Environment Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 152 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and colleagues, and Amendment 254 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, regarding the use of pesticides and their impact on the environment. I vividly recall similar debates last year in Committee and on Report during the passage of the Agriculture Act.

I believe, like the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, that there has to be a level of proportionality and balance, but I live in a rural area and I know what it is like to be impacted by the use of pesticides. There is a clear need for a pesticide management plan, because there has been an excessive use of pesticides, which have been damaging not only to the pollinators, as expressed through Amendment 254, but to human health and the environment, as conveyed by Amendment 152.

Amendment 152 is a cross-party piece of proposed legislation and is crucial in that its focus is the protection of human health and the environment in rural areas by prohibiting the use of agricultural pesticides near specified areas and the vulnerable groups within them, such as rural residents’ homes, schools, childcare nurseries and other healthcare facilities. As detailed in the UK Pesticides Campaign’s submission to the Public Bill Committee, it is highly noticeable that, although human health and the environment are inextricably linked—particularly when it comes to the use of agricultural pesticides—and the Environment Bill includes priority areas for regulations to be set, including in relation to air quality and the listed air polluting impacts, there appears to be a total omission of any requirements for the protection of human health and the environment from agricultural pesticides. Quite clearly, a level of balance and proportionality is required in the use and the location of pesticides.

As it stands, the Environment Bill does not appear to recognise in any capacity or even have any specific reference to pesticides, when in actual fact they are the biggest contributor of damage, pollution and contamination of the air, soil, water and overall environment in rural areas. The UK Pesticides Campaign asserts that the existing pesticides standards here in the UK fail to protect human health and the environment in rural areas.

Because improving air quality is a major public health issue, long-overdue regulations for the protection of human health and the environment from agricultural pesticides now need to be set in the Environment Bill, most importantly for the protection of the health of rural residents and communities—hence the need for Amendment 152 to be put on the face of the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, outlined.

Furthermore, on Amendment 254, the reality of crop spraying in the countryside is that it involves the dispersal of innumerable mixtures and cocktails of pesticides sprayed on crops, so the critical point about the exposure of any species—whether it be humans or bees and other pollinators—is that it will be to mixtures of different pesticides.

There is also the risk of adverse impacts on bee health from the cumulative effects of multiple exposures to mixtures of different pesticides. The only way to properly protect bees and other pollinators is to prohibit the use of such harmful pesticides in rural areas. Maybe another way to address this issue would be if farmers were allowed to set aside greater areas that were fully covered by all the subsidy schemes.

The Soil Association wants to see a different approach to farming and the use of pesticides. It believes that the Government and society should support UK farmers to transition to whole-farm agroecological systems, ensuring that there is no lowering of environmental or health standards as a result of any new trade deals, and that they should introduce a clear quantitative target for significantly reducing the overall use of pesticides in agriculture.

Therefore, pollinators must be protected from pesticides as Amendment 254 requires. I look forward to the response from the Minister and I hope that he will see fit to accept both amendments to ensure that our environment, our natural life and biodiversity and the human health of individuals in rural areas can be protected from the harmful impacts of pesticides.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is very good to have the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in the Chamber. He has been very active on the screen but there is no substitute for being here in the flesh. I very much hope that it will not be too long before we see the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, here too. She also has been very assiduous in taking part in debates and making her contributions, but I ask her to come here if she possibly can, please, because that is what proper debating is about.

My heart is entirely with those who have moved these amendments, but we owe a great debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, for making this a proper debate. I was a Member of Parliament for a rural constituency for 40 years. I got to know many farmers and many of them became close friends. A person I would like to quote is perhaps the greatest countryman I have ever known. Some of your Lordships may remember Phil Drabble and his programme “One Man and His Dog”—he was its originator—but he was far more than an accomplished shepherd. He had his wilderness, about which he wrote books, which was a wonderful corner of Staffordshire with the second largest heronry in the country. I often used to talk to him about these things. He used to say to me, with his inimitable burr, which I will certainly not try to imitate, that it is a question of getting the balance right.

Nobody could dispute that pesticides are indeed poisonous, as my noble friend Lord Randall said, or that their indiscriminate or careless use causes enormous damage. It is right that colleagues in this debate should point out some of the dangers—the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, was particularly forceful on this. It is also very important indeed that the dangers to pollinators should be properly recognised. Without pollinators there is only one end, which is extinction, and we have to be conscious of that. But the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, was right when he asked us to consider whether the current regulations are adequate. He came down on the side of saying that they were. I am not absolutely convinced, but we have stringent regulations and, although one case of poisoning through pesticides is one too many, there have not been enormous numbers and we have to bear that in mind.

The Minister, who will reply in a few moments, is, as someone said a little while ago, someone with a good track record in this field. I hope that he will bear in mind that your Lordships’ House—as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and several others reminded us—voted for a similar amendment during the passage of the Agriculture Act. I well remember the debate and the graphic and gruesome examples that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, drew to our attention. But, at the end of the day, farming is there for one overriding purpose: to produce the food to feed the nation.

Environment Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments and support in detail all that has been said by noble Lords, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. I want to ask a rather fundamental question. The environmental review can be taken on only where the OEP considers that, on the balance of probability,

“the authority has failed to comply with environmental law, and … it considers that the failure”

is “serious.” That is the start: a failure

“to comply with environmental law.”

Subsection (6) states:

“If the court finds that the authority has failed to comply with environmental law, it must make a statement to that effect (a ‘statement of non-compliance’).”


That is to say that the court has held that the authority in question

“has failed to comply with environmental law”.

It goes on to state:

“A statement of non-compliance does not affect the validity of the conduct in respect of which it is given.”


What does that mean? That means that the conduct in question cannot be a breach of the law. It is a failure of environmental law, yet it is not a breach of the law. Is that another way of saying that environmental law is not a law at all, and that planning law must prevail? Is that really what this is saying, or can my noble friend explain to me how you can have a law which has been breached yet the conduct is not regarded as improper?

It is a simple question that supports all these amendments, if answered properly. There is an underlying feeling that environmental law is to be a grade below some other laws so that, although you fail to comply with it, you can still be all right. That does not accord with our understanding of law—certainly not mine for a considerable period. I do not see how it can work that you can have a piece of legislation that describes something as law—environmental law—yet it is not law that, where you breach it, renders your conduct wrong.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is a delight to follow my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who is in many ways the embodiment of wisdom in your Lordships’ House. How good it is to have him back with us and speaking as vigorously and to the point as he always does.

