Environment and Climate Change Committee Report: An Extraordinary Challenge: Restoring 30 per cent of our Land and Sea by 2030
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, who was very generous in what she said. I agreed with everything she said—particularly that part.
I congratulate the committee on putting together a really valuable report and will focus, at least initially, on the international role of the UK in agitation and in leading by example, where the UK has a particular role to play.
It is an obvious thing to say but, logically, there is nothing more important than mending our relationship with the natural world. Absolutely everything we have, everything we need, everything we do and our entire economic system is based on nature, which is why the damage we are doing to it, all around the world—to our rivers, mangroves, corals and forests—is just so mad.
If I more or less keep to my time now, by the time I have finished and sit down we will have lost the equivalent of nearly 400 football pitches-worth of forest. That almost defies belief and imagination. These are forests that are home to four-fifths of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, around 1 billion people depend on them for their survival, and, as we know, the forests regulate so much, not least our climate and rainfall. The Congo Basin alone is believed to generate more than half of the rainfall for the entire continent of Africa. This is not just an issue of biodiversity, and it is certainly not just an academic discussion we are having.
The reality is that there is no technological substitute for these systems: the only solution, and the ultimate challenge, is finding a way to protect what remains and restore what we have carelessly lost, and then to do everything we can, through all of our decision-making, to reconcile ourselves, our cultures our civilisations and our economies with the natural world, on which we depend. It is an obvious thing to say—and I am certain that, for this Room, it did not need to be said —but it is an argument that needs to be made repeatedly.
The reason for that is that, far too often, when we hear debates about the environment, or when the environment is discussed as a political issue, we are not actually talking about the environment; we have reduced the whole thing to a very narrow focus on carbon and climate change. It is an extraordinarily one-dimensional discussion that we are having most of the time. The reality is that we could put all the solar panels in the world on all the rooftops around the planet, and invest 10 times more in energy efficiency, but if we do not massively ramp up our efforts to protect and restore nature then it is all pointless. There is no pathway to net zero and there is no solution to climate change without forests, and I think it is really important that we keep our conversation as broad as possible. Climate change is an overwhelming threat, but it is a symptom—just one symptom—of the underlying and abusive relationship we have with the natural world.
I do not want in any way to sound like I am discouraging efforts to accelerate the much-needed clean energy transition. It is crucial, I think, that we ramp up our focus on preventing nature loss. By the way, we know that we can do it; there are examples all around the world. I had the privilege of being a Minister for the international environment, and I saw with my own eyes initiatives on a tiny scale and a huge scale—and sometimes on a national scale, where countries have managed to break the link between productivity, prosperity and environmental destruction.
I have just come back from Indonesia a couple of days ago. I hate flying—I have to be drunk to get on an aeroplane, so I am probably not making as much sense now as I would like to be. I can tell you that Indonesia, a country that has taken a lot of flak over many years for high rates, historically, of deforestation, has got its deforestation under control. It does not get the credit for it but it has—the data does not lie. It has broken the link between palm oil production and deforestation. There is still some deforestation, of course, but it is nothing compared to what it was. If all the great forest countries behaved in the way that Indonesia has, we would be having a very different discussion. We know that it can be done.
Noble Lords will remember that, a few years ago, we had the privilege of hosting COP 26 in Glasgow, which we made an effort to turn into a nature COP. We wanted a broader focus, and we delivered the Glasgow leaders’ declaration on forests. We got 145 countries, representing 90% of the world’s forests, to commit to end deforestation this decade, and secured $20 billion to support those countries to do it. We persuaded the multilateral development agencies to align their policies and portfolios with that aim. It represented—in theory, at least—an unprecedented package of support for forests. I put on record my thanks to the extraordinarily talented people in the invisible part of government—the people who do not normally take part in these debates but who do the real work. Without any doubt, that was a consequence of an extraordinarily effective diplomatic effort.
Since then, we attempted to take that same energy, approach and momentum to Montreal, which was about a year later. In order to have an impact and to be able to influence the debate, we protected those diplomatic networks that we had created. We remained co-leaders of the High Ambition Coalition and the Global Ocean Alliance—organisations designed to extract maximum ambition from countries with which we get on well. We spearheaded, with Ecuador, the Maldives and Gabon, a programme that suggested how countries might club together in order to fund what is needed for nature restoration. It was a programme that was, more or less, adopted at Montreal, in the Kunming-Montreal protocol.
There is no doubt that the UK played a very important role. I am grateful for what the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said earlier, but the truth is that I had the honour of being the front of much of this work; the real work was done by hundreds and hundreds of people in government who were up all night, four or five days in a row. I thought some of them might be knocking on the door of madness by the end of it, relying only on coffee, but they did an extraordinary job and went way beyond what I, certainly, was expecting at the time. I am very grateful to them.
What was agreed at Montreal was seismic. It was an action plan that will put the world on a path to recovery. We are here to talk about the 30 by 30 target, and obviously that was the headline achievement that was secured at Montreal. But it was also agreed—and this is hugely important—that the wealthier countries will provide at least $20 billion a year by 2025 to help countries rich in nature but economically poorer to deliver their part of the bargain.
A lot has undoubtedly been achieved since Montreal. We have targets, agreements and treaties. In basic terms, we have the tools that we need, if we are serious about it, to turn the tide on nature destruction, but if we do not use those tools and properly do our part then the targets are academic. They would just be targets on paper.
The truth is that, globally—I include the UK in this—we are not living up to the commitments we made. We are less than one year from that $20 billion a year target. By the end of next year, the rich countries are supposed to be contributing $20 billion between them. A report produced by the ODI and commissioned by the brilliant Campaign for Nature, based entirely on OECD figures, shows that just two countries are contributing what they regard as their fair share of that finance. The UK is not one of them. I am certainly not blaming the new Government, who have only just taken their seats, but the UK is not one of them. The UK has a hugely important role to play in turning those grandiose commitments into something approaching reality.
We have been at the heart of this debate for some years now. It was a colossal error of judgment on the part of the most recent iteration of the Conservative Government just to walk off the stage. We were not there at the big events; we were fiddling the figures to make it look like we were spending more money than we were, and we were letting down allies. I think we did the UK’s reputation an enormous amount of damage. This Government have the awesome responsibility of turning things around, rebuilding our reputation and showing that, when we make a promise on these issues, we stick to it and keep our word.
That matters financially, for the reasons I have just explained, but it goes far beyond finance. It is also about politics. We have a history of being able to agitate in negative ways, but also in very positive ways internationally, persuading the world to do what we think it ought to be doing. When it comes to nature, our voice has counted for something. There have been many events and times in the last few years when regional groupings have gathered to talk—for example, about the Amazon. You would have all the Amazon countries there and the UK. We have had similar events in Asia, when leaders from Asian countries have gathered to talk about their biodiversity, and the UK has been the only non-regional member there. We have a voice, and it is essential that we use it.
We have to get our rich-country friends to step up and pay their fair share. We have to mobilise the private finance that we need, because there is nothing like enough public finance to do the job. We have to make sure that the forums that we are part of, such as the G7, honour the commitments that they made. If your Lordships remember, at the last G7 there was a commitment that all international aid—not just climate or nature, but all international aid—would be aligned with the global biodiversity framework. That has not happened—it has not happened in the UK or elsewhere.
I am running out of time, so will make one final point. The biggest challenge that people talk about when it comes to restoring our relationship with nature is finance. We are told that there is a $500 billion black hole annually; that is needed every year to turn things around. By coincidence, that is also how much the top 50 food-producing countries spend each year in subsidising often highly destructive land use. The UK is one of the few countries, possibly the only country, that has really got to grips with this challenge of reforming our subsidies, such that we are paying public money in return for public goods like the environment. I know others will be talking about this in due course, but it is really important that the new Government seize that agenda, recognise the opportunity and do not in any way yield to the vested interests that undoubtedly will be trying to pressure them to water down our commitments on land use subsidy reform. It is too important internationally and for the UK.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)
My Lords, I gently remind your Lordships that, although it says an “advisory” Back-Bench speaking time of nine minutes, it is slightly more than advisory. We have a lot of speakers here today, so I hope that noble Lords will keep an eye on the clock and keep to the time limit, as far as possible.
Trade Deals: Animal Welfare
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Trees
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they will safeguard animal welfare and environmental standards in negotiating trade deals with respect to livestock products.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Department for International Development (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con)
My Lords, as set out in our manifesto, we will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards in our trade negotiations. The Government’s Agriculture Bill sets out our plans to reward farmers for enhancing our natural environment and for safeguarding the nation’s high welfare standards. We will stand firm in trade negotiations to ensure that any future trade deals uphold the standards that farmers and consumers across the UK expect.
Lord Trees (CB)
I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer and I welcome him to the Front Bench. I do not doubt the sincerity of Her Majesty’s Government’s assurances, but there is widespread—and, I would suggest, justifiable—concern that our own livestock industry could be out-competed by imports of cheap livestock products from animals reared to poorer welfare and environmental standards. This might mean cheaper food, but it would be at a global cost to animal welfare and the environment and at some risk to our own indigenous livestock enterprise. Will the Government enshrine in UK law their manifesto commitment to require that imports of livestock products meet our high animal welfare and environmental standards?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
The UK, as the noble Lord points out, has world-leading environmental and animal welfare standards, and that will not change. They are backed up in legislation and, even more importantly, are backed by both producers and consumers right across the land. There is no value to anyone in imposing high standards here on our own producers if we then allow low-standard imports of those same products. We would merely be undermining our farmers while exporting cruelty elsewhere.
Baroness Fookes (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests in animal welfare matters as set out in the register. I take the view that it is an abomination that live animals should be transported very long distances, particularly to the continent but even here within the UK. Can my noble friend assure me that this will not be allowed to continue when we have new rules upon this subject?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
I thank my noble friend for her question. I very much share her concern about and views on the live export of animals for fattening and slaughter. The manifesto commitment on which this Government were elected could not have been clearer on this issue. We are committed, through that manifesto, to taking steps to end the live export of animals for fattening and slaughter. We will consult on the issue shortly; all noble Lords will be able to take part in that consultation and I encourage them to do so.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, how does the Minister reconcile the future for exports of our agricultural goods—whether animals or other agricultural products—and sustainability when we are probably closing our opportunities to export to our near neighbours and will be looking much further away? How do you handle both sustainability and animal welfare in those circumstances?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I have committed my life to the issue of sustainability and am proud of what we have achieved over the last 10 years. I am excited about what we will achieve in the coming years—partially as a consequence of our leaving the European Union, the issue that the noble Baroness raises. We will be able to do things now that we have left the European Union that we could not do as a member. For example, we can scrap the common agricultural policy, as we are intending to do, and replace it with a new system whereby those payments are directly conditional on the delivery of public goods such as environmental sustainability and animal welfare standards.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, as the Government are negotiating trade deals with the USA, in particular, for meat, dairy products and eggs, which are generally produced to much lower animal welfare standards than those produced here, we must insist on the inclusion of a clause permitting the UK to require imports to meet our animal welfare standards. If this is not possible, would the Minister consider imposing tariffs on imports that do not conform to UK welfare standards and which are sufficiently high to safeguard our farmers?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I agree with her premise: we certainly do not want to find ourselves importing egg products which fall below the standards we impose on our own producers. This Government have made that commitment and there are a number of different ways in which it can be achieved. She mentioned a ban and tariffs. I am afraid it will not be for me in my portfolio to determine which of those options we choose, but our commitment is absolute. We will not allow our producers to be penalised by high standards in the UK, only to be undercut by imports that do not meet those standards. That would be neither right nor fair.
