Rural Economy

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interests, which are financial, as set out in the register, and also personal, given my actual involvement in things. I congratulate the right reverend Prelate on calling this debate. It may disappoint him, but it seems to me that rural Britain is not really homogenous, and I am afraid I am not really interested in the Home Counties. Rather, my concern focuses on the shires and beyond—what I like to think of as l’Angleterre profonde. They are particularly important to us in this country as a whole, partly because they are part of our collective sense of Britishness and of a perception, from the outside, of what this country is. In their own way, they are as important as, for example, the building where we are this afternoon, or Canterbury Cathedral, or the National Gallery.

Rural Britain is experiencing two revolutions. The first is in town and country planning. The important thing for the countryside is that the underlying thinking behind the settlement of the post-war planning regime is now under challenge. Rural Britain is not only for farming and forestry. Particularly with the development of connectivity, all kinds of possibilities are opening up that are consistent in land-use terms with what was tried to have been protected. Of course, we all know that connectivity is pretty erratic in the countryside, but I hope the relationship between fibre and mobile, with the two—as I understand it—coming together, means it may be possible to achieve an adequate overall system quicker than perhaps was previously thought possible.

Secondly, now that we have left the common agricultural policy, there is a revolution in that area too. It is worth remembering in this context that agricultural policy has always been a distinct specialist phenomenon in politics, going back to the Middle Ages, for rather obvious reasons. Public money and the public goods that the public are going to receive for it are in a state of flux.

The questions that we need to ask are twofold. First, what is rural Britain for? Secondly, how is that aspiration going to be achieved? In my case, much of my thinking is derived from looking at the Lake District, which the Minister obviously knows well. It is 40 years ago that I became a member of the Lake District special planning board and chaired its development control—that is, its planning committee. Subsequently, I have always watched what is going on very carefully. In many ways, it is completely unrecognisable from what it was then.

The point about the Lake District is that it is England’s premier national park. It is the crucible of the Romantic movement, both here and abroad, and relatively recently has been inscribed as a UNESCO world heritage site, both for its landscape and for cultural reasons, and they are equally important. It is not just any old corner of contemporary Britain or just part of our nation’s family silver; it is part of the world’s patrimony. The point of that is that it is much more significant than simply a bean-counter’s analysis of a profit and loss account.

Despite all that, productivity, as it is now measured in this country, means that the Lake District is below the national average. To a degree, that may be to do with the methodology employed. It has always interested me that water, which in very large quantities is exported into what used to be known as industrial Lancashire, does not play a proper part. It is not only that they cannot spend a penny in that area without our water; industry—and everything in society—would simply grind to a halt.

Equally, as a number of speakers have mentioned, housing policy is seriously flawed. There are plenty of houses in the Lake District, but the problem is that people who want to live there and need to work there cannot do so because housing has become a must-have asset for rich, moneyed southerners and international money. If you think about it, the houses are there. The place is a national park, so the solution is not building more houses; it is finding a way of moving the houses that are there into a category which means they will be restricted to people who live and work there. You have to think out of the box a bit, but it is far from impossible to see relatively easy ways as to how that might be done, given the political will.

The visitor economy has been mentioned. It is important, but it is beginning to cause problems along the very general lines of the problems that it is posing in places such as Venice and Barcelona. It requires considerable thought. I was a bit startled the other day when my son said to me, “You know, dad, I think the Lake District is now more famous for food and fine dining than it is for the landscape and what it’s really all about”.

Our economy is dysfunctional. Despite providing and contributing a lot to UK well-being, it still seems to be unable to generate enough money to look after itself. Its liquidity, taken across the piece, is haemorrhaging. That is why the ideas proposed in the Budget for taxing small businesses and farms are, frankly, cuckoo. You must not take working capital out of a series of activities that are losing money.

I suggest that the Minister looks at the system used for dealing with works of art in a similar context. There are all kinds of pointers that seem to suggest that there are ways of both taxing and collecting the money at the time when the asset’s value is realised. That is a much more sensible way of doing it.

