Farming Families

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Lords’ Interests as chairman of the Countryside Alliance.

I was proud to join the farmers’ demonstration in Whitehall on Tuesday. The sentiment was clear: farmers were already desperately worried about wider policy challenges, but the change announced in the Budget was a tax too far. The Government do not appear to understand that farms are not conventional businesses. Where farm incomes are too low to pay this new inheritance tax bill, part or all of the farm will have to be sold. If the next generation cannot afford to pay this tax, they will lose not just the chance to run a family business but their home, their way of life and their chance to maintain their family’s custody of the land.

So many talk freely of the “family farm”, without apparently the slightest comprehension of what that actually means and how valuable this institution is in the story of the British countryside. If it is so wrong that farms have relief from inheritance tax, why did Ministers, when they were in opposition, promise farmers that they would not change it? Reneging on that explicit assurance has not just fatally undermined the trust of farmers and indeed the wider rural community but damaged trust in politics generally.

Yet instead of trying to repair this fissure with farming, the Government seem intent on opening up the wound. The Defra Secretary has said that:

“Half of farmland sold last year went to non-farmers including wealthy individuals trying to avoid inheritance tax”.


Does he not understand that if family farms are broken, more farmland will be sold to non-farmers? He says he wants everyone to pay their share so that young farmers can realise their dream of buying their farm. So today, this is a Levellers’ policy to change the ownership structure of land. Yesterday, it was a redistributionist policy to help pay for the public services on which farmers rely. Only a few farms would be affected, yet somehow it would help to save the NHS.

Even if the Treasury’s claim that only 500 farms a year would be caught by this tax was right—and all the agricultural experts say it is not—that would mean that over a generation of four decades 20,000 farming families would be affected. That is not a small number. It is a seismic change that would change forever the social fabric of the countryside.

It is intolerable that highly controversial tax changes such as this should be imposed without a proper assessment of their impact and where there is disagreement on the data within government, never mind outside it. If the Government want to find a way through this and genuinely tackle tax avoidance, which is a perfectly proper aim, the starting point must be to reach agreement on the actual effect of the change. I suggest that the Government should consider appointing an independent person or body to assess the true impact of the tax changes and to advise on how to meet their declared policy objective of preventing tax avoidance while protecting family farms.

Braving the rain and the cold will hardly have troubled farmers, of all people, this week, but it is not a small thing for these fundamentally decent, hardworking people to leave their farms to come to London to try to protect their livelihoods. These are the people who care for our countryside and who put food on our tables. They run one of our most important industries and manage one of our most valuable national assets. They deserve better.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 7th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I want first to thank my noble friend the Minister, who has put an inordinate amount of effort into discussing concerns about this Bill with those of us who have them. I congratulate him not only on becoming a grandfather but on landing this Bill, as he does today.

However, it remains a very bad Bill and I think it is worth repeating why. It is not because it entails a huge administrative reorganisation; in this House, we take huge administrative reorganisations in our stride. We have been reorganising the National Health Service over the past few weeks, which is possibly the largest organisation in the world, certainly in Europe. The Government’s defence of the measure is essentially that it is administratively very minor: it just sets up a committee; it is an advisory committee, and Ministers will make final decisions—“There is nothing to see here; move on”. But the important part of the Bill is not its administrative effects but the fact that it is a declaratory Bill. It declares something in the law of the United Kingdom for the first time to be true—that is, that animals, vertebrates and certain non-vertebrates, are sentient. I know that this appeared previously in a treaty that we were party to, but it moves it on a considerable step to incorporate it into domestic law in this way.

It is worth asking why that declaration matters. It matters because it is very much part of the agenda of the animal rights movement to achieve agreement on three things. The first is that animals are sentient; the second is that sentience is the sole basis for judging moral conduct; and the third, as a consequence of that, is that humans and animals are to be treated on the same basis in moral terms. That is a complete upturning of our established view of moral conduct; it is a completely new anthropology. This Bill is therefore profoundly anti-human. It opens the door to a moral calculus in which people can ask the question: how much chimpanzee suffering is equivalent to a human baby suffering? That is why it remains a very bad Bill. It is a Bill that we will come to regret.

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as declared in the register. I thank my noble friend the Minister for indicating that the Government wish to agree with these sensible amendments, which merely import principles which previously existed in relation to sentience provisions in the Lisbon treaty and will create a better balance in the Bill and in the operation of the sentience committee.

I fear that I rather agree with my noble friend Lord Moylan that this remains a bad Bill and it stores up trouble for the future, but we have made all those points before. Even if the Government came to this late, they are wise to have accepted the view of the Commons that some balance needed to be injected into the measures, so we are doing the right thing by agreeing with them. I thank my noble friend for everything that he has done to get us to this place.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, I endorse thoroughly the remarks of my noble friends Lord Herbert and Lord Moylan. I congratulate the Minister on entering this whole discussion with great good humour and with a certain amount of patience as well, because we have certainly asked him many questions and put him under quite a lot of pressure, but I hope that at all times we have been courteous to him, too.

