Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - part three
Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, for moving the amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lord Mancroft. We have already debated this, but I understand my noble friend’s concerns regarding conflicts of interest and what they may mean for the committee.

We want the committee to succeed, and I am confident that the Bill and the draft terms of reference will ensure that that is the case. As has been said today, the Secretary of State for Defra will be responsible for appointments to the committee and appointments will be decided in accordance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments. Applicants would, in line with best practice, be required to declare any potential conflicts of interest to the recruitment panel. The draft terms of reference set out that the Secretary of State may decline to consider an application from an individual whose conduct suggests that their membership could damage the reputation or credibility of the committee—for example, their membership of an extremist organisation. My noble friend’s amendment is simply not necessary. Defra has shown that this tried-and-tested approach works. There are a number of existing Defra-owned expert bodies which give balanced, reasonable advice on animal welfare issues. Few would ever accuse the Animal Welfare Committee, for example, of being made up of zealous activists.

I say again that noble Lords can be reassured that the process of recruitment of members of the committee will be rigorous and that members will be chosen on the merits of their expertise. This is what is needed in order for the committee to perform its role. I hope that this reassures noble Lords and that, together with the reassurance given by my noble friend the Minister on the previous group, it will enable the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

Before my noble friend sits down, could she reassure the House that, for instance, Chris Packham and Mark Avery of Wild Justice would not be eligible to be on the committee?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I am afraid I am not able to give that reassurance. All I can say is that they might not be considered to be experts.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That is good to know. I am very grateful. However, I differ from him entirely if he thinks—which I do not think he really does—that the Government, of whom I am proud to be part, would engage with any form of ropey bunch of scientists. In fact we will come on to talk about, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, the degree of scientific breadth that went into the 300 different pieces of work studied by the London School of Economics in its reports on decapods and cephalopods. It is an indication of the expertise that exists out there.

I think my noble friend Lord Hannan has the advantage on me in that he believes that legislators do not need experts. I may have misunderstood him, but as I gaze around this Chamber I see precious few scientists, with one notable exception. There may be more—of course, there is the noble Lord, Lord Trees.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

Excuse me!

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

No, I do not include the noble Lord, Lord Robathan. Both Houses lack the kind of expert rigour that we need in decision-making. I thank my noble friend Lord Moylan for his Amendments 23 and 35 concerning the academic rigour of the committee. We will ensure that the animal sentience committee is comprised of members with the right expertise. They will be best placed to decide what the committee’s priorities should be and, in doing so, they can consult others. I reassure my noble friend that the annual work plan of the committee will be made publicly available. This will ensure that its priorities and approach are fully transparent. As the draft terms of reference for the committee show, we fully intend to appoint members through a rigorous procedure of fair and open competition.

Of course, peer-reviewed evidence from academic journals has a role in informing the committee’s work. However, I do not believe it is necessary for the committee’s reports themselves to be published in academic journals. It is critical that the committee should be able to advise in a timely way—this is the key point—on policies that are being developed. To require the committee’s recommendations to undergo the full academic peer-review process would cause considerable delays in enabling Parliament to hold government to account. This amendment would severely compromise its role. I hope with those few words I have reassured my noble friend, and he will be content to withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, I have been up, and indeed in, many African rivers, but not the Zambezi, like the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. So, I will try to be as brief as he has been, but I want to make two comments: one about Amendment 39 and one about Amendment 42.

The inclusion of decapod crustaceans and cephalopods within the remit of this Bill is warranted, evidence based and consistent with current legislation with regard to cephalopods, in that they are protected under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, so I support this amendment. However, currently in the Bill, it appears that larval forms of decapod crustacea would also be included. These can be microscopic; they are the fauna of plankton, and then they grow up into shrimps and prawns and so on. I ask the Minister: at what point does a larval decapod crustacean become sentient? A briefing from the Marine Biological Association and the National Oceanography Centre expresses concerns particularly that, if larval forms of crustacea are included, it might compromise their environmental monitoring and research functions. I ask the Minister if consideration has been given to an amendment along the lines of Amendment 41, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Mancroft and Lord Marland, that excludes embryonic forms.

