Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Rooker and Baroness Parminter

Committee stage
Monday 28th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. We often agree but on this occasion I have to say that we do not. I shall speak briefly because the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, introduced so eloquently the amendment to which I put my name, concerning Clause 24 stand part. It would remove this clause, which would give the Secretary of State the right to give guidance to the OEP that it must have regard to in preparing its enforcement policy.

I do not want to repeat points that have already been made, so I shall merely congratulate the Select Committee on the Constitution, which is very ably chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, and refer to two points that it made. The committee said that:

“Guidance is a poor substitute for clear rules”,


and it is correct in saying so. That goes very much to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs: when it is guidance, it is hard for us to judge how wide-ranging or how constricting it will be to the independence of the OEP, but it could be very wide-ranging and that is one of the reasons why I am concerned.

The Constitution Committee also said:

“The power to issue guidance on the OEP’s enforcement powers could call into question how independent it will be.”


For me, that is the nub of the issue: it is about the public perception of how independent this new watchdog will be. At a time when there is increasing concern about public confidence in public institutions and indeed in politicians, we need to ensure that this new body is seen to be not just as independent as we would wish it to be but as independent as it needs to be.

It is not acceptable for the Minister to say, “Oh, we’d only use this guidance as a last resort”. As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said, we have a very independent-minded interim chair of the OEP at the moment; however, that may not be the case in future. Irrespective of that, we need to be clear that it has to be set down in statute that this is an independent body with the power to set its own enforcement policy. I am afraid that any indication that the Government can somehow meddle by looking into matters in other bodies within the Defra family just does not cut the mustard. I therefore feel very strongly that Clause 24 needs to be removed.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, briefly, the Minister would be well advised to pay attention to what the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, said. The Northern Ireland situation is not a coalition; it is a power-sharing Executive. The parties carve up the ministries. I had one year as a Minister when there was direct rule. I had planning and the environment among other responsibilities and duties. I discovered that most of the political parties there do not believe in planning. They would like a bungalow in every field. That is the situation: if you fly over Northern Ireland, have a look at it. Imagine a bungalow in every field, with the waste and everything else. “If you own land, you can do what you want with it”: that is what I was told. So it is a really sensitive issue to get the wrong person at the wrong time. It would be terrible to meet without someone representing Northern Ireland, but we should be aware of the way the d’Hondt system allows the parties to control the ministries.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, I heard the Minister say that there is no requirement to follow the guidance. I wrote it down at the time. That is interesting. I would love to be a fly on the wall the day the department’s lawyer goes to see the Minister and says, “Well, Minister, it only says you ‘must have regard’. You want to do this, that and the other and do your own thing, but it actually says you ‘must have regard’. Here’s all the reasons why you have to have regard to what the Secretary of State says.” Before you know it, there will be a threat of malfeasance on the office, because it has gone against having regard to a sufficient extent of what the Minister said.

How do you measure “have regard”? I realise that I will be followed by lawyers; I am not a lawyer, but I have been there when the lawyers have come in and said, “You can’t do this because you’ve got to take account of this, that and the other.” That is the pattern: it is the way advice to Ministers from the department’s lawyers works. I am not criticising or complaining about it; I am just saying that that is the way it works. So, if it is not clear in the legislation to start with, we are building up trouble. There are therefore good grounds for taking Clause 24 out of the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, reminded me that in February 2017 I too had the privilege of being on the EU sub-committee, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, when we arrived at this. I remember doing fringe meetings at the Labour Party conference the year before when the sector was waking up to the fact of the governance gap. As I said at Second Reading—I will not read it all out—Michael Gove had woken up to it by 13 November 2017, when he said that there has to be mechanism to replace what we are losing because of Brexit. He went on to say we would have

“a new, world-leading body to … hold the powerful to account. It will be independent of government, able to speak its mind freely.”

That was not a speech; that was a published article, authored on GOV.UK.

My final point is this. I know that it is easy and people will say that we have unaccountable agencies and this, that and the other, but sometimes they are a comfort blanket to Ministers. Situations arise in society where the public do not believe what they are told by Ministers. Going back to the time before I entered government, that was the situation regarding food safety: a collapse in confidence in what people were told by Ministers. That is one of the reasons a semi-independent body was set up, so that Ministers do not have to go on telly and say, “The food’s safe—please eat it”. People did not believe them. The technical people, the scientists and those who are qualified to have a view go on when there is such a situation—the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, is aware of that, having set up the agency.

I was originally partly responsible for some of the legislation that set it up; I certainly never forecast that I would be the chair. However, the fact is that these bodies are useful in certain circumstances because the public have a trust in them. It is important that the public have that trust; I will not start to imagine what kind of environmental problems there would be where there is public uproar and where Ministers find it very useful to have an expert body that is able to speak to the public and engender their confidence. Believe you me, I am giving this away for free. It can be a bonus for Ministers, and they ought to wake up to that fact.