UN Sustainable Development Goals

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

The noble Lord is quite right that if you look at the SDGs and poverty more generally, half of the poorest people in the world are now in fragile states. If we cannot help to fix fragile and conflict-affected states, we will not meet the SDGs. If you look across the Sahel, there have been a number of coups and wars and a lot of instability, so I do not think there is a single answer to this, but one of the issues, when we look at aid and development and how we help these countries, is how making sure that they have adequate security is essential. Often in this House, or in the other place, we say that defence is the first duty of a Government, but when it comes to aid, we set up a whole series of different things that we think countries ought to achieve. We must help them with their fundamental and basic security, and that is something we are committed to doing.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

Some 60% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa are smallholder farmers, and most of them are women. Food from domestic resources is crucial for reaching many of these SDG goals: poverty; hunger; health; management of water; even education, because these lady farmers put nearly every penny they make from their food production into educating their children. Will the noble Lord please undertake—and I ask as one Lord Cameron to another—to boost the currently small team in his department that is involved in agriculture to enable them to help these lady farmers to feed their families and their nations and resolve many of these sustainable development goals?

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

I will certainly take away what the noble Lord said and look at it carefully. In history, it is true that a green revolution of productivity in agriculture has almost always been necessary to see more of an industrial revolution and an increase in prosperity. But the noble Lord made a good point about small farmers—as we should keep it in the family, I had better go and have a careful look at it.

Environment Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 9th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Secretary of State, the Minister and the Bill team for the very helpful discussions that I have had with them throughout, and particularly during the last week. In spite of this, here I am with a further amendment, and I feel slightly embarrassed to be pressing yet again on the matter of the independence of the OEP. However, the strength of opinion across this House was clear at the first stage of ping-pong, when my amendment passed with a majority of 51.

The Government clearly have an umbilical attachment to the guidance powers in Clause 22, and my amendment makes a major concession in that it does not seek to remove the guidance power. I expect that there will be some noble Lords who believe that this concedes too much. However, the proposed new subsection (2) in the amendment would introduce a specific constraint on the Secretary of State in issuing guidance, namely that guidance cannot be issued on

“matters relating to the enforcement of environmental law against the Secretary of State”.

The aim of this subsection is to prevent the Secretary of State having a conflict of interest. Without it, he or she could, in effect, mark their own homework.

The proposed subsections (1) and (2A) of my amendment state that, in spite of any guidance, the OEP

“has complete discretion in the carrying out of its functions”,

and that, while it

“must have regard to the guidance”,

the OEP does not have to follow it if

“there are material considerations that indicate otherwise.”

These subsections are designed to ensure that the OEP has the operational independence that we all want, in spite of the guidance power.

I turn to the Minister’s opening speech and quote back two key sentences. The first is:

“It would also be inappropriate for the Secretary of State to issue guidance on specific matters relating to the enforcement of environmental law against the Secretary of State for Defra, given that there would be a conflict of interest.”


The second is:

“the OEP would be expected to have regard to any guidance issued, but it retains the ability and discretion to make its own decisions and is not bound to act in accordance with the guidance where it has clear reasons not to do so.”

Although the wording is slightly different from my amendment, the implications of the points made in the Minister’s speech are more or less identical. I hope that, later in this debate, the Minister will confirm that my interpretation is indeed correct. The only piece that is left out is the OEP setting its own budget, but there are some other safeguards in other parts of the Bill.

I consider it a great pity that the Government were not prepared to accept my amendment, as the Minister’s speech implies that its intent has indeed been accepted. However, as the Minister stated at the start of his speech, ministerial statements in Hansard could be used by the courts in future as an aid to statutory interpretation. I look to the lawyers, because it is well above my pay grade to judge the value of that statement and, therefore, whether what we have heard is a sufficiently robust protection for the OEP’s independence.

The Minister also made three other important points that respond to earlier concerns expressed about the guidance power. First, the guidance power could not be used to preclude the OEP from investigating a broad category of cases. The example I used in an earlier debate was new nuclear power stations. Secondly, it is up to the OEP to decide whether cases have national implications. For instance, a case that has specific and local implications, such as the destruction of a unique habitat, could also be of national significance. Thirdly, the Secretary of State will not issue guidance to the OEP before the initial setup and before the OEP has had a chance to develop its own enforcement policy.

I thank the Minister for his speech. I believe that we have converged on a way forward that protects the operational independence of the OEP. The solution may not be perfect, but it gives me some reassurance on this absolutely central plank of the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, it appears that there has been some sort of rapprochement—albeit, I suspect, reluctant. On the one hand are us, from all sides of the House of Lords, who wish to see a strong and independent OEP; on the other side is the current Defra team, which still, I get the impression, wishes to guide its activities as far as is politically possible. It would appear that we are gradually getting closer together. Sadly, however, we are not seeing a total volte-face by the Government, as we have over sewage and CSOs—or, for that matter, on breaches of parliamentary rules on lobbying.

Unfortunately, the independence of the OEP, a body that has yet to exist, is a concept too esoteric for the public to even know about, let alone to get hot under the collar about. If they knew about it, bearing in mind the Government’s behaviour in recent weeks, I should have thought that they would be concerned that future Secretaries of State could be exercising guidance over this body, whose primary function, let us face it, is to hold the Government, its Ministers and their quangos to account.

As my noble friend Lord Krebs said, his Motion A1 is very much in line with what my good friend Rebecca Pow, the Minister in the other place, has already said on the Floor of that House, as echoed by the Minister in this House today. It would have been good to get it on the face of the Bill to make the sentiment more certain and, above all, more durable, because that is really what matters. Bearing in mind that we are unlikely to get another environment Bill for some decades, I for one would have preferred us to move beyond just the commitments of this excellent team of Ministers and to a properly constituted, independent OEP that will stand the test of time. However, although I strongly support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Krebs, I recognise that the rapprochement we have achieved is now probably as far as we are going to get.

Environment Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

In evidence given by the Secretary of State to that committee, he was very open-minded about that co-operation and, if that is the case, I urge my noble friend that such co-operation take place and he allows the OEP, under the chairmanship of Dame Glenys Stacey, to work as effectively and independently as it possibly can.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, as someone who spoke passionately about the independence of the OEP at earlier stages of the Bill, I support my noble friend Lord Krebs in his amendment.

The OEP will be at the centre of our country’s new environmental future: post Brexit, post COP 26 and post COP 15. The world is changing fast, and I am pleased to say that, as the Minister mentioned earlier, we are slowly waking up to the environmental dangers we face and gradually—very gradually—moving in the right direction.

We all have great hopes for and expectations of the OEP, and within the nation’s ambitions to drive a cleaner, more sustainable and more biodiverse future, I cannot stress how important it is that we get the OEP right. The success or otherwise of everything in the Bill depends on it. At the moment, it still looks as though it will be a tool of the very department it should be overseeing, as has been mentioned.

Let us not forget that Defra is in charge of and funds our most important environmental bodies: Natural England and the Environment Agency. Even local authorities do much of their environmental work in partnership with Natural England and the Environment Agency, so the auditing and bringing to book of these, our most important environmental bodies, will be crucial. Sadly, in my experience of working with NDPBs within the Defra family, I believe this is unlikely to happen if Defra is allowed to exert undue influence over the OEP. As I said in debates at earlier stages, the OEP has not only to be independent but to be seen to be independent, and at the moment there is a severe danger that it will be neither.

This House’s views on the vital importance of the independence of the OEP have been expressed again and again by noble Lords from all sides of the House with much more eloquence than I can muster, so I will not go on, but I urge Defra, which originally fired the arrow of an independent OEP when Michael Gove was Secretary of State, to now let it fly. This is the department’s chance to do that.

This excellently crafted compromise amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Krebs is, like all compromises, probably not to the satisfaction of all, but I strongly believe that the Government and all noble Lords should now grasp this opportunity to resolve the impasse and give us an OEP we can be proud of by voting for my noble friend’s Motion F1.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lord, extremely briefly, I offer the Green group’s support for all the opposition amendments in this group. On Motion E1, I have a question for the Minister. Will he acknowledge to the House that we cannot keep the same mantra of “It is either deal with climate change or deal with national security” and acknowledge that, as the integrated review says, the climate emergency is the number one threat that the Government should be focused on internationally?

On introducing this debate on Motions F1 and G1, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said that he was not commenting on any individual involved in the OEP. I shall comment on individuals, to note the two noble Lords moving those Motions and urge noble Lords to support those extremely distinguished Members of our House in their area of absolute expertise and get behind them.

Environment Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

I plead with the Minister simply to accept this amendment. It must be part of the agenda and should be upfront in this clause as a priority issue to address. I believe that, today, he could unite the House in accepting this amendment.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment very strongly. First, I declare my interests—for the whole of Report—as a farmer and landowner, as chair of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and as chair of an internet parking business.

