Land Use in England Committee Report

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Tuesday 25th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I am tail-end Charlie and also an interloper, so I need to begin by drawing the House’s attention to my entry on the register. I congratulate the committee, as others have, on producing such a clear and informative report and on having done so without losing itself in impenetrable jargon and the alphabet soup referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, on his magisterial introduction.

If I had been a member of the committee, I would have been pretty disappointed with the Government’s response to the central recommendation to create a land use commission. I found the case pretty strongly made. For me, the coup de grâce was given in paragraph 225, which lists the five separate government departments that will have responsibility in this area.

Governments, constrained by the demands of the five-year electoral cycle, find it awfully hard to enter into the long-term commitments that provide the bedrock on which so much of our long-term planning depends. In a previous life, I chaired another committee of your Lordships’ House on citizenship and civic engagement. The House will understand from its title that it was cross-departmental and dealt with a very long tail. We learned some lessons from that, because the then Government were also reluctant to consider a co-ordinating body. We discovered two particular problems, which I offer now to my noble friend the Minister on the Front Bench and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, as chairman of the committee. The first is what we call “initiativitis”. Ministers would arrive keen to do a job and to show that they were doing something quickly, so they would set a hare running. Then, because it takes time for that hare to prove that it is worth having or not, by the time it was so proved or not proved, the Minister was gone—up or down the greasy ministerial pole—and, as a result, the initiative then mouldered in decent obscurity.

Linked to this was the absence that we found of any institutional memory—some body, somewhere, responsible for learning from and sharing success and failure, for co-ordinating different policies in different departments and along the way ensuring value for money for the taxpayer. I hope that the Minister can find a way to think further about that issue.

I have two points to make about the report itself. On the first, my fox was largely shot by my noble friend Lord Lucas, because he talked about the issue of water. I was disappointed that chapter 2 did not refer to water security but dealt only with food security, as water security is, in my view, an even more important point. The Environment Agency will tell us that by 2075 we will have run out of water in London and the south-east. We may be able to move water around the country, using our canal network, as has been talked about, but if we are going to build reservoirs, there will be a very substantial use of space, and it would have been helpful if the committee had spent a moment or two on that issue.

My second and absolutely fundamental issue—the elephant in the room for me—is people. It is our population, the likely rate of growth and the consequent impact, good or bad, including particularly on the many areas that are the subject of this report. I shall give noble Lords a couple of numbers. In the past 25 years, since 1997, our population has increased every year by 365,000 people, of which 100,000 is the natural increase and about 250,000 or 275,000 are arrivals from overseas. That means that our population has, over the period, increased by 9.2 million people. What do 9.2 million people look like? They look like three cities the size of Greater Manchester, which has a population of about 2.8 million or 2.9 million.

Since we are talking about a committee report on land use, I should mention that Greater Manchester has an area of about 1,276 square kilometres—so we have three of those, which is going to be about 3,800 square kilometres, which in turn is 1.5 times the size of Berkshire, which has an area of about 2,400 or 2,500 square kilometres. So over the past 25 years, we are likely to have built over an area 1.5 times the size of Berkshire.

Many believed that Brexit would bring that all to an end, but in fact the reverse has been the case. In 2021, we gave rights to remain here permanently to 500,000 people; in 2022, that number went up to 606,000 people. Allowing for some natural increases, we have probably given rights to remain here to between 1.25 million and 1.5 million people in the past two years. The Migration Observatory at Oxford University, a well-regarded think tank, thinks that the UK population is likely to increase by between 8 million and 9 million people by 2045. That means having to build over yet another 1.5 Berkshires to house them and look after them.

How is this happening? It is happening because the discussion about this has become strangely unbalanced. There are two views, both in favour of higher levels of population growth, dominating the discussion. The first is what I call the moral case—that we owe it to people less fortunate than ourselves to welcome them here—and the second is the business case—that we need people to do jobs that Brits cannot or will not do. Both those have their points of view. It is not so much about the fact that we should not have any new arrivals, as we need the economic and cultural dynamic that some new arrivals give. But it is an issue about scale, particularly in relation to the business case, because British industry and commerce are now treating migration as the default option, with consequent very serious long-term consequences for our settled population. But along the way, away from those two cases, there remain the 67.3 million people who live in this country, the settled population, whose views are rarely heard.

Their worries and concerns range widely. They do not ignore the moral or the economic case but they are about overcrowding, about damage to our environment and ecology, about our ability to meet our climate change goals and about threats to our social cohesion. In short, they are the people who would agree with Robert Kennedy when he said that GDP

“measures everything … except that which makes life worthwhile”.

What can we do about this? There is an answer, and it could be to have some sort of overarching body, perhaps called the office for democratic change, or the office for population sustainability if you prefer, perhaps created along the lines of the Office for Budget Responsibility, to provide authoritative, transparent and evidenced-based reports on the inevitable trade-offs as our population grows fast. Importantly, it would report to Parliament, thus ensuring that the concerns of the unheard, the 67.3 million unheard, including committees such as the one whose report we are discussing today, have been registered at a supra-departmental level.

What will my noble friend say? He will say nothing, if he can possibly get away with it. If he is pressed, he will say, “Nothing to do with me, guv”, and that of course means that this issue, like so many of the issues referred to in this report, will fall between the cracks of various government departments.

Let me conclude. Some Members of your Lordships’ House may read Caitlin Moran in the Times. She is a Wolverhampton born and bred journalist, and therefore an urban soul. She wrote in the Times a couple of weeks ago

“For, really, what victory has been gained if our country is one of the wealthiest in the world but our rivers are too sewage-riddled to swim in, our dawns stripped of the dawn chorus, and our children can reach university age without having heard a spring cuckoo, seen a swallow in flight or a hedgehog trundle across the lawn?”


That seems to be the challenge that this committee sought to address, a challenge that in my view will be much more difficult to meet if we continue to increase our population as we have over the recent past, but it is surely a challenge we have to continue to address, because at root it is about the sort of country we want to leave to future generations, and what could be more important than that?

Environmental Principles Policy Statement

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, made clear, I am not a member of her committee, so I shall not say much about the purpose of this regulation other than that, as she explained in her very interesting and wide-ranging speech, it is very significant. It has very significant consequences for the environment, about which so many people feel very strongly.

In my few minutes, I want to concentrate on process. Let me use the hackneyed phrase “You have the hand of history on your shoulder”. This afternoon, noble Lords are creating a precedent. This is the first time we have discussed a statement such as this. The way that it is being scrutinised will be used by the Government as a precedent for why future such arrangements should follow the same routine. It is a precedent which, I regret to have to say to my noble friend the Minister, represents another power grab by the Government and will contribute to the growing imbalance in power between the Executive and the two Houses of Parliament. It is not Lords versus Commons; it is Lords and Commons versus the Government.

As the noble Baroness said, I chair the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It is a cross-party committee—the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, whom we shall hear from in a few minutes, is one of our number. We have a terrific staff, and we meet weekly to scrutinise the 600 to 700 regulations made every year, each one of which imposes the law on every citizen of this country. We produce reports every Thursday following our meetings on Tuesdays—one has been published today—drawing the attention of the House to issues in the current crop of regulations for the week that we think might be of particular interest to your Lordships.

I emphasise that we are not concerned about actual policy. That is for the electorate to decide when the general election comes. However, we are concerned inter alia about whether the implications of the policy have been thought through, whether it has been adequately consulted on and whether it is likely to fulfil its primary policy objectives. Your Lordships will have seen from our report, which the noble Baroness quoted, that we felt that the regulation fell short of those and other objectives in several significant aspects. In its way, this is another example of the Government’s increasingly cavalier attitude towards Parliament and its duties of scrutiny.

Some noble Lords will recall a childhood game called “Grandmother’s Footsteps”. The child who was it had to face the wall and the other children playing the game would try to creep up behind. The child who was it could turn round at any moment, and if it caught the other children moving, they had to go back to the beginning. I am sure that several members of the Committee will have played that. That is what is happening here. While Parliament is looking the other way, the Government are creeping up on it, and we need to consider what we are going to do about it.

