Environment Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a curious experience to be standing up without being called.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has made the classic Conservative error of separating biodiversity from climate. It is all interconnected: you cannot talk about either without accepting that each has an impact on the other. Every noble Lord must understand that we have a climate emergency, and therefore this government Bill is not good enough. We all know that–it is why there are so many amendments at Report. It is our job to improve the Bill and it is the Government’s job to listen and, I hope, accept our improvements.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I hope that your Lordships will remember the words of the Pope in Laudato Si’, when he said that climate change was the symptom of what we had done to the world. That brings together bio- diversity, imposed poverty, the lack of fertility in our soil, modern slavery and a whole range of other things. Climate change is the planet crying out for the elimination of its disease.

I was not present for his speech but I read carefully what my noble friend said about his commitment to both these things. I hope that, when he comes to answer this debate, he realises that it is extremely difficult for us in the Climate Change Committee to explain to people why biodiversity is part of the answer—putting that right is just as important as a range of other things, and we cannot divorce them from each other. It is difficult, because we have already started doing that, making climate change one sort of thing and these other things different from it. I hope that the Government will understand why this amendment has been put down and why it is important to connect these things. If I have a difficulty, it is that a lot of other things ought to be connected as well, but these two are particularly important this year, given the nature of international negotiations in this area.

I hope also that my noble friend will think to himself a very simple thing: if the Government will not accept the amendment or rewrite the Bill—my noble friend Lord Caithness may be right; I am not arguing in detail about the particular amendment—it is perfectly possible for them to come forward and make a statement in the Bill which makes it clear that the biodiversity and climate emergencies are intimately and intricately connected. I hope my noble friend will realise that, if he cannot say it, he will be showing that the Government are not prepared to say it. That would be really worrying. The reason the Government have to say it is that there is a fundament problem with government: it has a series of silos, and if we are not careful these big issues get caught up in some ministries and not others. Unless we make it clear that this should be a driving force in, say, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport as much as in the Department for Education, Defra or BEIS, we will not win this battle.

I hope my noble friend will recognise that the House is asking for a very simple statement. If it is refused, I really would not blame people outside for questioning the commitment of the Government as a whole to these two essential parts of the same problem. I look to him if not to accept these amendments then to at least tell the House that, at Third Reading, he will introduce an amendment that will assert publicly the Government’s commitment to these being urgent, necessary issues that deserve the title that we have asked for. I hope he is able to say that; if he is not, it will send the wrong signal, at a time when we should be united in sending the right signals, so that in all discussions people will know precisely where Britain stands.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, in supporting the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, I draw attention to a particular feature that has been mentioned but perhaps could be made more explicit. It is a feature of both the climate emergency and the biodiversity emergency: the discontinuities that will arise as a result of incremental change. My noble friend Lady Boycott alluded to this in talking about the rivets in an aeroplane: it does not matter, perhaps, if one, two or three rivets fall out, but when more than a critical number fall off there is a discontinuity and the plane falls out of the sky. This is true, as we know from the IPCC and others, of the climate emergency. We hear over and over of the notion of dangerous climate change, whereby if we exceed a certain boundary then we will tip into a new world in which life becomes intolerable and many regions of the planet are uninhabitable for the human species. That is equally true of the biodiversity emergency.

I am an academic ecologist, and so I will refer back to the scientific literature. Back in 1969, an American ecologist, Robert T Paine of the University of Washington, drew attention to the notion of keystone species. He was studying a species of starfish that lives in the intertidal zone of the north-western United States—Washington state. If this species of starfish disappears then the whole ecosystem flips to a new state, because the starfish is the keystone species that maintains the equilibrium of the intertidal ecosystem. The same will be true in many other situations.

It is not just the number of rivets that fall out of the plane that is important; it is particular, key rivets. The sad thing is that, if we lose some of these keystone species, we will be among the ones that suffer, because we will suddenly find that the systems we rely on to produce food, purify our water and provide other ecosystem services will simply not exist any more. A genuine emergency is created by crossing these thresholds: once we have crossed them, it will be too late.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con)]

I am delighted to be back debating the Environment Bill on Report and not least to be able to do so in person. I thank noble Lords for continuing to meet me and my officials over the Summer Recess.

Off the back of much of that engagement, as well as the many insightful contributions in Committee from right across this House, noble Lords will have seen that we have secured and tabled some significant amendments to the Bill. I outlined these in a letter to your Lordships last week and I look forward to discussing these in more detail as we progress the debate.

