to cut the Opposition off at the knees by having unbelievably high targets. They have to be targets that can be achieved.
I note in particular the opinion of the Office for Environmental Protection, which commends this target for its ambition and agrees with the decision to exclude major mineral wastes from it; I will come on to talk more about that in a minute. Although the data is not robust enough to set a separate target to reduce major mineral wastes at this stage, we are continuing to look at what is needed to advance the evidence around major mineral wastes and how they can be reduced. This will allow us to assess whether it would be appropriate for a separate target to reduce major mineral waste to be set in the future. The target to reduce residual waste, excluding major mineral wastes, will focus on where the environmental impacts per tonne of waste are greatest. By meeting the target, we will deliver the environmental benefits of reducing waste.
I should have started—I apologise to the Committee —by declaring an interest. I had forgotten that my family has interests in former gravel extractions, which were filled by inert building material waste and have since been reopened. Those materials have been exploited to produce material for the building industry. That is an example of where there is a market for better reuse; it means that minerals are not being dug out of the ground but recycled.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh asked about exports of waste. The Government have fulfilled their obligations as a party to the United Nations Basel Convention and introduced controls which mean that shipments of Y48 plastic waste from Great Britain require the prior approval of the regulators in the country of destination as well as the relevant British regulator. Our proposal to ban exports of plastic waste, particularly to non-OECD countries, will go further than the EU’s ban as it will not be limited to just one category of plastic waste.
My noble friend referred to energy from waste and said that a lot of waste companies have become energy companies. It must be said that this is still an emitting activity but, obviously, it is much better for the waste to go to that use than to landfill. Crucially, the waste hierarchy ranks options for waste management from best to worst in terms of environmental impacts and moving to a circular economy. It is both a guide to sustainable waste management and a legal requirement, enshrined in law through the Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011. Priority goes to preventing the creation of waste in the first place, followed by preparing waste for reuse, recycling and then recovery. Disposal—in landfill, for example—is regarded as the worst option.
Burning valuable resources loses them to the economy forever. For example, although our reliance on landfill has fallen over time to just 8% for all local authority-collected waste, our waste from household recycling rates have stagnated at about 45%, as I said earlier. This is because residual waste is simply being diverted to energy from waste. Our target ensures that we get waste up the waste hierarchy through reduce, reuse and recycle, and cuts the amount of residual waste we produce.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, raised Newport; I see her Newport and raise her West Berkshire, where, when I was the leader of the opposition eons ago, a paltry amount was recycled—I think 15%. The excellent management of that local authority has seen that rise much higher than the national average, to nearly 60%, and it has just introduced a food recycling scheme which will take it above 70%—so there are good examples. The noble Baroness is absolutely right to raise the point that, very often, these matters cannot be run from the Secretary of State’s desk. There is a cultural issue in how we use waste, encourage people not to throw litter and tackle our sense of place and belief in community, protecting it from the worst ravages of a disposal society. There is a job to do locally, and local government is best placed to lead it. There are some fantastic examples as well as some laggards that we must get to move better and faster.
We have full confidence in the final suite of targets, which represents a robust analysis that has already been undertaken. The Environment Act established a robust legal framework to deliver environmental benefits and hold Governments—both now and in future—to account in delivering them.
Our record on the environment is strong: we have created or restored the equivalent of 364,000 football pitches of new habitat; restricted single-use plastics such as straws, stirrers and cotton buds; and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, cut the use of supermarket plastic bags by 97%. We have reduced waste sector emissions by nearly 40%, protected 1.5 million square miles of ocean and are leading international action to protect the environment as co-chair of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People and chair of the Global Ocean Alliance. I mention that because it is worth reminding ourselves that we sometimes get things right.
I hope I have covered all the points about major mineral wastes. These are inert materials from construction, demolition and excavation activity. Waste from critical raw materials is in scope of the targets for waste electricals. It is very important that they are not just seen as something we can bury alongside other waste. We want to make sure that we are tackling the reuse value that lies within them.
This target is ambitious yet achievable, with the planned collection and packaging reforms getting us roughly half way towards our target. A wide suite of policies is available to meet the remaining reduction required. These policy levers will be the decision of future Governments. Together with other government commitments, such as eliminating avoidable waste and doubling resource productivity by 2050, the target will drive down the amount of waste produced. This target, alongside the suite of Environment Act targets, will ensure that we meet our commitment to leave the environment in a better state than we found it.
Environmental Targets (Woodland and Trees Outside Woodland) (England) Regulations 2022
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Lord Benyon
That the Grand Committee do consider the Environmental Targets (Woodland and Trees Outside Woodland) (England) Regulations 2022.
Relevant document: 25th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument).
