Integrated Review: Development Aid

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on a masterful introduction to this debate. This is a very serious problem. As my noble friend Lord McConnell said, this cut shames our country. The government document Global Britain in a Competitive Age talks about international engagement in the introduction. How are the Government doing it and by what means? Is it engagement or is it threat? Engagement, to me, means friendly working with the needs of the less favoured countries by giving them some aid and helping them with research, not cutting the aid budget by £4 billion. According the Royal Society, part of that cut is a £500,000 cut in the relevant research budget. This is the ultimate engagement for further international research more widely, so why are they cutting it?

I see the Government instead going for the threat—sending an aircraft carrier to the Far East to rattle their sabres. I do not think it has any planes on it, but that does not seem to matter to them. We do not see so many nuclear submarines, but they cost even more of the £38 billion defence budget. Much of it is a threat. I suggest to the Minister that the Government need to reinstate the 0.7% funding. If they are short, they can reduce the defence budget from £38 billion to £34 billion. That would enable the aid budget to be reinstated. The Prime Minister, in his introduction to this document, talks about international engagement in the decade ahead. I suggest that that is better done by engagement, helping other countries with research, development economics and other advice, and reinstating the funding, rather than by pretending that we are a world power by sending aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines around the world. They do not help much in Yemen and other war zones.

River Pollution

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

The noble Lord is right: poor practice by farmers leads to run-off fertiliser, slurry, pesticides and various other chemicals, which are extremely damaging to river ecosystems. But even well-managed farms can have impacts on the environment. The catchment-sensitive farming and countryside stewardship schemes inform and incentivise farmers to manage their land in a better way—for example, creating buffer strips between fields and water courses, planting crops that preserve soil health and improving slurry storage, while the new Environmental Land Management Scheme set out in the Agriculture Bill will be a critically important part of a transition to more environmentally sensitive agriculture.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the 200,000 occasions of raw sewage being discharged into rivers in 2019, mentioned by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, in his follow-up question, totalled 1.5 million hours of discharge, according to the Guardian. Does the Minister accept that it is quite clear that the Government or their agencies have no interest in enforcement? Do the Government accept the legal position, originally stated by the European Court of Justice, that untreated sewage can be released into water bodies only under exceptional circumstances? Clearly this is not being complied with. What urgent action are the Government going to take to deal with this—or are we leaving the EU just to become the dirty man of Europe?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

I certainly agree with the noble Lord that raw sewage should only ever be released into water systems as a last resort and in exceptional circumstances. As I mentioned in a previous answer, this issue has been taken up with great energy by my colleague in Defra, Minister Pow, who established and chairs the task force and is committed to doing what is needed from the regulatory, legislative and funding points of view to tackle this very serious problem.

Environmental Protection (Plastic Straws, Cotton Buds and Stirrers) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Friday 10th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am sorry the Minister was not able to be in his place in the Chamber because I think I missed much of his introduction. As ever, we must look at this in perspective. According to the National Geographic, 8 million tonnes of plastic is deposited in the oceans every year, and straws represent 0.025% of that; that is one in 4,000. Here we have a 30-clause Bill to deal with 1/4,000th of the waste problem. The Minister said he is committed to eliminating plastic waste but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, he needs to do a lot more. When he comes to wind up, I hope he will explain exactly what he is going to do about the much bigger problem of tackling the rest of the plastic waste in the oceans.

Saudi Arabia: Death Penalty

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The noble Baroness raises an important point. Collaborative efforts on matters of foreign policy and on issues such as the death penalty do have an impact; we have therefore made a collective effort. I alluded earlier to the efforts the United Kingdom Government have made at the Human Rights Council, and we were pleased to support Australia on the broad concerns raised about human rights in Saudi Arabia. I add to an earlier point made to the noble Lord, Lord Collins, that we are seeing change and positive steps are being taken, as I saw when I visited. Notwithstanding that engagement, I assure the noble Baroness and your Lordships’ House that we continue to make an issue of a moratorium on the death penalty—as a first step, perhaps, to its prohibition—not just to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but elsewhere in the world. Our strategic alliances are important and allow us to make that case forcefully.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, for 10 or 20 years we have been hearing Ministers say that they have made representations to Saudi Arabia, and nothing happens. The Minister just said it is very important that we keep our strategic alliance going, so would it be wrong to suggest that if Saudi Arabia did not have oil and did not buy so many of our arms we would be declaring it a pariah state by now?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, talked about my longevity in office: I was not here 12 or 15 years ago, as the noble Lord may know. On his general point, while we hope for better progress, progress is being made. Although small steps are being taken in the human rights space, we have seen progress on the issue of gender and an easing of restrictions on the ground, particularly in places such as Riyadh. Can more progress be made? Of course. While we continue to raise these issues, the fact that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner helps us make this case, and I assure the noble Lord that we will continue to do so.