Amendment 42, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, myself, and the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, removes the possibility, currently in the Bill, for the Secretary of State by regulation to extend the list of animals covered in the Bill. This would still be possible but would be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny through primary legislation. This would recognise that, as scientific research continues, evidence may accrue from which it might be argued that other invertebrates may have some degree of sentience. Crustacea are but one group within a vast taxon of arthropods that includes many thousands of species including the insects.

In the excellent LSE report that reported on the sentience in decapod crustaceans and cephalopods, there is a matrix of criteria—eight in that report—in which evidence of varying strengths may be aggregated in varying levels of confidence to arrive at an overall judgment whether a particular group may be considered sentient. There is not a clear demarcation between sentient and non-sentient.

The inclusion of further groups of invertebrates as sentient merits very thorough and balanced political, economic and societal—as well as scientific—consideration, and should ultimately be a parliamentary decision in primary legislation.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend may not like it but I will support him—I hope he appreciates that—because he said something very sensible about Larsen traps. On a small Midlands farm I catch between 40 and 82 magpies—that is the most I have ever caught—a year. Visitors congratulate me on the huge clouds of linnets, yellowhammers and whatever that we have on the farm, so I was delighted to hear what he said about Larsen traps.

In relation to government Amendment 39, I have always thought that putting a lobster into boiling water must be cruel. People say, “Oh no, they don’t feel, they’ve got no brain”. I have no idea whether they have a brain or not, but it must be cruel, and the Government are making a very good move in seeking to protect such things. While I support the amendment, however, I am not sure that it should be in the Bill—in primary legislation. I would have thought that it could have done by SI; I am not sure that this is necessarily the right way to go about it. I will, however, on this occasion support the Government without any compromise.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am a bit perplexed by all this. The Government have decided to include lobsters and octopi—I prefer those terms because I understand them—but to exclude fish and, if they do not accept the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Trees, the minute creatures that they produce. It seems to me that we are on a slippery slope here: the sentience committee could come to the conclusion one day that fish have sentience and feel harm, and then we would ban them. Once you start down this road, there is no limit to where you can go in describing creatures as sentient. That troubles me enormously, and is why I am less than enthusiastic about my noble friend’s amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Robathan]

46: After Clause 5, insert the following new Clause—
“Expiry
This Act expires at the end of the period of 5 years beginning with the day on which it is passed.”

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising, who is unavoidably detained somewhere in the country—I am not quite sure where—I beg to move this amendment. I am sorry that the Minister feels put upon, because I think he is doing a very good job defending what some people have described as indefensible, and well done him.

This is a very simple sunset clause. It is fair to say beyond peradventure that some of the arguments raised in the past six or seven hours show that there is dispute over whether the Bill is a sensible idea. Therefore, surely, we should have a sunset clause so that, after five years, we can look back and say, “Actually, it’s not working very well, let’s scrap it”—or improve it, or whatever it might be. That is all a sunset clause does, and that is why I move it.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

I support my noble friend Lord Robathan. In anybody’s language, this is an extremely controversial Bill—that has come from a number of extremely distinguished Members of your Lordships’ House. The most appalling collateral damage could be caused by the Bill which no one has anticipated. That is the problem. When you have such Bills with a mind of their own and committees that can roar off doing all sorts of things and are completely independent, it is only later that you realise that it was a very great mistake in the beginning. In all modesty, I think the Minister should seriously consider this sunset clause so that we can reconsider whether the Act, as the Bill will no doubt become, has been a good idea, whether it has achieved what it set out to do, or whether it has caused so much damage that it needs to be radically revised. A sunset clause of five years gives us a wonderful opportunity to think again, and I sincerely hope that the Minister will give the amendment serious consideration.

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[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I do not agree with my noble friend, because the committee’s work will be ongoing, and it will also respond to changes in scientific research that may come out in the course of its many years of work. To introduce a hard stop—a hard deadline—to its work would be both unnecessary and impractical.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, if I might say, I agree entirely with my noble friend Lord Hamilton, because it is not a question of ending the work of the committee, but of saying, “Is the committee doing well after five years, and do we just continue it?”, which is very easily done. I have some experience of this in the past. However, I shall not force this to a Division, my noble friend will be pleased to know. Both my noble friends on the Front Bench will be particularly pleased to know that there is only one more clause to go. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 46 withdrawn.