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, trees and woodlands have a huge role to play in tackling climate change and recovering nature. They capture and lock away carbon, provide important habitats for thousands of species and offer nature-based solutions to challenges such as managing flood risk and improving mental and physical health. We know how important it is to plant more trees, but over the past two decades planting rates in England have declined. To reverse this trend, we have set out our ambition to increase tree and woodland cover from 14.5% to 16.5% of land area by 2050.
As a first step, we made a commitment in our manifesto to increase annual planting across the UK to 30,000 hectares by the end of this Parliament. In the England Trees Action Plan, we set out our ambition to treble woodland creation in England as our contribution to this, as well as our plan to achieve it. As a result, we are seeing planting rates rise. We must continue on this trajectory if we are to realise all the benefits for people, nature and climate that trees and woodlands bring. This instrument makes clear the necessary commitment to planting and nurturing our trees and ensures that trees remain a priority in the future.
I should have started by referring noble Lords to my interests as set out in the register. I apologise again for doing that late.
I turn to the details of this instrument. The regulations we have laid create a legally binding target to increase the combined canopy cover of woodlands and trees outside woodlands in England to 16.5% by 31 December 2050. Achieving this target would see both annual tree planting rates and total tree cover exceed historic highs. The action we are taking now through the England Trees Action Plan, supported by £675 million from the Nature for Climate Fund, will set us on the right path to achieving these new heights of ambition. We want to create a diverse treescape to draw on the unique benefits that different trees and woodlands can provide. Almost all trees and woodlands will contribute to meeting the target, including trees in woodlands, hedgerows, orchards, fields, towns and cities.
The Forestry Commission will monitor progress against the target. Using innovative tools such as remote sensing, we will be able to report accurately on not just woodlands but individual trees, down to those in gardens and on streets. This target is ambitious, deliverable and critical if we are to meet the joint challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss. I commend these draft regulations to the Committee.
Lord Benyon (Con)
I thank noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this debate. The Environment Act 2021 grants these Houses the power to make targets that tackle the challenges facing our environment today. This target does exactly that. To achieve the tree and woodland canopy cover target, we will need not just action from the Government, but effort across the country from the private sector, NGOs, and people up and down this country. I know many of us have fond memories of planting trees as a child. I am old enough to remember “Plant a Tree in 73” and being furiously dragged by my father to plant a tree, which died last year because of ash dieback, not because of my lack of skill in looking after it.
We want this target to be relevant to future generations. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, manages rage in a way that I need to channel at times. If her calm demeanour conceals rage, she has incredible self-control.
Let us look back at history. We have doubled woodland cover since 1924, but that is no reason to be complacent. As has been pointed out, it is a fraction of what exists in other countries, in which, I have to say, there are many fewer people. In 1086, when data collection was maybe a little vaguer, it was 15%, so our ambition is to take it to record highs. It is not just the Government saying, “Go there and plant a tree.” We can do that on publicly owned land, and we are in conversations with other departments that own a lot of land. The Government can contribute to this by directly increasing planting on land such as Ministry of Defence training grounds, but we are trying to encourage private sector businesses to plant more trees. That means a combination of incentives, regulations and conditionality on various things, and it is a complex ambition to achieve when you do not have direct control.
The noble Baroness talked about this as if was the only tool in the box. Through environmental land management, the opportunities of green finance, as pointed out by my noble friend Lord Roborough, could change quite dramatically in coming years. One of the greatest disincentives for land managers to plant trees is that they receive around £85 an acre from the EU for just farming it. Now with the shift towards environmentally incentivised schemes, some areas of a field will be uneconomic to get a piece of expensive tackle into and in order to use diesel, plough points, sprays, fertilisers and all the other paraphernalia of agricultural production. It is in those areas that we see great potential. We have a specific scheme in riparian planting and in a number of other areas, some of which will not come into these statistics, such as hedgerows—some areas of agroforestry do—and short-rotation coppice, which is a key part of our delivery to hit our carbon budget 6, and I will come on to talk about that in a minute.
I love the Woodland Trust. I think it has an important part to play in delivering these statistics. Apart from anything else, it has lots of money and is able to buy land and plant trees, but what I cannot understand about the Woodland Trust, and I have had this discussion with the noble Baroness before, is its fixation with native species. It is really not a very good long-term resilience policy because, with climate change and the prevalence of tree diseases approaching these shores that I see every day in my job, to be totally obsessed with just a few species of broadleaf trees is incomprehensible.
Therefore, I totally defend our 70/30 target—that is, 70% broadleaf and 30% species such as those that lock up carbon. For example, more carbon is retained by a softwood tree rather than being burned into the atmosphere, so it is better for that carbon to continue to remain in structures, such as roof beams, and other areas of our economy. We need ever more diversity of trees. I am excited by what foresters are doing all around the country, where I see new species. I am intensely proud of some of the trees that I have seen planted on land for which I have had responsibility, and where I have done this for other landowners.