My starting point was exactly the same as that of my noble friend. This Bill really was not necessary. If one looks at the raft of legislation in this country that protects and stands up for animals, one sees that it is one of the most effective legal frameworks anywhere in the world. Some of those laws date back to the start of the last century. Flowing from those different Acts of Parliament have been numerous regulations, such as the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations, which are pretty comprehensive.

So the Bill was not necessary, but in the context of realpolitik, I understand why the Government decided that they had to move down this route. The Bill has certainly been improved by the Commons amendments, which I welcome. I once again thank the Minister for what he has done to help improve the Bill substantially from where it was when it started out.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 13th December 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Herbert of South Downs]

At the end insert “but that this House, while strongly supporting measures to improve animal welfare, regrets the way in which the proposed Animal Sentience Committee is to be established”.

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my positions in the Countryside Alliance, including chairman, which I have declared in the register of Members’ interests. I regret detaining the House. I appreciate that there is important business next on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. However, as the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill leaves the House, I feel that there are important issues that need to be addressed. I would like to make two points at the outset.

First, none of what I am going to say is an attack on my noble friend the Minister. He is a good friend and a good man who has been given the impossible job of defending a Bill about which many of us have considerable reservations, and has done so with unfailing grace and humour. I am genuinely sorry to differ from him on this measure. Secondly, every one of us in this House wants to promote animal welfare. I certainly do. I feel strongly that animals must be treated properly but, whatever the good intentions of those promoting the Bill, I fear that it is not a wise measure as drafted. In fact, if we take a step back, it is actually an incredible measure. It seriously proposes that the effect of any government policy on the welfare of animals may be considered by an unfettered statutory committee and that Ministers must respond to that committee’s reports.

When the Bill started, that measure applied only to vertebrates; now it applies to cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans. That was one of the few amendments made to the Bill, and that was by the Government. At the height of a pandemic which has killed thousands of people and cost our economy billions, we have decided to devote time to passing a law to ensure that no government policy can hurt the feelings of a prawn.

The Government rejected every other amendment put to them. We pointed out that sentience is not actually defined in the legislation; apparently that does not matter. What matters is that Ministers must have regard to sentience, even if we do not know what it actually is. We asked for safeguards to ensure the expertise of the committee’s members. We were told that such protections were not necessary. We asked for constraints to the committee’s scope. We were told that limits to the committee’s unfettered remit were not necessary either. Crucially, we asked why the balancing provisions in the Lisbon treaty, which specifically exempt religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage, were not included and why the Bill goes so much further than the EU measure it claims to replace. We were told that this balancing provision was not necessary either. In fact, apparently no change was necessary.

The Government have been able to ignore every concern expressed, largely on this side, by relying on the kindness of strangers—uncritical support for the measures that would have guaranteed the defeat of any amendment. I wonder whether the Government will come to regret that.

I am sure that Ministers do not intend that this new committee will get out of hand. I am sure they intend to appoint sensible people to it. I am sure they believe their own rhetoric when they say that Ministers decide so they will resist the committee’s recommendations if necessary. This is of little reassurance when the Government have already capitulated in the face of a social media campaign to introduce the committee in the first place. It is like saying, “Don’t worry, we are going to make sure the burglar won’t take anything from your house, but we are going to let him in to make helpful suggestions about your security”. This committee will set its own priorities. It will decide its own agenda. It will rove across government at will and demand answers to its recommendations. The Government may believe that they are answering public concern by setting up the committee in this way, but I fear they are making a massive rod for their own back.

This measure departs from the usual practice of taking careful and specific steps to ensure animal welfare by injecting a broad and ill-defined principle into our public administration. The danger is that, in doing so, it will effectively if unwittingly hand an institutional footing to the animal rights agenda. We are giving leverage and power to that single-issue ideology, which can be uncompromising and extreme, without thinking through the consequences.

We are trying to beat a mutating virus. We are trying to level up, to build back better. We need Government to take better decisions, and more quickly. We need to get things done faster, yet we are putting in place a barely constrained mechanism which is simply bound to glue up government. I am afraid that I differ from my noble friend on that. At best, even with sensible people in place, the committee will put spanners in the works because frankly that will be its job. It will make it harder for Ministers to deliver, to take difficult balancing decisions, which they sometimes must, or to ignore populist sentiment. At worst, without the necessary safeguards in place, the committee risks becoming a Trojan horse, used especially to attack wildlife management farming or the well-being and way of life of our rural communities. We know that this is a real risk because the animal rights agenda is in plain sight, and because its proponents are already incessantly abusing judicial review to force government to do its will.

