Environmental Policies: Timeliness and Effectiveness

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 22nd January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not agree with that. The report said that 25 areas were improving, 10 were static and eight were deteriorating, and we take these extremely seriously. The OEP said that the EIP targets are welcome but that scale and pace, as the noble Baroness says, have to be improved. That was reporting on the year to March 2023; our environmental improvement plan was announced only last January, so the report was only three months into that period. There is a real sense of urgency among Ministers, through Defra and across government to make sure that we hit our no-net-loss targets by 2030. You do not achieve that by taking action in 2029; you take action now, and we have been doing so over a number of years, to make sure that the multiple decades of decline of nature in this country are stopped and reversed. That is our absolute ambition across government.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that part of the reason for sewage spilling into people’s homes is that we still do not have an end to the automatic right to connect, and a greater use of SUDS? When does he intend to bring forward the consultation on Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 to permit greater use of these facilities?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I have written to my noble friend to give her a detailed answer to that question, which is the same one she asked quite recently. I assure her that I asked whether we really had to consult again, and apparently we do; it is a statutory requirement under the Flood and Water Management Act. I suspect we will bring in those measures later this year.

Storms: Weather Resilience

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and refer to my interest as vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests as set out in the register. I know the whole House will extend our sympathies to those impacted by Storm Henk. To date, 2,185 properties have flooded, and over 81,000 properties have been protected due to the Government’s investment in flood defences. The Government’s 2020 policy statement sets out five ambitious policies and multiple actions to improve future resilience to flooding. Between 2021 and 2027, the Government will have doubled investment in flood and coastal erosion schemes across England to a record £5.2 billion.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that we should be doing more between floods? I pay tribute to the Environment Agency and drainage boards for the important work they do in regularly maintaining existing flood defences and dredging watercourses. Will he seek to end the arbitrary division of funding between capital expenditure and maintenance funding that is hampering this work, as advocated in the December report from the National Audit Office? Further, will he confirm that the farming recovery grants will reward farmers for loss of crops and for the fact that their land is effectively being used not for food production but to defend downstream communities from future floods?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I entirely join my noble friend in saying what fantastic work the Environment Agency has done in reaction to these floods, along with the ongoing work it does in between to make sure that we are more resilient to them. Its annual maintenance programme activities are prioritised and timetabled using information from inspections, maintenance standards, levels of flood risk and legal and statutory obligations. Local teams work with partners, including drainage boards, on maintenance and dredging programmes. In 2022-23, the agency spent over £200 million on maintaining flood risk assets. In 2021, we announced an additional £22 million per year from 2022-25 for the maintenance of flood defences, and details can be found in our Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Report.

My noble friend also talked about farming. The flood recovery fund will pay for the uninsured costs of preparing arable land for planting crops or reseeding grass where it has been damaged, and our agricultural transition plan has a range of measures which will support farmers in these matters.

Storm Henk

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for coming to answer questions on the Statement. He referred to the Pitt review of 2007, in which Sir Michael Pitt clearly stated that we should end the automatic right to connect. A lot of the floodwater will contain sewage: it is sewage on farmland and in people’s houses. When is he going to introduce the consultation that will lead to the implementation of Schedule 3 to the 2010 Act that we were promised would be implemented this year? That is now absolutely urgent.

The noble Baroness on the Liberal Democrat Benches mentioned mapping and building inappropriately on flood plains. Can my noble friend give the House an assurance today that we are ensuring that local authorities are mapping to ensure that nothing is built on zone 3b land, where building should be an absolute no-no?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

On my noble friend’s last point, 99% of planning permissions given in the last financial year were done in accordance with the Environment Agency’s advice on whether those developments should go ahead. Over the last 50 years there have been some appallingly bad decisions and we have seen housing going where it should not. But I absolutely do not agree, if that is what my noble friend is saying, that we should say that there should be no building on flood plains, because that would mean having no new buildings in cities such as York, Leeds, London and Exeter. Of course, it is not what you build but how you build it and how resilient it is, so building in resilience is vital.

I do not know a precise date for the final stage of our implementation of the Pitt review—a point that my noble friend raised—but as soon as I can find out I will drop her a line.

Israel and Gaza

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not have time to go into the details of the two incidents that the right reverend Prelate raises, but our information is that there were no Hamas fighters in or around the Holy Family compound and that the people who work and live there are nuns and other employees, or people who work with them. We want to make sure that they are protected and given all the protection one has a right to require for such people in a conflict situation.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, may I press my noble friend on the possibility of delivering humanitarian aid through maritime routes? Will he also look at the conflict in the Red Sea that is now impacting on our own merchant shipping?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

RFA “Lyme Bay” is off Cyprus, ready to go, and will require, as I said, the agreement of both sides in the conflict for it to make a maritime landing of aid—I cannot say more on that.

On the other question, which I think I did not answer the noble Baroness about, relating to the situation in the Red Sea, we are working with our allies. The United States Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, has put together a plan, which we are part of, to ensure that international shipping will continue to be able to head through the Strait of Hormuz. It is an absolutely vital seaway for the security of the region and for the trade routes throughout the world, and we are treating that as an absolute priority.

English Flood Defences

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 30th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I was involved in the setting up of Flood Re more than a decade ago. It has undoubtedly brought peace of mind to a huge number of households that could not get flood insurance or could get it only for an exorbitant amount. It needs looking at every so often, as building costs and our understanding of flood risk increase. The Government are working with the Flood Re in a variety of ways to ensure that we are making it fit not for just today but, as I said earlier, recognising that we could soon see houses we did not previously think were a flood risk become a flood risk. We want to make sure that this scheme covers them too.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, for Flood Re to work effectively, surely there should be no building on functional flood plains. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that there is a vital role for maintenance and recognise the work of the drainage authorities? I have the honour of being the vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities. Will he also ensure that, where the Environment Agency fails to do the work, farmers and others can do it through the drainage boards and maintain these flood-banks?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

This is going to come as a shock to my noble friend but I am not going to agree with her first point. If we say that we will not build on flood plains, that means no new houses in Leeds, London and many of our other major cities. What matters is not whether you build on flood plains but how you build. I was in the Netherlands last week, hearing about houses that are actually flood defences. There is so much successful building on flood plains around the world. There are also some fantastic examples in this country from the last 50 years of how not to do it. I urge caution when saying that we should not build on flood plains. We have increased the funding for maintenance of defences by £22 million per year, and are supporting farmers and others in their work to keep our homes from flooding.

Nutrition for Growth Summit 2024

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The White Paper seeks to set out how we hold ourselves accountable to the amounts of ODA that we give and to which areas. I cannot, particularly in a short moment here—even if I knew it—give the noble Lord the details of the metrics, but I urge him to look at the White Paper and, if he still requires information, I would be very happy to arrange for him to meet officials or to write to him.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister look favourably on the work—and applaud the work—done by non-governmental organisations in the third world in this regard? I had the privilege, with a number of colleagues more than 10 years ago, to travel with Nestlé to see the work it was doing in Africa in regard to the provision of nutrition, water and sanitation. Will he applaud the work that it does, together with Governments, in this regard?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Non-governmental organisations and those who work for them do heroic work in some of the most difficult parts of the world. We recently debated in this House the situation in Sudan and South Sudan. One of the difficulties that we have is getting people on to the ground, getting them visas and getting them safely to places where they can deliver aid. NGOs, faith-based organisations and civil society are absolutely vital for the effective implementation of overseas development aid.

Wine (Revocation and Consequential Provision) Regulations 2023

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 27th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, leaving the EU gives us a unique opportunity to review our retained EU wine law to ensure that it better suits our domestic needs. The UK wine market was worth more than £10 billion in 2022 in off-trade and on-trade sales and the UK’s developing domestic production sector has attracted significant global investment. It is therefore vital to reform retained EU laws to give us the opportunity to boost growth and development in our domestic industry and to give it the capacity to tackle future environmental and economic challenges. To do this, the reforms that I am setting out to the House today will address a number of issues faced by our wine businesses. They will remove barriers, support innovation and simplify regulations to help to support growth in our wine trade and production industry, giving them the freedom to meet new and evolving demands while maintaining the high standards that consumers have come to expect.

First, the regulations will amend current importer labelling requirements. The instrument will remove a stipulation that imported wine must show the prefix “Importer” or “Imported by” before the address of the business responsible for importing that wine to England. It will mean that the general food law provisions relating to the identification of the responsible food business operator will apply to wine in the same way as they apply to other food products, without any additional importer labelling requirements in wine law on top of that. Changing importer labelling provisions means that businesses do not have to face unnecessary costs and bureaucratic administrative burdens. With approximately 1.3 billion litres of wine being imported into the UK in the 12 months leading up to December 2022, these burdens from inherited EU labelling rules must be removed. This Government will always stand with businesses to create growth opportunities.

Secondly, we will allow wines with a protected designation of origin to be produced from any permitted grape variety or hybrid variety rather than just the species Vitis vinifera. Permitting the use of non-Vitis vinifera species and hybrid varieties in PDO wines can bring significant benefits to both the industry and to the environment. Hybrid varieties often exhibit higher disease resistance compared to traditional Vitis vinifera varieties. The use of hybrid grape varieties can contribute to greater crop consistency and thus supply chain resilience. These hybrid grapes are often bred to withstand various climatic conditions and soil types, leading to more predictable yields. That predictability can mitigate the impacts of climate-related fluctuations and contribute to a stable supply of grapes, supporting both producers and consumers.

Thirdly, the instrument will remove the ban on the production of piquette, a wine-based beverage produced by adding water to grape pomace. Ending this ban will allow wine producers to create a new product offering using a by-product of the wine production process. This is an exciting and interesting opportunity that the Government want to provide to our wine producers.

The Government will also continue to support the thriving wine industry by enabling the blending of imported wine in England. This reform is permissive in nature, so take-up from the sector is voluntary. Our aim of allowing the blending of any wine in England will enable the wine industry to blend different varieties of wine from the same or various origins to achieve greater consistency in their products and to create entirely new products that suit consumer tastes. The Government are delighted that this measure also offers the opportunity for more British jobs in English wineries and bottling plants.

The Government are also keen to make the recycling of wine bottles easier in line with collection and packaging reforms. The instrument therefore intends to remove the mandatory requirements for foil caps and mushroom-shaped stoppers to be used in the marketing of sparkling wine. In addition to reducing waste, our aim is to make the production of sparkling wine more competitive.

The instrument will remove the wine certification scheme. The Government have listened to our wine industry and acted to remove unnecessary bureaucracy. The Government opposed the wine certification scheme policy as an EU member; now that we have left, we can seize the opportunity to determine our own laws. The instrument therefore intends to remove the wine certification arrangements. The current cost of the application process is £15 plus VAT per varietal wine. By removing the scheme, the relevant wine producers are avoiding that unnecessary cost.

I recognise that a majority of these first-phase reforms will apply only in England. However, the Welsh Government and Defra have agreed to pursue future reforms together, allowing these benefits to flow to the wine industry across both nations. As we have done from the outset, we continue to encourage Scotland to make similar reforms.

Together, the changes I have set out will liberalise the growing domestic wine industry and address several issues that our wine businesses face. They will remove barriers, support innovation and simplify regulations to help support growth in our wine trade and production industries. These proposed reforms give them the freedom to meet new and evolving demands while also maintaining the high standards that consumers have come to expect.

Our wine industry and producers support the changes set out in this instrument and welcome the flexibility it provides. The Government intend to bring further changes to allow the wine industry the benefits of leaving the European Union. This instrument is part of a broader package of reforms giving our thriving wine and alcoholic drinks sector greater flexibilities that will support it in the future. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for presenting the regulations before us this afternoon; overall, they are a very positive contribution to the wines and spirits industry. I declare my interest: I chair the Proof of Age Standards Scheme board, of which the wines and spirits trust is a member. I was very grateful for its briefing as part of my preparations for this afternoon.

I have just a couple of questions for my noble friend. While it is welcome that the regulations will benefit both consumers and indeed the wine industry, my noble friend mentioned that there are one, if not two, further statutory instruments to come before the House in the next six months. Would it not have been better to do all three statutory instruments together? I understand that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which prepared a report in advance of the regulations being laid before us this this afternoon, expressed concern about the lack of a uniform approach and level playing field across Great Britain, and the way the department has introduced and promoted the instrument.

I welcome my noble friend’s having reached an agreement between the department and the Welsh Government. Can he tell us the status of the agreement between his department and the Scottish Government in that regard? Also, it is particularly welcome that, as my noble friend said, only one label will be required, so we are in fact restoring the situation that existed before Brexit. It looked at one time as though two labels would be required on one bottle, one for consumption in the EU and one for consumption in the UK, and it is very good news indeed that these labelling changes have gone ahead in such a sensible way.

With those few remarks, can my noble friend explain the thinking behind having one statutory instrument before the House now, with two to follow in short order? Also, can he explain the precise situation with the Scottish Government regarding the instrument before us this afternoon? However, I welcome these regulations.

Storm Babet: Flooding

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 25th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for bringing forward this Statement. My thoughts are with the victims—those who died and lost their lives, and all those who were flooded in such extreme circumstances. During the debate on the levelling-up Bill, regarding the amendments on increasing flood protection, we established—and my noble friend will recall this because at the time we were on the shadow team for the precursor to Flood Re—that any house built after 2009 is not insured if it is built on a flood plain. Through the course of the debate on the amendment, we understood that mapping the divisions between zones 3a and 3b, which determine which flood plains can or cannot be built on, is the responsibility of local authorities. Will my noble friend explore to what extent this mapping is taking place so that planning authorities know where these houses can or cannot be built, and will he use his best offices to tackle surface water flooding? We are awaiting the implementation of Schedule 3 to the 2010 Act.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her continued interest in this matter. She has reminded me that I did not respond to the point that the noble Baroness asked about building on flood plains. If we said that no more properties were to be built on flood plains—I know that this is not what she or my noble friend would say—we would be saying that there should be no more houses built in York, Leeds or even London and a great many other communities. What we want to see is flood-resilient homes being built, and there are plenty of examples in this country and around the world where you can build, in certain circumstances, flood-resistant housing on flood plains. But, by and large, we do not want to see this. The National Planning Policy Framework is very clear about this, and we have underpinned that recently.

My noble friend is right that Flood Re relates to houses built before that date, and that is one of the levers we are trying to apply to prevent the wrong kind of houses being built in the wrong place, but I will certainly look at the point she raises. Prior to Flood Re, 9% of policyholders with a prior flood claim could obtain flood insurance quotes from two or more insurers, and no one could get quotes from five or more. Following the scheme’s launch, most customers can now get more than 10 quotes. It has been a resounding success in supporting people for whom the fear of floods was dramatic; we would all like to see it extended. I point out that the Build Back Better scheme gives an added value of £10,000 to a household not just to restore a house after flooding but to make sure that it does not flood again. I note her point about Schedule 3, which she constantly raises. She knows that we are consulting on it, and the Government have given a clear commitment to bringing that into force.

Dangerous Dogs Act 1991: New Breeds

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 14th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and refer to my interests on the register, including the fact that I am an honorary associate of the British Veterinary Association.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, we take dog attacks very seriously and are making sure that the full force of the law is applied. This ranges from lower-level interventions to more serious offences under the Dangerous Dogs Act. The Government have commissioned urgent advice on what steps they can take on dangerous dogs. As a critical first step, we are immediately convening police experts and other stakeholders to define the breed for the purposes of the Dangerous Dogs Act.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer but it is clear that the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 is not working as it was intended. Dog attacks are on the increase, the public are feeling threatened and the Act is putting huge pressure on veterinary professionals and animal welfare charities. Can I urge my noble friend to use his good offices to take this opportunity to have a complete overhaul of the Act; to focus not on the breed but the deed; and to look increasingly at anti-social and aggressive behaviour on the part of dog owners, which should not be tolerated?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Every single one of these attacks is a tragedy. So often, they happen in the home, and some of the people involved really should not be in charge of a dog. We are concerned about the breed that people are concerned about now, XL Bullies, because we see from the available data we have that they are disproportionately involved in serious dog attacks. There is a divergence of opinion on this. My noble friend mentions organisations that campaign on this and are unhappy about the breed-specific nature of it. They have one view; another view is that none of the fatal attacks that have taken place in recent years were carried out by a prohibited breed that was registered under the Act. We want to get this right. That is why we are talking to everyone, including the police, vets and campaign groups. We want to make sure that we are keeping people safe.

Combined Sewer Overflows

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 14th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I know the noble Baroness well enough to know that she does not really believe that. We sat through hours and hours of debate on the Environment Act, the Agriculture Act and the Fisheries Act. She knows that this Government have done more to protect the environment and deal with the unacceptable problem, which has existed for centuries, of sewage going into our rivers. She knows that we are investing in monitoring. The previous Government did not have a clue: they knew of 7% of sewage outflows. I started that change in 2012, and we now know of 91%; by the end of this year, we will know of 100%. That light of transparency is helping resolve this problem.

We have a record investment programme of £56 billion to deal with the problem. We have tougher regulation: there was a debate on nutrients yesterday and a debate in the Grand Committee on increasing penalties for breaches of rules from £250,000, where they are capped, to unlimited amounts. That is an example of tougher regulation that we are bringing in. At the moment, we have the largest ever criminal investigation by the Environment Agency into this matter, and we have a very serious civil investigation by the regulator Ofwat. We are absolutely committed to dealing with this, and we are doing more than any other Government have done previously.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I will focus on the positive going forward, which is that the water companies are going to find the money to tackle combined sewer overflows. Is my noble friend confident that the level of expenditure can be found in the context of the current price review, which becomes effective on 1 January 2024? Also, does he not think that it is grossly unfair on water companies to be expected to connect to inadequate Victorian pipes that cannot take the effluent coming from these new housing developments? They are being forced to because of the current legislation.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend knows that there is a major investment in infrastructure, the largest ever, which is seeing many of those thousands of miles of Victorian pipes being replaced by modern ones. It is absolutely vital that any developments take into account the sewage infrastructure. That is why we are insisting on the entire impact of those, and any, developments being reflected in investment, and why we are front-loading a lot of the expenditure. We are requiring water companies to do a lot, but that is what their customers and the people of this country want. We have the right system by which to make that happen, and we want to encourage that expenditure to happen as quickly as possible.

Orphan Sites: Hazardous Waste

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I know he has raised this in both Houses in relation to an area that he used to represent. We have a system in place where orphan sites are transferred to the Crown Estate, which finds a new beneficial owner, and from which the vast majority then get contaminant clearance. Working with local authorities, it has been successful, but I will work with the noble Lord to try to find the best possible system that works in most cases.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, may I ask my noble friend about a different type of hazardous waste; namely, fly-tipping on private land, which is the scourge of the countryside? Can he update the House on any government policy and on what the Environment Agency and local authorities can do against this dreadful rural crime?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I once asked the then president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England what he thought the Government should do about fly- tipping and littering, and he said a shoot-to-kill policy. I think he was joking, but at times, I am sort of with him in spirit. The Government have provided more funds, increased the fines for fly-tipping and increased the ability of local authorities and the police to, for example, fine people for littering from a vehicle and to accept dashcam evidence. We are serious about trying to prevent this scourge. There is an organisation which now brings different groups of people together to assist landowners, who bear the brunt of fly-tipping, to minimise the chances of fly-tipping taking place in hotspots, but also provides them, through the local authority, with funding that will catch the criminals and take them to justice.

Domestic Animals: Welfare

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 13th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, the Government keep abreast of issues in breeding dogs through our engagements with the sector, including with the UK Brachycephalic Working Group. The Government prohibited the licensed breeding of dogs where their genetic traits, physical characteristics or health could reasonably be expected to result in health or welfare problems for the mother or puppies. Additionally, we raise awareness of issues associated with low-welfare supply of pets through our Petfished campaign.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend the Minister is aware, the Covid pandemic led to a lot of people buying dogs for company and exercise. Since this time, many of these dogs have been rehomed, putting increased pressure on the dog charities. There also seems to be an alarming increase in puppies being born but not housed. Is there something the Government can do to keep an eye on this and help the charities involved?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The dog charities are doing wonderful work on this. I particularly praise the Dogs Trust, having recently visited one of its rehoming units. There is a serious issue around people being encouraged to spend enormous amounts of money to import pets from countries such as Romania, with a heart-rending story involving the welfare of a dog from there. But we have a large number of dogs that need to be rehomed here, through a process that is properly managed by really good charities, such as the Dogs Trust. I urge people to take that path, rather than spending hundreds of pounds on what is becoming an industry. While some people are doing it well, some are not. I encourage people to go through a registered charity and home UK stray dogs that need rehoming as a priority.

Live Animals: Export Ban

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

One of the items in the kept animals Bill, on the keeping of primates as pets, is a good example of something we can deliver more quickly than we could in an all-encompassing Bill, and we are going to do that through secondary legislation. We are in consultation with a number of people who will bring forward items through Private Members’ Bills, with the Government’s support. We want to get all of them on the statute book, but I hope that the noble Baroness, like me, is proud of what this Government are doing for animal welfare.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend give the House an assurance this afternoon that the ban is reciprocal and that we will not be importing live animals from the EU for slaughter and fattening in this country?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

There has never been a significant import trade for slaughter or fattening. For example, from 2019 to 2021, only 91 cattle and 14 sheep were imported for slaughter from the mainland EU. A key concern of many of those who opposed live exports was that once they are exported to the EU, we do not know where they are going. We can now make sure that, through the actions of the Animal and Plant Health Agency, we are keeping track of everything, so we want to make sure this ban is in place as soon as possible.

European Union: Trade Barriers

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I hate to disagree with the noble Lord but the total value of imports of food, feed and drink from the EU in the three months to April 2023 was £10.6 billion, 11% higher than the three months to April 2022 and 34% higher than the three months to April 2018. Over that period, exports increased from £3.5 billion and were 4% higher than last year and 6% higher than the year before that. We are trying to introduce a system that is fair to importers and exporters and that protects our very important biosecurity.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Will my noble friend update the House on progress towards a sound and sustainable SPS system?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We are making great progress. I can assure my noble friend that we are on the point of publishing more details on a system being brought in from October this year whereby products of animal origin will require an export health certificate. From January, they will be checked at border control points we have constructed. We are minimising the burden on business through risk categorisation, a trusted trader system and simplifying and digitising our network.

Water Industry: Financial Resilience

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We think that the model that operates at the moment is the right one. We have seen more investment, but if the Government took back control, that would, in effect, put the onus back on the taxpayer. That would mean that I or the Secretary of State would have to get in the queue behind the health service, pensions, and all other areas of government spending to get the right levels of capital investment we need in the water industry.

We think that the £56 billion can be afforded at a relatively modest increase of around £12 per household. For roughly £1.20 a day, households receive the water they need and sewage and dirty water are removed from their homes, and there has been a massive increase in spending on the infrastructure we need, some of which is still in need of changes. Through this model, we have delivered a better outcome for the consumer and for the taxpayer. We have concerns, and I share the noble Baroness’s concerns, certainly about the issues relating to Thames Water and one or two other companies. Ofwat has been proactive in trying to resolve the concerns with those companies, and we are watching the situation very closely.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as co-chair of the APPG on Water. My noble friend will recall that alarm bells rang some years ago when a number of water companies were based offshore in places such as the Cayman Islands, which seems singularly inappropriate. I congratulate my noble friend on putting in the statutory and legal effect that dividends and bonuses must now be linked to environmental performance. Does he imagine that that will have an immediate effect or will it take some weeks and years before it comes into force?