I cannot begin to rival the expertise or knowledge of the noble and learned Lords who have spoken, but shall give my noble friend the Minister a secular analogy. When we enter this Chamber from the Prince’s Chamber, we have in front of us that great classical sculpture by John Gibson of Queen Victoria. It is flanked on either side by the figures of Justice and Mercy. The figure of Justice holds in her hands, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, reminded us earlier, the sword and the scales.

Would my noble friend Lord Goldsmith seriously think, as he entered the Chamber, of removing that sword and those scales? Because that, metaphorically, is what he is proposing to do this afternoon if he does not accept the spirit of these amendments. It is palpably absurd—I refer to the interesting contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—to have an Environment Bill that has as one of its slogans, “The polluter need not pay”. It is absurd. Can my noble friend not recognise that absurdity?

I have said before in these debates that it is essential that an environmental Bill should command the support of Members in all parts of your Lordships’ House, particularly one that is meant to stand the test of not just some time but generations. We cannot have a Bill enacted that, in effect, does what my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay has just said and contradicts one of the fundamentals of English law.

I hope that my noble friend Lord Goldsmith will do what I urged him to do when speaking to an amendment on Monday. I said that because it was so important that the Bill should command the support of your Lordships in all parts of the House, he should convene some sort of round table and talk to us all. There is an answer to all these conundrums and problems that we are highlighting, because we all support the basic premise of the Bill. However, if we support that premise and intention, we cannot allow the Bill to go on to the statute book so fundamentally flawed as it is at the moment. So I say to him again, “Please talk to those of us who wish you well, who wish the Bill well, but who can never lend support on Report to a Bill that is so riddled with absurdity”.

[Lord Duncan of Springbank (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by drawing attention to my interests in the register, notably the chairmanship of the National Forest.

I was pleased to put my name to Amendments 105 to 108, because they are necessary and they make the Bill better. We have heard echoed by a number of noble Lords how that can be achieved and I hope that the Government hear that. In many ways, this clause is like a Monet painting. It looks fine from a distance, but the closer you get the more the detail seems to disappear. What we need now is clarity and for that detail to be recognisable. Non-compliance must affect validity. That is a simple statement of fact. The beneficiary of an environmental deterrent or damage cannot escape sanction because he is materially affected by the sanction. That cannot be a useful way of moving forward. The remedies available must be a deterrent. If they are not, the system will be gamed. Individuals will find ways through, between and under, and they will be able to make a mockery of what should be a very important institution.

The OEP is a successor to a body that was able by its threats to bring about fundamental change in how environmental laws were enforced—and it made the environment better, safer and healthier by doing that. The successor body must be able to do the same and have available to it each of the elements that can allow it to achieve that outcome. That is why I was very pleased to put my name to these amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I support the amendments in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, as well as that in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Randall, about soil, that in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about ecosystems, and that in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, about the oceans.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is absolutely right: I did interview the Secretary of State last week, who talked extensively about how the Government saw soil as a key part of future strategy and as being at the heart of both the Agriculture Act and the Environment Bill.

The thing about soil is that it is very small in our eyes, but in the soil’s eyes it is of course a factory and it has been described as a factory. In a tea-spoon of soil, you will probably get some thousands of species, some millions of individuals and about 100 metres of fungal thread. This is a world of major complexity and, every second that we are alive, this factory is performing a function that none of us could do. No scientist could take sunlight, air and all the nutrients in the soil and produce leaves, which produce trees. Look around this Chamber: everything in here, apart from the quarried stone, has come from a plant, has come from the soil. This leather has come from an animal that has fed on a plant; the carpet, probably from Axminster, and some sheep; my clothes; everything. Yet we call it “the dirt beneath our feet” and we stomp on it.

Once I got the image of a factory into my head, and the notion that there are all these people pulling levers and rushing up and down hills, it struck me that it was like being in a city, but a city on a completely different scale to how we live, so of course we ignore it. What has gone so tragically wrong with the soil in recent years is not so much the tinkering around but the deep ploughing and then the addition of heavy chemicals. It strikes me that you could think about it as like living in Homs or somewhere like that. Your buildings get bombed every other day or, in the case of the soil, two or three times a year. We have decided, since the green revolution of the 1950s, that deep ploughing was a really good idea because it let in the air. It was extremely fallacious science that is now completely accepted not to be right.

Look at agroecology. Where I was with the Secretary of State last week, we saw new devices that slice through the soil like pizza cutters, dropping in individual seeds, making minimal disruption and, as a consequence, needing minimal fertilisers and producing strong, healthy plants that also support biodiversity. We have done so many things wrong it is quite impossible to start to count them: the monocrops that kill the culture; the deep ploughing; the addition of chemicals—it is really astonishing—but the soil is truly phenomenal. It is the most amazing stuff. Give it a break, and it will come charging back with great health. I have to say to whichever noble Lord it was who said how long it takes to regrow, it really does not; it is really amazing. It will knit itself together, start co-operating and start not only giving us back the goods and services we want, but at the same time taking down the carbon.

As the noble Lord, Lord Curry, said, it seems quite astonishing that soil is not in the Bill, along with air and water; it should be. History is littered with examples. I do not know whether any noble Lord has been to Leptis Magna. It is a desert, but it is not that long ago, in the big history of things, that the Romans used to get three harvests a year from Leptis Magna. That is why they wanted north Africa. They had the most sophisticated systems for bringing water from the mountains; they had an amazing market with marble and they kept the water in tanks underneath to keep the vegetables cool and then they overfarmed it. But it was fine then, because they just packed their trunks—I do not know whether they had trunks then—and got on their oxen and went somewhere else, because there was always somewhere else. There is not anywhere else now. It is the same as when the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, says, “There is no such place as away.” You throw it away: where is that away? As Greenpeace says, we throw away our plastic and it ends up in Turkey. We throw away something and it ends up in that awful albatross. That makes my heart break too. We have to respect and adore these particular things.