The seriousness of what Parliament faces varies. First, some of the problems could be solved by Ministers taking a better and tougher administrative grip by ensuring, for example, that impact assessments are available every time a regulation comes before your Lordships’ House. Your Lordships will not be aware of this, but last October we gave permission to a Department for Transport SI for which the impact assessment was published six months later, in April. What use is that? Secondly, departments could do a great deal better planning so that fewer instruments arrive in a rush, with the almost inevitable consequence that there has been inadequate consultation.

Some of the problems could be solved by greater clarity in policy, by, for example, distinguishing between regulation—the law—and guidance. I ask noble Lords to cast their minds back to the first month of the Covid outbreak. Do your Lordships remember being told that you could exercise only once a day? That was not true. Exercising once a day was in the guidance. The regulation—the law—put no limit on the number of times you should exercise. There was this wash-over between regulation and guidance, determinations, protocols and all sorts of other semi-legal pieces of government policy.

The Government could also improve things by not increasing the use of tertiary legislation, in which powers are passed down outside Parliament to bodies over which there is no democratic observance or control. The College of Policing, which is extremely important to the way our police service operates, has no statutory role at all but has a great deal of influence in the policy followed in that area.

All the really fundamental challenges come from the Government’s increasing use of what we have come to call framework Bills, in which the statute has only the broadest sense of policy travel and all the detail, which is what really matters to us all, is left to secondary legislation. In essence, the regulation before us is an example of what happens when you have a framework Bill. The parent Act, the Environment Act 2021, will have gone through the careful, helpful, thorough scrutiny afforded to primary legislation, both here in your Lordships’ House and in the House of Commons. But no one then knew the way in which the Act would be brought into force and the detail that would follow.

I take one example from the noble Baroness’s speech a few minutes ago. She talked about the definition of “proportionate”. I ask members of the Committee to hold that word in their mind for a second. The challenge we face with secondary legislation scrutiny is that, while we can discuss it—as we are doing this afternoon—say what is wrong with it and question my noble friend about what he is going to do about it, no matter how unsatisfactory his answer is, we cannot amend it. We can only accept or reject it. Since the latter is a pretty nuclear option, not surprisingly your Lordships’ House has been reluctant to finger the reject button.

I go back to the word that I asked the Committee to hold in their mind a minute ago. If “proportionate” had been in the primary legislation, think of the discussion there would have been about it and what would have gone on in the House. There would almost certainly have been some amendments about it, some definitions sought and clarity requested. The Government’s thinking would have been teased out in all sorts of ways. This afternoon, an hour from now, it will be through—done and dusted. The House will have no further say about it except and until a Minister—I do not mean my noble friend—says, “Well, I think we’ll change this a bit and put through another regulation”, which we will also be able to discuss and debate but not change. I hope my noble friend’s officials will not pass him a note saying, “Minister, when you come to wind up, just remind the Committee that all the regulations have to be approved”. They do, but the way they have to be approved is a sophistry. There is no reality to it at all.

Why are these draft framework Bills being brought forward? First, the world is moving faster and the rather stately pace of primary legislation is finding it hard to keep up. I recognise that. Secondly—and perhaps less attractively—the Government have brought forward legislation on which they have not been able or willing to undertake the intellectual heavy lifting to think through the policy before the parent Bill is brought before your Lordships’ House. It is a policy you might describe as making it up as you go along. Thirdly—and worst of all—Ministers are seduced by their civil servants, who say, “Minister, don’t let’s write this into the primary legislation. It is awfully inflexible if we do. Let’s just take some powers and then if we don’t like it, we can change it. We know neither House can amend those regulations, whereas if the primary Act gets stuck, goodness me, there’s going to be trouble. We’d need a new Act and the Prime Minister will ask why we’re stuck on this silly thing and who got it wrong in the first place.” Therefore, the tendency is to let this all pass by and appear at a lower level, as we are seeing this afternoon.

I said I have some sympathy with the view that the world is moving faster and primary legislation cannot keep up. But if the Government want to grab a little, as they are doing this afternoon, they need to give a little. They must help establish a new procedure for scrutinising framework Bills. In fact, I do not mean framework Bills but Bills in which there are framework clauses. Most of what we do with secondary legislation is fine, but there are an increasing number of areas—we have seen some this afternoon, as set out in the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter—where we need the ability to dig in and, where necessary, amend.

I said at the beginning of my remarks—I must end them shortly—that this regulation represents a precedent. Well, we are going to see a lot of precedents in the next few months. We have the Schools Bill, the Online Safety Bill and the Brexit freedoms Bill. If that is as I am told, I do not think that those who voted for Brexit, saying that it would mean we were taking back control, thought that meant taking control from Brussels and handing it to Whitehall without Parliament even seeing it on the way through, but that is what that Bill sounds as though it will do.

My noble friend the Minister may be tempted to respond by saying to me, “Look, guv, it is nothing to do with me. I am a junior Minister in Defra and this is all above my pay grade. This is the wrong speech to be making here; go to the Cabinet Office and try it again.” With great respect to my noble friend, I am afraid he is wrong. The bedrock of our democratic system is trust and confidence, leading to the key ingredient of informed consent. Every government Minister has a duty and role to make sure that principle of informed consent is adhered to and strengthened. These regulations, the Schools Bill, the Online Safety Bill and the Brexit freedoms Bill are stretching that principle of informed consent to breaking point, and so risk undermining public confidence in the way our governmental system operates. I am sure the Committee and, I hope, my noble friend accept that that would be a disastrous outcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness and her eloquent, thoughtful contribution. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on giving us this opportunity to debate the first statement on environmental principles.

I start by following some of the points my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts contributed. In particular, I look forward to hearing my noble friend’s response to the call of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report. It says in paragraph 40 that, as

“this is the first policy statement under the Act, it is essential that the practical implementation and effectiveness of the policy statement … be properly monitored and evaluated by all government departments”.

That was touched on by most of the contributions this afternoon.

When I was in the other place chairing the EFRA committee, I was at my wits’ end because so many of the regulations that came through were from Europe, and we could only—as my noble friend has explained—rubber-stamp them. They contained all the policy provisions. As we know, we often gold-plated them. One of the benefits of leaving the European Union is that we can no longer gold-plate policy from that particular quarter. It is very important, as my noble friend Lord Hodgson explained, that we have the opportunity to think through—this is the role of that committee—not only whether the policy has been adequately consulted on but whether it fits in with the primary policy objective. So often we find that not to be the case.

We have taken an awful lot on trust in the last two years. We have adopted very important Acts of Parliament with huge powers under Henry VIII clauses. Possibly—I say this as a very brave Back-Bencher—we ought to take the nuclear option more often, because we are imposing real obligations on businesses. I am thinking in particular of farmers and landowners. Perhaps we will leave it to the main opposition parties to do that on more occasions and we can cower behind them.

My noble friend came out with this idea of having a new procedure to scrutinise these framework Bills in the first place, but surely we could just make more use of the procedure we have of considering draft Bills. It is incumbent on the Government to explain why we are not using that procedure. We are running into enormous problems in this Session as well, where we have passed down the opportunity to consider things at the stage of a draft Bill. Perhaps ask a scrutiny committee or a Select Committee in each House to do this as part of their regular work. I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and her committee would do that.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I absolutely accept what my noble friend says. I was not suggesting that this was the only way to skin the cat; I was just trying to say that this was one way it could be skinned. The important thing is to get a discussion going about the fact that the cat needs skinning. We have not got to that but we need to get to it. The procedure is of secondary importance; the first thing is to persuade the Government and the Opposition Front Bench that this issue needs addressing.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I put on the record that I do not wish to skin any cat, for obvious reasons. I am just trying to support my noble friend’s proposal and the noble Baroness. Peace has broken out on the Committee.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on the ground she covered in her opening remarks. I do not wish to comment where I agree, but I take issue with one thing—my noble friend the Duke of Wellington is very aware of this. I believe it is unacceptable to continue to have the possibility of raw sewage entering the river or bathing waters at an earlier stage. I know this is a different department; this is one of the problems we have identified this afternoon. If you are to have a commitment, which I think all parties agree to, of building 300,000 houses a year on land that is prone to flooding, in inappropriate places and connected to pipes that are not fit for purpose—the Government and the department accept that they are Victorian pipes—we need to allow a massive investment in the next AMP round, the price review in 2024, for the water companies to do this. I challenge my noble friend to bring forward Section 23 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 to enable us to do so. In 2007 Michael Pitt called for an end to the automatic right to connect. It is inappropriate that someone living in an existing development should face the possibility of raw sewage coming into their home because the wastewater does not fit into the existing pipes. We have to end this disgusting practice, and now.