Water: Sewage

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord raises a really important point. The Government are looking at this right across the piece as a “one health” approach across human and animal health, food and the environment. We have set up a project called Pathogen Surveillance in Agriculture, Food and the Environment, which brings together a number of agencies and departments. It contains a workstream focused on AMR prevalence in two river catchments. This work will strengthen our understanding. We are also working with the Environment Agency and the water company chemical investigations programme to make sure that we are all pulling in the same direction to tackle this very important matter.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, the amendment to the Environment Act that was brought forward by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, shows that this House can really improve legislation. I think everybody would agree with that. Rather surprisingly, I hasten to add, I had no role in this at all because I think I probably voted with the Government. Water companies have not always been at the forefront of cleaning up their own act—if you will excuse the pun. What has the initial reaction of the water companies been to this new amendment, and when are they going to start meeting my noble friend if they have not done so already?

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)]

I have received requests to speak after the Minister from the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

I am moved to intervene briefly because the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said that the people want it—I think I quote her exactly. I think the people want animals to be well treated; I think that everyone in this Room wants them to be well treated, and we have pretty good legislation that already protects animals, both domestic and wild, from unnecessary cruelty and ill treatment. However, in my 23 years in the House of Commons—I know that the noble Baroness represented people in the London Assembly—I can certainly say that nobody mentioned animal sentience. They mentioned lots of animal welfare issues, but nobody mentioned animal sentience. I think they were about as concerned about animal sentience as about the divine right of kings, which the noble Baroness also mentioned. Although the noble Baroness cannot intervene, perhaps my noble friend the Minister might say how many people came to him when he was an MP and said they wanted an animal sentience Bill.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Quite a lot actually.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I will explain why. My noble friend was—as the previous Speaker used to say—a great denizen of the House of Commons for many years, as he rightly reminds us. But, sadly, he was not there when the Government of the day decided, for reasons that have always been slightly obscure to me, not to include the provisions of Article 13 in the legislation that took us out of the European Union. Those of us who were there found a tsunami of emails and letters from people who may not have understood the most detailed aspects of animal sentience but were very concerned that the Government were not reflecting their views. This resulted in rather a lot of mid-air turbulence in trying to get to this point. Without baring the soul of the discussions over that time, I respectfully correct my noble friend to say that this was something people were very concerned about in the much wider sense of where animal sentience and animal welfare combine.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

Perhaps my noble friend might list the constituents who wrote to him.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his very full reply. He did comment on my amendment; I will have to read what he said in the Official Report, but towards the end, he said quite rightly that the remit of the animal sentience committee was across Whitehall. That includes the devolved Administrations. The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission was set up specifically to look at how the welfare needs of sentient animals are being met by devolved policy. I am now unclear—perhaps my noble friend could help me—about how much of sentience is devolved and what exactly the committee will be able to do in the devolved countries. Will it be able to go to the Scotland Office and thus up to Holyrood, look at its policy and tell Scotland that it has to change its ways? I am not quite certain how this will work in practice. As this is Committee, it is an ideal time for my noble friend to explain the Bill a bit more to us.

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[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall confine myself to speaking to my Amendment 50 for reasons of brevity. The more astute Members of the Committee will have realised that this refers to Section 2 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006, but this seems to me, to a certain extent, the nub of the Bill. It concentrates on what we, as people, are responsible for.

As a slight side-issue, I was asked to change the language because, of course, these days parliamentary language should be gender-neutral. However, surely everyone—however ill-educated—knows that the term “mankind”, or “man” in this context, has always included all human beings, all humanity, of whatever gender. I mention that because language is important, and this is legislation. To have been not specific about “mankind” might have been an example of lack of clarity, of which I fear this Bill is also an example.

On the substance, if I am responsible for an animal, I have responsibilities and duties to that creature, be it my dog, my rather foolish hens—which are not laying eggs at the moment—a cow or, indeed, a pheasant. However, I am surely not responsible for the rats we all live with, nor the squirrels destroying the trees I have planted, nor if my dog catches a rat—it is a terrier, and that is what terriers do. We then come on to fish in a river. Is the owner of a particular stretch of river responsible for a fish moving up and down it? Fish have backbones and are indeed sentient beings. Or is a fishing club responsible? Am I responsible if I run over a squirrel or hit a bird in the road, which I try pretty hard not to do?

