United States: Haggis Ban

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I was going to say that it is a question of priorities, but that is an eminently sensible suggestion.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, what is served at the British embassy on Burns Night?

[Lord De Mauley]

What else, my Lords? Haggis.

Peatlands

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

Yes, my Lords—and I should take this opportunity to thank the noble Lord for the work he does with the Adaptation Sub-Committee; it is extremely important to us. The peatland code, which was launched in September, provides a basis for business sponsorship of peatland restoration; that is a key plank in what we are doing. We are also undertaking a considerable amount of important and relevant research. Environmental stewardship, which I referred to in my initial Answer, has for many years benefited peatlands, but the new ELMS will be more focused on environmental outcomes and therefore will be more directly beneficial to peatland restoration. The three nature improvement areas that have peatlands are working hard on improving their habitats.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, is not the best way in which to answer the plea of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, to ensure that these unreliable, uneconomic and unsightly wind farms are not built on land anywhere?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, of course, we have to take all factors into account in these decisions, but I shall pass on my noble friend’s comments to my colleagues at the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

EU: Regulation on Chemicals

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

As my noble friend asks about gold- plating, perhaps I may say that REACH is a directly acting regulation so there is little scope for gold-plating. However, the UK approach is in fact the opposite of that; for example, our approach to enforcement is to help companies get back into compliance. My noble friend might like to know that the Environment Agency has developed helpful tools for that process. It uses its expertise to look for illegal use of restricted chemicals, and it can then focus on suspected wrongdoing with little or no burden on compliant companies.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, there are significant consequences for small and medium-sized enterprises of incomplete registration. Can the Minister please tell us how many businesses have already been informed by the European Chemicals Agency that their registration is incomplete, and what action has he taken to ensure that businesses complete all of the agency’s registration requirements in time to avoid those significant consequences?

[Lord De Mauley]

In terms of specific numbers, no, I cannot. However, I will write to the noble Lord on his question.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I will ask the question that I tried to ask. Would not the best tool be the use of plain English which everyone can understand, whether they are in small business, medium business or any other sort of business?

[Lord De Mauley]

My noble friend, as always, speaks so much sense. I am discovering, as Defra’s science Minister, that the world of chemicals does not easily lend itself to simple language. However, I will do my best for my noble friend.

Agriculture: Common Agricultural Policy

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, my noble friend makes an important point. We have fought hard to achieve an element of flexibility in the greening requirements. Perhaps we have not got as far as we would have liked but we are negotiating with nearly 30 other states and, of course, the Parliament.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, can we inject some intelligibility into the language with which these things are described? It really is the most awful gobbledegook. How can people outside be expected to understand about caps, pillars, greening and all this nonsense?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, that is music to my ears.

Littering from Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, as always I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I do not come armed with a battery of convincing statistics—and convincing they were—but I am sure that we were all grateful to him for them. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Marlesford for the admirable, moderate and modest way in which he introduced a very important measure. My only criticism of his Bill is that it is perhaps too moderate. However, it can be amended in Committee.

I endorse everything that my noble friend Lord Lawson said to the Minister. I hope that any negative brief has already been destroyed and that his reply will indicate an understanding of the problem and a determination both to get on with it and not to produce meaningless consultation exercises that give two days for people to reply. That sort of thing reinforces the scepticism of those of us who regard the Localism Act as a tokenism Act.

This is a serious problem. My noble friend Lord Marlesford was right to say that it is a question of behavioural attitudes. We need to moderate behaviour. We discussed this in a couple of debates in this House in recent weeks. I had the privilege of introducing one on citizenship three weeks ago. The debate the following week was introduced by my noble friend Lady Shephard. We talked about the need for young people to grow into citizens who have a sense of community and of their responsibilities as well as their rights. I advocated a citizenship scheme and a ceremony, and had great support from all parts of the House. My noble friend Lady Shephard, and those of us who supported her, talked about the need for educating school leavers into feeling that they were going out into a world in which they would be able to play a constructive part. Attitudes and behaviour are crucial.

When I was a young schoolboy at a choir school in Grimsby in 1947, I was summoned to the headmaster’s study. “Cormack, you were looking in the toy shop window in the Bull Ring yesterday”. “Yes, sir”. “While you were there, a funeral passed you. You did not turn round, take off your cap and stand in silent respect”. “No, sir”. “If I ever see you doing that again, you know what will happen”. “Yes, sir”. That is perhaps an extreme example, but we were brought up with an attitude of real respect for those with whom we lived and for the society in which we lived. Not one of us would have thought of dropping anything on the ground without picking it up.

When I was a Member of Parliament for South Staffordshire, which I had the honour to represent for 40 years, litter became a terrible problem, particularly in the latter two decades. I lived in a particularly glorious part of the country. The surrounding lanes were frequently fouled by litter: not just lemonade bottles and cigarette packets but suites of furniture and white goods such as refrigerators dumped in lay-bys. The cost to the local council was enormous, but what was so terrible was that some beautiful and absolutely lovely countryside was despoiled and fouled, sometimes for weeks on end. Any society that can tolerate that does not deserve the epithet civilised.

I have the privilege of living in the Minster Yard, in the Cathedral Close, in the great city of Lincoln. Only last week, coming back from a service with a friend who was staying with us, we found on one of the greens—and Lincoln works very hard to keep itself tidy—that people had been picnicking, and there were bottles and cartons which we picked up and put in my dustbin. Any society that can have that attitude towards its surroundings does not, as I say, deserve to call itself civilised.

This modest measure is about changing attitudes, but it will work only if there is an enforcement of the sort of measures that my noble friend is advocating and a determination in our schools to teach our children that there are certain things that you just do not do—and one of them is spoiling the environment in which we live for your neighbours, your friends and your family and, in a sense, above all, for those visitors, if you live in a part of the world that attracts tourists, who come to enjoy it. So let us hope that, when my noble friend comes to reply from the Front Bench, he will indicate that the Government regard this matter as a high priority. He is nodding furiously, so we are all waiting for his speech.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

He is shaking his head.

[Lord Cormack]

If he is shaking his head, by Jove we are going to be plunged into gloom at the end of this debate. I hope that he will show that the Government accept that this is a real problem which my noble friend has underlined and, above all, ensure that it is tackled rather more quickly than the appalling problem of Parliament Square. We saw the centre of the greatest city in the world despoiled and defaced by litter, year after year. Now, thank God, it has gone—and let us hope that when Marlesford, or Marlesford in the government version, passes into law, we shall be on the way to seeing lanes, byways and the streets of our country and county towns as clean as Parliament Square is today. I am delighted to support my noble friend’s Bill.

Flooding: Defence Programme

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, there is constant negotiation between the meteorological forecasting organisation and the Environment Agency. My noble friend is right that we need to keep our eyes on that and we are certainly doing so.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, could we take this opportunity to extend our sympathy to those who have suffered this week in the United States from the devastating floods and storms?

[Lord De Mauley]

Yes, my Lords. I entirely agree with my noble friend. I think it is worth taking stock and making the point that we are seeking to learn lessons from what is going on in New York. The Environment Agency has contacted the US authorities already with a view to drawing on lessons learnt.

Agriculture: Pigs

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord will raise this matter on Report on that Bill, but I think my explanation to him in Committee was that we think it better that these things are discussed in greater detail when we can find time for an appropriate Bill. That is why we are committed to a draft Bill.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that the draft Bill to which he refers would be a far more welcome addition to the legislative timetable than another draft Bill that has recently been talked about?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I think that we are going beyond my pay grade and I will not discuss the differences between draft Bills.