Brexit: UK-EU Relationship

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Liddle on this debate, because it provides opportunities for yet another time when we can discuss the future, or not, of Brexit. I spend a lot of time on the continent talking about railways and transport, particularly in Brussels, and I share the view expressed by my noble friend Lord Monks and the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts—whom I certainly welcome to this House—that they are sad that we are leaving. However, it is not a question of how we leave; it is either hard Brexit or no Brexit. The approach that some of our Ministers and other commentators seem to be taking, which I term arrogant, will not make the negotiations any easier at all. We will not be able to pick and choose what we can have. We have had many discussions today and in previous debates about picking and choosing, and we will probably go on doing that for a long time. We really need to focus on what we want to get out of it.

We read reports daily in the press of UK business and industry sectors expressing concerns and alarm about job losses or economic problems if we have a hard Brexit. To name but a few, they include research, agriculture, the building industry, finance and transport. I suppose one could add to the list regional aid. It is not an industry but it dramatically helps jobs and so on.

I have looked at transport in a certain amount of detail. There could be problems in the air sector over agreements with the EU on designated routes. Will we continue to be part of the EU open skies policies? There could also be problems regarding ownership of some of the airlines. Would UK carriers be excluded from certain routes? Then there are the possible problems concerning extra customs formalities. Some noble Lords may remember the pictures of queues of trucks trying to cross the Iron Curtain. That could happen again.

There is also the issue of Calais. The camp of the potential immigrants has been removed, so the situation at the moment is much better, but if the French Government got a bit angry with us—although not as the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, suggested—there is no reason why they should not say, “If you’re leaving the EU, you can sort out your own immigration problem. And not only will we not allow the British immigration people to work in Calais any more but we’ll send anybody with a problem across to the UK, where they can claim asylum and it’ll be your problem”. I know that the treaty is not part of the European Union agreements but that could still happen. So my worry is that there will be a risk of a lack of compliance without any ability to make representations and participate if we want to stay in the single market.

I am sure that there is a solution to sorting out the immigration problem—if it is a problem—and it worries me that the Government have already decided what they are going to do. Yesterday, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, said in answer to the first Oral Question:

“The Government have been clear that as we conduct our negotiations it must be a priority to regain more control of the numbers of people who come here from Europe”.—[Official Report, 30/11/16; col. 195.]

We are still in Europe—we have been in Europe for 40 years—and if she is assuming that we have already left, that is probably why we are getting into the trouble we are in.

I suspect that over the next few months, when all the job losses have been added up, people will appreciate the threats much more. If there were another referendum, we would probably have at least 52% in favour of staying in rather than 52%—a very small majority—in favour of trying to get out. As other noble Lords have said, the referendum was advisory. I hope that the Government accept that the will of Parliament has to be tested and that Members of Parliament, having taken the views of their constituents, will be able to vote, as will we in this House, on whether they like the terms of the negotiations and, if necessary, reject them.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall not detain the House very long but, having listened to virtually all the speeches in this debate, I am, first, surprised at the lack of supportive speeches from the Tories for the Bill and, secondly, I am still not persuaded why we need the Bill at all.

The noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, mentioned the war. I hope that we are not going to go onto the war again—I shall not—but I go back to when I lived in Romania in the 1970s in the communist period and was struck by the complete lack of liberty of all the people who lived there. The European Union has given eastern Europe liberty and peace and we must never forget that. We need only look at what is going on in Ukraine at the moment to reflect on whether they will or will not come.

My interest now is, and has been for many years, in the single market and in particular in the rail sector. Some 40% or 50% of our trade is with the European Union now. Of course, we can gain a great deal of benefit from the rail industry exporting and from train operators—particularly passenger ones but also some freight ones—operating on the continent.

When you get into negotiations with the Commission and other member states you find many of the other member states—the big ones, France and Germany, come to mind—blocking everyone else coming in. They are obstructing the single market and the Commission, bless its heart, is doing a great job in infraction proceedings. However, the point I am making is that with all this trade potential we could do an awful lot more.

The smaller member states, in particular, look to us as an example and for support and leadership, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has just said. This will all stop if we leave. If we want trade, we will have to conform to their standards, which of course they set to protect their own domestic industry, not European industry. As I have said, the French and the Germans are particularly good at this. We will probably lose an awful lot of our trade and exports.

When the Government have decided what it is they want to renegotiate—which, as I said, is not clear to me—I hope that they will negotiate from the inside. They should do it not in an arrogant way—it is not as if we are still a global empire, addressing one of our small colonies—but as one member among equals. We will go a long way that way, but let us do it from the inside and forget about this Bill completely.