Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Young of Norwood Green and Lord Hope of Craighead

Committee stage
Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on his amendment, which I support. The marine environment, onshore and offshore, is vitally important, as we on the environmental sub-committee found on many occasions when we were discussing fisheries. Perhaps this is another case of not knowing what we have got until it is gone. There is a danger of over-fishing the environment, and acting in ways that damage the seabed, and that can have profound effects. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is right to stress the importance of this issue.

Before I go on to the light pollution amendment, which I have put my name to, I want to emphasise something that the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, said. I am puzzled why the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, wants to worry about people eating meat: if ever there was a cause that young people seem to embrace, it is vegetarianism—and indeed veganism. You do not need a government diktat to tell them to do that. Last night, we ate steak at our local pub; today, we had one of Lady Young’s delicious vegetable bakes. You do not need the state to interfere in this—there is a balance to be struck.

I am at one with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, about meat and dairy farming. Farming is changing fundamentally. As the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, reminded us, the use of fertiliser has dropped dramatically, and the way it is applied is much more scientific.

I noticed that there was a sort of aside by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, when she referred to mining. Yes, there will be mining, because we want lithium for batteries for electric cars—unless she is proposing that that is not a way forward. There are those who say that we should not be using cars at all, but you would have a job to convince the British public of that. Even there, science and technology are likely to come to our aid: a different type of battery, possibly using sulphur, may well be available in the future.

I think the advice of my noble friend Lord Rooker and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, was right: we want an Environment Bill, and there is no such thing as a perfect Bill. I remember trying to deal with a Bill on the digital economy—a small Bill that was swamped by about 700 amendments. We have to strike a balance on this Bill.

On the effect of light pollution, I am at one with the noble Lords, Lord Randall and Lord Taylor, and others. There are so many benefits that we can achieve through controlling light pollution. As the noble Lord, Lord Randall, said, lighting has come along in leaps and bounds, and local authorities are quite capable of doing a lot more to control the use of lighting. Although we are now using LEDs, I notice that they still shine just as brightly right through the night, when they clearly do not need to.

I remember driving along a country lane just outside Swanage, with my two young children. It was completely dark. We looked up at the sky and there, before their amazed eyes, was the Milky Way, stretched out before them in a way they had never seen in town. When I said, “Look, there is a shooting star”, I was met first with derision but was eventually proved right. We are probably never going to be able to return to seeing the Milky Way in London, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Randall, and others have brought to the Committee’s attention, we could make a profound difference on pollinators, on the kind of environment that we live in, and on energy saving. I am keen on both those amendments, and look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I wish principally to support Amendments 12 and 31, in the name of my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries of Pentregarth, which are about trees. Before I say something about those, I will say a few words about Amendment 6, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and Amendment 10, about light pollution.

I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is right to draw attention in Amendment 6 to the maritime or marine environment, but the terrestrial and the marine aspects are interconnected and, as the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, pointed out, there is no need for the amendment. You have only to go to the Isle of May—not very far from Edinburgh, where I am—at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, which is inhabited by very large numbers of puffins, to see the way in which that interconnection works. At this time of year, puffins come ashore in their thousands, with their beaks full of sand eels, to feed their young in burrows all round the island. These sand eels live in the sea, and they live on other things in the sea. The maritime environment is their environment, but they are caught by feeding seabirds, which of course spend much of their time at sea as well. The interconnection is obvious in places such as that, and I do not see the need for a distinction. But we do need the Minister to confirm that, when he talks about biodiversity, he means both maritime and terrestrial.

As for light pollution, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, that the summer solstice is a curious time of the year to be talking about it. In my cottage at Craighead in east Perthshire, you can read a newspaper outside at 11 pm. Even at midnight, almost half the sky is still light. We live up in the hills where there is no light pollution at all, and enjoy all the benefits and wonders of the sky where that is true. It is not entirely free of light pollution, because there is a wind farm not far from us which, until recently, had a bright red, winking light warning passing aircraft; it flashed 60 times a minute, right in front of our cottage. We were able to stop it, because there is a condition that required that element of light pollution to be removed by moving to ultraviolet light. This is just a small example of how things can be done by planners who put in the appropriate planning permissions for developments. There is a huge amount of work to do here and, as a bird-watcher, I support very much what the noble Lord, Lord Randall, said about the huge damage done to birds by light pollution, and the enormous loss of life that results to other animals, such as bats, as well.