Farm Animal Welfare

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 26th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that the power to improve animal welfare lies in large measure with the consumer, and keeping the consumer informed is a key part of this. Therefore, in answer to her question, we received over 1,600 responses to the consultation, a summary of which is available on GOV.UK. Based on the evidence provided, the Government are continuing to explore options for improving and expanding mandatory animal welfare labelling, covering both domestic and imported products, and we will keep the House informed of our progress.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, while I applaud the high standards that farming communities and the Government have achieved on farmed animals in this country, does my noble friend regret the fact that we have not extended the same high standards to imports, particularly those from Australia and New Zealand through the free trade agreements? Will he give the House a commitment today that future trade agreements will insist on the same animal welfare and environmental standards for imports as are applied in this country?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Imports into the UK must comply with our existing import requirements. Products produced to different environmental and animal welfare standards can be placed on the UK market if they comply with these requirements. We are taking a tailored approach in each of our new free trade agreements. For example, pork, poultry and eggs were excluded from our agreement with Australia, and in our agreements with Australia and New Zealand, we secured non-regression and non-derogation clauses on animal welfare. This will be a feature of future agreements.

REACH (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 13th June 2023 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, this statutory instrument was laid before this House on 20 April 2023 and makes technical amendments to UK REACH. UK REACH is the retained version of EU REACH and is one of the key pieces of legislation that regulates the use of chemicals in Great Britain. This instrument is being made pursuant to powers in the Environment Act 2021. In accordance with the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, UK REACH maintains the core approach and key principles of the EU REACH regulation. Its primary objectives remain focused on safeguarding a high level of protection of human health and the environment.

This SI introduces two changes. I should make it clear from the outset that the changes do not affect the key principles of UK REACH. The first change this SI introduces is that it amends Article 127P(4B) of UK REACH. This provides an additional three years for businesses to submit technical information on the hazards and risks of their substances to the Health and Safety Executive. This extension applies to all grandfathered registrations and chemicals being imported from the EU under the transitional arrangements. Industry will now be required to submit technical information on the hazards and risks of substances that it manufactures or imports by 27 October 2026, 27 October 2028 and 27 October 2030, depending on the tonnage and toxicity. These dates are changes from 27 October 2023, 27 October 2025 and 27 October 2027 respectively.

This SI supports the work that we announced in December to explore an alternative transitional registration model for UK REACH in order to address the significant potential cost, estimated at between £1.3 billion and £3.5 billion, of obtaining or accessing the full hazard information required to meet UK REACH registration requirements. Work on the alternative transitional registration model is ongoing. In response to concerns about the potential costs, we are currently engaging with stakeholders, including NGOs, to develop an alternative transitional registration model for UK REACH that will help reduce the costs associated with obtaining hazard information, including from expensive EU REACH data packages, while still ensuring that industry remains responsible for the safe use of chemicals throughout the supply chain.

The model also aims to place more emphasis on improving our understanding of the uses and exposures of chemicals in the GB context, which will enable better targeting of regulatory actions. Extending the deadlines will provide certainty to industry so that it can avoid making unnecessary investments towards obtaining information for the existing registration model when that information may no longer be necessary under an alternative model.

I now turn to the second change that this SI introduces. It moves the timelines for HSE to complete its compliance checks to ensure that the information submitted by industry is of sufficient quality. These timelines have been moved in order to align them with the extended submission deadlines. We need to move the dates for these regulatory checks because the current deadlines for compliance checking, as set down in Article 41(5) of UK REACH, would otherwise fall before the amended dates for submitting the relevant information. HSE will now have to complete its compliance checks by 27 October 2027, 27 October 2030 and 27 October 2035, corresponding to the three extended submission deadlines.

This is the first time we have prepared an SI using the powers to amend REACH set out in Schedule 21 to the Environment Act 2021. We have followed all the safeguards we attached to those powers: we received consent from the devolved Administrations of Wales and Scotland; we consulted widely with our stakeholders on our plans to extend the submission deadlines; and we published a consistency statement alongside the consultation, as required by the 2021 Act. This provides the Committee with the necessary assurance that extending the submission deadlines is consistent with Article 1 of UK REACH.

Our assessment, as outlined in the consistency statement, demonstrates that the UK REACH regime will still be able to ensure a high level of protection for human health and the environment for three main reasons. The first is the information and knowledge on chemicals registered under EU REACH available to both the Health and Safety Executive and Great Britain registrants. Secondly, importers from the EU will continue to receive EU REACH-compliant safety data sheets from their EU suppliers, which will enable them to identify and apply appropriate risk management measures. Thirdly, the Health and Safety Executive has the ability to seek risk management data from other sources, if necessary, as it did when acting as a competent authority under EU REACH. This could include calls for evidence or using data from EU REACH and other relevant sources that can provide Great Britain-specific hazard and exposure information.

Alongside the public consultation, we also published a full impact assessment on extending the deadlines. The impact assessment was awarded a green “fit for purpose” rating by the Regulatory Policy Committee. The territorial extent of this instrument is the United Kingdom. The devolved Administrations were engaged in the development of this instrument and are content. The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments did not report any concerns with this statutory instrument.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee raised four main concerns in relation to this SI and the ATR more generally, including whether the implementation deadline of 2024 is achievable; concern from stakeholders about weakening protections for human health and the environment; and concerns about the HSE’s regulatory function and the impact of the REUL Bill. As I have already commented, we are confident that UK REACH will still be able to ensure a high level of protection of human health and the environment. I will take the other concerns in turn.

In relation to the timeline for delivery of the ATR, this is a complex project. It is right that we take the appropriate time to develop the policy and test it with stakeholders. We are extending the transitional registration deadlines to ensure that we have a reasonable amount of time to do that. The earliest we can formally consult is the end of 2023, introducing legislation in 2024, and this remains our aim. The timetable is driven by both the technical and the sequential nature of the work. We are just coming to the end of an evidence-gathering project, including detailed interviews with companies including SMEs. Together with the new deadlines, this draft SI will give industry the time it needs to adapt to the new arrangements.

In relation to the HSE’s regulatory capacity, I am pleased to say that it continues to increase its capacity to take on new regulatory obligations. The HSE’s Chemicals Regulation Division increased by 46% between September 2020 and March 2022, and it has continued to build capacity over the last year. By 2025 the number of HSE staff working on UK REACH delivery is expected to grow to at least 50.

Finally, regarding the committee’s concerns about the impact of sunset provisions in the REUL Bill on this SI, I confirm that REACH was not on Defra’s list of retained EU law that it intends to remove from the statute book from 31 December 2023 following the retained EU law Bill becoming law.

I am confident that the provisions in these regulations mean that we will continue to ensure the highest levels of protection for human health and the environment, based on robust evidence and strong scientific analysis. At the same time, we are taking the necessary steps to provide industry with the legal certainty it needs to operate and to preserve the supply chains for the chemicals we depend on. For these reasons, I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for the opportunity to debate the regulations, which I broadly support, and to share with him some concerns that have been raised—in particular, by industry.

I start with the last bit of what my noble friend said about the REUL Bill: that this is not currently on the Defra list of retained EU law that might be changed. Can he give us, and therefore industry, an absolute commitment that in the next two to three years there will be no attempt by Defra to amend or revoke this? When the REUL Bill, which is now in the other place, went through its initial stages, we learned that Defra has absolute power to review, amend and revoke any piece of primary or secondary legislation—I forget all the nomenclatures—on the statute book. We as a Committee, a Parliament and a House do not have the right to review that, so it would be fair to business to know that it is not within the sight, mind or intention of the department to amend or revoke within the next two to three years.

On 24 May my noble friend was kind enough to reply to a Question I tabled on REACH and maintaining compliance with the EU REACH programme. He repeated today that, as we speak, we do not know what the total cost of the statutory instruments and the measures therein will be. In his Answer my noble friend said that it will be £2 billion over six years, but he and the Committee will understand that it is not very helpful to those preparing—the NGOs and particularly the chemical firms involved—that the Government do not have an idea. He concludes by saying:

“Although values of chemical exports are increasing, this is not generally reflected in volume, suggesting that inflationary pressures are contributing to the figures”.


I do not expect my noble friend to be able to reply this afternoon, but I understand that the cost of paint went up hugely after the UK left the European Union and I wonder whether that is partly because of the instrument before us this afternoon and the fact that those who wish to export still comply with EU REACH and are now having to comply with UK REACH, albeit with the slight delay.

The UK chemical sector, represented by the Chemical Industries Association, was kind enough to brief me for this afternoon, and I will share with my noble friend and the Committee its concerns. It

“would like to stress the importance of urgently providing legal certainty to businesses. The current level of uncertainty around future registration requirements, expected timelines and related costs is currently not encouraging new market opportunities. While the proposal to extend the deadlines is much welcomed by industry, clarity on the viability of the future registration model will also be needed very shortly to allow sufficient time for appropriate legislation to be developed and for authorities and industry to implement it”.

When will the future registration model be available?

As regards the concerns raised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, I share its concern that the potential date of late 2024 is not achievable, because my understanding is that the Government are looking at a completely new design for UK REACH, including all the things that businesses are expected to do. Again, I ask my noble friend to put our minds at rest. If it is a whole new design, how, hand on heart, can he explain that the department will be in a position to complete it?

The CIA is also concerned that:

“In considering a different approach to registration, it will be essential to avoid a situation where compliance costs are simply shifted rather than reduced, for example from buying access to data under the current system to new administrative costs due to the work needed to generate a dossier under the new model”.


Therefore, I am sure my noble friend would accept that there is considerable uncertainty as to whether the registration costs can be minimised and that the industry needs to know a workable alternative registration model. The CIA is

“of the view that an effective UK REACH regime could be achieved even without requiring a full resubmission of dossiers for all substances already registered under EU REACH”.

I could go on—my noble friend the Minister is aware that I have tracked this issue for some considerable time—but I share the ongoing concerns raised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I thank it for providing its report in time for us to consider it this afternoon. My main concerns are that 2024 is not achievable and that the REUL Bill gives my noble friend and his department complete power in this field to revoke or amend this without any consultation of businesses or real scrutiny in this place.

With those few remarks, I look forward to hearing my noble friend the Minister’s response.

Packaging Waste (Data Reporting) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 5th June 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Before my noble friend sits down, may I just follow up? I am trying to understand what he said in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. If it is a closed-loop system and the waste is not entering the general household collection system, surely, producers should be exempt and be allowed to have their own system. My noble friend seemed to answer the question by saying that if it is general household waste collection, they could not save more than 75%, but, if this is a closed-loop system, should they not be exempt?

My noble friend referred to the EPR regulations which will come into force later this year. Will we be given a similar chance to discuss them, in a similar forum?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

On the latter point, I can certainly assure my noble friend that there will be plenty of opportunity to discuss them.

Producers will not be permitted to off-set their fees where the packaging in question is collected for recycling by more than 75% of local authorities. That assesses the type of packaging we are talking about and how it impacts local authorities. Where there is a closed-loop system, we think that is the right measure to take. The key reason for this is that we do not want to incentivise producers to start collecting their own household packaging for recycling where that packaging is largely collected by local authorities. We want significantly to increase the amount of consistent kerbside collections we are conducting and thereby create economies for these products where possible. It is really important that the case raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, be brought to the attention of my ministerial colleague and officials so that we can talk through its impacts.

Animal By-Products, Pet Passport and Animal Health (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 5th June 2023 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, these regulations were laid before the House on 18 April. This instrument seeks to make amendments to the Animal Health (Miscellaneous Fees) (England) Regulations 2018 and the Animal By-Products and Pet Passport Fees (England) Regulations 2018 to ensure that there is no under-recovery or over-recovery of costs. These amendments do not contain any changes to policy or processes, only to the fees that the Animal and Plant Health Agency can collect on behalf of the Secretary of State in relation to statutory animal health services carried out by the agency.

The fees are designed to fund APHA’s front-line statutory animal health services for safeguarding animal health and supporting our domestic and international trade. These are: inspection of consignments and licensing of facilities involved in the trade of livestock semen, eggs and embryos; inspection and licensing of facilities involved in the handling, storage or incineration of animal by-products not destined for human consumption; inspection of live animals arriving from third countries at our border control posts; surveillance of commercial poultry flocks for salmonella; licensing and proficiency testing of private laboratories carrying out salmonella tests under our national salmonella control programme; and registration and approval of premises intending to export breeding poultry, day-old chicks and hatching eggs from Great Britain.

The proposed amendments also include the removal of the fees regime for pet passports, as APHA is no longer involved in the issuance of passports for the movement of pets to and from the UK and other countries. Following public consultation, new fees for these services were last introduced in 2018, with a commitment to businesses that fees would be reviewed biennially to ensure the charges and exemptions were appropriate.

Due to the agency’s focus of effort and resources on EU exit work, Covid and avian influenza, these reviews were put on hold and the fees for these schemes have consequently not been refreshed. As a result, businesses are being charged in a way which does not reflect full cost recovery for APHA. The schemes are failing to achieve recovery of their full costs, with a deficit of between £0.4 million and £0.5 million per year. This shortfall is currently being funded by the public purse.

Following the cost recovery principles of the Managing Public Money guidelines, APHA and Defra finance teams have developed a new fee schedule to deliver full cost recovery. No additional margins or profits have been included, and my counterparts in His Majesty’s Treasury have approved the approach taken.

The average increase to overall scheme fee income to achieve full cost recovery would be 51%. Given the substantive cost increases for some elements within the fee schedules, in designing this instrument we have balanced a proportional approach for businesses with the need to cover costs. We are proposing to follow the approach agreed in the 2018 consultation and apply a phased increase in fees over two years, with 50% of the fee uplift delivered in July 2023 and full cost recovery for the services delivered from July 2024. Border control post services are the exception to this phasing option. Here, we are proposing to increase fees and achieve full cost recovery from July this year. This will help us avoid any operational conflicts with changes that may follow the review of the new borders and boundaries fees process.

Delaying this uplift further would only increase the gulf between cost and recovery, and the impact of the changes would be even greater because of the impact of compounding factors such as inflation. APHA has continued to engage with business users and business associations on service performance and service fee schedules following the 2018 consultation, and these businesses are aware of the proposed new fee schedules and have engaged solely on service performance, rather than the fee increases themselves.

This statutory instrument applies to England only. The Scottish and Welsh Governments are following a similar approach, as APHA provides the same services to both Administrations. The Scottish and Welsh Governments have laid their own corresponding legislation. I commend the draft regulations to the House.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for presenting the regulations before us. First, can he explain when the last consultation was? He said that there had been a consultation in 2018. Paragraph 10.1 on page 4 of the Explanatory Memorandum refers to a consultation but seems to indicate that the last one was held in 2018, which is five years ago.

Secondly, these are huge increases. They are not 5% or 10%; we are looking at a 41% increase for the cost of animal by-products regulations, a 53% increase in the current fees of the animal health regulations, 65% for the animal health regulations relating to artificial breeding controls, and a more modest 21% increase for animal health regulations relating to the poultry health scheme. In the context of the general situation and the increases we have seen in public sector salaries, everyone balked at a 14% increase and 5% or 10% increases. I quite accept that, as my noble friend said, there has not been an increase since 2018, but these are huge increases. Can he put my mind at rest and say that there has been a more recent consultation with the industry, which is feeling fairly beleaguered?

Earlier, the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, referred to the cost of living crisis. What is becoming clear is that, while supermarket prices are going up, those increased costs are not being passed on to, for example, producers of meat and poultry. I am concerned. I realise that they are spread over two years but these are really big increases. If there has been a more recent consultation, I would be interested to know what the feedback from the industry has been in this regard.

Land Use Commission

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My concern about a commission is that it would probably have to be a creature of statute. That would take time. We would have to have consultations and pass legislation, and another factor is the cost, which the report said should be similar to that of the Scottish Land Commission, at £1.5 million, and the Climate Change Committee, which is about £4.5 million. The most important thing is that Ministers want to drive and be held to account in both Houses on this very important piece of work. We are yet to be convinced about parking it with a commission, but I am happy to have further conversations with Members of this House to get to the bottom of that.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister mentioned tenant farmers and graziers. When will the extent to which they will benefit from ELMS become clearer?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

They are already benefiting from ELMS. We are working hard to ensure that they can benefit from not just the sustainable farming incentive but all the other parts of the schemes that we are bringing forward. Areas of countryside stewardship have always been a problem with landlord and tenant. We are trying to iron those things out and ensure that we are providing a future of support for all parts of the farming sector.

Air Quality Strategy Consultation

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness knows how I hate to see her disgruntled, so I will see whether I can make her gruntled. The consultation was open for 10 days, the department received 434 responses in total and 97 local authorities responded—but that was not the totality of it. We have engaged with stakeholders, including local government, since December 2021; we have run a series of nine workshops to gain views and input from a range of stakeholders; and more than 30 meetings were held with internal and external stakeholders, as well as over 200 stakeholders from community groups, NGOs, academia and local authorities. This Government consult like no Government have before; sometimes, I wonder whether we consult too much, but in this case I think we have got this absolutely right and created a strategy that reflects what people want.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, in relation to consultation and the London mayor, does my noble friend agree that the main cause of increased traffic congestion and the knock-on effect on air quality is the lack of synchronisation of traffic lights, which is driving not just London cab drivers but all London motorists to distraction?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend raises a point that cab drivers raise with me frequently. It is a serious point. As she knows, air quality is devolved to the mayor, who is ultimately responsible for the delivery of his policies. Undoubtedly, with ULEZ and other policies, this is causing tensions, but it is for him to answer. Our point is to help local government in all its forms to deliver. We are putting in money to assist local authorities in tackling air quality right across the country. London is the biggest challenge. That is why we work with the mayor when we can to make sure that we are achieving that in the capital.

Water Companies: Licences

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 24th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

It is not just up to the company; it is up to the regulators, Ofwat and the Environment Agency. We are currently considering this, and there is a proposal to lift the cap on fines from the Environment Agency to an unlimited level. This is part of a concerted effort to tackle a serious problem.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s commitment to implement Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, but will my noble friend exercise a degree of urgency? Wales has already implemented this, making SUDS and sustainable drains mandatory in all new builds. That one measure alone will prevent sewage spilling over antiquated pipes and leading to river and sea pollution.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right: this was a key recommendation of the Pitt review following the floods in 2007. The Government are implementing it. It is complicated, because it is about who owns and has responsibility for the maintenance of the SUDS. My noble friend is right that this will have an impact on the amount of unwanted effluent that flows from developments into watercourses and aquifers, and it is being implemented—we are taking it forward urgently.

Microchipping of Cats and Dogs (England) Regulations 2023

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, the purpose of this instrument is to introduce compulsory cat microchipping in England, delivering one of the Government’s key manifesto pledges. This measure was supported by 99% of respondents to our public consultation, which received over 33,000 responses.

Microchipping improves animal welfare by increasing the traceability of pets, making it easier for lost, stray or stolen pets to be reunited with their keepers and returned home safely. Microchipping is a safe procedure involving the insertion of a chip, generally about the size of a grain of rice, under the skin of a pet. Once the microchip has been inserted, contact details are registered with a compliant database. The regulations also include provisions that relate to ensuring that microchips are inserted by competent people.

Since the Government introduced compulsory dog microchipping in England in 2016, around 90% of dogs are now microchipped. Evidence suggests that stray dogs that are microchipped and have up-to-date microchip records are more than twice as likely to be reunited with their keeper than stray dogs without a microchip.

There are over 9 million owned cats in England, but as many as 2.3 million are currently not microchipped. These measures are intended to address this. From 10 June 2024, any owned cat over the age of 20 weeks must be microchipped and the keeper’s contact details registered on a compliant database. There is an exception to this, where a vet certifies that the procedure should not be carried out for animal health reasons. However, I reassure your Lordships that this exception is rarely used. These requirements apply only to owned cats; they do not apply to free-living cats that live with little or no human interaction or dependency, such as farm, feral or community cats.

As with the existing requirements for dogs, keepers found not to have microchipped their cat may be served with a notice by the enforcement body, which will usually be the local authority. If they do not comply, they may face a fine of up to £500, and the enforcement body may also arrange for the cat to be microchipped at the keeper’s expense.

This instrument also repeals and replaces the Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2015, bringing all the measures into a new single instrument covering both dogs and cats. There are no substantive changes to the existing provisions covering the requirement to have your dog microchipped, although we have taken the opportunity to make technical drafting changes where we considered the existing text would benefit from further clarity. Animal welfare is a devolved issue and therefore these regulations apply to England only.

Noble Lords may be aware that, last year, the Government also consulted on wider pet microchipping reform designed to improve the operation of the existing regime. This includes plans to: make it easier for approved users to access microchip records; improve the accuracy of the records; and standardise database operator processes. We will be issuing our response to this consultation shortly. However, I can reassure noble Lords that we are planning to come forward with amending regulations in due course to implement these improvements. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome these regulations. I was chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in the other place and, as my noble friend will recall, we took great interest in this.

My view is that this measure will be successful only if it is properly enforced. Given that that the penalties will, I presume, be similar to those imposed for a breach of the obligation to microchip dogs, how many fines have been imposed for failure to comply with the obligation to microchip dogs? Does my noble friend share my frustration that we are still 10% short of the magic 100% figure for dogs? It is hoped that the obligation to microchip cats will bring it up to that level. Is that the Government’s ambition, or are they aiming even higher than that?

At the moment, there is the vexed issue of dangerous dogs doing damage. Often, they attack a person in a public place. I assume that these dogs will be microchipped. To what extent does my noble friend think that the Government’s current obligation to microchip dogs is successful in identifying and tracing dogs that commit a grievous injury or fatality in a public place?

On the exemption, I presume that there will be potential for a feral cat to cross over and commit an injury such as biting or scratching a perfectly innocent bystander, which we know can have very significant effects. Obviously, they have no owner, so what happens in that situation, in terms of identifying the feral cat and bringing it to justice, as it were?

My final question is about the continuous issue of what I think are called boiler-house dogs: the breeding of multiple pups which, when they are not sold, are unlikely to be microchipped. For the sake of completeness, what is the Government’s policy in that regard? I understand from press reports that these dogs are literally dumped on the streets and taken in by cats and dogs homes, such as Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, for whose work we are grateful. Is that occurring more than it was before and is there a similar problem with cats and kittens?