Moving on to the important issues at hand, I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for his Amendment 1. He described an emergency; I reassure him that the Government fully recognise the seriousness of both climate change and biodiversity loss, which, as a number of noble Lords have said, must be addressed in tandem if we are to protect the planet. There is no credible pathway to net zero that does not involve the protection and restoration of nature on an unprecedented scale. Indeed, there is no pathway to meeting our sustainable development goals—any of them—without massive efforts to protect and restore nature. We know that those people who depend most on the free services that nature provides, and which have been described by a number of speakers today, are in the most vulnerable and poorest communities. As we destroy nature, we destroy those services and plunge people in huge numbers into base poverty.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, pointed out that of total global climate finance, less than 3% is invested in nature-based solutions to climate change. An attempt to shift that balance and get that 3% much closer to 50% is at the heart of our ambitions as the president of COP. In addition to committing to double our own international climate finance to £11.6 billion, we have committed that nearly a third of that will be invested in nature-based solutions, including forests, mangroves, seagrasses and more. As part of our diplomatic efforts in the run-up to COP, we are talking to other donor countries on a regular basis to try to persuade them to do something similar. There has been some progress and I hope that, by the time we reach COP, I will be able to present significant movement in that area.

My noble friend Lord Deben, who I too am very pleased to see here and who is an authority on climate change, quoted the Pope; I am not sure whether it was the current or previous Pope but he quoted a Pope. The point he made was absolutely right. Climate change has been described by others—perhaps from a less theological point of view—as a fever caused by decades and generations of our abuse of the natural world. The more we can see it in that way, the more likely we are to deliver appropriate solutions. COP will be a nature COP; this is at the heart of what we are attempting to do with our presidency.

I take issue with one suggestion that the noble Lord, Lord Deben made: that we need to make it clear to others where the UK stands on these issues. I would not pretend that there is a country in the world, including the UK, that is doing enough. The gap between where we are and where we need to be is vast; that is true of every country on earth, and that is why we are having this discussion today. But where the UK stands on climate change and nature already sends a pretty powerful message to the world. I think we are regarded internationally as leaders: we were the first major economy to legislate for net zero by 2050; we have committed to ending taxpayer support for fossil fuel projects overseas, which the noble Lord has been urging for many years; we are the first to make our land use subsidy system conditional on environmental outcomes; we have doubled our international climate finance, as I said; and we have committed to a third of investment into nature-based solutions. As COP president, we are all engaging in intense diplomacy to try to raise ambition across the world.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I think my noble friend misunderstood my point. My point was that, given the opportunity to declare this simple thing in an Act, the Government, if they do not take it, cannot avoid the fact that many will say they do not want to. The Government have the opportunity. I do not want the rest of these amendments; I just want the statement, and then no one can argue. If he cannot give that, I merely say that people outside will think we are not willing to do so.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his intervention, and I will address his question directly.

The Environment Bill contains numerous world firsts as well—for example, legislation to move illegal deforestation from supply chains, which we are trying to persuade many other countries to emulate, and with which we think we are making some progress. Biodiversity net gain is, I believe, a world first. I am delighted to introduce a legal requirement, which we will debate later today, to everything the Government can do to bend the curve of biodiversity loss by 2030. The Bill will enable us to improve air quality, address nature’s decline, deliver a resource-efficient economy, tackle the scourge of single-use plastics and ensure we can manage our precious water resources in a changing climate. All climate change legislation in England will be part of the enforcement remit of the office for environmental protection, including enforcement of the net-zero target. The OEP will work closely alongside our world-leading Committee on Climate Change on these issues, ensuring that their individual roles complement and reinforce one another.

Through the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan, the Government set out steps to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. This innovative programme outlines ambitious policies and includes £12 billion of government investment to support up to 250,000 green jobs, accelerate our path to reaching net zero by 2050 and lay the foundations for a green recovery by building back greener from the pandemic. The Government have also published their energy White Paper, transport decarbonisation plan and hydrogen strategy, and we will bring forward further proposals, including a net-zero strategy, before COP 26—a strategy that all government departments, without exception, are working on. We will continue to tackle these interrelated crises in an integrated way, internationally, as hosts of COP 26 and by playing a leading role in pushing for the development of an ambitious post-2020 global biodiversity framework to be adopted at the CBD COP 15.

Briefly, in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who talked about the need for action alongside this but questioned the action taken during the passage of the Bill, most of the examples I gave earlier are things that have happened during the passage of the Bill but, in addition to that, the Government announced a few months ago the £3 billion green investment fund to create thousands of green jobs and upgrade buildings; a £2 billion green homes grant; the England peat action plan, produced by my honourable friend Rebecca Pow in the other place; the England trees action plan, which was part of my portfolio; and a £5.2 billion fund to better protect properties from flooding, increasing amounts of which will be invested in nature-based solutions to try to deal with numerous problems using the same investment. We are taking action.

In response to the amendment, but also to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben: it is clearly the action against which a Government will be judged. Any Government can make declarations, as we have seen. As we approach COP, every declaration made so far in relation to deforestation globally has been missed. The Aichi targets were missed catastrophically. I cannot think of a single grand statement about the environment, biodiversity or climate change that has in fact been met—not a single one. It is the steps—the actions—that Governments take against which they should be judged.