Lord Carrington (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interests as a farmer as set out in the register. Could the Minister explain the recent remarks by the Prime Minister at the UK-Africa Investment Summit welcoming Ugandan beef into this country without attaching any conditions relating to standards of production, traceability and welfare at slaughter, despite all the verbal and manifesto pledges given by Ministers?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
I thank the noble Lord for his question. The Prime Minister was not saying anything new: Ugandan beef already has tariff-free access to our market. As a less-developed country, Uganda has duty-free and quota-free access for all products, with the exception of arms and ammunition. However, there are currently no imports of Ugandan beef because it does not meet the standards applied on imports into the European Union or the standards that will be required now that we have left the European Union. The situation therefore remains exactly the same.
Lord Grantchester (Lab)
I welcome the Minister to his Front-Bench duties and declare my interests in a farming enterprise as recorded in the register. Regarding fair competition for farmers and consumer confidence for the public, equivalence of standards will be a difficult area in trade Bills. During the recent Trade Bill in the last Parliament, amendments ensured the maintenance of UK levels of statutory protection of welfare and environmental standards. Can the Minister confirm that this is now a way forward for government policy and that such necessary provisions will be contained in the various Bills and regulations that will need to be re-enacted?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
I thank the noble Lord for his question. I will make two points. First, the Government are committed to introducing a new sentience clause—a much debated issue in the last Parliament. That is not simply a case of translating an EU principle into UK law; when translated it will go much further. It will not have the exemptions, and it will not only apply to a few narrow sectors but will cross the entire decision-making process of government. Secondly, our Environment Bill, which was introduced in the other place just a few days ago, is in and of itself, because of what it contains, a non-regression Bill—a non- regression commitment that will require the Government legally to build on the standards we are proud of, but which we would all like to see improved.
Fisheries: EU Landing Obligation (European Union Committee Report)
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Department for International Development (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for initiating this important debate and I thank all Members for their contributions today. I am also grateful to members of the EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee for its hugely valuable reports on the landing obligation.
I should note that this is my first, and therefore technically my maiden, speech in this House. Given that time is short, that we are here to debate a very specific issue and that I have already had an opportunity, some 10 years ago, to deliver a maiden speech in Parliament, I will keep my opening remarks to a minimum. Before I do, I thank noble Lords from right across the House for a surprisingly warm welcome. I can tell them that there is quite a contrast between this side of the building and the other. I thank in particular my two distinguished supporters, my noble friend Lord True, who I had the pleasure of working with when he led Richmond Council, when he really showed me how politics should be done at the local level, and my noble friend Lord Randall, who I first met in the other part of this complicated compound when he was the Deputy Chief Whip. It is a miracle that we remained friends but we did; I think it had something to do with our shared passion for nature. I also thank my noble friends and Defra colleagues Lord Gardiner and Lady Chisholm for their extraordinary patience in showing me the ropes here from the moment I arrived. Finally, for the same reason, I give my sincere thanks to the doorkeepers, the police officers, the Clerk of the Parliaments, parliamentary staff and Black Rod, who have all at varying times explained the procedures and prevented me getting horribly lost.
I had the honour of representing my home community of Richmond Park and north Kingston for nearly 10 years, with the exception of a short six-month window in 2016 when my constituents kindly sent me off on a short sabbatical. While I will miss working directly for my former constituents, I think we can agree they are not short of representation here in this House. It is a pleasure to see the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, on the other Benches. I think she will understand when I say that I have lost count of the number of times I have knocked on the door of a residence, to be told by a pleased-looking occupant that they are unable to vote in a general election. I sometimes resist asking why, just to cause a flicker of disappointment.
I know that my appointment to this House was not everyone’s cup of tea. One political rival described me—I apologise if this is inappropriate—as a turd that will not flush; a phrase my children are unlikely to let me forget. Equally, I know that many of those heroic people who are engaged in the battle to protect this extraordinary planet we inhabit and the species it holds are cheered by having another voice in Parliament. It is an enormous privilege. The environment has preoccupied me for as long as I remember; it dominated my work in the Commons. I am enormously grateful that I am able to continue working on it full time, as part of a Government who have made tackling these issues a top priority.
The environment may not be everyone’s most immediate concern in the way that education, health, security and so on often are; but given our total dependence on the health of this planet, the damage we are doing to it is self-evidently the most important issue. There can be no doubt that we are damaging the planet. It is estimated that each minute last year, the world lost the equivalent of 30 football pitches of forest. Since the 1960s—just a few years before I was born—we have lost half the world’s land animals; today, we are told that a million species face extinction. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made this point graphically in her speech. Our marine environment has fared no better. As the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, explained, nearly a third of the world’s fisheries have either collapsed or are close to collapse. Half of the world’s coastal waters have been degraded and we are told that if trends are allowed to continue, by 2050 the seas will contain more plastic than fish if measured by weight.
All these things matter in and of themselves, but they matter to humanity as well. Forests, for instance, underpin the livelihoods of well over a billion people. Some 200 million people depend on fishing for their immediately livelihoods. Ultimately, of course, we all depend on nature, so we have an enormous amount to do to restore some form of balance in the relationship between our species and the surrounding world. I do not believe that any Government in the world are doing enough, but I am proud of what this Government are doing on land and at sea, at home and abroad.
The subject of this debate concerns the seas, broadly, so they will be my focus. As custodians of the fifth-largest marine estate globally, it is a source of immense pride that we are on track, through our magnificent Blue Belt programme, to protect an ocean area of some 4 million square kilometres around our Overseas Territories—an area roughly the size of India. Our Overseas Territories, incidentally, harbour around 90% of all our biodiversity. This is the reason why our Prime Minister has said repeatedly that two-thirds of the world’s penguins are British. I am not going to argue with the figure; I have used it myself from time to time. What better reference can there be?
Last year we committed additional funding for the Blue Belt programme and, as one of the Ministers responsible for this area, I am absolutely determined to see it grow much further still. I was also delighted that we committed in our manifesto to create
“a new £500 million Blue Planet Fund”
from our overseas development budget, to help restore and protect ocean ecosystems around the world, and that the Government are leading calls for at least 30% of the world’s oceans to be protected by 2030. By yesterday morning, 12 countries had signed up to this fledgling campaign; by yesterday evening, Sweden had joined them and I am grateful for that.
We are making progress in our domestic waters, too. A quarter of UK waters are already in marine protected areas—an area almost twice the size of England. Masses of evidence from around the world show that marine protected areas work, but the evidence is also clear that much more needs to be done. That is why we have asked the former Fisheries Minister, Richard Benyon, to review whether the Government should introduce a network of highly protected marine areas in our waters. It was Richard, incidentally, who spear- headed calls to end the appalling practice of discarding, which is of course the subject of today’s debate.
That brings me to the issue we are discussing. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, whose question was repeated by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I want to be clear that this Government remain committed to sustainable fishing and the principle of maximum sustainable yield, as well as to ending the appallingly wasteful practice of discarding fish. This will not change once we leave the European Union. However, leaving the EU and the common fisheries policy gives us a unique opportunity to introduce a sustainable, responsive and resilient new fisheries policy, one which both recognises and can overcome the challenges associated with ending discarding.
As both these excellent reports we are debating today have shown, implementing the landing obligation is far from easy. The first Select Committee report reviewed whether the full landing obligation would lead to large segments of the fishing fleet being choked, as well as how the choke risks could be mitigated. It reviewed how effectively the landing obligation was being enforced, and recommended the use of remote electronic monitoring as a compliance and enforcement tool.
The second report was published six months after full implementation of the landing obligation. It questioned why it had had only a limited impact, and in particular why the earlier identified choke risk had not materialised. It questioned whether this was due to lack of enforcement and compliance, and repeated its very strong call for the use of REM. The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, pointed out in his very eloquent speech that there was no doubt that one of the reasons for the difficulties was the nature of UK fisheries: the fact that our fisheries are so mixed. Moreover, the inherent risks of choke—exacerbated by the CFP’s outdated allocation of fishing opportunities, which is effectively based on fishing patterns of the 1970s—has made implementation of the landing obligation extremely challenging. This is particularly the case in areas where there is a need to protect and recover vulnerable stocks, often where the UK’s share of quota does not accurately reflect the balance in our mixed fisheries.
Leaving the CFP is a huge opportunity, which will allow us to address many of these issues. For example, in the Celtic Sea, where Celtic Sea cod numbers are low and haddock numbers are high, we would want to ensure that our share of cod quota was sufficiently high to enable our industry to catch the haddock it is entitled to catch. That does not mean—just to be clear —increasing the overall quota in EU waters: it means increasing our share of quota in UK waters to provide a more sensible balance and to minimise the risk of choke. We have instigated a comprehensive programme of research to inform this process, including a call for evidence last year. Among other things, we used this to ask what England could learn from allocation models used in other parts of the world—a point made by a number of noble Lords—how allocation could help tackle choke risk and how best to use quota to support coastal communities and ensure a sustainable industry.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, asked a question specifically about support for the under-10s. It is the case that, since 2017, all additional quota has been distributed to the under-10s as a direct policy—if not all, then a majority. I am happy to come back with a more accurate answer following this debate, but I believe that all additional quota has been passed to them. We will take what we have learned and will work with industry and other stakeholders to develop a new approach to allocating any additional quota we secure after leaving the EU.
As noble Lords will know, the Government will be introducing a fisheries Bill soon. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones—I thank her for the kind words in her speech—asked for more details of the timeline. I am afraid that I am not able to provide her with specific answers, but it will be here shortly and will be steered through this House by my noble friend Lord Gardiner. The Bill is designed to enable the UK to act as a responsible independent coastal state, taking control of the management of its fishing waters, and achieving world-class sustainable fisheries. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, the Bill will also ensure that we meet our manifesto commitments to include a legal requirement to end overfishing, to fish sustainably and to produce plans to recover fish stocks to achieve maximum sustainable yields.
I acknowledge that there are strong calls for a legal commitment to achieve MSY within a specified timeframe, and I have heard those arguments today. While clearly this is something we would like to do, it can be achieved only through international negotiations, because fishing stocks by their nature straddle international boundaries. As things stand, the number of stocks of interest to the UK being fished at MSY is rising. After the recent December Fisheries Council, 69% of those stocks will be fished at or below MSY in 2020. While this is good news, clearly much more remains to be done, particularly for those stocks for which we do not yet have sufficient information.
