Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Lord Kerr of Kinlochard and Lord Benyon

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

I am most grateful to the Minister, and I admire his excelsior position that we are aiming at higher and higher standards. If he was to follow the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, and put these exemptions in the Bill, he would have set a floor; he would not have prevented himself from moving up to higher standards over time. However, I am sceptical whether he carries the whole government with “excelsior”—ever upward—because we have Clause 15(5), where there is an absolute ban on amending or replacing any of these Acts in a way that might increase the regulatory burden, and that burden is defined as including putting up the financial cost or creating

“an obstacle to efficiency, productivity or profitability”.

That does not seem to me to fit terribly well with a drive for ever-higher standards.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We can get bogged down in a philosophical debate about what regulation is for. Some people come at it from the direction that it should always stop people doing things that others might define as growth. Other people look on it as assisting legitimate businesses in functioning in a way that disadvantages bad people doing bad things. There needs to be flexibility in legislation to allow the right sort of regulation to encourage good behaviour. You will find that your greatest supporters in doing that are businesses and interests that not only are keen to be seen to be doing the right thing but want to benefit from the fact that we have the right kind of regulation in this country.

I will just finish the point about water. This Government are the first to tackle sewage overflows in the way we have. In the summer we published the most ambitious plan to tackle sewage discharges from storm overflows in water company history. The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, about the River Parrett is entirely understood; the base of that river covers a huge catchment area and agricultural activities over years have seen soils washed away into the river. The problems that have occurred as a result of that are being tackled in a combination of ways: first, through regulation; and, secondly, through incentives in our environmental land management schemes.

The noble Baroness also talked about siloed protections. We now have probably the most united approach to this through the 25-year environment plan, the Environment Act, the environmental improvement plan, what we are doing to encourage tree planting along rivers and many other things. I hope noble Lords agree that our plan will require a huge change in attitude now among the range of people involved in the management of our waterways. With this in mind, I hope that the noble Baroness might not press her amendments.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, made a very good intervention. He spoke about the “green crap” point. I was in that Government and in that room; it was not the Prime Minister who said that. I am glad to correct him on that. The Environment Act is not just warm words. I hope that, like me, the noble Lord feels that the hard yards in this Chamber to improve that Bill really made a fundamental piece of legislation, the like of which other countries will look at to see how to make proper environmental legislation.

The noble Lord is right to raise human health, as I said earlier. There is a lot of mapping going on around noise; he will be pleased to know that we include noise levels typically not required by statutory obligations. This will allow for the consideration of health impacts regardless of legal obligations.

I will address noble Lords’ other points. I really want to nail the point about this Bill’s impact on the habitats regulations. We have been clear about the importance of environmental protection across the United Kingdom —not least through the Environment Act, which includes a legally binding target to halt the decline of nature by 2030. We are committed to meeting this target and will not undermine our obligations to the environment in pursuit of growth. Defra published a Green Paper consultation on nature recovery in March last year; the reforms explored in that Green Paper have fed into the Government’s environmental improvement plan, and nothing in this Bill will allow that to be put at risk.

On pesticides, I want to assure noble Lords about REACH; this addresses the point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate. There are no specific provisions in the Bill relating to UK REACH, so it will have no direct impact on current UK REACH policy. Defra has two key activities under way that aim to improve UK REACH: an alternative transitional registration model to reduce the cost to industry of transitional registrations while keeping high levels of protection. We will extend the transitional REACH deadlines in the meantime to allow time to continue the development of the alternative transitional registration model. Defra and the devolved Administrations are considering ways to improve and better tailor UK REACH to a GB-only setting while keeping the overarching framework of UK REACH in place.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, raised pesticides. The United Kingdom upholds strict food safety, health and environmental standards, and our first priority regarding pesticides is to ensure that they do not harm people or pose an unacceptable risk to the environment. We will not allow the Bill to put that at risk. We will continue to ensure that decisions on the use of pesticides are based on careful scientific assessments of the risks in order to achieve a high level of protection for people and the environment while improving agricultural production.

The UK has an independent national regulator, the Health and Safety Executive, that assesses the risks of pesticides and undertakes the necessary scientific evaluations. If the noble Baroness has specific points on that, I am happy to talk to her at another time. It is necessary to ensure that UK legislation can be updated to reflect future advances in science and technology. Sometimes this debate is very much in net present value terms. Science is fast moving. We want to make sure that science is at the heart of policy-making.