I regard myself as a conservationist. The noble Lord, Lord Randall, referred to himself as such in a previous debate. However, unlike him, I see the way this Bill is phrased as paving the way for interference in anything and everything. It has been suggested that it is a Trojan horse and that there will be mission creep. I think it will be an activists’ charter. My noble friend Lord Herbert said in another debate that we need clarity.

The Minister, for whom I have a very high regard—we go back quite a long way and he called me, I think, a “denizen” of the last Chamber we served in—said earlier today that there is a very specific role for the committee. What is that role? It is not clear to me, and I am afraid that the debates so far have not clarified the situation. I hope this amendment may go some way towards clarifying the situation: that we are responsible for those animals for which we are responsible and not responsible for those which we cannot be responsible for.

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

My Lords, the next three speakers—the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean—have all withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I have received one request to speak after the Minister. I call the noble Lord, Lord Robathan.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I must declare an interest as a farmer, with a livestock farm in Leicestershire. I do not wish to detain the Committee long or to repeat all the arguments already made, nor do I wish to further irritate my noble friend the Minister, who is making a good fist of a fairly difficult job. I have two questions for him.

Ensuring the committee has people with real knowledge—to quote the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, “proper knowledge”—of animals, perhaps people who rely on those animals for their livelihood, is extraordinarily important. I am not talking about owning cats or dogs; I have several cats on the farm which helpfully keep down the rats—they do a rather good job—and I also own a dog, but that does not make me an expert on animal sentience. However, those who work with animals the whole time do have a lot of knowledge of animal sentience.

Slaughterhouses and abattoirs have been mentioned. Anyone who has been to an abattoir knows how awful they are; they are extremely unpleasant. But while we remain omnivores and eat meat, they will be necessary.

My noble friend said he will not construct a membership on areas of expertise, but I ask him a different question: will he ensure that nobody without knowledge is appointed to the committee? By that I mean somebody who thinks he has a lot of knowledge, such as Chris Packham, but does not actually have any knowledge of living off the work with animals. Secondly, does he consider that animal rights movement members have “appropriate expertise” or would be “dynamic” members of the committee?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend takes me down a rabbit hole. I do not think I can add to what I already said. The serious point is that we want people with real expertise and knowledge, and the committee must not be too big—so there is a challenge for me, if I am the Minister, or for the Secretary of State. We have to create something that delivers a real understanding of the wide range of issues it will look at, from fishing practices on the high seas through to—as he states—abattoirs and other areas.

I have received inspiration, which I will share with my noble friend. As I have said, appointments will be decided in accordance with the code on public appointments. Applicants would, in line with best practice, be required to declare any potential conflicts of interest to the recruitment panel. It would then be for the panel to determine whether an applicant would proceed. Members of the committee will declare any relevant interests, and the committee will make a list of these interests publicly available.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Robathan Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 16th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I have heard a large number of quite excellent speeches—some funny, some learned—and I cannot possibly emulate them. I shall try not to repeat verbatim what has been said, although it can be quite difficult when you come in at a late stage on a Bill.

We are of course a nation of animal lovers, and I include myself in that. Quite rightly, people who are cruel to animals are prosecuted, be it for cats nailed to trees—we heard about that recently from the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley—or set on fire, which they have been, or hedgehogs used as footballs. I see

“tougher sentences for animal cruelty”

in our manifesto, and I applaud that if it gives magistrates the opportunity to sentence cruel yobs appropriately.

We have heard about farming standards. Our farming welfare standards are in the news today, because they are so high, because of the Australian free trade agreement. It is agreed that they are excellent, and we should be proud of that.

Are animals sentient beings? They probably are—I certainly think so—but they are not the same. For instance, my dog will run out into the middle of the road and stand looking at a car driving straight at it, much to my annoyance and fear. It does not have the same reactions as we have; we should realise that. Do they feel pain? Of course they feel pain. Is it different from ours? I think it probably is, but we owe it to all animals, wild and domestic, to treat them well—but that is a very subjective judgment. For instance, do animals at a slaughterhouse exhibit fear? I have been to slaughterhouses; they do. So should we ban the killing of animals for meat? Should we ban the shooting of wild birds or deer for eating? My answer is no. We should treat animals well in life and we owe them a clean and swift death if we are going to eat them.