The Select Committee report highlighted the importance of using more selective gear to avoid unwanted catch. This is absolutely part of the Government’s approach to implementing a discards ban. Across the UK, £5.3 million from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund has already been used to support the landing obligation by improving port infrastructure to prevent the waste of fish that would otherwise have been discarded—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford. A further £4 million has supported more selective gear types, as well as diverting fishing activity to less restricted species. After the CFP, we are committed to introducing grant schemes of our own across the UK to continue that work.
The committee’s two reports raised concerns about the extent to which the landing obligation is being monitored in UK waters and the rules enforced. Through the Marine Management Organisation, the Government have put a lot of effort into ensuring that the industry has the right information available to support compliance. The equivalent organisations have done the same in the devolved nations. Alongside this, the MMO is stepping up enforcement. In England, between 2018 and 2019, the MMO more than doubled the number of inspections of landings. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, it has also nearly doubled the number of inspections at sea. In Scotland, inspections against landing obligation rules have also increased significantly. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Byford—I hope that I get these figures right—landings of undersized fish since 2016 have increased, although not by as much as expected. The figures that I have are that in 2016, 175 tonnes were landed, and in 2109, 358 tonnes were landed—so an increase, but not the increase that was anticipated.
I know that many noble Lords have a close interest in REM, and we have heard a number of calls today for the adoption of cameras on fishing vessels as soon as possible, not least so that our quota setting is based on proper science. The UK has consistently called for the adoption of REM across the EU. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, emphasised the importance of the UK taking the lead—a point repeated by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. At this stage in discussions, however, we are in a very tiny minority—perhaps a tiny minority of one.
After we leave the CFP, we will have the power to make this decision unilaterally, but, as the Select Committee reports have made clear, compliance for many fishers remains extremely challenging, and it may be that we need to facilitate the transition to the mandatory use of REM before it is introduced for compliance purposes. We discussed this point with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, when we met in a meeting just a few days ago. We will work with industry, environmental groups, retailers and others on this as we consider the right approach.
Finally, as a number of noble Lords highlighted in the debate, fisheries is a devolved matter that is important to all parts of the United Kingdom. Obviously, we must work—and are working—as closely as we always have with our colleagues in the devolved nations, as well as those in the Crown dependencies, and we will ensure that their views are taken fully into account.
I want to end by saying that much of this work was begun by Richard Benyon in the other place when he was Fisheries Minister. It is only right that we should continue to lead the way after we leave the European Union. Once again, I thank noble Lords for taking part in this debate and for raising some extremely important points that I will take back to my department and discuss with my colleague here, my noble friend Lord Gardiner.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Zac Goldsmith)
This is the last time I will be able to address you from the Chamber, Mr Speaker, so I would like to put on record my thanks to you for what you have done for this House, particularly during my time as a Back Bencher, when we worked closely on a number of issues. I thank you very much what you have done.
The UK is a world leader in efforts to protect endangered plants and animals from poaching and illegal wildlife trade. We have invested over £36 million between 2014 and 2021 on work to directly counter the illegal wildlife trade, including reducing demand, strengthening enforcement, ensuring effective legal frameworks and developing sustainable livelihoods. We will significantly scale up our funding from 2021 by doubling the illegal wildlife trade challenge fund as part of the £220 million international biodiversity fund announced in September.
Andrew Jones
I am concerned, along with many constituents who have contacted me on this issue, that the persecution of raptors is not treated as a priority by local police forces. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that raptor persecution, particularly that of hen harriers, is a national wildlife crime priority and that strong penalties are in place for offences committed against birds of prey?
Zac Goldsmith
The illegal wildlife trade is not just an international issue; it is a domestic issue as well. All our birds in the UK are protected. Wild birds are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and there are strong penalties for committing offences. The Government take wildlife crime very seriously and have identified raptor persecution as a national wildlife crime priority, and that includes species such as hen harriers and peregrines of course. We are very concerned, however, about hen harrier populations, which is why we took the lead on the hen harrier action plan to increase hen harrier populations in England. I add that DEFRA has committed to at least maintaining existing levels of funding for the national wildlife fund until the next spending review.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
A constituent of mine has been terrorised by off-road bikers, who are also devastating local wildlife. Because this is happening on private land, our local police have found it difficult to take action, so will the Department and the police work together to overcome this dreadful problem?
Zac Goldsmith
I have had letters from the constituents of a number of hon. Members raising the same issue: off-road bikers causing wildlife mayhem in sensitive and fragile parts of the countryside. I of course commit to the hon. Gentleman to talk to the police and landowners and animal welfare charities to see what the best solution is. There is no silver bullet to solve the problem. It needs to be addressed, but it is not immediately obvious what that solution would be.
Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
Canned lion breeding in South Africa is causing terrible angst for many people because these lions, barely two years old, are shot at point-blank range. That adds to the trophy hunting imports to this country. When is the consultation my right hon. Friend has mentioned going to begin?
Zac Goldsmith
My hon. Friend is right: canned lion hunting is one of the grimmest of all human activities. It is hard to see any defence for it. There are concerns that, although it may not be a direct conservation issue, creating a legal trade in lion parts, particularly lion bones, provides a cover for the illegal trade, and we know that lion numbers have plummeted in the last 15 or 20 years. As she mentioned, we have committed to launching a call for evidence and, based on the results we get, we will take whatever steps are necessary to end or to regulate the import of hunting trophies.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the Minister for all he has done to stop imports from trophy hunting, but with special reference to that can he outline recent steps taken to absolutely ban any such imports? I think it is the mood of the House and the country for that to happen. Can he tell us what has been done?
Zac Goldsmith
The hon. Gentleman knows my views on the issue; we have discussed it many times. From the Back Benches and as a Minister, I have debated the issue with him, although we have been on the same side of the debate. I am appalled by the very concept of wanting to shoot these extraordinarily beautiful, endangered wild animals. I cannot see any obvious link between that activity and protection of those animals. However, we are obliged as a Government, before embarking on any kind of legislation to prevent the import of trophies, to consult so that we know exactly what the impacts of that potential legislative change would be. So we have to do that consultation. We have to do it in an honest fashion. On the back of that consultation, we will take whatever steps are necessary, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that this is not an issue that we intend to kick into the long grass.
Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)
I wish you all the best for the future, Mr Speaker, and thank you for chairing DEFRA questions with such patience and consideration over the last few years.
We know that there are loopholes in the Hunting Act 2004 which are being exploited. A Labour Government would strengthen the hunting ban, so may I ask what the Conservative Government have been doing to stop foxhunters from breaking the law?
Zac Goldsmith
There is no doubt that illegal activities continue. They are well documented and often secure widespread coverage on social media in particular, and they cause outrage among the population. Those activities are already illegal: they are against the law. Digging up setts, bashing fox cubs on the head and breeding foxes to feed to hounds are illegal as well as abhorrent. The challenge relates to enforcement and prosecution. As I mentioned, we are committed to maintaining levels of funding for the National Wildlife Crime Unit, and we are encouraging other Government Departments to play their part as well.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Zac Goldsmith)
I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and I commend Harrogate Borough Council. The National Trust has said that a child today is three times more likely to go to hospital for falling out of bed than falling out of a tree. Obviously I do not recommend either activity, but there is no doubt that children who are insulated from nature are losing out; I very much agree with him. Working with the Woodland Trust and community forests, we are on track to meet our target of planting 1 million trees at English primary schools by 2020, and we committed in the 25-year environment plan to encourage children to be closer to nature in and out of school. The last week of November is National Tree Week, and I strongly encourage Members to plant trees with their local schools, so that we can all celebrate together.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
Mr Speaker, our careers have been somewhat in parallel. I had a slight interregnum in the middle of your speakership, but I am pleased to be here today, to top and tail it. We have remained good friends throughout.
The Government committed to keeping the current level of farm spending until the end of this Parliament, which will be in the next couple of days. The Labour party will commit to keep that level of spending and, indeed, even spending more under the new system, which will be expensive to introduce. Will the Government make that commitment?
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
The Woodland Trust, of which I am a keen member, believes that we can increase the amount of tree coverage by natural regeneration. That seems to be the best way of doing it, so how can we incentivise that within the new environmental land management scheme?
Zac Goldsmith
I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and he is absolutely right. Much of what we need to do to tackle climate change and restore nature involves rewilding or natural regeneration. A growing number of projects around the country are already delivering vast benefits. For example, at Knepp Castle in West Sussex, agri-environment funding has helped to create extensive grassland and scrub habitats, with huge benefits for declining bird species such as the turtle dove and the nightingale. As he says, the new environmental land management scheme will be transformative, because it will make subsidies conditional on the delivery of public goods such as biodiversity, woodland and flood management. It really could be the big thing that improves biodiversity in this country, which of course means increasing tree cover and encouraging natural regeneration.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (England and Northern Ireland) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(5 years ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Zac Goldsmith)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (England and Northern Ireland) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (S.I. 2019, No. 1308).
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. This statutory instrument, which was laid before the House on 7 October, makes simple and technical amendments to domestic legislation so that we meet our obligations under the UK-Ireland common travel area with regards to certificates of competence for slaughterers upon exit.
After exit day, a slaughterer will have to hold a certificate of competence issued by a UK-competent authority in order to work in the UK. This will ensure that any future changes we make will apply equally to all slaughterers operating in the UK. It will also ensure that we can take effective enforcement action, as currently only the member state that issued a certificate of competence can suspend or revoke it.
It is, however, the case that we continue to have reciprocal arrangements with the Republic of Ireland under the UK-Ireland common travel area, which provide a right for Irish citizens to work in the UK and have qualifications recognised, and vice versa. This instrument ensures that we will continue to recognise training and examination carried out in the Republic of Ireland after we leave. It does this by amending the definition of
“evidence of training and examination”
contained in regulations 3(1) of the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2014 and the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (England) Regulations 2015.
This means that when applying for a certificate of competence from the competent authority in England and Northern Ireland, the applicant may refer to training and examination undertaken in the Republic of Ireland to support their application. The applicant will not need to undergo further training or take an exam if they have passed the relevant modules in the Republic of Ireland.
The Foods Standards Agency and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, which are the competent authorities in England and Northern Ireland respectively, consider that very few applications are likely to rely on evidence of training or examination from the Republic of Ireland, estimated at around two applications a year. Any impact would be positive, as the applicant would not be required to undergo additional training or examination and would not incur additional costs, which would be approximately £225.
Animal welfare is a devolved issue. Each devolved Administration is responsible for its own regulations in this area, but I can inform the Committee that the Scottish and Welsh Governments have made similar amendments. We have decided that in the interest of legal certainty in Northern Ireland, the UK Government may take through the necessary secondary legislation for Northern Ireland in some circumstances, in close consultation with the Northern Ireland Departments. This is one such instrument.
The Government have taken care to avoid using the urgency procedure under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, but we considered its use be appropriate in this instance to ensure the continued application of our obligations under the common travel area at the point of EU exit. I hope colleagues across the Committee will join me in supporting these regulations. I commend them to the Committee.