Lord Watson of Wyre Forest (Lab)
I feel grateful to the Minister for giving me one last roll of the dice. Could I make my offer to him again? I am absolutely convinced that he is across this, but I am prepared to do everything I can in my party to join his nascent squirrel execution pledge. If we could work together afterwards, we are likely to agree this or would at least restate or work towards the case for 17.5% politically, in what I think could be an agreement across the main parties’ manifestos for the next period. There may be at least an opportunity to review those targets prior to the 2028 review, as currently addressed in this set of arrangements.
Lord Benyon (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for that helpful and honest appraisal about where we want to get to. I want the highest possible ambition. We are setting targets that we think we can achieve within the current framework. Farming is going through a massive transition. I have spoken about the need for a land-use framework for the future and, as the next few crucial years go by, the kinds of incentives and encouragement will become more apparent, as will our success or otherwise. The private sector green finance that my noble friend Lord Roborough was talking about is already seeing tree planting, to the criticism of some people. This could be hugely effective in exceeding our target. I am certainly happy to work cross-party to achieve that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, asked me a number of questions, not least about nursery capacity, importantly. We have launched the nature for climate fund, which is spending £750 million on trees and peat-land restoration over this Parliament. It has seen progress on not just tree planting but building long-term capacity within the sector. We will commit around £28 million of this fund to projects to support the domestic seed and sapling supply sectors.
Other questions were put by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, who correctly set this within the context of the Government’s net-zero ambitions. They are not just ambitions but comply with the Climate Change Act. The Climate Change Committee is very clear about where we are and how we can get on track with the sixth carbon budget. I can tell her that, as part of the Government’s response, we are looking across the range of Defra’s responsibilities and to recent court cases. We want to make sure that we are not only saying the right thing and that something is deliverable but backing this by real fact.
This makes for difficult choices, because we want our relatively small country to continue to be able to feed itself and for it to be secure that that production is sustainable. We can achieve this. I have seen that from the scale of the farm to now talking about it for the nation. It takes courage to make those decisions and to argue them with sectors that may be very suspicious about what they mean for them and their businesses, so we must do it in the right way.
I take the key point about skills. We are training people to manage a different kind of environment. That might be about producing more energy crops or managing more wilder spaces. In terms of nature and its recovery, it is certainly about having more people working in forestry. That is why I am pleased that the Forestry Commission training scheme is now up and running, and that more foresters are being taken on and trained. Actually, it is not just for the Forestry Commission to do this; it is for local authorities and the private sector, as well.
The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, asked me some questions about the targets, which I hope I have answered. So far, the Government have trebled planting rates to 7,000 hectares a year. This is the first step to hitting the target. I have talked about nursery capacity. Our £270 million farming innovation programme is seeing money going into a variety of different things, including skills and improving the market for timber products. This is very different from growing a crop of wheat, where you can have a discussion with your bank manager because you know you are producing something that may vary by 15% up or down every year, depending on the weather. You need to take a much longer-term view with trees, but there is business to be had in forestry and we want to make sure it is successful. We can really enhance our forestry targets if people realise that there is a future in it.
These targets, as part of the suite of Environment Act targets, will drive action to deliver our commitment to leave the environment in a better state than we found it. I commend these draft regulations to the Committee.
Environmental Targets (Water) (England) Regulations 2022
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Lord Benyon
That the Regulations laid before the House on 19 December 2022 be approved.
Relevant document: 25th Report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Special attention drawn to the instrument.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move that the draft environmental targets for water in England be approved. Water is one of our most precious natural resources. It is essential for human well-being, farming, food production and biodiversity.
I will briefly set out how the Government have massively increased action on water quality. We are tackling agricultural pollution at the source by doubling investment in catchment-sensitive farming and rolling out new schemes to reward sustainable farming. We launched our storm overflows discharge reduction plan to deliver the largest infrastructure programme in water company history, with £56 billion of capital investment by 2050. Through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, we will place a duty on water companies in England to upgrade wastewater treatment works in nutrient neutrality areas to the highest achievable technological levels. Our new long-term targets will tackle some of the biggest impacts on our water environment by stimulating action towards our ambition in the 25-year environment plan of clean and plentiful water.
I turn to the amendment to the Motion, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, which gave rise to this debate. The amendment raises concern about the level of ambition of this new set of water targets and the recent river basin management plans published by the Environment Agency. The targets we are setting are ambitious and will have significant impact. They will deliver tangible improvements to the water environment. We are going as far as we can as fast as we can, while balancing the costs to business and people’s lives and complying with the Environment Act. I remind noble Lords that the Act says in Section 4:
“Before making regulations under sections 1 to 3 which set or amend a target the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the target, or amended target, can be met.”
I absolutely reject the claim that existing deadlines for our commitments in the water framework directive regulations 2017 have been pushed back to 2063. The updated river basin management plans published by the Environment Agency set objectives for good ecological status by 2027 and are compliant with the water framework directive regulations 2017.