It is usually this House which provides a robust check on measures propelled by populist wins, yet we have passed the Bill with no amendment, except to extend its scope to beasts such as cuttlefish. Some noble Lords may remember that, 30 years ago, it was only the sober intervention of this House which prevented the then Dangerous Dogs Bill from inadvertently making it a strict liability imprisonable offence for a dog to cause injury by accidentally knocking someone off their bicycle. That Bill had foolishly been driven through all its Commons stages in a single day, but today we are showing ourselves to be more inclined to bend without sufficient thought to populism, and now it will fall to Members of the House of Commons to address the deficiencies in this proposal.

We all want to advance animal welfare, but the sentience provisions in the Lisbon treaty had little or nothing to do with the succession of admirable legislation which for over a century has been passed by this Parliament. In fact, with Brexit, we have the freedom to pass laws to protect animals which would not have been possible before—to address puppy smuggling, for instance. Even before this sentience Bill has been passed, other government Bills to protect animals have been introduced or announced, which only goes to prove that this Bill, creating this committee in this way, is not necessarily to protect animals.

I have offered these remarks in the hope that even as the Bill leaves this House, there is still a chance that its serious deficiencies will be addressed and that we will return to focusing on specific workable measures to improve the welfare of animals in ways which we all want and can all support. I beg to move.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister who, with good humour throughout, has defended what is frankly almost indefensible. He has done extremely well, and I hope that he is congratulated by the higher ranks of the Government. I associate myself entirely with the excellent points made by my noble friend Lord Herbert. I will not repeat them, but I will repeat that this is a shockingly bad piece of legislation which should be an embarrassment to the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Herbert for his contributions to today’s proceedings and earlier debates on the Bill. I have previously addressed at length a number of the points he raised, so I do not intend to detain the House long. He made an incredibly good speech, and some of his points struck home—I felt a bit like that painting of St Sebastian.

The weakest argument he put, echoed by my noble friend Lord Cormack, seemed to suggest that this House cannot hold two thoughts in its head at the same time. Of course, the priority of this House, the Government and all of us is to deal with the pandemic, but the idea that you cannot produce legislation on any other subject, which is the logical conclusion of his argument, is one that I am afraid I do not agree with. But he made other very good points.

I suggest to the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, that this concept of animal sentience was on the statute book; we had it under Article 13 of the Lisbon treaty. The debate, which will continue in another place, is about the degree to which we transpose that. I understand the points she made.

I make an absolute assurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, who is not here. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, made a very good point, and I respect him and his knowledge. On the point about judicial review, we have done all we can to limit the duties that a Minister has to abide by. That is where judicial review really hurts Ministers—if they fail to follow a duty in the Bill—but I absolutely concede that organisations will continuously try to judicially review the Government, on this legislation and elsewhere. The question is: will it be successful? Will it be permitted to be taken forward? Just the week before last, an organisation wanted to take the Government to judicial review and was refused by the courts.

Finally, on religious rites, I made a promise on Report and continue to make that point. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, and others made genuine points about concerns in the communities they come from or sought to represent in their words on this Bill. I and the Government take these concerns really seriously and want to give them every assurance that the Government’s policy remains to support them on these matters of religious importance and on how they wish to have animals slaughtered. We will make officials and Ministers available to give those added reassurances.

I again thank all those involved to date in the Bill’s passage and hope my noble friend will be persuaded not to push his amendment.

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a good airing of the issues; we have all said our piece. I have no wish to try the patience of the House, which wishes to get on to other matters, any longer. I hope that Members of Parliament will heed what has been said, and that in due course we will have an opportunity to consider amendments that they make, so that this House performs the job of being a revising Chamber—because the Bill has not so far been revised at all. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - part three
Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I shall just comment very briefly on what my noble friend has just said. I disagreed with him on one point, when he said that there were no leading lights in the science of sentience. I draw his attention to a wonderful book published by Oxford University Press just a few months ago by the great Cambridge psychologist Nick Humphrey. Nick says, after 60,000 words of argument, as he put it to me in an email:

“My conclusions are quite radical—and at odds with both academic and popular wisdom. I argue that the only animals that have evolved to be sentient are mammals and birds, and not all of these. We really don’t need to worry about lobsters or octopuses.”


He did not add, “or crocodiles”.

So I think that there is developing science on this, and my noble friend is quite right that it needs to be peer-reviewed and investigated. I think that we will find the goalposts move on what is sentient, and that it is not a given that everything with a backbone is sentient or, indeed, that some of the decapods and others are as sentient as we have heard in recent years.

