China: Human Rights and Security

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, that was another excellent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and a brilliant peroration as he concluded, building on eight other excellent speeches we have heard in this debate, following its superb launch by my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, who has campaigned on this issue for many years. How wonderful it was to hear two robust speeches from Church of England Bishops rather than the usual fence-sitting stuff. I particularly liked what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester had to say. I think he is right: it is not just this tianxia culture. Is there not a deeply ingrained racist element, in that they believe that those of the Han ethnicity are the only real people and every other ethnic race are just vermin or infidels to be destroyed? I am grateful that the right reverend Prelate is nodding: I got at least something right in my speech today.

So what is China doing—the country described by the FCDO as a “strategic partner” with which this Government are determined to have a “pragmatic” relationship? Well, it is oppressing its own people, both directly through an extensive network of black jails and indirectly with no free press. This House and 11 other countries have said that the Chinese state is committing genocide in Xinjiang province and, in Tibet, it is seeking to deny a people their culture and identity. It is running what has been described as the

“world’s largest contemporary system of state-imposed forced labor”,

with up to 2.5 million Uighurs and members of other ethnic groups at risk of coerced work.

In Hong Kong, it has reneged on an internationally registered treaty with the UK, in order to deny the city’s residents their civil and political rights. It is stealing islands, building military bases and deploying paramilitary forces to bully its neighbours in the South China Sea, despite an international ruling that its claims are unfounded. It is engaged in the largest military build-up since World War II, adding the equivalent of the entire Royal Navy every two years. Its programme of civil-military fusion subserviates its economy to military needs. It is increasing its military exercises and incursions into Taiwan’s airspace and escalating the use of grey-zone activities to undermine both Taiwan’s will to resist and that of the international community to stand firm against aggression.

It is also waging a non-military war against Taiwan, by trying to eradicate its right to exist. Taiwan cannot get into the United Nations, nor any of its agencies. China has banned it from the World Health Organization, even though it was Taiwan that raised the alarm about Covid while China covered it up, and China has banned Taiwan from Interpol. China constantly seeks to change the wording of United Nations agreements to freeze out Taiwan.

Our own Intelligence and Security Committee has said that China runs the largest state intelligence service in the world and that it is a threat to our British industry and technology. Let us be clear that when I say China, I of course mean the Communist Party of China, not the whole of the Chinese people. It lied about the origins of Covid, lied to the World Health Organization, lied about the efficacy of its vaccines and spread conspiracy theories when seeking to divert responsibility and blame. It destroyed evidence and continues to withhold information on what it knows. It also launched a trade war against Australia, Norway and Lithuania when these countries asked questions about the Covid cover-up.

That is what is happening around the world. What about the UK? There is a long list of hostile Chinese aggressive acts against our United Kingdom; against individuals, the state and companies. On a daily basis, it is mounting massive cyberattacks against the UK, including one in March of this year targeting Members of Parliament and the Electoral Commission. A former UK Foreign Secretary said that torture on an industrial scale was happening in Xinjiang province. How can we have as a strategic partner a country committing genocide?

China blatantly steals our technologies, has infiltrated all our universities—often helped by craven university chancellors more interested in Chinese cash than freedom of speech. More recently, have we not seen just how high their spies can penetrate? This was not a one-off quirk but the result of many years of assiduous penetration of all our top institutions, and many thousands more are still beavering away in our companies, universities and institutions, seeking to undermine our will to resist Chinese aggression.

These are not the actions of a strategic partner with whom we should be having a pragmatic relationship. These are the actions of a hostile state. Why will the Government—and the last Government, too—not listen to our own top security experts? The current head of MI5, Ken McCallum, has said that China is engaged in espionage on an “epic scale”. He gives us that message every few months—let us listen to him. Of course China is a massive trading entity from which we cannot cut ourselves off. Trade with China? Yes. Trust China? No.

The Henry Jackson Society published a large report in 2020 showing that the UK was strategically dependent on China for 229 categories of goods, of which 57 had applications in critical national infrastructure. This must not continue. We have let China get a stranglehold over some of our vital commodities: parts and components which could cripple us economically, and possibly militarily, as a country if China turned off the tap. So we must accelerate onshoring and taking back to the UK things we should be making here—or we should have various suppliers from other friendly countries around the world.

China is a hostile country. It is a clear and present danger to the West. It seeks to dominate us economically, militarily and politically. China is not a strategic partner; it is just a ruthless commercial competitor, and we should treat it as such. We must open our eyes and acknowledge the nature of the threat posed to us; then we can plan to combat it. Only from a position of security and strength can we then consider being “pragmatic”.

Georgia: Political Situation

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

The noble and right reverend Lord knows what I will say about sanctions specifically, which is that we do not pre-announce our sanctions or our intention to designate any subject of our sanctions. However, he is absolutely right to highlight the track record of Russia in interfering in democracies, not least in Georgia. I recommend that noble Lords who are interested in this look at the OSCE interim report on these elections, which highlights some serious concerns.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, as the first ever elected chair of the new Council of Europe expert group on observing elections—that sounds grander than it actually is—I was the only Brit on the Council of Europe delegation to Georgia three weeks ago. I have done nine of these, and it was the first time that I ever experienced personal intimidation and my vehicle was sabotaged. I draw the Minister’s attention to the joint press release issued the next day by the Council of Europe, the OSCE and NATO. It is a very watered-down version of what happened because, inevitably, the OSCE and NATO wanted not to be too nasty to Georgia. I also draw her attention to the PACE report that was published last week, which exposes the massive intimidation by Georgian Dream, orchestrated at a very high state level. I suggest to her that that report is quite authoritative, and it casts doubt on the whole election result

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

The noble Lord is completely right, and I respect the fact that he was there so recently and took part in that process. I will read the PACE report; I have read excerpts from it, but I will read it in full, as he suggests. We are deeply concerned, as he alluded to, about the intimidation not just of observers but of voters, as well as the whole atmosphere around the elections and in the period leading up to them. I thank the noble Lord for the work that he has done and for bringing it to this House’s attention.

Environment Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I am grateful for the efforts of my noble friend Lord Blencathra and other members of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. My Bill team and I were greatly reassured by the assessment that the committee made of the Environment Bill, and I agree that there is an opportunity for us to go further. That is why I have accepted all the DPRRC’s recommendations and am pleased to table these amendments.

These technical amendments will increase parliamentary scrutiny in areas such as littering enforcement, vehicle recall, land drainage and local nature recovery strategies. I have also tabled Amendment 43, which was requested by the Scottish Government so that they will be able to make provision under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency to be able to impose civil sanctions relating to electronic waste tracking. This will bring the Scottish Ministers’ powers in line with those of the Secretary of State in England, Welsh Ministers and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland.

Finally, I have tabled Amendments 46, 47, 48 and 49. These are minor and technical amendments to measures on fly-tipping enforcement to clarify that authorised officers would be able to exercise their Schedule 10 powers relating to the search and seizure of evidence without a warrant in circumstances where consent has been given. This will enable enforcement officers to determine whether pollution control legislation is being complied with. This was always the intention; however, these amendments expressly set out that, where consent has been given, a warrant is not required.

I hope that noble Lords welcome these technical changes, which will increase parliamentary oversight and improve the Environment Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. It would be churlish of me not to congratulate my noble friend and the Defra Bill team on making these technical amendments. They were the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which I am privileged to chair. On behalf of the committee, I thank the Minister and the Defra team for making them. One of the powers has moved from negative to affirmative—no big deal, but we are very grateful for it. The others are textbook examples of what departments can do to improve parliamentary scrutiny. We were not demanding that the SIs be affirmative or that they be negative; we were simply saying, “Please lay them before Parliament and publish them.” They have agreed to do so.

In the report that we publish today on the police and sentencing Bill, which the House will consider tomorrow, we will be scathing in our condemnation because the Home Office has failed to do those simple things in its legislation. Let this be a lesson to it on what can be done.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I was going to prepare a 20-minute response to the Government’s amendments, but in the interest and spirit of getting to COP 26 faster, I will just say that we on these Benches welcome that the Government have listened to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and accepted its recommendations, which will be good for everybody involved and the wider stakeholders.

Environment Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak in favour of all the amendments in this group—even, in a very soft way, the government amendments. They address issues that I spoke on at considerable length in Committee, so I will, given the hour, be brief. It is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and all the speakers on this group. I think the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, really hit the nail on the head. If 30 years is all we can tie things up for, if it works, you are tying it up, one would assume, indefinitely, which 125 years serves as a figure for.

In Committee, I talked about 30 years being a blink of an eye in nature, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, set out a very nice template for us thinking about different kinds of habitats and ecosystems. I will add to this my—perhaps now inevitable—point about soil, which is about the biodiversity of the soil and producing what you might describe as a mature soil, whether it is under any of those habitats. A meadow might look quite nice on the top, but the soil is not going to be anything like a long-term developed meadow for many years. These are ecosystems that take a long time to develop to get the real richness you would need for a proper, healthy soil.