The world is changing. We are not yet in a world where the policies and systemic framework surrounding all this are stable. Until just the other day, I chaired the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, which is 50% industrial and 50% rural. I believe that we managed to achieve a harmonious partnership between local authorities, the voluntary sector and industrialists. In particular, industrialists and businesspeople are important, because they are the people who know how things are done. It is very important that, as we go forward, we find a way of making sure that those who do the business take part in and drive the policy.

Storm Bert

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I live in a community in Cumbria that floods a lot, and one of the most extraordinary things when you have faced a serious flooding event is the way the local community comes together, whether that is farmers helping to clear the roads, people checking on vulnerable residents or people looking after other people’s pets when they have had to go into hotel accommodation. Community support, the way communities come together, should be hugely commended in our society, and farmers have an important role to play in that in rural areas.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, given that we seem to have more and more floods, do the Government have any analysis of whether people are taking flood warnings more or less seriously than they used to?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

That is an interesting question. All I can say, for my part and that of people I know locally, is that in the last 20 to 25 years, since the flood warning system was set up and made available to communities, we have taken the warnings extremely seriously. It is important that we have these systems set up in order that they can help people in advance. If that did not happen this time, that is something we need to look at.

Water (Special Measures) Bill [HL]

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 9th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interests in the register and by saying how much I enjoyed the preceding speech from the noble Earl, Lord Devon.

Nearly 40 years ago, I spent about a couple years as a non-executive director of North West Water, the pre-privatisation predecessor of the United Utilities water section. In my initial briefing, I was absolutely gobsmacked by the revelation of the extent of the problems thrown up by dirty water and its treatment. It was explained to me that, over possibly three or four previous generations, the dominant de facto control over these things had been in the hands of the local authority. In practice, vastly insufficient resources have been put into the underground infrastructure. The Alderman Foodbothams, to use Peter Simple’s graphic phrase, thought there were no votes in burying ratepayers’ money. Of course, they were right then.

Since those days, as we have heard from a number of speakers, there are now more people, more houses and more pollution, coupled with a genuine recognition that pollution really matters and needs addressing effectively. At the time I was involved, privatisation was in the wind. The rationale was that it would help deal with these issues. My experience suggests that the problems that I discovered then were, if anything, underestimated. They are turning out to be more difficult to deal with than was anticipated, not least because a certain amount of the low-hanging fruit has been plucked.

I believe that privatisation as taken forward has brought a number of benefits, but not universal benefits—we should remember that. The question we should ask ourselves is: what are water companies for? Their essential purpose is supplying clean water, then treating dirty water and returning it to the natural environment clean. The combination of corporate structures, with their extensive legal implications, and the regulatory framework was intended to provide a better vehicle for doing that—and, as I said, it has brought benefits. But—this is the important thing—while most directors of responsible companies are decent people who behave responsibly and are law-abiding by instinct, a certain number of people are dazzled by the financial services sector and become disciples of Gordon Gekko, in that “Greed is good”. Dazzled by the gold, they lose a proper sense of proportion. Some of the abuse that has taken place in the water sector is the result of that.

What matters is what is happening on the ground—or perhaps I ought to say what is happening in the water. The noble Earl, Lord Devon, referred to Lake Windermere, where, as we all know, there has been a well-publicised campaign about pollution problems. As he said, those are urban not rural in origin. It is true that the water in the lake is not up to the best target standards, but for years considerable sums have been spent, progress has been made and measures put in hand to improve matters.

The problem is that the way in which that campaign has been promoted has had a damaging impact on the tourist industry there. As your Lordships will know, the tourist industry was very badly hit by Covid and has not properly recovered. The message that has been received in many places is clearly—wearing my hat as the chairman of the Cumbria LEP, I have been told this by a number of angry people in the visitor economy —that, if you go on holiday to Windermere, you will be having your holiday on the Costa del Septic Tank. As can be imagined, that is not something that positively encourages people.