I declare an interest as a farmer. My farming partner dislikes sending lambs and especially young cattle to market. I understand that. Indeed, he sells his calves only to other farmers, mostly for breeding. James Cromwell, who noble Peers will know as the actor who played the farmer in “Babe”, which I thought was an excellent film—I watched it probably 20 times with my children when they were younger—apparently became a vegan after the film because it was so anthropomorphic.

We already have high standards and laws on animal cruelty, so why do we need the Bill? It is very flimsy. There is nothing to it really, as one Minister told me, so why are we having it? We are told that it is very popular with people and that animal welfare was the second-most important issue in the minds of voters in the 2019 election after Brexit. Well, do they vote on these issues or on wider and more important issues facing the country? I was elected to the House of Commons five times and I think I still know how people think. Most people vote on rather more important issues.

Most people have feelings for animals, but there is a small lobby of activists who rarely vote Conservative—or, indeed, Labour—pushing an animal rights agenda. They are not mainstream. They represent only themselves. The Peta—People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—website says “End Speciesism” and has a picture of a rat with:

“We also feel pain, love, joy, and fear.”


Love? Rats will eat their own young, as noble Lords will know, and I do not think that shows love. Peta also wants us to go vegan, to not have milk in our coffee—a treat—and it says that eating meat, cheese et cetera is an addiction similar to drugs. The Animal Liberation Front, of course, is notorious for its violent action. I could go on. But are rats sentient? Yes. Are squirrels, which are destroying the woods that we are all trying to encourage, sentient? Yes. Are the magpies that kill fledglings sentient? Well, yes, of course, as are the foxes that kill hens—but what about the hens and the fledglings that get killed by magpies?

I will not dwell on the fact that if we did not have farm animals for our benefit, they would not exist and our countryside would look totally different. It would be mostly arable or wasteland. So this Bill seems to me to be driven by a minority agenda pushing animal rights. What amendments does my noble friend envisage under Clause 5(2) and (3) to regulations made by SI. What good will come of this animal sentience committee? What relationship will it have with the Animal Welfare Committee? Who will be on the committee? Will he pledge not to appoint members of Wild Justice or Peta? To coin a phrase, cui bono? The Explanatory Notes blithely say:

“The Bill will require some public expenditure.”


How much?

Finally, the Bill has been described by one of my noble friend’s fellow Ministers as a paving measure. What does that mean? We have heard today ominous calls for the Bill to be strengthened. Like my noble friend Lord Bellingham, I have always believed that we should legislate as little as possible and only when it is necessary. The gentleman in Whitehall does not know best, and individuals should be allowed to get on with their lives without interference, in so far as that does not adversely impact on other people or wider society—and that includes animal cruelty. We pass laws to ensure that that does not happen. I fear that the Bill is a superfluous measure and a very un-Conservative measure, and I look to the Minister to allay my fears that this is not some thin end of the wedge softening-up of our legislation to pursue a bogus animal rights agenda.

Pesticides

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I will start with that last point and promise to write to the noble Baroness on the uptake of new technologies. I certainly think that the advantage of the new ELM scheme is that it will allow us to embed integrated pest management as part of the three offers we are making. That allows us to finely hone our support for farmers, particularly where they are moving towards systems that are better for the environment and human health. I can assure her that the use of pesticide sprays and herbicides will certainly be part of our ELM schemes going forward.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, the use of DDT was most certainly harmful to wildlife and possibly to humans, but of course, it is now banned. I declare an interest as a farmer. Farmers now only use the targeted minimum of expensive pesticides. Can my noble friend tell me what role the use of pesticides has played in combating the spread of trypanosomiasis, also known as sleeping sickness and spread by tsetse fly, and the fight against malaria, which is spread my mosquitos and kills over 400,000 people each year, 2,000 of them children under the age of five and mostly in sub-Saharan Africa?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend is right about DDT. I am afraid that tsetse fly is not covered in my brief, but I agree with him that there are occasions where the use of pesticides is vital and has saved millions of lives. I am glad to say that we do not have tsetse fly in this country, and I hope that global warming will not bring it here.