For too long, in this country and elsewhere, we have ignored the importance of the 1 billion bacteria that should exist in every teaspoonful of our top-soil. We have ignored their vital importance for the foundation of life on our planet—food, habitats, everything. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has just said, the situation is particularly serious in sub-Saharan Africa, where we are losing good agricultural soils at a devastating rate. While obviously this Bill can do nothing about that, it would be good if the UK could lead by example and set the model for others to follow. Having soil as a priority area in our Environment Bill, and later, when we come to Amendment 18, having a serious soil management strategy, would be a good way to do this and would create a model for other countries to follow. I commend the emphasis on soils in this amendment and look forward to hearing the Government’s response.

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment very strongly. I speak as the chair of the Adaptation Committee of the Committee on Climate Change. In June this year, we gave our advice to the Government on climate risks faced by the UK, and three of our eight urgent priorities are to do with the impacts of the changing climate on our soils—so it is not just those historic and current farming practices but the fact that our soils now have to put up with droughts, floods, high temperatures and wildfires. Of course, these are unfortunately only going to get worse. This means that we are giving them a very hard time—yet we are expecting them to sequester carbon and support the 30,000 to 50,000 hectares of trees that we need to be planting per annum to meet net zero, and we are expecting them to support increased food productivity to make room for planting those trees. We are expecting a lot from our soils; they need the support of this amendment.

Environment Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, after that stunning introduction by the noble Lord, Lord Randall, I feel I ought to speak to my amendment, although I do not think I can be as erudite as he thought. I am delighted that he, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, are my co-signatories.

First, in anticipation of him moving it, I thank the Minister for government Amendment 6, which toughens up the commitment to halt species decline. That is fine, but I am less well behaved than the noble Lord, Lord Randall. I am a bit like Oliver Twist—I want more—so I also support Amendment 7 from my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch, which would go further and quite rightly seeks not just to halt but to begin to reverse species decline. It is a bit like target golf: I am not entirely sure that you could halt species decline without being on a trajectory that will take you towards recovery anyway. No doubt my noble friend will illuminate us.

The noble Lord, Lord Randall, was absolutely right in saying that species are not sufficient and we need to talk about habitats as well. The twin currency of biodiversity conservation has for generations been both species and habitats, so in speaking to my Amendment 9 I am trying to lay out that we need targets to be set to improve the extent and condition of important wildlife habitats by 2030 as a complementary and twin part of the effort towards the species recovery targets also being debated.

My amendment has three prongs. The first is an increase in the area of the national protected sites network, which is not complete yet. The second is an increase in the area of the important habitats that are not protected sites. Many of our important habitats have no protection whatever at the moment. Noble Lords have heard me bang on about ancient woodland many times; I promise that I will bring on more when we get to the tree bit of the Bill. The third prong is that at least 60% of our sites of special scientific interest—these jewels in the crown of nature conservation—need to be in a favourable condition.

Why should the Minister accept this amendment? I will give him five reasons; I will be brief. Protected sites, by which I mean sites of special scientific interest, European protected sites—heaven knows what they are called now; they used to be called Natura 2000 sites—and even sites such as national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty have been, as I said, the jewels in the crown of our nature conservation effort for more than 70 years. It would be nothing short of weird if a government commitment to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 made no reference to this network of sites and ecosystems, because they support the species that we want to see recover. They are fundamental; they are the webs of life within which these species exist.

The second reason is that sites of special scientific interest are the most wildlife-rich places we have. They are absolutely fundamental for species recovery, yet we have gone backwards rather than forwards in improving their condition. Over the past decade, many of our SSSIs have not been monitored at all. Our current estimate is that only 39% of SSSIs are in favourable condition, so a commitment is needed urgently to improve their condition.

The third reason is ancient history. I am very old, in common with many Members of your Lordships’ House, and, once upon a time, in the 1990s, the NGOs worked incredibly hard and produced a detailed recovery plan for nature, the biodiversity action plan. This was so good it was adopted by government. It was judged essential that it contain action plans not just for declining species but for important habitat types, with measurable actions and outcomes. So why would we feel less able to do this now? That is ancient history, and they did it then.

The fourth reason why the Minister should adopt the amendment is that habitats are easy, not less easy, to assess and monitor. I know that his officials in Defra are telling him that habitats are very difficult to monitor, but that is absolutely not the case, especially with modern technologies such as satellites and drones. Habitats are big stretches of land; they do not move around; they are not complicated, like beetles with no names; they are pretty straightforward to assess and monitor.

Lastly, and this is my trump card, the Prime Minister’s father phoned me up and pointed out to me—I hope the Minister noted that, but I am sure he pointed it out to the Minister as well, because he told me he had—that the latest draft of the global biodiversity targets for 2030 under the convention on biodiversity, the CBD, which will be agreed in China, or remotely through China, in October at the Conference of the Parties 15, combines species abundance and habitat extent and quality. So if we do not have targets that combine the two, we will be out of step with what is being aimed at by the rest of the world. I know that the UK Government are playing a key leadership role in COP 15, and it would be pretty strange if they were settling here, back home, for a less effective target based solely on species abundance and not habitats.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 7 at the end of July, before the Government’s Amendment 6 was tabled and was public knowledge, because I think species abundance really matters. I am one of those, perhaps because I am a countryman, who gets worried about the state of our biodiversity. I worry that the CBD and COP 15 are almost never heard of in the press and in public, compared with COP 26—because COP 15 matters as much, if not more, to the future of our planet as COP 26 on climate change, although I realise completely that they are inextricably linked. In many ways, I am very glad that COP 15 has now been delayed until next spring, because the extra time might enable us to get better commitments from the rest of the world. To my way of thinking, government Amendment 6 is as good a way as any of throwing down the gauntlet to the rest of the world: “Copy that”, we are saying. Hopefully, with the extra time now available before COP 15 meets, it might encourage some countries to respond in similar vein. I am always eternally optimistic.

I give the Government credit, first, for introducing Clause 3 in Committee and now for giving it the greater commitment of Amendment 6. I realise that, in government terms, setting a target of this nature is quite a bold step. After all, 2030 is not so far off and, in spite of all the new habitats we hope to create before 2030, from ELMS, net gain, conservation covenants, local nature recovery strategies, et cetera, no one can really predict how nature will respond to these incentives and whether we will get our habitat creation exactly right first time. I suspect not, but it is great that the Government have given it such a priority and, as I say, challenged the rest of the world to follow their example. So I thank the Minister, whose personal hand I detect here, and the Defra team involved.

Environment Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

I do not know whether or why the Government would resist these important and entirely reasonable amendments. I am sure that, like me, they want biodiversity net gain and conservation covenants to be a roaring success. I have requested a meeting with the Minister and the Bill team, but we have not yet had a chance to discuss. Perhaps we can meet before Report where these amendments will return if they are not accepted. In any event, I look forward with anticipation to the Minister’s reply and beg to move.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Devon and his forensic legal approach to these issues. In this case, I am highly persuaded by his arguments. Fifteen minutes ago, I had relatively few doubts about this chapter on conservation covenants, but now I seem to have loads of them. I should also say that this is my first appearance in this Chamber since March 2020, and it is good to be back.

I shall speak to my Amendment 276A in this group. I should say at the outset that it is very much a probing amendment. There is no doubt that overgrazing on many of our hills and commons has been a problem for several decades. One of the best things that we could do for biodiversity in these areas is to find a way of reducing the number of grazing mammals or changing the variety of them or possibly, in some cases, removing them altogether. That is what the amendment seeks to do. I hope it would enable the peat and blanket bog to rebuild itself to help the climate change agenda and to improve the biodiversity of the common in question.

It appears that ever since the Commons Act 2006 it has been difficult to buy grazing stints without having also to buy the land to which the stints are attached. As I understand it, this linkage was made under the previous CAP regime in an effort to limit grazing numbers, as linkage to the dominant tenement restricted the number of stints that the tenement could tolerate for overwintering on its own land. This regime also meant that the stint holders tended to farm adjacent to the common, which helped to keep the link between the stint holders and the management of the commons.

Now, of course, we are entering a completely new land management regime, ELMS, so it seems that it would be in the interest of conservationists and conservation organisations, such as Natural England, for them to be able to buy stints without having to buy the farm to which they are attached. I know Natural England is supportive. It also seems that such a regime would also be in the interests of the farmer and the commoner. He or she would be able to sell some of their stints, even to the extent of selling all of them, without having to sell their farm and/or their home. Life under ELMS is going to be very different and maybe even difficult for some of these farmers, so the more flexibility that we can grant them, the better.