I will just note that we are strongly behind Amendments 85 and 87, which my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed, but I would also particularly compliment the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on Amendment 84A. I would have signed it had I actually spotted it, but I am afraid I missed it. There has been much discussion in the media, in the public and in the environmental community about the utter inadequacy of the biodiversity metric. In this amendment, the noble Lord is going some way to finding a way forward to fix that, and I really do hope the Minister will take it on board.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as on the register. I want to comment briefly on two amendments. First, I welcome my noble friend’s Amendment 89; it is important to keep under review the amount of land available for the net gain register.

Secondly, I want to comment on Amendment 84A from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. I say this to him: I do not think it is necessary. As he said, this is evolving. The metric as published by Natural England is not set in stone. It will be an evolving measure, and as further and better particulars come along, it will be changed and amended. An annual review by the Government is not needed for that to happen.

The other point I want to make is this: yes, of course, the metric could be made more complicated. Some on the Climate Change Committee condemn it, because it is just a biodiversity net gain metric. They want an environmental net gain metric, which would be an all-singing, all-dancing super one, but incredibly complicated to produce. No one is capable of doing it properly at the moment.

If we bring in lots of other factors, which would no doubt make this much better in biodiversity terms, we would be faced with an industry and builders that have not a clue how it would work. Net gain is terribly, terribly important. It will be one of the greatest improvements to planning and the environment we have ever seen in this country. But it is a completely new concept; it is innovative. For it to happen, we have to get developers on side, working with it. At the moment, they have not a clue how it works. They have a couple of years, I think, to get that right.

I am concerned that we keep this initially simple. The current metric, which is still doing a good job and can evolve and can change, will not be detrimental to biodiversity; it will be a big improvement to biodiversity. But I am certain that in a couple of years’ time or a year’s time, it may be tweaked again to improve it. As developers and Government and Natural England bed this down, I am certain it will become more sophisticated and more perfect from a purist environmental point of view.

So I say to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who is incredibly able and thoroughly knowledgeable in this matter—he is 10 times more knowledgeable than I am, though I am practical—that we have to start somewhere. There used to be an army acronym KISS: “Keep it simple, stupid.” We have to keep it simple to begin with, and we can make it a lot more complicated as we get used to it.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, says, but I still think the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, raised some real concerns that this House deserves answers to, and I hope the Minister, in his summing up, can give the reassurances the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has asked for. I wanted to briefly add my voice to the others in support of Amendment 87, which deals with the issue of perpetuity versus the 30 years for the biodiversity net gain.

I will not add to the other arguments people have made, but I just wanted to remind noble Lords that in Committee, in response to a question from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, the Minister said that the Government wish to introduce biodiversity net gain

“in a way that requires developers … to bear as little cost as possible.”—[Official Report, 7/7/21; col. 1377.]

It seems to me that overriding constraint is as much relevant in terms of this debate, because this is not about worrying that there will not be enough landowners coming forward to provide the amount of nature conservation that we need. It is really about limiting the liability of developers. That is at the heart of this, and that is why I support the amendment.

Environment Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 8th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I have put my name to all four amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

My noble friend the Minister acknowledged in his speech at Second Reading that heritage is a part of the Government’s vision for conservation and the countryside. He reminded your Lordships that the 25-year plan explicitly recognises the link between the natural environment and heritage and said that it is at the heart of our approach. However, if that is so, why is heritage the only one of the 10 goals contained in the 25-year plan to be excluded from the definition of “the environment” in Clause 44? EU legislation did not treat heritage buildings and archaeological features as part of the environment and, as a result, they have been underfunded for decades.

More than half of our traditional farm buildings have already been lost. As I said in Committee, I do not think it is possible to set targets with respect to people’s enjoyment of the natural environment without recognising that traditional farm buildings and other archaeological features are an essential part of accommodating increased numbers of visitors to the countryside and their enjoyment of it. Ancient tithe barns and other buildings have been or need be restored and repurposed in order to accommodate increasing visitor numbers.

On 23 June, my noble friend the Minister stated that heritage was never funded under the common agricultural policy. I am not sure that he was correct, in that, although heritage was not treated by the EU as part of the environment, I understand that it has been funded by Defra ever since the Agriculture Act 1986. Landscape heritage was one of five priorities for agri-environment scheme funding under the CAP and has received Defra funding of several million pounds a year—both maintenance and capital—for more than three decades, under country stewardship, environmental stewardship and previous schemes.

On page 42, the 2019 Conservative manifesto guaranteed that the current CAP budget would be maintained but that it would be moved from direct payments to public goods. The budget for public goods such as heritage is thus up to three times higher than it was under the CAP. Like the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, I look forward to hearing something strong and positive about this, because heritage is a great omission from the Bill.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and his excellent amendments. Like him, I regret that we did not get this on the face of the Bill. My noble friend the Minister rejected that in Committee and there is no point in trying again. However, I hope that my noble friend will pay strict attention to what the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, said about making a strong statement that this funding should continue. I apologise if I am incorrect, but I think that my noble friend Lord Trenchard was right. My noble friend the Minister probably was given wrong advice when he said in Committee that it has never been funded under the CAP and that:

“It is not something that Defra has done or can do. It is very much a job and a responsibility for the DCMS.”—[Official Report, 23/6/21; col. 365.]


I think that is not the case and that this has been funded for some considerable time through Defra. I understand that the sums are not significant. We are talking about £10 million per annum, which has of course been used for things such as farm buildings, walls, and archaeology. It is not funding residences; it has not been funding grand estates which may be the job of the DCMS, or anything like that.

In addition to asking the Minister to make a strong statement that the funding will continue, I enter another strong plea. I do not speak on its behalf, but I understand that Historic England is deeply worried about this. It was under the impression, rightly or wrongly, that this would appear on the face of the Bill. It is now concerned that, since it will not be included, and given that my noble friend the Minister and Defra are rightly concentrating on funding the Bill’s priorities—peatland restoration, woodland planting and so on—something such as heritage might fall through the cracks. I would be very grateful if my noble friend said that either he or one of the Defra Ministers will meet with the heads of Historic England and reassure them as to their intentions. Historic England is not seeking much: it is seeking reassurances that the status quo can continue. I would be very grateful if my noble friend gave that assurance and assured the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, that this will not fall through the cracks but will continue to be a small but important priority.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support what my noble friend Lord Blencathra just said about a meeting with Historic England and indeed with English Heritage, which is responsible for a large number of important buildings up and down the land. I support all the amendments, as I did in Committee. To me, it is an anomaly and a contradiction of the phrase “joined-up government” that because something is largely within the province of another department it cannot be covered by an all-embracing Bill.

This afternoon, I will concentrate on an issue that I raised on another amendment in Committee. I do so—and I have discussed this with my noble friend the Minister—because it fits logically under these amendments. When we were debating this last time, I said, and there were nods all around the Chamber, how central and important to the manmade landscape our churches are. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, referred to a synagogue in London, the most historic synagogue in the land, and she was absolutely right in all she said. I pray that that is not overshadowed, literally, in the way currently threatened.

Central to most of our country towns and virtually all our villages, especially in England, is the parish church. You come closest to the soul of the country in the parish church, particularly through the monuments it contains, which often tell the story of the whole community—one thinks of Gray’s “Elegy”—in that church.

We have a real problem when it comes to the preservation of species and buildings. The National Trust paper, which we have all been sent, refers to habitats, and we have got the balance very wrong when it comes to the preservation of bats—important creatures that they are, despite being a bit of a health hazard sometimes—and the preservation of those buildings that tell the story of our land. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Goldsmith; I gather he is not going to reply to this debate, but he replied to the earlier one in which I took part and we had a brief discussion this afternoon. I had a lengthy meeting with him during the recess, on the dreaded Zoom, but it was a good meeting and Professor Jean Wilson, a great former president of the Church Monuments Society, took part.

I know there is a Bats in Churches project, but it is creeping forward slowly. We have 16,000 listed churches in this country, most of them Church of England, but not all, by any means. Some of them are being despoiled and defaced—the monuments, the wall paintings, the alabasters and the brasses in particular—by bat urine and bat faeces. We have to get the balance right when we are preserving species and buildings that were not built to house bats; they were built to house worshipping Christians. We are still officially a Christian country, and the parish church means a great deal to many people, even if they do not worship in it regularly. We have to remember that the parish system in our country means that everyone who lives in England lives in a parish and is entitled to the services of the parish and priest, particularly at times of great moment in a family’s history—birth, marriage, death. It is truly important that we recognise how important these buildings are.

In his letter to me, sent following our meeting, the Minister talked about something like five churches a year benefiting from this new scheme. That is good but, measured against the overall number, it is negligible. I hope that the Minister will meet me, Professor Wilson and perhaps others again, because we must try to get the balance right. Getting the balance right is the answer to so many problems in our country, not just heritage and environmental problems, but many others. It would be wrong if, during the passage of this environmental Bill—and I agree strongly with my noble friend Lord Blencathra and the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale—we do not get this on the face of it. I am realistic enough to know that we are not going to get it, but we need a strong ministerial statement. This is casting no aspersions on my noble friend Lady Bloomfield, who will reply to this debate, but we need a statement from my noble friend Lord Goldsmith as well.