Zac Goldsmith
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments and all hon. Members for attending the Committee. I will try to answer his questions. First, this statutory instrument is about slaughter and not about veterinary surgeons, but I take his point. The Government have already made operability amendments to Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 so that, after exit, we can recognise equivalent qualifications from anywhere in the world. There should not be a barrier to the recruitment of vets who come to work in the UK as long as their training is recognised by us or the standards are considered to be as good.
In terms of numbers, my understanding from DEFRA research is that if and when this SI is passed, there will be on average only two people a year from the Republic of Ireland who will benefit. It matters to them for the sake of tidiness, and as the hon. Gentleman, it is common sense and needs to happen, but it is not a particularly cumbersome regulation. It is a straightforward and, as he said, narrow SI.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the quality of animal welfare standards applied within slaughterhouses. He is right about that. We have done several things, including mandating the use of CCTV in all slaughterhouses. It is hard to imagine that that has not had a significant impact on the behaviour of slaughtermen in those establishments.
We are also, as the hon. Gentleman knows, taking steps to deal with—I must be careful what I say, because we are in consultation—the live export of animals for fattening and slaughter. One reason for that is that we do not believe it is possible to send animals on very long journeys while simultaneously respecting the need for good animal husbandry: 30, 40 or, in some cases, 50 hours is not compatible with animal welfare. The other reason is that we are not convinced that the quality and standards in slaughterhouses in many other countries, to which are animals are often exported, are anywhere close to the standards that we expect and apply in this country. We are taking steps to improve things at the point of slaughter.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the more complicated issue of stunning pre-slaughter. He finished by saying that we should try to find a mechanism to bring the stakeholders together to see if we can find a solution that respects religious freedom and has an eye to animal welfare. The previous Secretary of State initiated a series of roundtables with stakeholders from across the board. Those discussions continue and I am now involved in them. I have had some very good meetings with stakeholders in the last month. It is not the right time to pre-empt what we will deliver as a consequence of that, but we will deliver steps that I think will satisfy the stakeholders’ concerns and improve animal welfare at the point of slaughter. I hope the hon. Gentleman will bear with me on that and I hope to talk more about it should I still be in this place in a few weeks’ time—who knows about that?—but we are making progress.
I think I have answered the hon. Gentleman’s questions. I thank hon. Members for their attendance and my counterpart for his contributions. I hope that hon. Members are reassured on these points. To reiterate, this regulation does no more than meet our existing obligations under the common travel area.
Question put and agreed to.
Restoring Nature and Climate Change
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Zac Goldsmith)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir David, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on securing this debate. It is similarly a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), who has given a typically wide-ranging, thoughtful and knowledgeable speech on this hugely important issue. I will attempt to answer his questions; the “coked-up eels” debate is probably one for another day, but I look forward to it, not least learning what the impacts are. I do not doubt that human cocaine use has had a marked impact on the river environment, but it is not an area about which I know a great deal, so I look forward to hearing more in a subsequent debate.
The hon. Member for Cambridge mentioned his constituent Maggie, who I believe is 12 years old. He can tell Maggie that I agree with her, and have done since I was her age; indeed, I have committed most of my life to campaigning and working on these issues. Nature clearly matters. Given that it is the only source of our wealth, our health, and our very lives, one could say that it matters more than anything else that preoccupies us in this ever-madder place in which we work. All the research, including the recent “State of Nature” report that a number of hon. Members have mentioned, paints a very gloomy picture of nature loss in the UK, with 41% of our species having declined since the 1970s. That report does point to some success stories, and it would be wrong to overlook them. Many of those happened as a consequence of Government, conservation groups, farmers and land managers all working together. Nevertheless, those success stories are the exception; we need there to be many, many more.
The situation globally is even worse. Scientists have warned that even a 1.5° rise in temperatures would be absolutely devastating for humanity, ecosystems and the natural world as a whole, but we are not heading towards a 1.5° rise. Currently, without radical intervention, we are heading towards a 3° rise, which—if we believe the majority of scientists—would be almost apocalyptic. Earlier this year, we saw the results of the most comprehensive assessment yet of the state of nature around the world, and again, the news is really bad. It tells us that today, 1 million species are on the brink of extinction. Over my lifetime, since the early 1970s—I was born in 1975—we have lost a staggering 60% of the world’s land animals in just those few years, and continue to destroy an area of forest the size of 47 football pitches every minute. Someone better at maths than I am would be able to tell hon. Members how many football fields’ worth of forest has been destroyed since this debate began. It is utterly shocking.
Our oceans, meanwhile, are under siege; we are told that by 2050, they will contain more plastic than fish, measured by weight. Fisheries that once seemed inexhaustible, such was their abundance, have either collapsed entirely or are on the verge of collapse. A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister referred to tackling climate change and biodiversity loss as
“two sides of the same coin”.
He was right. We cannot protect nature unless we address climate change, and we cannot properly address climate change unless we restore nature. I would add that unless we do those things, we have no hope of tackling base poverty around the world, either.
If that seems alarmist, we need only look at the facts. More than 1 billion people depend on forest for their livelihoods, more than 1 billion depend on fish as their main source of protein, and about 200 million depend on fishing for their livelihoods. All of us, of course, ultimately depend on the free services that are provided by nature, without which we simply could not survive. For the sake of nature, of climate and of people, it is critical that we step up our response, at home and internationally.
The good news, as a number of hon. Members have said, is that nature-based solutions have the potential to provide up to a third of the climate change mitigation that we need globally by 2030. Done properly, those solutions can turn the tide on the extinction crisis we are experiencing and provide sustainable, secure livelihoods for millions of people. Given that protecting and restoring nature provides a cascade of solutions to so many of the world’s pressing problems, it is extraordinary that it receives such a tiny proportion of global aid support. Of all the money invested by the world’s Governments in tackling climate change, just 2.5% goes to nature-based solutions. Such solutions should not become a substitute for decarbonisation on a massive scale, as was said by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who is no longer in the Chamber. However, those solutions clearly merit a far greater share of resources.
I was therefore thrilled when the Prime Minister announced at last month’s UN climate summit that we in the UK intend to double our climate spending to £11.6 billion between 2021 and 2026, and—even more importantly—that much of that uplift will be invested in nature-based solutions and biodiversity protection. We have already announced a £220 million fund to protect the world’s biodiversity, including £100 million for a biodiverse landscape fund that will protect a large range of cross-border, ecologically biodiverse and important landscapes. We are also trebling annual funding for the brilliant, long-established, and—as some hon. Members will remember—threatened Darwin initiative. Ten years ago, a number of Members had to step up to protect that initiative, because it faced closure. It is an extraordinary initiative, of which we can all be proud.
We are also committing an additional £30 million to tackling the grimly destructive illegal wildlife trade. We are on track to deliver the $5 billion of finance for stopping and reversing deforestation that we pledged alongside Germany and Norway in 2015, and are making big efforts to protect the world’s oceans. We have dedicated £23 million to supporting communities to maintain and enhance 20,000 hectares of mangroves in Madagascar, Indonesia, Latin America and the Caribbean. We have directly helped 100,000 people through building resilient jobs and supporting marine life. We are on track to protect more than half of UK and UK overseas territories waters by 2020 through our world-leading Blue Belt programme, and have announced that we intend to expand that programme much further, with an initial £7 million put aside to protect some of the most diverse marine systems on Earth.
At the UN General Assembly, we announced a global ocean alliance of countries committed to a new global target: to protect at least 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. Countries are lining up to sign up to that commitment—I forget the exact number, but it is a relatively new campaign, and over 10 countries have already signed up to it, with a number of other countries flirting with doing so. Hopefully, they will sign up in the next few weeks and months. We are also working with our friends across the Commonwealth to tackle the scourge of plastic pollution in our oceans. As one hon. Member pointed out, 1 million birds and 100,000 mammals lose their life every year from eating, or getting tangled up in, ocean plastic. As part of the Commonwealth Clean Oceans Alliance, we have invested in programmes worth up to £70 million to tackle that issue.
We have also invested in research so that we can better understand the role of the oceans. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport mentioned the value of seagrass, and he was right to do so: we know that seagrass has an extraordinary capacity to absorb carbon, but we do not fully understand the role of the oceans as a whole in relation to climate change. For example, we do not know the full impact on the ocean floor of bottom trawling and dredging, but science is emerging that suggests it plays a gigantic role in releasing emissions. That is something we need to know, so we are investing in that research. In the meantime, we are investing in protecting fragile ecosystems in the oceans. We are working on a number of other big interventions on land and at sea, and I look forward to telling hon. Members who are interested in these issues more about those interventions in subsequent debates.
However, this is not just about aid. As we negotiate new free trade agreements, we must be confident that we are not importing deforestation through environmentally damaging goods, as was noted by the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). The hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) made the point about our environmental footprint here in the UK; I believe that we rely on an overseas land area more than half the size of the UK just for imported commodities such as palm oil, soya and things that we feed our livestock. Whether we like it or not, despite the fact that most people in this country would be appalled to know it, we are importing deforestation daily. Under our global resource initiative taskforce, we are working to create a plan to end our contribution to global deforestation through our supply chains. It is incredibly complex, but we have to find a way to do it. We have no alternative.
The OECD estimates that the top 50 food-producing nations spend about $700 billion a year subsidising landowners and farmers. At the moment, they do that pretty badly, with little regard for sustainability. We have to find a way to encourage as many of those countries as possible to shift the way that they subsidise farming, as we are trying to do here through our environmental land management schemes. We have set up the Just Rural Transition to do that.
2020 will be a gigantic year for nature and the climate. We will do all we can to deliver meaningful commitments at the convention on biological diversity in China and at COP 26, which we will host with Italy in Glasgow. We want to focus international attention on the importance of and opportunities inherent in tackling climate change and biodiversity loss through investing in nature-based solutions.
I will turn my attention back home, which has been the focus of most hon. Members’ speeches and where, as I said, biodiversity is undoubtedly suffering. We need to reverse that and we are taking steps to do so. The UK was the first major economy to set a net zero emissions target in law for 2050. The restoration of nature will be a big part of our response to that challenge. We are already committed to planting 11 million trees in England, plus a further million trees in and around our towns and cities. Despite the scepticism of several hon. Members, we are on target to do that. I am fully confident that we will meet that target, but, equally, I will not pretend that it is anywhere near ambitious enough. We will have to do much more.
The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport rightly laid out the challenge: we need to ramp up our efforts. In the next few months, we will consult on a tree strategy for England. Earlier this year, we announced a new Northumberland forest, which will be delivered through a local partnership. This year, we will launch the woodland carbon guarantee, a new £50-million market-based mechanism to provide long-term payments to land managers in England to plant trees.
I will move on, briefly, to peat, which was raised by almost all hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). Peat, including blanket bogs and peat soils under agriculture, acts as the UK’s largest terrestrial carbon store. When peatlands are working and healthy, they sequester carbon, nurture wildlife, act as water regulators and contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Some 86% of peatland emissions come from lowland peat in agricultural use. This year, we launched a lowland agricultural peat taskforce that will deliver recommendations for a new, more sustainable future for agriculture on lowland peat in England.