A number of noble Lords have described an environmental crisis, a biodiversity crisis and a climate crisis. I have, in the short time I have been in this place, described those crises myself. Indeed, the reason I am in politics is to tackle those crises. It is hard to talk about the scale of the crisis. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, gave the example that the populations of key species have declined by nearly 70% in my lifetime, and that would not even qualify as a nano-blip in evolutionary terms. One more nano-blip like that and we are in very serious trouble. Of course this is an emergency; there is no doubt that we are describing, combating and tackling a biodiversity and climate emergency. But adding this proposed new clause to the Bill would not, we believe, drive any specific further action. It does not change the nature of what we need to do or of the action we are already taking. While I agree completely with the sentiment behind the noble Lord’s amendment—and I think the Government have demonstrated, in the steps they have taken, that they share that sentiment—respectfully, we do not see that this amendment would have any material impact.

Amendment 21 was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bird, but he has not spoken to it, so I hope it is okay if I address it. I am not sure what the protocol requires, but I will do so unless I am told not to. I firmly believe that environmental risks are already accounted for under the Bill—in numerous ways, such as the environment improvement plan and annual reports that will consider risks related to improving the natural environment and be actively managed through ongoing performance management. These reports will be published and scrutinised by Parliament and the office for environmental protection. Furthermore, the Government report publicly on specific environmental risk, including long-term environmental trends and high-impact environmental risks, through Defra’s annual reports and accounts and the outcome delivery plans for each government department. These are all available online.

Regarding youth engagement, a point raised by a number of speakers, we have consulted the Youth Steering Group and are exploring new approaches to youth engagement as part of the EIP review due to take place in 2022. In addition, the emphasis being placed by the COP president-designate on the value of youth engagement and youth involvement cannot be overestimated, and that is demonstrated through the actions he is taking and the plans he is making.

The Bill and the actions we are taking elsewhere will deliver on the sentiments behind both amendments. Therefore, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I simply say to my noble friend that I am not in a position to accept this amendment. If the House feels strongly on this issue, then it is important that it tests the amendment in a Division. Accepting it is not something that I am able to do or, frankly, that I think would make any material difference to government policy.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I do not want this to start off so badly, but the fact is that many of us do not want to have various bits of this amendment and it is not our fault that my noble friend has been offered the opportunity to make this statement. I have to ask him: is he really going to stand up and say that, if just that bit were put in at Third Reading, he would whip his side to vote against it? If he did that—and that is the only way in which he could stand behind refusing such an amendment—then that seems to open up the reality of the question that he has been asked.

I agree with him about statements. I am constantly attacking the Government for not doing the things that are necessary to achieve the ends that they have so nobly accepted, so he must not accuse me of being in favour of declarations. However, when he has been asked to make a declaration and he does not do so, that seems to me to be a very different circumstance.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

Perhaps I have misunderstood my noble friend. If he is asking me to acknowledge, as I have done many times in this House and outside it, that we face a biodiversity and climate emergency then I believe I have already done so. However, it is not for me to unilaterally accept an amendment on behalf of the Government that would have no material impact. As my noble friend says, we have made some big commitments; accepting the amendment would not change our commitment to net zero or to reversing biodiversity loss by 2030, or indeed in relation to any of these issues. I am afraid I have to come back to my noble friend and others by saying that if the feeling is strong then this issue needs to be put to a Division.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, Amendment 2 appears in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Whitty, Lord Curry of Kirkharle and Lord Randall of Uxbridge. I thank them all for their support, as well as others who would have offered their support had there been space under our procedures.

We have here a very simple amendment, but an improved amendment from Committee. As I listened to the discussion in Committee, it became obvious that we really needed to ensure that this amendment addresses both the health and quality of soil. I am simplifying slightly—I refer noble Lords to the discussion in Committee—but in a sense, in recent decades we have come to realise, in a way we had not before, that soils are complex ecosystems in their own right. The “health” element of this amendment very much addresses that biology aspect, whereas the “quality” element speaks more specifically to the chemical and physical composition of the soil. It is interesting that in our first debate today, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, highlighted the importance of soils when we are talking about biodiversity and climate. That is a useful introduction to this debate.

We debated soils at great length in Committee, so I will just briefly summarise some of the points raised. The UK loses more than 3 million tonnes of topsoil every year. Soil is degraded even while it remains in situ; almost 4 million hectares are at risk of compaction—the life and air squashed out of the soil, mostly by the passage of heavy farm machinery. Soil can also be contaminated through dangerous, damaging substances being swept or blown or landing on it—or still sometimes, sadly, being deliberately placed on it through error or fraud. We are also just beginning to understand micro- plastic pollution, something that cannot be escaped anywhere on this planet. Soils are stores of carbon too, of course. They are rich ecosystems and stores of life and biodiversity on a scale that we have barely begun to understand.

It is important to acknowledge that the Government, at least in some quarters, recognise the scale of this issue. The 25-year environment plan—supposedly the big, set-piece document outlining what the Government intend to do on many pressing issues—says that England’s soils must be sustainably managed by 2030. To drive home that point, that is little more than eight years away. In terms of farming practice, farmers are buying new machinery now that they might expect to use for many decades. In terms of the need urgently to plant trees, which is a soil health and quality issue as well as one in so many other areas, eight years is obviously not very long at all for them to reach any kind of size. Food manufacturers will have to think about their plans for the future and what crops might be available to them.