The thing about the soil is that there are a lot of “don’ts”. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, says, “Don’t deep plough”, “Don’t put fertiliser on it”, “Keep cover crops on it.” Soil wants that; soil wants to work. We have to find intelligent ways to pay for this; we cannot just expect people to do it and not get anything back. They will get it back in advanced crops without having to pay for chemicals, but that will take a bit of time. Yes, indeed, people are using earthworms as a measure, but it is still a bit clumsy and a bit inexact. It is kind of fun, but there are some more sophisticated things that we can do.

I want to quickly address the necessity of understanding things as ecosystems. I do not know how many noble Lords know of Dr Suzanne Simard, but she is a Canadian forestry professor at British Columbia University. She grew up in the forest, became a logger and a forestry expert and at the age of 20 she was put to work by a forestry company in the north-west and her job was to clear-fell and then plant pine. After a bit, she looked at it and thought, “Why are these things dying over huge acres?” That was when we thought, “Survival of the fittest: get rid of everything else and everything will grow”, but in fact they died. They did not do well, they sort of struggled and some of them just fell apart. What she realised, and what she has now written about and become the world expert on, is that there is an extraordinary interconnection that goes on underground. We are only just beginning to learn about it. A tree will help out another tree if it is in trouble. It will send extra nutrients. It is quite magical. In the same way that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, was moved about the albatross, I am extremely moved about the power of the soil. I feel very strongly that it has to be at the heart of the Bill.

Finally, on the question of the oceans, not only did I see the Secretary of State last week, but the week before I saw the Minister for Food and Farming. We were in the West Country at an event and she was on her way to Brixham. She said to me, “This is going to be tricky, but 80% of the fish that comes in comes from bottom trawling.” Bottom trawling is just like ploughing: it is smashing through someone else’s home with absolutely no regard for those who live there. We would not smash through a field of cattle, just wipe them out and throw them all over the place; that is what we do every day. Some in this Chamber will have seen “Seaspiracy”. It is not a pleasant watch. You get the sense of how many fish get sacrificed in the by-catch. Please, Minister, find a way to put the sense of ecosystems and soil absolutely at the heart of how we assess our environment and take care of it, because we will fail otherwise.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

It is a very real privilege, and I mean it, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. Hers was a splendid speech—one of many we have heard this afternoon—and she was so right in her references to bottom trawling. I may be the only Member of your Lordships’ House who sailed, in the old days, in a deep-sea trawler. I was the candidate for Grimsby at the time, in 1965, and I went up to the north coast of Norway in a trawler. That was proper fishing. It was fascinating, and the men who were there were among the bravest I have ever known. I represented a mining constituency later. That is another tough and appalling job, but at least the miner went home to his bed each night. The trawler-man was out for 18, 21 or 24 days, and it was extraordinary. That was what convinced me, and I have always been convinced, that we must look after our marine environment.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who has put his name to my noble friend’s amendment and who will be winding up on it for his party, is bound to be sympathetic and enthusiastic. Of course, he chaired that session of the EU Environment Sub-Committee to which my noble friend Lady McIntosh referred in her speech. We heard some fairly disturbing things that day. Anybody who has watched “Blue Planet” knows that the isolated, moving incident of the albatross, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, referred, is just one of a million examples. It was a very graphic and good example, but there are so many—all of them caused by the careless distribution of our detritus across the world.

I am sure many noble Lords will know about Operation Neptune, where the National Trust sought to buy many miles of our coastline. It has been an operation that has lasted for some half a century now and has been extraordinarily successful. It has succeeded in preserving some of the most beautiful of our coastal areas—many of which, incidentally, were rather badly despoiled during the pandemic by careless visitors and worse than careless visitors. If we want to preserve our coastline, we must also preserve our marine environment, so I very much hope that my noble friend Lord Goldsmith will accept this amendment with enthusiastic alacrity or, if not, call a meeting to devise an amendment that he can accept with enthusiastic alacrity, because this, again, will come back on Report and we need to get it right.

Environment Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 28th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone has withdrawn, as she is listed twice on this list and will not be speaking in either place, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

A few moments ago the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, referred to this as the core amendment of the Bill. In many ways it is, because the success of the Bill depends upon having a totally independent, vigorous, courageous person who can stand up to any Minister and who has the authority to call the Government properly to account for infringements of an environmental nature. One thinks of the debate we had last week about the pollution of rivers and the ability to fine—the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, in his admirable introduction to his amendment talked about the swingeing fines that have been imposed upon Italy, among other countries.

If the Bill is truly to become a landmark Act of Parliament—again I use those words, which have been used so often—it has to stand the test of time. We are not legislating for the next five years or even for the next 25 years—a figure that has cropped up before. We are legislating to lay the foundations for an environmental system that our grandchildren—in the case of some of us, our great-grandchildren—will depend upon. We cannot be fobbed off with the answer that this is more or less another function of the Secretary of State. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, has spelled out many things—I do not agree with all of them—which are of great importance to us all.

I have some doubts about appointing a person for 10 years; I would prefer the electoral cycle of five years, although emphatically not to coincide with a general election. I would be entirely happy with an appointment for five years, to be renewed for another five years, but not longer. So I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, on the overall length, but we have to be a little cautious about appointing any individual for a 10-year period. Things can go wrong, and it can be very difficult to get rid of people who are not fulfilling their function.

This is a minor point, but I also think we should not rule out Members of your Lordships’ House. We have a number of people who are highly accomplished and who could fulfil such a role. Of course it would be necessary to stand down from active membership of the House, as the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, did, but we have provision for that. It is possible to take leave of absence, and if anybody is appointed to a very important position, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Ashton and Lady Amos, were, they do not function as a Member of the House during that period. To rule out somebody by virtue of his or her membership of the House is wrong and unnecessary.

The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, hit on many other important points. There has to be a degree of independence. He talked about the Comptroller and Auditor-General as an example on which he has drawn. There has to be independence and vigour and strength—it is crucial.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, in her inimitable way, talked about Report. I say to my noble friend, not in any spirit of threat, that there must be meetings with Members of your Lordships’ House between now and Report, otherwise the Government will get a lot of egg on their face and the possibility of a 1 November deadline will vanish. I do not say that in a threatening spirit and, in particular, I say it in no spirit of animosity towards any of the Ministers concerned, either my noble friend or those in the other place. A number of people, including the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Krebs, have made that point this afternoon. We are not expressing doubt in their sincerity or wisdom, but we are saying that if they are creating something for generations to come, they have to bear certain things in mind. We do not need recent examples to remind us that Ministers do not always end in a blaze of glory.