Oil Spill: Poole Harbour

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Poole harbour is a large expanse of water and this is a significant spill. Booms have been put out, but they will not contain all the pollutant. Other measures have been put in place and the Environment Agency is overseeing the recovery. Repair works will be conducted close to the salt marshes, mud flats and reed beds which are used by a variety of residents and overwintering birds. As the noble Baroness will know, Poole harbour is home to a native population of spiny seahorse, short-snouted seahorse and other rare species, and there is also a mussel fishery and an oyster fishery. We will make sure, working with the Food Standards Agency, that they are safe to eat. We are advising local people to continue to use the beaches but at this stage not to swim there, and we are monitoring the situation. The Environment Agency is in charge of all outreach to local people, and is making sure that we are communicating to them what we are doing by way of recovery and to limit the effects of the spill.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister pass on our congratulations to those who managed to contain the spill? It could have been so much worse. He mentioned potential loss of income to fishermen and tourism businesses. What compensation might they get if there is significant loss in that regard?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Noble work is being done, and I thank my noble friend for pointing that out. There is a very clear line of process for compensation, which is that the polluter should pay. We will assist anyone who feels they have a legitimate case to make in following that process through. However, at this stage it is unclear whether there are significant losses. As I say, we are working with organisations such as the Food Standards Agency to make sure that the food is safe and that people can continue to produce high-quality shellfish from that area.

Agriculture (Financial Assistance) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, in moving the regulations I declare my farming interests as set out in the register.

This is the third year of the seven-year agricultural transition period. The new financial assistance schemes under the Agriculture Act are an important part of this transition as farmers move away from direct payments. They will help to ensure that sustainable food production and the delivery of improved environmental outcomes go hand in hand. Indeed, we are investing in the very foundations of food security—healthy soils, clean water and abundant pollinators—to support a prosperous long-term future for the sector.

We are due to meet at a later date to debate the statutory instrument that sets the reductions to farmers’ 2023 direct payments. I want to be clear to anyone who is minded to support the fatal Motion tabled by the Liberal Democrats about exactly what they would be voting for. First, that vote would be against small farms. We are replacing unfair and ineffective area-based payments with targeted payments. Some 50% of the direct payments budget went to the largest 10% of recipients, so by seeking to stop the agricultural transition the movers of this Motion are voting for that unfairness to continue. Secondly, that vote would be against food security. Support for that Motion would be a vote for the EU’s area-based subsidies to continue, and they did very little for farming, food production or the environment. The link between food production and the common agricultural policy was substantially severed in 2005.

If the fatal Motion on the other regulation is successful, the effect would be insufficient funding to deliver current plans. Specifically, we would have to cancel all the agreements or plans under Countryside Stewardship 2023, the sustainable farming incentive, landscape recovery, farming in protected landscapes, support for producer organisations, the future farming resilience fund, the livestock information programme, the animal health and welfare pathway, and the Institute for Agriculture and Horticulture. This would mean immediately stopping work on projects to restore nearly 400 miles of river and to protect and provide habitat for 263 species—such as water vole, otter, pine marten, lapwing, great crested newt, European eel and marsh fritillary—across 40,000 hectares. We must therefore continue our move away from direct payments and the legacy of the EU’s bureaucratic common agricultural policy, which did little for farming, food production or the environment. I hope that, with that little taster of the debate in a week or two, I have persuaded noble Lords who were minded to table that Motion to rethink.

The regulations that we are debating today provide the legal framework for Defra and its delivery bodies to enforce and monitor the financial assistance schemes and to publish data about grant payments. This instrument makes technical amendments to those regulations to support the continuing transition to new schemes. Through this instrument, the definitions of three financial assistance schemes from the 2021 regulations have been removed. This change does not impact the schemes, which have already been launched, or their funding. It is so that the Government can be more flexible in adapting schemes to suit farmers’ needs. For example, the Government will be launching the animal health and welfare grants through the farming investment fund, which were previously defined as separate schemes.

The data publication requirements are amended so that the Secretary of State may exempt financial assistance schemes awarded to improve the health or welfare of livestock or plants if full publication would hinder the scheme’s purpose. For example, identifying a land manager who has received grants related to diseases in livestock could be damaging to their business and deter them reporting future cases. Similarly, the Government will continue to exempt the tree health pilot and animal health and welfare review from the full publishing requirement to protect the interests of affected parties. The Government have continued to name these schemes in this instrument to provide certainty to existing beneficiaries. However, as with all exempted schemes, the aggregated data for these payments will be published.

The Government are making sure that the taxpayer still knows where the funding is going. This instrument amends the data publication requirements so that, where the Secretary of State is required to publish the aggregate of financial assistance paid under a scheme, they must also publish the number of agreement holders who received financial assistance under that scheme.

These amendments will allow the financial assistance schemes to run more efficiently and effectively for farmers and help to achieve their intended benefits under the Agriculture Act while still making sure that there is accountability to the public. Therefore, this instrument is an essential step in ensuring that farmers can help build and maintain resilient businesses by spending public money in a way that helps us to secure the public good. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for setting out the detail of and background to the regulations before us today. I simply want to probe him on a couple of points, if I may, including on how these regulations will apply, especially to English farmers, and particularly tenant farmers.

The guidance was published in March 2022, and the path to sustainable farming was set out earlier. Has the guidance been updated since 2022? I do not see that in the Explanatory Memorandum, paragraph 11. If they are just technical changes, that may not be so important.

Why was no impact assessment done? As my noble friend said, this is year three of the seven-year transition and where the finances will start to bite quite dramatically. I state at the outset that English farmers will feel unfairly treated. My understanding is that the direct payments will continue in Scotland, so those farms in North Yorkshire, Durham, Cumbria and Northumberland will look across the Scottish border and see a slightly more familiar scheme to that which they have now and which is being taken away from them. Is that something that concerns my noble friend the Minister?

My real concern is the transition from basic farm payments to ELMS. My noble friend concentrated very heavily on the advantages to the environment. I press him on how this will impact on hill farmers, upland farmers and small farmers everywhere, in particular those who produce grazing stock such as spring lambs and, indeed, fatstock cattle.

In a Financial Times article on 5 March, it is calculated that a drop in farm business income—a measure of net profit—of almost two-thirds is expected in this financial year. That amounts to a drop in profit of £16,300. When I was an MP next door—as indeed was my noble friend—I worked very closely with the graziers. I would hazard a guess that that £16,000 per grazier was their total income. The question is this: what alternative money will they seek? They tend to have the rights in perpetuity but they tend to be tenant farmers elsewhere. If they do not get direct farm payments because the landowner, where they farm elsewhere, is taking it then obviously they will not be getting any compensation.

My noble friend the Minister will be familiar with the work of Julia Aglionby, a Professor of Practice at the University of Cumbria’s Centre for National Parks and Protected Areas. Her projection is that income will recover to £22,900 in two years before slumping back to £16,700; this would place it at just above a third of its 2021-22 level. I understand that of particular concern to the president of the NFU is the fact that at the heart of this squeeze on government payments is the decision to calculate payments on the basis of income foregone plus costs, meaning paying for green improvements at rates aimed at recompensing farmers for the resulting fall in agricultural income.

According to the president of the NFU, Minette Batters, for some farms that took part at the pilot stage, the work was simply not cost effective. As my noble friend the Minister will be aware, upland farms are particularly affected because they tend to produce less food than lowland sites, meaning that they are considered to have foregone less income and are paid lower rates. As I understand it, most farmers will receive £151 a hectare for managing grassland with minimal fertiliser, but those doing the same work in so-called severely disadvantaged areas or upland farms will be paid only £98. That is a severe drop in income and this is only the third year of seven.

Can my noble friend the Minister address those points? How are these farmers meant to survive? What are the department’s projections for the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh years? Where the farmers in the uplands are tenant farmers, as many of them will be—I appreciate the fact that, in North Yorkshire, where I served as an MP, and in County Durham, where I grew up in the Pennines, probably 50% of the farming community is made up of tenant farmers—what hope do they possibly have of farming in future if they are not eligible for food production grants going forward? I realise that they will get money for stonewalling, which is a tradition that we want to keep, but they are hardly contributing to food security or sourcing more food—as the Prime Minister would like them to do—for our schools, hospitals and local garrisons. What future does my noble friend see, even in this coming year, for upland farmers and, separately, for tenant farmers?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I feel I may have confused my noble friend. I did not mention area payments. I said that there is envy of what the Scots are being paid. My concern is that the way that the calculation has been done—income forgone plus costs—is leading to this perverse situation of a fall in incomes.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I will seek to address those points as I go through my remarks. We want to make sure that the £2.4 billion is spent more fairly. That means a greater incentive for smaller farmers to receive more of the pie because they have been hard done by under the common agricultural policy. I will come on to talk about this as I address other points.

The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, raised some important points. I make no apologies for the fact that we have amended the schemes. He quite rightly asked about consultation. The schemes are indicative. We want to make sure that, as we work through not only our tests and trials but the implementation of these schemes, we are listening to farmers. This has probably been the largest consultative process that I have experienced in my time in Defra. The food, farming and countryside team has attended agricultural shows, done webinars, visited clusters of farmers, attended the vast majority of farmers’ social gatherings that can possibly be imagined and responded to concerns raised. We will continue to do that through our standard routine engagement with organisations such as the NFU, the TFA, the CLA and others and also directly with farmers. I have been able to put farmers who have raised particular points with me straight through to the director concerned and she has been able to answer their questions, so the answer to the noble Lord’s question about continued consultation is absolutely yes.

Agreement holders will have to be notified. On the noble Lord’s point about changes in farm tenure and ownership, these will be considerably simpler under the schemes. There should be no deterrent effect to being able to transfer the schemes if, for example, a partner in a farming partnership arrangement changes and there should be no bureaucratic barrier more than a notification, if required, in those schemes. There are issues relating to the time left of a farm business tenancy, for example. If it is less than three years, I think, it can be rolled over but it needs to be notified.

We are measuring the impact on the environment of the uptake of these schemes. We will also be measuring the impact on the environment of farmers and land managers accessing private sector green finance, and making sure that we are working to strategies through our Countryside Stewardship, which now has more than 30,000 farmers in the scheme. We have raised the payments by 40% and have increased the amount of support for farmers to go into those schemes. We want to make sure that local nature recovery strategies are doing what Professor Sir John Lawton did in his ground-breaking paper, Making Space for Nature: seeking to connect environments where possible.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, talked about the exemptions. It is important that we get this right. Whether it is a perception or not, perceptions are reality in this case. If there is a perception about making public the fact that you are taking part in an animal health and welfare grant scheme or you might have tree diseases on your land, and that will be a barrier to farmers taking part in the schemes, then I think we are right to seek that exemption.

As the noble Baroness points out, there have been cases where certain animal rights organisations have targeted farmers. On the question of African swine fever, it is a notifiable disease, so somebody not notifying the Government would be breaking the law, but that is an absolute nightmare prospect. In all our border security measures, biosecurity and everything that we seek to do, the risk of that sort of disease coming into our farming community is at the forefront of our minds. We are tracking what happens and where it is spreading across Europe and making sure that, with people coming to this country, in this globalised world in which we live, we seek to minimise the chance of that disease happening here.

The noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, raised the issue of food shortages. The principal cause of the headline-grabbing shortages was strange climatic conditions in southern Spain and Morocco, from where we receive most of our tomatoes at this time of year. It is a warning to us, but also to retailers, that we can expect strange climatic conditions. Our supply chains, which are resilient and were proved to be so during the pandemic, need to be prepared for such risks so that we can continue to see the food that we want to see on our shelves.

The noble Baroness’s question on resources is a good one. We in Defra are putting enormous resources into this; I can assure her that other issues we are seeking to deal with at the same time will not have an impact on the importance of rolling out these schemes, explaining them to farmers, getting as many as possible to sign up to them and making sure that we are supporting our farmers to produce food. We want them to produce food sustainably but we also have hungry mouths to feed. Food security remains an absolute priority for my department and the Government.

I will tackle other points as they have arisen and hope that I will cover all the questions. One point raised was on how we are helping farmers who will become unprofitable as a result of direct payment reductions. There are a number of ways in which farmers can be profitable without direct payments, including farm efficiency improvements, diversification and receiving money under new schemes. The actions taken will depend on the particular farm. The future farming resilience fund provides farmers with free advice from an independent provider to help them work out what to do for their business, including how best to improve business practices.

The impact on farmers of the phasing out of direct payments is obviously at the forefront of our minds. There is evidence showing that the scope—

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I entirely agree with the noble and learned Lord: it has to be specified. That is the work we are doing, and that is how we will decide whether we need that extension.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Will my noble friend—

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I want to make some progress.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I understand that, but I have not spoken yet. Can I just ask: where is this going to be specified for our greater understanding? My noble friend said that it would be specified; where will it be specified?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

In the work we are doing to assess each area of retained EU law, we will make an assessment of whether we are going to need some more time to do it. Your Lordships will be informed of that, and there will be the possibility of accountability being applied to it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, also raised bathing waters in Amendment 11. We are committed to protecting and enhancing water quality. It is worth stating that in most places our bathing waters are better than they have ever been. Indeed, in 2022, 72% of our bathing waters met the “excellent” standard, the highest number since new, more stringent standards were introduced in 2015. In total, 93% of bathing waters in England were classified as “good” or “excellent” last year. We recognise that there are always ways that we can improve how we manage and regulate our bathing waters, and we will continue to explore how to take those forward, including through this Bill.

The noble Baroness also referred to the water environment regulations in Amendment 12. We are committed to protecting and enhancing water quality, and the Environment Act has only strengthened regulations since we left the EU. We have set legally binding targets for the water environment which cover pollution from wastewater, agriculture and abandoned metal mines and reducing water demand. In the Environmental Improvement Plan, we committed to restoring 400 miles of river through the first round of landscape recovery projects and establishing 3,000 hectares of new woodlands along England’s rivers. We are also aiming to achieve “good” ecological status in 75% of water bodies, as per the water framework directive regulations. I assure your Lordships that this Government respect the significance of the water framework directive, and retained EU law reforms will not come at the expense of our already high environmental standards.

To address the point that the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, raised—I mentioned this yesterday in a meeting, but I will repeat it for the record—hitting the water framework directive standards is an incredibly high bar. The average river in this country is divided into a number of reaches for the purpose of the water framework directive. Each one of those reaches has a range of different measures—which could relate to fish population, chemical pollution, or anything else—that would trigger a failure of that particular reach to achieve the “good” standard that is required under the regulation. It is a policy called “one out, all out”. That is the reason that only 16% of our rivers are achieving “good” ecological status. That is a standard I do not want to see changed by this Government or any future Government. It is one of the most difficult to achieve, as other countries in Europe are also finding. If we were still in the European Union, we could face infraction fines if we failed to hit those targets. The point is that we are retaining those very high standards. We want to see them retained, and we want this Government and future Governments to be held, justifiably, to them.

Environmental Improvement Plan 2023

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Viscount is absolutely right to raise this. That storm flood, which was a perfect storm in every sense of the word, combined a tidal surge with very high water levels. It led to some visionary thinking right across government and saw that measure put in. There is work going on to factor in long-term rises in sea levels, as have been predicted by a number of different organisations. I am not up to date on where those are, but they are very real and we want to make sure that we protect one of the great cities of the world from all future risks. If I can get back to the noble Viscount with more details on precisely where the Environment Agency, Defra and other parts of government are working on that, I will.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I urge my noble friend to look at outcomes in the water efficiency of new developments. Undoubtedly, building 300,000 houses a year is contributing to sewage outfall from inadequate pipes. Can I instil in my noble friend a degree of urgency in ensuring that the very welcome mandatory requirement to fit all new developments to sustainable sewage systems is brought forward, so that we can have a consultation and implementation before December?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I share my noble friend’s delight that we are taking forward this part of the Flood and Water Management Act. I know that it has been a long time coming. There are a lot of different players in this and we want to get it right, but we are now on the home run. I will be able to give her more details on timings in the very near future.

Agricultural Transition Plan

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We have tried to help farmers in as many ways as possible. For example, we have brought forward to a half-yearly payment what they are currently receiving in the basic payment scheme, so what they were receiving in one lump sum they now receive six- monthly. That has helped their cash flow.

There are other things, such as the extra money we have put into Countryside Stewardship, which has drawn many more people into the scheme and front-loaded some of that money. The fact that we are setting six new standards now as opposed to the original three that we were going to announce is another example of how we are pulling the money forward. We want to make sure that it is going into farmers’ pockets as quickly and as easily as possible, keeping the application for it simple and getting the money to them through the Rural Payments Agency as quickly as possible.

I cannot answer the noble Baroness precisely, for the simple reason that it is different for every farm. As a farmer looks at the proposals that we have announced, they will be able to see on each standard that there are different things that they can do that fit in with the ecosystem that they farm in—the water management that they want to achieve and the wildlife that they want to encourage, while still producing food—and every single farm will be different. We are also helping through the announcement we made on landscape recovery, allowing farmers to work together in clusters to bring forward schemes. That has been really effective at drawing people into that scheme as well. So I cannot tell her precisely because every farm is different, but that amount is ring-fenced and farmers will be supported through the scheme.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the further update on the transition plan. When the Agriculture Bill was going through this place, pleas were made to the Minister’s predecessor to allow us to amend the two agricultural Acts that are the foundation of the tenancies. Will my noble friend take that away with him and urgently ensure that the tenancy agreements can be amended so that they will benefit? Who will advise the farmers on which applications they can make? Will it be Natural England?

On a positive note, I welcome the eight new agricultural attachés the Government have announced. Can the Minister say in what way they will actually help, for example, farmers in the north of England to reach export markets many miles away?

On the issue of crustaceans, he will be aware that this has had a devastating impact on those who fish for crabs off the north Yorkshire coast. What compensation can they look for, and what foreseeable future in this area of fishing will they have?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend, first, for reminding me that I did not answer the points made by the noble Baronesses on the Front Benches about tenants. I absolutely agree that we want to make these schemes as accessible as possible to tenant farmers. They are a fundamental part of the tenure of land that we have, from owner-occupiers, statutory tenants under the Agricultural Holdings Act, farm business tenancies, grazing rights and grazing on commons; there is an array of them. I agree with my noble friend that the legislation is a bit out of date. We have an organisation called TRIG, which is bringing together people across farming businesses to try to find a way of reform, although there is not agreement on that. My noble friend Lady Rock’s report has brought forward some measures that have already found their way into the Environmental Land Management Scheme and into Countryside Stewardship. We want to make these as accessible as possible for tenants, and I hope that the changes we made will please them.

I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s points on exports. I am pleased to see that we have recently agreed exports of pig meat to countries such as Mexico. This fills the gap created when markets were cut off for China. Our attachés, embassies and high commissions abroad will be working hard to secure better export opportunities for high-quality British food, so I hope that we will see a better future for that.

Plant Health and Trade in Animals and Related Products (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, the Plant Health and Trade in Animals and Related Products (Amendment) Regulations 2022 were laid before the House on 19 December 2022. Protecting our biosecurity is of paramount importance to addressing the climate and biodiversity crisis. By correcting deficiencies that have arisen from EU exit, this instrument ensures the effective operation of the biosecurity regime in Great Britain. The instrument makes amendments to plant and animal health legislation and, while the provisions in the instrument are merely technical amendments and not a change in policy, I must emphasise that the instrument is urgent.

In recent months, an outbreak of a plant disease near the Wales-England border highlighted an unknown gap in the legislation. This gap prevents the authority in one territory of Great Britain from establishing a demarcated area, based on the findings of a pest or disease in another territory. A rapid solution was needed to ensure that the legislation continued to allow effective action against this disease. Additionally, the withdrawal Act powers required to make changes in this instrument were due to sunset on 31 December 2022. We needed to address the identified deficiency before that date.

On the details of this instrument, these regulations correct the deficiency identified by allowing authorities to implement demarcated areas after a pest outbreak in another territory. They do this by making the following changes. First, they ensure that all relevant pests are included in the legislation for the application of demarcated areas. They also allow authorities in Great Britain to co-operate with one another in demarcating areas affected by certain plant pests. Authorities are then permitted to take measures in their own territory to control the spread of plant pests from a neighbouring territory. For example, a demarcated area could be established, and a restriction put in place on the movement of potentially infected material.

Amendments are additionally made to domestic legislation in, respectively, England, Scotland and Wales to allow notices to be served to establish demarcated areas in these instances. Given the urgency of this instrument, Scottish and Welsh government Ministers have formally consented for amendments to be made on their behalf.

Finally, this instrument corrects errors from earlier instruments made under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018; these amendments have been deemed non-urgent. The corrections include amending a retained EU decision to ensure that certain potato commodities from some regions of Lebanon meet stringent entry requirements.

An animal health instrument is also corrected to ensure the transfer of functions from the EU Commission to the appropriate authority in Great Britain. This will give the appropriate authority the power to change or establish specific rules on the imports of equine animals from third countries.

I am pleased to state that the devolved Administrations have given their consent for these regulations to extend across Great Britain, with some exceptions. Regulation 3 applies to England only, Regulation 4 applies to Scotland only, Regulations 5 and 6 apply to Wales only, and Regulation 8 applies to England and Scotland only.

As I stated previously to your Lordships, this instrument is urgent. As a result, these regulations came into force on 20 December 2022, except for the non-urgent provisions, which will come into force after the approval period for this instrument has ended.

In conclusion, I emphasise that these regulations ensure that effective biosecurity controls are in operation within Great Britain. They also enable co-ordinated action between territories within Great Britain to best manage the outbreaks of certain pests. I hope noble Lords will support these measures and their objectives. I commend these regulations to the Committee.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for introducing these regulations, which I broadly support. I have just a couple of points of interest.

I know my noble friend has visited—sometime last year, I think—Fera, based at Sand Hutton near York, which used to be in my constituency. I take this opportunity to praise it for the work it does. Presumably it will have a role to play in identifying any pest and the danger it might hold.

I would like to focus on the position of the Lebanese potatoes to which my noble friend referred. I think the regulations call for demarcation and for controls to be taken at the point of entry. On paragraph 7.9 of the Explanatory Memorandum, I sympathise with the department for the errors it has made and welcome this opportunity to correct them. It begs the question: if we are transposing these regulations into UK law, will they be subject to the retained EU law Bill? Will we ask Defra to lift them? I would be interested to know why we are being asked to look at them this afternoon if they are to be reversed later this year.

I know that it is a slightly separate issue, but it is very difficult to follow the retained EU legislation from looking at the dashboard. Defra does not appear in alphabetical order but has just shy of 1,800 regulations. I know that we in both Houses were involved in transposing these regulations into UK law, but Defra bore the brunt of the 2,700 or 4,000 regulations. I thank the officials for the work they did over a very intensive programme.

Paragraph 7.9 refers to ensuring

“that potatoes from certain regions of Lebanon meet stringent entry requirements.”

Did the checks take place at the port of entry? What is the normal entry route for these Lebanese potatoes? Do they come directly from Lebanon or through the EU? That is my first point of information. If they come through the EU, which is a strong possibility, I draw attention to the concern that the Food Standards Agency raised in its most recent annual report, Our Food 2021: An Annual Review of Food Standards Across the UK, which states at paragraph 8 on page 13:

“The UK Government recently announced that full import controls for goods coming from the EU to Great Britain would be further delayed and replaced by a modernised approach to border controls by the end of 2023.”


I am trying to understand whether that really is the case. If it is, it will put a huge onus of responsibility on local authorities. For information, I would like to know where the entry and route into this country is.