In December last year, the Environment Agency published its river basin management plans, which included modelling that showed that, for a small group of ubiquitous, persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals known as uPBTs—specifically mercury, PFOS and PBDE—the level of pollution will not decline to acceptable levels until 2063. Although most of these are banned from use, there is no technically feasible way to remove this historic pollution from the water environment. This situation is not unique to England. This is an issue faced internationally and EU states that have also chosen to undertake biota monitoring for uPBTs such as Germany, Sweden and Austria have returned comparable results.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
I do apologise, but I wanted to remind the House of the 1880s, when London sewage was all put into the River Thames and there was such a stench that both Houses of Parliament had to rise early for the Summer Recess.
Lord Benyon (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this debate.
The water targets put forward in this statutory instrument meet the requirements under the Environment Act to set at least one target in the area of water. As the Act requires, the Secretary of State has sought appropriate advice from independent experts and is satisfied that these targets can be met. The targets set out in this instrument will complement our existing water regulatory framework and the actions that the Government are taking on multiple fronts to address specific pollutions in the water environment.
For example, and to clarify my previous statement, we are driving Ofwat to challenge water companies to achieve zero serious pollution incidents by 2030. This includes the amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill to reduce phosphorus discharges from treated wastewater and reducing nutrient pollution from agriculture by doubling funding for advice and support to farmers through the catchment-sensitive farming scheme and our new slurry infrastructure grant. That grant addresses precisely the point that the noble Baroness made in relation to slurry lagoons. We are putting money into this area, where there is a specific point-source pollution problem, because we want to solve these problems.
I have not mentioned environment land management schemes—
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I talked about that part of the levelling-up Bill because I am slightly confused. Departments usually are not brilliant at talking to each other. How will this work and who takes precedence on this? Does DLUHC take that bit? I do not understand the set-up.
Lord Benyon (Con)
I hope that I can reassure the noble Baroness. I spend a lot of time talking to other departments on this. Part of the problem on the River Wye is a planning issue. The customer said they wanted free-range eggs, the market responded, but the planning system was not in place. I know this from a previous role that I had. Perhaps I should declare an interest: I was a campaigner on trying to clean up the River Wye. That is the angle that I come from in this debate. The problem over decades has been the mismatch between the demand of the customer and the planning, which has not addressed it. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that these matters need to be controlled. Not only do we deal with DLUHC every day but they are in the same building. We spend our time, at an official and a ministerial level, working very closely with colleagues.
Without these actions, we will see shortfalls in water supply across England and significant strain on the water environment from nutrient and metal pollution. This target, alongside the suite of Environmental Act targets, will ensure that we meet our commitments to leave the environment in a better place than we found it.
I hope that this will clarify the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking. There is a mistake in the amendment to the Motion, which the noble Baroness did not touch on. It notes that
“these targets must be considered in the context of the Environment Agency’s decision to postpone the deadline for improving the quality of England’s rivers, lakes and coastal waters to 2063”.
No, we are not. That simply refers—and it also addresses the point made by the noble Baroness on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench—to existing measures that are within the water framework directive. If we were still in the EU, these would apply. These are persistent toxic metals and chemicals that cannot be removed by any action that the Government can take now.
These matters will have to be dealt with over the coming months, years and decades to be resolved. They cannot be within the targets we want, because our ambitions are very high. These waste metals are in the environment, and you cannot remove them. That is why they are in the water framework directive. If we were still in the European Union, we would be abiding by this. I absolutely reject the line that we have somehow reduced our ambition since leaving the European Union. That is not true. The 75% figure that was quoted was decided before we left the EU and is an EU target. We are compliant with the water framework directive and, in other ways, we are more ambitious.
Through the way we support farmers in environmental land management, we are trying to give them incentives to change the way they treat soil. In preventing run-off of chemicals, pollutants and soil into our rivers, soil can be our friend. You only have to look at photographs from space, or with your own eyes when standing beside a river: when you see a river in a time of flood, it is very often brown because of the water that is flowing into it.
On the question of environmental laws and the rule Bill, there is no way we will get rid of regulations and measures that will help us hit our targets to reverse the decline in biodiversity by 2030. Many of those species exist in and around our waterways and rivers. There is no way we are going to get rid of regulations that help us to achieve our 25-year environment plan; and there is no way we are going to get rid of regulations that help us fulfil our international obligations, achieved with great effort at the CBD COP 15 in Montreal, with the United Kingdom Government at the heart of that process. There is no way we can do what we want to achieve while getting rid of regulations. So I hope that noble Lords will be reassured on that.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh made a good point about the impact of housing on rivers. A large part of the pollution problems we face comes from individual households that may have poor connections, or from the sheer number of houses that have been built in communities without the infrastructure to support them. That is why, with these targets, we will see hundreds of improvements to sewage treatment plants up and down rivers in this country.