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my various interests in the Countryside Alliance, including chairing the organisation. I apologise for being unable to take part in this Report stage earlier, but I was isolating and was only just released less than two hours ago. However, I was watching the proceedings very carefully, and it seemed to me that there was an emerging pattern—a serial rejection of all the amendments proposed by my noble friends and others, whether on issues of retrospectivity, on the composition of the committee, or on the matter of the risk that this committee is going to present of more judicial review. I could only admire my noble friend’s élan in batting away each of these suggestions, which came from former Ministers, from a former Leader of the House and from a former leader of the party—and from a brace at least of Queen’s Counsel, as well as suggestions and advice from a former Master of the Rolls. They were all swatted away elegantly by my noble friend.

I simply wish to say that my noble friends are sentient beings, too, and I believe that we are being treated cruelly. There is a case for reference to an independent committee to make advice as to whether all these suggestions should have been taken more seriously. Perhaps, if Ministers dismiss the advice of the animal sentience committee with the same alacrity, we will have little to fear from its future proceedings.

However, the truth is that there is less of a risk to specific aspects of farming or other activities that we can identify now than, I judge, of gluing up government with a constant process of analysis and rejection, followed by review, of proposals made by the committee. Indeed, there is to be not just one committee but two and, as we heard earlier, they will refer matters to each other, in a description that reminded me very much of a passage from “Yes Minister”. Ministers sometimes, when they occupy two briefs, as I once did, are encouraged to write letters to themselves in their dual positions. Now we have two animal committees that will be encouraged to refer matters to each other. This is an overcorrection because of a promise made earlier.

The suggestion of my noble friend Lord Moylan that, at the very least, we should ensure that the advice that the committee gives is grounded in the soundest possible science and is peer reviewed seems eminently sensible. I also join his modest suggestion that this might be the exception and the one proposal that the Minister might entertain.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Moylan’s amendment. Why do we have delegated committees? Why do parliamentary bodies contract out part of their function? The only answer, it seems to me, is that you need very specific accumulated scientific expertise—in the field of economics, or whatever—that you would not reasonably have from a legislative Chamber.

When I made the point on an earlier amendment that there is no such thing as a disinterested expert—we all have our prejudices and opinions and scientists are still human beings—the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said that I was Luddite or, worse, “Goveian” in my attack on all experts. But this is surely having it both ways. We cannot say, “We must have this outside committee but there is absolutely no reason for them to base their recommendations on reputable science”. If we are not prepared to require the experts to rule on the basis of where the expertise is, on what possible basis are we creating this committee at all?

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. I will write to him about the committee’s make-up and remit and repeat any points he may have missed in our conversations or in earlier proceedings about how we feel this committee should exist. Of course, we are going into a spending round and these issues will be reflected in that, but I have declared openly how the resources will be found.

I will correct my noble friend on one point. When I said “highly regulated”, I was talking about how we use animals in scientific research. That is something we can all be extremely proud of. In animal research, we have one of the most highly regulated science communities. I share his desire for less bureaucracy and less regulation for the farming community. There are changes afoot that I hope he will be extremely pleased about. We will see a simpler range of policies, which will make life easier for rural businesses. When I referred to high regulation, I did so with pride that we have an active and vibrant scientific community based on research into animals, and that it is properly regulated by probably the best regulation in the world.

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest with various positions in the Countryside Alliance.

I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could elucidate this point: the thrust of almost all the contributions by noble Lords today has been that the Bill’s scope is too broad and that the powers of the committee that is to be set up insufficiently constrained. The architecture being established is far broader than that which exists for the Animal Welfare Committee—an issue we are about to explore—and the effect of the consideration of sentience will be far greater than the declaratory effect that sentience had in the provisions in European law. As has been raised, all this suggests that there is a greater potential for judicial review.

So far as I could see, in responding to all these points the Minister said that the remit would remain broad, sentience would not be defined and the committee’s powers would not be constrained. My simple question is therefore: does he accept the views expressed by most noble Lords this afternoon that the Bill is imperfectly drafted, that the committee’s powers are too broad and that it needs to be constrained? Is that important position accepted or not? Is the Minister dismissing all the views expressed by way of amendments today and essentially saying to us that the balance struck in the Bill is perfect?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I would never have the temerity to say that anything was perfect in this world, and legislation is a messy process. I assure my noble friend that I believe that we are sailing the right path between creating something that is unwieldy and a burden on government and something that is—I hope he will agree when it is established—proportionate. It can range around government looking at important things and will inform the way decisions are made.

My noble friend mentioned the risk of judicial review. The Bill places additional legal duties on Ministers only in so far as it requires them to submit written responses on the parliamentary record to the animal sentience committee’s reports within three months of their publication. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is additionally legally required to appoint and maintain an animal sentience committee. This means that the Bill creates only two additional grounds for judicial review: a failure by the relevant Minister to respond to the committee within three months and a failure by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to establish and maintain an animal sentience committee. I hope that gives my noble friend some reassurance.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 16th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as set out in the register and my position in the Countryside Alliance.

In 1789, the great philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, said of animals that

“the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?”