This is a very real and serious concern, which we must bear in mind in parallel with the overriding long-term objective of improving water standards. The scale of the problem is such that we cannot solve it all immediately—and if resources are transferred from one place to another place, somebody else is going to suffer. There has to be progress over time, which will inevitably involve a degree of political direction. We do not want to duck that.

Finally, I turn to a similar but much smaller-scale matter, which I hope I will be allowed—having been given my pass to the political tumbril—to illustrate from my own personal circumstances. It is a good graphic example of something that has a much wider application. The Minister, as a noble Cumbrian, knows that my home is too big, and is situated in the Petteril catchment area, which is part of the Eden catchment area—one of the problem catchments in this country. It has been designated as a place of national importance, which, both by statute and by contract, I am obliged to look after properly—and that is what I am trying to do.

Some of the adjacent cottages, which are an integral part of the whole, are served by a United Utilities septic tank subject to a grandfathered discharge licence dating back between 50 and 100 years. Nobody would get a discharge licence on those terms now, but it is valid. The result is that, from time to time, horrifyingly disgusting discharges go straight into a stream that is part of what I might describe as a water feature—part of the garden, which is of national significance. Visitors pay good money to see that and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.

I have talked to United Utilities about this, and the people there they explain that there is a licence to discharge, albeit that it is below contemporary standards. It is not a priority for them. I can understand their point, and where their thinking is coming from. Across rural Britain, and England in particular, there are many similar arrangements, which for practical purposes are equivalent to the well-recognised and understood private small-scale systems that exist.

I suggest that the best way of dealing with the kinds of problems that such arrangements bring about is to transfer the responsibility for dealing with those discharges from the utility company to the private landowners affected, together with a dowry to enable them to carry out the work. The companies would be relinquishing their responsibilities and taking them off their balance sheet. Speaking for myself—and, I dare say, for a lot of other people—I would much rather be subject directly to the rules and the law, and be able to take responsibility and gain control over my own immediate environment, than have no choice but passively to endure the noxious consequence of the inactivity of the utility.

I raise that as a thought, and in conclusion I simply join others in saying that I am looking forward to considering the Bill, and also the promised review in due course. This manifesto Bill is targeted at a real abuse, but we need to examine it and ensure that it meets its purpose well and avoids collateral damage. After all, that is what the House of Lords is for.

Land Use in England Committee Report

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Tuesday 25th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak as the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle’s swansong die away across your Lordships’ House. I have been one of his flock in the diocese of Carlisle for the 21 years in which he has served both as suffragan and then as diocesan bishop. While it is true that I am president of the National Sheep Association, I do not think I am ever likely to win a rosette in his class at the Loweswater Show.

As his comments today have shown, he has throughout his time here ceaselessly promoted the concerns and problems of his diocese in your Lordships’ House. As he has explained, he has also been the Bishops’ spokesman for health and social care. I understand that this arose out of a slight misunderstanding about his previous experience, which seems to me to echo the generality of how things work in politics. One of the leitmotivs of his activities has been an overriding wish to try to draw people together to get genuine agreement about the appropriate way forward.

While I have made innumerable speeches in your Lordships’ House about sheep, I have never once in over 30 years spoken about health or social care, so I am not qualified to comment, other than to say that it is quite clear from the respect he is accorded across the House that he has made a real contribution. I am sure I speak for all of us when I say to him and his family that we wish them every good wish as they emigrate from Cumbria to Oxfordshire.

Before I proceed with the rest of my remarks, I declare my interests in the register. For my part, I welcome this report and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and his committee on it, as much for the corpus of evidence assembled as for its detailed conclusions. They underscore the problems facing rural England today—indeed, rural Britain as a whole—and they are, as we have already heard, a real challenge. This collection of all the evidence is important, because the discussion of this topic has been bedevilled by there being no clear overall picture of the underlying issues, which in turn has to be the starting point for resolving the problems they pose.