If the right to buy that I am proposing were limited to “responsible bodies” as defined under this chapter, I believe there would be no chance of other farmers, landowners or even shooting tenants moving in and buying these stints for their own purposes. I hope that these stints are either going to disappear altogether or at least be managed for the benefit of the environment.

I am aware that the law and history surrounding commons are immensely complicated, and I am certainly no expert—unlike some noble Lords, I am sure—but I know enough to realise that tabling an amendment such as this is the equivalent of sticking my hand into a wasps’ nest. That is the reason why I felt that consultation, although hopefully not for too long, would be a good idea, and why in this instance I put “may” rather than “must” at the beginning of the amendment. I know that Natural England approves of my intentions, and I hope the Government will support the amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It is my pleasure to welcome back the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. I had not actually realised that he was not here because I have seen him so often on screen. It is good to see him.

I have a slight confession to make. When I first looked at these amendments, all my working class instincts—which have served me quite well over the past 70 years—started coming out about supporting something that seemed sensible but was from a landowner, and then another landowner came in with another amendment. However, I fought down those suspicions and in fact I welcome the concept of new conservation covenants in the Bill.

I would probably benefit from some more explanation. I know the noble Earl, Lord Devon, gave an extremely comprehensive introduction to this topic, but I still have a few small queries. However, I want to put on record the Green group’s support for these amendments. They appear to be an essential tool for modifying the law of land ownership towards a greener system that understands that land is the primary source of all real wealth, which is held in trust by humans on behalf of all species and future generations.

Regarding the noble Earl’s introductory speech, the minute that anyone uses words like “offsetting” and “market”, all my green instincts come out. I have a slight problem with those words because both those things normally mean a complete scam as far as environmental issues are concerned.

This would be a landmark change to the law because it expands on some traditions in English land law—common land, public rights of way and other traditional rights and obligations arising under various circumstances—but the amendments in this group also highlight some of the real difficulties of the law of the land. So much of land law is focused on formalities, and if the necessary formalities are not met then everything can unravel.

Amendments 266, 267 and 268 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, focus on the formalities needed for a valid conservation covenant. This is where I would like a little more explanation, particularly if the noble Earl is going to push them through to the next stage.

Amendment 276 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, probes another issue, one that I find quite perplexing, the question of why Clause 125(8) explicitly states that

“the Secretary of State has no liability with respect to performance of any obligation … under the covenant”

during any time that the Secretary of State is custodian of the covenant. Why have the Government chosen that approach? If they are not responsible during this time, who is? Will these important natural sites go untended, unmanaged and uncared-for into abandonment? Unless the Government can give some convincing reason, it seems that Amendment 276 would be an important change to the Bill—in fact, to law—to ensure that these covenants are upheld and natural sites protected.

I once again commend the inclusion of these covenants in the Bill, and I hope noble Lords can iron out these few small queries so that the covenants work as effectively as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am here to speak against Amendment 285. It seems to me that making fracking effectively illegal is an extreme reaction. That seems short-sighted. It closes down any possibility of looking at the issue again or objectively, and potentially feeds into an atmosphere in which we cannot have a sensible debate on energy policy because we start criminalising innovations every time they come along. We have heard that the Government have a moratorium on fracking. I feel that is overcautious and potentially unhelpful but, regardless of that, to make it illegal feels completely over the top.

I understand that fracking is controversial as a method of drawing shale gas from the ground. Certainly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, explained, environmental activists have been hyperactive in ensuring that there is a popular image of fracking as dangerous and dirty, but I do not know that that should pass for science or evidence. I am not for or against fracking, but I am against moralising on the issue and, right from the start, I have been shocked by the venomous demonisation of what, after all, is just an energy source. There has been a lot of misinformation and scare stories around the issue.

I call, rather, for a calm discussion about the kind of tremors caused—they would be caused by any mineral extraction, whether quarry blasting or any major civil engineering project. I worry about a tendency to portray the worst-case scenario, with scary stories of earthquakes, water contamination and poisoned water tables. I feel that is a distinctly evidence-free approach and I do not feel the Bill should be associated with something quite so ideological in that way. I am calling for a more neutral and nuanced cost-benefit analysis approach.

I remember when the former Labour MP and fracking tsar, Natascha Engel, said that government policy was being driven by environmental lobbying rather than science, evidence and a desire to see the UK industry flourish. Indeed, I was shocked by how many rejoiced at what Ms Engel described as a “perfectly viable” industry being wasted, regardless of that industry’s massive potential for jobs and local prosperity in places such as the north-west, North Yorkshire and north Derbyshire. It promised to bring energy prices down. If it did not work out, fine, but to celebrate that as a big gain seemed to me inappropriate.

I also worry about the billions being spent on importing gas, which could be better spent. I have plenty of ideas, particularly in health and social care and in rebuilding post-Covid society. I am not keen on dependence on Russian gas, but even beyond the question of energy security, it seems to me that, even within the terms set by net zero—even though that is not a target I am particularly obsessive about, as others are—shale gas production could have had few carbon emissions, far fewer than hydrocarbons. It always surprises me, when we talk about reaching carbon emission targets, that we would rule out getting gas out of the ground in the UK, rather than importing it. It feels, with nuclear power as well, that every time a new energy solution is proposed that is not wind or solar, we get a kind of moral panic led by activism.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, talked about the problem of finding any energy source that will not disrupt the environment and nature. I was involved in an argument some years ago after Lancashire County Council rejected an application for exploratory drilling—not in relation to the safety of fracking per se, but based on the negative visual impact, increased traffic on rural roads and that kind of environmental disruption. Would not such concerns condemn industrialisation in general? How can there be economic development without traffic, or some changes to the skyline or, indeed, to the environment? I think we need that.

My priorities are to generate wealth—not personally; I have never been able to do that—to see that society is able to generate wealth and, in the process, make people’s lives more comfortable and open opportunities for humanity. We need industrialisation in general, and more energy production in particular, and that will involve infrastructural environmental disruption. Shale gas might not be the energy we need, but we should note that the wider ideological rejection of economic growth and progress sometimes afflicts this discussion and we should avoid it. We definitely do not need an amendment to the Bill that would make fracking, or any energy source, illegal. I would even urge the Government to look again at the moratorium.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 280 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. This is a very interesting area and it is important that we continue to carefully research the impact of individual wind farms, as well as—perhaps more importantly, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned—their cumulative effect on many species, from benthic invertebrates through sand eels and fish to birds and the larger sea mammals. I shall start by highlighting the approach taken on this subject by the National Audubon Society, the equivalent of the RSPB in the USA. It says, and I gather that many scientists here agree, that climate change is the biggest enemy of our avian population. As wind farms are one of the best weapons in our arsenal to fight climate change, we must be careful about putting too many barriers in the way of their development, albeit with a clear understanding of their effects and what mitigation could be put in place.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, is right that research on the effect of offshore wind farms on marine mammals and cetaceans is still, shall we say, in its infancy. However, the research on wind farms and their effects on birds is reasonably well advanced, so I shall focus on that. The Scottish Government, through their all-encompassing research programme on marine energy, ScotMER, have taken a very good strategic approach to this issue, working with research institutions, notably the UK’s CEH, which I happen to chair, alongside some important private-sector players; the Swedish company Vattenfall and the Danish company Ørsted being two good examples.

On the question of where offshore windfarms should be situated, we are pretty well aware of their effects during the seabird breeding season. By putting GPS tags on birds during the breeding season, we now know precisely where wind farms should not go, which is a very good start. The winter season is more difficult, however. GPS tags are not yet light enough or durable enough to provide reliable long-term information during this highly sensitive period. I call it a sensitive period because most seabird mortality happens during winter, and winter deaths are the critical factor in the survival of their colonies—more so, it seems, than their breeding success.

The main problem encountered during winter by our seabirds is the lack of food. The main food they eat are sand eels, which, as their name indicates, live in the underwater sands of the North Sea, let us say, where most wind farms are. Maybe the abundance of sand eels is affected by the sands themselves being disturbed by the building of wind farms and, more importantly perhaps, by the submersion of miles and miles of cable. But we do not yet have the data on that.

However, I should point out at this stage that, where you have wind farms, you will probably not get fishing boats, because of the likelihood of drift and getting the nets entangled in turbine towers. In the long term—we do not yet know—by building wind farms, we might well be creating the equivalent of what should be happening in our marine protected areas in terms of no-go fishing areas, where many species, including sand eels, could be given a real chance to flourish. Wind farms could be the best thing for both our abundance of fish and our birds. Who knows?

Coming back to the existence of offshore wind farms and their effect on birds, it is notable that the worst effects are on high-flying birds such as gannets and kittiwakes, whereas low-flying birds such as razorbills, guillemots and shearwaters tend not to be too troubled by them. Kittiwakes seem to be the worst affected species, and it is good that Ørsted, for instance, is building artificial kittiwake nesting sites at the Hornsea Three development off the Yorkshire coast by way of mitigation.

