Brexit: Environment and Climate Change

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, that was a very important and searching speech. I hope that the Minister and others will take it very seriously indeed. I am very glad that the noble Baroness mentioned the European Investment Bank, as did the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and what will replace it. I am also glad that she mentioned the European Court of Justice because I believe there has been tremendous rhetoric and prejudice about that court. However, it is not only in this sphere that its validity is becoming obvious. I serve on the Justice sub-committee. In the sphere of commercial and family law, given that there is so much trans-border activity, it is very worrying indeed to know what the final authority will be when we lose the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.

I declare an interest as I am vice-president of the Campaign for National Parks and I have been for a number of years president of Friends of the Lake District, of which I am now patron.

This excellent report—for which the members, and indeed the clerk and staff, of the committee deserve real praise and thanks from us all—brings home very clearly that we are flat-earthing if we believe we can have a future on our own. We live in a totally interdependent world in so many ways, and that interdependence starts very immediately with our relationship with our European neighbours. This is becoming very obvious in the issues that are raised in the report, and in so many other issues. We need some convincing evidence from the Government about the real, practical arrangements that are going to be put in place which face up to that interdependence. We cannot avoid it. The demand is there. In the interests of our people, it is absolutely essential to know what the practical arrangements necessary in an interdependent situation will be.

This is true of so many aspects of food production, but it is also true of fisheries. It is terribly important to have conservation in fisheries. It is terribly important to have sanity between close and adjacent neighbours in Europe about how they raise those issues. This is very obvious in the context of climate change: how on earth are we going to deal with the consequences of climate change on our own? It is just madness. We have to work together with others. So what will be the practical arrangements for working with others? We have yet to see any evidence of practical arrangements being put in place. Of course, this is true on the environment as a whole.

Some environmentalists recently put it very well when they said that clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas are essential for humanity. I endorse that conclusion warmly. We certainly need clean drinking water. Here, again, the reality—as against prejudice and rhetoric—is that our drinking water left a great deal to be desired and our membership of Europe has done a great deal to improve it. Indeed, on swimming in the sea, our membership of the Community has enabled us to see much more clearly how far short we are of the standards that we should have around our coasts.

Whatever happens in all this—and I cannot stress too strongly the need for evidence of what is going to be put in place; how can we come to a conclusion until we see that?—we are going to need, for the future of our society, the continued revitalisation of our countryside. We have to recognise the importance for the future of our nation of the relationship between farming and the countryside. That is very obvious in the area in which I live, in the Lake District, where all the joys, scenically and the rest, of Cumbria are intimately connected—as are farming and the countryside. This produces the character that we all appreciate so much. It will be essential to have arrangements to support farming and farmers and, indeed, the wider rural communities of which they are a key part. There is a great deal of rural poverty in our country, which we are not beginning to face up to and deal with as we should.

All these things are going to be as pressing as ever. We keep telling the world how wonderful our countryside is. We all know how vital it is to our own values but how will we sustain that countryside without the arrangements that have been increasingly put in place within the European Economic Community? It is the evidence of what will really be there that is needed.

I conclude by applauding what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said. It is absolutely clear that our involvement with Europe and our dependency on that relationship with Europe are so great that it would be the height of irresponsibility if we did not stop using oversimplified, negative rhetoric. Instead, we must start to face up to the challenge of how we have continuing close co-operation with Europe, without which we cannot have a decent future.