The Government may have rejected the report’s main conclusion, but that does not mean that they should or can reject the reasons the committee had for reaching it. They simply cannot say, “We’ll just muddle through; it’ll all turn out all right on the night”—because I do not think it will. I, and I expect the whole House, will be interested to hear what the Minister has to tell us, if anything, about all this.

One of the most refreshing aspects of the report is that I believe it starts in the right place—the breakdown of the post-war agricultural and rural policy settlement—and does not tilt at the windmill of the CAP, which really has remarkably little to do with it. We are now in a world where the aspiration for rural England is that of a “place”—I use that word in its contemporary, slightly changed, meaning—of a mosaic of differing, quite exactly defined, land uses, rather than that of a broad sweep of a narrow range of quasi-agricultural activities. Unfortunately, it seems to me that government policy appears principally to be focused on saving money and doing this on the cheap.

On 13 July, I happened to intervene at Question Time and asked the Minister at the Dispatch Box, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, whether he agreed that emissions trading schemes offered a very valuable opportunity for regions of both this country and elsewhere to generate some much-needed income and revenue. I am afraid that the response I got was:

“I understand the point that my noble friend is making. A happy by-product for the Treasury of the emissions trading scheme is the considerable revenue that it generates, and I am sure that it is spending all this money very wisely”.—[Official Report, 13/7/23; col. 1890.]


Frankly, I was horrified by that, and I hope your Lordships are too, because it amounts to saying that the Treasury intends to use emissions trading schemes as a cash cow for itself and not to enable rural and other areas to earn money from their own activities that they need to level up. I hope the Minister can confirm that the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, on that occasion were a slip of the tongue and that the revenues generated will go to the people in the places earning them and not elsewhere. I am equally interested— as I am sure the whole House is—to hear the thoughts of the Opposition Front Bench on the same point.

It is well known that, according to economic and social indicators, much of rural England is in need of levelling up, as are the more urban and northerly parts of the country. Indeed, there is quite a lot of overlap. Critics may say that there are millionaires in the countryside, and of course that is true. But equally, there are millionaires in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and so on, so that is deliberately missing the point, because much of the wealth now concentrated in the countryside comes from elsewhere. Rural England, as opposed to suburban or urban England in the countryside, needs, deserves and is entitled to expect that the countryside should be able to pay its own way and should not be a kind of neocolonial satrapy of urban Britain. Currently there is insufficient internally generated working capital, which inhibits the changes sought and the longer-term continuity and sustainability they require.

These days, the word “partnership” is on everyone’s lips, but it seems that there are at least two problems. First, there are many different visions, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, already said, and there is need for at least a degree of agreement about what is needed. It is no good agreeing about what you do not want; it is necessary to have at least some consensus about what you do. The various arguments so often tend to be advanced by obsessives and extremists. What is required is an overall compromise to resolve mutually conflicting ideas, and intellectual rigour and flexibility are needed to effect acceptable compromise. I ask myself whether it is there.

Secondly, when government is involved in partnerships, too often it imposes its ideas and does not accord genuine engagement with others’ opinions. In this context, as was hinted at earlier, it seems that the current Government’s and the Administration’s understanding and appreciation of the realities of rural England are, shall we say, not strong.

Furthermore—again, this has been touched on—hearts and minds have to be captured. If that does not happen, it cannot work, and things cannot be achieved, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said, only by the “big battalions” or the substance of the command economy. Private property, frequently in small units, is the essential characteristic and building block of the countryside, and that and the role of SMEs and microbusinesses are at the heart of solving these problems.