Returning to the amendment, I am not sure that its emphasis is right. Private companies already have to carry out basic environmental monitoring exercises both before and after their developments. As I have said, some of them go very much further, with Vattenfall actually paying for a PhD student to assist in the ScotMER research project I mentioned just now.

In many ways, having private companies judge the environmental viability of their own project is not as good as getting them to contribute to more strategic research into the overall cumulative effects of offshore wind farms and the best ways of mitigating their effects. The current view is that having lots of small turbines placed close to each other is more damaging than having modern large turbines placed a kilometre or so apart, but we do not yet really know. Is it best to leave 2-kilometre-wide corridors through wind farms or does this only confuse the situation? Further research has found that if you paint one blade of each turbine all black, the birds seem to keep away—but again, more data is needed on this.

Coming back to the kittiwake issue, and on the subject of strategic planning, there is a big question as to whether we should be thinking of the kittiwake population as a local problem or, as they do in the United States, thinking of the kittiwake population as a whole. In other words, if a colony on the Yorkshire coast is threatened, maybe it would be better to encourage more kittiwake growth in Wales or Cornwall, and not in Yorkshire. We might have more overall success that way. Again, more research is going on in those fields. If overwintering is the main problem, as I said, we should definitely combine our research strategies, not only with all the UK nations involved but also, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, with other countries such as Iceland, Norway, Denmark, et cetera.

In conclusion, the problem is a very good one to raise in the context of this Bill. It is an important issue and I thank the noble Baroness for raising it, but I am not sure that the amendment as it stands quite puts its finger on the right solution.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 280 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and Amendment 285 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. It is great to see him in person, although we also appreciate seeing him virtually and hearing his expertise.

Amendment 280 would allow the Secretary of State to gain a stronger understanding of the impact of offshore wind farms on the environment, marine life and sea mammals. The UK is a global leader in offshore wind—Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that we are the Saudi Arabia of wind power—but, with the energy source powering millions of homes across the country, it is also an area that the Government have identified for growth, with the world’s largest wind farm under construction off the north-east coast. To allow such expansion, Ministers have been uncharacteristically generous in extending the work visa waiver scheme for relevant workers.

As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, has said, there has not been enough research in this area; the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said that we must look at the most favourable way to ensure that the decisions are right. The noble Baroness looked in particular at the impact of wind farms not just operationally but from a construction point of view on the ecosystem, looking at the fixed structures and turbines themselves.

Environment Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

At face value, these clauses alarm and unsettle those farmers and growers who will be affected. Assurance of proportionality is essential, together with close engagement between all parties and clear guidance.

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

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, particularly as I agree with a lot of what he had to say, although, as he will see a minute, I come to some slightly different conclusions. Where I agree with him is that this is a tricky problem, and I speak as a farmer who grows and irrigates potatoes—or at least my son now does. I am aware that you can hardly sell unirrigated potatoes nowadays. It is all about skin finish: in the old days, you could, because mostly, of course, we peel the skin off our potatoes before we eat them, so the skin should really not matter. It should be the taste of the flesh underneath that is important but, apparently, or so we are told by the supermarkets, skin finish is king, and for that I am afraid that you need irrigation.

The second thing that makes this a tricky problem, as the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, referred to, is the huge capital involved in most of the crops needing irrigating. Returning again to the humble potato, you need stone separators, potato planters, ridgers, harvesters, grading lines and cold stores, not to mention the underground and overground pipes, as well as the pumps and irrigation equipment itself. All this could easily come to well over a million pounds, which huge sum most farmers will have had to borrow from the bank. The threat of all that borrowing going to waste or not returning the required interest is indeed frightening, although if your abstraction licence dates back to the 1960s or 1970s, as some of them do, and your capital is all paid off, it is slightly less frightening.

A third factor that makes this a tricky area is that whereas a water company has a network of pipes and many different sources of water, and so can juggle its extraction plans to cater for where the water might be in abundance, the farmer can get his or her water only from or adjacent to their own land. They cannot abstract water from a different catchment or a different aquifer from the one they farm on.

Why, might the Committee ask, am I wanting to shorten the leeway allowed to farmers from 2028 to 2023? The answer is that I am not; what I am saying is that no compensation for amending an abstraction licence should be allowable after January 2023. However, the Environment Agency should be able to extend the enforcement of the necessary licence modification for several years if it believes time is required by the individual business—for the building of a reservoir, for instance. This should be done on a case-by-case basis, and in that way most modifications can probably happen sooner rather than later. However, and this is my key point, the days when you can be compensated for not causing environmental degradation have, in my view, long since gone: you cannot be compensated for not causing environmental degradation.

At the risk of straying into the realms of the bleeding obvious, I should state that, as has been made clear again and again in our discussions on this water chapter, some of our rivers are in a pretty poor state: sewage overspills, road run-off, agricultural run-off and generally just having too many people or too much livestock per square kilometre all contribute to ever more damaging stuff—to use a highly scientific technical term—entering our rivers. Unless we can ensure sufficient water in the river to dilute that stuff, then trout, grayling, carp and perch, dragonflies, mayflies, shrimps and dippers could all disappear, along with irises, water violets and multi-fruited river moss, to name but a few lifeforms that are important inhabitants of our rivers. This dilution is important, and it must have been obvious to all farmers for years that anyone causing environmental damage by overabstraction was going to have to change what they did and how they did it; but, in some cases, very little has happened, and too many farmers have taken no action at all. There are still people extracting from rivers in the middle of summer.

It is possible for a farmer to build one, two or even three small on-farm reservoirs to ensure that they abstract only during the winter months. It is possible for farmers to share reservoirs. It is possible for licence sharing to exist between abstractors in a single catchment. It is possible to use precision irrigation systems which save huge amounts of water. There are a variety of possible solutions and it is to be hoped that all abstractors will be able to find some form of compromise on rivers and waterways where the environment is threatened. I gather from data produced by Defra last year that this amounts to some 18% of our rivers and waterways and over a quarter of our groundwaters. We cannot just go on allowing abstractors to continue to cause environmental degradation.

My proposal is that the Environment Agency should start talking now to farmers on an individual basis with a view to modifying licences which are deemed to be damaging rivers, especially where there are habitats of particular biodiversity importance. This obviously includes SSSIs, referred to in my Amendment 179A, which largely speaks for itself and I would have thought was indisputable.

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

My Lords, I apologise in advance since I shall probably speak for too long on this group, but many of the amendments are either in my name or of interest to me.

My Amendments 188A, 188B and 188C really speak for themselves. To some extent they are probing amendments. The question of water quality, how such quality is defined in relation to current and future possible pollutants and how these substances should be dealt with is clearly important to businesses and individuals across the country whose lives are in many ways touched by our rivers and waterways. As my explanatory note says, there is significant public interest in water quality, so we feel that the Secretary of State should set up a technical advisory group with the purpose of providing independent—I stress that word—advice to Ministers on the measurement and improvement of water quality standards. It is only in this way that the public will have confidence that the regulations, introduced by the Secretary of State and properly discussed by Parliament under the affirmative procedure, will be fair and equitable to all parties, including, most importantly, to the rivers themselves.

I turn to Amendment 189 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and others. I particularly support subsection (4) of the proposed new clause, the bit on compulsory smart metering; I was going to table my own amendment on that subject but they beat me to it. The 2009 Walker review, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, gave a clear message that metering is the fairest way of charging for water, and that after meters were installed the majority of households found that both their water charges and their consumption of water fell.

I believe there is no other commodity for which we do not pay according to use. That seems strange to me, particularly as we know that the commodity can be in very short supply. I am told that we are the only country in Europe that does not charge for water by volume. Metering also has the benefit of making people realise that water is not a free good of which there is an endless supply.

In 2014, during the passage of what is now the Water Act, Southern Water, the leader in this field at that time, reckoned that 100% metering would result in a 12% saving in water. As I said then, that is a gigantic amount of water to remove from the system day in, day out. I also said, thinking of people who might be detrimentally affected, that

“if there was a universal tariff for every litre of water used, some poor households with large families”

might suffer from such a change.

“However, with transitional tariffs, social tariffs and even block tariffs and the like, and with the meter in the house and not at the end of the garden, it is perfectly possible for everyone to benefit from 100% metering. There is absolutely no doubt that the environment would win hands down”.—[Official Report, 27/1/14; col. 1028.]


That is what I said then. Now, however, with smart metering, not only have the costs come down but the benefits to the environment are considerably greater. For instance, last year Thames Water announced that its smart metering programme in London has helped it to locate and repair 200 leaks across its network every week, leading to a reduction in overall leakage of 15% in one year—the biggest reduction in a century, I believe. Anglian Water has also said that in its trials it appeared that smart meters could reduce consumption by an average of 18%, considerably higher than the 12% being put forward by Southern Water seven years ago.

