Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Lexden and Lord Cameron of Dillington

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 120, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. No one who saw last April’s “Panorama” programme on the state of our rivers could possibly not support this amendment. That picture of what initially looked like a sandbank in the River Thames but was in fact a huge pile of wet wipes and other plastic-fibre sanitary items was simply disgusting to me. I do not think that that is an overreaction on my part.

In evidence given to the Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee, one witness—one assumes that he was an expert and knew what he was talking about—addressed plastic-fibre wet wipes, stating:

“every day 7 million wet wipes ... are flushed ... down the toilet”.

There were also

“2.5 million tampons, 1.5 million sanitary pads and 700,000 panty liners”,

all currently with a varying degree of plastic content. They do not dissolve or break down but, as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said, have to be raked out of the sewage treatment works and sent to landfill.

The flushing of these products is already illegal. I believe that they can now all be produced without plastic content; in other words, to a “fine to flush” standard. They can now be produced in materials which are equally effective, but which can and do break down within the sewage system, like paper. So I make a plea: the Government should look into this issue and then, I hope, announce a legal end date for the production of all sanitary goods that are not produced to a flushable standard. In the meantime, as Amendment 120 proposes, we should ensure that all the current products are clearly marked as non-flushable.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, the next three speakers on the list—the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott—have withdrawn from the debate, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Lexden and Lord Cameron of Dillington

Committee stage & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, I have received no requests to speak after the Minister.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington [V]]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, particularly my fellow sponsors of the amendment. I also thank the Minister for his very full reply, which I shall read carefully and reflect on. It is clear that people on both sides of the fence feel strongly on the subject. I think we can all agree that the most important thing is to feed our grandchildren with the least possible damage to the environment and the future of the planet. Those in favour of the amendment believe that using precision techniques is the best and safest way to do this, while those against think that the tried and tested random mutation is better, albeit slower. I want to respond to one or two of the points raised.

One cannot put traditionally bred plants back in the bottle; nor can one stop any cross-fertilisation in the wild, but properly regulated precision breeding is just less likely to do so, in my view. However, I agree that the wider consultation is a really good idea, which is why this amendment specifically recommends it and why it seems that the Minister has picked up on it. As a Scotsman, I picked up the remarks about wheat in Scotland. I should tell the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that in the 1990s, a field in Aberdeenshire held the world record for winter wheat yields for several years. It is the long summer days there.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, also made a comparison with human medicine, with reference to an article in Nature. However, it is very misleading in this discussion about which is the best between precision breeding and traditional breeding. The removal of undesirable off-target characteristics is what traditional breeders have been doing for millennia. This back-crossing, as it is known, has never been possible with human medicine for obvious reasons, so the arguments and comparisons do not apply. Of course, scientists are cautious about the use of gene editing in humans. Meanwhile, compared with precision breeding, traditional animal and crop breeding is much more likely to produce off-target characteristics to be removed. Precision breeding is, as I said, much safer and more accurate.

I repeat what I said in my opening speech to the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter: this amendment in no way affects the legislation on GMOs and is not the thin end of any wedge. Several noble Lords mentioned or hinted at this, but I am not sure how we are pre-empting parliamentary debate with this amendment. If that is so with this amendment, presumably all amendments over the past seven days are pre-empting debate. Surely it is the opposite: we are promoting debate. If the Bill is about only rewarding new ways of land management, presumably the debate that we have just had on trading standards is also trying to slide an amendment through by the back door. I will say no more, but we all know that the Bill will go back to the Commons, which can have its say over all or any of our changes.

On animal cruelty, also mentioned by the Minister, I strongly refute that gene editing could be considered more cruel than traditional breeding methods. Think of the results of traditional breeding from the wolf over the years, which include dogs with noses that are so squashed they can hardly breathe and Pekingeses whose eyes drop out. Meanwhile, the process of taking an egg from a chicken or fish and editing its genetic make-up is not in any way cruel. If, for instance with the salmon egg, you can increase its resilience to sea lice, as they are doing at Roslin, you would be doing both the salmon and its surrounding environment a heap of good as there would be no need for environmentally damaging treatment to remove the lice, which also harms the salmon.

With mammals, you also take an egg, treat it and re-insert it into the mother—a process no crueller than IVF in humans to help a mother have a much-wanted child. If, for instance, you thus increase resistance to PRRS in pigs, as again they are doing at Roslin, you are reducing the enormous suffering and deaths from that appalling respiratory disease. Of course, if you alter the genes of one animal, you should get hundreds or even thousands of their progeny with the same characteristics without touching them in any way. Breeding resistance to disease into future generations is so much more sensible than the ongoing use of antibiotics or medicines as the best way of helping animals live pain-free and disease-free lives.

I will stop there. But as this is the last time that I will speak in Committee, I want to thank the Minister for his extreme patience and professionalism, expertise in the subject and fluency at the Dispatch Box. I am full of admiration for the skill and extraordinary tolerance with which he has handled us troublesome Members, and I thank him for the conscientious way that he has dealt with the Bill. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.