My noble friend will be pleased that we are taking forward the, I grant her, long-delayed SUDS provisions in the Flood and Water Management Act. I am very happy to give her more details on that. She is also right to point out that sewage, if handled in the right way, is a resource. I refer her to emerging technologies around sustainable fertilisers, which can use waste products such as treated sewage to create prilled fertiliser that farmers can put on their land in the certain knowledge of its quality. It stands up against the inorganic, synthetically produced fertilisers that have been part of the problem with pollution, run-off, damage to the environment and the farming sector’s inability to hit its target of achieving net zero by 2040. So, technology is our friend in this field.
I was very interested to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talk about the River Colne, which I was beside this weekend. It is beautiful. If amounts of sewage are being released into it and it is illegal, some of the environmental enforcement agencies, including the new ones we have created with the extra investment we have put into the Environment Agency, will be able to take that water company to court and issue fines, as we have on many occasions, some of which were very large fines indeed.
One of the reasons that £1.3 billion is being spent on a new sewer a few feet from where we are standing is the failure of a previous Government to hit the urban wastewater treatment directive targets. Those targets still exist, and we are cleaning up rivers such as the Thames not only in order to comply but because we want to achieve that.
I turn to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on COP 15. Water and biodiversity targets go hand in hand. Our new legally binding targets to halt the decline in species abundance is a good proxy for the health of wider ecosystems. These targets will drive domestic action. She asked about weakening the water framework target. I hope that I have covered that. It is categorically untrue that the Government have reduced in any way the water framework directive regulations since Brexit. All EU nations have exempted some water bodies from the target where it is neither practically nor technically feasible to meet it, and I have covered that. The 75% target was set before we left the EU, and we remain committed to it.
Turning to the baseline issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, the water targets do have different baseline years. This simply represents the latest years for which we have robust data. It reflects the different reporting cycles for these targets and it is important to use the most recent data. That is why, on occasions, there are different baselines. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, also raised issues regarding the OEP. The OEP commended several of the targets, including on waste reduction, agricultural water pollution and particulate matter pollution.
We all want to do things as quickly as possible. If I was on any side of the House, but not on the Front Bench, I too would be pushing the Minister of the day. I do not resile from, or have any less respect for, any Member of this House who pushes the Government on this. I want things to be done as quickly as possible, but let us do it on the right basis. The way this 2063 target has been used in this regret Motion is totally inaccurate, and I hope that noble Lords understand that.
We have been consistently clear with water companies that they must act rapidly to prioritise action on sewage-overflow pollution. Water companies are investing £3.1 billion to improve storm overflows between 2020 and 2025. Our storm overflows plan balances ambition and pace with the impact on consumer bills. Our plan will see £56 billion of capital investment and an estimated £12 average increase in customer water bills between 2025 and 2030. To promote sustainable solutions, green infrastructure projects, started before 2027 and delivered as quickly as possible, will count towards the completion of targets. This is a huge opportunity for the natural environment to see large amounts of private sector money being put into the environment. I will add, on enforcement, that, since 2015, the Environment Agency has concluded 59 prosecutions against water and sewerage companies, securing fines of more than £144 million.
I will now address the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on our targets and ambitions on water use. We want to be serious about this and we want to be effective in reducing it. A cultural change needs to take place. We use potable drinking water to water our plants and wash our cars, as well as for household needs. I am not suggesting that there is an easy cure for this, but, in a changing climate, where there are real pressures, we want to make sure that we are driving down water use, helping those on low incomes to understand that this is a way they can save money—not in a preachy, patronising way but with real assistance. I have seen this at first hand, where a water company shows people how, through small additions to their households, sometimes provided free, they are able to achieve this.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
Before the Minister sits down, can I take him back to the need for an overall ambition and overall target? The Environment Act says that it should be long-term. We understand that is what the Government are doing, so we might have other targets—and there is an awful lot of targets being floated around at the moment—but we also have the hope of a long-term target for water. So let us say within 15 years, which is what the Environment Act is talking about, could we say, notwithstanding pollutants that are leaching into the water that you cannot do anything about, which the Minister was specific about and will take longer, could we then have a guarantee that we will have clean water in our rivers, waterways and coastal waters within that 15-year deadline? That is doable, I would have thought, and I do not know why the Government do not say that and do not actually set that out as an ambition.
Lord Benyon (Con)
That will, of course, be our aim. Dates are just dates; they are moments in time. The idea that we are going to allow pollution to carry on and then it is suddenly going to fall off a cliff is of course nonsense. Whoever is responsible, whether it is the Government, their agencies, private landowners, water companies, farmers or whoever it is will be tackling this either because they are forced to do it or because they are incentivised to do it, and they will get the graph moving, as they have already, downwards. They will deal, like we all do, with the low-hanging fruit first, and then they will move on to the more difficult and the hardest to reach.
