Environmental Protection and Green Growth

Debate between Lord Benyon and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Let me say with absolute clarity that we want to reverse the decline of biodiversity in this country, not just because we value nature in its esoteric sense, but because we value it in its economic sense as well. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I are working with organisations like the RSPB and many others to try to ensure that the strategies we have brought forward are effective and workable. The indicators suggest that, with the right commitment, we can achieve this.

[Zac Goldsmith]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

I urge the hon. Gentleman, whom I respect on this subject, to look at exactly what the Chancellor is doing. He should look at the £3 billion that the Treasury has invested in the green investment bank and at the commitment we have made on a whole range of other issues. I can assure him that if he did, his concerns would be allayed.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Learning how to value ecosystems is a prerequisite for tackling the loss of biodiversity and the environmental crisis generally. I am not often accused by colleagues of sycophancy, but I do want to say that the work in the natural environment White Paper puts us ahead of almost any other country in the world. It is work that should be absolutely commended and celebrated across the board.

[Richard Benyon]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, and I hope that Labour Members were listening to what he said.

Fisheries

Debate between Lord Benyon and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Westminster Hall

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

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Owen. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) for securing this debate. She spoke for everyone here when she said that this debate should take place on the Floor of the House in future so that we can give this subject the forum it deserves.

This is an important time for the industry, and I want to put the fishermen themselves at the heart of our considerations. I pay tribute to those who have lost their life or been injured in this dangerous profession. Fishermen work off a dangerous platform in a dangerous place, and too many pay the price for that. Bereaved families and many other parts of the fishing industry are wonderfully supported by organisations such as the Seamen’s Mission and the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. I echo other hon. Members in paying tribute to them and to organisations such as the RNLI and the coastguard for their bravery and courage and for serving our marine environment so well.

We tend to approach this debate with a sense of groundhog day, as we trawl through the same old arguments. There is a general ennui or depression about the way in which we manage the system, but there are glimmers of hope here and there. What I have detected in my time, both as spokesman for my party when in opposition and as Minister, is that there are some reasons to be cheerful, I intend to put all my effort behind those chinks of light to make them wider and clearer as we progress in the months ahead.

We face a very difficult time; let us not pretend otherwise. If I am asked to present in a sentence my vision for this industry and for the marine environment, I would say that we take an ecosystems-based approach, which was referred to in the GLOBE document. Such an approach has sustainability at its heart—sustainability of the marine environment and the ecosystems that we need and value and from which we get so many services, and sustainability for the industry, and the communities that it supports. Members from all parts of the House have spoken movingly about communities in their constituencies which are dependent not just on the, sadly, too few jobs, but the families, the processing industry and all its supporting infrastructure.

When I visited the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray)—it was the first place that I visited when I was appointed as shadow spokesman—I saw an industry that was surviving. It has had its moments and difficulties, but it has the support of a fish market, merchants, chandlers and many others. If one of them were to go, how viable would be the remainder? That is something that I frequently find as I go round the coast of Britain.

As we embark on the next few weeks, with the December Council and CFP reform, I have to say that I am supported well in this difficult job by some very able officials, who have so much more experience than I of this sometimes Kafkaesque process. There is a great sense of unity across the devolved Governments. If people want an example of cross-party co-operation, they need look no further. We have a Minister from a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government working with a Minister from the Scottish National party in Scotland, a Sinn Fein Minister in Northern Ireland, and a Labour Minister in Wales. I am determined that we should approach this round with a sense of unity, because it is only by working together and being on the same page that we can achieve what we need to achieve. I am grateful to all of them and to their respective officials for their support.

I will rattle through some of points that were made and try to respond to them in the time remaining. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan led the way in calling for regionalisation and an end to the top-down management of our fisheries and the common fisheries policy. She finds a ready and supportive audience in me. Earlier this week, I was at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council. In a discussion between all the Ministers and the commissioner, everyone who spoke mentioned the need for regionalisation and an end to the current centralised system. In the same way, people often talk positively about long-term management plans, but the proof of what is said lies in what is done, particularly with the current reform process. I sense that among some of our European partners there is, to quote Hilaire Belloc, a desperate desire to

“always keep a-hold of Nurse

For fear of finding something worse.”

I do not think that anything can be worse than what we have now. We must have a decentralised system, and that is what I will be leading on in the reform process.