This is a core amendment. It is something that I, and I am sure others, would like to sit down and discuss with my noble friend before Report. If we can reach agreement by compromise or discussion, it is always better than dividing the House, because if any Bill deserves—needs—the support of Members in all parts of your Lordships’ House, it is this one. The environment we are talking about is ours and, far more important than that, we are legislating for the environment of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and beyond, otherwise there is that fear of extinction, about which we talked the other day.

I support the spirit of all these amendments and very much hope that we will be able to come to a collective decision that will enhance the Bill and make it a Bill that has real teeth, with a body created by it that has real teeth and can deal with real problems in a vigorous way.

Environment Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, on her amendments, which I am afraid I did not sign. That was a complete oversight on my part. I think her introduction was excellent.

I suspect that not very far in the future, we will think of plastic as the new asbestos. When we first had asbestos, it was hailed as a wonder material. It is highly heat resistant and an excellent electrical insulator, and it has been used in construction, for fireproofing, and even for making clothing and furniture. In fact, archaeological evidence suggests that asbestos was used by humans quite a long time ago to strengthen ceramic pots, so it has been understood as a very valuable resource. Since the end of the 19th century, asbestos has been used in all sorts of buildings; any building constructed before the 1980s is likely to contain asbestos. Now, of course, the word “asbestos” is enough to stop people buying a property because it is so dangerous to human health when disturbed. I think we are going to see plastic as a dangerous material in the same way—probably more dangerous and more pervasive than asbestos.

Obviously, as other noble Lords have said, plastic has a lot of almost miracle properties, and the things that we can produce from plastic are integral to our way of life. However, its versatility and availability have led to exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said: we have used it mindlessly. We have made so much plastic that we are now in danger of being polluted by it ourselves. We have known for a long time that plastic takes hundreds of thousands of years to break down, but only recently we have understood how bad that is. Plastic only breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces; it does not actually ever go away. It just gets tiny and it gets everywhere, with quite damaging consequences.

We now see that microplastics are present almost everywhere, including in our own bodies. Plastics accumulate in the food that we eat, moving up the food chain until it reaches its highest concentration in our bodies and, most concerningly, in mothers’ breast milk. When microplastics get very small, they are referred to as nanoplastics. They are so small that they can cross cellular membranes and actually work their way into our individual cells. We are currently clueless about what that means for our health and the environment, but if it is anything like asbestos then a tiny amount can be incredibly damaging for our health.

The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, talked about disposal. The noble Baroness said that it should be disposed of well and the noble Earl talked about safe disposal. There is no safe disposal. There is no way to make sure that it is well disposed of; that just does not happen. It is still there. We know that we have produced far too much plastic, and it is within our control to reduce the amount that is made.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, mentioned masks. I am going to make my regular comment about the fact that—and I am going to try not to look at any noble Lords wearing them—the blue masks that some noble Lords are wearing today in your Lordships’ House are actually highly polluting. They are not paper but plasticised paper; they cannot be recycled; they end up in our seas and rivers; they kill animals; and obviously they are extremely ugly to see. I know it is not easy to replace them, and I would say that at least those noble Lords are wearing masks in the first place, but I have offered to replace such masks with material masks made in my little haberdasher’s down in Dorset rather than still seeing them as I look around the House.

The Bill absolutely has to set targets for reducing plastics because we have to start now to reduce the future burden. The problem is just going to get worse, and if we do not get it into the Bill then we probably will not deal with it.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

As always, it is a great pleasure to follow my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I do not always agree with her, but she speaks a great deal of common sense—as well as a few other things. I am delighted to see her putting on a mask. She will be glad to know that I took my blue mask off—I am waiting for the one from the haberdasher’s.

The noble Baroness made a very good point about asbestos, but of course that is a specific substance. “Plastic” is a bit of a generic term that covers a great deal. We have to recognise that in its beginning it often brought hygiene where there was squalor and safe packaging where there was danger, but it has now got completely out of hand. No one could have watched programmes like “The Blue Planet” without being completely nauseated by some of the scenes we saw on our screens of animals choked or strangled to death. It causes an enormous problem even in our own countryside and in our towns and cities.

My noble friend Lord Caithness referred to litter. In many ways, litter is the curse of the age. I have been horrified when I have watched “Look North” on our local television station and seen that after the end of various phases of the lockdown people have gone out in their hundreds and thousands and desecrated, and defecated in, our countryside. I say to the Minister that it is crucial, as others have referred to, that we have targets and deadlines. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, made a particular point of that and she is right. We keep coming back to the phrase “a landmark Bill” but if this is indeed going to be a landmark Bill then there have to be deadlines for elimination. Of course one has to give manufacturers a degree of notice but we cannot carry on as we are or we will smother ourselves in our own detritus—it is as simple and alarming as that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, and to commend him, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on Amendment 24, to which the Green group would have certainly given its support, had there been space on the paper for it.

I will, however, go back briefly to Amendment 23 from the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, because it is crucial that we acknowledge the importance of chalk streams. It is something I have in the past done a great deal of work on, with concern about the arrival of what has been called unconventional oil and gas extraction and its potential impact on them. I will admit that seeing the noble Lord’s amendment also made me want to revisit amendments that I tabled to the then Agriculture Bill on meadows and hedgerows. They are all things we need to include when we are talking about the species abundance target more broadly.

However, what I mostly want to address is new subsection (4) in the Government’s amendment and the proposed amendments to that subsection. As the noble Lord, Lord Randall, has already set out extremely clearly, this simply does not live up to the promises that the Government made on the species abundance target: the words we heard from the Secretary of State in what was billed as a landmark speech.

Amendment 24 would leave out the word “further”. The Government’s amendment states that they will “further the objective”, and Amendment 24 says “meet” the objective, which is a considerable improvement. However, I have tabled Amendment 26, which would go further. I apologise to noble Lords, because I realise, looking at it, that in the Explanatory Statement I did not really get on top of the complexities of explaining it. The key difference in this context is that I say, rather than to “further” or to “meet” a target, “delivering an improvement”. We have the Government saying, “We’re going to try to at least not get worse”; Amendment 24 says, “We’re going to at least meet a target for species abundance”; and I say, “We have to see an improvement.” That is what would be written into the Bill.