Several hon. Members talked about the problem of burning peatlands. There is no doubt that they are right; the Government share that view. There has been an attempt, through voluntary initiatives, to scale back—to reduce and eventually eliminate—the burning of fragile and important peat ecosystems, but that has not proven 100% successful as had been hoped. We are developing a legislative response to the problem and we will come back to the House in due course with our plans. There is no disagreement with the hon. Members who have spoken today about the need to address the issue, but we have to do that through legislation, because the alternative simply has not worked.
We are funding the restoration of more than 6,000 hectares of degraded peatland, much of it in the uplands, and we are allocating £10 million to 62 sites across England. We will publish a peat strategy for England that sets out a vision to reverse the decline in England’s peatlands and peat soils.
Much of what I have described, here and overseas, involves what some people refer to as rewilding, which is effectively integrating natural closed processes into land management. Rewilding is already happening across the UK in lots of projects, many of which deliver huge benefits. The hon. Member for Bristol East mentioned the Knepp estate in West Sussex, where agri-environment funding has helped to create extensive grassland and scrub habitats, with huge benefits for declining bird species such as the nightingale and turtle dove. I have not been to the Knepp estate, but I long to go and I will be going. I am told by those who have been that it is magical.
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for quoting my brother’s article in The Spectator in which he promotes the value of untidiness in nature. He has also been a huge promoter of the release of beavers back into the countryside, so I would not get away with not mentioning the return of beavers, more than 500 years since they were eradicated by us. It seems to be unambiguously good news; it is an extraordinary thing.
Beavers are the ultimate keystone species. They build small dams along river tributaries and streams, which play a big role in holding back water following rainfall and help to mitigate flooding and drought, while at the same time breathing life back into the landscape in an extraordinary way. Science is only beginning to understand how that simple species has such a magnificent and transformative impact on the natural world. I am in total agreement with my brother on that, and he would have been furious if I had not mentioned the beaver.
In the marine environment, domestically, we are expanding our network of marine protected areas. The recent designation of 41 new marine conservation zones means that we have 355 sites covering 25% of UK waters.
Our new Environment Bill, which has been mentioned by several hon. Members, includes measures that will address the biggest environmental priorities of our age and ensure that the Government are held to account if we fail to meet net zero by 2050. It will place a duty on the Government to set long-term, legally binding targets on biodiversity, air quality, water, and resource and waste efficiency. It will lay the foundation for the nature recovery network that will create or restore half a million hectares of wildlife-rich habitat in England, which will encompass woodlands, peatlands, grasslands and coastal ecosystems.
David Tredinnick
I recommend going to the Knepp estate and talking to the Burrell family who run it. It is a wonderful wildlife centre.
I am listening attentively to the Minister. I apologise that I was not here at the beginning of his speech, because I was in the Chamber listening to the Prime Minister. Earlier, I raised the issue of zero-carbon medicines and treatments and sustainable healthcare. Will he have a word with the Health Secretary and share some of his experience in that field?
Zac Goldsmith
In terms of zero-carbon medicine, I will struggle to give my hon. Friend a comprehensive answer, because I do not know much about that. As one of the biggest landowners in the country, however, there is a huge amount that the NHS could do. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport mentioned the Opposition’s plans to require the NHS to plant 1 million trees on NHS land. That would be just a start. As we build new buildings and expand the infrastructure of the NHS, we should do so in as close to a zero-carbon and nature-friendly way as possible.
The food that is supplied to patients in hospitals should be local, sustainable and good quality, as it is in a number of hospital trusts. The Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust wins the prize every year for the most sustainable, popular and healthy food by sourcing local ingredients. There is lots that the NHS can do, but I will have to get back to my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick) about zero-carbon medicines. I do not know a great deal about that area, but I will seek to find out more.
The Environment Bill also establishes spatial mapping and planning tools to help to inform nature recovery and, alongside the provisions in the Agriculture Bill, the actions and incentives that are needed to drive change on the ground. It establishes an office for environmental protection, with a statutory duty to hold the Government to account on our progress to improve the natural environment.
The cornerstone of our agricultural policy will be the environmental land management scheme that will replace the common agricultural policy and be a hugely powerful vehicle for delivering real change. Of everything that we have discussed, that could be the transformational policy in relation to our domestic biodiversity—if we get it right. It means that the payment of subsidies to farmers and landowners will become conditional on delivering public goods such as biodiversity, clean water, flood prevention and mitigation, and adaptation to climate change. It is potentially huge and I hope that the whole House will support it.
The Government are investing in restoring nature, at scale, at home and overseas, and we are providing leadership—I have no doubt about that. Given the scale of the problem that many hon. Members have outlined, however, I will not pretend that this or any Government are doing enough to respond to the crisis. I am absolutely determined that, as long as I am a Minister, and as long as I am in this place, we will do a great deal more. In the meantime, I urge hon. Members to support our Environment Bill and work with us through its passage, so that we can further protections for nature. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge again on his speech and on raising what is, perhaps, the most important issue of all.
Exiting the European Union (Environmental Protection)
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Zac Goldsmith)
I beg to move,
That the draft Environment and Wildlife (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2019, which were laid before this House on 24 July, be approved.
The convention on international trade in endangered species—CITES—provides protection for more than 35,000 species of endangered animals and plants, from pangolins to parrots, through to guitars made from rosewood. By regulating international trade in live animals and plants and in parts such as fur, feathers and seeds, the convention aims to reduce the threat to those species in the wild. The UK is completely committed to supporting the work of CITES. At the recent CITES conference of parties in August, the UK used its world-leading scientific and technical expertise to play a pivotal role in proceedings. As a result of those interventions, 93 new species, including giraffes, mako sharks, sea cucumbers and several species of otter, lizard, spider and box turtle have enhanced protection under the convention.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman. This is the first time I have taken part in a debate when he has been at the Dispatch Box. There have been reports about some of this country’s traditional species either disappearing or dropping in number. What are we doing to encourage the growth of those species, given climate change? They are naturally species for the climate of this country.
Zac Goldsmith
The hon. Gentleman is right to point to the collapse in biodiversity in this country, which is mirrored across the world. The purpose of the regulations is to deal with CITES specifically in relation to the import and export of endangered species from abroad, but he is absolutely right to raise the issue. We are completely committed to bringing in an environment Bill—we hope in a matter of weeks—which will set us on a course to reversing the biodiversity loss we are experiencing in this country. We could debate for hours what that involves. I do not think that this is the time for that, but it has my commitment—I am sure my colleague on the Front Bench, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), would make the same commitment—to do everything we can, for as long as we are in the Government, to play our role in turning around the extinction crisis we are experiencing in this country.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
While the Minister is on this subject and while you are allowing us to go into these areas, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is critically important that we plant more native species for exactly the reasons offered. Ash dieback is a good example, there is the disease affecting oak trees, and we know that horse chestnuts have suffered too in recent years, yet Network Rail and local authorities continue to decimate our tree population. To compensate for just that, the Government need a planting scheme of unprecedented proportions. I want millions more trees planted and there is no better Minister than this one, who has been such a champion of the environment throughout his political career, to be the spearhead to take that forward.
Zac Goldsmith
I thank my right hon. Friend very much for his kind words and his intervention. He is absolutely right. We need a hugely ambitious tree planting programme for this country. We do have an ambitious tree planting programme, but my view is that we need to step it up even further. We are certainly planning to do so and there will be, I can tell him tantalisingly, some announcements soon to that effect. It is not just about planting trees; it is also about ecosystems and encouraging wildlife in all its forms. As he knows, one of the advantages of leaving the European Union is that we can change the common agricultural policy to a system that, instead of paying people simply for owning land—effectively, simply for being wealthy—we will be paying them subsidies in return for providing public goods like improving biodiversity, flood prevention and so on. This is one of the great Brexit bonuses that I am looking forward to.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
I welcome my hon. Friend to his new position. Further to his answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), we now have an opportunity, with a new agricultural policy, to plant the right kind of trees. We need the right advice to plant trees in the right place so they do not get diseases and are not destroyed later. We have a real opportunity to make practical changes, moving on from the common agricultural policy, that work in different parts of the country. Different trees may need to be planted in different climatic conditions.
Zac Goldsmith
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and all the work he has done on these and associated issues. I could not agree with him more. I look forward to the publication of our tree strategy in a couple of months. From what I have seen so far, it will address those concerns head-on.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
The Minister will be aware that my constituency will be included in the northern forest, which we are very excited about. I know he is very busy, but I invite him to come to North Lincolnshire where, in a couple of weeks’ time, North Lincolnshire Council will be launching its own new environmental strategy to ensure that the resources it has, be they grass verges or open green spaces, are better utilised to increase the amount of habitat available. We will be launching that very shortly and he is welcome to visit at any time.
Zac Goldsmith
I thank my hon. Friend very much. I have heard a bit about what his council is doing and it does sound inspired. I would love to take him up on his very kind invitation. We will talk later. Now I am going to make some progress.
The Government’s support for CITES is just one part of a much bigger and wider commitment to tackling the catastrophic loss of biodiversity we are now facing. At the UN General Assembly a couple of weeks ago, the Prime Minister announced a new £220 million international biodiversity fund to protect and restore biodiversity. The new fund will provide support for, among other things, a new biodiverse landscapes initiative, substantial uplifts to the world-renowned Darwin fund, and work to combat the illegal wildlife trade, including for the IWT Challenge Fund. He also announced a doubling of international climate finance to £11.6 billion. That will provide for a massive scaling up of nature-based solutions to climate change, which are vital if we are serious about averting the threat not only of mass extinctions, but of climate change. The proposed legislation makes sure that after we leave the European Union, the regulations implementing CITES will work in the UK.
CITES is currently implemented in the EU through a number of regulations known as the EU wildlife trade regulations. Those EU regulations will become retained EU law on exit day. We have already made various EU exit regulations to make the legislation work in the UK. This statutory instrument corrects the drafting in one of the previous EU exit instruments.
The EU regulations put in place a system of permits and certificates for cross-border movement of specimens of endangered species. The main EU regulation, No. 338/97, contains a number of derogations—exceptions—from the permitting regime. Further detailed provisions on derogations are then set out in a subsidiary, implementing regulation, No. 865/2006. The main regulation gives the European Commission powers to legislate and set out these rules in subsidiary legislation.
We are talking here about specific provisions. The main regulation contains derogations in articles 7(1) to 7(3). These relate to specimens of species born and bred in captivity or artificially propagated, specimens in transit, and specimens that are personal and household effects. Article 7 currently gives the European Commission legislative powers to make further detailed provisions on these derogations, and that has been done in subsidiary legislation—EU regulation No. 865/2006.
These derogations cover, for example, the process by which someone may be able to import certain artificially propagated orchid hybrids without the normally required CITES paperwork and checks, recognising the low conservation risk that that trade has. They also govern how someone might be able to move a piece of rosewood furniture when a family moves from one country to another.
