Future Flood Prevention

Debate between Baroness Coffey and Mary Creagh

Monday 27th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She has joined me on the Environmental Audit Committee, and her expertise on this subject has been invaluable.

The Committee on Climate Change warns that increased flood risk affects property values and business revenues, and, in extreme cases, threatens the viability of some communities. A much worse scenario is set out in the climate change risk assessment: if global temperatures rise by 4° above pre-industrial levels, the number of UK households predicted to be at significant risk of flooding will double from 860,000 today to 1.9 million in 2050. Those are very stark and very concerning figures.

I know from my own constituency the misery that flooding can bring. In the 2007 floods, 1,000 homes in Wakefield were flooded. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris) said, successive Government have cut funding over the years, and 2007 was one such year—it was Labour that cut the funding that year. Our flood defence programme was cut, and I lobbied very hard to get that money reinstated. We got £15 million for flood defences to protect our cities. Thanks to those defences, which were completed in 2012, Wakefield managed to escape the worst of the 2015 storms. That was really, really important.

Nationally, the Government have taken a rollercoaster approach to funding. During the previous Parliament, flood funding was initially cut by 27%. The money was then reinstated after the 2013-14 floods. Mark Worsfield’s review of flood defences, which was published by my Committee, showed that those Government cuts had resulted in a decline in the condition of critical flood defences. It showed that the proportion of key flood defence assets that met the Environment Agency’s required condition fell from 99% in 2011-12 to 94% in 2013-14. Therefore, in three years we had a pretty large decline in the condition of mission critical flood defence assets, which posed an unacceptable risk for communities—I am talking about those communities that think that they have their flood defences in place and that they can sleep easy in their beds at night when it is raining. The more flood defences that the Government build, the more they need to increase the maintenance budgets. We cannot keep spending more on capital and then cut the revenue budget.

The failure of the Foss Barrier in York shows what happens when critical flood assets fail. It was built on the cheap in the 1980s. It was not built to the correct height and it had just two mechanisms. Once one of those mechanisms failed, the water overtopped its banks and reached the electrical switch rooms. Local flood engineers were left with no choice but to raise the barrier with very little notice, which led to hundreds of homes being flooded. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) will have a great deal to say on that.

The Government are talking about spending more on flood defences. One mechanism they are using is the so-called partnership funding. My Committee looked into the sources of that funding and found that 85% of it was coming from public sector bodies. Therefore, the Government are cutting funds centrally, and then putting pressure on hard-pressed local councils, which have seen their budgets fall by 30% over the past seven years, to boost their flood defence assets. When they say, “Do you fancy stomping up for some flood defence assets for your town or city.” those councils are left with no choice but to say yes. Just 15% of the money is coming from the private sector. Of course, it is not a level playing field, because any private sector company that gives the Government money for partnership funding gets tax relief on that so-called donation.

At the start of each spending review, the Government announce how much they will spend. In 2015, they allocated £2.5 billion for flood defences, but after storms Desmond, Eva and Frank, the Government announced, in Budget 2016, that the funding was not adequate and that they were going to invest an extra £700 million. Once again, we have this stop-start approach—cut when it is dry and spend when it is raining. The hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), who was then a Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said that the extra money would be spent according to a “political calculation”.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

Let me point out that we have increased our budget, not cut it.

[Mary Creagh]

The coalition Government in 2010—I know that the hon. Lady was not a Minister then—cut the flood defence budget by 27%. Of course, the way in which the Minister is raising the money—the extra £700 million that was announced in the Budget in March 2016—came from a stealth tax: an increase in insurance premium tax. That raises £200 million a year and goes on every insurance policy in the country, so car drivers and people who own pets are paying for flood defences. We can argue about whether that is the most transparent way of raising money for flood infrastructure.

I will talk about the Committee’s report and the criticisms that we have made, particularly about infrastructure resilience. Storm Angus caused landslips and ballast washaways on railway lines in Devon, Cornwall, the north-east and Scotland before Christmas, bringing travel disruption—as storms always do—as we saw last week with Storm Doris. Last winter’s floods, particularly those in Leeds, which the Committee visited, showed that key energy, digital and transport infrastructures are not well protected. Let us not forget the bridge being washed away in Tadcaster. The replacement bridge has only just reopened, over a year after those floods. Roads and railways going down have a huge impact on the economics of an area.

The Government’s national flood resilience review, published last summer, found that 500 sites with nationally significant infrastructure are vulnerable to flooding. During the winter floods of 2015-16, nine electricity sub-stations, and 110 water pumping stations or sewage works in Yorkshire were affected by flooding. Keeping the water supply going and the sewage under control is vital. My Committee recommended that the Government mandate energy and water companies to meet a one-in-200-year flood resilience target for risk. I am afraid that the Government’s response was hugely disappointing, simply saying, “We don’t think that’s the best way of doing it”, but not saying what the best way is. I am interested to hear that. Our strategy cannot just be tumbleweed—listening for the wind and hoping that it is not coming our way.

Minimum standards for energy, transport infrastructure and digital telecommunications companies are vital. Let us not forget that the railway lines were flooded out of Leeds. The police Airwave response radios went down, so West Yorkshire police were unable to work out where to send their blue light emergency response vehicles in the middle of a civil emergency. That is simply not good enough. If that had happened not on Boxing day, but on a normal working day a couple of days later, tens of thousands of people would have been stranded in Leeds city centre with nowhere to spend the night. There would have been a much bigger civil emergency response.