There is absolutely that target that we should achieve. We set ourselves a really difficult target with continuing with the water framework directive in its form because a river will be divided under that regulation into reaches. If it fails on one factor in one of those reaches, the whole river fails. That is why only 16% of our rivers qualify. Some reaches of those rivers are in quite good condition. I do not mind that target being demanding, but we need to understand that it is very hard to achieve what we are setting out. We think it is achievable and is doable, but if there is one point-source pollution incident resulting in a spike in phosphorus on one reach of a very long river, that river fails. So these are hard targets to hit, but we are determined to achieve that, and that is why I commend these regulations to the House.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
I would like to thank the Minister before he sits down—although he has completed that act—for his very clear exposition over my concern about the postponement date of 2063. I offer my gratitude to the Minister.
Avian Influenza: Game Birds
Lord Benyon Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Colgrain
To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in determining a link between avian influenza and game birds; and in respect of any such link, what plans they have to ban the rearing and release of game birds, given the impact that this could have on the rural labour market.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
I again declare my farming interests as set out in the register. We have strict biosecurity rules in place to limit the spread of avian influenza, including for the catching up and release of game birds, which are not permitted to be released in disease control zones or in avian influenza prevention zones with housing measures. The Government will keep the policy regarding future game bird releases under review and will take into consideration the outcomes of the risk assessments beyond risk levels and the ongoing avian influenza outbreak.
Lord Colgrain (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his reply, which in large part is reassuring. Nevertheless, he will know that plans need to be made over the next few weeks to decide whether many shoots, and the direct and indirect employment that goes with them, will continue for the new season. The financial contribution of shooting to the rural economy has been put annually at over £2 billion, with the hospitality sector in particular being a major beneficiary. Thousands of full-time jobs are at risk, as well as many part-time jobs. Can my noble friend the Minister indicate when he thinks any formal guidance on other issues affecting shooting can be given, such as the banning of the import of eggs or poults? Given the recent pandemic experience gained from the autumn migration, to what extent does he think that the spring migration arrivals will make a difference to current avian influenza levels?
Lord Benyon (Con)
Because this outbreak was originally brought by migrating birds, we follow the patterns of migrating birds very closely. The noble Lord is right that there is a concern in the autumn as migrating birds come in and move either south to north or west to east. We continue to monitor that. The increase in cases in poultry settings is slightly below what we feared it would be and we hope that trend continues. On the noble Lord’s other point, he is absolutely right that the businesses will want to de-risk as much as they can. We are trying to support them by giving as much information as we can. That is why we have just given guidance, on the basis of scientific evidence, on the practice of catching up birds to breed from later this year. That is now published.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, would my noble friend confirm that, when decisions are taken, they will be made on the best scientific evidence and not emotion or by those who shout the loudest? Has he seen the latest thorough scientific research which shows that shooting is beneficial to biodiversity in the same area?
Lord Benyon (Con)
My noble friend is right to raise this point. My department will make decisions on the basis of evidence. We will not be swayed by those who say we should allow activities like shooting regardless of the risks or by those who use this tragic outbreak as a hook on which to limit shooting or even ban it. We will make evidence-based decisions. However, we better make sure we are thinking of the counterfactuals as well, such as £2 billion of investment to some of the most remote parts of the country and 74,000 jobs. These are factors we also have to consider. If a shoot no longer exists, there will be no predation control, and cover crops being planted and other activities which are of massive benefit to wildlife in this country will no longer take place. That needs to be remembered.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, once game birds have been released, they are classed as wild birds for bird flu purposes. The person who releases the game birds is no longer their keeper. Currently, game birds may not be released into the wild if in a disease control zone or an avian influenza prevention zone with housing measures. Does the Minister think these provisions are sufficient?
Lord Benyon (Con)
We constantly monitor that, and we understand that people will want to make decisions about the release of game birds later in the summer. We want to ensure that we are providing them with information so that they know whether to invest or not. This is a very worrying time for the industry, and we want to try to support it. People in the industry will not be able to move birds from one area to another if one of those is a protection zone. That must be the case, because we cannot allow anything that would put at risk the spread of this disease. Our information about many of those activities is that the vast majority of outbreaks in wild birds, particularly shore birds, happened before the pheasant releases last summer—that needs to be considered as well.
Lord Trees (CB)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for his answer on avian flu. However, putting that to one side, given that some 30 million to 45 million pheasants and some 10 million red-legged partridges are released in England and Wales every year, what assessment have His Majesty’s Government made of the effect that that might have on ecological balance, the prevalence of other pathogens and parasites, and biodiversity in the habitats which those birds share with other birds and other wildlife?
Lord Benyon (Con)
Some work has been done with Natural England and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation to try to assess the impact. For the vast majority of cases, the birds disperse among other wildlife in a way which does not affect it, but there may be certain areas where there is an impact. We want to learn more about that, and we are working with shooting organisations to ensure that we are getting the best possible evidence.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that all the grouse moors and pheasant shoots to which the noble Lord, Lord Colgrain, and others referred are up in Scotland? Following his answer to the previous Question, a large number of national parks are also in Scotland. That is not surprising, because Scotland represents one-third of the land area of the whole of the United Kingdom, which Lord Barnett, in his wisdom, took account of when deciding his formula.
