Water Industry Reform

Lord Flight Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Water companies have invested £160 billion in a modernised infrastructure. I disagree with the noble Lord about the Environment Act; it sets out a very clear direction of travel for water companies and others to clean up our waterways. But I refer him to the strategic policy statement to Ofwat. It has been released in draft and will be laid before the House in the next few weeks, and it will add to it targets for improvement.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, our basement flat in Westminster has twice been flooded seriously with sewage-contaminated water as a result of the water companies opening their sluice gates at times of heavy rainfall. The cost of renovating the flat and its contents has been expensive. Going forward, surely property owners need to have renovation costs financed by the relevant water companies.

Agriculture Bill

Lord Flight Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th July 2020 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who—it may not have been apparent to your Lordships—was speaking from just over the hill from me in Cumbria. I put my name down to speak to Amendment 270 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, but my thoughts cover the entirety of the amendments we are considering at this point.

I am a farmer; I farm. My business and I face serious challenges, but I dare say I speak for many other farmers when I say that we are up for it—and anyway, we do not have much choice, do we?

Earlier in Committee, I said—slightly oversimplifying and slightly tongue in cheek—that since the end of the Second World War, Governments have paid public money to farmers because they wanted them to produce food and farm. In the brave new world into which we are now going, it has all changed and been turned on its head: farmers are paid public money to do everything and anything on land except produce food, while the food they might produce will be paid for by the market. While there is clearly a change entailed here, it is important to see that there is also a continuity: the central place of farming in the rural economy. It is merely the context in which it operates that is changing.

I do not believe this change of direction can work if food suppliers to this country from elsewhere in the world do not have to meet the same or equivalent standards demanded of domestic producers. The reason for that is that, regardless of any immediate direct impacts on either consumers or the environment, UK producers will not be able to compete and then the whole construct of the future of rural Britain will be put under threat and may well collapse. Were that to happen, not to provide a degree of protection would be a form of state aid given by the UK Government to foreign farmers. I do not believe that is an acceptable political response to taking back control. In short, it is not on.

In my view, unless the Government properly kitemark their intentions and policies with legally watertight guarantees—which, we understand and have heard this afternoon, is exactly what the British public want—under the proper control and in accordance with the procedures well established in the British constitution by Parliament, why should the rest of us place reliance on what we are told? I would like to hope that this matter can be clarified and resolved before Report.

[Lord Flight (Con) [V]]

My Lords—[Inaudible.]

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

I am afraid that we cannot hear the noble Lord. Can he get closer to his microphone?

[Lord Flight [V]]

Is that better?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

Yes, I think we can hear well enough. Go ahead.

[Lord Flight [V]]

I think that it would be a tragedy if British agriculture suffered rather than benefited from Brexit. It appears to be—[Inaudible.]

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

I am really sorry, but the sound has gone again. Perhaps we can move on to the next speaker and try to get the noble Lord back later.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committee (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

The House will be pleased to know that we are returning to the noble Lord, Lord Flight.

[Lord Flight [V]]

My Lords, I apologise for my computer not working properly.

It will be a tragedy if British agriculture suffers rather than benefits from Brexit. It appears that aspects of the Bill are not helpful to British agriculture, although it gives us the ability to restructure in our best interests. I was concerned to see Country Life, of all magazines, with headlines like

“British farming sold down the river”


and comments such as

“What a way to repay our farmers, by importing lower-standard products that steal their market”.


Is the Bill, with its many amendments, good or bad for our farmers? That seems to be the fundamental question. Defra Secretary George Eustice has insisted on upholding high welfare and safety standards and insists on the same welfare and food safety rules for imports as there are for our own farmers’ products. We need to put into law what Michael Gove promised when he was at Defra: namely, that Britain would lead the world in animal welfare and food safety.

But it now appears that we are going into trade negotiations having told other countries that we will not insist on either proper agricultural standards or environmental rules, so British farmers will be required to meet higher standards than pertain in other countries and will compete with food and goods exported by those who carry none of the same costs. Liz Truss is rightly pushing for free trade deals with the US and Brazil, knowing that the easiest way to achieve them is to signal her surrender on food exports. If that occurs, though, what a way to repay our farmers if we are importing goods or foods that steal our markets through lower standards and subsidies.

But are we misunderstanding the Bill? Is it not a trade Bill but rather a domestic Bill? It establishes a legalistic framework by which we can create a new system for supporting our farming industry post Brexit. The Bill also sets out a list of activities that could be supported by the Secretary of State. There are prescriptions for reforming our agricultural markets in line with farmers’ objectives. The key issue is to ensure that cheap goods and food imported to the UK do not undercut UK food production costs and standards. Arguably there should be a ban on food imports that do not meet UK standards. What is needed is for the Government to set out how and where this legislation is a friend to our farmers and how we can prevent unfair competition.