We live in a landscape that is mostly manmade and, where it is not, it is man-moulded. Some of the most important features of that landscape are parts of the built environment and the archaeology of which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, spoke so movingly. Can we please try to recognise the threat to our churches from the overpresence of bats in many of them and do all we can to rescue a priceless part of the nation’s heritage and an embodiment of much of its history?

Environment Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am very persuaded by my noble friend’s argument for a holistic approach to waste. Could my noble friend take this opportunity, in the context of these amendments, to set out how his approach would differ from the circular economy which we were signed up to when we were members of the European Union? I hate to deprive the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, of her beauty sleep, but, at the risk of doing so, I will ask my noble friend why we are continuing and indeed increasing our export to countries such as Turkey and, I understand, other third countries, considering that we have the facilities to dispose. We are a first-world country and have much better facilities to dispose of this. My understanding is that landfill sites, certainly in England, are full and that many have already closed. I just wonder how, in the context of disposing in particular of plastic waste, we will address this issue as a responsible Government.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, but I was getting increasingly worried, over the years, that I was tending to agree with so much of what she said. Then I realised, when I saw her sitting temporarily behind me, that she might be a closet Conservative after all. I was quite overwhelmed and thought how much more joy there is over one sinner that repenteth than over 99 just persons.

I was tempted to support these amendments, even to the point of a vote. When I heard the announcement last week from my noble friend at Defra that they were planning to ban single-use cutlery and plastic plates, I asked myself: if a Minister has the power to do this without putting anything in the Bill, can he extend it to other plastics as well? That is my main question for him. If he can do that, I would like him to target my bête noire which, initially, is polystyrene. There is absolutely no justification now for any polystyrene food dishes whatever: whether they are used as takeaways, for carry-outs or plastic cups, there are paper alternatives.

The other totally unjustified use of polystyrene—without rehearsing the speech I made in Committee—is in packaging material, whether it is those awful plastic bubbles that go everywhere and get stuck to everything under the sun, or large pieces of polystyrene holding televisions or tape recorders and so on. There is no need for them whatever, because cardboard can do the job infinitely better—it is just as sound and can protect valuable material. I also suggest that that should be a target: one could move on that very quickly indeed. The polystyrene used in house construction is another matter; it could take longer to come up with an alternative.

There is a final form of plastic I would like the Minister to tackle. If one buys ready meals, for example, some seem to come in grey containers, some in white containers and some in black containers, but I understand that if they are all mixed together in recycling, the whole thing is useless—only some of them are recyclable. So I simply say to my noble friend that, if he has powers to do so, can he start to compel the food manufacturers and supermarkets to go for a plastic microwavable dish that is recyclable and get rid of those which destroy the recyclability of the good ones?

Those are the only points I wish to make to my noble friend and I come back to my question: can he reassure me that he and Defra have all the necessary powers, in due course, to ban any other forms of plastic, whether it is horrible little sachets with shampoo in them, plastic food containers or polystyrene? That is all I seek from my noble friend tonight.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, there is an emerging consensus that plastics are worse for the environment than other substances used in single-use products. The plastics tax scheduled to be introduced next year will create an incentive for suppliers to shift away from plastics towards other substances, such as glass, aluminium and cardboard. However, this will not necessarily benefit the environment in all cases. I agree very much with what my noble friend Lord Blencathra just said about polystyrene, but the situation as far as plastic bottles are concerned is different. The carbon footprint released by the manufacture of glass and aluminium is around five times greater than that released by PET manufacturing. In other ways, too, PET has advantages over other substances for water and soft drinks bottles. Do we want a return to the days when there was a significant risk of cutting your foot on broken glass discarded on a beach?

Furthermore, there is growing public acceptance of a higher proportion of recycled material within bottles on the market today. Many brands of bottled water now supply bottles containing 50% recycled material. As far as plastic bottles are concerned, the answer is surely to introduce a deposit return scheme similar to that in operation in Germany, which should enable us to equal the German achievement of recycling 98% of plastic bottles compared with our record of around 68%.

Amendment 36 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, would introduce a plastic strategy for England. I think it should cover other materials besides plastics. It is also essential that discussions with the devolved authorities result in the adoption of a single coherent strategy for the United Kingdom as a whole. The Scottish deposit scheme, for example, requires producers to provide a great deal of detailed information, but, bizarrely, does not require labelling to state clearly whether a product can be recycled. This is very difficult for small brewers that sell through wholesalers that distribute products in England and Scotland.

I do not know whether the noble Baroness and her co-signatories recognise the conflict inherent in subsection (3) of their proposed new clause. Subsection (3)(a) seeks to achieve

“a reduction in single use plastics”.

This is surely incompatible with subsection (3)(b), because the shift to greater use of glass and aluminium will result in increased carbon emissions.

As far as bottles are concerned, if we can move to a culture of recycling based on an effective deposit return scheme, there are reasons to retain PET. We should not throw the baby out with the bath-water.

Environment Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard. I wish to speak to Amendments 259 and 260 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and to comment on Amendment 260A in the name of my noble friend Lord Kinnoull. I once again state my interests, as far as this debate is concerned, as a trustee of Clinton Devon Estates and chair of the Cawood group.

Much comment has already been made in this debate about tree health, including the deep concern about biosecurity and tree diseases and the need for a tree strategy. Given the Government’s ambition to plant 30,000 hectares of trees each year to improve tree cover and for climate change mitigation, and with the perilous state of tree health in Britain, the need for a tree strategy is undeniable. As has been said already, it was a tragedy when we lost our elm trees to Dutch elm disease; what a lovely tree the elm is. Our ash trees are now at risk from ash dieback, not to mention our larch. We have in our garden an ash tree that will have to be felled soon because it is infected. A recent forecast predicted that more than 90% of ash trees will be taken out by ash dieback. Most of our fence lines—our field divisions—in Northumberland are populated by ash trees; it is the most dominant species. Many are mapped as part of stewardship audits and are the homes of little owls, for example, and many other species, so their disappearance will be a disaster both visually and environmentally, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned.

Biosecurity is so important. We must reduce our dependence on imported tree stock. As the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, said, this does not mean that we need to ban imported trees completely, but a biosecurity plan would be able to identify the tree species that we could safely import. Outside the European Union, we can grow our own and in doing so support the rural economy. The Government should see this as yet another important opportunity.

The tree strategy should not only include our ambition to plant trees but incorporate the appropriate biosecurity measures and guidance on a species mix to minimise disease spread. I spent some time early last year in New Zealand, where large numbers of farms are being purchased and planted as part of a carbon offsetting scheme by global corporates. A lot of the planting has been indiscriminate, without due regard to soil type or carbon sequestration potential and without assessing the risk of disease. We must not make these mistakes. Identification of land quality in areas suitable for growing a specific mix of tree species to optimise long-term carbon sequestration is essential. To plant vast areas of land with tree cover—30,000 hectares a year, for example—to ease our climate change conscience and potentially become part of the carbon market without clear guidance on tree species and topography would be hugely irresponsible.

This strategy would help to reduce this risk and hopefully maximise the benefits: economic benefits; environmental benefits in terms of both carbon and biodiversity; and, importantly, public access benefits. The adequate protection of trees from a variety of predators is of course also essential, as suggested in Amendment 260A, and could be part of a tree strategy. I encourage the Minister to think about this very seriously indeed.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. I rise to commend the statements by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and her excellent moving of the amendments. She set out the case admirably. I also agree with what was said by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and just now by the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle.

I strongly believe that ancient woodlands must be protected where possible since they cannot be created except through a process that takes 400 to 500 years. This means that all developments that would remove them or parts of them or damage them must be avoided, and only in very exceptional circumstances should an ancient woodland be harmed. There should be a presumption against all developments affecting them.

The suggestion by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, in Amendment 258 is ingenious and I have some sympathy with it. However, I am not certain that classifying every ancient woodland site—I think she mentioned 1,200 of them—that has been wooded since 1600 AD as an SSSI automatically is the right answer. As I understand it—I think the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, made this point—there is nothing to prevent any woodland being classified as an SSSI right now if it meets the current criteria. I would prefer to see ancient woodlands assessed individually and, if suitable, declared—each one on its merits—an SSSI. I must also say to the noble Baroness that I do not think that it is legally possible to mass nominate dozens or even hundreds of pieces of land and to do it en masse, whatever features are on them.

As someone on the board of Natural England who has to decide on new SSSIs or extensions to them, I can tell the House that it is an incredibly detailed and exacting procedure. Officials must produce reams and reams of scientific justification and strict legal protocols must be followed, with all affected landowners entitled to make representations and appeals. If over that two or three-year process we put one foot wrong, we are straight into judicial review territory, which I should say has never happened yet. There might be an argument for simplifying the procedure—we certainly need to do that in the case of declaring new national parks or AONBs—but, for the moment, we have to follow the current law. Thus, while the noble Baroness’s amendment is ingenious, it will not stand up.

On Amendment 259, I am 100% behind her. This is not a “little Englander” new clause. For tens of thousands of years, our native fauna have survived and developed in a habitat of native British flora. Putting it simply, we cannot have red squirrels unless we have the native woods producing the nuts, fruits and seeds they normally eat. The Back from the Brink project to recover 20 species from near extinction depends on native habitats. As colleagues will know, we face an increasing threat from diseases unwittingly imported along with plants sourced from abroad. Even if we step up biosecurity now that we have left the EU, there will still be an enormous risk of bringing in destructive bugs and diseases. Nearly every single disease or bug that has destroyed our UK trees has been imported. If Xylella fastidiosa—the most dangerous and lethal plant disease in the world—gets here, God help us. It can kill 595 different plant species in 85 different botanical families. Our countryside and all our gardens would become wastelands.