I credit the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, for highlighting in Committee how your Lordships’ House, after a long wrestle, got a significant reference to soil in the Agriculture Act. This is very much its sister Bill, so surely we have to do the same thing here to get the two fitting and working together. In the priority areas of this Bill we have air and water quality, then there is a gap where soil obviously belongs and where this amendment puts it.

I want to address a couple of the points the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond, made in Committee. One response was that

“the Bill gives us the power to set legally-binding long-term targets on any aspect of the natural environment”.

A Secretary of State could set a target at any time, but given that there are a scant eight years to reach the Government’s own aim of 2030, why wait? Why would a world-leading Government wait?

The second response from the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, was that there is not enough information and knowledge about soils to know what the targets could be. I acknowledge, as I did in Committee, that there is a dreadful shortage of information on and understanding of soils. This is a result of the failure to fund independent agricultural research extending over decades and the outsourcing of it to agrochemical companies that have advocated highly profitable—for them—practices which have had such a disastrous impact on soil health and quality. I suggest that the Minister then contradicted himself when he said:

“Developing targets is an iterative process”.


In other words, this is something that is developed, evolved and finessed over time. These targets can be set, improved, developed and worked through. What we need in this Bill is a statement that soil has to be there with air and water.

Without this amendment, we have a Bill that is a two-legged stool. Someone pointed out to me that they were once used in dairy farming because you could wobble by hanging on to the cow, but that is not quite a practical arrangement for a legal process. Stools need three legs. What this small, modest, but important amendment does is put that third leg on the stool. In our Committee debate, the noble Earl, Lord Devon, said that soil

“warrants its own independent priority status”

and added that

“we are in danger of giving it a permanently second-tier status”—[Official Report, 21/6/21; cols. 87-93.]

without the addition of this amendment. If we are going to be able to grow our food, cultivate and support our natural world and store the carbon that we must in the coming years, decades and centuries, this amendment has to be in this Bill.

Noble Lords will note that the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, who might be expected to be in his place and commenting on this amendment, having attached his name to it, is not here. The noble Lord asked me to send his personal apologies for being unable to be here and to share some of his thoughts. He said: “I have attached my name to this amendment because it is illogical not to include soil health and quality as a key environmental indicator. Soil is our most precious asset, and its status will determine whether or not we achieve net zero by 2050 and whether or not we can feed 10 billion people by 2050. Nothing can be more important than these two objectives. The Republic of Ireland has just committed €10 million to carrying out a nationwide soil testing programme to establish a baseline of soil health and quality. We have the opportunity to do the same through the ELMS if we specify the standard of testing required and create a national database. Why could we not take this unique opportunity to position ourselves as global leaders in this crucial area, particularly with COP 26 approaching?”

I have indicated informally and will now indicate formally that, unless I hear an acceptance from the Minister that the Government will put the final leg on the stool, I intend to push this amendment to a vote. I really feel we can do nothing else; we will be utterly failing the future if we do not do this. I beg to move.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, the Climate Change Committee has made it very clear that the soil is a crucial part of our remediation policies to deal with climate change. I declare an interest because, in a small way, I am an organic farmer and I have a son who is particularly interested in and works with those who want to use soil for sequestration. Whatever one’s interests may be, it is quite clear that the importance of soil is universal; it is a world problem. We have reduced the fertility of our soil almost universally over the past 40 and 50 years. I often want to say that five a day is worth about what four a day might have been some time ago. I am not sure that is scientifically accurate, but it expresses what the difference is—not only is it the fertility of the soil, but the trace elements in the soil.

What is rather curiously called “conventional farming” suffers from the problem that is does not put back the richness of the soil in the same way that historic methods of farming have done. We have to recognise that we have to change, because we cannot go on doing this. If you come, as I do, from the east of England, you know that more and more conventional famers are recognising that the way we farm gives us very few more harvests because we are denuding the soil.

The first reason that soil is crucial is because it is getting far less useful—if we only want to look at it from a utilitarian point of view. The second reason is because we need it to be better able to sequester. That means we really have to bring the soil back to the kind of strength that it had before the war.

The third reason it is crucial is that there are particular soils with special issues. I draw my noble friend’s attention to the question of peatland, which is a remarkable and wonderful sequester of carbon. But if it is ruined or torn up, it becomes the opposite and it exhales carbon, so we have a double whammy. The fact is that the Government have not even embarked on a peatland policy that will reach the level the Climate Change Committee says is essential to meet net zero—to restore all our peatlands by 2045. If we do it at the speed which is, at the moment, being celebrated by Defra, we will not get there.

It is crucially important—some sort of animal has just landed on me and clearly wishes to sequester upon me—to note that, unless we act on soil, we have very little chance of reaching net zero, because the “net” bit of net zero is about sequestration. It is not just about planting trees, although that is crucially important; it is about the whole way we deal with soil, including how we deal with the bare period, which should be covered, and the sorts of things that we can do and which we have to make sure are part of ELMS when it comes to the detail. All those things are essential.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, referred to a very interesting thing: of earth, air and water, earth is the first. Again, one comes back to the words of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, who reminded us of the nature of the Lord’s Prayer.