Meanwhile Arqiva, which has probably been lobbying us all—and one should always take private lobbying with a pinch of salt—said that its analysis shows that fitting just 1 million smart water meters in the UK each year for the next 15 years could result in saving at least 1 billion litres of water—one thousand million litres— per day by the mid-2030s. That is the most enormous amount of water and it would be the most enormous boost to the environment that we could possibly give.

Bearing in mind the conversations that we have had in this chapter about the excess demands on our sewage treatment works and the problems of storm overflows, we should think about the reduction of household outflows into sewage treatment works that universal metering would have. If the use of water goes down, that will inevitably be reflected in the amount of water sent down the drains. Maybe that figure of billions of pounds that the Minister was talking about to sort out CSO issues could be dramatically reduced if less water arrived at our sewage treatment works in the first place.

So, what has to be done? The first thing to do is to remove the link between metering and the water-stressed area classification; that is vital. Secondly, we should ensure that the 2024 price review investment planning process is used to enable water companies to accelerate the rollout of smart water meters. Thirdly, picking up on Philip Dunne’s Private Member’s Bill, I believe the Government should regulate, and I quote from his Bill,

“requiring by 2025 all domestic properties to have a metered water supply when being leased, rented or sold”.

I would add the word “smart” before the word “metered” because of the evidence that I have already quoted from the Thames and Anglian water authorities.

Lastly, the Government should mandate the rollout of smart water meters to every household and business by 2035 at the latest. These are all firm government measures that would not only benefit the consumer but give back to the environment—and, for that matter, other abstractors, bearing in mind the last group of amendments—literally billions of litres of water.

I will not say much about Amendment 189A in my name because in many ways its length and detail speak for itself. The Bill has a lot of new strategies and plans in its water chapter: water resources management plans, drought plans, drainage and sewerage management plans, and now of course storm overflow discharge reduction plans. However, this is the Environment Bill, which we hope over the next few days will give us a vibrant, sustainable and well-managed environment in terms of our air, soils, seas, countryside, woods and other habitats. Although we have discussed the management of our water over our recent groupings and how it affects water companies, farmers, anglers, canoeists and other users over the short term—and by the short term I mean anything under 10 years—we do not seem to have an overall long-term strategy for creating a high-class water environment that will ensure that our aquatic biodiversity flourishes.

In the context of the myriad human uses of our waterways, how do we ensure that we have enough water for the flora and fauna that should rightly belong to our aquatic world, including the 500,000 hectares of wetland habitat promised in the 25-year environment plan? From the smallest of bugs through amphibians, fish, mammals, birds and our rich aquatic flora, we need an all-encompassing water strategy for England and its nature, as my amendment proposes.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group. I have added my name to several of those tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. I shall speak to my Amendment 189, which is about reducing household water usage, and I am grateful for the support for it from the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott and Lady Young of Old Scone, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley.

It is predicted that by 2050 there will be an increase of 7 million people in the UK and our water level supplies will be down by 15%. Indeed, a recent report from the climate change adaptation sub-committee said that tackling water metering is one of the issues that we need to address urgently, that it would deliver some of the best cost-benefit ratios and that the sooner we started tackling it, the better. We need to do it so that there is enough water for people and for our rivers; I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, are no longer in their place, because clearly our chalk streams also need all the water they can get. It is right for tackling our climate change emissions because heating water in homes accounts for 4% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Equally, farmers, whom we heard from so eloquently in last debate, need the water to maintain successful farming and other business. We need the Government to act.

I was therefore pleased to see the announcement in the Secretary of State’s Written Statement in the House of Commons last week that the Government intend to introduce mandatory labelling on the water efficiency of household appliances. That is a positive step and I congratulate the Government on making it but, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, so eloquently said, we will not make the cuts we need in amounts of household water—down from around 142 litres to 110 litres per person per day, which the Government say they want—unless we have labelling and minimum standards, combined with changes to building regulations. It was notable in the comments of the Secretary of State last week that he did not definitively commit to minimum standards or changing building regulations. There was a vague date and “We might look at it in the future”. We cannot get the figures we need without those.

Frankly, I am coming to the conclusion that the Government will not go anywhere near changing houses, because of the influence of various property developers. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who is not in his place, made a point in the debates last week about the influence of Taylor Wimpey on this Government and on housing developments. It is a scandal that we are not building houses that are carbon efficient and water efficient now. We are leaving the tab to be picked up by the environment, in the future, and the Government should be ashamed of that.

I partially congratulate the Government on taking up part of my amendment on labelling appliances but they have made no commitments on compulsory water metering. I raised this back in 2014 with an amendment to the then Water Bill. That is the issue that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, spoke so passionately about. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, that when you are a junior partner in a coalition, you do not always get what you want, whether about water abstraction or metering.

Since then, people who are more significant than me have added their voices to the cause for compulsory water metering. In addition to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, the Climate Change Committee is now saying we must introduce compulsory metering. The majority of respondents to the 2019 Defra consultation on reducing household waste supported compulsory water metering, and even the National Infrastructure Commission, which is not well known for supporting measures in this area, is in favour. I will not repeat the figures that were so well articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, but will say that, at the moment, only half of UK houses are on compulsory water metering. We need to reduce usage hugely, and the only way to do it is through compulsory metering.

I ask the Minister if he can give the Committee any idea how the Government intend to meet their target of 110 litres per person per day, if they do not accept all the recommendations of my Amendment 189.

Environment Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

160A: Clause 77, page 68, line 13, leave out “may” and insert “must”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment places specific requirements upon water companies to engage stakeholders in the development of plans.

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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.

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[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, for tabling these amendments. Before I turn to them, the noble Lord made a point about the use of “may” versus “must” in legislation, which I hope is helpful to touch on in a general sense before I go into the specific use of “may” in relation to his amendment. The Environment Bill, as with other primary legislation, provides powers for the Secretary of State to make some regulations by using the word “may” and others using the word “must”. I assure the noble Lord that where we have used “may”, it is because we want to regulate effectively, allowing for effective consultation and proper consideration. The term “must” is used to impose a statutory duty to take a specified action—for example, to make regulations—as soon as it can reasonably be achieved; the term “may” provides a power to take that action while preserving some flexibility to make regulations as and when appropriate.

On Amendment 160A and the specific use of “may” here, the Government understand that water undertakers need certainty about the requirements for fulfilling their duties when preparing water resource management plans, drought plans and joint proposals. However, when exercising these powers, Ministers will need flexibility to be mindful of when to introduce new water planning requirements. This is to avoid causing unnecessary impacts on the preparation of water companies’ plans, which are revised every five years and prepared by water companies at different times within their own five-year cycle.

On Amendments 160B and 160C, the Government recognise that planning for water resources is strengthened by the involvement of a range of stakeholders. It is the Government’s intention that these stakeholders are involved in the preparation and delivery of these plans in England. Clause 77, as drafted, enables Ministers to set out in regulations who should be consulted. Under existing powers, Ministers have set out a long list of relevant consultees in the Water Resources Management Plan Regulations 2007 and the Drought Plan Regulations 2005. The clause as drafted will enable the Government to set out in regulations all existing statutory consultees—including, for example, water companies, the Environment Agency and Ofwat—as well as a range of other stakeholders to be consulted. Therefore, I am pleased to confirm that the intent of the noble Lord’s amendment is already delivered by the clause as drafted.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Khan and Lord Cameron of Dillington, mentioned reservoirs. These measures will support ongoing work to improve regional water resources planning, as set out in the Environment Agency’s national framework for water resources. They will help to improve the assessment and selection of water resources, such as water transfers or shared new reservoirs, which will provide shared benefits.

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions and hope that I have provided enough reassurance for the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

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

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who took part in this very short debate. These amendments were very much probing amendments that were designed, I hoped, to provoke a robust declaration of intent from the Government—which, if I understood the noble Baroness’s remarks correctly, we actually got, so I am pleased to thank her for that. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for his remarks on nature-based solutions, and I will save my remarks on those for a later grouping, if I may. So, again thanking all those who took part, and in the hope of further positive statements on water from the Government, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 160A withdrawn.

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[The Duke of Wellington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am very pleased to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. Her Amendment 161, as she said, is nearly identical to an excellent Private Member’s Bill tabled in the other place in the last Session of Parliament by the right honourable Philip Dunne, Member of Parliament for Ludlow, to whom I pay tribute. It is an excellent Bill; it is a pity that it never got a Second Reading, but my concern is that, as an amendment, there is so much in it that I doubt whether there is a majority in this House to vote for it in its entirety.