The hon. Lady represents the two important ports of Peterhead and Fraserburgh, and my two visits to her constituency have proved to me the importance of the fishing industry there. I value the clear way in which I was briefed about her fishing interests, and she was right—as were other hon. Members—to point out the affront of discards. Discards are first and foremost an affront to fishermen, and they are increasingly an affront to the public and the consumer. I was recently interviewed at Billingsgate market by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, whom I congratulate on leading an important campaign to raise awareness of this issue. His questions surprised me, as he seemed to think that I would somehow be a Minister in a suit who would try to defend the status quo. He was surprised that I out-outraged him with my hyperbole and my opposition to discards.

We must look at where we can succeed. Some schemes have been mentioned today; the hon. Lady mentioned catch quotas, and others have spoken about Project 50%. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) raised that issue, and on three occasions, I have heard the commissioner quote it as a shining example of what can be achieved. I intend to build on those important points.

[Zac Goldsmith]

How realistic is it to say that we will move to a system of catch quotas? I have no doubt that the Government are committed to dealing with that problem, but realistically, how likely is it that we will see a change in policy?

[Richard Benyon]

I forget the figures for the English fleet, but in Scotland, there are 17 vessels in a catch quota system. That represents about 20% of that fleet—perhaps not; I cannot remember the exact figure. At the moment, that system is a trial. We tried to persuade the Commission—and we will continue to try—that we must move beyond a trial. We want to get every vessel possible into a catch quota system because, for reasons that I will mention, that is the solution. Fishermen are incentivised to do something that gives them more fish, ends discards and is a bottom-up approach. It makes fishermen part of the solution, and instead of being the battered person at the end of the line being hit by a stick, they are given a carrot to find a solution. I will go on to talk about mackerel, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan and others.

My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) echoed the point about decentralisation and I know the importance of nephrops to his constituency and the difficulties that are faced there. He rightly mentioned the difficulties of displacement. When we create a management regime that results in less activity in one area, there is a displacement effect. Too often, we have seen the malign effect of displacement round our coastline, and he is right to raise that issue. However, he sensibly discussed the world in which we live. I would love to debate how we got to this point, but that would be a waste both of my time and of the House’s. We should put all our energy into working with a system that we think we might be able to change. For the first time in my adult life and in the experience of people who have been in the House for many fisheries debates, we find the door open to a level of reform that we must try to achieve. I recognise that that is important.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) is an able chairman of the all-party group, which benefits from his knowledge of, and passion for, the subject. He rightly pointed out the importance of the processing industry. We must remember the jobs at stake and the importance to our food security of keeping the infrastructure that we require on land to support the jobs that we are discussing and get the product to market that our fishermen bring ashore. I think that he is rather depressed about the prospects for CFP reform. That probably comes from years of experience, but I hope that we can work with him.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Benyon and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Thursday 4th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we will use any means possible to resolve the issue, which has wider implications. Iceland is going through a process of accession to the Europe Union, and it seems a strange way to behave to tear up the rule book before joining the club. We are using a variety of mechanisms to try to put pressure on Iceland to operate in a sustainable way and protect a sustainable stock.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Does the Minister share the concerns of a number of farming organisations—in particular smaller farming organisations, such as the Small Farms Association and the Family Farmers Association—that plans to build a mega-dairy in Nocton will fatally undermine the viability of a great number of small and family farms?

Biodiversity

Debate between Lord Benyon and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Thursday 16th September 2010 Westminster Hall

[Richard Benyon]

As before, the hon. Gentleman has got it exactly right. Elsewhere in Parliament, Members are debating the strategic defence and security review. Part of that review involves how we will fund the type of operations being carried out in the seas off the horn of Africa. It is precisely because fisheries in those seas and agricultural systems in the region have been degraded, as well as the fact that the governance that supports a civilised society has been allowed to collapse in that region, that we now have to spend millions of pounds every year as part of an international campaign to counter that issue of piracy.

[Zac Goldsmith]

On that point, has the Minister been able to discuss the environmental causes of poverty with the Secretary of State for International Development? Given that the international development budget is one of the few that will be largely unaffected by the cuts—at least we think that is the case—it seems to me that there is huge potential to transform completely the way in which, historically, that money has been spent. We should start focusing it on tackling real environmental sources of poverty—for example, restoring forests to boost the water table and to stop women having to walk 5 miles to get water, or restoring fisheries to revitalise fishing communities, and so on. If the Secretary of State for International Development was to put much greater emphasis on the environmental causes of poverty, I believe that we might see some real progress in tackling these huge issues.