I shall go back, as did the noble Lord, Lord Randall, to the speech of George Eustice in Delamere Forest. I have a couple of quotes from it. It used the phrase “building back greener”. I put the stress on the “er” in that: an improvement. He said that

“restoring nature is going to be crucial”—

we are restoring, we are improving. He said:

“We want to not only stem the tide of this loss but to turn it around and to leave the environment in a better state.”


I would say that to deliver on what the Government say they want to achieve, they need the words “delivering an improvement”, or words very similar to those, in the Bill to commit to seeing an improvement.

I shall give just a short reflection on what that means, and I shall go to the RSPB:

“More than 40 million birds have disappeared from UK skies”


since 1970. What the Government are offering is, “We’re going to try and stop losing more”; Amendment 24 says, “We guarantee to at least stay where we are”; my amendment says, “We’re going to bring at least some of those 40 million birds back.” That is what it is aiming to do.

We can reflect on a phrase which has been very much popularised by George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist and writer: “shifting baseline syndrome”. Older Members of your Lordships’ House may well say, “Well, nature just doesn’t look like it used to when I was a child”—but their grandparents would have said exactly the same thing. We have had a long-term, centuries-long collapse, and if you could get someone in a time machine from 200 years ago and put them into our countryside now, they just would not recognise it, with its total lack of wildlife.

It is also worth looking at the Government’s reaction. The noble Lord, Lord Randall, referred to the Dasgupta review. The Government have, of course, already put out a formal response to that in which they talk about a “nature-positive future”, which I suggest implies that there has to be an improvement: if you are going to do something positive, you are increasing it. That explains why I have worded Amendment 26 in this way, in terms of delivering improvement.

I want briefly to address the rest of Amendments 26 and 27 on the issue of species abundance. I have talked to some of the NGOs that have been instrumental in the petition that the noble Lord, Lord Randall, referred to—250,000 people had signed it the last time I looked to say that they want an improved species abundance target—I will be very happy if the Minister can correct me, but no one has actually defined what a species abundance target means. We go back to our debate on Monday about what biodiversity means: whether it is biodiversity of genes in a large population which has a large diversity of genes, one hopes; whether it is species; whether it is the fact that to have abundant species, you need a rich ecological environment. All those things fit together. Amendments 26 and 27 are my attempt to get the Minister to reflect now, or if not now, later, and explain to us what the Government really mean by a species abundance target.

What I have suggested, in trying to address those different aspects of biodiversity, is to look at the mass of wild species—we are talking about bioabundance. Keeping a few handfuls of tiny populations of every species going is not enough; we need to have lots of the popular species, lots of all species and also population numbers of red and amber list species, trying to address those rarer species on which a lot of the attention in terms of extinction is focused. I am sure all noble Lords have received many representations about Amendment 24, which is certainly a great improvement on government Amendment 22, but I ask your Lordships’ House, as we go forward to the next stage, to think about some wording in the Bill that guarantees building in improvement, not just ensuring no decline.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She and her colleague from the Green Party can certainly never be accused of falling down on the job. They are persistent; I do not always agree with them, but I salute them for keeping their cause going.

I was greatly impressed by my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge’s speech but I must say to my noble friend, whose personal credentials I do not question for a moment, that his amendments this evening are disappointing, to put it mildly. The speech of the Secretary of State, George Eustice, to which reference has already been made, excited expectations. The amendments that my noble friend has tabled do not—if they will fulfil those expectations, there is a great difference between promise and performance. It is not just the road to hell that is paved with good intentions; in this context, the road to extinction is paved with good intentions. It is not a question of my noble friend’s intentions but of the performance that I think will follow.

I suggest that on Report my noble friend should toughen this up. I ask him to convene a meeting of those are speaking in this debate and others to see whether we can come to a consensus and amendments that will really reflect what I believe is his genuine intention, and what is certainly the desire of a large majority of your Lordships’ House. I urge him to do that, because I do not want this to become a politically contentious Bill; it is one that ought to command the allegiance of people in all parts of the country and in all political parties. I salute the Government for bringing it forward, but say to them, please do not fall down on this. It is crucial that in 10 years’ time, looking back upon 2030, people do not say, “There was a great opportunity that was badly missed.”

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[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, this is the first time I have spoken in this debate so I point first to my interests in the register. Specifically, I point out that I own land of environmental and historic significance. My comments are essentially probing ones attached to amendments in this grouping and relate to the Bill more generally.

My starting point is supporting the general gist of what the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, has said. In particular, I would like to reiterate comments I made briefly during the Agriculture Act, where I sensed that some of your Lordships were a little bit sceptical about the point I was making, but I believe they were not right in that. It is commonplace to say that all landscape in the UK is, in one shape or another, made land by man. But there is a category—I am specifically referring to landscape parks and gardens—in which the natural and deliberately planned fuse in a kind of hybrid, because humans deploy natural materials to create a work of art. They range in scale from being only a few acres to being what Stephen Switzer, the 18th century designer and author, described as

“aiming at an incomprehensible Vastness, and attempting at Things beyond the reach of Nature”.

To use a contemporary form of words, they are a form of land art.

Our great parks and gardens are probably this country’s greatest distinctive contribution to 18th century visual culture and possibly to global visual culture more generally. I hasten to add that “landscaping” is not used in its general contemporary sense of hard or soft landscaping. “Park” in this context does not have its general contemporary meaning of urban or country and, for that matter, “garden” does not merely mean what it means these days, although it may include them. All these are conceived with a complicated and important cultural, philosophical and intellectual framework which links them to all kinds of other disciplines and art forms. Probably the best-known practitioner is Capability Brown, but he has many predecessors and successors from Charles Bridgeman at the beginning of that century to Humphry Repton at the end of it.

These are landscapes that are incredibly fragile and inherently physically unstable. There is a matter of course because of the inevitability of plants dying. This, though, in some senses, paradoxically, can help to preserve them, but they are easily swept away by changes in taste and in rural land use—things like golf courses and urban development, which, in turn, often lead to physical disintegration and dismemberment. Quite how many there are I do not really know, and I dare say not more, anyway, than 1,000. Sometimes, they can suddenly come out of the undergrowth, like, for example, the well-known Lost Gardens of Heligan. Or, equally, they can disappear more or less completely, like Eastbury in Dorset, designed by Vanbrugh and now green fields. As Sir Thomas Browne put it, “green grass grows where Troy town stood”.