This SI ensures that the Secretary of State has the necessary legislative powers to amend detailed provisions on key derogations in retained EU law. It corrects the drafting in a previous SI, the Environment and Wildlife (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019—henceforth referred to as SI 2019/473—which will in turn amend CITES-related retained EU law on exit day. SI 2019/473 provides for the Secretary of State to carry out functions currently performed by the European Commission and for her to set out the detailed provisions on the relevant article 7 derogations “in writing”.
This proposed SI makes two amendments. The first corrects a drafting error, so that the Secretary of State can set out the regulatory detail of the derogations “in regulations”, as opposed to “in writing”. That will ensure that the Secretary of State has the legislative power to amend the retained EU law provisions after exit. This ensures that we can, for example, amend the detailed derogation provisions to strengthen the controls that we have in line with our oft-stated policy aims. The second amendment provides that regulations made by the Secretary of State in respect of these derogations will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny under the negative resolution procedure.
The Government have made it clear that the intention is to raise the bar for environmental standards when we leave the European Union. This includes our efforts to protect endangered species and our commitment to CITES.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
When Ministers are outlining what is going to happen in the House, it is also important that the regional devolved Administrations, whether they are in Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales, are under the same rules and regulations. Will the Minister confirm that that is the case—that what he is bringing before the House tonight on environmental protection will also apply to Northern Ireland, which I represent?
Zac Goldsmith
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. This instrument deals with entirely reserved matters. A draft of it has been shared with the devolved Administrations, but for information, the answer is that it will apply across the board.
These changes have been made because they are necessary to make it clear that the Secretary of State has the power not simply to take administrative action, but to legislate and amend retained EU law in respect of these key derogations. This will ensure that retained EU law is operable on exit.
In conclusion, I reiterate that this instrument will ensure that the Secretary of State can amend detailed provisions on key derogations in the regime implementing CITES. It provides for regulations made by the Secretary of State in respect of those derogations to be subject to parliamentary scrutiny under the negative resolution procedure. This instrument is thus necessary to ensure the full operability of retained EU law after we leave the EU. For those reasons, I commend this legislation to the House.
Zac Goldsmith
I will be quick, because there is an important debate coming up.
I thank right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to this afternoon’s debate. I particularly thank the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) for the tone of his contribution. I have no doubt—indeed, I know—that he is very serious about taking on the challenges that we have been discussing today. I appreciate the manner in which he engages on this issue. I note his comments and absolutely accept his challenge. The insurgency will continue.
I also thank the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally). I believe that his concerns about standards dropping after Brexit are unfounded. With every week that passes and every piece of legislation that the Government introduce, we will demonstrate that he is wrong. No doubt, he will be happy to be proven wrong on that point.
The UK remains committed to effectively regulating trade in endangered species to ensure that that trade does not threaten the survival of those species in the wild. These regulations will ensure the operability of retained EU law implementing CITES after we leave the EU, specifically by ensuring that detailed provisions on key derogations can be amended by the Secretary of State.
Question put and agreed to.
Trophy Hunting Imports
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Zac Goldsmith)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) on securing this debate. Over the past years we have stood side by side in so many debates on issues relevant to this one that I have lost track of how many we have shared. She has been a nature champion for all the time I have known her—indeed, this room is full of nature champions, and I wish there were a few more. It has been a joy to hear the contributions, including interventions, from all Members present.
My hon. Friend will know that this subject is close to my heart. Indeed, the last time I took part in a debate on this issue in Parliament—I believe she also took part—was on a motion tabled in my name, some time earlier this year. Last Saturday I was pleased to announce that the Government are launching a consultation on restricting, or banning, the import and export of hunting trophies.
Many questions have been raised, some of which I will struggle to answer because they relate to the details of the consultation. Hon. Members will understand that I must be slightly guarded and cannot go into too many details about a Government consultation, because I could end up jeopardising or compromising the process. Broadly speaking, however, we are not looking for any long grass. This is a serious consultation, and we intend to resolve the issue once and for all and not to waste any time. I will drive it through as fast as I possibly can, but in a proper manner.
I cannot answer the question about the threshold, were we to end up with the ban that we are talking about. My early-day motion broadly reflects the position laid out by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), which relates to not just CITES I and II, but the list from the International Union for Conservation of Nature. However, those details will have to come out in the consultation, and it would be wrong for me to pre-empt it.
I am grateful for and flattered by the remarks made about my appointment. I am an animal welfare and conservation advocate, and I was worried, before being asked to be a Minister, that I might have to go through a lobotomy and cast aside all my passions for such issues. That does not seem to have been the case—yet—so I am able to pursue issues that matter to me and to Members across the House. Over the next few weeks, I look forward to reading the feedback on this debate from people across the spectrum, but I know from correspondence I have already seen that some people will push back heavily against the proposal for a possible ban.
On a personal level, hon. Members know I believe that shooting a beautiful and endangered animal for fun is, to quote the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), obscene, and it is something I could never understand. Most people with whom I have discussed the issue are similarly sickened when they see images of so-called celebrity hunters smirking over the corpse of a lion, giraffe, rhino or elephant. It is something that most people regard as grotesque, and poll after poll shows that to be the view of the British people. There have been a range of polls, but they have consistently shown that between 75% and 90% of people are in favour of a ban on imports of hunting trophies.
To demonstrate quite how non-partisan this issue is, I was shocked and amazed last Saturday to read an editorial in the Daily Mirror—I have appeared in it a few times as a politician, and I have always put on my tin hat and hidden away for a few hours afterwards. This recent editorial, however, praised both me and the Conservative Government for initiating this process, because the issue goes way beyond the left or right of politics today. I thank the Daily Mirror for having pushed the issue up the agenda. It has run an incredibly impressive campaign, as have The Daily Telegraph and a number of key campaigners, such as Eduardo Gonçalves, who runs the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting.
Trophy hunting is not just a niche issue or a symbolic part of the conservation story. A 2016 report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare estimates that around 1.7 million hunting trophies crossed borders globally between 2004 and 2014, and at least 200,000 of those came from species that are threatened. Some of those species face a horribly uncertain future, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire in relation to lion numbers. There could be only 15,000 lions, 415,000 African elephants—there were 3 million elephants a century ago—and 5,000 black rhinos left in the wild.
As I said from the Back Benches a few months ago, we must nevertheless separate the moral arguments from the scientific ones. The moral arguments do matter, and for many people the idea of shooting a giraffe for fun or with the idea that it might help protect the giraffe seems utterly perverse, but the issue is subject to a live debate between experts and even some conservation organisations.
Bill Wiggin
Many people who live in the Forest of Dean wake up in the morning to find that wild boar have completely destroyed their garden, and they then ring the Forestry Commission—in the Minister’s Department—which culls those animals. Is that right?
Zac Goldsmith
It is certainly right that wild boar are culled. There is a live discussion about whether there should be a protected season for wild boar, given that they are now prevalent throughout the country. I am not sure that my hon. Friend’s point is directly relevant to the issue of the positive contribution of trophy hunting to either the conservation or the denudation of wild species.
Bill Wiggin
It is very easy to attach a huge amount of emotion to animals that are attractive and beautiful, as the Minister described, but they are still managed, and the ability to manage populations is the difficult part. The Government have to take responsibility. I felt he was perhaps straying into pretending that it does not happen.
Zac Goldsmith
My hon. Friend pre-empts the point I was about to make. We have to separate the ethical arguments from the scientific ones. If the scientific evidence can show that trophy hunting contributes to conservation, we will be having a different debate. Although I cannot pre-empt the consultation, we will be flooded with evidence that will tell us one way or the other. I acknowledge that some conservation groups make the case for trophy hunting. I have seen the documents and been bombarded with letters, as we will no doubt be throughout the consultation. Some of the arguments that I have heard are—I think this term entered the English dictionary only recently—whataboutery. A number of different organisations tell us that trophy hunting is an issue but that it is not as bad as habitat loss or illegal poaching. Obviously, habitat loss is the big problem facing species across the world, and we have heard about the illegal wildlife trade decimating communities and bringing species to the brink of extinction, but whether or not that is true, it is not an argument for or against trophy hunting. It is an entirely separate issue.
The central argument that has been put forward in favour of trophy hunting is that these magnificent animals, through being hunted, generate money that is then ploughed into conservation. I have not seen much evidence of the funds being used to support local communities or to invest in conservation. It is not much use if the main argument of the conservation groups is based on generalising the best of the best practice—no doubt there are some best practice examples—throughout the world; if so, their argument is flimsy at best. We will see during the consultation whether there are more examples of best practice than perhaps I have implied.
There are other issues to examine. Unlike wildlife tourism, trophy hunting contributes a tiny proportion of revenue for African countries. There is a question whether we should instead focus our efforts on promoting the former. I will come to that point in answer to another question, which was raised by the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron). There is also the issue of cruelty, with reports that half the animals killed in the course of trophy hunting are not killed instantaneously but are wounded. Cecil the lion lived for another 19 hours, I believe—no doubt in hideous pain—after first being shot.
We must find out the impact of trophy hunting on the gene pool. If hunters prize the biggest and the best of the rarest, the most endangered and the most valuable species, does that not logically mean that the gene pool is inevitably going to be weakened over time? These are issues that, again, we are going to have to address.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire mentioned the issue of canned hunting. I forget which hon. Member described it as an obscenity, but it is. As far as I can see, these lions are bred for one purpose only and they are shot in such a manner that anyone would be able to finish them off, no matter how talented they are with a gun. It is no different from putting goldfish in a bowl and just shooting them. It is an extraordinarily grim practice. In answer to my hon. Friend’s question about whether the consultation will include measures to tackle canned hunting, I would say that it is one and the same. That will be explored in the consultation, and I hope the outcome will fully take into account the points she made.
The UK cannot ban trophy hunting overseas. We are not at liberty to do so, but we can ban the import of hunting trophies. Over the five years from 2013 to 2017, we estimate that up to 1,500 trophies were imported into the UK, with up to one third of those from the most endangered species. Perversely, elephant parts are the favourite import for British trophy hunters. I say that is perverse because we are the world leader now in stepping up our efforts to protect elephants around the world, not least through the ivory legislation that has already been commended today and much more besides. This consultation is critical, and it is going to have to provide answers to those very difficult questions.
I want to talk briefly about animal welfare and conservation more broadly. People in this country do care—very much—about the issue. As the animal welfare Minister, I clearly do too. I am proud of the progress this Government have already made. We introduced the ivory legislation I just mentioned. We introduced legislation to ban the use of wild animals in travelling circuses. We have legislated to ensure that CCTV is required in every slaughterhouse. Along with this consultation on the importance of hunting trophies, we are also consulting on mandatory cat microchipping, we are issuing a call for evidence on banning the keeping of pet primates and we are bringing forward proposals for consideration on ending the live export of animals.