No matter how good port control might be, even if it is beefed up from the current inadequate levels, we cannot stop bugs and diseases coming in. Contractors will want to source the millions of trees and bushes needed for HS2 or Highways England road schemes from the cheapest suppliers. At the moment, they are the huge Dutch growers; that is where diseases will come in. This is why a requirement on acquiring plants from UK sources is so important. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said, it will also be good business for UK nurseries, which can easily supply all that would be required in due course.

We have a huge range of UK native trees, and there is no excuse not to use them: noble Lords need only look at the Woodland Trust website to see the range of native species and all the animal, bird, butterfly and other species that depend on our native flora for survival.

Finally, I want to support Amendment 260A. We will never achieve a fraction of the new woodlands that we wish to create unless we deal with rabbits, which are no longer much of a problem, and grey squirrels and deer, which are. One day in 1990, the then Minister of Agriculture, John Gummer MP, asked me, as junior Minister, to go through the MAFF research budget and root any unnecessary or wasteful research. Among others, I found a £250,000 programme researching the effect of rabbits on new woodlands schemes, which the department was funding. There was also one on controlling rabbits, which had been on the go since the 1940s, and another that was also running at £250,000 per annum and was on something that I cannot recall. I called in officials and said, “Have you found that rabbits are eating the bark of new saplings and killing them?” They looked surprised and asked if I had seen the report’s preliminary findings. Remaining remarkably calm for me in the circumstances, I pointed out that I was a countryman and did not need to spend £250,000 to discover that rabbits eat the bark of young trees.

When I spoke to officials on rabbit control, they informed me that there had been a marvellous breakthrough in that contraceptive pills were now 100% effective if eaten by the rabbits—but they could not find any way to make the rabbits eat them. I said that we did not need to spend another £250,000 researching the effects of ferrets and shotguns on rabbit populations, which had been proven to work in the past. But the problem was—and I think still is—that the department, understandably, was looking for huggy, squeezy, nice ways to control rabbits, and we have the same attitudes today dealing with grey squirrels, the destructive American tree rats. I recommend that the Minister have a word with the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, who ran a highly successful programme to deal with grey squirrels in Northumberland. With proper funding, that should be replicated throughout the country.

We also need to eliminate the Chinese muntjac deer. They are not a native species, either, and the damage they do to our native flora is immense. I quoted that story about rabbits, but rabbits are not the main problem now: squirrels and deer are. The point is that for over 40 or 50 years we have been researching how to deal with rabbits and have not got the solution. I wonder how many years we have been researching dealing with grey squirrels. We cannot wait another 40 years until we find a solution. This proposed new clause cleverly does not state what the solution should be, but that there has to be an animal damage protection standard. That is a clever way to tackle the problem and I commend it.

To conclude the anecdote of the never-ending Ministry of Agriculture rabbit research programme, I told that story in 1998 to the new Minister, who is now the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who chuckled and said, “Don’t worry, David, we’re not so daft as to do that.” Two weeks later, he came steaming up to me and said, “You’ll not believe this, we’re still spending £700,000 on rabbit research”. Policies and Ministers change, but academic research goes on for ever. I am told that there has been an amazing scientific breakthrough in dealing with squirrels. The current research shows that contraceptive pills for grey squirrels, I can tell the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, are apparently 100% effective—but they still cannot get the squirrels to eat them. It will take 10 more years of research, the experts will no doubt advise the Minister to pay for. Omnia mutantur nihil interit: Everything changes but nothing is lost.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. Much of what I was going to say has already been said by more eminent voices than mine, and, given that I have the lead amendment in the final group this evening, I will cut my comments quite short. I support the efforts of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, to introduce a national tree strategy for England. If she does not achieve her national land-use strategy, this might very well be the next best thing. We need a consensus that is locally informed but nationally co-ordinated, so that all areas of England can grow the trees that their local topography, climate and land-use heritage recommend.

I am also fully supportive of the thoughtful Amendment 260A, which was well introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, regarding animal damage. There is simply no point in planting broad-leaf trees in the south-west of England on a commercial basis these days, as squirrels and deer execute them long before they become viable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and to express my support for nearly all the amendments in this group, except Amendments 263 and 265.

We should start by acknowledging that this is yet one more sign that campaigning works. Schedule 16 represents amendments brought by the Government in the other place which reflect the campaigning of a great many NGOs and other groups and, as other noble Lords have said, the conclusions of the independent Global Resource Initiative Taskforce. However, as multiple briefings that we have all received show, it still needs improvement to deliver on the recommendations of the GRIT and the expectations of UK consumers and businesses.

I shall not go through each amendment, but I shall start with Amendment 293B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, because it is in many ways the most far-reaching and crucial. This is the one that calls for a global footprint target. I shall start with the benefit for the UK, before looking more broadly. It would reduce the risk of future pandemics; I do not really need to say more than that. It would help safeguard against the economic costs of biodiversity decline and climate change. The WWF Global Futures report calculated that that will cost the world at least £368 billion a year, with the UK suffering annual damage to its economy of £16 billion a year by 2050. It would also support the resilience of UK and global businesses. It would help businesses to manage risk proactively. Coming back to the Government’s desire, of which we so often hear, to be world-leading, it would mean that the UK was the first country to embed the latest pledge for nature into its legislation. It is crucial.

It is worth noting that this amendment is another way of addressing the issue I addressed in the amendment I moved to Clause 1, many days ago, on reducing resource use rather than making it more efficient. We need to reduce our ecological footprint by around 75% to fit within ecological limits. The WWF global footprint report looked at some of the key issues: our material footprint needs to come down by 38%, biomass by 48%, nitrogen—for which I tabled a specific amendment earlier—by 89%, and phosphorous by 85%.

The most basic amendment that I would surely suggest the Minister has to adopt in some form is Amendment 264A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. She has already made many powerful arguments, in particular that if we do not introduce this amendment there will a perverse incentive to encourage the legalisation of deforestation. UK businesses could also benefit from this amendment. Currently, in many parts of the world laws relating to land use, forests and commodity production are numerous, uncertain, inconsistent and poorly implemented. It is very difficult to determine legality, and companies can be trapped in a regulatory, paperwork minefield from which the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, could free them. Of course, 2.1 million hectares of natural vegetation within the 133 Brazilian municipalities that currently supply the UK with soya could be legally deforested.

I come now to Amendment 264ZA in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, which calls for the recognition of customary land ownership and membership systems. Some 80% of indigenous and community lands are held without legally recognised tenure rights. We know that in indigenous and tribal territories, deforestation rates are significantly lower. Ensuring respect for customary tenure rights is an efficient, just and cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions. Noble Lords who have been reading The House magazine might know that I have some recommendations for summer reading in there. I would like to add an extra one: Imbolo Mbue’s second novel, How Beautiful We Were, which is set in a fictional African village and shows how it was depleted by centuries of the activities of fossil fuel companies, forest exploitation and rubber plantations, going back to slavery. We really cannot allow this kind of relationship with the world to continue.

I come now to Amendment 265A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. What we are doing here is the reverse of what your Lordships’ House achieved in the Financial Services Bill. After a lot of wrestling, we finally got a reference to climate—although, unfortunately, not biodiversity—into the Finance Bill. What we also need to do is to get recognition of the damage the financial sector does to the rest of the world, and we need to see finance addressed in all the other Bills. The UK is the single biggest source of international finance for six of the most harmful agribusiness companies involved in deforestation in Brazil, the Congo basin and Papua New Guinea, lending £5 billion between 2013 and 2019. These UK banks included HSBC, Barclays, and Standard Chartered. We simply cannot allow this to continue.

Noble Lords may not think so, but I am really trying to be brief, so I will turn to some very short concluding thoughts. If deforestation was a country, it would be the third largest emitter of carbon, behind China and the US. Some 80% of deforestation is associated with agricultural production, yet figures published this afternoon from five major UN agencies show that the number of people without access to healthy diets has grown by 320 million in the last year. They now number 2.37 billion in total. A fifth of all children under five are stunted because of lack of access to the most basic resource of all: food.

We have to stop wrecking other people’s countries. We have to ensure that our lives are lived within the limits of this fragile planet, and that everyone else has access to that same basic level of resources that is their human right.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. While I warmly welcome all the provisions that the Government have put into this Bill on this matter of due diligence, I also support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge, who moved them so powerfully, eloquently and rapidly. I pay tribute, too, to the passionate and excellent speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, which was a pleasure to listen to.

I will comment first on Amendment 265A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge, the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. It is a rather ingenious and clever approach, and I was appalled to hear that British institutions—if I heard the noble Baroness correctly—have raised about £5 billion of funding for the illegal destruction of rainforest. If British banks and financial institutions are involved, we have to find ways of putting a stop to them doing that sort of thing.