It is very important that soil should be part of this. My reason for speaking is simply because we have made that very clear in the Climate Change Committee’s report—which has been accepted by the Government and is the basis of our commitment to net zero and the way in which we are going to get there. It would be a great pity if we cannot find a way of including soil. It may be that the way the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, wants to do it has some technical problem which I have not so far seen, and I am perfectly prepared to be led down some path which enables some other way of doing this. But if we do not include soil, we are again saying something. There is no such thing as being able to negative something without making a statement. Therefore, we either have to do what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, would like us to do, or we have to find another way of making sure that soil is part of this.

I end by saying to my noble friend that there is a particular reason why Defra should be saying this: we have not heard enough from Defra about how we are going to improve the soil—we have not heard enough about the details. Therefore, we are not sure that Defra has really taken this on board. The Climate Change Committee is, I think, trying to say to Defra that this is central. For example, we have not yet banned horticultural peat. What on earth are we doing making it worse? We could do that immediately; the industry is ready for it, but we have not yet done it because we are still talking. Climate change gives us no time to talk about this—something that we should have done a long time ago. Please can we have this in the Bill, so that we know where we are and the Government can be held to it?

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on the way that she presented it and added a few more points from the noble Lord, Lord Curry, in his absence. Now, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has spelled out most of what I was about to say. The reality is that this is a very straightforward amendment and one which would be easy, sensible and logical for the Minister to accept.

In relation to the back end of the remarks by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, Defra really has no excuse now. I have to admit that, 20 years ago, when I was a Defra Minister, soil management was not very high on the agenda; it was there, and it was vaguely there in the common agricultural policy and agro-environment schemes, but it was very low priority. And yet it is such a central issue to life on this earth and the future of the human race that we have a soil—both cultivated and in the wild—that will continue to be sustainable and be resilient enough to provide the multitudinous plants that sustain life for ourselves and for almost every other species on earth.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL]

Lord Deben Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 15th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure on this occasion to speak after my noble friend Lord McNally and to agree with him. I am very glad to do so. Although he does not think much of lawyers, he would make a wonderful lawyer—and I mean that as a compliment.

So far as this amendment is concerned, although the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, went back to the proclamations in explaining its origin, I shall add this from my own memory. When I was a student of history, not law, at Cambridge University, my mentor told me to read The New Despotism by Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice, and, especially, Harold Laski and the other members of the Donoughmore committee on Ministers’ powers, which reported in the late 1930s. Anybody who reads those two historic documents will understand perfectly why the amendment moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, needs to be supported. It is a matter of the rule of law and of parliamentary democracy. Therefore, I very much hope that the whole House and the Minister, in particular, will be able to accept the amendment. If not, I will certainly be delighted to vote in its favour.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House that I was fortunate enough to take part in the Space Industry Bill on exactly this basis. That is the reason I come to this amendment. I hope that my noble friend will recognise that this is about not just this amendment in this Bill but a whole range of ways of looking at taking into our domestic legislation the things that we have to. I choose to speak on this simply because this is not an issue on which I can be accused of having a parti pris position—although I will be perfectly happy to be accused of that when we have the withdrawal Bill, on which clearly I take a very strong view.

On this, I am talking about an amendment to a Bill which has a great danger. If you produce a Bill called the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill, it is very easy to put almost anything in it and feel that it is perfectly reasonable to support what you have put in—because none of us is in favour of not having sanctions and all of us are opposed to money laundering. Therefore, this is the moment in which I always become particularly careful. I am worried about this because it seems to be an area in which lawyers have taken a major part. That always worries me, and I feel that one has to make sure that one is not being led astray down some legal path that is other than sensible.

On this occasion, I think that what is being proposed is not acceptable within the constitution. As the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said, this is a constitutional matter. If we are here for anything—and I believe that we are here for a very good purpose—dealing with the constitution is clearly the central part of it, and dealing with it in the detail that we can, when the House of Commons is unable to deal with it in that detail, makes this even more important.

I cannot believe that my noble friend really intends to say that Ministers should have these powers. I know that I have said it before, but I was a Minister for 16 years and I have to tell him that I should not have been given those powers. I do not agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, that it does not matter because of the excellence of the Minister. In a sense, it matters more because of the excellence of the Minister. It is very important as a Minister to recognise that there are restrictions on any Minister, however good. In a sense, that is when I particularly want those restrictions to be strong.