I was proud that the UK played a defining role at the recent CITES COP, working under the radar, barely noticed by the rest of the country, to bring an end to the appalling practice of capturing wild elephants to be sold for captivity around the world. Without our negotiating team from DEFRA taking part in that debate, the motion would not have passed and it would still be possible for countries to capture wild elephants and pack them off to grim zoos in China and elsewhere. If they were here, I would pay tribute to them. In their absence, I will do so, all the same.
I am delighted that the Prime Minister announced at the United Nations that we are going to radically step up our contribution to tackling the wider environmental and climate crisis—and it is a crisis, no matter how you choose to interpret it. We know from scientists that a 1.5°˚ C rise in temperatures is going to be utterly devastating to humanity and nature. We heard just a few months ago, in what is the most comprehensive ever assessment of the state of the natural world, the report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, that 1 million species face extinction, many of them within decades. We have heard that, since 1970, the populations of the world’s wild animals have declined by 60%—a staggering figure. We learned from the World Resources Institute that, last year, we lost the equivalent of 27 football pitches’ worth of forest every single minute. Incidentally, we also learned from the World Economic Forum that, by 2050, our oceans will have more plastic in them than fish, if measured by weight.
We recognise the scale of the challenge. We are determined as a Government to provide the leadership that is needed globally and to do our bit at home. I was at the General Assembly of the United Nations when the Prime Minister made his announcement that we are going to double our climate funding. I was there when he made the important point about the crucial role of biodiversity in nature in tackling climate change. That directly addresses the point raised by a number of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Strangford, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) and no doubt others as well. The Prime Minister emphasised that much of that uplift in climate funding will be spent on nature-based solutions to climate change. We know that if we invest in protecting, saving and restoring forests, we protect the livelihoods of those hundreds of millions of people who depend on them for their livelihoods. We protect the harbour for 80% of the world’s biodiversity, and we also tackle climate change, given that deforestation is the second-biggest cause of emissions.
The same is true of our oceans. About 1 billion people depend on oceans for their main source of protein. Some 200 million depend on oceans for their livelihoods and on there being fish for them to catch. However, oceans are also a gigantic carbon sink, so the case for investing in nature-based solutions as a means of tackling climate change and helping to stop the extinction crisis, and also as a means of alleviating and preventing base poverty, is absolute and unarguable. I am thrilled that we are moving in that direction, and I do not sense any opposition from any party in this place to that shift. So that is where we need to go, and that is where I am thrilled to say we are going.
As a start to that package—these are just the things that have been announced in the past few weeks in relation to biodiversity—the Prime Minister announced a new £220 million fund. That includes a dramatic uplift to the Darwin initiative, which I am sure Members are aware of. That world-renowned programme has brought individual species back from the brink of extinction. We will see a major uplift in the illegal wildlife trade challenge fund, which is relatively new, but is already yielding incredible results, particularly on the continent of Africa, but elsewhere as well. It helps train local people to tackle poaching and create alternative livelihoods in areas most at risk, and it is having a significant and measurable impact.
We are creating a new fund. It does not have a proper name yet, but we are calling it the biodiverse landscape fund. It is a £100 million fund—a world first. It will tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss in large biodiversity hotspots around the world, focusing particularly on trans-frontier initiatives such as KAZA in southern Africa, which is a programme that five countries have signed up to to create wildlife corridors connecting their countries, their national parks and more. It is all based on helping local communities to create alternative livelihoods so that the viability of local economies is based and dependent on the health of the local environment and on flourishing biodiversity.
That is just a start. We are doing a lot, and I am thrilled that the UK has been given an opportunity to host the COP in 2020. We keep hearing about 2020 as a superyear for nature. It is absolutely the Government’s ambition to play a part so that 2020 will be the superyear for nature. We will host COP, and by the end of the year, in December, we aim to have aligned as many big countries in the world as possible with our ambition to step up our contribution to tackling climate change, to focus much more on nature-based solutions and to help turn the tide on this catastrophic extinction crisis, which is now beyond any doubt at all—it is happening right now on our watch.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire for bringing attention to this hugely important issue and for all the work she does as a parliamentary nature champion. I thank other hon. Members for their contributions too. We will crack on. We will get this done. We are not looking for the long grass. We will nail this issue as quickly as we possibly can.
Trophy Hunting
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered trophy hunting.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. This debate about trophy hunting takes place within a much wider context. For example, we learned from a recent Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services report published just a few days ago that humanity threatens a million species with extinction—species that cover the full range of biodiversity. Although extinctions have always occurred, the report makes it clear that we are witnessing a man-made tragedy on an unprecedented scale. Since 1970, the world’s human population has doubled. The global economy has quadrupled in size and international trade has grown tenfold, and yet as the human footprint has expanded, nature has suffered dramatically. In that same timeframe, we have lost half of the world’s wild animals. We continue to lose around 20 million hectares of forest a year. Only 13% of the world’s wetlands that existed in 1700 still survive today. A third of fish stocks are now harvested at unsustainable levels and live coral cover has more than halved. Perhaps most starkly of all, a quarter of all animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction. That is a rate of destruction hundreds of times higher than the average of the past 10 million years.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. The world’s pre-eminent experts have highlighted that we as humans have wiped out more than 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles just within the past 50 years, implying that the annihilation of wildlife is an emergency that threatens civilisation itself. On top of that, we have pathetic, reckless, foolish individuals engaged in trophy hunting. Does he agree that a lot more needs to be done by the Government to tackle the evil wildlife trade and to clamp down on trophy hunting? I hope we will hear some concrete measures from the Minister today.
Zac Goldsmith
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The statistics he cites are absolutely right. That is a mere blink in evolutionary terms; another blink of inaction, and we could wipe out what remains. I will come to the point about trophy hunting soon.
We are exhausting the planet, and we need radical and immediate action to reverse that. I will not claim today that tackling trophy hunting will reverse this mass extinction—far from it—but I put the debate in that context to remind us all of what is at stake and the situation we find ourselves in.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Trophy hunting has become an industry in Africa. They see people coming from the United States and just killing tigers, for no apparent reason other than that they think they are getting a thrill out of killing the animal and can post it back to the United States or wherever they come from. I know that the British Government are doing a bit of work on that. We had a good example of that with the ban on animals being used in circuses. The exploitation of animals and the rainforest are going to have a major impact on climate change in the world before long.
Zac Goldsmith
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I will come to the points he raised later. Despite the appalling background that I and others have already described, we do care about nature in this country. It is often rightly said that we are a nation of animal lovers. I am proud of things that have happened even on this Government’s watch. We have banned microbeads and ensured that CCTV is required in every slaughterhouse. We are finally prohibiting the use of wild animals in circuses. That took a while to happen, but it is happening. We have banned the ivory trade. We have world-leading legislation. We have extended the blue belt to protect vast swathes of the world’s oceans. We have done much more besides that, but the need to protect animal welfare does not stop at our borders, and that is why I want to highlight the issue of trophy hunting today.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
No one is in any doubt as to the hon. Gentleman’s commitment to these issues. He just mentioned things outside our borders. I apologise if I pre-empt what the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries) is here to say, but there is also real concern about what is happening in Woburn on the estate owned by the Duke of Bedford. Tourists are paying up to £7,000 to shoot deer there. That is another form of canned trophy hunting, but it is happening in this country, not very far from where we are now. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that also should be prohibited?
Zac Goldsmith
I think that issue will be raised later in the debate. It is not an issue that I know a huge amount about, but from what I do know, I very much share the hon. Lady’s concerns, and I thank her for raising them.
On a personal level, I believe that shooting beautiful endangered wild animals purely for sport is barbaric and perverse. I think the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spoke for many when he said recently that he had an “emotional problem” with trophy hunting. It is no surprise that a poll found 93% of the public opposed to trophy hunting. Earlier this week, the Commons digital engagement team kindly asked members of the public for their views in advance of this debate, and there was a huge response. Many thousands of people responded and, unsurprisingly, the vast majority were opposed to the practice, describing it as “abhorrent,” “appalling”, “barbaric”, and more besides.
Members will remember the tragic story of Cecil the lion, a beautiful and much celebrated animal, shot dead by a trophy hunter in Zimbabwe in 2015. I remember feeling sickened by the sight of celebrity hunter Melissa Bachman gloating on Twitter and Facebook, smirking alongside dead bears, crocodiles, lions and so many other beautiful animals, but the issue goes far wider than the stories that occasionally make it into the mainstream media or even social media. A 2016 report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare revealed that as many as 1.7 million hunting trophies crossed borders between 2004 and 2014, at least 200,000 of which were from threatened species. The US accounts for a staggering 71% of them. In 2016, 1,203 trophies were taken from the most endangered species of all—those listed on appendix I of the convention on international trade in endangered species.
Some of those species are in real trouble. Wild lion numbers, for example, may now be as low as 15,000, which is a 43% decline in just 21 years. Only 415,000 African elephants remain, when there were more than 3 million a century ago. The black rhino population has recovered a bit, but there are still just 5,000. It therefore seems perverse that the hunting continues, and in many cases is all perfectly legal. We sometimes hear from the hunters when they are pushed, charged or challenged that they do it for the love of the animal or for the love of nature, but could anyone who loves and respects the noble lion or the gentle giraffe even entertain the idea of paying thousands of pounds to butcher them?
David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Given what the hon. Gentleman has said, will he clarify something for me? I am mystified as to why the UK Government’s position, according to the Secretary of State, is that the UK will not yet be banning imports from trophy hunting. That is the central point of the debate where I want to put pressure on the Government, but I genuinely want to know the hon. Gentleman’s understanding of why that is the case.
Zac Goldsmith
I cannot speak for the Government, but I will attempt to answer that question in the remaining minutes of my speech. I suspect that the right hon. Gentleman and I are largely on the same page.
Having said what I have said about the moral conundrum or the moral case for or against trophy hunting, it is important for the sake of this debate—the Government certainly have to do this—to separate the moral arguments from the conservation arguments. Morally, the issue is largely black and white. We are either comfortable with endangered wild animals being killed for fun or we are not, but from a conservation point of view, I have to acknowledge, not least because I have just been in a big discussion with conservation groups arguing about the issue, that the issue is at least more nuanced than that. I will explain why, but before I do, I will give way.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
First, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman for what he does on conservation work across the world. We are much indebted to him for his leadership. He referred to conservation. When we have any conversations about animals or animal welfare, we must always be sure to discuss conservation, because it is so important. How can we do better at conserving wildlife and ensuring that the habitat is still there to sustain the animals? Some of the reasons for the decreasing numbers are habitat loss and poor management. He has secured this debate, and I know he wants to add hippopotamuses to the Ivory Act 2018. I fully support him in that.
Zac Goldsmith
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to point to habitat loss, which is the biggest cause of extinction. I have an idea—I will mention it right at the end of the debate, if that is okay—that would help to address that problem.
It would be wrong if I failed to acknowledge the live debate between experts, NGOs and even conservation charities about hunting. There are those who argue that it can contribute to conservation. Those in favour of trophy hunting say, for example, that it is nothing compared to the threat of habitat loss, illegal poaching, human and animal conflict and so on, which contribute a great deal more to the decline in species, and that we should focus on them instead. The first part of that is true, but it does not strike me as an argument against taking action to tackle trophy hunting. We could say, but I do not think we would, that we should not worry about deforestation because it is not as big a part of the climate change problem as transport, for instance.