I am a big supporter of Surfers Against Sewage but it is missing the point. We are dealing with this at the wrong stage, and much as I welcomed my noble friend the Duke of Wellington’s amendment, that is too late. If we have this housing commitment—I do not disagree with it; I just do not know where all these people are coming from—we need the investment in wastewater. Bring forward Schedule 3, give us a date and ensure that we end the automatic right to connect with no provisos, ifs or buts—just completely end it—allow water companies to disconnect until the investment has been made and recognise water companies as statutory consultees. Then we will no longer be pumping raw sewage into rivers and bathing waters in the first place. I shall calm down now.

I invite my noble friend and the department—as my noble friend Lord Hodgson asked us—to make sure that there is joined-up thinking between the different policies coming out of one department. I make a plea that food production, as the NFU president asked for today, be recognised as a top priority of the department. I have heard my noble friend either respond to Questions or make Statements in this regard on a number of occasions and I wholeheartedly support him in that, but we are currently only on 60% self-sufficiency in food. The NFU pointed out today in the publication of its survey that farmers’ confidence to invest has been severely dented by all the reasons the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, rehearsed before us this afternoon. It has been dented by the spiralling costs of energy and fuel in this country, which are not within our control; they are the result of the war in Ukraine. That is a challenge to the Government; we have to have more storage of gas. We cannot have just 30 days —or was it 60 days?—of storage. It is clearly insufficient before we go into another autumn.

How does my noble friend respond? I invite him to support the call from the NFU for the Government to introduce a duty on Ministers to assess the impact of any new policy—I take the environmental statement of principles to be a new policy—on food production.

The survey results from the NFU show that a third of arable farmers have made changes to their cropping plans in the last quarter or four months, which 90% of growers attributed to rocketing fertiliser costs. Growers are now switching from growing milling wheat for bread to growing feed wheat for animals, because it has a lower fertiliser requirement. Also, over the next two years dairy farmers were most concerned about prices of feed, with a 93% increase; fuel, with a 91% increase; energy, with an 89% increase; and, as my noble friend the Minister knows, fertiliser, with an 88% increase.

Why is this important? As we consider the environmental principles policy statement today, the Government are putting the finishing touches—I hope—to the environmental land management schemes. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has spoken eloquently on this on a number of occasions. There are simply too many competing uses for land. Will my noble friend confirm that farming and food production are public goods for the purposes of environmental land management schemes, and that the five environmental principles before us—the integration, prevention, rectification, polluter pays and precautionary principles—will have a crossover to ELMS, with the sustainable farming incentive, local nature recovery and landscape recovery uses? Without that, it will be totally confusing for our farmers and growers to know what they have to do.

I welcome the opportunity to debate these issues today. I hope we will be able to give confidence to farmers, growers and consumers and have greater clarity, not just on what the environmental principles will be but on how these will impact on ELMS and other aspects of Defra work.

Agriculture Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 162 and 171. I am delighted to thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, and my noble friend Lord Caithness for their support.

I believe that it is essential to have a report on progress on food security more frequently—I would suggest every year. Amendment 162 therefore seeks to increase the frequency of publication by the Government of their proposed reports on food security. While I welcome the fact that the Government have indicated their willingness to produce an early report, a five-year interval between reports is much too long for such an important and sensitive issue. Every 10 years we have an issue of food security or animal health—pest, pestilence and, currently, pandemic. We had BSE; we had foot and mouth disease; and we had the horsegate scandal, which could have been much worse, rather than just a fraud.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has, if anything, highlighted even more the strains and stresses within the food supply system. There is no doubt that some of these issues will continue to be a problem for a long time to come. This is the first time in my living memory that we have experienced empty supermarket shelves and people having to queue to shop for food and having restricted choice within food retail outlets. The loss of the food service sector through the government lockdown measures was also a major shock that caused many consumers to consider issues around food security for perhaps the very first time.

We have become complacent over time about our ability, as a relatively rich nation, to secure our necessary food both domestically and internationally, but this could become a much more difficult proposition in the future. One of the most important objectives of a Government is to ensure that their people are well fed and it is therefore imperative that issues around food security are given much greater pre-eminence than envisaged by the Bill, which provides only for five-yearly reports.

Currently, the UK is only around 60% self-sufficient in food and we are reliant upon imports for our remaining food need. If anything, it has become apparent that more and more nations around the world are becoming increasingly nationalistic in terms of their trading policy. There is a risk that a tightening of supplies globally could cause issues for food supply. However, food supply is not just about quantity but quality. The issues of food security go the heart of ensuring that we are not offshoring our environmental and animal welfare problems by the food that we are importing into the UK. We want, surely, to promote, protect and enhance these high standards both at home and internationally and, therefore, our trading policies must reflect that. An annual report from government is a good basis on which to start and a good discipline to ensure that matters are kept in sharp focus.

Turning to Amendment 171, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for their support. Again, while I welcome the Government’s commitment to produce a regular report on food security, it is vital that this is a means through which the Government express their policy targets and mechanisms to address issues around food security.

Currently, the provisions in the Bill envisage a fairly static output that merely reports on the current food security situation. I would prefer to see a more dynamic report that seeks to set out an agenda for change, where change is required. There seems little point in the Government merely producing a report of which Parliament is required to take note rather than for it to be a platform for evaluation, repurposing and informing future actions. At the very least, it will be essential to ensure that food security targets are both met and monitored. Where the report indicates that there are issues with aspects of our food and environmental security, the Government must come forward with their plans and policy for addressing these shortcomings.

Amendment 171 will provide the necessary architecture for the Government to take this forward. It will be a failure if, having taken the time to consider the importance of having a food security report, the Government did not also ensure that this report was used to inform changes in policy and procedures. A statutory requirement for the Government to address these issues is surely the sensible thing to include in this Bill.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, 163 and 172, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for having put his name to them. Since this is the first time I have spoken in Committee on this Bill, I probably need to draw your Lordships’ attention to my entry on the register of interests. More significantly for my noble friend, he will be glad to hear that, though this is the first time I have spoken, it will also be the last time I am going to speak. Bearing in mind the stately progress that is being made, I shall not be holding up proceedings any further.

The amendments in this group discussed so far are about the frequency of reports. I have no particular dog in that fight, but I offer one word of caution, which is that if these reports are going to mean something, they need to be relatively infrequent. If they are too frequent, they lose their impact. I suggest to those who are seeking too frequent reports that these may pass by too easily and quickly. A report wants to be an event when it happens.

My amendments go to another part of this clause and try to give it some teeth. Clause 17, as drafted, could result in some pretty anodyne, platitudinous reports—general statements of principle without any detail. When we talk about food security, detail will be very important. My noble friend on the Front Bench will say, “Absolutely, I understand that, and I will ensure there is going to be detail, and the reports will have plenty of focus.” But we have been here before, and we have been here recently. A Green Future contained similarly impressive objectives and an impressive monitoring procedure. This was to be under the Natural Capital Committee chaired by Professor Dieter Helm, who was the subject of some adverse comments by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, about five minutes ago. Professor Helm was to monitor performance under the green future proposals. The last annual report from Professor Helm’s committee, which was in September last year, read as follows:

“Unfortunately, the Progress Report does not in fact tell us very much about whether and to what extent there has been progress. On the contrary, the Progress Report provides a long list of actions, and presents very little evidence of improvements in the state of our natural capital.”


If we do not strengthen the wording in this clause, we will get a long list of actions and very little evidence of improvement. We need to build in some specific teeth.