The purpose of these remarks is simply to seek confirmation from the Minister of reassurance that such things as these, which are neither solely natural nor solely manmade, but a hybrid, will be given the highest consideration in the context of what this Bill does in respect of land. They are, after all, one of our nation’s glories and give a large number of people in our country both pleasure and inspiration.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow both the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and my noble friend Lord Inglewood. We owe a great deal to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, for putting down these amendments, drafted, as he said, by the Heritage Alliance, which represents so many heritage organisations in this country.

The poetic speech of my noble friend Lord Inglewood inspires me to think of so many of the landscape gardens I know and love. In my own former constituency of South Staffordshire, we had Chillington, one of the masterpieces of Capability Brown, with its wonderful lake, its Palladian bridges and its marvellous vistas. Just a few miles ago, there is Weston Park, the home of the Earls of Bradford through the centuries. But there are so many, many more, such as Studley Royal around Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire. I could dredge my mind and memory and go on, but I do not want to detain the House for too long at this stage of the evening.

Our landscape—my noble friend Lord Inglewood referred to this—is largely manmade and, even in its wilder aspects, man-moulded. It is a real deficiency in this Bill, which calls itself the Environment Bill, if some of the most memorable and vulnerable parts of our environment are excluded. I talked briefly on this on Second Reading, when I referred to parish churches, which are the centre of most of our villages. I am not suggesting that every historic building be brought within the compass of this Bill, but I believe it is important that we recognise the built environment, which is part of the environment. One thinks of hill forts, some of them dating back to the Bronze Age. One thinks of the canals of this country—manmade. One thinks of dovecotes; there is a particularly beautiful one not far from my former constituency that is owned and protected by the National Trust. These are all parts of our built environment, our environment and our heritage.

I would ask my noble friend, following what the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, said a few moments ago: would he please convene a meeting of those of us who are particularly concerned about this? I speak as president of the All-Party Parliamentary Arts and Heritage Group, which I founded with the late Andrew Faulds way back in 1974, and which has attracted the support of many of your Lordships over many years.

Environment Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendments of my noble friend Lord Lindsay and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I will just add one or two brief points.

First, my noble friend Lord Lindsay talked about clarity and cohesion. I would add another “C”—consistency. If we are to have a landmark Bill—and this must be a landmark Bill—it is clearly important that we get it right as far as we possibly can. During this dreadful year of the pandemic, when the Government—and I am not scoring cheap points—have been fighting something literally unprecedented in the last century, a degree of confusion has been caused by a lack of clarity, consistency and cohesion. I do not want to stray from the Bill into recent events, but we have seen how people have been uncertain, often, about what the Government are really seeking to do.

It is crucial that when this landmark Bill reaches the statute books—as I, of course, hope it will—it is in a significantly better shape than it is at the moment, good as it is. Therefore, while I would like to see the Bill on the statute book by 1 November, what matters far, far more than any artificial timetable is that this Bill is right. Whether it goes on the statute books on 1 November, 1 December or 1 January matters far less than that it is right. You have only to mention the words “Irish protocol” to realise that if you negotiate to a strict and artificial timetable, you often get it wrong.

I referred to my noble friend: he chaired the Environment Sub-Committee of the EU Committee—on which I had the good fortune to sit—extremely well. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, also made some very telling points. We have to realise that we are in this sixth crisis; we have to realise that many species are on the brink of extinction. This year, in our small but quite attractive urban garden in Lincoln, we have hardly seen a butterfly. Talking to friends around, I have heard of similar experiences. I read in the Times this morning, coming up on the train, about the lack of Arctic terns in Northumbria—an extraordinary bird that commutes 14,000 miles a year. There is a very real danger to its survival as a species. There are so many things that the Bill can help to underline and combat, and it is essential that it does.

With those few words, I endorse both my noble friend Lord Lindsay and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in what they are seeking to do. Although in Committee we are mainly probing, it is essential that the Bill finishes Report in this House in as near a perfect state as it is possible for us to make it.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. I am speaking in support of Amendment 2 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Clearly, the amendments in this group seek to improve the Bill’s environmental objectives by statute, and that is laudable of them all. But Amendment 2 sets a tone for the Bill, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who indicated the need for an assessment and provided a very good assessment of the current state of biodiversity in Cornwall, which could quite easily be mirrored in other parts of the UK.

The Bill needs to have the purpose and declaration of biodiversity and climate emergency specified in it on an equal basis. It is particularly pertinent to set this in legislation if the Government are serious about the need to protect and nurture our unique biodiversity and to mitigate the problems that the climate emergency is bringing to our planet, with increased levels of flooding, the warming of our planet, and the weekend warning that we now have Mediterranean UV levels in the UK. To take the example of Belfast, Department of the Environment statistics show that on 13 June last week, UV levels reached 9 on the solar UV index. This is due to a number of things, including stratospheric ozone depletion, the position of the sun in the sky at this time of year, and the lack of cloud cover. That is one reason why Amendment 2 is so important and why it must be included in statutory form in the Bill in order to give both areas of climate emergency and biodiversity equal status.

I honestly believe that the PM must take charge of the situation. This amendment provides for him—or for whoever is the postholder—to declare that there is a biodiversity and climate emergency both domestically and globally. It will strengthen the governance regime and give strength and toughness to the need for governmental action to protect our biodiversity and to protect our planet from the climate emergency. It is so important that we agree to do this with COP 15 and COP 26 taking place this year.

As the Aldersgate Group—which supplied us with a briefing—stated, the Environment Bill is a vital opportunity to establish a new, ambitious and robust governance framework that protects and enhances the natural environment. What better way to do that than to ensure that the Government accept an amendment to the Bill which provides for the Prime Minister, with statutory effect, to declare that there is a biodiversity and climate emergency both in the UK and globally and, above all, to enhance and strengthen the Bill to ensure that it becomes an even greater landmark Bill with the legislative teeth to act in such urgent circumstances.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I support the sentiment of Amendment 4 in the name of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, but water quality is not the only issue to do with water. I would not want that to be to the particular focus, because with increasing climate change and growing demand, water quantity is also important.