I also raise a question my right honourable friend Kit Malthouse asked in the other place. Ash dieback has taken hold of the country. I think my noble friend will confirm that we have ended the practice of exporting ash seeds and reimporting young saplings into this country from regions such as Denmark and Poland, in which ash dieback is rife. Kit Malthouse asked about ash dieback on Wednesday 25 January when this instrument was debated in the other place. It again begs the question: where are ash trees, whether saplings of bigger trees, being imported to? Where do the checks take place? That is crucial to ensuring that any diseased trees among these imports are taken at a very early stage.

I commend these regulations because there is an animal or plant scare or scandal roughly every 10 years. I think of BSE, foot and mouth, horsegate and, this year and last year, avian flu. The regulations provide the department with the tools it needs, but I have raised concerns that I hope my noble friend will address.

Pollution: Rivers and Beaches

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[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.

Environmental Targets (Residual Waste) (England) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Grand Committee

[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.

National Parks

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[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.

Environmental Principles Policy Statement

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 9th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I wish the noble Baroness a very happy new year and a continued position on the Benches opposite in future. We recognise the urgency of the challenges that we face, from the threats posed by climate change to the pressures on nature both at home and abroad. Defra is working at pace to deliver on this across a wide range of areas where we are trying to implement the most progressive environmental policy that this country has ever seen. Progress is being made in the area of this policy statement. We have now started the final stage of consultation with colleagues across government to ensure that all departments play their part in these policies, which will be presented to Parliament in the next few weeks.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on the draft environmental principles statement on the website. Can he assure us that this will extend to the commitment in the 2019 manifesto on which the Conservatives were elected that UK food will be produced to the highest environmental and animal welfare standards and that domestic food imports will also have to meet those high standards?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I can absolutely give that assurance; it is at the heart of the policies that we are implementing. The policy statement covers the five key principles which underpin our approach to nature, natural environment, habitat, climate change and how we feed our country sustainably.

Traffic-related Air Pollution

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that trees play an important role in improving environmental health? When might we expect the environmental improvement plan to be published? Ash dieback has had a devasting effect on many ash trees in areas owned by local councils, so has he made an estimate of the cost of removing ash trees damaged by dieback in our hedgerows and grasslands owned by local authorities?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not have a figure with which to answer my noble friend, but she is absolutely right to point out the value of trees. We have stretching targets for new woodland planting, which not only will help to reverse the declines in biodiversity and to lock up more carbon but will improve people’s health through both the air they breathe and the quality of their lives. We want to ensure that this is understood, not just by land managers but by local authorities and government departments which own a large amount of land. We want to ensure that everybody is part of the great national effort to improve our biodiversity and quality of life.

Restriction of Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Exemptions) (Fees) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, the regulations were laid before the House on 18 October. The Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2012, also known as the ROHS regulations, restrict the use of 10 substances that were commonly used in the manufacture of electrical and electronic equipment but which have now been proven to cause harm to the environment and/or human health. This is particularly the case when products become waste, with the potential for these harmful substances to be released into the environment or the workplace of those working in the waste treatment sector.

Businesses can apply for exemptions from the ROHS regulations if they need to use any of the restricted substances above the permitted threshold limits in order for products to function safely and reliably. Any such exemptions apply to the product rather than to the specific organisation that applied for the exemption. When the United Kingdom was a member of the European Union, applications for exemptions and the renewal of exemptions were submitted to and considered by the European Commission using delegated powers and the ROHS directive. On leaving the EU, this function was transferred to the Secretary of State by the Hazardous Substances and Packaging (Legislative Functions and Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, bringing with it new freedoms to determine the outcome of applications as they apply to Great Britain.

The instrument makes provisions to transfer the costs of undertaking the necessary technical appraisal and public consultations associated with it from the taxpayer to business. This approach is entirely in keeping with the requirements of the Government’s Managing Public Money principles. The charge is set on a cost-recovery basis. Such an approach is common practice in circumstances in which industry is required to apply for regulations, authorisation and licensing to comply with regulatory requirements.

The fee will be £39,721 per application and will be payable on exemption applications received from 6 April 2023. Most of those costs reflect the cost to the Government in contracting with technical specialists to undertake the technical appraisal of each application. It is important that a full technical assessment is made when assessing applications to use restricted substances above the permitted level that could cause significant harm to human health and the environment. That technical assessment will, crucially, include an in-depth analysis of any potential less harmful substitutes that could be used to enable the Secretary of State to make an objective determination on each application received. Applications for exemptions are typically submitted by industry rather than individual businesses, because exemptions are granted to products rather than the organisation that submits the application. Historically, most applications for exemptions are made by trade bodies on behalf of a sector, and we anticipate this collaborative approach to continue, with associated costs being spread across the relevant sector.

I stress that the fee is being charged strictly on a cost-recovery basis, reflecting the appraisal work undertaken. The amount payable will be reviewed regularly. I hope the introduction of an application fee will encourage industry to fully explore the use of less hazardous alternative substances before submitting full exemption applications. Noble Lords do not need me to remind them of the potential harmful effects of lead and mercury on human health and the environment, so we seek to minimise their use.

In line with published guidance, there is no need to conduct an impact assessment as any direct impacts from this instrument are judged to fall under £5 million per year. In any event, the only costs on business arising from this instrument relate to Defra’s appraisal of exemption applications. Costs on public bodies such as these fall within the statutory exemptions for which impact assessments are required.

This instrument was subject to consultation, as it alters existing policy. Unsurprisingly, those likely to be subjected to an application fee in future did not support these proposals. Our proposals are consistent with Managing Public Money principles, but in response to those concerns we have committed to consider the merits of recognising exemption decisions taken by other jurisdictions that have similar ROHS regulations to those in the UK.

The territorial extent of this instrument is Great Britain. This is considered a reserved policy, but the devolved Administrations were engaged in the development of the policy and are content. The ROHS regulations fall within the Northern Ireland protocol; as such, businesses placing product on the Northern Ireland market are bound by EU exemption decisions and, under unfettered access provisions, can subsequently freely supply those goods to the GB market. This does not represent a loophole, as suggested by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, but is about ensuring that businesses in Northern Ireland can trade freely in the UK. I commend this instrument to the Committee.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for presenting this statutory instrument. I read very carefully the conclusions of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and will go through some of the issues with this Committee this afternoon.

The Explanatory Memorandum sets out very clearly at paragraph 10.1 that a six-week public consultation was conducted which closed on 26 August. That is normally considered a holiday period. Certainly it is when I have always taken my holidays, as I tend to go to northern Europe and that is probably the last bit of good weather and bright sunshine that we might expect. It was a short six-week consultation; I think they normally last 12 weeks. Was there any reason why the consultation was shorter and not carried through to September, which would have given people more chance to respond?

Fifty-three of the 54 respondents objected to the line that the Government took. I will not read it out because it is there and everyone will probably say the same thing this afternoon, but I wonder why the Government overruled those who bothered to reply.

My noble friend said of paragraph 16 of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s response that this is not a potential loophole. I would like to understand why he and the department think that. If Northern Ireland, which is still part of the single market, can export these products to the rest of Great Britain, which is not, and those in Great Britain have to pay the fee, that gives those operators in Northern Ireland a commercial advantage, if I understand this correctly. I would like to understand the background to why my noble friend thinks it is not a loophole or a commercial advantage to the Northern Irish.

Previously, in its conclusions, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee confirmed that there is no payment for Northern Ireland operators and that 53 of the 54 responses were negative towards the Government’s position. I underline the uncertainty in paragraph 14 of that scrutiny committee report, which says that the view the department has put forward

“creates uncertainty and may be inconsistent with the Department’s declared intention to have a GB-specific, cost-recovery based system for exemptions.”

I take this opportunity to press my noble friend on that.

I have one last question. What will the position of this statutory instrument be under the retained EU legislation Bill? Are we coming back to revisit this, or is this the last time we will look at this statutory instrument?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The exemption is on the product, not the applicant, so yes. Some of these would be multinational companies based overseas wanting to export their products here. They would have to get this to do so.

I think that addresses the main concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. Trade bodies will be the vast majority of the applicants, not businesses. It is crucial that we drive behaviour change where it can be achieved. The application process requires the applicant to have looked at alternatives before securing an exemption.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, asked for examples of recent exemption decisions. Lead in solders in portable emergency defibrillators is one. Mercury in components of intravascular ultrasound imaging systems and lead in hexavalent chromium used for civil explosives in mining and quarrying are other examples of where this requirement will be used.

The Secretary of State could grant exemptions without the need for an application if the sale of essential equipment were jeopardised because of the non-payment of a fee. For example, if the supply of essential equipment was required for the health sector and was jeopardised because of the requirement to have an application, the Secretary of State could overrule it and give that exemption. I think that gives a lot of assurance to people who feel that, for example, our NHS could lose out on getting a vital piece of equipment.

The final question, quite rightly put, was whether this drives business away from the UK. It is normal for businesses to be charged fees for registrations and applications if necessary. As I say, it is important to note that the fees apply to the product, not to individual businesses. There is a track record of businesses working together to submit applications.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Can I just clarify that point for my noble friend? It is about whether there would be a commercial advantage in what we are pursuing, thus giving Northern Ireland a benefit.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

In Northern Ireland, our wish for there to be unfettered access is absolutely paramount. As things stand, businesses in the European Union will seek applications from here, as will businesses from beyond the European Union. It is vital that we maintain that unfettered access while we sort out the implications of the Northern Ireland protocol, which are very familiar to Members of this Committee.

I hope that I have answered all the questions. If there are further points that noble Lords wish me to comment on, I would be happy to contact them. I commend these draft regulations to the Committee.

Motion agreed.

Agricultural Holdings (Fee) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move that the draft Agricultural Holdings (Fee) Regulations 2022, which were laid before the House on 20 October, be approved. I declare my farming interests as set out in the register and point out that I am a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. I speak for England only. However, I highlight that we have worked closely with the Welsh Government on this instrument, and the same composite instrument was debated and approved by the Senedd on 22 November.

This Government believe in a vibrant and flourishing tenant farming sector. We believe that it is vital for the future of agriculture. A third of farmland in England is tenanted, with 14% of farms wholly tenanted and 31% of farms with a mixed tenure—that is, both owning and renting land. This variety in land tenure and the ability to rent land on a flexible basis is important as it enable tenants and owners to grow and adapt their farm businesses. It also provides a route into farming for new entrants, bringing new skills and ideas into the sector.

Many tenants and landlords work collaboratively and progressively to resolve issues that may arise during their tenancy agreement. However, sometimes, that is not possible. In those cases, our agricultural tenancy legislation enables either party to the tenancy agreement to apply to a professional authority to appoint an independent arbitrator to help resolve a dispute. It also enables the professional authorities to charge a small statutory fee to cover the administration costs of delivering an arbitration appointment service.

The current fee that can be charged for the appointment service was set in 1996 at £115. Inflation since then means that this level of fee no longer covers the costs incurred by the professional authorities in delivering the arbitration appointment service. The purpose of this instrument is to update the statutory fee on a cost recovery basis to £195 in line with His Majesty’s Treasury’s guidance, Managing Public Money. The increase was supported by 73% of the respondents to the Government’s consultation on this issue.

Although I recognise that this increases costs for tenants and landlords, it remains a relatively small statutory fee that is necessary to sustain the continued delivery of an important independent appointment service. The costs of running the service include staff time to assess each application for the arbitration skills and knowledge required to make a relevant match with a suitably qualified arbitrator, as well as conducting the necessary checks for any conflicts of interest to ensure independence.

This instrument also updates the regulations in line with changes we made in the Agriculture Act 2020 to include a wider list of professional authorities that can now offer an arbitration appointment service. This now includes the president of the Central Association for Agricultural Valuers and the chair of the Agricultural Law Association, alongside the president of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. This means that tenants and landlords now have more choice between different service providers, which will help to drive continuous improvement in the provision of an efficient and quality service.

In addition, this instrument includes a new duty to review the regulations every five years. Reviews will be carried out in consultation with industry to check that the level of the statutory fee is appropriate and in line with cost-recovery principles.

I am aware of the recently published report on tenant farming led by my noble friend Lady Rock. It includes recommendations on the operation and oversight of dispute resolution. I thank my noble friend and members of the working group for producing this report. I welcome it and its focus on supporting a vibrant tenanted sector. The Government are considering its recommendations and will publish a formal response in due course.

I also highlight that the professional authorities delivering arbitration appointments have responded positively and proactively to requests for improvements. For example, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors is in the process of implementing the recommendations made in the recent review by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, to improve governance structures, deliver greater independence of its regulatory functions and focus on its public interest remit. In addition, the professional authorities delivering arbitration appointment services have transparent and high standards of professional conduct that they expect their arbitrators to comply with.

I hope I have assured noble Lords of the need for this instrument, which will ensure that tenant farmers and landlords continue to have access to the appointment of an independent arbitrator when they need it, funded by an appropriate statutory fee on a cost-recovery basis. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the content of these regulations and thank my noble friend for presenting them. I pay tribute to the work of my noble friend Lady Rock and all those who contributed to the review that she conducted.

It is a little disappointing that my noble friend says that we will have a response only “in due course”. We owe it to the tenanted sector to have a response in real time and a date when that might be due. I regret that I cannot remember whether it is Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 tenancies that are for one year only or more, but I know that the Tenant Farmers Association has expressed concern that where a tenancy agreement is for only three or five years, it is simply not long enough for tenant farmers to make the required investment.

This is an issue very close to my heart. I grew up in an tenanted area in the Pennines where there are smallholdings—mixed farms with not a great deal of land. At one stage my brother and I farmed two fields, but I could not stand the excitement so he now farms them in his own right. My late father is no longer there to look after all the admin for us, so my brother is in sole charge as the owner of those two fields. These smallholdings are very dependent on spring lamb and stall cattle, that is bringing young beef on and fattening them up. Marts such as at Middleton-in-Teesdale, Kirkby Stephen, Thirsk and Skipton are very dependent on this.

I argue that, if anything, there will be more call on these advisers. I accept that there has not been a review for five years. It could be argued that the fee is almost double, but I think it is a reasonable level. No one has corresponded with me to say that they will not be able to pay this.

I understand that 60% of all land in England is farmed by tenant farmers. Certainly in North Yorkshire, where I was an MP for 18 years, 48% of the farms are tenanted. This is a very big sector, so I would like to press my noble friend by asking whether the fees will cover all eventual disputes in this area. For example, will they cover potential eviction from the tenanted farm if the fee could be used to be represented in an arbitration procedure?

Similarly, the landowner may seek to take back the farmland if they wish to plant trees, for example. I know that my noble friend and the department are very keen on that but, from what we have seen in Cumbria and Wales, it is not always ideal to be taking land that has been actively farmed—particularly when our food supply chains are under pressure of being in an emergency situation, as we hear this morning, with the NFU calling on the Government to take urgent action in that regard.

My heart goes out to tenant farmers at this time. The fees proposed in this statutory instrument are affordable given the increase that the Government are seeking. I welcome the fact that there could be a five- yearly review; I think I saw that in paragraph 7.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum. Can my noble friend say in precisely which circumstances the fee would be applied and assure us that the tenants will have recourse to a professional authority in the circumstances that I outlined?

Sustainable Farming Incentive Grants

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 5th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not accept that there has been a delay, with respect to the noble Baroness. We are tapering out the basic payment scheme—which is understood right across this House as being bad for both the environment and farmers, particularly smaller ones—and replacing it with a scheme through which farmers are starting to see how they can fill the gap created by that taper down. As things stand, the standards that we have published give farmers roughly between £22 and £60 per hectare. We are going to roll out another four standards next year, another five the year after and another five the year after that. There has been no greater degree of consultation in the history of Defra in terms of how we have engaged with the farming community here. This is an iterative process. We have improved the scheme as it has gone on. The response we have had from farming organisations and individual farmers has been positive.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Will my noble friend join me in paying tribute to tenant farmers? In north Yorkshire, 48% of farms are tenanted. The farmers have done quite well under the existing schemes. What will they benefit from under the new initiative? Most of it seems to be environmental and, of course, they do not own land.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

It is absolutely vital that we have a strong tenanted farm sector in this country. It gives a plurality of land occupancy that encourages new entrants—that is, people who cannot inherit or buy land but can access farming. We have benefited from a really interesting report from my noble friend Lady Rock, which we are currently reviewing and which has more than 80 recommendations. We will respond in due course. Under the SFI, more tenant farmers can access this scheme than has been the case under previous schemes; this includes farmers with tenancies on a rolling, year-by-year basis. We have worked closely with the Tenant Farmers Association; we want to make sure that it can see a future in British farming in England.

Animals and Animal Health, Feed and Food, Plants and Plant Health (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 5th December 2022 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, these regulations were laid in draft before this house on 20 October 2022. The time that we have does not permit me to cover in detail all the amendments that these instruments make, but I shall do my best to cover some of the most significant points.

The first instrument makes technical amendments to various pieces of retained EU law and domestic legislation to ensure that they operate effectively in the following four areas after the UK’s withdrawal from the EU:

“Official controls and requirements on imports into and movements within Great Britain of animals, animal products, plants and plant products; the rules on animal welfare during transport; the rules on the marketing of plants and planting material; and the rules on the prevention, control and eradication of certain transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, a group of fatal diseases which include mad cow disease.”


This instrument also addresses various other deficiencies in retained EU legislation and corrects errors in earlier instruments made under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The changes are, for example, to

“clarify that the appropriate authority can create or amend rules on penalties for non-compliance with these regulations and relevant supporting legislation with regards to the Official Controls Regulation and Plant Health Regulation; streamline the process for designating an appropriate authority as a competent authority responsible for carrying out official controls; and replace the existing obligation for the appropriate authority to make secondary legislation to address biosecurity risks from imports of animals and animal products with a power to make secondary legislation, helping to protect biosecurity by giving Defra the flexibility to address biosecurity risks through means other than regulations.”

The Plant Varieties and Seeds Act 1964 is amended to enable Ministers to make regulations via the negative resolution procedure to ensure that domestic secondary legislation, which captures the marketing of fruit, vegetables, and ornamental plants for planting, can be updated as required. This change will ensure that we can keep pace with changing requirements in this space. Corrective amendments make it clear to transporters, organisers, and keepers of live animals, that they must comply with the journey log requirements on protecting animal welfare in transport.

The second instrument makes modifications to the interpretation of 11 directives to ensure a continuing and fit-for-purpose imports system for animals and animal products entering Great Britain, to ensure that the legislative regime is up-to-date, enforceable, and easy to use. These modifications do not make policy changes. They are technical fixes to assist with the interpretation and application of the directives. This instrument also transfers the functions, including legislative powers from EU bodies, to the appropriate authority and makes the necessary changes to relevant import enforcement legislation.

Both instruments apply across Great Britain, although there are some exceptions. In the first instrument, Regulation 12 applies only to England and Wales, Regulation 13 applies only to Scotland, and Part 6 applies only in England.

In the second instrument, Part 1 applies across Great Britain, whereas in Part 2, Regulation 5 applies only to England. Regulation 6 applies only to Scotland, and Part 3 applies only to England and Scotland, with the Welsh Government having laid a mirroring instrument which applies in Wales. I will be testing noble Lords on that later; I hope it was clear. Both instruments also make a series of technical amendments to other pieces of legislation to ensure that they are fully operable.

In summary, the amendments in these instruments will ensure that official controls on imports of animals and animal products continue to be effective, that appropriate authorities have the relevant powers to make and implement necessary changes to imports legislation and that we have the legislative tools we need to safeguard our biosecurity.

To conclude, the devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales have provided their formal consent for these instruments. Movements from Northern Ireland or the Crown dependencies are considered internal movements and are not affected by the modifications and amendments laid in these instruments. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for presenting these two statutory instruments, which I support. I shall press him on a couple of issues.

Will both instruments definitely be retained and not excluded under the provisions of the EU retained law Bill currently in the House of Commons? Having done all this work, it would be a pity to waste it. In each case, will the Minister clarify which are the relevant public authorities?

On the trade in animals and related products regulations, as an MEP I spent many happy hours looking at the live trade in animals. As the MEP for Brightlingsea, I had the rather unfortunate experience of representing Brightlingsea when it closed down the live trade in Dover; there were demonstrations to prevent the live trade. My understanding is that it is still the case that one live animal is transported for every seven transported in carcass form, certainly from this country—now we are a third country, or third countries—to the EU. Are those figures correct, and are they still reflected in imports from the EU to this country?

Also, in the provisions of the regulations, is there a role for the Food Standards Agency in this regard? Whichever agency or authority it is, will it rely on notifications, or will it be able to do spot checks? It would be better for the Committee’s trust in the system—certainly my own trust—if it was able to do spot checks either on live animals or animal products, in frozen or fresh form. That would be very helpful to know.

I have two small further points to make that I am fortunate to have in my possession having attended the briefing from the Food Standards Agency on a completely different matter—its annual report for last year. Clearly, the regulations reflect the fact that, as a result of our departure from the EU, Ministers and food regulators are now directly responsible for food law for the first time in nearly 50 years. Therefore, the level of understanding, particularly at local authority level—not just when the products come into this country but when we are relying on local authorities to do inspections of food businesses at the level of outlets—is a matter of some concern.

Can my noble friend say how the Government plan to address concerns that I and others have? I do not want to put words into the mouth of the Food Standards Agency, but it has reflected this in its annual report, where it says:

“Firstly there has been a fall in the level of local authority inspections of food businesses. The situation is in the process of being repaired … but progress is being constrained by resource and the availability of qualified professionals.”


I understand that part of that problem is lack of skills and understanding that this is a potentially interesting and rewarding job. The endgame is to make the job of health inspectors attractive. The second problem the FSA raises is

“in relation to the import of food from the EU … To enhance levels of assurance on higher-risk EU food like meat, dairy and eggs, and food and feed that has come to the UK via the EU”.

Water Framework Directive

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 24th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I beg leave to ask the question standing in my name on the Order Paper and draw attention to my interests as set out in the register.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I too refer noble Lords to my entry in the register. This Government are committed to protecting and enhancing water quality. Reform of retained EU law will not come at the expense of our already high environmental standards. Our Environment Act has strengthened regulation since we left the EU. We have consulted on legally binding targets for the water environment, covering pollution from wastewater, agriculture, abandoned metal mines and reducing water demand. We are also the first Government to instruct water companies to significantly reduce storm overflows.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, while I welcome that Answer, of course storm overflows are one of the later pieces that will come into effect. We are in danger of creating a perfect storm: building 300,000 houses a year with nowhere for the wastewater and sewage to be safely disposed of. Does my noble friend agree that the European water framework directive, the drinking water directive, the bathing water directive and others played a great part in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher in ensuring the improvement of water quality in this country? Will he set out what the Government’s plans are, under retained EU legislation, to ensure that we maintain the highest environmental standards we possibly can, and that there will be no going backwards?