At the beginning of this Session of Parliament, the Government announced that they would take over most of the components of Philip Dunne’s Bill by tabling amendments in this House. The result this evening is government Amendment 165. However, I do not think—and I think the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, feels the same—that Amendment 165 goes nearly far enough. Therefore, I have tabled a number of amendments which we are now debating in this group. I have also tabled some amendments to Clause 78, which will be debated in the next group.

I must describe first to your Lordships the purpose of all my amendments. To me and to many others in this House and elsewhere, it is completely unacceptable that in the 21st century raw, untreated sewage continues to be discharged into our rivers. I suspect that the two respected Ministers, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and Rebecca Pow in the other place, also find it unacceptable, but government Amendment 165 commits the Government to lay before Parliament by September of next year a plan only to reduce such discharges. To my mind, and I hope the Minister will not mind me saying it, this is an inadequate response to a most disagreeable state of affairs affecting the environment in general and the quality of water in our rivers in particular.

My Amendment 166 would place an obligation on the water companies to prevent any untreated sewage being discharged and not just to reduce the discharges, as the Government propose. The amendment would also require the Secretary of State, the office for environmental protection and the Environment Agency to use their powers to secure compliance by the water companies. Regrettably, there is evidence that illegal and unjustified discharges are occurring regularly with apparent impunity.

My Amendment 167 would strengthen the government amendment by inserting “and eventually eliminating” after “reducing”. The Government are not being bold enough if they plan simply to reduce discharges, which must surely be eliminated in a country which is trying to leave the environment in a better state for future generations.

My Amendment 168 seeks to replace “may” with “must” for a number of provisions in the government plan. A plan which only “may” reduce the need for discharges, “may” require the treatment of sewage discharged by storm overflows, “may” monitor the quality of watercourses and “may” obtain information on storm overflows is clearly inadequate in the face of 403,000 discharges in England last year.

My Amendment 169 requires that the plan includes proposals for nature-based solutions, which my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington has already referred to. It is surely desirable that reed beds, for example, should at least be considered, where possible.

My Amendment 170 proposes a new subsection to the government amendment, to ensure that progress is made every year and that, by 2025, full monitoring is in place. It is essential that those who enjoy rivers—swimmers or anglers—have access to information on discharges in real time.

My Amendment 171 seeks to bring forward the date by which Ministers must bring their plan to Parliament. The proposed plan was announced in May; for the department to have given itself 16 months to do the work shows a certain lack of urgency. These revolting discharges are happening every week, and it seems appropriate to put Ministers and their officials under greater pressure to come up with a solution.

My Amendment 172 would add, through the Secretary of State, some important further requirements on the water companies. It will be necessary to report in detail the extent to which discharges have occurred and the adverse impact on public health. The effect on public health of these regular discharges of raw sewage is, to my mind, not yet fully understood, neither by the experts nor the public.

As I go through these amendments, I would like to say in passing that I support Amendments 172A and 172B in the name of my noble friend Lord Cameron. Storm overflows should certainly only ever occur in extreme weather conditions.

My Amendment 173 is similar to Amendment 172, but places the obligations on the Environment Agency in its reporting to address the extent to which the water companies have complied or will comply, and to give its assessment of the impacts on public health.

My Amendment 174 would effectively delete the let-out clause in the government amendment, whereby the water companies would not have to report discharges if there had been an electrical or mechanical failure or a blockage elsewhere in the system. To me, that is a most surprising exemption—a huge loophole. Disclosure and publication of these very problems would undoubtedly make the water companies tackle the issues concerned with greater urgency.

I also support Amendment 175, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and others. Installation of grey water systems is eminently sensible and long overdue.

To conclude, government Amendment 165 is very welcome, but it really needs strengthening, and my amendments seek to do that. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for signing them. These matters should never be party political, and I hope that there will be cross-party support for our attempts to improve the Bill and to make significant progress in cleaning up the rivers of England.

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

My Lords, it is a real honour to follow the powerful and authoritative speech of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I agree with every word he said.

I will first speak to Amendment 161, to which I would have put my name had there been more room or had I got there soon enough. Although most of the content of this amendment has now been superseded by other amendments to this Bill, as a general approach to the appalling pollution of all our rivers it still holds good. However, we will cover CSOs, SuDS and water metering in this and future groupings, and we have already spoken about flushable products, so I will not touch on those aspects at this time. But there is one area in this amendment—I am sure there are others—which is not really covered by other amendments and which caught my attention: the question of designated bathing spots.

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I also wish to support in this group a number of amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and others. The Government have not chosen to table their own amendment to Clause 78, but I hope that the Minister will agree that all these various amendments will improve the Bill. They will help to achieve what I believe both the Minister and Rebecca Pow in the other place would want from this Bill. I beg to move.

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

My Lords, once again, it is a real pleasure to follow my noble friend the Duke of Wellington and to support his Amendment 162, which seems a very good response to the Minister’s claim in respect of the last grouping that it was altogether far too expensive to prevent CSO discharges and the damage done to our rivers by our sewage treatment works. My noble friend’s amendment asks for continuous improvement of sewage works, and it should be accepted.

I shall speak to Amendment 162A in my name. It is probably superfluous, and I am merely probing to get an assurance from the Government. In the light of what we know about the state of our rivers and of getting to grips with some of the future problems—for example, the necessary but dramatic rise in planned housing provision and the fact that we probably have too many people per cubic metre of water in many parts of our country—it is important that the drainage and sewerage management plans work.

The amendment is designed to ensure that the plans work not only for present and future customers but for the environment. Above all, and I stress this, it is important to get this emphasis on the environment into this part of the Bill, so that Ofwat, in its authorisation of capital expenditure by water companies, is aware that environmental considerations are a legal necessity. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me on that specific point.

Turning to my other amendment in this group, Amendment 163A, on nature-based solutions, I realise that this has already been touched on today, but I thought I would use the amendment to drive home the message. “Nature based solutions” is a better name than the alternative of a sustainable urban drainage system, or SUDS, the point being that these solutions are just as important in rural areas as in urban.

Like trying to fit modern heating systems into old houses, it has to be admitted that retrofitting natural drainage solutions into existing communities can be expensive and difficult, but it is crucial that, starting right now, we insist that all new developments consider nature-based solutions from the start. It should be a compulsory part of the planning system. The main message I wish to get across is that Schedule 3 to the 2010 Act, as mentioned in Philip Dunne’s Bill, must be implemented in England as it already is in Wales, because these schemes have to be planned before the design of the site even starts. They are dependent on gravity, whereas every other service to a site can, as it were, flow uphill. The positioning of these nature-based solutions is therefore crucial, and they should be the first thing designed into any new site.

Let me give a brief example of a retrofitted nature-based solution which also perhaps helps explain what it is all about, and which could even be a model for new developments. I refer to the Greener Grangetown scheme, as it is called, near Cardiff. It consists of 12 streets and is now a series of rain gardens. The water is cleansed, and many trees grow there. What is essentially a drainage scheme has become a community garden scheme looked after by people of the community. The CSO is no longer needed, as storm conditions are already catered for. I admit that such a scheme is probably too expensive for mass replication, but, with its many outputs, it attracted many willing partners and investors. Businesses and local government wanted to get involved, so it is not totally unrepeatable with the right local driving force. When the Severn Trent Mansfield pilot has produced some results, we might be able to introduce more schemes across the country, confident that we know what works and what positive outcomes we can expect.

It is worth stressing that one of the major purposes—in fact probably the main purpose—of nature-based solutions is that they deal successfully with much of the problem of road run-off, which is such a contaminant of our rivers. As well as the oils and grease from roads, 63,000 tonnes of rubber tyre particles go into our rivers every year, plus suspended solids which coat the bed of the river, hydrocarbons and dissolved metals which are toxic to fish, and benzo(a)pyrene, which is very carcinogenic. Highway run-off needs treating, and most sewage treatment works are not really designed to deal with its particular pollutants. Meanwhile, at the moment, highway authorities can connect their drains to sewage works without the water companies being able to deny them. We must do all we can to introduce nature-based solutions, wherever we can.

To summarise—and I apologise if this is over labouring my point—nature-based solutions have four main benefits. First, they slow the flow, which of course helps the CSO problem; secondly, they act as filtration plants to remove road oils, grease, hydrocarbon pollutants and microplastics; thirdly, they clean the water, whether it is going back into the river or down into an aquifer; and, fourthly, and not unimportantly, they provide beauty and habitats. As I said, they should be everywhere.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, it is genuinely a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, who always gives us a master class. Whereas I tend to rely a bit too much on rhetoric, he gives us facts, which are far more robust and demanding of a government response. I shall speak to Amendment 175, although I also put my name to Amendment 175A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, which I support. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for their support.