The second weakness of the clause, as presently drafted, is that it could be a snapshot, whereas what we should be looking for is a continuous look—a cine film in the old-fashioned way—at the process of our food security. Perhaps I could explain further by analogy. When you go to your annual medical, the doctor looks at your heart and lungs, he sees whether your weight has gone up or down, and he tells you what the results are. That is, of course, very important. If you have a poorly performing heart, you want it treated quickly. But what is really important is how you compare with the previous year. Are you getting heavier? Are you getting lighter? Are you losing weight? Has a new mole emerged? Has your blood pressure gone up? All those sorts of things give you an idea, over a period of time, of how your health and physiology are changing. From that, the doctor can prescribe more exercise, less food, pills or whatever.

Agriculture Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very clear introduction. An advisory speaking time of four minutes is not long to tackle the far-reaching provisions of this Bill, but I want to use a few of my precious seconds to protest to the Whip on duty about how the Bill is being handled. It is not just the four-minute limit; more importantly, a good number of our fellow Peers from all parties have been scrubbed from speaking at all. Things have reached a pretty pass when Members of your Lordships’ House are prevented from speaking at Second Reading of a Bill of this magnitude. Please do not play the pandemic card in reply. It will be perfectly possible to extend this debate by another half day to enable all who wish to speak to do so. Our fellow Peers deserve no less.

In my remaining time, I will focus on Clause 17 and food security. I remind the House that I am a controlling shareholder in a company that owns a modest amount of farmland. On 14 May, there was a very interesting debate in your Lordships’ House on food security, ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and equally ably replied to by the Minister. However, given the scale of the challenges we face to our future food security, through a combination of 40% increase in the world population—some 4 billion people—the impact of climate change and risks to the ability to move food around the world, Clause 17 is far too bland and unsecure. We need not expressions of hope but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, said, duties on the Government.

I will give three quick examples. First, there needs to be a stated government policy on what level of food security is sought. Currently, it is about 50%. Is that the right level? Should it be higher or lower? The public are entitled to know.

Secondly, the clause says nothing about water. The Environment Agency tells us that we will run short of water within 20 years, and that we are entering, in the words of the chairman of the Environment Agency, “the jaws of death”. Significantly for our food security, the shortage of water will be most acute in the south-east of England, where some of our most productive farmland is located.

Finally, the clause makes no reference to the number of mouths that will have to be fed 20 years or so from now. What will the population of the United Kingdom be? Those numbers are stark. The ONS mid projection suggests that the population of the UK 25 years from now will be 72 million people, an increase of about 6 million, equivalent to two and a half cities the size of Manchester today. To provide the necessary homes, offices and other space for those people is likely to require us to tarmac over an area the size of Bedfordshire.

One of the challenges faced by all Governments is the inevitable public bias towards the present at the expense of the future. People find it hard to give proper weight to problems that lie 20 years away and are, unsurprisingly, inclined to focus on the short-term challenges they face, but if the pandemic has taught us anything it is that an absence of strategic thought and planning can carry a heavy cost, so I shall end with that great Jewish saying, “Start worrying. Details to follow.”

Common Fisheries Policy and Animals (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his elegant and succinct summary of this long SI. I would like to ask a couple of questions. The first is about the enforcement of these fisheries rules. Page 14 has a reference to Article 23 and to projects involving “catches and discards” and so on. I remember from the time when I worked in the fisheries department, at what is now Defra, that enforcement of the rules is actually as important as the statutory framework itself. We are obviously moving from an EU-based system to a UK one, and in some cases to a devolved system. It may be beyond the reach of this SI, but can the Minister say anything reassuring about enforcement? Vessels will obviously come from other EU member states; they may not always be punctilious about discards and catches. Our own fishermen also need to be properly protected.

The second point is on the issue of errors, which we heard about in the previous debate and again here. Are any steps being taken, as part of the Brexit process and more generally, to minimise the amount of errors that there are in SIs? If an SI is wrong even in terms of one spelling mistake, my recollection is that you have to re-lay it. I found this to be a problem when I was in the business department, so I took steps to make sure that the SIs did not come through with errors in them. “Right first time” is obviously a good principle. Can anything be done in that area to help? I am sure that we will have a lot more SIs as work on Brexit continues into the more detailed areas.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend Lord Gardiner and to the Committee for having missed the first 45 seconds of his elegant introduction. My noble friend Lady Chisholm dealt with her business faster than I anticipated, so I was caught in the corridor. I am the chairman of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which has looked at this instrument. Our report is in the papers for today’s meeting and our committee was obviously concerned about fishing, because fishing and fisheries policy is quite a hot topic on two grounds. One is that the “take back control” argument rides quite high in fishing; the other is the increased focus today on marine conservation, preservation, resources and so on. The committee also saw that this is a “made affirmative” instrument, and therefore has speedy passage under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act. One is always concerned about how and why it had to be done at this last minute, and so quickly, and whether it meets the requirements laid down in that Act for going through the “made affirmative” procedure.

I heard my noble friend say that this is about tidying up the statute book. Part 2 of the annex to the Explanatory Memorandum indicates that the Minister is required to make an “Appropriateness statement”, and Mr George Eustice has made a statement saying that in his view the SI,

“does no more than is appropriate”.

If we are tidying up the statute book, we do not need to think about that as part of our consideration here. This is nothing to do with tidying up the statute book.

Those are the technical issues. My real concern is the fact that we are moving from two layers of supervision to one. We are coming out of the EU; I understand all that. Up to now, each individual member state has put positions to the EU. The EU has made decisions and those have been passed back to the individual member states. That is clearly not appropriate, it does not work under the new structure, but we now have a situation where Defra is marking is own homework. Nobody is checking and saying whether it is a good decision or a bad decision; Defra is deciding it.

I know that the Government have in mind—we refer to this in our report—to introduce a stand-alone supervisory body to ensure that Defra does not mark its own homework for longer than is strictly necessary. It would be helpful as part of the consideration of this SI if the Minister could update the Committee on where we are with the creation of this new body, when it is going to arrive—I imagine as part of the Environment Bill—and how it is going to develop. Can he also generally reassure the Committee that we have in mind to ensure a proper a balance of powers, and that the Government, in the shape of Defra, will not have all the cards for longer than is necessary?

Kew Gardens (Leases) (No. 3) Bill [HL]

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st May 2019 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, at end insert—
“( ) The Secretary of State may not grant a lease for more than 31 years under subsection (1) unless he or she has consulted the Charity Commission on the compliance of the proposed lease with the functions of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, under section 24 of the National Heritage Act 1983 and with sections 117 to 123 of the Charities Act 2011 (restrictions on dispositions of land) and the results of that consultation have been published.”

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, with this amendment, we leave the harsh atmosphere of steel manufacture for the gentler world of Kew Gardens, and what better day to do so than the first day of the Chelsea Flower Show?

I will begin by making it clear what my amendment is not about. It is not an attack on the Bill itself, which I think has an excellent purpose in encouraging Kew, like all semi-public bodies, to make best use of its assets. It is not an attack on the institution itself. I explained at Second Reading that, though I am no plantsman, I am aware of Kew’s worldwide reputation, and it is part of our soft-power armoury. It is not an attack on the trustees—good men and women true—who, I am sure, are doing their best. It is not an attack on the Minister, who has given several passionate speeches in favour of Kew during the earlier stage of this Bill; and nor, indeed, is it an attack on his officials in the Box, who have been more than kind to us, and who have written, had meetings and helped those of us with an interest in this topic as much as could reasonably be expected.

But the French have a phrase—the French always have a phrase—“autres temps, autres mœurs”. For those of you who cannot understand my execrable French, it means “other times, other customs”. All of us who are involved and who have an interest in this Bill will eventually move on, and we cannot be certain that those who come after us will be as well motivated as today’s participants and protagonists. Therefore, we need to ensure that the keys to the castle are safely guarded for ever against two broad types of possible events. The first I could describe broadly as conspiracy—that is to say, in the future, a determined effort to misapply Kew’s assets, maybe in response to some shift in national government policy. The second type—in my view a more likely outcome, but I hope I am not using unparliamentary language—is a cock-up: that is, an administrative failing or oversight that is not caught in time.