In truth, Parliament has answered that question for two centuries by passing a canon of animal welfare laws. We have always accepted that animals can suffer, that they are sentient—indeed, I would argue that the question of sentience is a simple matter of fact: vertebrates clearly are sentient, and that is recognised in the body of laws we have already passed.

However, there is a question about whether simply adding “sentience” to the law as an expression, as this Bill does, will advance animal welfare legislation or treating animals in the way that is intended. We need to consider a number of questions as we examine the Bill.

The first is to distinguish clearly between animal rights and animal welfare. I submit that every one of us is subscribed to the principles of animal welfare: that we should treat animals humanely, compassionately and properly. The idea that animals have rights which are in some way akin to human rights is much more problematic, and obviously so. Most of us—not all—who agree and feel strongly that animals must be treated properly and humanely, also eat animals and probably support their use in scientific research. The distinction between animal rights and animal welfare is important when it comes to considering the difference between wild and domestic animals. It is obvious, for instance, that a domestic animal under our control deserves to be watered and fed properly, and if we do not do that we break the law and rightly can be held responsible for such cruel treatment, but with a wild animal, even if it is on land that a farmer owns, that farmer can have no responsibility for feeding and watering it—it is not under his control. It is only when wild animals are brought under domestic control or the control of individuals that they deserve the protection of the law. Instantly, we see that the doctrine of animal rights is unhelpful in guiding us as to how we should treat animals.

Secondly, we need to advance the protection of animals on the basis of principle and evidence and ensure that we can as far as possible detach what is often powerful emotion from the debate. The exercise of emotion in any aspect of lawmaking can lead to bad law—parliamentarians doing things because, in the worst case, they think it is popular or they are driven by their own sentiment. We have to be more careful and forensic than that because there are competing interests to be balanced. This Chamber above all chambers needs to exercise the cool reason that is sometimes absent from the consideration of the elected Chamber, driven as it is by more populist urges—I say that having been a Member of the other place for 15 years.

Thirdly, the principle must be right that Ministers make decisions and do not subcontract them to unelected bodies, even where they are appointed by those Ministers. It is one thing for Ministers to be guided; it is another to passport decisions to bodies that cannot properly be held to account for them. It is an irony that the Bill introducing this principle—albeit constrained by a committee—is being brought forward just as the Government are seeking to constrain judicial review precisely because of their concern that it is interfering with ministerial responsibility. Ministerial responsibility for decisions matters because Ministers are accountable to Parliament and Parliament is in turn accountable to the people, while unelected committees are not. We have surely just understood the importance of that. The dangers were perfectly illustrated by the misleading campaign against the decision initially not to import the decision on sentience from the EU.

We have had animal welfare laws in our country for 200 years, since the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act was introduced. Our animal welfare standards go far beyond the minimums set by the EU. I respectfully disagree entirely with the proposition of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that, somehow, animal welfare in this country was advanced by our subscription to the EU and the principle of sentience that it introduced. That is simply not the case. We need to remember that the principles of sentience are not in dispute. That we should treat animals properly is not in dispute. But what matters is that Ministers and Parliament should ultimately decide, and that we should not find ourselves subcontracting decisions to bodies that are accountable neither to us nor to the public but can be pressured by outside interests.

Improving Air Quality

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

Last month, the World Health Organisation published a list of the 30 worst polluted areas—those exceeding their limits—in the country. These included, perhaps not surprisingly, London, Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester, but they also included Storrington in my constituency—Storrington was among the 30 worst polluted areas in the whole country. It is worse than that. Compare My Move reported earlier this month that, using the WHO data on the worst pollutants—fine particulate matter—the worst cities for air pollution were Bristol, Stanford-le-Hope, Swansea and Storrington; it called that a city. These places had a higher concentration of pollutants than London. Storrington was the worst place in the south-ast.

The “city” of Storrington is in fact a village, of just 7,000 residents, and it is at the foot of the South Downs national park. It is in very picturesque country and it is astonishing that it should be one of the places with the very worst air pollution in the country. The reason is the traffic that is forced through the village. It was declared an air quality management area eight years ago. A low emissions trial was set up, but it was abandoned after just one year because, ironically, there was no mobile phone signal available in that rural area, so the data could not be sent. Some 3% of the traffic through Storrington is made up of heavy goods vehicles, but they are responsible for 30% of the pollution.

Local people know that there is a very good reason traffic is so heavy through Storrington, and why the air pollution is consequently so bad when the traffic queues. The reason is that the traffic is forced up through the downs because of congestion on the A27, which runs at the bottom of the south downs and through my constituency. That was once said or meant to be the coastal highway, but significant parts of it are not dualled and it has very serious congestion, including at Arundel. As a consequence, the traffic aims to miss the congestion on the A27 and instead rat-runs through the historic town of Arundel in my constituency and up through the south downs and downland villages such as Storrington. That accounts for the terrible air quality.