It was more than 15 years ago that a member of my family opened a printing factory in Cornwall and I heard the term BREEAM for the first time: a building standard demanded at the time because it was partly financed by the European Regional Development Fund. There was a reasonable expectation—in fact, a necessity—that certain standards be built into that building. One of them concerned grey water. I remember saying, “What the heck is greywater?” The answer was that it is recycling water—not water that has gone through the lavatories, or loos, but the rest of it—to make sure that water demand comes down. It was one of the most obvious examples of what we would now call the circular economy. Those technologies can save something like 50% of water consumption.

In those days—all of 15 years ago—it would have been completely unrealistic to apply such a system to domestic houses, because they were not available at that scale. But even then, for commercial buildings, it was the case that those systems worked, and worked well—the system in that building is still working very effectively and reducing water demand. But now those systems are up for use in domestic housing as well. They work. There are criticisms of them: obviously, the cost, technically—I shall come back to that—but also that they raise the demand for electricity, and so the carbon footprint may go up. We should always remember that domestic buildings will probably last for 100 years. We know that we will decarbonise electricity generation anyway, I hope, well before 2050, so that carbon footprint will not be an issue for very long.

I say to the Government that surely we have a real opportunity here to save a major proportion of water consumption. It will not solve leakage, which I appreciate has to be done elsewhere, and there are other amendments to deal with that, but on water consumption we already have a solution which, if it is rolled out in new buildings, whether commercial or domestic, the difference on the cost of that building is far from great—perhaps a couple of thousand pounds. Over the life of that building, clearly there will be savings in both resources and the cost of water.

Environment Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to speak briefly on this group and to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, who spoke eloquently and forcefully on single-use nappies. Of course, it is not just at the beginning of life that people use nappies; there is the similar and even greater problem of incontinence pads, if we dare call them that, for the third age, so I can see where the noble Baroness is coming from.

If he will permit me, I will congratulate my noble friend Lord Goldsmith and the Government on drafting and including Clause 49 and Schedule 4 in the Bill. I press him on the sentiments behind a number of the amendments, particularly Amendment 119, which was moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and which presses for the introduction of a timetable. The explanatory statement says:

“This amendment aims to ensure that the new packaging producer responsibility system is in place for the beginning of 2024, given that the final compliance year of the current package will end on 31 December 2023.”


All who have spoken and will speak in this debate are very concerned about our inability to address producer responsibility. I worked very hard for this during my 10 years as a Member of the European Parliament.

We all seem to pick up on the end of use, and we have all these recycling issues. If you buy perfume or aftershave for a present, you think you are gifting someone what looks like a really nice present, but, when you watch them open it, the contents are of course absolutely tiny, and you think it must be something to do with the marketing of it. Is there some way that we can use the provisions that are set out in the Bill?

What is the government position on labelling? The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, gave a very good example about garments, and I know that there are others that we could use. Has the department done any work on this? I accept the concerns addressed by many, including my noble friend Lord Lucas, who spoke about resource efficiency. Has the department done any costings on this?

In speaking to his Amendment 120 this evening, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, mentioned a concern, which I share and support him on, about wet wipes being put down the toilet, which causes so much cost further down the chain, as we know. We do not need regulations to ask manufacturers to do this; it is a case of education and asking them why they are not doing this in letters that we can all read. So I press my noble friend to say what work has been done on labelling and the education of consumers. We should not let producers slip away from their responsibilities in this regard. I wonder what the cost of such labelling would be—or would we micromanaging and micro-legislating if we were to ask my noble friend to address this?

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

My Lords, I support Amendment 120, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. No one who saw last April’s “Panorama” programme on the state of our rivers could possibly not support this amendment. That picture of what initially looked like a sandbank in the River Thames but was in fact a huge pile of wet wipes and other plastic-fibre sanitary items was simply disgusting to me. I do not think that that is an overreaction on my part.

In evidence given to the Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee, one witness—one assumes that he was an expert and knew what he was talking about—addressed plastic-fibre wet wipes, stating:

“every day 7 million wet wipes ... are flushed ... down the toilet”.

There were also

“2.5 million tampons, 1.5 million sanitary pads and 700,000 panty liners”,

all currently with a varying degree of plastic content. They do not dissolve or break down but, as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said, have to be raked out of the sewage treatment works and sent to landfill.

The flushing of these products is already illegal. I believe that they can now all be produced without plastic content; in other words, to a “fine to flush” standard. They can now be produced in materials which are equally effective, but which can and do break down within the sewage system, like paper. So I make a plea: the Government should look into this issue and then, I hope, announce a legal end date for the production of all sanitary goods that are not produced to a flushable standard. In the meantime, as Amendment 120 proposes, we should ensure that all the current products are clearly marked as non-flushable.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, the next three speakers on the list—the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott—have withdrawn from the debate, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys.

Environment Bill

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 28th June 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

82: Before Clause 21, insert the following new Clause—
“Office of Commissioner for Environmental Protection
(1) The office of Commissioner for Environmental Protection is established.(2) It is for Her Majesty by Letters Patent to appoint a person to be Commissioner for Environmental Protection.(3) Her Majesty’s power is exercisable on an address of the House of Commons. (4) It is for the Prime Minister to move the motion for the address.(5) To do so the Prime Minister must have the agreement of the person who chairs the Environment Audit Committee.(6) The person appointed holds office for 10 years, and may not be appointed again.(7) The Commissioner for Environmental Protection is by that name to be a corporation sole.(8) The Commissioner for Environmental Protection is to be an officer of the House of Commons.(9) But section 4(4) of the House of Commons (Administration) Act 1978 (which provides for the application of provisions of that Act to staff employed in or for the purposes of the House of Commons) does not apply in relation to the office of Commissioner for Environmental Protection.(10) The person who is Commissioner for Environmental Protection may not be a member of the House of Lords.(11) The Commissioner for Environmental Protection is not to be regarded—(a) as the servant or agent of the Crown, or(b) as enjoying any status, immunity or privilege of the Crown.(12) The person who is Commissioner for Environmental Protection may not hold any other office or position to which a person may be appointed, or recommended for appointment, by or on behalf of the Crown.(13) Before a person is appointed as Commissioner for Environmental Protection, remuneration arrangements are to be made in relation to the person jointly by the Prime Minister and the person who chairs the Committee of Public Accounts.(14) The Commissioner for Environmental Protection may resign from office by giving written notice to the Prime Minister.(15) Her Majesty may remove the Commissioner for Environmental Protection from office on an address of both Houses of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is to help secure the independence of the OEP by making its chief executive a separate office holder appointed by the House of Commons. It is modelled on provision made for the Comptroller and Auditor General under the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011.

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

My Lords, I know this group of amendments is unlikely to find favour with Defra. While I normally contribute to our debates in this House in what I hope is a dispassionate, calm manner, I have to say that on this occasion, I feel quite passionate about this issue. I am what I would describe as “a very cross Bencher”.

In the early days of Brexit planning, we were promised that we would have as near a replication of the EU environmental oversight of our organisations as is possible. At the time, Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State, was reported as saying that he thought that putting Defra in charge of the OEP would not be suitable. As ever, he was right.

The OEP will be at the centre of our country’s new environmental future post Brexit. We all have great hopes and expectations for it—some, I suspect, possibly too high. But within all our ambitions to secure a cleaner, more sustainable and more biodiverse future, I cannot stress how important it is that we get the OEP right—and at the moment it looks as though it will be a mere tool of the very body it should be overseeing.

I know that the EU regime we are leaving could not possibly be the same as any domestic arrangement we might replace it with, but, as I say, in the early days we were promised “an equally effective regime”. So it is worth reiterating what various ex-Ministers have said: namely, that in the past, the mere threat of the EU Commission taking action against the Government had departmental Ministers and Secretaries of State quaking in their shoes. And you can understand why. As an example of the punishments doled out by the ECJ, at the behest of the Commission, in 2014 Italy was fined €40 million, with an additional fine of €42.8 million every six months that the issue of dumping illegal waste remained unresolved—as I believe it did for at least one six-month period. Again, in 2015, Italy was fined €20 million and a further €120,000 each and every day that the region of Campania failed to resolve its waste-management problems.

The interesting thing about that last case is that it was the Italian Government who were fined, not the regional council of Campania, which was at fault. I say this because when Professor Macrory—who I see has now joined the shadow OEP board—gave evidence to our Lords environment committee last year or the year before, he emphasised that the Commission infringement proceedings were always directed at Governments, even if the breach was by another public body. He argued that, if possible, this should be replicated post Brexit, with the OEP’s enforcement powers being directed solely against Secretaries of State. But of course, that would be impossible under the current proposed arrangements, because it would mean the Defra Secretary of State taking himself to court.

