King’s Speech

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I declare my interest as president of the Rural Coalition as set out in the register. That means that I want to reflect for a few moments on the environmental and rural dimensions of some of the legislation that will be coming our way over the coming year.

I will make a couple of preliminary comments. Back in 2015, His Majesty’s Government responded to the independent rural-proofing implementation review by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. Among the recommendations was that

“Defra Ministers should work with Cabinet Office to strengthen and improve rural proofing guidance when the impact of policies is being assessed, to ensure that rural policy impacts are given clear and robust attention”.


It is clear to many of us in the Rural Coalition, and many Members of your Lordships’ House who have a particular interest in rural life and rural industry and economy, that many policies and Bills are still not being properly rural-proofed. Some 9.6 million people live in our rural areas. It is vital that we attend to this dimension of legislation as it goes through Parliament.

The second general point I want to make is that Section 17(5) of the Environment Act 2021 introduced the five principles that would

“protect and enhance our environment and preserve England’s unique natural assets, all within the context of building resilience to biodiversity loss and the effects of our changing climate”.

This legally binding commitment needs urgently to be applied to each Bill we debate in the next Session to ensure that we consider the environmental impacts of proposed legislation that comes before your Lordships’ House.

I want now to make some brief comments on three of the Bills in the King’s Speech, one of which strays briefly into the themes of another day of this debate. The first is the Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill. Our domestic agricultural sector is world leading. While welcoming the UK’s membership of the CPTPP, I believe it is essential that UK farming is not disadvantaged or weakened. We must use this opportunity to drive up standards in other countries and not allow our standards to drop to theirs. In particular, we urgently need a better and more accurate system for food labelling, especially with regard to country of origin. For example, meat products should be shown as British only when the livestock has been born, fattened and slaughtered here.

Secondly, I welcome the animal welfare (livestock exports) Bill, which will stop the export of livestock for fattening and slaughter once and for all. Although livestock is not currently exported for this reason, in the past many animals were in transit for long periods, which caused unnecessary suffering. It is also well documented that some overseas abattoirs to which they were taken do not have the same high standards that we provide in the United Kingdom. I congratulate His Majesty’s Government on the announcement some months ago of a fund of £4 million for smaller, more local abattoirs in this country, which will also be a more humane way to treat our livestock. This is especially important as the number of small abattoirs in the UK has declined dramatically over recent years.

Finally, I will say a few words about the tobacco and vapes Bill, which I warmly welcome. I am very supportive of the aims of that Bill. Other Members of your Lordships’ House have already noted that there is a problem with around 5 million disposable vapes being used each week in the United Kingdom. Each of those vapes has a battery which uses metals such as copper and lithium. The Green Alliance has estimated that enough lithium has been disposed of to create 5,000 batteries for electric cars. Surely there is a powerful argument for a complete ban on the sale of disposable vapes here in the UK. I expect that Members of your Lordships’ House will plan to bring amendments to that Bill as we seek to focus it and make a real improvement as we take it through.