As well as the obvious physical characteristics of the land itself and what is happening on it, two further essentials are not really touched on in the report. The first is tax. A lawyer I know who specialises in these matters recently commented that it is now simply not clear how either capital gains tax or stamp duty land tax affect conservation covenants. If they do, they will probably render the whole idea more or less useless, and without clarity and certainty there can be no significant progress. The same principle applies right across the board. As I intimated earlier, in the real world, unless it is worth people’s while to implement these new ideas, things simply will not happen.

Secondly, at least as important albeit perhaps more esoteric is the legal character of the rights and processes needed to bring this about. For example, how do conservation covenants relate to instruments involved with carbon capture or food production? Can payments be stacked or are they mutually incompatible?

A century ago, the complications of traditional English land law and the manorial system were comprehensively reduced by the impact of the property legislation of 1925. There is a real risk that what may now come into being, with all its attendant cost, delay and obfuscating, could recreate much of what I might call the Dickensian law that was swept away at that point—again, the noble Earl, Lord Devon, touched on that point. Perhaps that might be a matter for the Law Commission.

In conclusion, when I was a boy, I remember enjoying Aesop’s Fables, one of which your Lordships will recall was “Belling the Cat”. A convention of mice concluded that their safety and well-being would be enhanced if one of them tied a bell around the cat’s neck. A volunteer was sought but none was forthcoming. It was a good idea but a bad plan because it could not be put into effect sensibly. There is a real possibility that the same may be true here.

Imported Beef

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I agree entirely with the noble Baroness. This is a really important issue. When we as consumers go into a supermarket, to an extent, we park our environmental and social conscience with that brand because we trust it and want it to be doing the right thing. So if it says that a meat product is UK-produced and it has a union jack on it, we expect it to be so; we expect it to have been produced with high welfare standards and the highest environmental standards possible. If that is not the case, we as a department, as a Government and in this House should raise this seriously, both as consumers and as the Government. We meet retailers on a very regular basis and raise these issues often; I would be happy to give the noble Baroness more detail outside.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. In talking about imports from the European Union, the Minister did not say that there is a principle of equivalence. Although the standards outside this country may not be exactly the same, there is a generality of equivalence between the various standards in various member states. Does it not follow from that that the right way to approach the problem we are discussing is to have transparent, binding farm assurance schemes in the markets where our trading partners produce animals so that there is transparency both in terms of getting through the tariff barrier and other restrictions as well as for the consumer to know what they are buying?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. That is of great assistance to the Government and regulators, as well as to retailers which want to make a virtue of the kinds of products they put on sale. It is also of great help to the consumer for them to make the right choices about the products that they wish to buy.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Parminter clearly set out the arguments for Amendment 126, which I fully support. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, ably introduced her Amendment 130, to which I have added my name. I will speak briefly to that amendment.

The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, made it clear that he is personally committed to ensuring that environmental standards are maintained, that biosecurity is improved, and that the Government leave the environment in a better state than they found it. However, this commitment and aim are not shared by all in the current Government.

The Bill is worded in such a way as to provide a very large degree of what can be called “wriggle room”. We have debated in Clause 15 the meaning of “appropriate” and how this will be interpreted by both officials and Ministers when it comes to individual pieces of legislation.

Clause 15 allows Ministers to amend important retained EU environmental law on nature, water and chemicals, ensuring that there is no reduction in environmental protection. This has to be achieved without extra bureaucracy, taxes or burdens being incurred. My noble friend Lady Parminter has spoken on this issue.

In evidence to the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, the Secretary of State referred to the Environment Agency’s wish

“to change quite a lot of the water framework directive”.

The quality of our water has featured in our debates more often than many of us would care to mention. To be informed that a lot of changes are likely to come to the water framework directive without any indication of what they may be is extremely worrying for many in this Chamber. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, also raised this.

Amendment 130 would insert a new clause whose aim is to maintain environmental standards across a range of regulations and directives, which the country has taken for granted and which have protected the health of the population, our environment, wildlife and the marine environment over the years. Proposed new subsection (4) lists those laws that we believe are essential to keep. Others are also important, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, also raised, but those five are vital and should be included in the Bill. There is consensus on this across the Committee.