The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, is rightly exercised about sewage pollution into our rivers, as is the Minister. I look forward to saying more when we debate Amendments 161 and 162 on reducing and eliminating sewage discharges into rivers, which importantly go into detail on the programmes and actions needed to get this to happen.

I declare an interest as a former chief executive of the Environment Agency. I think it is quite clear that, although it has brought only 174 prosecutions over the last 10 years, there could have been more than 2,000 breaches in that period and a vastly greater number of legal discharges under the current regulations. That is a source of considerable public concern.

In support of the considerable work done by the Environment Agency and the water companies, I should say that river water has improved dramatically over the last 20 years. We should not relax in that, because the current situation is totally unacceptable. Nevertheless, a major amount of river water has been cleaned up. Most of our waters were completely dead and highly polluted 20 years ago and they are now in a much better state, but we still have more to do.

We had EU regulation to rely on in the past, which was needed to drive the Government to do something about exactly this problem in the River Thames, by creating the Thames super-sewer. At that stage, we had the dirtiest river of any capital city in Europe. I am delighted that action was taken, but it needed the full weight of environmental regulation coming from Europe and a considerable and hefty programme of fining of the Government to get action taken. We need to ensure through the mechanism of the Bill that we move forward and tackle this running sore—if noble Lords will pardon the phrase. I welcome the creation of the storm overflow task force and look forward to its findings. I look forward to debating the government amendment to tackle this issue and strengthening it in the appropriate place in the Bill.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, is right to talk about the Thames. I remember the Thames half a century ago, when I first came to Parliament, and what an utter disgrace it was. But that should not lead us to be in any way complacent. Although my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering referred to this as a small amendment—and it is in terms of words—it is absolutely crucial. Unless we clean up our rivers, the Environment Bill—the Act, as I am sure it will become—will fail. It is as simple as that.

Not so long ago there was a great campaign about our coastal waters, and there is still much to be done. One of my most vivid memories of the other place was an Adjournment Debate at 10 pm one night, introduced by the late Sir Reggie Bennett, about swimming off the coast. I remember he said, “Mr Speaker, you cannot swim off the coast, you can only go through the motions”. I fear that that is the case with many of our rivers today. I hope the Minister will endorse that it is crucial that we get this right, because how clean our waterways are will be a test of the success of the Environment Act.

We have some glorious rivers in this country and some wonderful chalk streams. I think one of the saddest pictures that I have seen in the last 12 months was of a stretch of perhaps the loveliest river of all, the Wye, which had been so contaminated by the effluent from intensively reared battery chickens—something else we need to tackle. We are all in debt to my noble friend the Duke of Wellington, not only for bringing this amendment forward but for introducing on the very day of Second Reading, his own Bill on cleaning up our inland waterways.

This is a vital issue, but I cannot sit down before saying what a joy it is to see my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern in the Chamber. We have seen him many times appear on the Zoom screen, and it is wonderful to have him here in person among us.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I think we can count that as the best joke of the Environment Bill Committee so far, so I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for that. I had not intended to speak on this amendment, so all I shall say is that this is a very important issue. It is probably dealt with more specifically and better later in the Bill, but I very much support the thoughts of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. Words matter; so too does the meaning that we give to them. That is especially so where targets are being set that will influence policy in a matter as far-reaching as the environment. That is why the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Randall of Uxbridge, were right to bring forward these amendments so that we can consider whether the choice of the word “biodiversity” to identify one of the priority areas in Clause 1(3) was well made, or whether it should be replaced by the word “nature”, as is being suggested.

I wish to concentrate on the use of words in this clause. I say nothing about the wording of Clauses 95 and 96 and others, except that it seems to make sense to follow whatever the choice is for Clause 1 when deciding what is right for those other clauses too. For me, the choice in Clause 1(3) should be guided by two things: the context, and the meaning of the word “biodiversity” itself.

The context for the choice of words in Clause 1(3) is created by the wording of Clause 1(1). We are told there that the long-term targets that the Secretary of State must have in mind relate to “the natural environment”. That suggests to me that when we come to Clause 1(3), we should expect to find, if I can put it this way, a list of subspecies within the natural environment rather than a repetition of the parent concept itself, embraced by the word “nature”. The word “nature”—the parent concept—embraces everything that comprises the phenomena of the natural world or, as Clause 1(1) puts it, of “the natural environment”. That suggests that we need something more specific and precise to serve the purpose of Clause 1(3), which is to identify the priority areas within that environment. The question then, therefore, is whether “biodiversity” achieves something for the identification of a priority area that “nature” would not achieve.

I was surprised to find, when I was consulting my dictionaries, how recent the word “biodiversity” is in the English language. Everyone talks about nature, said the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and he is absolutely right: it is so much in common use, and “biodiversity”, as the dictionaries indicated to me, is not in common use in that way. It is not even mentioned, let alone defined, in the editions of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary that I have, which were published in the 1990s. It is a mark of our increasing awareness of the importance of the variety and variability of life on earth and its preservation that we have created this portmanteau word to describe it. “Diversity” is what we are talking about when we use this word. The prefix “bio” makes it clear that we are using that word in the context of the natural environment in all its aspects which, of course, is the context in which we are using it here. In that context, it is no exaggeration to say that diversity is what keeps the environment alive. It is absolutely right to concentrate on diversity as a priority area.

I suggest, therefore, that the word “biodiversity”, although not so widely used as “nature”, is the one to use because it is more precisely targeted on that aspect of our environment. It achieves that much more than “nature”. It reaches out across the entirety of the ecosystem, on which the natural environment depends, and the diversity that gives it its life. With great respect to the two noble Lords, I believe that it is the right word to use here in this Bill.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and also the noble Lord, Lord Rooker; I well remember the late Sir David Renton, as he was in the other place, or Lord Renton, as he became in this one. He was an absolute terrier and was determined to try to ensure that all legislation was intelligible to those to whom it applied.

That really is the underlying reason why my noble friend Lord Blencathra has introduced this very interesting and probing amendment. We say again and again during this debate that this is a landmark Bill. It is indeed, and it has to bear the test of time: it has to be an Act of Parliament that becomes familiar to all those to whom it applies, which is virtually every citizen in our land. It must be an Act of Parliament that is understood. It is entirely right that my noble friend Lord Blencathra introduced this amendment so that we can debate, at an early stage of the Bill, what we are really talking about.