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Lord is dexterous and ingenious at trying to wangle the previous Question into this one. Lots of those kinds of activities take place in England, and an enormous proportion of our uplands are in England as well as Scotland, so that has absolutely nothing to do with the Barnett formula.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, returning to the evidence on avian flu, figures from the US, Japan and across Europe show that the outbreaks of avian flu are not in any way reducing in either virulence or scale. Is it not clear from the figures we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Trees, that there is no way that we can continue, into the future, releasing those massive numbers of reared birds into the natural world? Is it not the case, for the sake of both public health and animal health, that we cannot continue that industry certainly on anything like the current scale?
Lord Benyon (Con)
Given the absolute assurance that we will follow the science, and that it will be evidence-led and neither anecdotal nor the sort of knee-jerk reactions of people coming from both ends of the issue, the noble Baroness must also agree with me that she wants to see—she is shaking her head already, but she has not listened to what I have to say, and she might actually agree with me—a reversal in the tragic decline in farmland birds and an increase in biodiversity in this country. Some £250 million a year is spent by private individuals on conservation, because of activities such as shooting, so she must think of the counterfactual when she argues her point.
Lord Selkirk of Douglas (Con)
Is the Minister aware that a tremendous number of gannets have died from avian flu? Most of those birds have a wing-span of six feet, and there is a considerable danger that, instead of having a life expectancy of 70 years, they are transmitting the illness to game birds and other species. Can something more be done, either through vaccination or other preventive measures?
Lord Benyon (Con)
What is happening to shore birds is a tragedy. There is a slightly different strain affecting shore birds and poultry—and pheasants I class with the latter. It is a tragedy that is apparent when you look at Bass Rock, which for centuries has been white and is now black, because there are not the sea-birds on it. We are working across government to make sure that we address the disease in wild as well as domestic birds.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, following on from the question about vaccination, we know that researchers are confident that they will make progress down this route—potentially through gene-editing techniques. Obviously, that is going to take some time, so in the interim the disease is going to continue to mutate, with all the risks that that brings for animals and, potentially, even humans. Given the cross-border nature of the problem, what steps are the Government taking to ensure an international research effort similar to that which we saw during the Covid pandemic?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I can absolutely assure the noble Baroness that this is happening. As she says, this is a global issue, and there are many forums in which we deal with it. The World Organisation for Animal Health is one of them, and our chief vet and her team are completely embedded in this. If we can find a vaccination solution that is both effective and practical, I assure her that we will take every measure to see it implemented here, and we are working hard to achieve that.
National Parks
Lord Benyon Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask His Majesty’s Government what support they will provide for the continuing preservation and maintenance of national parks, and in consideration of their role in fighting climate change.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. The Government’s response to the Landscapes Review was accompanied by a public consultation. We will publish a response to the consultation shortly, setting out plans to support national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, including helping them deliver climate mitigation and adaptation. Our Farming in Protected Landscapes programme is a key delivery mechanism and provides funding for farmers and land managers to work in partnership with protected landscapes teams to deliver projects on climate, nature, people and place.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that national parks are flagship assets in the fight against climate change, but that that fight has been made much harder through cuts to funding of 40% in real terms in the last 10 years? Does he believe that the national park authorities and the AONBs together require fresh powers, as the Glover review recommended, and new funding in order to effect nature recovery and, crucially, increase biodiversity, and that farmers too need to be a properly effective ally in that fundamentally important ambition?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I entirely agree with the noble Earl about the value that our protected landscapes bring to our policies, not only on climate mitigation but on reversing the tragic decline in species. We have increased spending on areas of outstanding natural beauty by 15% this year. I concede that inflationary pressures are challenging for all protected landscapes but I urge him to look at the other areas of funding that we are providing. As I mentioned earlier, the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme has 1,800 projects, benefiting climate and nature right across our protected landscapes. Large amounts of our £750 million Nature for Climate Fund will be spent in our protected landscapes, because that is where 60% of our peat is and where 50% of our SSSIs are. That is where the focus of that fund will go. In addition to that, we have private and blended finance that national parks are very well able to get.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
Does my noble friend accept that one of the difficulties at the moment is that the “have regard” clause is weakening the potential input that national parks might face? Could that be amended through the process of the levelling up Bill? What steps have the Government taken to lever more private funding to ensure that there are greater powers for water companies, for example, to fund nature-based solutions in future?