We have debated these issues on previous days in Committee without the Minister giving any comfort. On this occasion, we are all looking for the Minister to realise that the vital issue of protecting the environment and the population is not going to trickle away. Unless he wants to see a flood of opposition from all quarters, both inside and outside Parliament, he will accept the amendment before we come to Report. I look forward to his agreement.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have been listening to this debate with interest. Obviously, it relates to environmental standards, but is also about the way in which the legislation that deals with environmental standards is cast. I am sure we are all agreed that some of the things that the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, described could be substantially mitigated, to the benefit of everybody.

Having said that, what we see with the two amendments we are considering is the introduction of legal certainty into the legislation. That, it seems to me, is actually quite important because, as has been described on previous days in Committee, the underlying rationale behind the kind of approach being adopted by the Government is what I might describe as the operation of a compensatory principle. This, it seems to me, is a very attractive notion. But how is it going to work? In particular, as has been debated previously, what is the currency you use to determine whether or not something is compensation? It has to be equivalent, it seems to me. That is the basic meaning of the word in the English language.

Then there has been discussion about “Well, it’ll be done on the whim of a civil servant or a Minister”. But I do not think this is going to be the end of the story—this is what my concern is—because any change that comes about will produce winners and losers. Wherever there are winners and losers, not least in this area of policy, the law gets dragged in. I can see that the whole scheme on which this particular approach has been adopted is going to lead to an absolute abundance of applications for judicial review, because any change that is made on the basis of this compensatory principle is going to have a winner and a loser, and is going to be the hinge on which the legislation depends. I would be very interested to know the views of the Front Bench on this, because I can see that what sounds superficially like a siren song of easy administration may well end up providing an absolute bonanza for lawyers. I suppose that, as one myself, I should declare an interest.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I want to say a few brief words before the Minister replies; this is prompted by the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, in summing up on the last group, and the letter we received today from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. My noble friends, in moving and speaking to the amendments in their names, and other noble Lords from other Benches, have highlighted the objective of the amendments, which is to get pledges to uphold environmental protections, including those in international instruments.

In the last group, the Minister gave as an example a pledge to uphold human rights. We are shortly to have a Statement on the well-named Illegal Migration Bill, in which the Home Secretary has said that this is 50% likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights. If that is the standard by which we judge the Government’s intentions in upholding international law, I do not think it is terribly encouraging.

We debated on Monday the definition of a subject area in the light of the letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield. I think we have done so again today. Does it mean water quality? Is it the whole of environmental law? Is it the whole of what Defra does? None of us has the foggiest idea. The same puzzle arises over the term “objectives”. The letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, tells us that

“the individual limbs of the power”

in Clause 15

“are also restricted. Subsection (2) is limited such that any replacement legislation must be appropriate and must fulfil same or similar objectives as the retained EU law or assimilated law that it is replacing.”

That is, of course, the wording in the Bill. She goes on:

“This limits the functionality of this limb of the power to essentially adjusting policy to better fit the UK context”.


Apparently, this is

“rather than radically departing or introducing legislation in ways that are controversially different from the existing legislation.”

So now we have “appropriate”, we have the “same or similar objectives”, we have “subject area”, and now we have a pledge to essentially adjust policy to better fit the UK context. I am afraid that this does not assuage concerns because I, for one, do not have the foggiest idea what restraints or constraints there will be on the Government in their adjustment of policy. They are proposing to adjust policy on refugees, with a 50% likelihood of breaching the European Convention on Human Rightsm as well as, in the opinion of these Benches, totally breaching the refugee convention. I am afraid that the Minister has his work cut out to convince us—certainly these Benches—of the Government's good intentions in the environmental area.