Sewage Discharges

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 14th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness is usually much more devastating in her attacks than that. She knows that 2050 is a date by which we hope to see the problem completely resolved. We are going to move very fast on many of the areas where the problem is greatest. As for the idea that we are going to continue to leave this to future generations, that is not the case. The Environment Act is one of the most progressive pieces of environmental legislation anywhere. It has water quality at its heart. The drainage and wastewater management plans will be reviewed again in 2027 to see if our ambitions are being fulfilled. We can change them with government direction through the water regulators, the Environment Agency, Ofwat and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, to make sure that we are getting this problem sorted. It is not a question of making a decision between people gluing their fingers to a road and solving this. This is a problem we can solve now, and we are doing so.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend agree that water running off the roads into the combined sewers is contributing to sewage going into watercourses? Will he make sure that the highway authorities are held responsible for rainwater run-off?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend makes a good point. The recent outflow at St Agnes in Cornwall, which rightly had a lot of publicity, lasted for 10 minutes, and there may have been some sewage in it. After 12 hours of rain, the vast majority was probably soil run-off from farms and run-off from roads. We are bringing in measures to continue to improve farming policy and soil management, and we are putting a lot of resources into this. But she is absolutely right that highways authorities and others have responsibilities to make sure that we look at this holistically, not just in one particular sector.

Avian Influenza

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I will pursue with my noble friend the Minister the question of what is happening in Scotland. There is deep unease that Scotland is not following the same measures as England. Will he keep this under review and use his best offices in that regard? The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, referred to the impact of migratory birds. How can we prevent the spread of wildfowl entering the system in future years?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We have a devolved system of government, and the Scottish Government have this decision in their hands. They will be talking to the Scottish NFU, Scottish research establishments and other interests in Scotland while making their decision. As I said, we are consulting them on a regular basis. On my noble friend’s second point, migratory birds are the reason this disease came to this country. It is a tragedy that is very hard to control because migratory birds are coming from all over Europe and beyond, and we now have the problem that the disease is within our own wild bird population. Whereas in the past it started to flare up at this time of year and more or less ended towards the end of February, it is now established in the kinds of species that I described earlier. All we can do is monitor this and see whether we can find areas of change. This is a flu—an influenza like many others—and, after a while, these viruses diminish in their effect, and great abilities to withstand their impacts start to occur. We must hope that this happens quickly. We are all united in this House in wanting this country to fulfil its desire to see no net loss of biodiversity by 2030, although factors like this make it more difficult. Nevertheless, these species can be extremely resilient: if we can get over this, their numbers can start to recover. I assure noble Lords that we are monitoring this carefully.

Water Companies: Pollution

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I take what the noble Baroness says about the level these sanctions are set at. If she thinks that there are areas that could be improved on, we will work with Ofwat to do that. She talks about this as though it is the only area of enforcement. Where water companies have failed to achieve their environmental standards and illegally pumped sewage into rivers, enormous fines have been applied, which have had a dramatic impact on the amounts of dividends that they have been able to award.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend estimate for the House the contribution that the 300,000 new houses being built will make to the problem? When will we have an end to the automatic right to connect so that we will have antiquated, antediluvian pipes replaced with modern pipes that can actually take sewage from these new houses?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Enormous amounts of money have been spent on new water infrastructure, but sewage companies are responsible for the maintenance and resilience of drainage and wastewater networks. To address current and future pressures on drainage networks, we are making drainage and wastewater management plans statutory through the Environment Act, so they will be consulted. They have to put these forward as a legal measure to ensure that they take into account the pressure of new housing.

Environmental Targets

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I think there is a collective clunk of realisation of what it would actually take to replace that. That legislation was created for an environment that goes from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. I am sure she understands, being the expert that she is, that it is a bit clunky when it comes to dealing with the bespoke environment of these islands. It can be improved, but in a way that is at least no worse for nature, and which preferably improves it.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, that “collective clunk” took hours of time of the Minister’s department and both Houses of Parliament. Is he saying that, at the stroke of a pen, the Government are going to write off all the environmental protections that we spent hours in this place writing into retained EU law?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

No, that is not what we are saying at all. Most of the protections we have are written into law in the Climate Change Act, the Environment Act and many other provisions that no Administration in recent months—of any form—have talked about trying to tamper with. The habitats directive and other measures are very important; we will not be able to hit our 2030 target for no net loss of biodiversity if we were somehow to sweep those away.

So, if we are going to get rid of them, we have got to replace them with something that is meaningful and bespoke for these islands, and that cannot be done overnight. The Government want to hit our target for 2030, our 30by30 target and many other measures that are written into the Environment Act. The directives we have transposed into UK law have got to be dealt with carefully and in a way that results in no net loss of benefit for the environment, preferably improving it.

Environment Act 2021: Targets

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Soils are a fundamental part of our environmental land management schemes. The soil standard in the sustainable farming incentive is key to getting those ecological systems functioning properly and to their not being viewed, as they have too often been in recent decades, as just a medium into which you can add synthetic products to produce crops or grow stock. Soils are absolutely fundamental, as is our peat standard. There will be targets to restore peatland and ensure that soils are properly functioning ecosystems. The noble Baroness is absolutely right to raise this issue.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that improving water quality is vital? Can he tell us where we are with storm water overflows and ending the automatic right to connect?

Food: Imports and Security

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 24th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question in my name on the Order Paper and refer to my interests as set out in the register.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary 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 depreciation of the pound should not have a direct impact on household food security; however, it may have an indirect effect if increased import costs cause the price of food to rise. It is not for His Majesty’s Government to set retail food prices. Through regular engagement, Defra will continue to work with food retailers to explore the range of measures they can take to ensure the availability of affordable food.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Given the unprecedented food inflation we have seen—the highest level for 40 years—and the fact that farmers and consumers are facing unprecedented challenges, will my noble friend the Minister take this opportunity to boost farm productivity at home to stabilise food security and to boost self-sufficiency in food, which for fruit and vegetables is a woeful 16%? This is a one-off opportunity to help farmers and consumers with both their budgets and food productivity and growth.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, we enjoy a high degree of domestic food security and self-sufficiency but we are not complacent about it. We have responded to recent events, as in the food strategy, putting food security at the heart of the Government’s vision for the food sector. It is absolutely our intention to help farmers become much more productive in the two sectors that the noble Baroness mentioned, particularly in horticulture but also in areas such as seafood. Our farming reforms are designed to support farmers to produce food sustainably and productively alongside delivering environmental improvements, which of course we all benefit from.

Nitrate-free Bacon and Ham

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I think the company to which the noble Baroness refers produces something called Better Naked, which is a very worthy product and has a lot of innovative approaches. However, we are following the evidence on this: while the IARC published a report that said that processed meats can be carcinogenic in some cases, it does not make a direct link between the consumption of nitrates and nitrites in processed meats and colorectal cancer. We must be very mindful of the fact that these products in meats inhibit the growth of conditions such as clostridium botulinum, which can of course be fatal.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend accept that the pig industry is suffering a crisis that is unprecedented in its history? Will he join me in regretting the closure of the Vale of Mowbray facility at Leeming Bar—a 100 year-old facility involved in world-famous pork pies—with the loss of 171 jobs? What future does he see for the pig industry in this country going forward?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We want a good future for the pig industry, which has struggled for many years. As a Government we have stepped in where we can: we introduced more visas for butchers, private storage aid and the slaughter incentive payment scheme. Over 760 tonnes of pigmeat was put into the Government’s freezer storage plan, and this has ended, to the greatest extent, the backlog of pigmeat that was on farms.

Water Companies: Environmental Pollution

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The Environment Agency is part of Defra, so absolutely I agree with what the chair of the Environment Agency said in relation to a report that was published on Thursday. I shall read a section of it:

“The sector’s performance on pollution was shocking, much worse than previous years … Company directors let this occur and it is simply unacceptable. Over the years the public have seen water company executives and investors rewarded handsomely while the environment pays the price. The water companies are behaving like this for a simple reason: because they can. We intend to make it too painful for them to continue as they are.”


That report speaks for the Government.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that there would be less environmental pollution if developers were not allowed to connect wastewater to inappropriate pipes? When will my noble friend enforce the provision to make sure that water companies will be allowed to invest in adequate pipes and force developers to create natural flood prevention schemes to stop wastewater entering rivers in the first place? It is an unacceptable situation and developers must be prevented from contributing to it.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend will be pleased to know that we are undertaking a review of the case for implementing Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act. We will report on this in September, and I hope that will bring my noble friend to the realisation that the Government are determined to act on it.

Food Strategy White Paper

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 7th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I always defer to the noble Baroness because of her great experience and passion on this issue. However, this is absolutely a cross-government initiative. We have set up our cross-government food group, which brings together senior civil servants across government departments and the FSA to examine our strategy and monitor it on key delivery points. We will bring together the monitoring and evaluation of individual policies to enable us, and the wider population, to evaluate the food strategy and how we are performing against our targets.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend explain how the food strategy addresses the very urgent need to increase our self-sufficiency in food, particularly the parlous state of fruit and vegetable production in this country?

Plant Health etc. (Miscellaneous Fees) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Grand Committee

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

My Lords, this instrument makes amendments to plant health fees established in the Plant Health etc. (Fees) (England) Regulations 2018 to ensure that there is no underrecovery or overrecovery of costs.

First, it ensures that the fees charged for plant health checks on regulated commodities imported into England from all third countries reflect the frequencies of those checks established under the new risk-targeted inspection scheme set out in the Official Controls (Plant Health) (Frequency of Checks) Regulations 2022, which will be laid in Parliament on 30 June and apply from July 2022. This approach to fees does not apply to a new flat rate fee, which this instrument also introduces and which I will discuss shortly.

It is our responsibility to protect biosecurity across plant and animal health and the wider ecosystem. To that end, plant health checks, encompassing documentary, identity and physical checks, are carried out on certain regulated consignments imported into England from third countries that may carry pests or diseases that could pose a risk to our biosecurity.

Currently, the highest-risk commodities are subject to 100% plant health checks. The level of identity and physical checks on other commodities is based on risk. The new risk-targeted inspection scheme will provide a risk-based method to determine the frequency of plant health checks, focusing specifically on risks to GB biosecurity. This scheme will apply equally to certain regulated imports from non-EU countries and from EU member states, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

It is UK government policy to charge for many publicly provided goods and services. The standard approach is to set fees to recover the full costs of service delivery. This relieves the general taxpayer of costs so that they are borne by users who benefit from a service. This allows for a more equitable distribution of public resources and enables lower public expenditure and borrowing.

Charging for plant health services is consistent with the principle that businesses using these services should bear the costs of any measures to prevent harm that businesses might otherwise cause by their actions or non-actions, since most serious plant pests and diseases that arrive and spread in this country do so via commercial trade in plants and plant produce.

In line with the standard approach that the full cost of service delivery be recovered from businesses using these services, fees for physical and identity checks will reflect the frequencies established under the Official Controls (Plant Health) (Frequency of Checks) Regulations 2022. For commodities subject to reduced levels of physical and identity checks, a proportionally reduced fee is applied.

This statutory instrument applies to England only. The Scottish and Welsh Governments are following the same approach in terms of applying fees to recover the full costs of their respective inspections. The Scottish and Welsh Governments laid corresponding legislation on 20 May and 21 June respectively.

Secondly, this instrument provides for a flat rate fee on certain plants for plants imported to England from all third countries. The new risk-targeted inspection regime will see plants intended for final users subjected to lower frequencies of checks, compared with 100% frequencies for plants not intended for final users. This flat rate fee aims to prevent plants that have completed their production stage in a third country and are ready to be sold to consumers after import benefiting from a cost advantage over plants imported to complete their production in Great Britain, while maintaining full cost recovery. The policy for a flat rate fee was proposed following stakeholder concerns. The Welsh Government have laid a similar piece of legislation to implement the flat rate fee.

We have worked closely with industry bodies, including the Horticultural Trades Association and the National Farmers’ Union, on developing our approach to the flat rate fee. Following a consultation, it was decided that a new flat rate fee should be applied to plants for planting and cuttings. After feedback that a switch to a flat rate fee would significantly increase fees for importing bulbs and seeds for the final user, we have restricted the flat rate fee to commodities where there is a clear benefit to trade. This excludes bulbs and seeds from the proposed flat rate fee.

Thirdly, this instrument extends an exemption from the payment of fees for pre-export and export certification services where goods are moving from England to a business or private individual in Northern Ireland. This will continue to enable trade between England and Northern Ireland in line with the Government’s movement assistance scheme. The Welsh and Scottish Governments are extending these exemptions in a similar fashion.

Finally, an error is corrected to reinstate in the fees regulations a provision for fees for samples taken on imports, which was omitted by the Plant Health etc. (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021.

This instrument is necessary because it ensures that there is no over-recovery of fees charged for plant health checks on commodities imported from third countries and maintains the full cost recovery of plant health services. If this instrument is not made, it would lead to over-recovery of fees from businesses, which would mean that proposals agreed with stakeholders on a flat rate fee for certain categories of plants would not be implemented. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing the regulations before us. I broadly welcome them, but I have a number of questions.

Paragraph 12.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:

“The impact on business … is that these changes are estimated to save businesses c. £1.2m per annum due to lower levels of checks and subsequent impact on fees.”


Obviously, a lower level of fees will be pleasing for the industry, but I had not grasped that we are introducing a lower level of checks through this instrument.

One of the difficulties of this instrument, which my noble friend just introduced, was also set out in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s fifth report. As my noble friend stated at the outset, there will be a second statutory instrument at the end of June that will set out the regime. Why has the way in which the fees have been structured been separated from the regime? Why have we not had an opportunity to consider them both together? I would have thought that the regime was probably of most interest. When might we expect to see that statutory instrument, as today is already 28 June?

Am I right to assume that paragraph 28 talks about the inspection fees being corrected, as they are being reinstated, when samples of imported consignments are taken for lab testing to confirm the presence of certain plant pests? Can my noble friend elaborate on whether that is done on an ad hoc basis or responding to intelligence? Does it include such laboratories as FERA, which I had the honour to represent in North Yorkshire for the last five years I was in the other place?

Also, is this one of the instruments that appears on the famous dashboard that we heard about last week? Is it one of the 570 statutory instruments that is retained EU law or is it a stand-alone instrument? Will we come back to look at this in a different context? I welcome the opportunity to debate and approve the regulations this afternoon.

Water Companies: Sewage Discharge Monitoring

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The public are right to feel very strongly about this and we try to reflect that in the priority we give to this. The target will be to concentrate on bathing waters and special environmental waterways, such as chalk streams. They will be the Government’s absolute priority and by 2035, under our plans, we will have eliminated nearly all outflows into those waterways.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that if he introduced Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, the amount of discharge would be immediately reduced? What plans have the Government got to do so?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

From memory, I think that Schedule 3 refers to water companies being statutory consultees. I am very happy to follow that up with my noble friend in the near future.

Farmers

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I am absolutely convinced that farming is going to be a profession and a skill that will be much in demand in a hungry world. But the noble Lord is absolutely right: there is uncertainty because of commodity price spikes internationally and because of changes to farming systems. We are doing all we can to skill up farmers for a different world—a different world of support, in which they will be incentivised. We want to make sure that they do so in a way that reflects how young people want to go into an industry and to be skilled. I am happy to work with the noble Lord and other noble Lords on making sure that we understand how we can help farmers at this difficult time.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Can my noble friend explain to the House what specific support will be given to tenant farmers, who risk being ineligible under the new schemes?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, tenant farmers can access the sustainable farming incentive, which is the entry-level scheme. Where there are difficulties between landlord and tenant, we are seeking to iron them out with the committee headed by my noble friend Lady Rock, which has representatives of the Tenant Farmers Association, the CLA and others, to make sure that tenant farmers will be a fundamental part of future British agriculture. It is the only way for many people to get into farming, and we want to see it thrive.

Zoonoses Research Centre

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 24th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. This is a major threat and was identified as such in the integrated review. We are corralling expertise within government, academia and the private sector, and our priorities are around genomics research, vector-borne disease research and projects to improve the use of surveillance. We think this is the best way that we can abide by not only the Prime Minister’s commitment but the leadership Britain has given in the G7 and G20 to make sure we have a global response to these threats.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend pay tribute in this regard to Fera, the food science facility at Sand Hutton, near York? I commend the work of many universities outside the golden triangle of London, Oxford and Cambridge on this. Does monkeypox not show that just the sort of global framework argued for by the noble Lord, Lord Trees, is needed at this time and that Britain should be at the forefront of it?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am very happy to pay tribute to Fera, which does extraordinarily important work and is part of a wide range of different organisations— I apologise to noble Lords; sometimes it is like an alphabet soup—which we are trying to bring together, with their various different strands of expertise, to make sure we tackle all zoonotic diseases. My noble friend is absolutely right that monkeypox is one of them.

Food Price Inflation

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 19th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

To the noble Lord’s point about Odessa and getting grain out of Ukraine and on to the world market, it is of course a war zone. While this war ebbs and flows, there may be opportunities for the international community to get involved in precisely what he rightly points out is important. We do not know. However, I can assure him that we are working extremely hard with other countries and the Government of Ukraine to try to achieve this. There was talk earlier about trying to find some sort of land bridge to get some of this produce on to the world market, but that is more difficult. On his last point, of course the Chancellor deals with fiscal matters, but I point out that we have increased the threshold below which people pay income tax, which directly impacts many people on low or modest incomes. It is those sorts of things that have much more impact on household incomes than some of the suggestions that we have had to date.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend share my concern that fruit and vegetable prices may increase because there are no Ukrainian workers coming over? How advanced is the scheme that my noble friend is looking at to bring Ukrainian women and their families over, and would it not be a wonderful idea to accommodate them at RAF Linton, which has family accommodation for both the women and their children?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am not aware of the details of that last point, but we are working very closely with the sector. Our information is that there are concerns, but it is thought that they are containable and that the fruit and vegetables will be harvested and available for our domestic market. I assure my noble friend that we are monitoring this daily with the industry to make sure that we are getting this right.

Food Security: Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. We have to make sure that we are not, through our environmental policies, just pushing carbon emissions and biodiversity practices that we do not allow here to other countries. We are part of a global community. Our food supply chains are very complex and we want to manage them with our international relations and make sure that we are protecting our environment at home, continuing to produce good food and playing our part abroad as well.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend join me in paying tribute to our farmers, not just for putting food on our plates but for creating and protecting biodiversity? Will he ensure that food security is embraced as a public good and that tenant farmers will continue to benefit from farm payments?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We want the entire spectrum of British agriculture to benefit from the changes. We recognise that this is a difficult time for farming; it would be even if we were not going through the changes we are with commodity price spikes and the like. We are working closely with them and the food sector to make sure that we are supporting our British farmers and that they continue to produce food at the highest welfare and environmental standards now and in the future.

Ukraine War: UK Food Security

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I refer to my interests in the register.

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

My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register. I start by paying tribute to Lord Plumb. He had an extraordinary influence on British agriculture and on this place, and his voice needs to be the voice in our heads as we consider Questions such as this.

The UK’s food import dependency on Ukraine and Russia is very low, so the conflict is expected to have limited direct impact on the UK food supply. However, Russia and Ukraine are major global exporters of food commodities, so increases in international commodity and fuel prices are putting pressure on food supply chains. The Government are engaging with industry to understand and mitigate any impacts of the conflict on individual industries and supply chains.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I join my noble friend in paying tribute to Lord Plumb, who gave me my first job in politics in 1982 in the European Parliament.

Given the increasing threat to food security, and the fact that the Agriculture Act and the Environment Act were passed before the hostilities in Ukraine and the rising cost of inflation, will my noble friend promise to keep the phasing out of direct farm payments and the introduction of environmental monies for public goods under review to ensure that food production remains the top priority for farmers, to boost our self-sufficiency? Will he promise to keep market and supply chains under review, and will he take this opportunity to inform us about the programme for seasonal workers, particularly those in fruit and vegetables?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I absolutely understand people’s concerns about the current situation and its effect on farming. The basic payment scheme and area payments have had their day and are indefensible. Some 10% of landowners got over 50% of the BPS budget, and the smallest farmers—one-third—got less than £5,000. What we are proposing is different and it offers farmers much more choice to support their businesses. My noble friend raises a very important point about the market, and we are working very closely through the UK Agriculture Market Monitoring Group, which monitors UK agricultural markets, including price supply inputs, trade and recent developments, and we have increased our engagement with the industry. There is much we can do to support farming at this difficult time, and we will continue to do so.

On seasonal workers: we have 30,000 visas agreed and that can be extended to up to 40,000. Our current negotiations with the industry suggest that this is enough, but we are keeping it under review.

Veterinary Personnel

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Working in an abattoir or assessing the viability of products of animal origin is not necessarily why everyone goes into the veterinary profession, but they are important professions and part of it. We are working with the royal college to make sure that it is a career people want to go into. We are working with the Food Standards Agency, which is now going to recruit 25% of official veterinarians itself, rather than going through a third body, to make sure that we can career-manage them to stay in the profession and prosper in it.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the British Veterinary Association and congratulate my noble friend on the work his department has done. However, on the question of abattoirs, does not he accept that the shortage of veterinary workers is causing the scandal of the backlog? How does he intend to address that?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I think it very important to say that there is no threat to human health resulting from the shortage of official veterinarians working in abattoirs. There is adequate coverage. It is a problem, and we are seeking to address it in a number of ways that I have already stated, and others. I hope we can reassure the public that, while there is a shortage, there is no risk to public health.

National Farmers’ Union

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord is right to point out that it is vital that we protect the agricultural and food supply chain. We have powers in the Agriculture Act that allow us to introduce statutory codes of conduct that increase the transparency of business relationships and protect farmers and others from imbalanced commercial terms. We are currently exercising that in a number of sectors.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Will my noble friend join me in celebrating livestock farming in this country? He will be aware that much livestock production is conducted by tenant farmers in upland and common land areas. What future does he envisage for tenant and livestock farming?

Climate Change

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The Government have co-financed a number of research projects on this. It remains a technology that has potential. We are working to understand it, its viability and all its implications to ensure that our infrastructure in the North Sea can be used as we develop it.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that planting trees can contribute to mitigating and adapting to climate change, particularly to reduce the threat of flooding? Will he give an assurance that the trees that will be planted under the Government’s programme and ELMS will be fit for purpose and will not contribute to the possibility of flooding?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

New tree planting is absolutely fundamental to our new ELMS and environmental policies. We have very bold targets for tree planting. However, my noble friend is absolutely right: they need to be in the right place. There is incredibly powerful evidence to show that a tree’s ability to move water underground from the surface can enormously contribute to flood mitigation. It is very much part of our policy.

National Food Strategy

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 24th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The food strategy is an attempt for the first time to draw together all different aspects of the food system. I am very admiring of the noble Baroness’s work, not least with the Food Foundation. I assure her that the Government will take any measures necessary, legislative or otherwise, to implement this very well thought-through piece of work. I regret that it was not published exactly within six months, but it will be published very shortly.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on their work on the food strategy, and the noble Baroness and Henry Dimbleby on their work. Bearing in mind that we might be facing a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, will my noble friend update the House on what measures we are taking to increase our self-sufficiency in food and our general food security? What measures are the Government taking to tackle the immediate pig crisis that we face with the difficulty of manning abattoirs and their slaughterhouses?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The Government have gone to great lengths to ensure that the latter problem has been resolved. As things stand, we have imported enough people to help with the processing of pigmeat, although there are still problems. It is too early to assess the issue concerning Ukraine. Some 75% to 80% of our seasonal workers come from Ukraine. It is uncertain at this stage whether the current situation will have any effect on that, but we are watching it very closely and talking to other countries as well.