I say to my noble friend that there is a reason why this amendment is very important, and it is a constitutional reason. But there is a practical reason, too. It is that we do not want to feel that the Government are not prepared to understand the distinction between constitutional propriety and the urge and necessity to change the law in order to face up to the regrettable effects of Brexit. This is an opportunity for us to say that this is not about this issue; it is about the constitutional concern. I hope that my noble friend will be able to give the House some reassurance that, now that this has been pointed out to him, he will look again at the debates on the Space Industry Bill, think forward to the debates that we will have over the Trade Bill and the withdrawal Bill, and recognise that perhaps this is a moment to find a way of accommodating a very serious criticism.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord and noble Lords for their contributions. I agree wholeheartedly with their comments in relation to the thrust of this legislation. We are here because of another decision. We are here because we are being forced to take action speedily because of the precipice that we will be facing.

I said at Second Reading and will say now that we support this Bill because we are required to have a proper and full sanctions regime. I completely share the concerns expressed by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee. But, as I said in Committee, your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee examined these clauses in some detail and did not quite share the view of the Constitution Committee. It referred to its previous memorandum on the subject and said that the reason for this clause related to the enforcement of the prohibitions and requirements set out in the regulations. In Committee, the Minister said that the Government were replicating existing enforcement regimes. He said:

“To be clear: these types of offences already exist”.—[Official Report, 21/11/17; col. 165.]


In Committee, I said that if that was the case, and the Minister was hearing us in terms of the concerns over principles, I hoped that he would come up with something better to address the concerns of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I am afraid that, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said, I do not think that the Minister has come up with adequate provisions to address these concerns. They are limited, as the noble and learned Lord said, to some of the all-embracing powers such as determining evidence and the process for evidence. I welcome those changes but I do not think that the Government have gone far enough in terms of being very clear how these wide-ranging powers will be dealt with. If the noble and learned Lord presses this issue, I hope that the House will support him.

EU: Free Movement of Labour

Lord Deben Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My noble friend is always worth listening to.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept that it would be a good thing if both the Government and the Opposition spent a bit more time explaining why and what immigrants from the rest of Europe contribute to our economy, how much good they are doing here, and how valuable it is for us to have the free movement of our labour into the rest of the European Union?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the Prime Minister is the first to explain how membership of a reformed EU is for the benefit of this country. I think that he did rather tease the Lithuanian Prime Minister by pointing out that 6% of the population of Lithuania now lives in the United Kingdom, so clearly we all have different problems with migration. My experience over the years has shown me that migrants form a very valuable part of our society. It is clear, though, that the increase in EU migration has caused some stresses and strains in some areas of the country on services such as health. That should be of concern to us all. We need to put that right to ensure that, when migration works, it is to the benefit of everybody.

Berlin Wall

Lord Deben Excerpts

Thursday 6th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept that there is now no conflict between our membership of NATO and our membership of the European Union and that together these guarantee the freedom and future of Europe? Does she accept that Britain ought to be a full, active and determined member of both, and that at the moment we are not speaking up enough about the benefits of our membership of the European Union?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the Prime Minister is the first to speak up about the benefits that can be obtained from a European Union that is reformed, and he has support around the European Union to achieve those reforms. We are, of course, strong supporters of NATO—and remain so—but also of the United Nations and all the work that it does.

Gaza

Lord Deben Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

Of course, my Lords; unfortunately that is the complexity of the Middle East peace process, and of the situation that has existed there for many, many decades. There is nobody in this country who could be unmoved by the tragic deaths that we are seeing as a result of this conflict. As a mother, of course I feel for the death of any child. As I have said before at this Dispatch Box, it is not the natural order to bury your children; the natural order is for our children to bury us. The deaths on both sides are of course tragic events. It is for that reason that this matter has to be de-escalated, and we have to get back to the negotiating table.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Would my noble friend accept that there are many who entirely support Israel’s right to continue as an independent nation and to defend its borders, but at the same time believe that there is no hope for peace as long as Israel continues its illegal settlement policy? Does my noble friend accept that Israel is the only so-called liberal democracy that believes that colonisation should be part of its programme?

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble Lord of course makes strong points. I said at this Dispatch Box only earlier this week that when we have these discussions it is important to emphasise the values upon which countries seek to operate. Regarding the ceasefire, I can say that last night delegations from both Israel and Hamas arrived in Cairo for discussions on the Egyptian initiative which is currently on the table. I understand that President Abbas is in Cairo and is due to meet General Sisi. It may well be that these latest tragic deaths have finally made people stop and think.

European Commission: UK Member

Lord Deben Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

The important thing is that we make sure that we appoint a good Commissioner who does a good job in Europe. All the other factors are secondary.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept that there are some serious matters at stake here? At the heart of the Question—which has a lot of persiflage round it, if I may say so to my noble friend—is the fact that we need somebody who will go to Brussels and do the job properly, which means doing their best for the whole of the European Community, and who will have the confidence of people throughout the country. It should not be somebody who goes to Brussels with predetermined views and an unwillingness to work with our colleagues in the European Union.

[Baroness Warsi]

My noble friend makes an important point. However, I think he would accept that at the recent European elections, not just in the United Kingdom but across the European Union, the citizens of the member states sent out a very clear signal about the kind of Europe they want, and it is important that Commissioners reflect that in their work.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

I hate to deprive the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, of my wisdom, and he has been far too polite in the past.