There is, therefore, a very strong environmental case for trying to do something about that traffic. The obvious thing to do is to upgrade the A27 to make the traffic flow freely along what is in any case a very important route economically, as the east-west connection in the south of England. At last—this has been delayed for over three decades—we have a plan for the Arundel bypass. I am very grateful to the Government for announcing the funding for the bypass a few years ago, and Highways England has recently announced the preferred route for the scheme. There are of course some local objections to the bypass, as there always are, but my judgment is that there is overwhelming local support for it, not least because of all the traffic running up through the towns and the air pollution in places such as Storrington as a consequence.

It was, therefore, very surprising and disappointing when the South Downs National Park Authority announced that it would seek a judicial review of Highways England’s preferred route. This is an extraordinary position: a public body, using public funds and through proper consultation, has identified the best route for a bypass that the Government have announced funding for and say is necessary; and another publicly funded body, the South Downs National Park Authority—paying absolutely no regard to the views of local people or local villages in the communities in the South Downs national park—has decided, on what is clearly a purely ideological basis, to seek a judicial review of the route and has tried to prevent it from happening simply because it touches a tiny part of the national park right at the bottom of it.

In fact, everybody knows that this will be a South Downs national park relief road. Highways England official projections show that annually there are 15,287 daily traffic movements on average through Storrington, causing all the congestion and pollution and that, with the Arundel bypass on the preferred route, there would be over 3,000 fewer traffic movements in the first year after the bypass opens—over 20% fewer—and by 2041 there would be nearly 6,000 fewer traffic movements, or 38% fewer. So the bypass would clearly prevent the problems of the traffic queuing in this downland village.

Despite that, we have this attempted judicial review. The meeting was not public. Notice was barely given of it. Where is the accountability for this decision? Why is not the South Downs National Park Authority made party to the collective decisions that ought to be taken by local authorities on environmental matters, including reducing air pollution? Why can it simply stand above that, when it is clearly of such environmental benefit overall to the south downs and the downland communities? Its actions are completely unacceptable, and local communities are rightly very angry at what it is seeking to do.

Another village in my constituency, Cowfold, is also over the statutory limits on air pollution. It exceeds both the EU and the WHO maximum levels. It is an even smaller village, of only 2,000 people, but it sits on the A272, and again there is queuing traffic. It was declared an air quality management area in 2011, but there has been no real action for seven years. Some 4% of the traffic is heavy goods vehicles, but they contribute 37% of the pollution. The parish council wants a very simple thing. It wants signs put up by the side of the main routes that run north and south alongside the village, the A24 and the A23, to discourage heavy goods vehicles from taking the route along the A272.

There are perfectly viable dual carriageway routes that go away from this road and village, and there are means by which to discourage heavy goods vehicles from taking this route, yet we have seen a complete failure by the relevant local authorities to take forward any initiative to do the simple thing of introducing these signs. West Sussex County Council says that there is no evidence to support the contention that heavy goods vehicle traffic would be affected by the signs wherever they might be placed. It needs a feasibility study, but there is no funding for one.

I welcome the Government’s air quality plan published last July—I am not churlish about it as other hon. Members are—because it represents a welcome step towards taking action in places such as Storrington and Cowfold. I note that the Government announced a £255 million implementation fund to support local authorities in conducting things such as feasibility studies, and I think £40 million of that was meant to be made available immediately, so can the Minister confirm that the fund is available to places such as Storrington and Cowfold, so that they can conduct feasibility studies, and that the clean air fund, which the Government also announced, will be available to those local authorities if they then need to take measures as a consequence of the feasibility studies?

We cannot let this matter drag on. It has affected Storrington and Cowfold for well over a decade. We need energetic joint action by all the local authorities, and that needs to be supported, in the way the Government have suggested, by Government funding so that studies can be commissioned and action taken. At the moment, there has been inertia by all concerned, but when there are rural areas and tiny villages at the foot of the south downs with the very worst air pollution in the country, something is wrong. It is completely avoidable and it is time we did something about it.

Anti-Corruption Strategy: Illegal Wildlife Trade

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huq]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Criminal intelligence gets more and more complex as criminals find different ways to convert their ill-gotten gains. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the risks are the same, as are the effects of this crime on communities at the other end, which are often in the developed world, so he makes an excellent point.

This trade, if we can call it such, is popular with terrorist groups and militias. That relates to what the Government’s anti-corruption champion just said. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army in South Sudan, which was a rebel group but has now overthrown the person who was in power, has been partial to elephant poaching by grenade; and ivory poaching is a means by which the Janjaweed militia funds its activities in the same region.