This is the essence of my amendment. The Bill’s intention is to open up considerable financial returns by extending the maximum term of a lease from 31 years to 150 years. The Explanatory Notes focus on seven houses on Kew Green that are owned by the Crown and are said to be surplus to Kew’s requirements. Before we go any further, I would be grateful if the Minister could explain whether there are any other assets to which the Bill might apply in future that are currently hidden from view. In other words, is this a one-shot deal after which nothing else can happen, or, when the Bill is passed, might we suddenly find that a series of other assets is revealed?

My direct concerns are twofold. As I said, the Bill increases the financial resources available to Kew. Noble Lords will be familiar with the crime thriller book or film in which the grizzled detective with 25 years’ experience tells his naive new recruit to “follow the money”. That has been a feature of some charities’ behaviour in recent years—a tendency to overlook and downplay the fact that, as a charity, it has a stated public benefit objective and instead to be dazzled by access to funding. That is my first concern.

My second concern is potential inflexibility. Extending leases is of course financially very attractive. However, once the lease is signed, the asset is effectively gone, at least for 150 years. At Second Reading, a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, drew attention to places where Kew’s service performance offering might be improved. So we need to be sure that any new arrangements balance the search for funding today with the constraints on Kew’s future operations and its overall performance in future. I would feel happier if we had a clear regulatory structure and lines of authority.

I will not repeat what I said at Second Reading. Suffice it to say that the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a charity—but a charity with a difference. It is what is known as an “exempt charity”: that is, it can access all the benefits of a registered charity, on tax and so forth, but it does not—indeed, cannot—register with the Charity Commission, which therefore has no sight of, and no ability to watch, what is happening in the charity. Instead, an exempt charity has what is called a “principal regulator”, which in Kew’s case is Defra—the Minister’s department. However, “principal regulator” is a misnomer. The principal regulator’s sole task is to ensure compliance with charity law. When the principal regulator discovers malfeasance, it can do nothing about it. It has no enforcement power but has to pass the case on to the Charity Commission to take whatever actions are necessary. As I said at Second Reading, its role will be closer to that of a traffic policeman than that of a regulator. On top of this already somewhat confused situation, we have the provisions of the National Heritage Act 1983, which has a whole section devoted to Kew and gives the Minister very wide powers indeed, but which nowhere mentions the need for an exempt charity to comply with the provisions of the Charities Act, despite the Minister having the very wide powers to direct the board.

My noble friend Lord Eccles has been good enough to put his name to this amendment. I am delighted that he has done this, because as a past chairman of Kew he can speak with far greater authority than I can. I think he intends to focus on the part of the ministerial brief on power, so I will say no more about it now.

What is the department’s answer to this regulatory model? Its deus ex machina is the existence of a memorandum of understanding signed in 2010 between the department and the Charity Commission, in which—as I understand it; I have not seen it so cannot be certain what it says—the department binds itself to observing the principles of charity law in connection with Kew. I do not doubt that this represents an effective tactical bridge, but strategically it is very weak because an MoU is capable of being swept away at the stroke of a ministerial pen.

My amendment aims to reinforce that potentially weak bridge. It does so by binding the existing MoU into the Bill, requiring the Secretary of State in statute, before he grants any lease extensions, to consult the Charity Commission and to publish the results of that consultation. Some, perhaps including my noble friend, may argue that this is bureaucratic, to which I reply that Kew’s worldwide reputation is too valuable to take chances with. The need for these consultations will be infrequent—perhaps only one will be needed if my noble friend gives the answer that only seven properties will ever fall under the provisions of this Bill.

About quarter of an hour ago, the noble Lord, Lord McFall, moved a series of changes to the procedure rules of your Lordships’ House. One of them permits short explanatory statements to amendments. I thought I might be able to add one to this amendment, so I went to the Public Bill Office to ask whether I could. I was told, “Not yet, you are jumping the gun. You have to wait until the House has passed it”. If I were able to table a short explanatory statement summarising what I am trying to achieve, it would read as follows: “to clarify and strengthen the lines of responsibility for ensuring compliance with charity law for the trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Defra, the relevant government department, and the Charity Commission”. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

Before my noble friend leaves behind the issue of the leases, can he let the Committee know whether other assets could be leased, or are we talking just about seven properties on Kew Green?

--- Later in debate ---

I will look again at some of the key points raised, but I want to emphasise that the whole purpose of this legislation, in moving from the figure of 31 to 150, is to release funds for Kew to do what we all want it to do: supply solutions to many of the issues facing our ecosystems. It is science that I will always put first. I have problems with the amendment because of the legal situation, and although I am very happy to continue discussions with my noble friends to provide reassurance, I hope my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment at this time.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister has been extremely courteous and accepted interventions from all sides of the House, which is very good of him. He may be regretting the briefing he provided for us before Second Reading, at which he was unwise enough to say, “I hope some of you are going to take an interest in this Bill and we get enough speakers”. He may have put his head into the lion’s mouth there.

I thank my noble friend Lord Eccles, who brings a wealth of experience and insight to this and brought out the difficult balances that are to be struck—no one is suggesting that what we are trying to tackle is easy. To the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, I say that of course we understand that Kew needs the money; but we need to make sure there are appropriate checks and balances and that we are not chasing the money too much. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for her general support.

My noble friend made three important points. First, he said that the focus is on seven residential properties but there are no immediate plans to go beyond that. That is a careful set of words. Secondly, he was very careful and courteous also in dealing with the “core” and “non-core” point, brought up by my noble friend Lord Eccles.

Finally, as I understand it, the legal advice is that this amendment does not have effect because the Crown land has no link with a charity and therefore with the Charity Commission. I am therefore not quite sure why the department needs to sign an MoU to ensure compliance with charity law because if it was just—

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

This is because the MoU relates to the plants, collections and functions, not to the land.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

That is very helpful. So the MoU is narrowly drawn in that sense. I am grateful for that. I want to make sure that somewhere in this legislation we know how big a set of opportunities we are offering Kew and make sure that there are no unnecessary opportunities for side deals which may release funds for Kew in the short term in a way that does not deal with its long-term objectives, which we all support. We will carry on the discussion. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

Following on slightly from the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, can the Minister address the nature of the leases? These will presumably be repairing and insuring leases, in the sense that at the end of the term of the lease Kew will want the property back in the state in which the lease was granted. It would be worth while if my noble friend could confirm that, either now or in writing later.

The one amendment in this group with which I have particular sympathy is Amendment 7. This seems to provide a way to get some of the answers to the questions posed by my noble friend Lord Eccles about core and non-core land and to the wider concerns in the House about whether this is a one-shot deal or whether there is—as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, just said—around the periphery of the properties a whole series of small plots of land that might at one time or another be envisaged as falling under the provisions of this Bill. Some work on Amendment 7 could provide some answers and reassurance to those of us concerned at the nibbling away that might take place over a period of time in circumstances that are hard to foresee now.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for tabling these amendments. Without going on for too long, I should like to take the opportunity to place on record a number of points.

Amendment 5 seeks to require the Secretary of State to publish, within a month of the Act being passed, an impact assessment covering any property that could be involved in these leases and any related financial liabilities and income projections. I understand that the aim of the amendment is to ensure public transparency on the scope and impacts of the leases that may be enabled under the Bill. I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for allowing me to put on record the detail already published in Kew’s annual report and accounts, which includes the valuations set for Kew’s heritage assets of land, buildings and dwellings, as well as those assets under restoration.

Kew has already estimated the value to Kew of the properties affected. I understand that the £40 million was in 2015. Since then, the assessment is that the value of leases and avoided renovation costs in the short term would be up to £15 million. This estimate is based on the seven residential leases, of which two are currently unoccupied properties that require substantial renovation. This means that there cannot be any more quantified projections other than those that Kew has given at this time.

The need to scrutinise the impacts of lease proposals will be fulfilled by Kew in taking specialist advice and preparing proposals for consideration by, first, its executive board and board of trustees and, ultimately, the Secretary of State. This includes the involvement of Kew’s finance committee, audit and risk committee and capital development committee, as well as Defra. As I have said, and as we have all realised, Kew will focus on the seven residential properties currently let on assured shorthold tenancies or empty. As I have said, Kew has no immediate plans beyond that.