The current provisions in the Bill quite rightly impose obligations on regulated persons who are trading products from endangered rainforests. As in every other business, however, the normal rule is “Follow the money”: if you want to catch illegal or improper behaviour, look at the money flows. Putting an obligation on all financial institutions to exercise the same due diligence as the companies that import and export timber would plug a potentially big gap. How do we crack down on money laundering and terrorist financing? We do it by putting an obligation on all financial institutions to report transactions above £10,000. It works for illegal money transactions, and it can work for destructive timber transactions or the financing of palm oil, soya bean or ranching projects.

I rather like my noble friend’s Amendments 265B and 265D. Why should we try to save the rainforest? The rationale for saving the rainforest is infinitely greater than just reducing carbon emissions—important though that is—or saving indigenous people or preventing mahogany and other tree species from being extinguished. The rationale is that the rainforest is the “medicine cabinet” of the world, to steal another phrase from the Prince’s Rainforests Project.

As rainforest species disappear, so too do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs that are sold worldwide are derived from plant sources, and 25% of western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients. However, fewer than 1% of tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists. So we have tested 1% and are burning the other 99%, yet we are getting 25% of our drugs from that small 1%. That is a very dangerous pyramid.

A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all the rivers of Europe put together. A 25-acre area of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of trees—a figure equal to the total tree diversity of North America. A single rainforest in Peru is home to more species of birds than are found in the entire United States, and the number of species of fish in the Amazon exceeds the number found in the entire Atlantic Ocean.

So I repeat my question: how can we in the West be so stupid as to permanently destroy, or fund the destruction of, a habitat when we have not looked at 99% of the species in it? Some scientists estimate that we are losing more than 130 species of plants and animals every single day through rainforest destruction. We just do not know, yet we are carrying on regardless. Estimates of the total number of species in the world vary from 2 million to 100 million, the best estimate being that there are about 10 million species of living things, ranging from nematode worms, slugs, molluscs, plant life and fungi to trees, birds and the cuddly animals that we worry about.

Biodiversity, however, is not just about saving the red squirrels, polar bears, orangutans, lemurs and tigers—as vital and close to my heart as some of those are. Of far greater importance to the planet are the plants and bugs that we never see and are not cuddly.

Environment Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

Our Amendments 196, 201AZA and 201AZB address this concern and would ensure that habitats created under net gain would be secured in perpetuity. I ask the Minister to take our concerns about this seriously.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as on the register. It was an absolute pleasure to hear my noble friend introduce this vital new clause, which is quite superb. It is also amazing to hear that he has accepted every recommendation of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which I am privileged to chair. I think, in all my time in the House, I have never known a Minister or a department accept every single recommendation. I have already said to another very big, powerful government department that if it wants to see how to do delegated powers properly, it should look at the Defra Delegated Powers Memorandum and see the way in which it has drafted a very large Bill, in eight parts, covering an awful lot of delegated powers, and done so with proper parliamentary scrutiny. I commend that to every other department.

Officially, I shall speak to Amendments 200 and 201 on biodiversity net gain—or nature net gain, as I would love to have it called—and to support my noble friend the Minister and his wonderful, large new clause. As someone who passionately believes in recovering our nature, I consider this to be one of the most important clauses in the Bill. When we add up the clauses on biodiversity targets, local nature recovery strategies, species conservation targets and now 10% minimum net gain, this is the greatest step forward this country has ever taken to bend the curve of nature loss and begin full-scale nature recovery. The only principal differences between my noble friend’s amendments and mine are that mine attempt to apply biodiversity net gain to the first two legs of HS2 and the Minister’s amendments are much longer with a lot of detail—that always makes me slightly suspicious, of course. However, my noble friend has pulled off an absolute blinder in getting other departments to agree to extend net gain to all national strategic infrastructure projects.

A few months ago, I and others made the case in this Chamber that 10% net gain be extended to HS— the Birmingham to Crewe leg—but that was resisted by the DfT. To be fair, the excellent Transport Minister in the other place, Andrew Stephenson MP, has been pressing HS2 to go further than “no net loss”—the current policy—and it seems to be moving in that direction. I want the Government to make sure that HS2 follows up on the welcome aspiration of a commitment to BNG.

I hope that will not be a watered-down version of net gain—it should be open, transparent and open to scrutiny. Net gain should be net gain, whether its supported by legislation or not. While we in this Committee may be urging my noble friend to go faster or do more, we must acknowledge that he and Defra have persuaded the Treasury, BEIS and DfT to accept 10% biodiversity net gain for all national strategic infrastructure projects. Quite frankly, that is an astonishing achievement and I did not expect to see it. It is important that NSIPs can and should deliver BNG to at least the same standards as those expected for other developments.

I welcome the reference to NSIPs having access to the statutory biodiversity credits scheme in the case of market failure. Natural England is currently developing this credits scheme. I like how BNG is to be embedded within national policy statements through biodiversity net gain statements and that there are mechanisms to be put in place for those sectors where the NSIPs have yet to be updated or where there is no national policy statements. I consider that this will allow for sufficient flexibility to allow biodiversity net gain to be tailored to any sector requirements if and where needed.

I am delighted to see it also extended to marine. That issue is contained in my amendments and I thought that I would have to argue the case for it. All I need to do instead is say, “Well done, Minister.”

That is enough praise—now for a few little queries. As I said at the beginning, I am always suspicious when we get a massive new clause to deal with what is really a simple matter of amending the schedule. First, I note that the amendment allows for developments to be excluded from this requirement by the Secretary of State. I cannot see grounds for granting such an exclusion and would not wish to see it enacted. However, I suspect that it is perhaps one of those safeguards Defra had to offer in order to get the other departments to sign up to BNG in the first place. I hope that it is merely a comfort blanket for the Treasury.

I hope that the requirement for NSIP net gain will be the same as for TCPA schemes. I would like to be reassured on this. Also, there is no commitment to a minimum period in which the biodiversity net gain must be secured on or off-site in the legislation. TCPA schemes are required to legally secure biodiversity net gain for a minimum of 30 years. I would expect NSIP schemes to secure outcomes for at least the same period, if not longer. Will my noble friend assure me that this omission is simply because the Government expect these schemes to last for evermore and thus a 30-year requirement is not necessary? I cannot imagine that in 30 years’ time any Government would consent to NSIP net gain schemes being ploughed up. Of course, the better guarantee of schemes lasting more than 30 years is conservation covenants—an excellent innovation in the Bill that we will come to in due course.

I note that there is reference to the use of alternative metrics other than the one developed by Natural England, metric 3.0, for use by TCPA developments. I can see no reason why NSIPs should not use the same metric. Any alternative metrics developed would mean that one NSIP’s 10% BNG would not necessarily be comparable with another’s. The current version of this metric is in use by major infrastructure delivery bodies such as Network Rail, Highways England, National Grid, et cetera. Of course, as my noble friend has said, no metric currently exists for marine developments; these will require a specific approach to be agreed on, and then some statutory instruments made in due course. It is a complicated area; it is better we get it right than rush it.

Finally, I note that there is no requirement for land delivering NSIPs’ biodiversity net gain to be registered on the national net-gain register developed for TCPA schemes. As I understand it, the statement by the developers must set out the gain to be achieved and how it is to be recorded. If they do not use the same register as the TCPA then, even if they are publicly available elsewhere, that is an unnecessary hassle. I would expect to see all terrestrial and intertidal NSIPs using the national net-gain register. There is nothing about the design of that register that would preclude its usage by such NSIP schemes. Furthermore, as quasi-government-funded projects, I cannot see an argument why there should be any reason why an NSIP should not see its net gain registered in a public and transparent manner in the same way that we expect private developments to be. NSIPs and TCPA schemes will both be engaging in the same net-gain market and it is critical that each is held to the same high standards that having net gains registered on the national register will provide for.

The only exception I can see to the above is an argument possibly requiring a different mechanism for marine NSIPs. At present, the register has been designed for terrestrial and intertidal schemes, and it does not cover sub-tidal. However, as soon as there is greater clarity about the nature of marine net-gain schemes I think that Defra and Natural England can discuss how the register could be adapted, and what resources would be needed to allow it to accommodate marine net gain.

With these technical queries—and they are technical queries. not criticisms—I am delighted to support this excellent new clause. I reiterate that it is an incredible achievement for my noble friend and Defra to get BNG for national infrastructure projects, and get every other department, including the Treasury, to sign up to it. I will be happy to accept my noble friend’s amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, it is a particular pleasure to commend his Amendment 201, also backed by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, although my perspective on it is a little different. This is potentially one of the most important amendments that has been tabled. If we are to see biodiversity net gain actually survive and thrive, we should look at the last paragraph of the lines that would be left out by Amendment 201:

“Paragraph 13 does not apply in relation to … development of such other description as the Secretary of State may by regulations specify.”


That is a get-out clause for the Government. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra—perhaps being very charitable and coming from a slightly different political perspective —said, “This is perhaps just a comfort blanket for the Treasury.” I think it is a get-out-of-jail-free card that simply cannot be allowed to remain in the Bill. That is absolutely crucial.