Agricultural Transition Plan

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I can absolutely assure the noble Baroness that they are safe to eat. The FSA advice is that they are safe to eat and that there is no zoonotic effect on human health from crabs that have been found dead and have been examined.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Absolutely, in addition to the organisations I listed earlier. The initial views are that finding something to which we can attribute the cause is unlikely, but Professor Henderson has suggested that the university sector will be well placed to extend research in this area, and he is working with it to see what further research can be done.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare my agricultural interests as in the register. I would like the Minister to return to the reply he gave to the noble Lord, Lord Deben, when he explained that British agriculture and those engaged in it would not be, with their products, competing against people who operate under lower environmental and welfare standards. How does that square with the remarks of his noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Lainston, on the Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill, where he told the House that the standards in Australia were lower than those in this country?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Our policy is that agricultural products taken in as part of a trade deal cannot be imported into this country if they fall beneath our standards of animal welfare and environmental protection. That is the policy in the agricultural chapter of the Australia deal; it is the first time such a chapter in a trade deal has said that.

Sewage Pollution

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that that is disgraceful. If it was an illegal sewage dump, which I am sure it was, that matter should have been investigated and should be prosecuted. The Environment Agency now has the resources. Its ambitions have been set not just by Ministers but by legislation that requires this practice to finish. Of course, with our current infrastructure, there are occasions when, if there is not a release of sewage in a storm, that water will back up into people’s homes. We cannot have that in a modern economy such as ours. We must make sure that we build the infrastructure. Some £170 billion has been spent since privatisation on water infrastructure. We are spending enormous sums of money in this price review period, which will rise to £56 billion in the years ahead. The sort of things that the noble Lord describes are absolutely terrible in waters that we want to be enjoyed by people and tourists. Our coastal economies need to be blue-flagged to make sure that these are things of the past.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I must declare an interest: I am affected by the phenomenon that I want to draw to the Minister’s attention. There are a number of instances, certainly in the locality where I live, of old discharges that received consent many years ago continuing. Because they were authorised long ago, when standards were much lower than they are now, such discharges are not an attractive feature, yet the utilities company responds that they are lawful. Could the Minister look into this because it is disagreeable, to put it mildly?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I should have started by referring noble Lords to my entry in the register; I, too, am affected by this issue. It is an affront to me. I was part of a national campaign to clean up our rivers but I had to resign from it to take up this post. This is something that matters to me as much as it does to everybody.

I will take up the noble Lord’s issue. The consenting system must be updated. Frankly, some of the consents have been superseded by the fact that large numbers of new people are living in communities where the sewerage infrastructure is not up to the required standard. That is where we want this huge investment to take place. Any discharges that are consented to must be fit for the times in which we live, not the times in which they were created.

Tree Health in England

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interests in the register and explaining that I own some ash trees. One of my abiding memories of the Platinum Jubilee weekend was the obvious impact of ash dieback on the tree cover of Cumbria: everywhere were black, skeletal twigs protruding through the tree canopy. This pandemic predates Covid and moves more slowly, but it is a real pestilence just the same. We have not talked about it as much as Covid-19, fortunately, but the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, has done us a good turn in bringing this debate.

We should not be surprised by something such as this happening. After all, Dutch elm disease occurred in this country’s living memory and, before that, in the 1930s. Pundits have predicted this kind of thing and historians of nature, ecology and the environment have chronicled this kind of happening regularly, from time to time over the centuries. That is not to say it is not sad. We regret that the landscape, as we know it, is losing a very important component and is dying in front of our eyes. But something else will emerge. While it is destroying part of our living world, it is not destroying the world itself.

As other noble Lords have said, I understand that some trees are likely to be resistant. As long as they are spared the woodman’s axe and their natural offspring are allowed to grow, we, in partnership with plant breeders, will be able to replenish our countryside’s ash trees. As has been said, the life cycle of trees is long. It is not the end of the ash, any more than Dutch elm disease completely wiped out the English elm or wych elm.