Lord Benyon (Con)
We hugely admire Julian Glover’s report and have already implemented large portions of its measures. One of those centres on governance, and that is where it will fit into our green finance strategy, which is about to be refreshed in March to bring in all the different players, and different parts of government, to make sure that we are responding to the huge potential that lies in ESG money and other offsets that can benefit our landscapes. These are the most treasured landscapes in these islands, and we want to make sure that they are getting the lion’s share of this kind of finance.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate Defra on the Farming in Protected Landscapes scheme, which has worked extremely well. But the fact is that biodiversity in AONBs and national parks is no better than in the rest of the UK as an average, which is extremely poor compared with international examples. What is Defra going to do to improve the situation beyond that scheme to ensure that there really is a difference? Surely these days our protected areas should be better on biodiversity than the rest of the country.
Lord Benyon (Con)
Our ambition is to reverse any decline in species. We have policies that will see, across the country, an end to the decline of species by 2030 and an uptick in the populations that we see across our islands. On the particular point, we want to see 35,000 hectares of peat restored by 2025 and 280,000 hectares by 2050. AONBs and national parks will be fundamental to that, because they are where most of it lies.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest on national parks as in the register. Returning to the 40% cut in real terms that national parks have received over the last decade—at a time, I should say, when they have never been more popular or had more demand on their services—the Minister has talked about other funds that are going into the national parks, but does he accept that that is not core funding and is going to other organisations in the parks? It is the national parks themselves—the rangers, the services and the visitor centres—that are core to providing a good visitor experience and encouraging more people to go into the parks. Does he accept that we should be more ambitious about the role that national parks can play? If we are to do that then they will need more core funding, not the supplementary funding that the Minister is talking about.
Lord Benyon (Con)
I think national parks are very good at getting that money in, whether from the private sector or blended finance. There is a very good arrangement with Palladium called Revere, which sees some money going into supporting, for example, core personnel in national parks to do projects right across those parks. All areas of government have challenges at the moment, particularly in the light of inflationary pressures. The national parks have proved themselves very resilient. I want to make sure that we can find more for money for them in the future. That is a key part of our decisions into the next spending round.
The Lord Bishop of Carlisle
My Lords, some of our national parks believe that they could better address climate and nature emergencies if they were added to the list of authorities which have a general power of competence under the Localism Act 2011. Can the Minister tell us whether His Majesty’s Government have any plans to bring that about?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I might have to write to the right reverend Prelate on that. As we look as implementing the recommendations of the Landscapes Review, and through the biodiversity duty that we are imposing on public bodies through the Environment Act, I think we will address that. I hope we are seeing the determination of this Government to tackle issues which simply did not exist when national parks were created 70 years ago. Climate change was not talked about then and biodiversity was stable or rising; those emergencies need to be reflected in the policies they take forward.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, national parks across the country are losing thousands of trees because of disease. In the Lake District, Forestry England is cutting down large trees in the Ennerdale valley and Whinlatter, across many hectares of land. What assessment has been made as to the impact on wildlife from this loss of trees, including red squirrel populations, and what plans are in place, including the timescales for replanting with native species?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I cannot give the noble Baroness an accurate assessment of what impact tree disease has had, or indeed Storm Arwen in Northumberland, which saw probably millions of trees blown down. Undoubtedly, that has an effect on wildlife, but wildlife can benefit from different ages of woodland being in a landscape. I hope the replanting schemes that are happening, whether because of disease such as ash die- back or events such as Storm Arwen, will see those areas planted as quickly as possible. It is not the national park doing that; it is the landowners and land managers within those areas, and Forestry England will be assisting them and giving grants for that to happen.
Lord Carrington (CB)
The Landscapes Review recommended that there should be an upgrade in the current duty to foster economic and social growth in national parks and AONBs. Please can the Minister confirm that the farming and other economic activities going on in those areas are not limited to tourism or sporting and other activities?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Lord is absolutely right that it should not be restricted to what one might term the visitor economy. It is about keeping people living in these landscapes. It is about ensuring that they have the opportunities to conduct businesses of all kinds and that there are skills and opportunities for young people. When we talk about levelling up, I always feel that we should also talk about levelling out, into some of the more remote places, to make sure that the opportunities for families, young people and entrepreneurs exist in those landscapes as well.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, we now have a virtual contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]
My Lords, with climate change being the root cause of flooding of property in towns such as Keswick in the Lake District National Park, instead of imposing flooding remediation costs on property owners, why not amend the law by placing legal responsibility on companies such as United Utilities to more effectively manage their water assets, and for them to community block insure against the risk of flooding damage to residential, commercial and community assets in areas designated at risk from their companies’ operations? Flood Re is inadequate.
Lord Benyon (Con)
As the Minister who brought Flood Re into being, I think it has been an enormous success. I do not know the exact circumstances that the noble Lord is referring to in that part of the world, but there are a number of levers on United Utilities to make sure that it is fulfilling more than just its statutory duty to provide clean water and get rid of sewage. I will look into the matter and, if necessary, write to the noble Lord.