Organic Products (Production and Control) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mendoza (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I had imagined that joining your Lordships’ House might prove intimidating, but the welcome I have had from everyone has been extremely friendly. I thank in particular the police officers, the security staff and the doorkeepers. Black Rod, the Clerk of the Parliaments and officials here have all helped me to begin the process of fathoming how this place works. The embrace of the Government Whips’ Office has been a particular delight. I also thank the Prime Minister for nominating me, and my noble friend Lady Finn and the noble Lord, Lord Trevethin and Oaksey, for acting as my supporters.

I hope that your Lordships will indulge me in speaking on a subject that has occupied a large part of my life since March. I have the honour to serve as the Government’s Commissioner for Cultural Recovery and Renewal. Your Lordships will know that this is a hard and perilous time for organisations and people in the cultural sector. Cruelly, often the more independent the organisation, the most commercial it is and the least reliant it has been on government grant, and the harder it has been as audiences and visitors have been kept away.

Since March, I have played a part in conceiving, developing and overseeing the necessary £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund. I am proud of what has been achieved to date through so many working together. It has relied on ministerial leadership and joined-up working by brilliant officials across DCMS, the Treasury and No. 10. It has brought together great arm’s-length bodies, such as Arts Council England, Historic England, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the British Film Institute. There have been regular working groups covering museums, entertainment, tourism and heritage, bringing in knowledgeable sector expertise.

Over the last weeks, thousands of grants, large and small, have been announced for places up and down the country—for churches and cathedrals, heritage sites, steam railways, museums and galleries, dance, theatre, orchestras, music venues, festivals, arts centres and independent cinemas. Many have never had or needed public funding before. The process will carry on over the coming weeks. It will not end the crisis for culture, but it will help. We continue to work to get places open, with fuller audiences and visitors where we can, so that they can continue to bring joy and happiness, promote economic growth, help society and add vibrancy to local communities, villages, towns and cities. Culture will return.

Turning to the SIs, as the Minister clearly explained, the Government are not altering regulatory policy at the moment. The SIs are keeping in place existing regimes that come over from retained EU law. At the risk of repeating what the Minister said, they amend the 2019 regulations to refer to Great Britain rather than to the UK in order to help the legislation operate in line with the Northern Ireland protocol.

As provost of Oriel College at the University of Oxford, I witnessed the wonderful range of academic endeavour from arts to sciences. I am privileged to be able to discuss the work of students, researchers and academics in, for example, biochemistry, biomedicine and medicine. Powerful gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 are now ubiquitous. They are used to develop GMOs and potential therapies and cures for a range of diseases, such as some forms of blindness and cancer. This country leads in much of that research. I support legislation that allows this progress to flourish.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

I congratulate my noble friend on his excellent speech. We have more in common than he may realise. We were both brought up in the suburbs of north London, we went to private day schools on the edge of London, and then, as he knows, we both went to Oriel College, Oxford. What he may not know is that we both applied to be provost of Oriel College. There the similarities end. He became provost. I was not considered. I know why, because I have good intelligence; it was because I was too old. As it happens, that is pretty sensible, because I am too old, but the 2010 Equalities Act might have had something to say about that.

I had a rather undistinguished military career and then became a Member of Parliament because I needed a job. He has had a stellar career, which we heard only a little about in his speech. With great enterprise, he founded Forward Publishing, with Will Sieghart. With even greater enterprise, and I suspect some financial benefit, he sold it 15 years later to WPP. Since then, he has made a name in the cultural field and in the arts charities’ fields. There is too much to list, but he was chairman of the Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts, he is chairman of the Landmark Trust, he was a commissioner of Historic England, and this year, as we have heard, he was appointed the Government’s Commissioner for Cultural Recovery and Renewal—et cetera, et cetera. As we can tell from his speech, he has a huge amount to offer this House, and we look forward to further contributions, when Oriel College can spare him.