The second stage of the process of amending the treaty is the calling of a convention. The last and only convention so far lasted for just over 18 months. The convention has to end up with consensus. The next stage is an intergovernmental conference in which one needs the unanimous agreement of every other member state to one’s propositions. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. The final stage would be ratification of the outcome. If it involved treaty amendment, the changed treaties would require new national ratification in every member state’s capital. I assume that before we have the referendum, we would want to know, and be able to tell the country, whether the renegotiation deal had stuck and had been accepted in other member states. A very awkward and complex situation would arise if you had a referendum on the assumption that the renegotiation deal would be ratified everywhere, and that turned out not to be the case.

We do not begin those four stages until after an election in 2015. It does not add up. The first stage, the bilateral diplomacy, we do not appear to be doing. We do not appear to be collecting the 14 friends to get past the first hurdle. As to the second stage, the convention, I do not know how long it would take. It might take much less than the 18 months taken last time, but it is a finite hurdle to get over and it will take time. As to the third stage, the intergovernmental conference, Maastricht took a year. This one might take less but, on the other hand, it sounds as if the propositions that the Conservative Party envisages bringing forward are rather fundamental. Finally, as to ratification in 2017, one would be asking the French and the Germans in their election years to agree with the British on, say, restraining free movement of persons, taking human rights out of the treaty, exempting the British from social law or giving them a veto on financial law. You would be seeking agreement on that in the year in which a French Socialist President was seeking re-election, and a German Government who strongly believe in human rights would be facing the polls.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

The noble Lord has not mentioned the danger that ratification would not have taken place. If the British had a referendum and wished to remain in the EU, but ratification did not take place after that decision was made, that would put us in a constitutional position of great severity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack]

I would say to my noble friend, in answer to his perfectly reasonable question, that just as we are sitting beyond our normal hours today, it is entirely up to the House of Commons to sit beyond its normal hours on 28 February—and if there is a strong and passionate feeling that the Bill should become an Act and go on to the statute book, then it can have a very long Friday and do that. Of course, constraints are called for, and the more amendments that are passed, the more difficult it will become. I absolutely accept that. My reference was in particular to the amendments that have already been passed, which could be incorporated without any great difficulty.

[Lord Deben]

I hope my noble friend will agree that those who say that the House of Lords should not have debated this Bill and tried to improve it because somehow or other it was trying to destroy it, have got entirely the wrong end of the stick. We are trying to make this Bill passable: therefore, it is up to the House of Commons to accept a better Bill from us, which is what our job is, and then pass it. To say that we cannot deal with it because somehow or other we are being disloyal seems to me to be entirely wrong, and a media invention.

[Lord Cormack]

We are not going to redebate the Second Reading. I agree with much of what my noble friend Lord Deben has just said. At Second Reading I believed there was a case for giving this Bill, imperfect as it—I made it plain that I would not have started from here and that I did not like the Bill very much—a fair wind. I tried to make that case as effectively as I could but it was not accepted. I was merely pointing out that we are now in a different position. Amendments have been passed. It is indeed, as he and I have just said, up to the other place. The principle of the referendum remains. In spite of what my noble friend Lord Spicer said, these are not wrecking amendments. If the other place will give itself sufficient time on the last day of February, it will be perfectly possible for this Bill to become an Act of Parliament, suitably improved.

Bahrain

Lord Deben Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

These issues are far too serious for anyone—Members of this House, Members of the other place or, indeed, the Bahraini embassy—to consider that matters can be brushed under the carpet or under a hamper.

[Lord Deben]

Is the Minister sure that the Bahraini Government understand just how seriously we take this? I have a feeling that it will be seen as merely the sort of thing that we do and say because we are that kind of country. I hope that she will enable Bahrain to understand that the future of our relationship depends on its behaving in a civilised way. If it does not, there really must be an understanding that that will change entirely the way that we deal with Bahrain.

[Baroness Warsi]

My noble friend makes an important point. We have a strong relationship—a strong friendship—with Bahrain. It is because that friendship is so strong that we can have very honest conversations. I assure him that, from the Prime Minister through to the Foreign Secretary and the Minister responsible for Bahrain, and in the discussions that I have had, we do not lose any opportunity to raise these concerns. We get real support from the other side: there is a willingness to move these matters forward. As I said in my recent discussions with the Foreign Minister, the more that can be achieved and the more progress that can be shown in terms of these recommendations from the BICI and the UPR, the better this relationship will become.

Falkland Islands

Lord Deben Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The noble Lord is extremely well informed on this and has followed it very closely. Of course, leaving aside sovereignty and the wishes of the islanders to remain a self-governing territory of the United Kingdom—very clearly expressed, and I am sure they will be again—a whole range of things have been offered to Argentina. There is much talk, of course, about the hydrocarbons explorations around the island. Thirty years ago, when I was involved in some administration of this country on energy matters, one of the files on my desk was concerned with exploration of the hydrocarbons around the Falklands—and that was right at the start of this, in 1980. All along, and increasingly and very specifically in the 1990s, offers were made to the Argentinean people to co-operate very closely and to share the benefits of anything that emerged. That was just one example; the noble Lord gave many others. There is a whole range of areas where there could be extreme benefit to the people of Argentina, but they must not include—and in fact must exclude—the consideration of the sovereignty and the self-determination of the people of the Falkland Islands.