Environment Bill: Royal Assent

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, the Secretary of State will be able to issue guidance to the OEP to ensure that the organisation retains a focus on the key priorities, but the OEP is just as able to reject that advice. It retains independence, and that independence is confirmed through a number of mechanisms in the Bill that ensure that, whether with financial independence or decision-making independence, it is free from ministerial interference.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, “perfect legislation” is the ultimate oxymoron, but does my noble friend accept this is landmark legislation, so it must be as near perfection as possible? That means that an artificial deadline is far less important than thorough scrutiny? This House must have the chance to do that.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

Again, the noble Lord makes a very important point, and of course the Bill must be subjected to full and proper scrutiny—as I believe it will in the days and hours that have been given for its scrutiny. We have seven days for Committee, and I have no doubt that that debate will be lively and that the results will be effective in helping us to ensure that it is as close to perfect as possible.

Environment Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow my noble friend the Duke of Wellington in giving support to his Bill. How appropriate it is that he should introduce it today. Perhaps it is a pity that it was not on 18 June, but one cannot have everything. I also echo the eloquent words of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering and wish the right reverend Prelate every possible happiness and success in what I trust will be a long, active and healthy retirement. I am slightly surprised that such a young man should retire.

The most chilling words in this debate were uttered by Lord Krebs: “We have squeezed nature out of its home.” When he spoke those words, my mind flashed back to the mid-1940s, in particular 1947. I had been given a bicycle for Christmas and we had that long, terrible winter. In the summer, my father took me into the Lincolnshire Wolds. It is glorious countryside; if your Lordships do not know it, I warmly commend it to them. One particular day, we counted two things: cars and skylarks. There were more of the latter than the former. What a fall there has been.

The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, made the entirely correct point that ours is largely a man-made landscape—and it is a wonderful one. When I wrote a book called Heritage in Danger in 1976, I included our landscape as part of the heritage that was in danger. I talked about the thousands of miles of hedgerows that had been torn out. So I warm very much to the plea made by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, my noble friend Lord Trenchard and the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, who was the first to introduce this subject today. I beg my noble friend on the Front Bench to ensure that heritage is indeed included in the Bill before it reaches the statute book.

Great buildings are part of our heritage, and I am particularly concerned in this year, following the pandemic, about the added dangers facing our country churches. The right reverend Prelate will have many in his diocese, and unless he is exceptionally fortunate, some of them may close and not open again. Certainly, in Lincolnshire a number are in real danger. Very often the focal point of the landscape, the centre of the village, is the village church, or its tower or spire. The opportunity offered by a fairly all-embracing environment Bill must include heritage. I declare an interest as founder and president of the All-Party Arts and Heritage Group, which has been on the go since 1974. I am also vice-president of the Lincolnshire Churches Trust and was president of Staffordshire Historic Churches Trust and vice-president of the National Churches Trust, so this is something very close indeed to my heart, but to the hearts of many others as well. Whether they are Christian or not, the village church is very important in their lives. I hope very much that my noble friend ensures that heritage is included.

There is a danger that many of this Bill’s good intentions will be wrecked and sabotaged by the Government’s planning policy. I am deeply unhappy that local people will have little or no say in major developments. We heard of one earlier today: a wilding project in great danger because 3,500 houses are to be built on the border. It is crucial that when we look at planning, we look at distribution—where the new homes are built—and the quality of the homes. I talked about our churches and intrinsically their quality, but there is a very good example from a very high place—the Prince of Wales and Poundbury—where a new development has been planned and executed on a human scale, and the individual dwellings are of some beauty and will be treasured and lived in and loved, one hopes, for centuries. Do not let the good intentions of the Environment Bill be sabotaged by an unthinking planning Bill.

Russia: Alexei Navalny

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I agree. Further, I agree with the great, respected and revered Winston Churchill.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, following the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, when he asked his Question, why do we not take sanctions against a given number of people every week until Navalny is released from his appalling jail? Although we know that the Russians veto things at the Security Council, that is no reason for not having an internationally publicised debate on this issue.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, on my noble friend’s second point, we are doing just that, if not necessarily at the UN Security Council. I mentioned the OPCW earlier. There is a specific debate with the Russians, in a constructive fashion, saying: “There was a poisoning of Mr Navalny. Answer the case.” The Russians have not been forthcoming. On the issue of sanctions every day or what may happen in future, there are good reasons why we do not speculate, one of which is that an evidential threshold needs to be met. Anyone or any institution that is sanctioned has the right to appeal, and we need to ensure that the sanctions we impose are robust.

Hong Kong: Pro-Democracy Campaigners

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I note and of course accept that the noble Lord has raised this issue on a number of occasions. However, as I have said in answer to other questions, I cannot speculate on future sanctions. I assure him, and indeed all noble Lords, that we work very closely with our partners: the European Union, Australia, the United States and others.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, much as I sympathise with my noble friend and appreciate the limitations of his personal power and influence, it is appalling when an international treaty—to which we and Hong Kong are joint parties—is violated by one party. We appear to be dragging our feet and it really is important that we have action this day.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, while appreciating my noble friend’s sympathy for my position, I assure him that I have been persistent in my capacity as a Minister within FCDO and particularly in my responsibilities as Human Rights Minister to ensure that we do everything possible, in terms of both direct action and action with international partners. We continue to lead the international community. We have made statements through the Human Rights Council and the G7 and will continue to do so. On the wider policy of specific sanctions, I have already indicated our current position, but we keep that position under review.

Clergy: EU Visas and Residence Permits

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I can of course assure the noble Lord that we will work with all organisations, including the Church of Scotland. If there are specific issues that he wishes to raise with me, I will be happy to answer them directly.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, are the problems experienced by the Churches not yet a further example of the increasingly tetchy relationship between the UK and the EU? I commend to my noble friend the very perceptive article in today’s Times by our noble friend Lord Hague, who points out how very important it is that we get on well and constructively? We have not left Europe. These are our friends and neighbours; it is incumbent upon them, and us, to ensure that we have a relationship which enables the normal decencies of life to be observed.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend Lord Cormack, and indeed with my noble friend Lord Hague. That is why we work very constructively, including on citizens’ rights, with the European Union. The Specialised Committee on Citizens’ Rights oversees the implementation and application of citizens’ rights; this is part of, and central to, the withdrawal agreement.