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs regularly meets the Secretary of State for International Development, but last week she met him and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. They were talking about sustainability and they are going to New York next week to talk about the millennium development goals. We cannot achieve those goals unless we have sustainability at the heart of our actions.

My hon. Friend points out, quite rightly, that one can achieve quick wins in international development: we can have a gift from the people of Britain of a pump that is put on some giant structure that perhaps pumps thousands of gallons of water every day into some irrigation system. However, we could have a much more sustainable solution, which provides a better deal for the British taxpayer as well as for that environment, by protecting the ecosystem that provides the water in the first place. I know that I am preaching to the choir here, but that point must be understood across Government and that is why sustainability must be at the heart of our actions.

The hon. Member for Brent North also touched on the issue of coastal erosion. He talked about coastal erosion in the gulf of Mexico, but I saw coastal erosion nearer to home last week, or the week before—the weeks are merging into one at the moment. I went to Norfolk and Suffolk and saw for myself what is a quite—I use my words carefully—frightening prospect for communities living in that area. During the last 50 years, the collective class of politicians has been party to a slight con of the people in certain coastal areas of Britain, in arguing that this concept of “holding the line” is achievable amid the modern pressures of our economy. The idea that we can ring large parts of our coast with constructions of steel and concrete for ever more—that is just not going to happen. Therefore, we must certainly develop innovative financial solutions to hold the line where we can, but we must also look at some of the sustainable solutions that the hon. Gentleman was discussing, such as salt flats, mudflats and other constructions that work. There is wonderful work going on and I am really impressed by the people that I meet in the Environment Agency and in the Department who completely get the necessity of taking that route.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about measuring cost, which was also touched on by the hon. Member for Ogmore, who speaks from their party’s Front Bench, in relation to eco-tourism. To a brutally simplistic economist advising a Japanese whaling company, the value of a whale would be calculated in terms of the value of the product as against the cost of harvesting that animal in whatever part of the seas it is found, and the cost of the fuel for the ship. However, if we compare that with the value of that animal as a global eco-tourism resource, we see that there is no viability in whaling at all. Whaling can survive only with huge investments from Governments to support the few jobs that remain in the industry. That was brought home to me very clearly when I went to the International Whaling Commission in Agadir. The number of species, including whales, and the scale of the fish stocks that we manage to maintain in our oceans are also indicators of the general state of the seas. Therefore, the issues that the hon. Gentlemen covered are incredibly important.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) put a local perspective on the importance of engaging local people, which is vital. In our structural reform plan, our business plan for the Department, we said that we will work with the Department for Communities and Local Government to protect green areas of particular importance to local communities. As we develop housing, we must understand that we can build an enormous number of benefits into new housing schemes—sustainable drainage systems, green open spaces or a conservation credit system—to replace the biodiversity lost due to the creation of those communities. Ultimately, though, it is the constituents and the people who live in our communities whose well-being it is in all our interests to maintain. Therefore, the right environment is vital, and he is right to raise the issue.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) made a powerful plea in support of plants as an important part of biodiversity. Too often, we think of biodiversity in terms of fur and feather. She is absolutely right that plants are intrinsically important. I went to the natural history museum within days of my appointment, and was shown the mind map that is biodiversity. Mammals are a tiny part of it. Compared with fungi and plant life, we are a small part of that great picture. The hon. Lady is right: that is why the millennium seed bank is important. We should all feel proud that it is based here in Britain.

I can give the hon. Lady the comfort that one part of the conservation zeitgeist in Britain at the moment is landscape-scale conservation. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds cares about that, and it is the purpose of areas of outstanding natural beauty, national parks and wildlife trusts. It draws together key areas with farmland in between and does conservation work on that scale. That is how to succeed, and how the plants that she talks about will be protected.

The hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Ongar mentioned peat, which is important to the Government. I recently visited the Peak District national park and saw the impressive peat restoration project there. I had not understood how degraded the peat had become due to the effects of a century or more of pollution, or what work, skills and technologies were involved in the vital job of protecting it.

At the other end of the argument, it is vital that we consider the market for peat and ensure that it is sustainable. The quick win is getting companies such as B&Q to use man-made products; it is the smaller companies, the local garage and other such outlets selling peat that must be worked on. We love having summits; I hope that they are summits with a purpose. We are having a peat summit at which we will get together with all the companies that sell peat to ensure that we drive forward that vital agenda.