Oriel, our college, was the very fortunate recipient, about a century ago, of a large donation from Cecil Rhodes, which built undergraduate accommodation—the Rhodes building—where there is a statue of him. I regret that some woke members of the governing body, possibly ones rather ignorant of history or with a different interpretation of history than some of us, wish to rewrite history. Rhodes was a very controversial, unpopular figure in his time, who was much criticised. He fought the Boers and his nadir was the Jameson raid against the Transvaal. However, the descendants of the Boers he fought founded apartheid half a century later. His rather uninteresting and usually unregarded statute is part of history and part of the historic built environment of Oxford. I particularly regret that there are pusillanimous dons trying to curry favour with left-wing students by trying to bring the statue down.

My noble friend Lord Mendoza has been outed as a Tory. I fear that he may find himself in a minority on the governing body; the only Tory in the village, we might say. However, I hope that he will bring some balance and common sense to Oxford University, which remains an institution that is admired around the world. In welcoming him, I should tell him that we have one last shared interest, which I only discovered yesterday when he gave me some political betting tips. I am also a political gambler, so I am very grateful for his tips.

Single-use Plastics

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Robathan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to reduce the consumption levels of single-use plastics.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)]

My Lords, we have banned microbeads on personal care products, reduced single-use plastic carrier bags and invested £100 million in plastics innovation. We are banning the supply of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds from April 2020; seeking powers through primary legislation to charge for specified single-use plastic items; and delivering our promises to introduce a DRS, provide consistent recycling collections and reform packaging waste regulations. Consumer single-use plastics will be removed from central government offices from January 2020.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, plastics have been hugely beneficial to society and civilization, but sadly their misuse is now very detrimental to all of us. I welcome everything that the Minister has said, particularly the plastic bag tax, which has been a huge success, reducing consumption by 85%. I hope that this direction of policy will continue, but can my noble friend the Minister tell me, first, whether we are promoting research into whether we can get the embedded energy and the oils out of plastic and reuse them—that is a very complicated question—and, secondly, whether we can educate the public more so that they, particularly young people, do not go around with a single-use plastic bottle in their hand the whole time but use a renewable one?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, a lot of us are now very much using renewable bottles. I am pleased to say that, in the Year of Green Action, I have one in my office that is very useful. That is why I mentioned the £100 million of research in my original reply, because clearly there are still a lot of answers that we do not know and we want to do things better. That is why there is £20 million for the Plastics Research and Innovation Fund, a further £20 million for the plastics and waste investment fund and £66 million through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. All of these are part of what we need to move to, which is reducing plastic, and, wherever possible where we have plastic—and we will, of course, need plastic for things such as medicine and medical facilities and so forth—ensuring that we reduce, reuse and recycle sensibly.

Fly-tipping

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I agree with a very considerable amount of what the noble Baroness has said. We need to educate people much more: one in five people consciously drop litter—one in four fail to tidy, or place, their litter—so there is a lot of work we need to do to educate. We are working with local authorities because we think that is the way forward. I would endorse the Great British Spring Clean of March and April as a way in which civil society can get much involved.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to hear the Minister endorse the Great British Spring Clean, but will he get Her Majesty’s Government to encourage every school to get involved in it, so that children are educated? Before he answers that, I will endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said. As a member of the Woodland Trust, I think that fly-tipping is absolutely appalling, whether on Woodland Trust territory or anywhere else.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

Again, I agree with my noble friend that there is a lot that needs to be done. It is worse in urban areas than rural areas, but wherever it is, it is unacceptable.

Agricultural Subsidies

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, that is precisely why Clause 1 of the Agriculture Bill sets out that the Secretary of State may give financial assistance for, or in connection with, a number of purposes. One of those is,

“managing land or water in a way that protects or improves the environment”.

There is no doubt that there are nearly 100,000 acres of land in riparian buffer strips beyond two metres. We wish to continue with this because there are a lot of benefits to it.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a farmer. I endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said. It is important that this money is devoted to things such as buffer strips. I also beg my noble friend that, when the new design is put into place, it is simple for everybody to understand and to pay. As he will know from the Rural Payments Agency, payments on the HLS have been disastrous for some farmers.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, having declared my interests, I have considerable sympathy with my noble friend. That is precisely why we are working and will be working with farmers, land managers, environmental experts and other stakeholders so that we get this precisely right and it is not over-bureaucratic but environmentally outcome-focused, which is so important.