The illegal wildlife trade goes much wider than being simply a peripheral concern of well-meaning people concerned with the world that we will leave to the next generation. The damage done is manifold, as the anti-corruption champion just told us. The corruption that supports illegal trading in wildlife poses threats to national security, as we have seen from the terror threat. It is seen by those who deal in it, like guns and drugs, as just another commodity and part and parcel of these organised crime networks. Bribery and corruption obscure the enforcement of existing laws—if there are bendable officials, that also mucks things up—and diminish efforts to strengthen them. Not everyone has an anti-corruption champion in the same way as we do, although the post was vacant for a while; I am very glad that the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) is occupying it now.

Credit where credit is due: the UK has not completely sat on its hands when it comes to anti-corruption efforts. We all remember David Cameron’s anti-corruption summit in May 2016—the whole world came to London. The strategy he promised at the time finally saw the light of day at the end of last year, as did the long awaited champion. It was almost smuggled out in the dead of night and not everyone seems to have noticed. Ultimately, we must do more.

One of my main concerns with the anti-corruption strategy is the lack of strong action on open registers of beneficial ownership in our overseas territories. We have said that before. The criminal gangs do not simply traffic in animal parts, but in drugs and arms. They launder their money through shell corporations. Again, we are dealing with these secrecy jurisdictions and mysterious properties with questionable ownership. I think there are whole streets in London where we do not know who owns them and dirty money is parked there.

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I strongly support what the hon. Lady is saying about the need for transparency. I agree with her about the transparency of companies, the registers of beneficial ownership in overseas territories and the need for more enforcement. Does she agree that it is vital that we choke off demand for ivory? In the end, as with all crime, if we do not tackle demand, but only focus on enforcement, we will not be successful. It is just as important that we address the demand for ivory, as well as the vital enforcement measures, which I agree are important.

[Dr Huq]

I will come on to speak about demand. I agree that we need to stop these ivory products being desirable, especially in south-east Asia. The right hon. Gentleman made a very good speech the other day in the debate on the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill, with which I agreed wholeheartedly. He has also noticed that the Government seem to have downgraded their ambition. In 2016, we were told that all countries needed to reach a gold standard of public registers of beneficial interest. David Cameron painted himself as a world leader in this and promised action. Now, the Foreign Office says that it expects UK tax havens only to adopt the public register when it becomes a global standard, so I think there has been a bit of slippage, but I know that the right hon. Gentleman has done excellent work on this. He is absolutely right that these products should not be desirable at all and people should not be clamouring for them.

The conservation community should be encouraged to work alongside anti-corruption organisations in bringing together anti-corruption strategy and environmental policy. We have an environment Minister responding today, but in a way this covers more than one Department. It is a multifarious issue.

It was good that a much-trailed document recently saw the light of day: the 25-year environment plan. That came out earlier this year and it includes a pledge to bring forward an anti-poaching taskforce. I hope that the Minister will tell us that that will happen well before 2043. We do not need 25 years to do this. We know what the issue is. That plan also includes a taskforce. Sometimes I feel that people can get consultation fatigue. I hope the taskforce has a better appointment procedure than the Office for Students. Perhaps that is something for my constituent, Toby Young, given that he is not serving on the OFS any more. I do not know how transparent the application process is.

English Wine Industry

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, in this important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing it. I am particularly pleased to be speaking in it because my constituency, which I am proud to represent, has more wine producers than any other. We have 17 producers that I am aware of, including award-winning producers such as Stopham, whose wine was served on the Queen’s barge in the diamond jubilee celebrations; Wiston; Nutbourne; and, perhaps most notably—arguably it is the finest English wine—Nyetimber, which is a premium brand that is increasingly exported globally.

First, I want to add to what my hon. Friend said about the importance of the Government getting behind this industry. It would be relatively easy for them to do that. It seems to me absolutely obvious that the Government should showcase English sparkling wine at its major events. I am glad that Downing Street is serving English sparkling wine. I hope that the Foreign Office is also doing so at appropriate events, and I hope our embassies will be encouraged to do the same. I recognise that English sparkling wine is relatively more expensive, but it says something about our country and this emerging industry if we can serve the wines. It would be a talking point.

I make a plea to the Minister to look at the normal procurement rules and to perhaps give a say and an opportunity to the variety of English sparkling wines that are produced. The Government should not just land on one or two, which I understand is the case in Downing Street at the moment. These are all emerging brands, and there are some particularly fine ones among them that win blind tastings. I understand that Clarence House adopts a slightly different approach in how it serves English wine. It has blind tastings and has arrived at serving rather more English wines as a consequence. The opportunity should be shared around more, and the Government should approach the issue in that way so that other areas of the country and other wines can benefit. Indeed, the Government may need to do that if they are to serve such wines more, which seems to me to be a relatively cheap way in which they could help the industry.