This is a very long list of amendments, and amendments to amendments, so the easiest way of approaching it might be to run through them chronologically. I am happy to commend all the amendments in this group, including the government amendments. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that the Minister can be proud of the additions that are here. This is a very clear sign that campaigning works: we know that a great many NGOs, campaign groups, individuals and Members of your Lordships’ House have been working very hard to ensure that biodiversity net gain covers our nationally significant infrastructure projects. There is real progress in government Amendment 194B. However, the number of amendments shows how much that still needs to be strengthened.

Running through some of the most significant of those, and those to which I have added my name or tabled myself, I begin with Amendment 196 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, also signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and myself. Obviously,

“maintained for at least 30 years”

is grossly inadequately in the kind of circumstances that we are talking about. As noble Lords have already said, the destruction is going to effectively be permanent. If we are seeing replacement structures and natural conditions put in, they have to continue indefinitely. Thirty years, in terms of nature, is merely a blink of an eye.

Amendments 198 and 199, both of which appear in my name—also kindly backed by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson—seek to ensure that what is done in securing biodiversity gain continues. Amendment 198 refers to

“proof that sufficient funds have been allocated to implement the plan in full, including contingencies.”

As the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, was referring to HS2, I was thinking about some horrific case studies associated with that from a couple of years ago. We saw trees—little saplings that were planted as part of HS2 offsetting plans in a very dry, hot year—left to die because it was cheaper to do that and replant them than to water them. That really is a demonstration of the way in which externalised costs and the need to ensure that biodiversity is allowed to establish and thrive have to be built into the Bill. Ensuring that the money is there is not going to guarantee that totally, but at least it is a start.

Amendment 199 strengthens the argument on sufficient funds. Of course, we know that many developers of all kinds of projects go broke. They undergo restructuring; they mysteriously disappear into offshore entities that are impossible to trace, and ownership is impossible to trace. We need to ensure that the funding for any biodiversity net gain is fully provided.

Amendment 201AB on monitoring is particularly important, and I commend those who identified the issue. It requires that an independent body be established to check the reality of biodiversity gain. Reading this, I was thinking about the practical reality of the huge issue we have with building standards, and the fact that we know that most of the buildings constructed in the UK now do not even meet our inadequate standards to which they are supposed to be built when they are actually put to the test. That is very often under a self-certification scheme. It is absolutely crucial that we have genuinely independent verification of this gain being made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I do not need the Minister to respond to the points I am about to make. First, I thank him for his detailed response to all points raised in this debate. I raised a few technical queries, but I do not need to press him today or need a detailed response from him, because I assure him of this: officials at Natural England, at all levels, are working hand in glove with his officials to address all aspects of net gain—to make sure we have the registers up and running, to figure out how to extend it to marine and to figure out the credit system. I am confident that, if funding allows, we will produce detailed proposals as soon as possible.

The main reason I got up to speak—I do so with considerable trepidation—is to challenge some of the comments made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. He seemed to imply, and indeed said to me during our last HS2 debate, that, if we extend net gain to the first two legs of HS2, it will require the compulsory purchase of more land. No, it will not. That is where, in the distinguished job the noble and learned Lord did in chairing the committee, the promoters of the Bill misinformed him, no doubt inadvertently. You can get net gain from HS2 or any other project, without changing a single item in the HS2 Bill. One does not need to change the planning application and, more importantly, one does not need to buy a single extra square inch of land. Net gain is not about that.

Theoretically, one could buy more land on either side of HS2 and have wider embankments, but net gain can be delivered by HS2 funding projects off site, near the railway line. Neighbouring farmers may voluntarily wish to add some net gain. It requires only that HS2 funds it and I suggest that there are adequate funds. I believe the cost of HS2 went up another £1.5 billion last week. The cost of increasing from no net loss to some net gain would be quite insignificant, in comparison to the overall costs.

My final point for the noble and learned Lord is this: net gain is already moving away from no net loss, from what I hear. I know my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge is slightly more cynical about this but, if HS2 can now move slightly beyond no net loss to some net gain, and can do it without changing the hybrid Bill or applying for more planning permission, we should keep up the pressure on it for 10% net gain on the existing two legs. We can do that without changing a single bit of law.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I will take up my noble friend on his offer for me not to respond, other than to say that I note his comments and, I think, agree with everything he is saying.

Environment Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to follow my noble friend and I support both him and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, in the sentiments behind their amendments. In looking at the factsheet that was circulated by the department in connection with this Bill, I welcome the fact that the Government are minded to introduce regulations to, in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, move food waste further up the hierarchy, so that there will be less left at the end. I particularly welcome the two amendments in this group as probing amendments, and ask my noble friend: is there not a degree of urgency that we need to do this?

I may have one point of disagreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. She and I both have family living in Denmark, I understand, and I have been immensely taken by the contribution that the Danes, other Scandinavians and Austria and Germany have made to enhancing energy from waste. I prefer to call it “energy from waste”; I know others call it incineration. I had beer poured over me once in my surgery when I was a Member of the other place; since then, I have called it “energy from waste”. This is the ultimate circular economy, because you are taking potential food waste and putting it into the system—the residual; I accept the hierarchy, and it should be the absolute minimum. The community benefits because it would go, ideally, into the local grid. There is a now a big incinerator in what was my original constituency, the Vale of York. The gripe I have with it is that it goes into the National Grid, whereas, as north Yorkshire is very cold, it should go into the local grid.

The factsheet also set out the importance of reducing the amount of food waste—as do both the amendments in the names of my noble friend Lord Caithness and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott—which is currently estimated as producing 25 million tonnes of CO₂ gas emissions every year through 9.5 million tonnes of food and drink which is wasted annually post farm gate. I take those figures as being accurate, as I understand that they are in the factsheet we received.

I press my noble friend when he sums up that there is a sense of urgency here: however we address it, we need to reduce that waste. I pay tribute to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, not just on feeding Britain, as I think she called it, but for the national food strategy, as one of the team with its author, Henry Dimbleby. I look forward to hearing the official government response to Part 1 of that report.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as on the register. Like my noble friend Lord Caithness, I support the thrust of both these amendments, though neither goes far enough, in my opinion, including my noble friend’s amendment.

Amendment 149 applies only to retailers generating more than 10 tonnes of food waste and in stores of more than 400 square metres. I would reduce those sizes by half and apply them to everyone producing food waste: retailers, manufacturers and the catering industry. We have no idea of the extent of food waste in the catering industry. Today’s uneaten roast chicken should be tomorrow’s soup or curry.

Similarly, Amendment 149A in the name of my noble friend Lord Caithness is absolutely right in concept, especially the idea of reducing food waste across the whole supermarket supply chain. We often concentrate on the food that is unsold in shops at closing time, but we really need to tackle the rejected misshapen carrots, the less-than-perfectly shaped tomatoes and all the other food that is thrown away before it gets to the shops or caterers. A lot of organisations, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, referred, usually charities, are seeking to use up food before supermarkets throw it away. My noble friend Lord Caithness is right to seek to reduce all food waste across the supply chain, before it gets to the ultimate shop or caterer.

In my opinion, it is wrong to set the bar at supermarkets with a turnover of £1 billion. That is too high. I would apply it to all retailers, manufacturers and catering outlets with a turnover of more than £200 million. As an aside, if I may say so—probably improperly—I hope there is still a Morrisons supermarket in five years’ time we can apply it to, after the vulture capitalists have loaded it with debt, robbed the pension fund and asset-stripped it. But that is possibly for another day.

Neither of the amendments deals with the appalling waste of food in our homes but, again, that is not a discussion for the Bill today. If my noble friend the Minister cannot accept the amendments, I hope he will stress to all those in the food supply business that at some point, the Government will be bearing down on them to drastically reduce all food waste at all points in the food supply chain and across all food outlets.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Blencathra is quite right to point up food waste at home. Here in Eastbourne, we have a universal system to deal with that, and a pair of them is nesting on the roof above me as I speak: very little goes to waste here. But on the broader front, yes, we absolutely must not accept the idea of waste. This comes back to the point I was making on previous amendments: the necessity of looking at things in the round. One of the prime ways to reduce waste is plastic packaging. The less you use plastic packaging, the more food waste you generate. We need to look at things as a whole, not at little bits. Within the area of food that, however packaged, has reached or is reaching the end of its shelf life, we indeed need to make it compulsory that it is offered to people, particularly charities, so that they can distribute it as it is needed and that, if there is no market there for it, that it is used in the most efficient way possible. By doing that, we will generate efficient ways to use it.

The other day, I came across a fascinating company called C3 BIOTECH, which is using biotechnology to convert food waste into useful fuels and other materials. These things flourish because we create the circumstances in which they can. If we do not mandate that people deal effectively with food waste, it just gets thrown away and the opportunity to do better things never arises. It is really important that the Government take action in this area. I wish the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, well: if not in the detail of its drafting, very much in its spirit.

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[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, we now enter the chapter in this Bill on water, which has attracted a lot of attention in both Houses and in the outside world. The first thing to say is that undoubtedly Defra and the Government have recognised the concerns across the nation about the state of our waterways and, in this chapter, have tried to put in place actions to improve the situation. So at least from my perspective, there is none of the indignation I felt when trying to sort out the set-up of the OEP.