In this context, it is worth remembering that the EU Commission took the UK to court for infringement 34 times in total and won 30 times. There is no reason to suppose that the frequency of infringements by UK public bodies will not continue into the future. Why would that change? Our institutions remain as fallible and, dare I say it, as underfunded as ever. But now, the Secretary of State will stand between the OEP and the infringing body, rather than taking the hit, as he or she should.

I must repeat what I said at Second Reading: this has nothing at all to do with our trust in the present Ministers, in whom I recognise a total commitment to the environment, but we have to think what will happen if, in the future, we find ourselves with a disinterested, or maybe just incompetent, Secretary of State and an overcontrolling department. The decisions that we make in this Bill could still be affecting the governance of our environment in 40, 50 or even 60 years’ time. So I say again: the auditing and bringing to book for environmental rule-breaking by our relevant public bodies, the most important of whom are within the Defra family, is unlikely to happen when Defra gives the guidance to, and controls the budget of, the OEP.

Let me tell you a story. I had a friend who was a regional director of MAFF in the 1980s. He had a farming neighbour who had a grouch about some MAFF policy—I am afraid I cannot quite remember exactly what it was—and he asked my friend to help him write a letter to the Secretary of State. Of course, in those days he was called not the Secretary of State but the Minister of Agriculture. Anyway, in due course the Minister, having received the letter—largely written by my friend—sent it down to my friend, the regional director, and asked him to draft a reply to him, refuting the farmer’s complaint. So my friend, no doubt employing his best departmental penmanship, wrote the reply for the Minister to send to the farmer. And then, of course, the farmer brought the Minister’s letter to my friend, asking him to help draft a further response for him to send back to the Minister. And so he did. Rather like someone playing chess against himself, he ended up having quite a long, rather enjoyable, correspondence with himself over several months, writing letters for both sides of the argument.

You can see where this is going, because that is precisely what will happen when, for instance, the OEP is threatening the Environment Agency with proceedings. The Secretary of State may not be actually writing the correspondence, but you can bet that he will be monitoring it and ensuring that, in whatever is said by either side, no blame could possibly fall on either him or his department. We know for sure that many of the current failings of the Environment Agency and Natural England are a direct result of them being starved of funds by Defra—and, also, incidentally, being subtly indirectly controlled by that department. So much for Professor Macrory’s wish that the buck should always stop with the Secretary of State.

Just last week, I was talking to an organisation about our rivers, and it was saying that it is lawlessness out there, because no one is monitoring, inspecting or enforcing the rules on our rivers, since the Environment Agency has been starved of funds in this respect. That is what it said, and when you read the evidence given to the Environmental Audit Committee last month, it is clear that it is right. The buck should stop with the Secretary of State, or at least his department, and he should definitely not be the one controlling the buck.

That brings me to the Minister’s claim, in his admirably full letter to us all last week—for which I thank him very much—that the OEP will be a non-departmental body. I am afraid that, in my view, the phrase “non-departmental body” is widely overused and wrongly applied in today’s political world. As an ex-chair of the Countryside Agency, I can say that it was not always thus—at least, it was not when I reported to the Department of the Environment, before we came under the control of Defra—but in the modern political climate of total control from the centre, free-speaking bodies within Government are no longer tolerated.

--- Later in debate ---

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

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate—this core debate as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, described it. Noble Lords from all sides of the Committee seem to support the principle of what our amendment proposes. It was not quite 25-0 as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, put it, but I think it was 13-0. This is clearly a matter of passion for a lot of people. I am sorry that we could hear the passion of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, because I know that she has had to go to the dentist, which is why she has excused herself. I am sure that we all wish her a very comfortable evening.

I am also quite glad that some noble Lords—the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Whitty, to be specific—spoke about the details contained in my amendments, and quite right too. As I explained, the words come directly from the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011. With the Bill Office, we decided not to change any of the words. I wish that we could have been discussing the technical detail of my amendment in the form of further amendments to my amendment—that would have been nice. If we did that, we would have got past the first hurdle of getting the principle of these amendments and gone on to, as it were, the Government’s playing field.

As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said in what I thought was a very powerful speech, we cannot replicate what we had in the EU. Maybe my amendments are not precisely what we need, but we do need a body that can hold the Government to account, as the noble Lord, Lord Oates, said and, in particular, hold the family of Defra to account. I note the Minister’s point about the speed of rectification under the OEP compared with the EU, but that is not what we are discussing; it is the OEP’s perceived and actual independence that is the crucial factor.

In answer to the Minister, we have examined the Bill and we have found it wanting in that respect. He spoke very fast and I have to say that I did not catch every point that he made. I will examine what he said in detail later, but there was nothing that, on the surface, I found very convincing. I still think that leaving the OEP within the control of Defra—the ultimate control, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, described it—is the equivalent of a batsman being in charge of their own LBW decision. There will be times when the decision is so obvious that, if they were not to walk, there would be riots in the stands. But there would be many more times when the batsman would stand obdurately at the crease because it suits the interests of their own team. I still believe that the OEP, like cricket umpires, should be independent. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 82 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, in speaking briefly in support of this group of amendments, I refer back to the budget of Natural England. I seek absolute assurance from the Minister that the OEP will not suffer the same fate as Natural England has.

Between 2010 and 2020, Natural England’s budget was cut by almost two-thirds. In a letter to the chair of the Environmental Audit Committee in another place, dated 2 November 2020, the chair of Natural England, Tony Juniper, wrote:

“Natural England’s current funding is below the level required to deliver all of our statutory duties to a good standard. That in itself presents several key risks including increased legal challenge, lost opportunities for environmental enhancement and the wider effect that presents on wellbeing.”


He went on to list the areas of work that had been curtailed or reduced as a result of the funding cuts. These included land use planning, species recovery, wildlife licensing, national nature reserves, SSSIs, landscapes, agri-environment, evidence gathering and partnership funding, for instance for community-based initiatives with parish councils.

The Secretary of State acknowledged to the Environmental Audit Committee that the cuts had been severe and, in May this year, Natural England had an increase of 47% in its budget. In spite of this increase, Natural England’s budget for 2020-21 of £198 million is still below the £265 million it received in 2008-09. In going into this example in some detail, my point is that we certainly do not want to find the OEP, in five or 10 years’ time, in the same state as Natural England has found itself, with the consequent damage to our environment.

To repeat what I started with, I very much hope, therefore, that the Minister will confirm that the OEP, with a long-term settlement, will have sufficient resources to carry out its job; and, importantly, that when there are cuts to government expenditure across the board, which there will no doubt have to be to pay the huge bill that we have racked up as a result of the Covid pandemic, the OEP will be one of the protected areas and will not just take a salami slice along with everybody else.

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

My Lords, after my remarks a moment ago on the independence of the OEP, it will come as no surprise to your Lordships that I strongly support the principle that the OEP should have as much financial independence as possible and that I therefore support these amendments.

Funding is vital. I note that the correspondence from Natural England that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, just read out could equally be replicated in correspondence from, I suspect, the Environment Agency to Defra, because the same incredible cut—up to 70%, I believe—has happened to the Environment Agency. So funding is absolutely vital for the proper operation of all these NDPBs. In my view, the OEP’s budget should not be at the discretion of the Secretary of State for Defra.

I believe that the public at large will take a great deal of interest in the work of the OEP—if not, they certainly should do—so anything that makes the OEP’s finances more transparent to the public, more long-term and more the business of Parliament rather than at the whim of the department gets my approval.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

We appear not to have the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington.

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

My Lords, I strongly support the messages being delivered in this group of amendments. Above all, I support the stand part question opposing Clause 24, to which I would have added my name if there had been room. I strongly support the powerful speeches given on it by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and—as ever—the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, with his great experience on this matter.

My basic position is that I would support any amendment which reduced the influence of Defra and its Secretary of State on the workings of the OEP. I know that sounds harsh, and I repeat my point that this does not denote any mistrust of the current officials in Defra, and certainly not its Secretary of State or Ministers. However, we have to ensure that the workings of the OEP over decades to come, as stressed by many, are completely independent of the bodies on which it is supposed to keep a watchful eye. That definitely includes Defra and its wider family. It must be independent and be seen to be independent, so the idea that the Secretary of State of Defra should be giving guidance to the OEP on how it exercises its enforcement policies must be wrong. I have yet to meet anyone who, in their heart of hearts, does not agree with that statement, with the perhaps unique exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who gave the impression of not having listened very closely to the previous debates.

Our whole constitution is based on checks and balances, yet what we have here is the equivalent of the potential accused being able to influence the operation of the Crown Prosecution Service. This must be very wrong. It would be a travesty of proper governance if Clause 24 were to remain in the Bill.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

I call the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.