I find it really rather alarming that everyone is determined that dreadful things can happen. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has already said that this is one of the most protected sites in the country. No Parliament can bind its successors. All we can do is use our best endeavours now, with the protections that are there in legislation. I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. If a Parliament decided to amend the National Heritage Act in an adverse way, of course we would regret it, but it is for future Parliaments to decide those matters. What we can deal with today is having all the protections we possibly can. I have sympathy with all that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is seeking, but it is on record—even from the noble Lord—that this is the most protected part of the kingdom.

The development of all aspects of the Kew estate will remain subject to the approval of its board of trustees and in line with Kew’s world heritage site management plan, just as any shorter-term leases already would. Although I fully endorse the desire for meaningful transparency in these leases and the motivation behind the amendment from the noble Baroness, the degree of variation means that it would be best served through Kew’s existing proposals and commitments. Indeed, the lease would be publicly available at the Land Registry when the sale completes.

It is the view of my department that this amendment would risk providing information that would not be precise. Of course, it is subject to market conditions. In addition, the Secretary of State has to follow the guidance in Managing Public Money, formerly the Treasury Green Book, which requires value-for-money assessments.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, referring to Amendment 6, made some important points about the local planning authority. I understand and share the wish of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, that any refurbishment or development should require the correct approval so that it does not compromise the property—which is Crown land—the world heritage site or Kew’s functions and activities in any way.

Kew’s activities, including any lease under the Bill’s provisions, are overseen by Kew’s board and the Secretary of State. The discussions and negotiations about leases would be initiated by Kew in accordance with its governance. This includes the trustees’ code of best practice, the National Heritage Act 1983 and the framework document between Kew and Defra. The lease itself would be prepared for and on behalf of the Secretary of State using specialist property lawyers and specialist commercial advice.

There will be numerous bespoke conditions in the lease agreement itself that shall offer the appropriate and relevant protection to Kew under this amendment. As I shall detail, these would deal with the unique nature of the land at Kew and, in particular, the listed buildings on Kew Green and, in doing so, provide complete protection for the Secretary of State and Kew.

As well as conditions bespoke to Kew, which I shall turn to in a moment, the usual lease conditions would apply. The usual leaseholder covenants include obligations not to do anything that contravenes planning; to comply with any estate regulations that may be drawn up; not to make any alterations to any part of the internal or external structure of premises without freeholder consent; to submit plans to the freeholder if consent for alteration is required; not to sublet or transfer premises without freeholder consent; not to interfere with or obstruct the performance of a freeholder in carrying out its duties; not to use the property for anything other than the use specified in the lease; not to access the property other than as specified in the lease; and not to cause a nuisance from the property. In addition, I assure your Lordships that all Kew leases will expressly include a leaseholder obligation not to do, or allow to be done, anything that will bring into disrepute the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, including its status as a world heritage site or the listed building status of any house, for example.

Some of the houses will contain features typical of buildings of this age, such as plasterwork ceilings and cornicing. Given their listed building status, features such as these may not be altered, so any lease would provide that such features must be preserved and may not be damaged in any way. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, the local planning authority, advised by Historic England, is responsible for deciding whether a proposed development, or even internal renovation, should be allowed to go ahead.

I hope I can also reassure your Lordships that the Secretary of State would absolutely not grant a lease without the recommendation of the Kew trustees. The Secretary of State would take advice from specialist property lawyers as to the appropriate level of protection given Kew’s listed building status and the world heritage site. Therefore, I believe that robust procedures are already in place to ensure that the correct approvals are made. I am as concerned as anyone that none of these buildings be refurbished insensitively, but the terms of any standard lease, bolstered by special conditions for Kew and alongside the governance that the local planning authorities, Kew trustees and the Secretary of State provide, ensure that the points in the noble Baroness’s amendment are already covered.

Turning to Amendment 7, I am again grateful to the noble Baroness for the opportunity to clarify the criteria that would apply. Instead of taking three months, I hope I am able to put on record now these points. I re-emphasise that Kew’s current proposals extend to only seven properties, two of which are unoccupied and none of which is part of the core estate. These leases are being pursued to free up vital revenue for Kew, and will do so with no impact on Kew’s core functions. I am pleased to reassure your Lordships that these criteria derive from the various protections already in place, which I have strongly emphasised. It is, however, absolutely right that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, referred to respecting the property, because that is exactly what we must do.

To preserve the protection of the property and Kew’s functions, obligations on the leaseholders would include the following requirements, which I will place on record in the context of Amendments 7 and 8: to repair and keep the property in good condition and decoration; to allow Defra or Kew to access the property to carry out any necessary works; to make good any damage caused by the leaseholder to the property or to the Kew estate; not to do, or allow to be done, anything that will bring RBG Kew into disrepute, including its status as a world heritage site; to comply with the provisions of any statute, statutory instrument, order, rule or regulation, and of any order, direction or requirement made or given by any planning authority or the appropriate Minister or court; not to alter any of the property internally or externally without the express written consent of Kew’s board of trustees and the Secretary of State; not to sublet any of the property without the Secretary of State’s consent; not to assign, transfer or sell their interest in the property without the Secretary of State’s consent; not to interfere with or obstruct the performance of the duties of the Secretary of State, or Kew by way of servant; not to use the property for anything other than the use specified in the lease; not to access the property other than as specified in the lease; not to leave the property unoccupied for a certain period of time; and, finally, not to cause a nuisance from the property. I want to be very clear that there has been proper consideration of this in reference to, as my noble friend Lord Hodgson said, the status and condition of the property.

The noble Baroness was right to raise also the issue of forfeiture. The right to forfeiture occurs when the leaseholder under a lease breaches an obligation contained within a lease. What these obligations may be are a routine part of lease agreements, and so are the conditions for termination of the lease—I have already placed these on the record—as to obligations that will ultimately result in forfeiture if breached under a Kew lease. As I said, the lease agreement itself will be drawn up by specialist property lawyers acting on behalf of the Secretary of State to reflect the various considerations and protections that need to apply in respect of the property itself, the world heritage site and Kew’s functions and activities. I should stress that lease agreements will need to be, and shall be, drawn up and agreed on a case-by-case basis by specialist property lawyers, even though they will have most conditions in common.

Forfeiture of a business lease and forfeiture of a residential property are not the same. This Bill does not seek to disapply any protection a leaseholder may have from unlawful eviction. The forfeiture clause in a lease cannot be one size fits all, since the court looks very seriously at any possession claim, and it is a complicated area of law. This does not, however, negate the fact that breach of leaseholder covenants under leases created by this Bill—such as an obligation to keep in good repair—can and will, if appropriate and if sanctioned by the courts following sufficiently serious breaches, result in the Secretary of State taking back possession of the property.

Kew Gardens (Leases) (No. 3) Bill [HL]

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I am the 10th speaker on a two-clause Bill and am succeeding my noble friend Lord Eccles, who is a past chairman of the Royal Botanic Gardens. I am aware that I should not trespass on the House’s kindness and generosity by reploughing ground that has already been extensively ploughed.

I am not a plantsman—I can just about distinguish a daisy from a buttercup—so my commenting on Kew’s professional competence would be otiose, to say the least. As many noble Lords have said, Kew has a worldwide reputation for excellence. I am a strong believer in the virtues of soft power in the modern world, and as other noble Lords have pointed out, in any list of our soft power assets, Kew would be at the top. Indeed, in preparation for this debate, having printed off the annual report of Kew, I could not help but be impressed by the quality and detail of the engagement with the public and the encouragement of volunteering, so I have an instinctive sympathy with the Bill’s strategic aim.

However, picking up a theme begun in earlier speeches, I want to be reassured that the plans envisaged in the Bill are properly thought through and have the appropriate checks and balances. I was extremely grateful to my noble friend for addressing this topic in some depth in his opening remarks, which, as an expert Minister, were as smooth as cream. One could not envisage circumstances in which any disagreement could possibly arise between the various authorities and powers involved with Kew.