I hope all my amendments to this chapter are as helpful as intended. I, and others, are trying to make certain that what the Government are trying to do really works for all those whose lives are touched by our aquatic environment—and that is probably most of us.

Amendment 160A is on “may” or “must”. I know the Minister, in his letter to us today, indicated that the point of the word “may” is to allow the Government to consult, but the Defra fact sheet that also came out today indicates that it has already consulted the water companies on this matter. I guess my point is that, if the idea is good and the water companies have been consulted, it must be done—and this is a good idea.

We know for a fact that some parts of England, notably the south-east, will be stretched to provide enough water for all human needs over coming decades, let alone for nature. If we are going to build 1 million new homes along the Oxford-Cambridge arc and 300,000 new homes every year, which we probably need to, if Southern Water is predicting a supply-demand deficit by 2030 equivalent to 50% of its current supply, and if we are going to get hotter summers, meaning less rain and more evaporation, we have to do some serious planning sooner rather than later, as proposed new Section 39F in Clause 77 rightly suggests we do.

I like the idea of moving water between catchments; I also like the idea of more reservoirs, probably numerous smaller reservoirs, which might be easier to plan, bearing in mind that there have been no significant reservoir constructions in England for over 40 years. I know we are coming on to abstraction later in the Bill, but this is a serious issue that needs serious long-term planning. There is no “may” about it; it quite clearly “must” be done.

The purpose of my next two amendments, Amendments 160B and 160C, is just to bring the necessity of putting the all-important wider consultation process, and the stipulation of who is to be consulted, under the “must” part of the clause as per Amendment 160A. Note that this is consultation on what the regulations should cover, not on whether they should actually be introduced because, in my view, they should all be “must”s. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my environmental interests as in the register. I support the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and his Amendment 163A, which encourages sewerage under-takers to consider nature-based solutions for wastewater treatment.

We have new and emerging threats in trying to treat wastewater. We have microplastics and increasing levels of hormones and other pharmaceuticals, as well as an increasing range of chemicals flushed down toilets to clean them. These are called contaminants of emerging concern—CECs—and the traditional approach would be to use different and even stronger chemicals to neutralise them, although I am not sure how one can neutralise microplastics. This is where nature-based solutions can play a big part. We all know that nature-based solutions near and on rivers can reduce flooding, cut down on nutrients getting into rivers and the sea and improve biodiversity. They can do the same thing before treated water even gets to the rivers.

In the next group is the new clause from my noble friend the Minister on stormwater overflows, which is long overdue. We must stop ordinary rainwater from entering the sewerage system and adding millions of gallons of clean water to wastewater, making the whole lot in need of treatment. In addition, we need a campaign to educate householders not to pour gallons of poisonous cleaners down the loo. I think we are still trapped—well, some older noble Lords might remember this—in the old Harpic advert of the 1980s, with its slogan of it being essential to clean “right round the bend”. It was a great slogan that has encouraged millions of us to use unnecessarily powerful chemicals to tackle a non-existent problem of cleaning sewerage pipes and not just the toilet itself.

In addition to reducing the amount of water which becomes wastewater in need of treatment and reducing the poisons we add to it, we need sewage treatment works to adopt, where possible, alternatives to chemical treatment. The main alternative has to be reed beds, which work exceptionally well and do a perfect job. Of course, reed beds and treatment require space and they are not the solution for many urban areas but they can be a much greater solution than they are now. Amendment 163A merely states that a sewerage undertaker in its management plan must address

“the opportunities for nature based solutions”.

As I read it, there is no compulsion, no fixed targets; it merely asks them to look at the opportunities to do it. In my opinion, that does not impose an unreasonable burden on them and I urge my noble friend the Minister to accept it, or accept the concept, anyway.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I welcome this part of the Bill. I refer to my interests as in the register, in particular that I am vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities and that I worked with the Water Industry Commission for Scotland for a number of years. I also declare my interest as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Water Group. I welcome Amendments 160A, 160B, 160C as probing amendments and would like to follow up the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and my noble friend Lord Blencathra.

In the regulations to which the Government refer, and as referred to specifically in the amendments by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, it would be helpful to know who the consultees are. I wish to place on record what an enormous difference it has made since the Environment Agency became a statutory consultee to applications for major new developments. I know that at one stage drainage boards themselves would have liked to have been considered as statutory consultees in relation to similar amendments, but they are focused more now on the provisions of the Bill which relate to drainage authorities, which I personally welcome, and which we will come to later. It is essential in my view—and I do have an amendment down to this effect—that water companies be considered as statutory consultees, for reasons which we will discuss elsewhere.

I welcome the references to water efficiency in earlier parts of the Bill, and I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, referred to water moving between catchments. Catchment management control is a very positive way forward. He also referred to reservoirs. Has my noble friend the Minister had the chance to look at—and, if not, will she look at—the most recent advice given by Professor Balmforth on reservoirs? I particularly support what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said about smaller reservoirs, particularly in the context of what my noble friend Lord Blencathra said about nature-based solutions. We had an extremely successful scheme with the Slowing the Flow at Pickering pilot project, which only involved public bodies, and I am delighted to say that Pickering has not flooded since we have had this scheme in place. I pay tribute to all the partners—albeit public partners—that have been involved. We can slow the flow not just by building reservoirs, as those of a particular size do pose problems because of the current legislation, but smaller bunds and dams, and smaller reservoirs all have a role to play.

I welcome these as probing amendments to see specifically what form of consultation the Government have in mind in the context of these provisions in Part 5.

Environment Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, in moving technical government Amendment 121, I will also speak to similar government Amendments 122, 125, 126, 129, 132, 146, 147 and 151 in my name, which would allow for public consultations undertaken during this Bill’s passage to count towards the corresponding statutory duty to consult. These minor and technical amendments reflect the work that has continued while the Bill has been paused, including the launch of consultations that were recently undertaken—for example, on deposit return schemes, extended producer responsibility and consistent recycling collections.

Also in this group is government Amendment 278. The Bill establishes a number of functions that are to be exercised concurrently by Ministers of the Crown and the devolved Administrations. These enable us to provide for common UK-wide approaches in future, with agreement from the devolved Administrations. However, restrictions in Schedule 7B to the Government of Wales Act 2006 prevent the Senedd removing such a function of a Minister of the Crown without the consent of the UK Government.

The Welsh Government have raised concerns over the Senedd’s ability to end the concurrent arrangements in future in the light of those restrictions. The UK Government agree that the restrictions are not appropriate in these circumstances. Amendment 278 would therefore carve out the concurrent powers in the Bill from the consent requirements. This is in line with the approach taken to carve out concurrent functions in other enactments through the Government of Wales Act 2006 (Amendment) Order 2021.

I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my environmental interests as in the register. However, today, I speak in my capacity as chair of the Delegated Powers Committee. I will speak to Amendments 148, 150, 160, 190, 191, 231, 243 and 250, which flow from the recommendations in our report on the delegated powers in the Bill. The changes that I am proposing are incredibly modest; the reason for that is that the Bill has satisfied my committee on the vast majority of delegated powers in it.

To set my proposed amendments in context, we said in our report that Defra’s delegated powers memorandum was “thorough and exceedingly helpful” and

“a model of its kind”.

This is a massive landmark Bill of 141 clauses, 20 schedules and eight different parts. It has 110 regulation-making powers but 44% of them are affirmative, which must be a record. We recommend that only one of those powers be upgraded from negative to affirmative. It has 17 Henry VIII powers but 15 are affirmative. One of my amendments seeks not even to delete one of the Henry VIII powers but merely to limit it.

I contrast what Defra is doing with the delegated powers in this Bill with one from BEIS that we reported on last Friday: the Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill. It has a mere 15 clauses and deals with a single issue yet, as we have seen many departments do ever since they learned this ploy from the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, BEIS has tacked on a completely unnecessary Henry VIII power to amend any Act of Parliament since 1066.

So the Environment Bill is very good in delegated powers terms but my amendments seek to make it an absolute exemplar across the whole of government. Let us take the easy ones, which I am sure my noble friend can assent to just like that. Amendments 148, 150, 195, 231, 243 and 250 simply ask him to adopt exactly the same procedure that is already in Clause 24(4), which is to lay the published guidance before Parliament. Where guidance is statutory and has to be followed, we in the Delegated Powers Committee say that it should be approved by Parliament, but guidance that is merely intended just to guide does not need parliamentary scrutiny. The Bill therefore has a provision in Clause 24 that the Secretary of State can issue guidance to the OEP while subsection (4) says that the guidance must be laid before Parliament and published.

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[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, on this amendment and thank her very much for her contribution. I also declare my interest as a landowner in Northumberland. I am not here to carp about the cost to me of doing this, more to carp about the inconvenience of finding your gateways blocked again and again, as well as the unpleasantness of this problem. It is often a really unpleasant thing to have to deal with.

Fly-tipping is a huge problem. It has got worse during the pandemic because a lot of local authorities closed their tips when there was social distancing of various kinds. The fly-tipping industry—if we can call it that—seems to have a sort of momentum behind it now, so even though those tips are open, it continues. On my farm, we experience this problem about once a week, to give you an idea of how bad it is. There is usually a chunk of leylandii hedge, a fridge, a cooker, some flooring, bits of clothing, toys, random chunks of concrete, lots of plastic, plenty of polystyrene packaging and some really unmentionable things as well.