[Lord Deben]

Is my noble friend aware that the Argentine Government have been arguing against the referendum on the basis that those taking part will be settlers, or the children of settlers, on the Falkland Islands? Will it be possible for him to bring to the attention of the Argentine ambassador the fact that she is a settler and the child of settlers, that there is no voter for the President of the Argentine who is not himself or herself a settler, and that if we are talking about settlers we are all in it together?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My noble friend makes a very acute historical point that many of the inhabitants of almost every country on earth are settlers; one thinks, not least, of the United States. I believe that the ancestors of many here were also settlers. Indeed, I often hear divisions between the arriviste Norman settlers who came in in 1066 and those who were here already, so my noble friend makes a very good point. However, I do not intend to pursue it with the Argentine ambassador. I have had the opportunity to meet her and I believe that the view that we should express in this country is not one of tit for tat but a dignified intention that the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands people must be preserved, that we wish Argentina well, and that we would like an end to this distracting quarrel and the restoration of the co-operation and links which we once had with the Argentine.

EU: Recent Developments

Lord Deben Excerpts

Thursday 16th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

You are anti-European Union. I should have corrected myself—but you are anti.

[Lord Deben]

Given that the noble Lord has been interrupted, perhaps I may point out that there are some on these Benches who are in no way uncertain about the future of Britain in the European Union and support every word that he is saying.

[Lord Liddle]

That is a nice compliment from the noble Lord. What worries me is when people say, “Yes, we want Europe because it is good where we can have political co-operation on where we agree. Yes, of course the single market matters, but let us draw a clear line at that”. Whereas in the post-war era it is said that we had the myth of Britain standing alone at Dunkirk, which kept us out of effective engagement with Europe for 30 years, we are now recreating a new myth about Britain’s role in the world, whereby Britain alone in the new globalised world of the 21st century can thrive without the “shackles”—as the anti-European Union people put it—of engagement in Europe.

Of course Britain has global reach and global interests, and it can be an influential and effective networker in this new global world, but there is the idea of Europe as a shackle, that the single market is no more than a monster of bureaucratic regulation, that free movement of labour stops us having our own immigration policy, and that the things that people do not like—such as the rights culture and the health and safety culture—are all because of Europe.

I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Flight, was almost cheering when my noble friend Lord Monks said that four weeks’ statutory holiday for people would be scrapped if we were no longer part of Europe. That is a dangerous and seductive myth that may well seriously cloud our judgment as a nation as to where our future best interests lie. We must recognise that the health of the European Union is absolutely central to our global interests. British-based businesses sell a higher proportion of their exports into the single market than German exporters do of theirs. That is partly because, due to the single market, Britain has become such an attractive base for inward investment. It is because of the base of the single market that we can specialise and compete in world markets.

We do not strengthen our position in the single market by diplomatically putting ourselves out of the room when, for all the paper promises made, key economic questions affecting this country will be discussed. It is nonsense to think that the world will pay more heed to a Britain that accounts for—what?—2 per cent of world GDP than the European Union, which still represents the biggest economy in the world. People who think that Europe is putting us in shackles to meet the challenges of the global economy have to explain why Germany is one of the world's most successful exporters to China and the emerging economies.

The anti-Europeans have a vision of how Britain can make its living in the 21st-century that is deeply antipathetic to the instincts of those on our Benches. We believe in a European vision of a modern social market economy, a Europe that takes the high road to competitiveness and combines the opportunity for successful private enterprise with decent regulatory standards and essential public investment in low-carbon infrastructure, research, education, early years, a modern welfare state, and so on. The vision against that is essentially the vision of an offshore Britain, a deregulatory tax haven, a Hong Kong-type vision, which would be a disaster for most of our people but for the City of London as well.

The coalition would like to think that we can have the best of both worlds, to keep the benefits of the single market while avoiding most of Europe's obligations and political commitments. Of course, we should try to do our best to shape Europe in a British image, and there is a huge agenda of European reform that we need to pursue, but if we are saying that we will stay apart for ever from the single currency, we will have nothing to do with the fiscal stability union, we will be no longer in Schengen or part of the justice and home affairs parts of the treaties, what other nation in Europe shares that vision of Europe's future? Where are we looking for allies if we are trying to stay out of everything?

The European Union is an exercise in pooled sovereignty or it is nothing. If we are not prepared to join in and do our bit, we will ultimately make ourselves irrelevant. We cannot indefinitely achieve our objectives by staying out of the room when we do not like what is being discussed, and we cannot achieve them by opting out of so much that it begins to look as if we might as well not be in.

We have to resolve this issue as a country: is our future European or not? That is the lead that we are looking for from the Government.