As my noble friend explained, the Royal Botanic Gardens is a charity, but a charity with a difference: it is an exempt charity. It is worth the House being clear what this means. As a review of the Charities Act 2006 said:

“The exempt charities are those institutions that are comprised in Schedule 3 of the Charities Act 2011 … They are institutions that are charities but which are exempted from registration with the Charity Commission … They were granted this exemption because they were considered to be adequately supervised by another body or authority”.


Confusingly, although in practice,

“exempt charities are bound by charity law and can access the tax breaks associated with charitable status, they are not required to”—

indeed, they are not permitted to—

“register with the Charity Commission, and so are not subject to the same reporting requirements as other charities (e.g. submission of accounts). It follows that, though the Charity Commission has ultimate responsibility for the regulation of the entire charity sector, it has little visibility over this large group”:

the exempt charities, many of which have very significant assets—museums, higher education institutions, charitable and social housing projects and so on.

This is not the only confusion. To qualify as an exempt charity, a charity must have what is called a principal regulator. In the case of Kew that is Defra, under the supervision of my noble friend. That term “principal regulator” creates an unhelpful public perception of what the role entails. The legislation does not—I repeat, not—confer regulatory powers on the principal regulator, which in this case is Defra. It gives it the simple duty to promote charity law alongside its existing role. All the regulatory compliance and enforcement powers rest with the Charity Commission. So if my noble friend’s department were to believe that there had been charitable mismanagement at Kew, it could do absolutely nothing about it directly. All it could do would be to act as a traffic policeman and wave the case through to the Charity Commission for investigation, and enforcement if necessary. Your Lordships will see that this is a rather muddled situation with a confused regulatory hierarchy. As Clausewitz, the great military strategist, said, “Better a bad general than a divided command”. This is a divided command if ever I saw one.

When my noble friend comes to wind up, could he answer the following points? At the heart of the Bill is the encouragement of Kew to make better use of its property assets and general estate. Property is an issue of importance under charity law. Sections 117 to 128 of the Charities Act 2011 lay down controls on the use of land by a registered charity. Indeed, Section 117 is entitled, “Restrictions on dispositions of land: general”. First, is it intended that any actions taken under the provisions of the Bill will comply fully with the requirements of those sections of the Charities Act? Secondly, what organisation will actually grant the new leases envisaged by the Bill?

Perhaps I may refer your Lordships to the excellent briefing note produced by the Library, which says:

“The freeholds for the land and buildings used by RBG Kew have different ownership. The Board of Trustees only holds the title for the Wellcome Trust Millennium Building and adjacent land at Wakehurst Place (including Havelock Farm) … The Crown owns the land and buildings at Kew, while the National Trust owns the freehold of the remaining land at Wakehurst Place”.


There therefore appear to be three possible landlords or lessors: the trustees of Kew, the Crown and/or the National Trust. If the leases are to be granted by the Crown, will the Crown itself be subject to charity law?

I then draw the House’s attention to the provisions of the National Heritage Act 1983. Here I start to work on the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. It contains a whole section devoted specifically to the Royal Botanic Gardens, as several other noble Lords have pointed out, under Schedule 4 and Sections 23 to 29, particularly Section 24. A number of subsequent amendments may have overtaken my points and made them irrelevant, but I think these provisions are still outstanding. In Section 24, subsection (2) states:

“For those purposes the Board may, subject to the provisions of this Act - (a) enter into contracts and other agreements (including agreements for the Board’s occupation or management of land)”.


There is no mention of charity law. Subsection (3) says:

“Subject to the provisions of this Act, the Board may do such things as they think necessary or expedient … (c) otherwise for the purposes of their functions”.


That is a very wide and permissive provision. Finally, subsection (5) says:

“If the Minister directs the Board to exercise functions specified in the direction in relation to land so specified, the Board shall exercise them on his behalf in such manner as he may from time to time direct”.


These are pretty wide powers and I am not clear how they are going to mesh with the provisions of the Charities Act 2011, with which the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew should be complying, as an exempt charity.

Will my noble friend lay out in detail how his department will be supervising—riding herd—the execution of the plans provided for in the Bill? He kindly had a briefing meeting with noble Lords last week when I explained that my concerns flow from my experience with my house at Ludlow in Shropshire. The Forestry Commission proposed to give a commercial operator, Forest Holidays, the benefit of a 125-year lease. This arrangement was approved by Defra without either the commission or the department appearing to have any comprehension of the value of the concession they were granting. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, made this point. We surely do not want to risk this happening again.

In conclusion, as I said at the outset, I am not against the provisions of the Bill; nor do I attack the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in any way. However, I am for the charity sector, which is a great feature of our national life and engages the support of so many members of society. The sector has taken some blows to its reputation in recent years: tax avoidance, overaggressive fundraising, spectacular loss of financial control, malpractice of staff in charities working overseas and controversy over the level of executive salaries. Sadly, today’s Times carries an article headed, “Charities pay the price for a loss of trust”. Whenever there is trouble in the sector, any other parties who may have had some peripheral involvement in or responsibility for the particular transaction vanish like snow off a dyke. If there were to be trouble at Kew, I fear that the response of my noble friend’s department would be, “Nothing to do with us, guv. Call the Charity Commission. It is sorting it out”. I am anxious to minimise the chances of further blows to the sector’s reputation, hence my search for further reassurance on the regulatory aspects of the Bill, which, in principle, I support.

Abattoirs: Non-stun Slaughter

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, we intend to lay legislation on this matter very shortly. I wish I could give the noble Baroness and the House a precise date, but we want to bring it forward as soon as possible. CCTV will be installed in all areas where live animals are present. We want animals to have a good life and a respectful end to their lives. I think this will advance that.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, of course we must wholeheartedly and unreservedly respect freedom of religious belief, but there are among us those who would prefer not to eat meat that has been slaughtered using a mechanism that we believe causes unnecessary suffering. Will the Government now grasp this nettle and arrange for a labelling mechanism so that those of us who do not believe in following this practice have the freedom of our own belief?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the labelling issue is very important. We think it is absolutely essential that everyone can make an informed choice. We will be considering this issue in the context of our departure from the EU. I also say to my noble friend that farm assurance schemes, such as Red Tractor and the RSPCA Assured scheme, require stunned slaughter. That is an important feature.

Bee Population

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I add my thanks and congratulations to my noble friend on having given us the chance to debate this important topic this afternoon. I am the eighth speaker on what is a fairly narrow subject, so I will endeavour not to re-plough the ground that has already extensively been discussed.

I grew up in a bee-focused household. After the war, my mother began to raise and look after a few bees. We reached a peak of about 60 or 70 hives, which represents a tonne of honey. In my teenage years my pocket money was supplemented by having to look after these beastly things. I had to carry the heavy supers out of the fields back to decap them, extract them, strain them clean, bottle them and label them, and to do so in the height of summer in a room that was completely sealed and therefore roasting hot, because if it was not sealed you had some angry bees joining you very quickly indeed.

In addition, the local authority pest control department quickly gets to know that you are the source of bee collection, so when there is a problem with a swarm and a householder rings up you are sent to pick up the swarm. My noble friend Lord Patten talked about the dangers of being under the tree with inebriated bumblebees. Up the tree, on a ladder, trying to scoop a swarm into a box is a challenge of a different kind.

More seriously and most importantly, we used to get calls from local farmers asking us to move our hives to the edge of their fields to improve pollination. My noble friend Lord Patten referred to apples. The area I am talking about, south Shropshire and north Worcestershire, is a big cider apple-growing area and bees are the major pollinators of these fruits. Moving hives is also a challenge because it has to be done at night: you seal up the hives, strap them together, put them into the back of your pick-up truck and drive them to the edge of the field. Invariably, from time to time one of the straps comes loose, the hive breaks open and the result is not attractive for the driver.

Despite all this, I admired the determination and single-mindedness of bees. When I was about 18, I was told by a doyen of the British Beekeepers Association that to make a pound of honey the bees would fly 24,000 miles around the world and would visit, depending on the size of the flower, between 3 million and 9 million flowers. I thought that was a pretty impressive achievement. Clearly, bees also did an enormous amount in improving crop yields and increasing biodiversity.