Water Industry Reform

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord raises an important point. Under the way we economically value water, it is extremely expensive to move it around the country, from areas that have a lot of rain to those that do not. That economic modelling will change very quickly if we continue to have serious droughts, and we have to remain open to moving water between water company areas in a much more joined-up way.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend pay tribute to Yorkshire Water, which has invested in such a grid for the region? Will he also ensure that, where appropriate, water companies and drainage authorities will be part of the catchment management system?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

There is a sort of grid, which allows you to move water from Yorkshire as far down as Ipswich, using a variety of different means. Following the disastrous situation in the early 2000s, Yorkshire Water created a much more balanced infrastructure, which has worked for it and needs to be copied by others.

Microchipping of Dogs (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Grand Committee

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

My Lords, the purpose of this short and simple instrument is to extend the sunset clause contained in the Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2015 by two years, until 23 February 2024. Without this instrument, the 2015 regulations will cease to have effect as of 24 February this year. This extension will enable the 2015 regulations to remain in force until we introduce a new set of regulations later this year.

The primary policy objective of the 2015 regulations is to improve animal welfare by increasing the traceability of dogs. This facilitates lost dogs being quickly reunited with their keepers. The 2015 regulations made it compulsory for dogs in England over eight weeks of age to be microchipped, unless exempted by a veterinary surgeon. The dog’s details must also be registered on a compliant database. The regulations set out the requirements which these databases must adhere to, as well as setting standards relating both to the microchips and to microchip implanters. Finally, the regulations give enforcement powers to local authorities and the police.

Under Regulation 18 of the 2015 regulations, the Government must review the regulations within five years of them coming into force. I must apologise to your Lordships that due to pressures within the department created first by EU exit and then by the pandemic, this review was published only in December last year, alongside a Defra-commissioned research report from Nottingham University which informed the review.

The review clearly demonstrates that dog microchipping has had a positive effect on reunification rates of stray dogs with their keepers. Before the intention to introduce compulsory dog microchipping was first announced in 2012, around 70% of dogs were microchipped. In 2021, that number was close to 90%.

The Nottingham University research showed that compulsory microchipping has contributed to a reduction in the number of stray dogs taken in by local authorities. This in turn has led to more of those stray dogs being reunited with their keepers. Battersea Dogs and Cats Home reported last year that stray dogs that are microchipped and have up-to-date microchip records are more than twice as likely to be reunited with their keepers than stray dogs without a microchip.

The review concluded that the current legislation is seen as an important and necessary means to achieve improvements in dog welfare by increasing the traceability of dogs and their keepers. The review, however, also highlighted areas where improvements to the micro- chipping regime would be beneficial. In particular, improvements could be made to the operation of the database system, a point raised by the Pet Theft Taskforce, which published its report last September.

Since the 2015 regulations came into force, there has been an increase in the number of databases that hold dog microchip records. These databases offer a range of services and provide choice for dog owners, but key users, such as local authorities and vets, have expressed concerns that this has made it more difficult and time-consuming to find the keeper details linked to a dog’s microchip number. In addition, to help combat pet theft we want to strengthen processes of updating a microchip record when a dog moves to a new keeper.

We are committed to addressing these issues, because we want to give every dog the best possible opportunity of being reunited with its keeper if it gets lost. We are working at pace to deliver changes, starting with a consultation that we intend to launch in March this year, which will pave the way for introducing changes to the microchipping regime.

Your Lordships will be interested to note that we announced last December that we will introduce compulsory cat microchipping, which will fulfil a manifesto commitment. As the existing microchip database system will also hold cat microchip records, we want to ensure that the database issues have been addressed before expanding the regulations to include cats. This approach is supported by stakeholders.

Our intention is to introduce a new, single set of regulations by the end of the year, which will incorporate the changes to the 2015 regulations and add a new requirement for compulsory microchipping of cats. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing the regulations extending the current regime and for highlighting what is to follow. He will be aware of the work that we did when I chaired the EFRA Committee, and I am delighted to see that that work has brought good effect. I also welcome the fact that the microchipping will be extended to cats, which implements the manifesto pledge to all cat owners and dog owners. It is very good news indeed.

I still believe that one of the best means of ensuring that prospective owners can ensure the safe birth of their puppies is for the bitch to be present at the point of sale, and I understood from our noble friend Lord Goldsmith that that is indeed the case. That, too, is very welcome. Undoubtedly, the regulations before us today, and the future regulations, have improved the animal welfare of the dogs that went missing and, as my noble friend has highlighted, have expedited the time when those dogs are reunited with their owners.

More specifically, will my noble friend tell us the timetable for the review, and not only when the regulations will come before the House but when they will take effect? I assume from his comments that the regulations that will replace the regulations before us today will take effect from the end of this year.

I record my thanks to the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, which shared the briefing with me about the regulations, and I would like to raise some of the issues that arise from that briefing.

My noble friend referred to the databases. My understanding is that currently there are only minimum requirements for a database to be compliant. There is nothing clear or obvious to a consumer that it is compliant or not compliant, and I believe that the consultation announced by my noble friend today to be held this year would provide the opportunity for that to be revisited. Would my noble friend and the department consider enhancing stipulations about database companies, making it a requirement for them to implement more systematically the process of information checking and updating to ensure the accuracy of their records? My noble friend said that compliance with microchipping is at 90%, which is very welcome if that figure is correct. When microchipping was first introduced, my understanding was that it was at 50%, so we have come a long way since then and it would be nice to think that we could close the gap on the remaining 10%.

Will my noble friend assure us this afternoon that local authorities will have sufficient resources, and indeed a legal duty, to enforce the regulations? Am I right that, at the moment, there is currently no legal obligation on any statutory body to enforce them? Will the Government produce best-practice guidance for local authorities, taking the practices that work best and rolling them out to all local authorities in future, and will they consider introducing the power to issue a conditional fixed penalty for non-compliance that could be cancelled or reduced once the keepers have complied?

I have addressed the point that there are apparently only minimum requirements for a database to be compliant. What duty is there for the database owners or the keepers to ensure that the database is regularly updated? Do they have to enter the information only once, as my noble friend suggests? What obligation are they under if they move house or the dog is sold? Who is responsible for keeping the information on the database updated, and what is the timeframe for that to be entered?

I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Trees, will address all the points of relevance to veterinary surgeons, but an issue that is of concern to vets is that there should be single-portal access to the database to prevent vets, enforcement and rescuers having to search through multiple websites after scanning to find a record. That would have significant time and resource implications if that was the case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am almost certain that my noble friend has responded to this point, but could he confirm that he said that if someone were to go to the GOV.UK website, it would show where the microchip was registered? That would satisfy my query about having a single portal. Has he also addressed how the Government intend to tackle the issue of dogs with microchips from France and other countries and the foreign disease risk that they represent?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That is a very good point. It was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Trees, and is very much in my mind as we tackle a range of new diseases coming to this country, particularly, unfortunately, with the recent importation of dogs from Afghanistan. We were told that these dogs were healthy, but it turned out that a number of them had very serious diseases, including Brucella canis, which we really want to keep out of this country.

We are constantly alert to the need for new disease provisions. Our biosecurity in this country is fundamental. Our new border control posts, particularly on the short straits, will soon come online, and this will be an opportunity to work with Border Force to make sure that we identify where risks occur. The rules on the importation of animals, particularly to tackle the scourge of puppy farming and the bringing in of large numbers of dogs for illegal trade in this country, are one of the provisions of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill that we want to see brought online.

Pesticides: Thiamethoxam

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I, my department and others mind desperately about antimicrobial resistance. When I saw the wording of the Question, I looked into the matter in some detail. The neonicotinoid we are talking about is an insecticide that is not found to be causally related to antimicrobial resistance. I will look at the Lancet article about which the noble Baroness spoke and I will take her points back. The Government take AMR extremely seriously and we are coming forward with a number of different ideas to tackle this problem.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend take this opportunity to update the House on alternative forms of production of sugar beet, such as organic and the work done by LEAF and Rothamsted institute in this regard?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Excellent work is being done and I do not think we will be having this conversation in future years. I very much hope we will not. Enormous amounts are being done through integrated pest management. There is a variety of different breeding techniques and husbandry for sugar beet. So I very much hope that there will be no need for derogations in future.

Environmental Land Management Schemes

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right: we can provide all the footpaths and access we want, but it is about getting people out there to use them and demystifying the natural environment for some people. I was interested in that report, as it produced the rather worrying finding that physical activity levels in the UK have significantly declined, in part as a result of Covid. Much more can be done to join this up and it is absolutely a job across government, not just for one department.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, may I raise access of a different kind, in connection with the ELMS: access for tenants and how we can encourage and incentivise longer tenancy agreements? Will the Minister use his good offices to interact with the Treasury to ensure that the tax changes needed for this purpose can be made in time, before the ELMS come into effect?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. There are ongoing discussions with the Treasury on a variety of different aspects of agricultural transition and reform, not least our exit scheme. But we also want to encourage a length of tenure which encourages people to invest in a wide variety of different activities in the countryside, including access.

Sugar Beet: Neonicotinoids

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness will be pleased with the progress made that will make these sorts of debates unnecessary in future years. The development of new, resistant strains and the work that has been done, not least at Rothamsted, will mean that we will not have to have this debate in future. We are absolutely committed to protecting wildlife, particularly pollinators—we understand their value—and these decisions are taken in a balanced and careful way.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Will my noble friend assure the House that all other alternative treatments will be deployed on such occasions as this? In particular, can he update the House on where we are with the organic production of sugar beet? I understand that there are alternative treatments, such as breeding aphids that will actually attack the beetle causing the damage to the sugar beet.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The concept of integrated pest management is hardwired into our 25-year environment plan and it is one of the standards in the new sustainable farming incentive, which is the first scheme we are announcing as part of environmental land management. So, absolutely, it is vital. There have been applications this year for any derogations for organic farmers.

Future Farming Programme: Small Farms

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 9th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for allowing me the opportunity to say: yes, precisely. We monitor farm incomes carefully and have data going back many years. The current area payments under the basic payment scheme are no friend of the smaller farmer: the largest 10% of farms in the country receive 50% of the money. We are trying to create a fairer system, and not only so that smaller farmers receive a fair amount. Many farmers who do not receive any—for example, 40% of sheep farmers—will have access to these funds.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Will my noble friend take this opportunity to correct the record? He inadvertently stated that tenant farmers had not complained about their status under the new schemes. If, as our honourable friend in the other place has said, legislation is required to amend the tenancy agreements, will the Government bring this forward as a matter of urgency?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for the chance to clarify my remarks made to her last month with regard to the Tenant Farmers Association. The TFA provides a constructive contribution to considerations on the letting of agricultural land and a huge input into our rollout of the new schemes. The Government are working to ensure that the design of our future farming schemes is accessible to as many farmers as possible, including tenant farmers. For example, we have designed the sustainable farming incentive scheme rules for 2022 to have shorter agreements and more flexibility to better suit tenant farmers, and we have removed the requirements to demonstrate landlord consent. We recognise that some agreements prevent farmers getting income from schemes because of restrictive clauses, and we are working with the TFA to correct that.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Report stage & Lords Hansard - part one
Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Perhaps I may press my noble friend, because I did not follow what he said about retrospectivity—or perhaps he did not say anything. Will he confirm that there is no retrospective effect? I listened very carefully to what he said about animal sentience; I hesitate to say it, but I think he is confusing animal sentience and animal welfare. I think the mood of the House is to keep Article 13 on animal sentience and let the other committee that is already set up to look after animal welfare do the perfectly good job it is already doing.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. I will not detain the House by repeating the paragraphs I have put on record in relation to the prioritising policies that the committee will look at. That will be for the current Government and the policies they are currently pursuing, and it will fulfil the committee’s statutory function under Clause 3. I went on to say—I hope this was clear—that the committee would not be doing its job properly if it sought to rake over old coals and reignite past policy issues that are now closed. My noble friend and noble Lords will know that words said by Ministers at the Dispatch Box hold sway when people try to interpret legislation. I hope I have been as clear as I possibly can be about the remit of this committee and the kinds of priorities it will look at. I hope that has reassured my noble friend.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Report stage & Lords Hansard - part two
Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for their valuable scrutiny of the Bill, and the envisaged structure and operation of the animal sentience committee. I will address the points raised in turn.

I start with Amendments 3 and 5 in the name of my noble friend Lord Mancroft and ably proposed by my noble friend Lord Robathan, concerning the membership of the committee. These amendments would limit the power of the Defra Secretary of State in appointing members to the committee. We believe that the Defra Secretary of State is very well placed to be responsible for those appointments.

Defra has a long track record of recruiting expert advisers to give balanced, reasonable advice on animal welfare issues. Appointments will be decided in accordance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments, and this is important. The aim of the code is to ensure the best applicants are appointed. Anybody suitably qualified and wishing to apply would need to be assessed alongside other candidates according to a rigorous selection procedure. Applicants would, in line with best practice, be required to declare any potential conflicts of interest to the recruitment panel. Your Lordships can be reassured that the process of recruitment of members to the committee will be rigorous and that members will be chosen on the merits of their expertise. This is what is needed for the committee to perform its role.

I thank my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering for her Amendment 4, concerning term limits for members of the committee. Before I get into the meat of her point, I will say that our commitment to supporting farmers is total. I ask her to read, if she has not already, a copy of the speech made by the Secretary of State on Thursday; it sets out our commitment to support farming and farmers, particularly in the upland areas that I know I know are dear to her.

I agree with my noble friend that the committee should benefit from fresh thinking and new perspectives, but this should be balanced against the risk of unnecessary churn and loss of talent. Setting inflexible term limits could prove disruptive to the committee’s work. It would be regrettable if a member’s term ended mid-report, for example.

Additionally, we should allow some room for manoeuvre in exceptional circumstances; for example, the ongoing pandemic. This was a point well made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, who may not have been referring to the pandemic, but her point was right. The pandemic disrupted recruitment to several organisations, and I would not want to take away the ability of the Secretary of State to apply short extensions to members’ terms if necessary.

We have sought to strike a sensible balance in the approach outlined in the draft terms of reference—I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for her points about that. Members would, in general, be appointed for terms of four years, renewable once. This is the standard approach for public appointments of this nature. These are the same terms on which we appoint members of other animal welfare expert bodies such as the Animal Welfare Committee and the Zoos Expert Committee. It is tried and tested.

Of course, there will be safeguards. As set out in the terms of reference, the Secretary of State reserves the right to terminate appointments if he or she considers that a committee member’s performance, attendance or conduct has been unsatisfactory, or if there is a conflict of interest which threatens the integrity of the committee. I hope my noble friend will agree that our proposed approach strikes the right balance.

I turn to Amendment 6, also in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh, concerning the membership of the committee. I agree with my noble friend that vets and livestock farmers have a lot to contribute when considering animal welfare. We recognise the importance of having experts with hands-on experience of working with animals on the committee. Anyone who is an expert in the fields of animal behaviour, animal welfare, neurophysiology, veterinary science, law and public administration who wished to apply would be assessed alongside other candidates via a rigorous selection procedure based on fair and open competition. We want to ensure that the committee benefits from a diversity of expertise, and we hope to encourage applications from a wide range of specialists.

That is one reason why we have sought to avoid being too prescriptive about the make-up of the committee, be that in the Bill or in the draft terms of reference. Also, the expertise required by the committee may change from time to time as the scientific understanding of the welfare needs of animals continues to evolve. It is important that the Bill leaves scope to adjust the committee’s membership as required. It is also important to avoid creating requirements in the Bill that are so specific that they lead to appropriate candidates being unable to fulfil the criteria. For these reasons, I would prefer an approach that encourages the recruitment of a diverse range of experts to the committee, rather than setting out too-rigid specifications in statute.

I turn to another amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh, Amendment 8, concerning the governance and operation of the committee. When we last discussed this amendment, my noble friend stressed that it is

“intended to be entirely helpful”,—[Official Report, 6/7/21; col. GC 298.]

and I am grateful for the constructive suggestions that she has offered. The draft terms of reference reflect many of the points raised in the amendment. As I have said, they make provision for the Secretary of State to remove underperforming members, and they also propose term lengths and performance management procedures.

My noble friend has said that her amendment is based on the text used in the Trade Act to describe the Trade Remedies Authority. I would argue that the committee’s role and remit is very different from the authority’s, and so provisions appropriate to the latter are not necessarily suitable for this committee. For example, there is no need to create executive and non-executive classes of membership for the committee. It will be the members themselves who prepare reports, with assistance from the committee’s secretariat. There is little need to codify any delegation of functions. In the committee’s case, it is the Secretary of State who should ultimately be responsible for its good governance and effective recruitment. The draft terms of reference make this responsibility clear. I would be reluctant to dilute this accountability by delegating such responsibilities as the amendment proposes.

We have proposed an approach that makes Ministers accountable for ensuring the committee is run well, while avoiding excessive red tape. We want a timely, targeted and proportionate accountability mechanism. This requires the committee to have sufficient confidence and independence to offer meaningful scrutiny, but without conferring legal powers and responsibilities on it which are not appropriate for a body of this size and remit.

Finally, I turn to Amendment 10, also in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh. I understand that my noble friend and other Peers have queries regarding the need for such a committee and suggest its functions could be subsumed into the Animal Welfare Committee—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, earlier. The two committees have different roles. The animal sentience committee needs to be established in statute to provide for effective parliamentary accountability. The Animal Welfare Committee operates very effectively as a non-statutory body that provides expert advice on specific issues set out in remits issued by the Government. While both committees hold expertise in a similar area, their roles are distinct. For the legislation to require Ministers to publish a written response to a report by the committee, and to lay the response before Parliament, the committee must be referred to in the Bill. It is on this basis that the committee has a legal persona, and this role could not be undertaken by a completely non-statutory body such as the Animal Welfare Committee.

The animal sentience committee and the Animal Welfare Committee will be affiliates sitting within the animal welfare centre of excellence. We expect that, within the centre, the committee will have a particularly close working relationship with the Animal Welfare Committee. The two committees may refer issues to each other as required. However, the function to issue reports on how well central government policy decisions have taken the needs of sentient animals into account can be undertaken only by the animal sentience committee, in accordance with the parameters set out in the Bill.

I hope that I have been able to reassure noble Lords and that they will feel content not to press their amendments.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, he has not explained why he argued so vigorously in Committee that, if the details that are now in the terms of reference appeared in the Bill, they might be subject to judicial review. His view must be that, because they are in the terms of reference, they are not subject to judicial review. In my view, they constitute an administrative act, so how is he going to get round this and avoid judicial reviews?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

If, as my noble friend suggests, we put details in the Bill that incorporated the types of people who had to be on the committee, and then if, for example, someone were off sick or had not been appointed or for whatever reason was not available at the point at which the committee wrote a report, that would leave the Government open to a successful judicial review. These are matters that we think sit absolutely in accordance with other committees that are set up across government, where the terms of reference are amendable without having to go back to legislation. This is a fast-moving area of policy and, in future, we may feel, after thinking about it for a while, that the terms of reference need to be amended. This allows, in an entirely normal way, the Secretary of State to make those amendments in consultation with others. I do not think that it would be wise to put it in the Bill because that would increase the risk of judicial review.

Water: Sewage

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am a great admirer of Surfers Against Sewage; it, along with Members of this House and others, has strengthened the hands of those in government who wanted to see that we have proper measures against sewage outflows. As I said in reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, we will respond on the timescale as indicated, in the early part of next year. We are treating this as a matter of urgency, and we want to hold water companies to account to react quickly to the new measures we are bringing in.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Will my noble friend confirm that the water industry welcomes the amendment proposed by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, as giving it for the first time the legal basis on which to make the necessary investment? Will the Government accept that the flip side to that is the regulations to be introduced under Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, which will introduce natural flood schemes such as SUDS to prevent combined sewers overflowing? When will my noble friend bring these regulations forward?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am pleased to tell my noble friend that her hour has come. The review is due to complete by autumn 2022.

National Food Strategy Report

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and I refer to my interests in the register.

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

My Lords, the Government have already acted on the recommendations in Henry Dimbleby’s part 1 report with the announcement of the Covid winter support package and the recommendations on trade last year, which included putting the Trade and Agriculture Commission on to a statutory footing. We thank Henry Dimbleby for his independent review, including his part 2 report, published this year, which we will consider in the forthcoming government food strategy to be published in early 2022.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

It was an excellent report, and the national food strategy advocates upholding our own high standards in food production and that imports should meet these same standards. Given the fall in our self-sufficiency in food and the fact that tenant farmers will be in breach of their agricultural tenancies if they apply for any environmental schemes, will the Government ensure that these high standards of animal welfare and food safety that our farmers meet are met also in imported food products agreed under any free trade deals, to prevent substandard imports from putting our hill farmers in particular out of business?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I think I can give my noble friend some assurance here. Tenant farmers will be able to take out agreements under the sustainable farming incentive scheme, which begins being progressively rolled out next year. The Tenant Farmers Association has not raised any issues about tenancies preventing tenant farmers from entering into new environmental land management schemes. My colleague Victoria Prentis, the Agriculture Minister, met with the chief executive of the Tenant Farmers Association this week, and my noble friend’s concerns were not raised.

Farming Rules for Water

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 1st November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness is perhaps referring to the amount of money the Government had said they would put into the transition scheme to assist farmers in changing their system to invest in better slurry systems. After consultation with the farmers, it has been decided to do that in a different way. We have the incentive fund, which is there for farmers to access, but they have said that they want the money spent on environmental measures to be looked at much more holistically across the whole farm, and that is what we are doing.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that the real emergency is giving farmers, particularly organic and livestock producers, clear and simple rules to follow? Is it not true that we simply do not know what the safe level of nutrients in the soil should be, so there should be no change to the rules or the regulatory policy statements until we have the science on which to base them?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We do have a lot of science on this. If we were to indulge in many years of further scientific investigation, it would be too late for certain rivers, which—I am using strong words here—will be ecologically dead if we do not take action. The rules are there and they have been set out in the code for good agricultural practice since 1985. We are working with farmers to make sure that we apply them proportionately and to assist them in changing their businesses to deal with what is a very real and present problem.

Organics (Equivalence and Control Bodies Listing) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Grand Committee

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

My Lords, for organic products imported from another country to be legally sold as organic in Great Britain they must be certified as organic by a third country or third-country control body that the UK has recognised as having equivalent or compliant standards.

The lists are currently contained within retained EU Commission Regulation EC number 1235/2008. Annexe III of this regulation lists third countries recognised as equivalent and gives the name and website of the competent authority for each country, along with a list of the control bodies operating in that country, their control body codes and websites. Annexe IV of the regulation lists third-country control bodies recognised as equivalent and gives the name, address, website, code numbers, applicable countries and approved product categories for each control body.

This statutory instrument was made to streamline the process of listing and accessing the details of the third countries and third-country control bodies that we recognise as compliant and equivalent for the purposes of UK organic regulations. The amendments made by this instrument do not constitute a policy change.