If you are lucky, there is also a bank statement or a utility bill and this can be very helpful. However, when you go round and knock on the door of the person whose bank statement it is, they apologise profusely and, as the noble Baroness said, say, “I’m terribly sorry, we thought they were a legitimate waste disposal outfit”. That is, again and again, the problem that one encounters. There are plenty of rogues masquerading as legitimate waste disposal people. Surely it is possible to tackle that problem.

In our case, many of the tips are—because we keep our gates firmly locked—on the public highway side of the gate and they end up being the local authority’s problem to get rid of, not ours. All it takes is a couple of calls and a lot of inconvenience and it happens. As I said, I am not here to complain about the cost to me. It is £250 a time to hire a skip and it is a lot of work.

What would work extremely well, because this happens again and again in certain locations, is CCTV. But if you put up CCTV you have to put up a sign saying that you have put up CCTV, otherwise you cannot bring a prosecution based on it. Now, if you put up a sign saying that there is CCTV in a gateway, you are simply shifting the problem to somebody else’s gateway.

I worry that the cost of legitimately disposing of waste is too high and the inconvenience too great. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, touched on this as well. More effort needs to go into making it easier for households to find somewhere to dispose of their waste cheaply and easily. That would help a lot.

I think this amendment would help and it is right that landowners should not have to bear the cost of removing this stuff from their land, but further changes are necessary to alter the incentives and stop the dreadful nuisance created. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, in asking for further detail on what the Bill is likely to be able to enable, in terms of secondary legislation, to try to tackle this problem.

While I am on my feet, may I touch on one other issue? If you go for a walk on remote moorland in the Pennines, you encounter zero litter except one thing that you encounter on every walk and that is birthday balloons. They just appear all the time, but not in very large numbers. They are not terribly inconvenient and not so difficult to get rid of—you stuff them in your pocket—but it is upsetting in a beautiful landscape suddenly to find something shiny and bright purple. Well, purple is all right on a moorland—bright yellow, shall we say? It would be quite easy to ask the birthday balloon industry always to put an address on birthday balloons, so that I could send them back in a package.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and my noble friend Lord Ridley, who set out the case for this amendment so convincingly and cogently. I can be very brief by comparison. I strongly support these amendments. It is simply a matter of natural justice and fairness. If someone dumps their old sofa or mattress in the street or a council car park, the council will initially bear the cost of removing them and then, of course, the council tax payers will share that cost. Of course, in an ideal world, people would not do that, like the people who left a bathtub, a commode and a pile of polystyrene beside some official recycling bins I was using recently. I would love it if we could catch in every case the despicable people who dump their garbage like that, but catching them, as my noble friend said, is very difficult.

The police and councils need to put more effort into tracking down the organised criminals who dump commercial and building rubbish in the countryside on a vast scale. What is worse, when these same vile individuals dump their rubbish in a farmer’s field or lane, there is no council or council tax payer to share the cost. The farmer has to bear the complete cost of removal. Of course, some of that waste may have poisoned his land and his animals. That is simply wrong and unfair. The cost burden has to be shared among society, as these amendments would provide for, and be passed on to producers.

I perfectly well accept that Mercers, Sealy beds and Argos did not dump the mattress or the sofa and that their hands are clean in that regard, but they profited from the original sale of the items. The farmer got no financial benefit from the sale, but has to pay the cost of their disposal. That is not right, and it is why I support the amendments.

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[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I applaud the Government’s determination to drive down the single use of plastics. Clause 54 and its associated Schedule 9 will do a useful job in reducing plastic pollution by introducing a charge on the use of single-use plastics, but Amendment 139 aims to push the Government to be braver and go further with the Bill. I also support the wish to make the use of plastics more transparent in Amendments 130A and 130B.

The lockdown and its subsequent easing have shown us all the dangers of allowing the single-use culture to flourish. I, like many other noble Lords, was appalled when we ordered online delivery shopping during lockdown to find so many of our purchases wrapped in sheaths and sheaths of paper inside a huge cardboard box—all of which had to be thrown away. Many noble Lords have expressed their horror at the litter left behind in our parks and streets as lockdown eased. That litter is not just plastic. It is also wooden cutlery, aluminium cans and paper bags, all of which are used just once and then discarded and all of which despoils our countryside and urban spaces.

On day two of Committee, the Minister said:

“For the long-term legally binding target on waste reduction and resource efficiency, we want to take a more holistic approach to reduce consumption, not just of plastic, but of all materials. This would increase resource productivity and reduce the volume of waste we generate overall”.—[Official Report, 23/6/21; col. 255.]


Does the Minister stand by that statement? If so, will he support the holistic approach demanded by this amendment? That holistic approach means that, although the campaign to reduce plastics must be supported, it cannot be carried out at the expense of driving manufacturers and consumers into substituting them with other single-use materials, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, just warned us.

As it stands, Schedule 9 risks creating a situation where single-use plastic will be replaced by other environmentally damaging materials. I have already mentioned that paper is being used extensively for packaging, bags and cups, and wood is being used for cutlery. It is not always possible to determine the provenance of all paper and wood. Not all our pulp for imported paper comes from the EU and the USA. Annually, more than 750,000 hectares of timber—equivalent to nearly half the size of Wales—is imported into the UK from China, Russia and Brazil, where there is a high risk of deforestation and a threat to biodiversity. The paper manufacturing process increases the use of chemical waste, creating water pollution and pouring carbon into the atmosphere. A recent study by the Danish environment agency found that a paper bag must be reused 43 times if it is to have a lower environmental impact than the average plastic bag.

Increasingly, coffee shops and cafés are stocking disposable paper cups that do not contain plastic. As the Bill stands, they will not be included in the new charges. There were 5 billion disposable coffee cups used in the UK last year. Noble Lords only have to look at the aftermath of any big event to see the plethora of paper cups left littering the venue and its surrounding areas. A charge on all single-use items would go a long way to decreasing the number of disposable cups being used. Studies show that a charge of just 25p could reduce that use by more than 30%.

There were similar fears of plastic being substituted by aluminium cans, which can have a similar devastating effect on the environment. Aluminium production is energy intensive and accounts for 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Studies show that UK aluminium has one of the highest greenhouse gas impacts per kilogram of any packaging in the UK.

PwC examined the greenhouse gas impacts of packaging types currently used in the UK of the behalf of the Circular Economy Task Force. It found that all materials used for packaging consumed annually in the UK account for 13.4 megatonnes of carbon, or 2% of this country’s carbon emissions. The scale of emissions created by packaging, revealed by this study, makes it clear that the Government’s resources strategy should prioritise the reduction of all virgin materials. In a recent survey of stakeholders, one supermarket said about the drive to reduce plastics:

“The whole agenda needs to be more aligned and more encompassing with carbon. We’re so focused on the plastics that we seem to have lost sight of the impacts around climate.”


This amendment will go far to remedy these threats by bearing down on single-use materials consumption and shifting this country’s focus to a culture of reuse and refill, which must be a priority in developing the circular economy promoted by this Bill. Driving down material consumption and shifting to the reuse of materials must remain the Government’s highest priority.

When a similar amendment to this one was tabled in the other place, the Minister, Rebecca Pow, said that, when looking at this Bill, it bears down on this country’s disposable culture. She said that it needs to be taken into account

“how much of the Bill is aimed at tackling”—[Official Report, Commons, 12/11/20; col. 439.]

single-use plastic. Is this answer sufficient to win the war on single-use culture? Can the Minister explain to the Committee why the Government should not introduce these wider charges? Surely they should be encouraging manufacturers and consumers to reuse as many products as possible; it is a vital part of the circular economy.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, has made a very powerful speech on cracking down not just on single-use plastics but on every single-use product. It merits deep consideration.

I was also fascinated by what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said on Amendment 141 about those horrible little plastic sachets. I agree entirely with her that they should be banned, not just because they are dangerous for the environment but because they are fiendish little things. On the few occasions I have had them, I could not get them open, but once you stick them in your wash-bag, they burst spontaneously. There is not much point in them.

Before speaking to Amendment 140, I want to comment on something that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, said in the last debate: that her fridge lasted only 27 years. She should have bought the same model that I believe our late Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother bought for Mey Castle, which was still going after 60 years. That is a good use of material.

Amendment 140 seeks to introduce a new clause to ban the use of polystyrene as used for food containers or packaging material by 1 January 2023, and ban its use in construction by 31 December 2026, in five years’ time. Why do I want to do that? Polystyrene is lightweight and has superb insulation properties for keeping items cold or hot. It is widely used for a whole range of functions but where safer alternatives could be used instead; because it is widely used, it is one of the most dangerous and polluting plastics damaging our environment today.

Of course, the manufacturers say than it can be recycled. No doubt it can—that is, if you can get enough of it to a sophisticated facility, it could be done, but does any noble Lord know of any council that actually collects polystyrene, either in food containers or the big chunks of it you get protecting televisions and other electronic items? I have not seen a big bin for polystyrene at any recycling centre, and all the council advice I have seen says to put it in the waste garbage bin.