Secondly, I endorse what my hon. Friend said about wine duty. At the moment, wine duty applies across the board because we are in the European Union. It is not clear whether that would continue in the future, but there is a case anyway for reducing wine duty in the same way as has happened for beer duty. It has been shown that that has a beneficial impact, and wine has rather lost out in the argument in recent years. Wine duty was frozen at one point, but generally it has increased, and that has a negative effect that could be addressed. I hope that the Minister will join us in making representations to the Chancellor to support the industry by lowering wine duty.

Thirdly, I endorse what my hon. Friend may have said—I am not sure whether he did, but I will say it anyway—on the Government’s producing a welcome roundtable. The then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, now Lord Chancellor, held a roundtable on how English wine is promoted, bringing together the various interests in the country. It would be welcome if the Government continued with that initiative and held another roundtable. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about that.

English wine is a potential success story. It is no longer a joke. People are talking about it. It is a potential source of alternative rural employment and a good, environmentally friendly land use. It seems to me far better to grow vines than to grow ugly things on agricultural land that might have been farmed in other ways in the past. It is a great opportunity for the country. At a time when many of us may be utterly miserable due to global events, I can think of no better way to drown one’s sorrows than for those who drink—sadly, I am no longer one of them—to raise a glass of English wine and toast its success.

I do not hold with those who say that we need Brexit for English wine to be a success story. Nor is it necessarily the case that tariff-free access for wine will be an answer in itself, because tariff-free access would imply a reciprocal arrangement and tariff-free access for wine that we import. As so often, the glib solutions are not necessarily the most straightforward. There are ways that the Government can get behind the industry, and I hope that they will, because it is an important and exciting one for this country.

Driven Grouse Shooting

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double]

I agree very much with both my hon. Friend’s points.

Red grouse are not found anywhere in the UK but uplands. They live in heather moorland and heather forms the staple part of their diet. Seventy-five per cent of global heather moorland is located in the UK, so in global terms heather moorland is rarer than the rain forest. Heather moorland comprises about 7% of the UK’s land mass, or some 6,500 square miles.

Grouse shooting comes in two forms: walked-up shooting, which involves groups of shooters who walk around a predetermined area and drive the grouse from the ground, and driven grouse shooting, which involves a group of beaters who scare the grouse from the ground towards a line of shooters. One of the petitions calls for a ban on driven grouse shooting, but as my hon. Friend said, it seems slightly illogical to wish to ban only one form of grouse shooting.

Clearly there are informed and strongly held views that grouse shooting is detrimental to our environment and wildlife. Concerns have been expressed about how the way in which the moors are managed contributes to flooding and is responsible for the destruction of other wildlife, including some of our national birds of prey in particular. I am aware that many other hon. Members wish to participate in the debate, so I will be unable to go into all the detail of the issues raised in the time available to me in opening, but I hope others will pick up on the other points. I will deal with what I see as the main issues.

One of the biggest questions, as I see it, is whether the management of grouse moors is good or bad for our environment. First, we have to look at moorland management and whether the moors must necessarily be managed. Moorland looks wild, but in fact it is a carefully managed environment. It is thanks to grouse shooting that over the past 30 years grouse moor managers in England have been responsible for the regeneration of more than 217,000 acres of heather moorland. The petition to ban mentions that such moorland is an important part of the ecosystem and local habitats, so one of the big questions to be asked is, if we were to ban grouse shooting, how would that important habitat otherwise be managed?

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend. Does he agree that the question is not just how this moorland would be managed were grouse shooting to be banned, but whether it would exist at all or instead be given over to belts of conifers or grazed farmland? Surely the existence of the moorland is a reflection of grouse moor management over generations.

[Steve Double]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point, which I will develop later in my speech, and I agree with him completely.

The management of the moorland for grouse provides the manpower to tackle invasive plants such as bracken and ragwort, along with saplings and shrubs of other species, and keeps the heather moorland clear. That level of intervention would not be viable without the grouse shooting industry. In England, grouse moor owners spend approximately £50 million every year on moorland management; in Scotland, the figure is more than £30 million. If grouse shooting were banned, where would the funds to manage the land come from?

Another concern expressed by those who wish to ban grouse shooting is that it causes flooding. I understand the logic of their argument: grouse moor management can increase the risk of flooding, because burning reduces the ability of the moor to absorb rainfall and run-off must therefore increase, leading to flooding further downstream. I suggest, however, that that is too simple a conclusion and that the issue is far more complex. Indeed, peatland restoration is known to help to slow the rate of water run-off. Ending moorland management as a result of banning grouse shooting might actually make flooding worse and more likely to happen. I am particularly interested in hearing the Minister’s views on that when she responds to the debate, because the issue is of great concern to those who live near such moors.

Another point worth making is that many areas of heather moorland are protected in their current state by their status as SSSIs—sites of special scientific interest. If the tens of millions of pounds of income from grouse shooting were to be lost, how would those protected landscapes be maintained in their current state without the cost falling on the taxpayer, something I simply could not support?