As the law stands, it would be necessary to pass a new SI to confirm recognition of a new country or control body, or for changes to existing recognition, such as changes to their name, website address or approved goods categories. With hundreds of organisations listed, this information can change frequently. When the UK was an EU member state, these changes were advised on by the European Commission and approved by representatives of the EU member states at the regulatory committee on organic production, not by the European Parliament.

Given the administrative nature of these changes, we believe that making numerous new SIs to reflect them would be disproportionate. The time taken to pass such SIs to update the lists would have a negative impact on trade in organics. Details held on these lists are necessary for port health authorities, local authorities and other relevant parties to ensure that the goods in question have been certified in a recognised third country or by a recognised third-country control body. The delay between the changes taking place and being reflected in legislation would result in discrepancies between the documents and legislation. This can cause disruption to trade, as even minor discrepancies may delay goods being checked at ports.

This SI will not alter the criteria according to which third countries and third-country control bodies are recognised. I would like to reassure the Committee that the process for allowing third-country products to be placed on the GB market as organic remains robust and follows highly technical criteria set out in the retained organics regulations: Council Regulation 834/2007 and Commission Regulations 889/2008 and 1235/2008. This SI simply seeks to move the lists currently referenced in legislation to the GOV.UK website, where they can be updated directly by officials. We will continue to uphold the high standards expected by UK consumers and businesses.

Our approach with this SI follows best practice in other policy areas, where minor amendments are made to lists on various topics without requiring an SI. For example, the register of protected geographical food and drink names, which determines what goods can be sold under particular names in GB, is updated by the Secretary of State on the advice of officials. These decisions are made by evaluating the merits of each case in accordance with criteria outlined in legislation. This change will also improve the accessibility of these lists for stakeholders by providing all the relevant information in a single location, removing the need to consult multiple pieces of legislation, a problem that stakeholders have raised in the past.

These proposed changes have been welcomed by stakeholders including UK port health authorities, UK organic control bodies—through the UK organic certifiers group—and the devolved Administrations at the UK organics four nations working group. International partners such as the United States Department of Agriculture have also welcomed the proposed changes.

The proposed lists on GOV.UK will be updated to reflect the terms of the trade and co-operation agreement, extending EU organic equivalence recognition until 31 December 2023 as agreed, without the need to pass an additional SI. Current UK legislation includes EU recognition only until 31 December 2021, so the lists will need to be amended before that date to be in line with the trade and co-operation agreement. If this SI does not pass, a separate instrument will be required to extend EU recognition to the end of 2023. If a new SI is not passed by the end of the year, that could cause a delay to trade and there would be a risk of political controversy.

A breach of our commitments under the TCA would potentially leave the UK open to retaliatory action from the EU, such as withdrawal of its recognition of UK organics standards, which would prevent GB organic goods from being sold in the EU. Given the importance of the EU market to UK organic producers, this would risk a severe impact on the sector and its contribution to the UK economy. The UK has committed to updating the lists of recognised third countries and third-country control bodies to reflect changes that occurred shortly before the end of the transition period but were not captured in the retained legislation. This includes adding, removing and amending some control bodies in Annexe III and Annexe IV.

Until this SI comes into effect, goods certified by those newly recognised control bodies risk rejection at the border and we also risk that goods certified by control bodies that are no longer recognised may enter the GB market. Delay to these changes would cause disruption to trade and risk a perception that we are in violation of our treaty obligations. Under the current terms of the Northern Ireland protocol, EU organics regulations continue to apply in Northern Ireland as they do in the EU. As such, Northern Ireland continues to use the list of recognised third countries and third-country control bodies in EU law and this SI will have no effect on trade in Northern Ireland. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for setting out the remit of the statutory instrument that is before us this afternoon. We have been greatly assisted by the 14th report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which my noble friend will be aware has a number of outstanding concerns that I will raise.

Paragraph 7.5 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that

“instead of laying new statutory instruments for new recognitions or changes to existing recognitions, the law be amended”

in the way that my noble friend outlined. It concludes:

“This will save a considerable amount of officials’ and Parliamentary time and allow for greater speed in updating information.”


I do not think that Parliament has ever asked for less time to scrutinise legislation. As my noble friend will recall, when much of the legislation went through under the treaties and the Acts taking us out of the European Union, concern was expressed at the amount of parliamentary scrutiny that there would be.

My first question to my noble friend is this. Paragraph 10.1 specifically states:

“The changes to the listing of control bodies and third countries have been discussed with UK control bodies … and with the devolved administrations at the Organics Four Nations Working Group.”


I am interested to know whether that was just one meeting. Was there the opportunity for the devolved Parliaments and Governments to raise any concerns that they must have?

My noble friend will be aware that, in this very Room last week, the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee met to raise a number of issues. His department was mentioned, as there are, I think, 14 common frameworks that relate to it. I might be wrong, but I do not think that Parliament has seen a single one of those. Obviously, it is of great interest to us to see what has been agreed. I mention that as background. I would like to think that the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish nations have had the opportunity for both their Parliaments and Governments to raise any concerns that they had.

I turn briefly to the issues raised in appendix 3 of the 14th report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee—the exchange of letters with our honourable friend Victoria Prentis, in the other place, as Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has done the House a great service in pointing out its concerns. I would like to quote from the report:

“These Regulations replace a legislative process for updating a list of third countries and third country control bodies which are recognised as equivalent in relation to organic standards, with an administrative process.”


It concludes that

“there should be parliamentary oversight of updates to lists.”

Will my noble friend explain to us this afternoon why there is the need for such speed in this regard? Can he convince us that there has been proper parliamentary oversight of what was delegated to the Government to perform this?

The report goes on to cite a letter from the Lord President to the chairman of the committee, our noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts:

“I agree that it is important that Parliament has the opportunity to scrutinise significant changes in addition to streamlining processes to ensure that the regulatory system best serves the needs of British businesses and consumers.”


Obviously there was a long debate about equivalence at the time that the legislation went through. Noble Lords ought to know my admiration for the organic sector and its importance to the rural economy.

I conclude by again raising an issue that was raised by our noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts with our honourable friend Victoria Prentis. On page 30 of the report, the committee sets out again its concern that the decisions before us this afternoon have been removed from the oversight of Parliament by switching from a legislative to a purely administrative process. I am not entirely sure that my noble friend has set out the context for why we will not in future be able to look at these statutory instruments, albeit briefly, or why we are losing the parliamentary oversight, which seems to be the nub of the concern expressed in the 14th report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.

Livestock Feed: Processed Animal Protein

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 6th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The EU made this announcement in May, but it had been under discussion for a long time—even when we were an EU member. It does not affect trade in Northern Ireland or in this country, because our current standard is the same as the EU’s. The EU is changing that standard, but it remains considerably higher, covering countries around the world from which we receive meat imports. This issue is not affecting the Northern Ireland protocol or any other aspect of trade with Northern Ireland. We have ongoing discussions about it with the EU at a scientific and animal health level, and will continue to do so.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

What does my noble friend think will happen to our meat exports from the UK to the EU, at a time when we may import meat from countries, such as Australia, which use hormones to produce beef and other methods that we do not accept here and are not accepted in the EU? Would it not be better, at this stage, to agree an SPS system similar to that agreed between New Zealand and the EU, to make sure that we can export meat to the EU?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I entirely understand the point my noble friend makes, but we must not conflate issues relating to trade agreements with this particular issue. We have the highest standard here, which was brought in in a very precautionary way, at the time of a terrible disease. Science, and our understanding of this disease, has changed. Our ability to track where processed animal proteins come from allows for a change in policy. We have not taken that step yet, but we will consider it in due course with all the evidence. We must not conflate it with the trade issues that are so important to your Lordships.

Managing Flood Risk

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to say that I believe that there is an incoherence in policy. We import woodchip at huge expense from the United States and other parts of the country to co-fire coal at Drax power station in Selby; I should be encouraging farmers in north Yorkshire and all around the country to grow fast-growing willow coppice trees to co-fire that power station. There are inconsistencies and incoherence in our renewals policy and we should visit those as part of our flood prevention scheme.

We have seen just about every type of flooding possible since autumn last year—coastal flooding, tidal surges, river flooding and overtopping, surface water flooding and, most recently, groundwater flooding. We know that all this has been the worst flooding incident in this country in 250 years, since 1766. This debate is the opportunity for the Department to share how the Government seek to adapt to more extreme weather events and how we are becoming more resilient and building more appropriately. Given what was asked at Communities and Local Government questions earlier, I am not sure that the House is entirely convinced that we are yet building in the most appropriate places—that is, not in areas that have something to do with flooding in their name or that act as functional floodplains.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

In 2007, 55,000 houses were flooded in this country. My understanding is that this winter about 7,000 houses were flooded. That is a personal tragedy for every single one of those 7,000, but I am not sure how my hon. Friend can claim that last winter’s flooding was the worst for 250 years. We had the worst rainfall for 250 years, but in the context of 2007, the flooding was nowhere near that scale.

[Miss McIntosh]

It was the worst weather event that we have had. My hon. Friend’s intervention raises the very interesting question of why the Bellwin formula was not raised for the roads, bridges and houses that were damaged in 2012-13. He is right about the number of houses flooded. I think that more houses were flooded in the whole of the Yorkshire region in 2012-13 than were flooded in total this year. I supported the bid by North Yorkshire county council to increase the Bellwin limit and I will come on to that in a moment.

My hon. Friend also raises the very interesting question—this supports my argument—of where the funding will come from. I absolutely agree that most of the flood defences held and that many more houses would have flooded than was the case. The House should celebrate that, but where will the money come from to repair those flood defences that held this time but that will have been damaged by the sustained bashing from the storm?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

I applaud the residents of Purley, because I have seen that approach work not only in my constituency but right across the country. The National Flood Forum has a cut-and-paste organisation for local communities to pick up and run with. It is a superb organisation with real knowledge and expertise. I know that the Department and the Environment Agency will also assist local communities in setting up a flood forum. The difficulty is that communities that have never been flooded will be flooded. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) that there will be new flooding, as we all know, and it is in those communities that we want lead local flood authorities to start getting voluntary action going, with flood wardens, parish councils getting involved and local communities setting up those sorts of organisations.

I am guilty of not responding to the second point my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) made, on whether we should introduce a statutory activity. I blow hot and cold about Pitt’s recommendation to create a duty on fire and rescue services to prepare and be equipped to deal with flooding. In my constituency over the past few weeks, we have seen Tyne and Wear fire and rescue service, Cheshire fire and rescue service, East Yorkshire fire and rescue service and many others, all coming through the centrally controlled asset management register, which brings precisely these sorts of assets to our constituencies when we need them, and they are still there today doing wonderful work. Something is happening, and perhaps more can be done.

[Miss McIntosh]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he did as Minister. Is it a matter of regret to him that we still do not have sustainable drainage systems in place? Does he accept that one of Pitt’s core recommendations was to end the automatic right to connect and make IDBs, water companies and others statutory consultees on future planning applications?

[Richard Benyon]

I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I was not aware that there was a time limit and will race through my final remarks.

Fishing Industry

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 12th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will join me in tasting some of that to see whether it is edible, and we could look at creating a new market.

As the hon. Member for Aberdeen North said, the key points of the next stage of reform include a ban on the wasteful practice of discarding at sea perfectly edible fish for which there is no current market, a legally binding commitment to fishing at sustainable levels, and decentralised decision making that allows member states to agree measures appropriate to their fisheries.

One of the most exciting parts of this reform is that for once we are going to focus more on the science—I think we have gone wrong with previous reforms of the commons fisheries policy because we have not done that. I am an avid watcher of “Borgen”, the Danish television programme, and I will include in my remarks one or two references to Denmark. I am half Danish—I am very proud of that—and I studied in Denmark. As part of our report the Committee had the opportunity to visit Denmark and see practices that I hope will transform the regional control aspects. Science is particularly important there because Copenhagen is home to the headquarters of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea—ICES—and if we followed more of the scientific base that it spends a long time producing, I believe we would all benefit.

The health of fish stocks is assessed every six months by ICES, and the EU published an overall assessment of its advice in October 2013. It stated—this is from a Library note so it must be true—

“that 39% of EU fish stocks are still over fished,”

but that is down from 86% in 2009. In spite of that reduction in overfished stocks, the assessment goes on to say that trends giving rise to concern include, for instance, the fact that

“the number of stocks under an advice to reduce captures to the lowest possible level… had increased.”

I am sure the Minister will wish to focus on that. Being optimistic, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North concluded, Seafish, the industry body for the UK, has said:

“there is reason for cautious optimism in the industry as we continue to see iconic stocks such as cod in the North Sea move towards recovery.”

We must not rest on our laurels, and it is essential we follow the science. Where I would like the science to lead, and where I believe there is an example we can follow, is regional control, and I have a question for the Minister about that.

I also worked for a number of years in Brussels in legal practice, and we must understand how we can get round the problem of fisheries still being an exclusive competence of the EU. If that situation remains, how shall we achieve regional control in practice? I believe that is a legal problem and not insurmountable. Again, I will turn to Denmark, because Denmark and Sweden have established regional control around Danish and Swedish waters that works extremely well. That is down to the size of the nets and meshing they use, and how they fish particular fisheries—I will not go into too much detail because it is well established. I hope the Minister will confirm that that model will be used. I understand that the new common fisheries policy brings decision making closer to the fishing grounds, clarifies the roles and obligations of each of the players, and ends micro-management from Brussels, and that the Commission will agree with fishing nations in the region about the general framework, principles and standards, overall targets, performance indicators and time frames. Crucially, however, member states within that region will co-operate at a regional level to develop the actual implementing measures. If it can be established, and all member states in the region agree to the recommendations being transposed into rules that will apply to all fishermen in the region, it will be a real game changer.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a superb speech. She mentioned two key elements to reform, but does she agree that there is a third? History might reveal that that third element—a legal requirement to fish sustainably, to fish to maximum sustainable yield—is even more of a game changer. Is that not a key reform that will get our fisheries back on an ecosystem management basis?

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful for that intervention, and it gives me the opportunity to record my thanks to my hon. Friend for the hours he spent on the groundwork to achieve an historic agreement. Sustainability is key, and sustainability will be proved by following the science. We went too far away from the science in the past; we need to hold to it in future.

Common Fisheries Policy

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 17th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I thank the hon. Lady for her congratulations. I would also like to pass on my congratulations, and those of everyone in the House, to the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) on his happy event.

On exemptions to the discard ban, we believe that the maximum 5% de minimis contains so many caveats that it will be used only in exceptional circumstances: where the discard plans are part of a multi-annual plan; where they are co-decided; and where there is scientific evidence to support them.

In certain fisheries, changes in behaviour can be driven only through a land-all policy, and we were absolutely determined about that: it is the right approach and one that has proved to be a driver for change in other areas. It should not take away, however, from the fact that the industry has made huge strides in reducing discards. Around the coast in all parts of the United Kingdom, there are wonderful stories of leadership from the industry. I want to build on that.

The hon. Lady asked about a maximum sustainable yield. We have committed to imposing one by 2015, where possible, and by 2020 in any event, and I will be very open with the House about our progress on that, but she will understand that it will have to be on an almost annual basis, as we announce our fishing opportunities each year. There is now a firm driver and legally binding commitment to achieve such a yield.

The hon. Lady also talked about marine conservation, which is an absolute priority for us. We have had conversations with France, through the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, because we do not want to look at this issue through the myopia of an English or UK solution; our approach has to be ecologically coherent, which means talking to countries such as France, Ireland and others. A provision in the text allows us to ensure that any conservation measures we introduce beyond the six-nautical-mile limit will have to be obeyed by fishermen from all countries in the EU. That is a big win.

The hon. Lady talked about the needs of the inshore fisheries sector. She will be aware that we have taken steps to improve the fishing opportunity for this sector, and we will continue to do so, although I am wary about this question of 96% and 4%, because the inshore fleet would not be able to access many of the 96% of quotas held by the larger fishing vessels. She is right that there is a disparity, however, and we are trying to address it. I can also provide confirmation about our plans to publish a register of who owns quota and has access to fishing opportunities in this country—I must correct that: they do not own the quota; the country owns the quota. This is a national resource. However, the register of who holds quota will be published by the end of the year.

I entirely agree about the importance of bearing down on illegal, unreported and unregistered fishing. It is vital that we use every tool in the box to stop people fishing illegally. They are stealing fish from legitimate, law-abiding fishermen. Technology is working in our favour, however: through vessel monitoring systems, e-logbooks and a range of other enforcement measures, we can protect honest fishermen and catch and prosecute those who break the law.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on all he has achieved and on the news that the register of quota will be published by the end of the year, which will help under-10s and others in coastal areas. Alarm bells started ringing when he said that legal effect would be given through either European law or national measures. Can he assure the House that where a regional agreement is reached, the Commission will no longer intervene?

[Richard Benyon]

My hon. Friend raises a very good point about regionalisation—and one that detained us a long time as we tried to find a solution. Under the Commission’s original text, which could have had a centralising effect, if the countries around a sea basin—the North sea, for example—failed to agree, the power to decide on the technical measures would have been taken by the Commission. We thought that that was wrong, so we developed—under the leadership of my Department, I have to say—an idea that found its way into the text. Under this provision, a measure becomes law where there is agreement among all the countries fishing a particular sea basin, and where they cannot agree, the matter is determined by co-decision. That is a much better way forward. Throughout these discussions, I have always said, “I would never start from here”. We are trying to improve something that is very, very wrong. We are going to make it halfway right, however, and there is still much more work to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 7th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I suggest that the hon. Lady looks at the facts of the schemes that we have just brought forward. These are schemes in many cities that have constantly failed to get above the line, but which, owing to partnership funding and extra Treasury funding, are now going ahead—in Leeds, Exeter, Ipswich and many others places. I understand the great concern in Hull, as it has suffered from flooding in the past, and I can assure her that it will remain a Government priority to build flood protection.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

T8. May I congratulate the Secretary of State on the progress being made on reform of the common agricultural policy? He must be aware of the particular difficulties of tenant farmers who are graziers on common land in north Yorkshire. Will he ensure that Natural England and the Department fully understand that tenants who are active farmers must benefit from the funds after CAP reform?

EU Fisheries Negotiations

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I would expect nothing less from the hon. Gentleman.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his sympathy about the absurd and ridiculous processes that one has to go through. With the reform of the common fisheries policy, we have a golden opportunity to end some of the absurdity, if not all of it. We can cease the ridiculous charade of a Minister like me discussing fishing net sizes with a Commission official perhaps 1,000 miles from where the net will be used. That is a technical matter that should be decided locally with fishermen. That is why our regionalisation agenda as part of the CFP reform is so important.

The system can also be improved through better long-term management plans. The cod recovery plan is a bad plan, but that should not dissuade us from pushing for more long-term management plans that are scientifically based and worked through with the industry, taking away from politicians the late-night horse trading and making the system much more evidence based. We want to see more of that.

The hon. Gentleman raised an issue about cod. Where cod effort continues to be reduced, the incentive is then for fishermen to fish as soon as possible after leaving port, and that might not be the most sustainable place for them to catch fish—it might be where cod are spawning or where there are more juvenile fish. We want to encourage them to go to the places where there are the larger fish that they can target sustainably.

The hon. Gentleman asked whether this will be subject to a legal challenge. It may well be—these things happen. I was very clear that I did not want the livelihoods of our fishermen or the sustainability of our seas to be the totemic issue on which inter-institutional rivalries would be sorted out. Therefore, the decision we took to support the presidency in sorting out this element of the cod recovery plan was the right one. It may well end up in court and I cannot guarantee the result, but we have secured a sensible solution for this year.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the advice of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. ICES looks at individual fish stocks rather than, as is the case in this country, mixed fisheries, so we do apply other scientific advice. On cod, we got ICES to agree that our rationale was right that if we had progressed down the route proposed by the Commission, it would have resulted in more discards.

Mackerel remains our absolute priority. It is this country’s biggest by-value catch and I am determined to do all we can to get Iceland and the Faroes back to the negotiating table and find a solution. If not, sanctions remain on the table.

I will write to the hon. Gentleman about blue whiting, because that is a more technical issue.

We inherited an extraordinary situation whereby we do not know who owns quota in this country, which is daft. We have set about our determination to resolve that issue this year, so I hope that at some point in 2013 we will be able to explain to the House whether or not quota is actually owned by football clubs and celebrities, as is constantly made clear to me. We have yet to find out and are working hard to achieve that.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the Fisheries Minister on enduring the final throes of an out-of-date policy. Could he assure the House that cod quota will be extended to our hard-pressed, initial under-10 metre fleet? That is extremely important.

On the common fisheries policy, it is music to the ears of fishermen that we are proceeding on the grounds of sustainability, sound scientific advice and, indeed, a discard policy that should work. Will he assure the House that regional control will amount to control by him and his colleagues for the North sea fishermen and, indeed, by the fishermen and the regional advisory councils themselves?

[Richard Benyon]

I thank my hon. Friend for her remarks. Yes, I can confirm that cod is an important stock for the inshore fleet as well as for others. It is welcome that cod stocks are increasing. That is in so small part thanks to the work being done by fishermen in all sectors to improve the biomass of this important staple of our diet. It is not entirely good news—there are still cuts to cod quotas in some areas—but the general trend is increasing. We need to reflect on the fact that 1 million tonnes of cod will be caught off Norway and in the North sea this year. This stock is improving dramatically not very far from us. It is not improving quickly enough, but we are working hard to achieve that.

I agree with my hon. Friend that sustainability is important, not just because we mind about the health of our seas, but because we mind about the future of our fishing industry. We want an increased biomass and it is through increased stocks that more businesses will progress and become more profitable.

I absolutely concur with my hon. Friend’s comments on regional management. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been banging this drum for a long time. We want fully documented fisheries where the technical measures that are currently decided by a top-down centralised system are decided locally on an ecosystem basis, so that in an area such as the North sea it is the countries that actually fish in it that will decide how it is managed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 6th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

The hon. Lady is looking at the Shark Trust’s greatest fan: it has done wonderful work. I am delighted about the recent vote in the European Parliament, and I hope that the hon. Lady is pleased that the Government have been at the forefront of this campaign. We have been leading the way in Europe, and we will now lead the way internationally.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

T4. I congratulate the Secretary of State on the work that he is doing in negotiating reforms of the common agricultural policy. Does he share my concern about potential delays owing to lack of agreement on the budget, and will he assure the House that farmers will have enough time to prepare for the next round of CAP reforms?

Fish Discards

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 14th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on what he has delivered and the progress that was made, particularly on regionalisation, which is music to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s ears. Will he update the House on the question of a register for UK fishermen so that we can tackle the problem of slipper skippers, which will also help with discards? Will he confirm that it will be fish caught against quota on which we will proceed, not just fish landed, as that is one of the main issues with discards? Will he confirm that there will be support for fishermen to invest in the selective gear that has been successful in Denmark and Sweden?

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her support. It is a priority quickly to overcome the absurd position that we do not know who holds quota in this country. We want to work with devolved Governments to make sure that we have that register as quickly possible to ensure that we know and perhaps to slay some of the urban myths that football clubs and celebrities own quota. I have never managed to find out the facts about this.