Those in favour of trophy hunting also say that it can generate important revenue for deprived areas of the world—revenue that can be spent on preserving habitat and protecting endangered species more widely. That is an important argument, which needs to be examined properly. The problem—the Minister will probably make the same point—is that there is simply not enough evidence or data to back up that assertion. I am struck by the way in which pro-conservation arguments in favour of trophy hunting are always phrased. Trophy hunting is okay if it is properly regulated, if the fees go to local communities and if it is sustainable. I suspect that advocates of those arguments are arguing for something that, although it is undoubtedly done to a higher standard occasionally, just does not exist on a wide scale.
The Government use a similar argument. In explaining the Government’s position, Ministers have said that sustainable trophy hunting can play a part in species conservation efforts, including providing funding for conservation. I have three questions about that approach. First, are Ministers confident that the large fees charged for trophy hunting are actually being spent on conservation, rather than going to those organising the hunts? There is very little evidence that the money is genuinely reinvested in protecting habitats or helping local communities.
Secondly, do Ministers really believe that the money generated from hunting is preferable to the much larger sums that could be generated, where appropriate, from such things as wildlife tourism and sustainable land use? The Wildlife Trusts estimates that a live elephant is worth 76 times more than a dead elephant.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Is it not rather hard to create the right culture and educative environment if we say, “Oh yes, if you’re rich you can go and shoot a few elephants or whatever, but if you’re some poor poacher, that’s terrible—you mustn’t do that”? We have to say that it is completely unacceptable behaviour whether someone is rich or poor.
Zac Goldsmith
I share my right hon. and learned Friend’s view, and I will come to that shortly. I thank him for his intervention.
The third question for Ministers is: can we be confident that the legal hunting trade is not acting as a cover for the illegal trade in animal products, which the UK has been a world leader in fighting? We banned the legal ivory trade in the UK precisely because it often incentivised, and provided cover for, the illegal trade. Surely the same logic applies.
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
I apologise for interrupting my hon. Friend, but, as he knows, I am about to go and give his apologies to IFAW for his absence from its celebrations. He mentioned the ban on the ivory trade—there is probably nobody in the Chamber who has not welcomed that—and he used the word “perverse” several times. Is it not perverse that although the Government have banned the ivory trade and justly claimed credit for doing so, they are permitting and almost encouraging the killing of animals for trophies other than ivory, such as skins? Does it not make it even worse, and kick the bottom out of the conservation argument, that in South Africa lions are being bred as cubs to be released into the wild for no purpose other than to be shot? There is no conservation in that, is there?
Zac Goldsmith
My right hon. Friend is right that there is no conservation value in that whatever. Colleagues will raise that issue in more detail, but I will touch on it shortly.
My fear is that the existence of some small-scale examples of better practice is driving our policy generally on trophy hunting, without recourse to the wider evidence, which suggests that the real story of trophy hunting is a lot less rosy than those advocates would have us believe. Indeed, on almost every level there is reason to doubt the arguments in favour of trophy hunting.
When it comes to the claim that sustainable hunting supports local people, a report prepared for—not written by—the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which is the global authority on nature, said that hunting
“serves individual interests, but not those of conservation, governments or local communities.”
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation, around 97% of hunting revenues stay within the hunting industry. Incidentally, just 0.03% of African GDP derives from hunting, when the prospects for expanding tourism are clearly far greater, and likely far more profitable for local communities. Another report written for the IUCN noted that 40% of the big game hunting zones in Zambia, and 72% in Tanzania, are now classified as depleted because the big game has simply been hunted out of those areas.
Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the greatest threats to some of those species is the growth of populations in continents such as Africa? Will he applaud work done by non-governmental organisations, such as one I have seen for myself at Amboseli, where IFAW has put people in place to co-ordinate the interface between wildlife and human beings, which has caused threats particularly to species such as lions? It is really important that that is where resources go.
Zac Goldsmith
I could not agree more strongly. The best conservation projects harness the power of people at the grassroots—people who then directly benefit from an emerging economy in conservation. There are so many examples—not enough to buck the trends that I mentioned at the beginning, but some really inspiring ones that I could spend hours relaying. However, I will not do that, as I am going to allow another intervention.
Ms Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
I have applied to speak, but in case there is not time, I could not let the point about Zambia go. I lived in that country many years ago, in the Luangwa Valley, which was a game reserve and which, as my hon. Friend pointed out, is now totally depleted of the richness that it had years ago. Does he agree that, were we to ban—as Ségolène Royal has done in France, and as has been done in Australia and the Netherlands—the importing of what are regarded as prize trophies, such a ban would deplete the hunger for trophies and their magical status? Perhaps other countries would follow suit, and the appetite for barbaric trophy hunting would begin to die down.
Zac Goldsmith
I strongly agree, and I will come to that. On the claims about the conservation value of trophy hunting, I will make one other point. The findings that I described were echoed by a US congressional report, which was damning in its conclusion. It stated:
“Claiming that trophy hunting benefits imperiled species is significantly easier than finding evidence to substantiate it.”
It added that
“it is difficult to confidently conclude that any particular trophy import would enhance the survival of a species.”
There are other problems with trophy hunting. For instance, the idea that all the animals are killed quickly and cleanly is a myth. Cecil, the lion I mentioned earlier, took 11 hours to die, and it is reported that 50% of animals that are hunted are wounded rather than killed straight away. In addition, hunters invariably prize the rarer species, meaning that the most endangered species—lions, giraffes, elephants and so on—are disproportionately targeted. In addition to that, hunters prize the biggest and most impressive of those animals—the elephants with the largest tusks or lions with the largest manes. Trophy hunting therefore risks weakening the gene pool as well.
Finally, there is the revolting practice that has already been mentioned of canned hunting, in which animals are bred to be hunted and then shot like fish in a bowl. It has been widely covered recently in the UK press, thanks largely to investigative work by Lord Ashcroft. It is not reflective of all trophy hunting, but it is on the increase, especially with lion farms in South Africa. As well as the ethical horror of breeding animals simply to shoot them for fun, such farms supply the trade in lion bones, which in turn fuels, and provides cover for, illegal trade in the same products.
I received letters in the run-up to the debate saying that we must be conscious of so-called “conservation colonialism”. Clearly that is right, and I do not disagree with that. Whatever we think about trophy hunting, we cannot dictate laws for African countries. However, we can focus on our domestic responsibilities. Between 2007 and 2016, UK hunters brought home 2,638 trophies, of which 15% were from the most endangered species. The flow of trophy imports into the UK is increasing, with 12 times as many trophies taken between 2010 and 2017 as were taken in the decade from 1981 to 1990.
It seems particularly perverse, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) said, that even though we have taken a leading role in banning the ivory trade, elephants remain by far the most popular trophy of choice for British game hunters. Clearly, we cannot ban trophy hunting overseas, and it is not our place to do so, but we can reduce demand for it. Australia and France have banned the import of lion trophies, and the Netherlands has gone further and banned trophies from several threatened species.
I want the UK to take the lead and introduce a ban, or even, for now, a moratorium, on the import of hunting trophies, in particular from those species listed as threatened or endangered. My early-day motion 1829 calling for that has attracted the support of 166 colleagues, making it the third most signed early-day motion this Session.
In 2015, the then Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whom I am very pleased to see as the new Secretary of State for International Development, promised that
“the Government will ban lion trophy imports by the end of 2017 unless there are improvements in the way hunting takes place in certain countries, judged against strict criteria.”
Is the Minister going to tell us that those improvements have been made? I cannot find any evidence of that whatever.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for whom I have huge admiration and respect, has explained his refusal to act immediately on trophy hunting by saying that he wants to be “cautious”. He is right to be cautious, and he is right that there is a genuine debate on the issue, but surely the cautious thing would be to introduce a moratorium on trophy imports now until robust scientific evidence shows that they are a clear net positive for conservation. We should also use our international role to argue for trophy hunting to be removed as an exception to trade under CITES appendix I, because it is absurd that CITES recognises species as endangered but permits trophy hunting as an exception to the ban on trading them.
I will finish where I began. Global nature is in crisis, and we must act. Banning imports of hunting trophies will not, on its own, save species; I have spoken before about the need to divert more of our aid spending towards protecting and restoring nature, not least as a means of tackling and alleviating poverty. However, by supporting trophy hunting and allowing its proceeds into the UK, we are actively supporting an activity whose conservation benefits are dubious at best. The evidence suggests that it is actually causing harm to endangered species and that its proceeds rarely, if ever, reach local communities.
I hope that the practice of trophy hunting will stop; I recognise that that will work only if it is replaced by other sources of income, which will not happen overnight, but we should be so much more ambitious for conservation. After all, is it not dispiriting to argue that the best that we can do for endangered species is allow wealthy people to come in and shoot them? Surely we can do better than that.
Zac Goldsmith
The Minister will not be able to answer now, but I hope that as she gathers the evidence, if it emerges—I believe it will—that the practice of trophy hunting has no net positive effect for conservation, the Government will take the firm position that I think pretty much everyone in the debate has demanded. I thank hon. Members for their contributions, and I thank LionAid, Born Free and the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting for all their work to raise the issue right up the political agenda, resulting in this debate and, I hope, more to come.
Environment and Climate Change
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Jeremy Corbyn
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I will come on to the work done by the previous Labour Government, which did so much to try and bring about awareness of the climate emergency. We have the chance to bring new manufacturing and engineering jobs to places that have never recovered from the destruction of our industries in the early 1980s. We need a green industrial revolution with huge investments in new technologies and green industries.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman is correct to declare a climate emergency and a broader environment emergency. He talks about radical action, and one action that we need to take is to protect the world’s forests. After transport, deforestation is the second biggest source of emissions. We are destroying around 20 million acres—a mind-boggling amount—every single year, and billions of people depend directly on forests for their livelihoods. So, from the point of view of biodiversity, humanitarianism and climate change, protecting the forests must surely be a No. 1 priority for any Government.
Jeremy Corbyn
The hon. Gentleman is right that that must be a high priority. I will be coming on to it towards the end of my speech, but he is correct that forests not only sustain a high level of biodiversity, but are a huge source of carbon capture, locking it up within the trees themselves.
Michael Gove
I must allow my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park to intervene, after which I will take an intervention from the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) and then make some progress.
Zac Goldsmith
Does my right hon. Friend agree that part of any new deal for nature—it has been much discussed, and I hope it will be discussed again today—should be a significant shift in DFID’s spending such that a much greater proportion of its money is spent on protecting and restoring the natural world, as a means of preventing base poverty and alleviating poverty?
Michael Gove
I could not agree more, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development believes that as well. One of the best ways to safeguard the environment is to support people towards sustainable growth. Projects such as the Darwin initiative have shown the way in making sure that we can provide people with dignity and the chance to flourish economically, while at the same time safeguarding and enhancing valuable habitats.