Direct Payments to Farmers (Crop Diversification Derogation) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Flight Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, I believe there is strong cross-party support for this much-needed emergency measure, both in the Commons and in the Lords. As these are money regulations, however, decisions in the Lords are not binding. The regulations have a convoluted legal background and they aim to continue direct payments up to 31 December 2020 under domestic law. The Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill received Royal Assent back in January. The measures are required because the EU direct payments legislation no longer applied to the UK from exit day on 31 January this year. The Agriculture Bill will not affect 2020 direct payments. Clause 8 of the Bill means that direct payments will be phased out over seven years from 2021. Their last year will be the 2027 scheme year. Do the Government propose to continue to allow for a derogation of crop diversification during the phasing-out period?

The Government’s 2018 consultation paper Health and Harmony set out phasing-out proposals for direct payments and their replacement eventually with a new environmental land management scheme, to be piloted from 2021 to 2024. I will have a lot more to say and concerns to raise regarding financial arrangements at Second Reading of the Agriculture Bill on 10 June.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Flight Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I too welcome the maiden speech by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol. I also look forward to the maiden speech we are due to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

I was planning to deal with the environment and regulation, but I have junked the environment as there will be a Bill later on and we can deal it then.

For most of my time in government I was involved in regulation, be it food, farming, planning or regeneration. There were always lots of calls for less regulation but every time I asked for ideas on what we did not need, answer came there none. The balance of competency reviews between the UK and the EU in 2010 pushed by William Hague—all 38 of them—did not, as I recall, produce any less regulation. Now, a decade later, we have a Prime Minister determined to get rid of “burdensome regulation”. The fact that he told untruths about some of the regulations he complained about is neither here nor there.

His team is determined to cut “red tape”, as they call it. I will use just one example, from the Prime Minister’s right-hand man, the Leader of the House of Commons. He might present himself as a comedy toff but, in my view, he is in reality a hard-right bully. At the Treasury Select Committee in 2016, the now Leader of the House of Commons opined that standards that were good enough for India would be good enough for the UK after Brexit. I have never been to India but I have enormous respect for the world’s largest democracy. There are thousands of members of my professional institution, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, in India. I have looked at a couple of areas as comparative examples. ILO data tells us that, in India, 403,000 people die each year due to work-related problems; this amounts to 46 deaths per hour. Work-related deaths in GB, including where the public were involved, totalled 239 in 2018-19, which amounts to 0.027 per hour. India’s population is 20 times the size of Great Britain’s. So if Britain was same size, there would be one extra death every two hours. That is from an academic paper by MMK Sardana, whose abstract says that India should copy the UK, not the other way around.

I looked at deaths from fire accidents. According to information from the National Crime Records Bureau in India, in the four years 2010-14, 114,000 people lost their lives in fire accidents—that is 62 deaths per day—and two-thirds of them were female. In Great Britain in the same four years, the loss of life was 1,478, which amounts to one death a day. Scaled to Indian levels, that would be 20 per day. I have used these examples for a reason. In March 1974, in maiden speech in the Commons, I used the subject of industrial accidents as my theme. I had worked in engineering as both a safety officer and a production manager.

A third example is air pollution. Before the clean air Acts, black smoke emissions in the UK were up to 50 times higher than today. Not only did unregulated coal burning darken the skies but there were high death rates from respiratory diseases among the old and the very young. The effect of pollution in India today is comparable with that in Great Britain’s industrial cities in the late 19th century. I picked that up from a paper by Professor Tim Hatton at the University of Essex entitled, India’s Pollution Today is as Deadly as the Black Smog that Covered Britain during the Industrial Revolution.

India has room for improvement. There is massive work going on to legislate and improve the situation, and they use our Health and Safety Executive as an example in their papers of how we transformed our situation from myriad old-fashioned legislation in the 1950s and 1960s. So why should the UK follow India in these circumstances? I take what the people in the Cabinet, the bosses who are in the Government—

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Rooker]

No, I will not give way. I take what they say seriously; we have to. We clearly have a Cabinet of people akin to the factory owners of the past, who did not actually work in the factories that they owned, many of which were unsafe, but expected workers to make do and mend. Calling for such changes in deregulation, knowing the actual consequences, is the same as saying that extra Brexit deaths due to less red tape are worth having. I know that is a serious charge, but the reality is that we have to watch what happens with deregulation like a hawk. The Leader of the House of Commons appears to be advocating that standards in India are good enough for the UK after Brexit. I have given just a few examples of some of the consequences of adopting standards in India in the UK. To be honest, I would not be very comfortable with India’s standards in the UK.

Japanese Knotweed

Lord Flight Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The noble Lord makes a very important point. Japanese knotweed is a pest and it is extremely difficult to eliminate. However, I remind the noble Lord that this House guards jealously the right of entry. I remember many debates on that issue and I am not sure that this House would be particularly happy to have people’s gardens invaded by enforcement officers in the way that he suggests.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, when I read this excellent Question of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, I wondered whether it was code for the knotweed growth regulation that was debilitating our economy.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

As my noble friend will know, Defra has been extremely vigorous in responding to the red tape challenge. Indeed, the red tape regulatory reduction targets of this Government are being vigorously enforced. Unfortunately, we do not have a psyllid that we can apply to them.