The important point on discards is that we know how to make this work. We begin with a really good experience of working with the fishing industry. Catch quota schemes will result in 0.2% of discards of cod for vessels in those schemes. We want to incentivise fishermen not to catch fish that they would otherwise discard. We want to make sure, too, that where there is a land-all obligation there are supply chains that ensure that those fish are eaten or go into other systems. We should not just transfer a problem out at sea to landfill. The most important thing is that we have time and a clear direction to ensure that we can use all the work that we have done with the industry to make this effective and to stop the problem in a practical sense.

Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 14th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

Bearing in mind the history of hybrid Bills in this House, and the length of time and the amount of dissent that they can involve, I am not sure that that is the path the hon. Gentleman really, truly wishes to go down.

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) and his colleagues for tabling the amendments, because that allows me to explain—and, I hope, to reassure the House—about the use and the powers of the clause.

First, I will address a couple of the points that the hon. Gentleman made. I assure him that I am happy to discuss the process with him and for him to meet my officials to see how it is progressing. He is a very honourable individual and he will respect the fact that because some aspects of what we are dealing with are extremely sensitive and are being watched closely by a number of organisations and, not least, the markets, we have to be extremely careful. I am pleased about how things are going. He also has the opportunity to meet representatives of Thames Water, Ofwat and others to express his concerns on this and related issues, and I know that he has already done so.

The hon. Gentleman asked which Ministers will make the final decision on such matters. The Secretaries of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and for Communities and Local Government will jointly take decisions on water and waste water applications. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government will take the lead on considering the Planning Inspectorate’s recommendations. My officials are due to meet his officials shortly to agree the process, and I am happy to keep the hon. Gentleman informed as that develops.

I should like to outline the practical problems associated with accepting the amendments. Together with advisers, the Treasury, Infrastructure UK and Ofwat, we are engaged in discussions with Thames Water over the financing of the Thames tunnel project. Those discussions are focused on reaching the right balance between protecting bill payers and taxpayers and ensuring that the project can be financed and delivered by the private sector. By necessity, a project of such scale and complexity as the Thames tunnel involves a complicated and lengthy negotiating process. I can foresee a host of practical problems in stopping that process at the point at which we feel that a reasonable package has been reached, which balances the risks and enables the project to be delivered, publishing a report on apprenticeships and a further cost-benefit appraisal, and then translating the agreement reached into a statutory instrument for debate in both Houses. Even if we can find a way around addressing potentially commercially confidential material in a published draft order, that additional regulatory process would prolong the completion of the project and add cost that is ultimately paid for by the customer. It would also create an extra layer of risk, with likely implications for securing and retaining the interest of investors in the project.

Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I am sorry, but I am a bit short of time, and I may be about to answer the point. Despite the concerns raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, Ofwat regulates the ring-fenced regulated businesses and ensures that customers receive value for money from them. Who ultimately owns that ring-fenced business makes no difference to customers; the licence conditions attached to the ring fence provide the necessary protections. Thames Water’s structure is similar to that of several other water companies.

We heard eloquent and passionate speeches from the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) and from the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), reminding us of the potential impacts of the tunnel’s construction on their constituents. I remain ready to work with them to try to minimise the impacts in any way I can. I am very conscious of the effect that it can have on communities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark and the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) asked for an opportunity to amend the waste water national policy statement. We are, of course, happy to have a debate on the policy statement, and, like other debates in the House on national policy statements, it would be a yes or no debate. Best endeavours are being made to ensure that it is held before the Easter recess, and I hope that that provides the necessary reassurance. As for the other project to which the policy statement refers, the Deephams sewage treatment works, Thames Water intends to begin the phase 1 consultation in about June this year. It is still working on a preferred option, and aims to submit a planning application in late 2013 or early 2014.

The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), the shadow Secretary of State, sometimes reminds me of someone having a fight in a pub when the lights have been turned out. She flails around in all directions, and causes as much damage to her mates as to anyone else. She had to intervene later in the debate to tell us that she was, in fact, supporting the Bill, which is a great relief. That was underlined by the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), and we are grateful for his support as well.

Despite the concerns raised by the shadow Secretary of State, the powers in the Bill are appropriately drafted. Although we currently have no plans to use those powers other than to assist South West Water customers and in relation to the Thames tunnel, we heard many calls today—including, again, calls from Opposition Members—for us to legislate to help reduce the problems of water affordability around the country, and to invest in new infrastructure to help make the country more resilient to droughts in future. As the water White Paper made clear, given our growing population and changing climate, our need for infrastructure investment will not diminish. We should leave ourselves the flexibility to offer similar Government support to future projects if the case is strong. However, it is inconceivable that any nationally significant infrastructure project would proceed with Government backing unless the case had been fully debated, as the Thames tunnel project is at present.

Let me repeat the Secretary of State’s commitment: we will publish a draft Water Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny in the coming months, and it will cover the remaining legislative commitments set out in the water White Paper. The market reform proposals in the White Paper will be a key part of the Bill, and are a direct response to Martin Cave’s invaluable report.

In the few seconds that I have left, I want to talk about affordability. One of the necessary provisions is the ability for us to issue guidance on water company social tariffs, so we can address the issue of water affordability nationally. The reduction in South West Water bills to which we are committed addresses an exceptional historic unfairness, but we recognise that many people in the south-west and elsewhere are struggling to pay their water bills. We are encouraging all water companies to introduce social tariffs to reduce those bills in order to help people who would otherwise struggle to pay them, and we will publish final guidance on the design of the tariffs in the spring.

My hon. Friends the Members for St Ives (Andrew George) and for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) were keen for us to expand the existing reach of the WaterSure scheme. I assure the House that we have considered that carefully, but, as Members will appreciate, we have to make tough decisions about the use of limited public funds.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Richard Benyon]

I am sorry, but I cannot.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot expressed the fear that not all household customers would receive assistance. We know that in some cases the bill payer is the landlord or manager, for example in a park home, a block of flats or sheltered accommodation. I assure my hon. Friend that we are working with South West Water to ensure that the money reaches the people, in whatever residence they live.

As the water White Paper explained, keeping water affordable is vital, but it is also vital for us to use water more efficiently. While there are many uncertainties in connection with the weather, the one thing of which we can be certain is that it will become more unpredictable. That is why we are taking action now, and why we are responsible for ensuring that we use water wisely so that we can retain a secure water supply in the months and years ahead.

I am grateful for the support of Members in all parts of the Chamber, and I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Water Industry (financial assistance) Bill (programme)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill:

Committal

1. The Bill shall be committed to a Committee of the whole House.

Proceedings in Committee, on consideration and on Third Reading

2. Proceedings in Committee, any proceedings on consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall be completed at one day’s sitting.

3. On that day, proceedings in Committee and any proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption.

4. On that day, proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption.

5. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on consideration or proceedings on Third Reading.

Other proceedings

6. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—(Mr Vara.)

Question agreed to.

Water Industry (financial assistance) Bill (Money)

Queen’s Recommendation signified.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill, it is expedient to authorise-

(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State by virtue of the Act, and

(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.—(Mr Vara.)

Question agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 1st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has come up with a novel means of negotiating decision making on fisheries management back to the member states. Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to amend the regulations, as part of the common fisheries policy, to end the micro-management from Brussels and enhance local decision making?

[Richard Benyon]

I will examine any suggestion that unpicks a system that has failed fishermen and the marine environment. I am putting all my energies into trying to get a meaningful reform that will enable the regional control of fisheries, taking this away from the micro-management by people who often sit about 1,000 miles away from the fishermen who are actually doing the work.

Fisheries Council

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I thank the hon. Lady for her warm welcome—I am attempting irony, which never quite works from this position. She really needs to understand that at the beginning of last week we were looking down the barrel of a gun at cuts that could have resulted from a penalty regulation introduced by the Commission. Its interpretation of the cod recovery plan could have resulted in between half and two thirds of the Scottish fleet being put out of business, the Northern Irish nephrops fleet being tied up for 11 months of next year and a great many other vessels and fleets around the country being put out of business. We argued that both at meetings last week and at the end of the week at the Council and we got things reversed. We did so by close working with Ministers from other devolved Governments, and I thank them for their efforts.

If the hon. Lady looked into the details, she would see that although vessels will have a reduced number of days at sea next year, what we secured, through our interpretation of the cod recovery plan, was the ability for them to buy back days at sea by the imposition of other methods of conservation. So she simply has not understood the difference between the control order that the Commission has now withdrawn and the remains of the cod recovery plan.

The hon. Lady asked me to visit the Western Isles. I have done so in the past but not in this role, and I will certainly do so in the future. My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) has reminded me that I am due to visit Shetland soon, and I see such visits as an important part of my job as UK Minister. She rightly says that there is an important social element to this, because the men who risk their lives to get this healthy and much-needed food on to our plates also support people in ports.

The Government remain absolutely committed to reform of the common fisheries policy. I sat up until 4 o’clock on Saturday morning arguing about net sizes, the gauge of nets, the Orkney trawl and eliminator trawls—such details simply should not be the subject of a management system where the people imposing regulations on the fishery are sometimes located 1,000 miles away from the fishermen who are supposed to use them. We must have reform that is more decentralised and that gets away from the micro-management that has failed. I believe that last week exposed a system that is obsessed with process and therefore ignores outcomes. The cod recovery plan is not working because the Commission sticks so rigidly to the process and the rules and regulations.

What we have achieved is a realisation from the Commission that it must start to look at the process, because the outcomes we all want to achieve are being lost. The hon. Lady is right that Scotland’s fleet has done many good things. It has led the way in real-time closures and selective measures, but it has not done so exclusively. Wonderful work has been done around the United Kingdom and we want to see it being brought forward. That is why we have secured the science budget, which the hon. Lady asked me about, to ensure that the information we can give the Commission is accurate. We faced 25% cuts in total allowable catch for data-poor stocks, but we managed to argue against that, not out of a blind desire to let our fishermen go fishing but because there was scientific evidence for it.

When the hon. Lady talked about last week, she talked as though Britain was somehow isolated in Europe. Nothing could be further from the truth. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is today at the Environment Council and she will have the same experience as I had, which is of a close working relationship. I built alliances with the French and the Germans, and, as I said, with the Spanish, the Irish, the Danish and those from many other countries. I can assure the hon. Lady that Britain is far from being isolated in these matters.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on his stamina and on delivering an agreement that was in the best interests of Britain. What does he understand centralisation to mean under the fishery reforms? I hope he will join me in wishing Denmark well as it takes over the presidency. Does he share my concern at the lack of science? He referred to the data-poor species, but we are proceeding with these annual rounds with a complete ignorance of the science about the stocks and climate change, warmer waters and the movement of species. Will he also give us an undertaking today that our inshore fishing fleet will not be disadvantaged in the future reform of the common fisheries policy?

[Richard Benyon]

My hon. Friend will know that I have been particularly keen in this job to see a better deal for the inshore fleet. I believe that the pilots we are about to start will show a new way of managing the inshore fleet and I can assure her that the scientific evidence we require for that will be vital. As we roll out the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and the marine conservation zones, we will see further investment in information about what is going on in our seas, on the seabed and so on, to ensure that we protect those areas as much as possible.

My hon. Friend asked about regionalisation and it is vital that we get this right. This is a once-in-a-decade opportunity, and, frankly, I do not believe that we will have another chance if we do not get it right this time. Decentralisation must mean an end to the top-down detailed decisions that I described earlier being taken so far from the fisheries. The problem we have in the United Kingdom is that our fisheries are complex. They are mixed fisheries with species swimming alongside each other, which means that if one species is targeted another is caught. Systems of management such as the cod recovery plan that operate from the sub-Arctic waters of the north down to the waters of Spain simply do not work because they are a one-size-fits-all solution and that simply does not work with fisheries.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I am pleased to report, if the right hon. Gentleman has not heard, that the Government are announcing Government buying standards at the highest level, commensurate with the Olympic standard, which is considered to be the relevant level of sustainability. Across Government, we will procure fish only from sustainable sources.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will my ministerial Friend agree that one of the most exciting aspects of the proposed reforms is regional control? Will he strain every sinew to ensure that we end the exclusive competence of the EU in this regard and allow regional fisheries to control their own waters?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

As someone who loves bats and is a reasonably regular churchgoer, I suppose that I am qualified to talk about this. There is a serious point: of course, we want to abide by the habitats directive and, in most cases, working with Natural England, we can resolve these issues locally, but it would be ridiculous if churches that have been used for worship for hundreds of years become unusable owing to a too-close following of the directive. There must be a common-sense way forward. I am happy to work with my hon. Friend in his capacity as the Second Church Estates Commissioner to ensure that we have sensible policies on the issue.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

At St Hilda’s church in a parish near Thornton-le-Dale parish, the bats are allowed to use the church but the congregation is not. Have we not reached a ridiculous state of affairs when bats have greater protection than the congregation?

[Richard Benyon]

I am aware of the issue at St Hilda’s. If that really is the case, we have reached an absolute impasse. We must consider finding an alternative means to provide a place where bats can roost and people can worship. That is one of the reasons why the Government have put all wildlife legislation in the Law Commission’s hands—to make absolutely certain that we are not gold-plating our interpretation of the directive. I assure my hon. Friend that I will work with her and any other Member if they find examples where we have hit the buffers and cannot find a way forward.

Flood Defences

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Richard Benyon]

That is a key point, and I will come on to talk about how we are reviewing the situation, principally in Pickering, and the implications that it will have for other areas.

The Environment Agency is responsible for technical judgments on flow rates and volumes. The Institution of Civil Engineers is the expert, and it is vital that we have such organisations. The Environment Agency has assessed with the panel engineer the volume of water that needs to be stored. My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton made a point about powers that I may or may not have to do with variation. Under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, the threshold has been reduced from 25,000 to 10,000 cubic metres. That is the area in which Ministers can apply variation, depending on the circumstances. However, that element of the Act has yet to be formally adopted. When it is, that variation will be in the power of Ministers. Under the current scheme, the Secretary of State and I do not have the power to vary the rates.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am delighted to be able to help my hon. Friend on that point; someone in the Institution of Civil Engineers has put it to me that that might be suitable for Ministers, but not under the 2010 Act. Its provisions and the reduction in rates caused shockwaves in golf clubs and farms. Those reductions have huge implications for future reservoir building, but that is not the purpose of the debate today. Under the 1998 guidance to the Reservoirs Act 1975, the Minister has the power to make an order proposing the scheme in Pickering. We have to balance removing the risk of river flooding with the slight risk caused by the presence of a reservoir upstream to the communities at Newbridge. He has the power; I urge him to use it before the House rises for the recess.

[Richard Benyon]

I recognise the point that my hon. Friend makes and it is now on the record. My officials and I will look carefully at it. However, that is not the information that I had when preparing for this debate, so I will take that point away and get back to her.

Let us look at the case that my hon. Friend raises, because it is important to understand the history. I apologise to other hon. Members who might wish to intervene, but I have only a few moments left. My hon. Friend called this debate and I want to be able to answer her points. Last September, an independent reservoir engineer was appointed to assess the proposals in the context of the Reservoirs Act 1975. The Act is designed to ensure that public safety is maintained. The engineer acted in accordance with guidance produced by the Institution of Civil Engineers. At that stage, the engineer identified the reservoir as a category A reservoir. That classification means that a breach of what could be an 85,000 cubic metre reservoir could seriously endanger a community—we have already discussed what constitutes a community. As a result, it is only right that the highest standards of public safety apply. At best, a failure would increase the level of flood-water, thus defeating the purpose of the scheme. At worst, a catastrophic failure would result in human tragedy. The engineer agreed necessary design standards that should apply in this case to maintain public safety.

In March, new modelling led the engineer to conclude that a higher design standard was necessary. In May, a second opinion was sought, again from an independent reservoir engineer. The second opinion confirmed that the Institution of Civil Engineers guidance on the 1975 Act had been correctly applied and that a higher standard was needed. That led to a redesign that incorporated the higher design standard of the spillway, to which we referred earlier. Inevitably, that pushed up costs. Despite the significant local investment already on the table, the shortfall in funding amounted to around £2 million. Frustratingly, at that level of cost, the scheme is not cost-beneficial under the Treasury Green Book rules. It is not my view that the guidance is wrong. That said, the case does underline the sense in reviewing the guidance. That is a firm assurance that I can give to my hon. Friend today. A review on highly technical guidance—I have already referred to the complexity of the document—is not a quick fix, and will require broad engagement. In the mean time, I welcome efforts to reassess these proposals.

The reservoir is clearly an important part of the plans for the area. That said, I know that many of the innovative approaches that my hon. Friend has described are continuing in parallel. It may well be that we can fairly quickly achieve a different scheme that complies with the Reservoirs Act 1975 and has a sensible cost frame and a sensible cost-benefit analysis result. All the work going into reviewing the guidance will not affect the implementation of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. If it does, Ministers will have the power to apply other criteria to assess whether, on the balance of risk, it is right that these schemes should go ahead even with the lower threshold.

The reservoir is clearly an important part of the plans for the area, so I genuinely applaud the real openness and innovation. There has been engagement with the local authorities, local landowners and many other partners, and leadership from my hon. Friend.

The Environment Agency and local partners are working hard to reassess the designs and to drive down costs. Other options that were originally put forward are also being discussed. Once consideration is complete—I expect that to be at the end of July—the agency is eager to continue working with local partners to explore what can be done while maintaining public safety.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 30th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I can give the hon. Lady that assurance. That is one of the attractions of this scheme, and is why it works well in other areas. We want to dovetail it into our planning system because it offers clarity. She is right to point out that section 106 negotiations can sometimes be a bit of a horse-trading operation and can result, in certain circumstances, in token biodiversity protection activities. This scheme offers a clear, understandable, auditable, accountable system. We are delighted by the response from a number of local authorities through the consultation process. More are now coming forward since the natural environment White Paper was published, as are developers. I hope that in the coming months we will be able to give her the assurance that she needs.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

There is, of course, an excellent pilot project that will bring enormous biodiversity benefits to Pickering, in the form of the slow-the-flow flood defence scheme. Will the Minister assure me that the guidance regulations under the Reservoirs Act 1975, which are preventing that project from going ahead, will be swept away?

[Richard Benyon]

I have just won my bet that my hon. Friend would raise that issue, and she is entirely right to do so. I share her concerns about the application of the Reservoirs Act and its implications for Pickering. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has visited the site. We want to do all we can to ensure that the scheme goes ahead, because we think that it is a good example of how biodiversity, slowing up water, and flood protection can fit together in many areas. We want her constituents to know that the Government will look into any means possible to ensure that such schemes go ahead.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I entirely understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point. It is worth applauding companies such as Princes that have moved over to line-caught tuna only. Many other multiples and supermarkets now sell only tuna that has been caught by sustainable means from sustainable stocks. I entirely endorse what the right hon. Gentleman said.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on the negotiations about discards, which is a wholly unacceptable practice. The Commission seems to be moving towards a quota for 15 years. Will he spare a thought for the Coble fishermen in Filey who have no quota, want to fish cod at the moment, but are unable to do so under the current regime?

[Richard Benyon]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point. We have to work off track records and historical fishing effort. I understand the many concerns of fishermen in the non-quota areas. They want to be part of a reformed policy and I will certainly consult my hon. Friend and Members of all parties to make sure that we take forward a long-term policy that has sustainability at its heart.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 17th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

I am very happy to tell the hon. Lady that our plans to roll out superfast broadband to rural communities will assist all entrepreneurs, including women, and rural areas will be able to see the benefits of superfast broadband in the creative industries and every other kind of industry. We have put £530 million over the next four years into that, so it will be happening very soon.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

T3. I wish to raise the whole sorry saga of the single farm payment, as administered by the Rural Payments Agency. One farmer in my area has not received payment since 2009. I understand that the target for March will not be met, that the accuracy of the figures remains woefully short of what might be expected and that we risk incurring EU fines. Can the Minister assure the House that that will not be the case this year?

Flood Defence Allocations

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The House will not be taken in by the crocodile tears of the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), whose Government changed the points system in 2005, depriving many towns such as Thirsk of protection from floods. Will the Minister give the House an assurance that any local levy he seeks to raise will not trigger the 2.5% increase that would lead to a local referendum? Will he work with the insurance industry to see whether local resilience measures for houses could be extended to business properties and whether a lower insurance premium could then be attracted?

[Richard Benyon]

We very much want to gear things towards a system where the benefits can be understood by people. That is why the payment-for-outcomes scheme offers so much potential; it offers clarity, for the first time, where the current system is opaque. It will allow communities such as my hon. Friend’s to see where they are in the pecking order, why they are constantly overtaken as our understanding of flood risk management gets better and where they are missing out. Thus, when people and businesses are benefiting, they may choose to contribute and get their scheme above the line. This approach offers her and her constituents a great opportunity.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 9th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

7. What recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of flood defences.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

The Environment Agency continually reviews the condition of its assets. Its target for 2011 is for 97% to be at or above target condition.

[Miss McIntosh]

The statement of principles agreed between the Government and the insurance industry is due to expire in 2013, yet many of the remaining issues, following the summer floods in 2007, are to do with the adequacy of insurance cover for homes and business properties. What assurance can the Government give the House that the statement of principles will meet the requirements of the insurance industry and that Government expenditure will remain at the level expected until 2013?

[Richard Benyon]

On the latter point, obviously I cannot prejudge the comprehensive spending review, which will be announced on 20 October. However, my hon. Friend will know, from the coalition document and our Department’s structural reform plan, the priority that we are giving to such matters. Under her chairmanship, the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will look closely at the issue. I have met with the Association of British Insurers, and I believe that my hon. Friend is joining us next week—or in the near future—for a summit with the insurance industry to talk about such matters. I assure her that the statement of principles is an absolute priority, and 2013 is a date very much in our minds. We want to ensure continuity in the future, because of the uncertainty for the 5.2 million households at risk from flooding.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Benyon and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Thursday 24th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. He has a particularly interesting project in his constituency: the work on the River Rother. I am very interested in it because it involves local levy funding, which is a very good way forward in times of difficult financial circumstances. We have found some savings in the budget for this year, and that is simply because the Environment Agency was ahead of the game in its targets for this year. I cannot say to the hon. Gentleman that there will be no cuts in the flood defence budget, but if he looks at the coalition agreement he will see that flood protection is an absolute priority for this Government.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

May I congratulate the entire ministerial team and assure Ministers of a very warm welcome when they appear before the departmental Select Committee? May I press my hon. Friend on flood defences for Chesterfield and other more urban areas? Will he take this opportunity to review the way the points are skewed in favour of urban areas to the detriment of rural areas, and make sure we restore more funding to regular maintenance rather than, almost exclusively, capital expenditure projects?

[Richard Benyon]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments, and it will be very interesting to take up these matters with her Select Committee; I know they will be of great interest to it. This is all about getting the balance right. There are circumstances in which rural communities can put together a very good financial case, particularly with a form of local levy funding, to which I have already referred. We also have to recognise, however, that spending must go to where it is most effective and can secure as many homes as possible from the risk of flooding. I cannot talk in specifics on such a general issue, but I can assure my hon. Friend that this is an absolute priority that we will take forward.