It seems to be agreed that tree nurseries spread the disease from spores contained in stock raised on the continent. In this context, we need to be clear that we have always had phytosanitary arrangements and being in the single market did not affect that. As others have said, we have to tighten them up. I suspect that, in addition to a number of pernicious plant diseases, we will see more invasive species that are likely to carry out a lot of damage. I put it to your Lordships that the grey squirrel has probably done more damage to British tree cover than ash dieback has. We have to plan for this happening. The problem is that, like generals, we are always tempted to fight the last war. It has also been suggested that spores may have blown over the North Sea. If that sort of thing happens again, it will be rather more difficult to deal with.

What should we do? First, we should breed and propagate resistant ash trees. Secondly, we should replace them but, if that is expensive, with diversified species, as has been said. We should not be too frightened of these alleged non-native species, such as sycamore, beech and Spanish chestnut. The greater the diversity we have, the greater the chance is of some of them dying.

If an outbreak of some disease is discovered, we should monitor it, destroy it and—I add this deliberately —properly compensate for those trees lost. It is much cheaper to spend a bit of money and properly wipe out the disease than for people not to report it and then for it to run out of control.

Finally, we obviously must cut down and destroy the infected trees. It is on this point that I wish to conclude, since many of these trees are on the edge of the highway. For safety reasons, they have to be taken down quickly. For that to be done, it is necessary to have traffic lights, which require a permit from the local authority. These require a payment. I gather that the amount varies significantly from local authority to local authority. It looks to me as if some are profiteering from it. I ask the Minister to look into this and suggest that permits should be issued either free or for a nominal sum. It does not seem right that local authorities look as if they profit from this, in the same way that it was said that some suppliers of PPE did in the Covid outbreak.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 16th June 2021 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I am content with the Bill, the gist of its purpose and the role that the proposed committee will play in the debate about animal welfare, a topic about which everyone has an opinion. I begin by declaring an interest, for I am a livestock farmer in Cumbria. I personally do little shooting and in the old days used occasionally to go out with the fell packs. I am also a patron of the Livestock Auctioneers’ Association and president of the National Sheep Association.

While I fear that there always are abuses, real farmers care about their stock and take pride in it and the way it is looked after. I also do not believe that animals have rights. Rather, we as humans have obligations towards them that should and must be legally enforced. This is a widely recognised legal phenomenon and an entirely sensible approach to these matters.

I was a Member of the European Parliament when embedding the concept of animal sentience in EU law was discussed. At that time I was very unsure whether this was the right direction of travel, but I have become satisfied that it is.

Contrary to what some seem to say, animal sentience has been understood for quite a long time. After all, Homer understood it. You have only to read the 17th- book of the Odyssey: returning in disguise after a 20-year absence, Odysseus is recognised only by his faithful old dog Argos.

In this instance as in so many others, and as is so often the case, for our national policies to be sensible they have to sail between Scylla and Charybdis—the Scylla of treating animals as mere chattels, and the Charybdis of anthropomorphism. Walt Disney has done this issue no favour; “Bambi” is a confidence trick. Equally, in this context, Beatrix Potter has quite a lot to answer for. Although it will come as no surprise to your Lordships, and although I never knew her, those of my Cumbrian friends and neighbours who did, tell me that she was a very practical, down-to-earth hill farmer whose attitude towards her own animals bore little relation to her fictional creatures.

I welcome the committee, but it is not a substitute for either government or Parliament. I assume its purpose is to help public debate on this topic, as part of a wider political process. Both Parliament and the Government have never been backward about ignoring committees, and I do not anticipate that that is going to change. The impact of this committee will depend on its tone and modus operandi. It has to base its thinking on expertise, not partisanship, its approach and composition on independence of thought and action, and its conclusions on intelligence and wisdom. These aspects must be central to its activities and will determine its seriousness, or lack of it, and hence its influence and ability to be a force for good. Whether that happens depends on what it does and the conclusions it reaches which, I hasten to add in conclusion, is not necessarily the same as agreeing with me.