As for my personal experience of bees, I liked bees but they did not like me. I was stung so many times during those years that I now have an extreme allergic reaction to bees and therefore have to carry an Epipen antihistamine injector with me as my reward for having stolen all that honey.

My family’s bee colonies have experienced the familiar story that has been described earlier in this debate; that is, weakening and dying colonies. A lot of focus has been put on varroa and similar diseases that kill outright. Like my noble friend Lord Moynihan, I wonder if that is not too simplistic an approach. Yes, we have seen hives dwindle and die and sometimes it has been because of varroa, but more often there appears to be a gradual diminution of the health of the hive, which precedes complete collapse. The diseases that weaken hives include the chalkbrood fungus, which kills the larvae, and nosema apis, which causes dysentery in the hive. These and similar diseases cause enormous stress.

Stress and bees may seem an unusual combination but when you move hives, even if you take them to the edge of a field where the pollen collection opportunities are very great, it is two or three days before the bees settle down and start to fly normally. It would be very helpful if the Minister could spend a minute or two explaining to my noble friend and me what is the wider view of colony susceptibility. We could usefully spend some time trying to pick apart the different strands of that problem.

As my noble friend also said in his excellent introduction, there have been attempts to increase the number of hygienic honey bees. He gave the figure of 10%; I am told that it is about 15%. Nevertheless, as he pointed out, it is important to see whether we can increase those strains to tackle those diseases in a different way.

As an alternative approach to improving the health of a hive, there is the facilitation of food collection. Research has shown that, in spring and early summer, bees, on average, fly only about 700 metres to find food. By March, that figure has risen to nearly 4,000 metres. That is another type of stress for a hive and, as many noble Lords have said, is a direct result of the intensification of our agriculture. We need to find ways to increase pollinated habitats. Perhaps the Minister could update the House on developments in that area through the environmental stewardship schemes or similar policies. We need not just to increase the pollinated habitats, because, as the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Cheltenham, said, certain plants in the pollinated habitats can be particularly effective and helpful to bees, and we need to focus on them.

That takes me to the important point: who is in charge of all this? My research, via my mother, found a range of bodies involved. Of course, there is Defra. There is the 10-year healthy bee strategy referred to by my noble friend Lady Byford. That covers England and Wales, but not Scotland. There is a five-year insect pollination initiative, which is led by the research councils, also includes Defra, and covers Scotland. There is the Natural England environmental stewardship scheme and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, covering the licensing of honey bee medicines. Are those bodies, plans and programmes properly co-ordinated to best effect, and, if so, by whom?

The debate has, understandably, focused on honey bees, but I add my support to those noble Lords who have talked about the importance of alternative pollinators: bumblebees, moths, which have not been mentioned in the debate so far today—67% of common species have declined in the past 40 years—and butterflies, which are making a comeback in ordinary species, but specialist species appear to remain in decline. There is work to be done. Research and assistance is needed if we are to reverse those trends, which broadly follow the decline of the honey bee.

To conclude, it is easy to see this issue as one of the availability of honey—the Rupert Brooke romantic vision, “Is there honey still for tea?”—but it has a much wider dimension. A 2009 study by Reading University suggested that a total loss of pollinators would drastically cut the yields of oilseed rape, orchard fruit, soft fruit and beans. The Reading estimate of the cost was £400 million, or 13% of UK farming income. That, in a nutshell, is why my noble friend Lord Moynihan has performed such a valuable task by introducing the debate today.

British Waterways Board (Transfer of Functions) Order 2012

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Smith of Finsbury]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest as chairman of the Environment Agency. I very much welcome the transformation of the British Waterways Board into the new Canal and River Trust and I am grateful to the Minister for the helpful way in which he introduced our discussion. I particularly welcome two things about what is happening. First, I welcome the encouragement and facilitation of increased public and community participation in decision-making about what happens to our waterways. I very much hope that the Government’s intentions in this respect will come to fruition in the way in which the new CRT operates. Secondly, I very much welcome the funding package which the Government have put in place to enable the transfer. In the spirit of the times, it is a somewhat generous package but it will enable a really good start to be made on the work of the new trust.

It is, of course, the Government’s ambition to go a bit further in two to three years’ time and to include the Environment Agency’s navigation responsibilities in the new Canal and River Trust. I welcome that ambition and we in the Environment Agency will do everything that we can to assist the process. At the moment, we have responsibility for something like 1,000 kilometres of statutory navigation. This includes, crucially, the River Thames and the River Medway, Rye Harbour, the Great Ouse, the River Nene, the Stour in Suffolk, the Wye and the Dee conservancy in Wales—substantial navigable rivers of iconic importance. Our responsibilities for those waterways include a duty to maintain them in a condition in which people can safely enjoy the statutory public right of navigation that exists on them. We will continue to endeavour to fulfil those responsibilities to the very best of our ability in the run-up to any transfer to the new trust.

We should remember how popular our waterways are. In 2009-10, the last year for which we have accurate figures, there were approximately 70 million visits to our waterways. There are 32,000 registration holders—boat owners and operators—on our navigations alone, let alone on the canals and waterways that will come under the new body. In the current financial year we will be investing around £10 million of grant in aid and £7.5 million of income, a considerable amount of that coming from boaters, in managing and operating the navigation structures on these waterways.

As we prepare for the further handover, and as we bear in mind the responsibilities that the new trust will have, a few points need to be borne in mind, and I very much hope that the Government will do so. First, on rivers in particular—this differs to a certain extent from canals—there are different traditions for different rivers; they do not all operate in exactly the same way with the same expectations for boat operators and users. Including an appreciation of the subtle differences between different waterways in any assessment of how things move forward is going to be important.

Secondly, and with the events of the past weekend weighing heavily on my mind, we need to bear in mind the need always to manage rivers for flood risk management. The importance of marrying navigation responsibilities with the continuing flood risk responsibilities that the Environment Agency will continue to have in waterways that transfer will eventually be an important part of what happens. Thirdly, it will be important that the money is there for any enhanced responsibilities that the new trust has when transfer occurs in a few years’ time.

Fourthly, in looking at how the new trust operates, both in its initial phase and in the second phase after the transfer of EA responsibilities, it is important that the new trust all the time bears in mind the interests of boat owners and users and the people who want to use our rivers for recreation, for quiet enjoyment and for the solace that very often our rivers can bring. It is being accorded an important responsibility. I have every confidence that the team and the arrangements that are being put in place will enable that to happen, but I hope that the Government will keep a wary eye on making sure that it does.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I also thank my noble friend for the explanation of this order. I share the enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, for this good and imaginative proposal. I do so for practical reasons. One is that, as it says in paragraph 8.12 of the Explanatory Memorandum,

“one of the benefits of moving out of the public sector will be that it should enable and encourage more innovation and diversity in the way the new charity grows its income”.

There is also an emotional reason: the first holiday I ever spent, aged 16, with three friends from school, was to hire a canal boat and travel the Shropshire Union Canal and over the Pontcysyllte aqueduct on the way to Llangollen. I doubt that you would be allowed to take a boat out now aged 16, but in those days we did not have as much health and safety as we do now. When one compares and contrasts some of the things that one sees on the waterways now with what was going on then, one sees that a lot of the developments and improvements have been made by voluntary labour, so this is a welcome extension of a trend that is already present in the waterways movement.

The putative board very kindly had a briefing meeting on 6 July last year. It explained its plans for the future, and exciting indeed they were. However, one of the questions that I would like to funnel to it through my noble friend regards the enormous cultural shift that there is going to have to be within the organisation in order to pick up and respond to the challenges of working in the private sector. As some noble Lords know, my life is in the City. When I said, “Just tell me a bit about the return on capital and post-investment appraisals”, and those sorts of things, there was an answer but not one that I would describe as being of sufficient crispness if this organisation is to hold its own against the very sharp commercial operators with which it will have to carry out joint ventures to develop its various assets. It was slightly hazy. It is important that this very imaginative proposal should succeed. Therefore, I very much hope that this body will be able to up the game, if that is the right expression.