The Government’s long awaited national flood resilience review was published in September. It was good to hear about some of the things that are happening, such as the mobile flood defences. However, the Committee thinks that flood defences are essentially a sticking plaster solution: they are good as far as they go, but fail one third of the times they are used, so they work only twice in every three times. The review said nothing about the risk from heavy rainfall overwhelming sewers. No one likes to talk about sewage, although some people might think that a lot of it goes on in this place, Madam Deputy Speaker, but clearly not in this debate and under your excellent chairmanship.

The Government need a comprehensive long-term strategy properly to deal with some of the granular issues around flood risk, none more important than the way in which local authorities have to deal with flood planning and prevention. Some 30% of local authorities in September 2016 simply did not have a complete plan for flood risk, and a quarter of lead local flood authorities did not have a strategy. How are the public and Members of this place meant to scrutinise whether the plans and responses are adequate if they simply do not exist?

The Environment Agency provides advice to local councils about where new housing developments should be built in order to minimise flood risk, and the Committee heard that such advice is usually followed. However, almost 10,000 homes were built in high flood-risk areas in 2013-14. The extent to which the Environment Agency’s advice on where or whether to build homes is systematically monitored, reported or followed up through the planning system is simply not known. There is nothing wrong with building new homes in flood-risk areas, as long as those areas are adequately protected—Southwark and this place are at risk of flooding, and people are obviously still building new homes in London because there is a thing called the Thames barrier—but the situation is not being systematically monitored. We would therefore like to see much more help going from DEFRA and the DCLG to enable councils to adopt local flood plans and then actually follow them up.

In the wake of the winter storms in 2015-16, the then Prime Minister appointed two Ministers as flood envoys to co-ordinate the response to flooding in two areas: the hon. Members for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) in Cumbria and for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) in Yorkshire. A question was raised about whether those posts transferred under the new Government and the new Prime Minister. I wrote to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in July. She responded in September, saying she was thinking about it. Finally, on 7 January, we got a reply saying, “Actually, they are still in post.” It should not take six months for the Secretary of State to reply to a Committee Chair of this House to let us know whether, in the event of a flood, those two Ministers are still co-ordinating the response. What would have happened if flooding had taken place in Jaywick? That is simply not acceptable.

Finally, on insurance, last winter’s devastating floods cost over £1.3 billion in insured losses and about £5 billion across the whole economy. As I said, my Committee visited Leeds, and we had particular access to insurance. We had people coming across from Calderdale, where 70% to 80% of businesses were affected by the flooding—they have been affected almost annually by fluvial flooding and surface flooding. The floods cost small and medium-sized enterprises an estimated £47 million, with indirect costs totalling £170 million.

The floods in Leeds were the worst since 1866. Leeds University, which has done some research into this issue, told my Committee that 60% of local businesses have been unable to obtain a quotation for insurance since last winter’s floods. We heard of one business whose excess had risen from £1,000 to £250,000 after the floods. We heard of another business whose buildings insurance premium rose 60%, to £10,000, and whose excess increased 40%, to £10,000, but it would get the insurance only if it stumped up £400,000 to build new flood defences. The Committee on Climate Change says that the economic viability of some areas is being threatened, and the way insurance companies are failing to rise to meet this risk and failing to stand with communities is putting whole parts of our country at risk of becoming economically unviable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Coffey and Mary Creagh

Thursday 19th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I commend my hon. Friend for his continuing support of the hedgehog. The Government support efforts to make our gardens more hedgehog-friendly through the creation of havens, and the campaigns within local communities to work together to look out for the hedgehog, including that of BBC Suffolk; I encourage him to get BBC Devon to do the same. We do have a proud tradition, and we want to continue that with our next generation.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

Indeed, Mr Speaker. Many happy returns.

Hedgehogs and other wild mammals, and precious bird species, are currently protected under European Union regulations. The Environmental Audit Committee’s report on the effects on the natural environment of leaving the EU recommended a new environmental protection Act. Has the Minister had a chance to read the report, and what is her assessment of our recommendation?

[Dr Coffey]

I read it from cover to cover on the day it came out, as is appropriate for a Minister in serving the needs of the House. I can honestly say that our intention is to bring environmental legislation into law on the day that we leave the European Union. As a consequence, we see no need for any future legislation at this stage.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Coffey and Mary Creagh

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

7. What steps she has taken to minimise the risk of winter flooding.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

We have completed 130 new flood schemes this year, protecting over 55,000 households. All but three of the 660 Environment Agency flood defences damaged last winter have now been repaired and the three remaining assets have contingency plans in place. The Environment Agency recently launched its flood awareness campaign and last month we launched the property level resilience action plan on how householders can protect their homes from flooding. It also details measures that will allow them to get back into their home more quickly if they are, unfortunately, flooded.

[Mary Creagh]

This year, after the devastation caused by storms Desmond, Eva and Frank right across the country, the Government announced an extra £700 million of flood defence spending, but apart from saying £12 million of that would be spent on mobile flood defences to protect electricity and infrastructure assets, there has not been a clear plan from the Government about how the money is going to be spent. The Environmental Audit Committee made strong recommendations on the protection of roads and railways, and with Devon and Cornwall, the north-east and Scotland suffering landslips and ballast washaways in the recent flooding, is not now the time to set out a proper transport infrastructure resilience plan for the whole country?

[Dr Coffey]

About half of the money has already been allocated, but the hon. Lady may not yet be aware that the autumn statement included the announcement of a package of £170 million to be deployed, £150 million of which is specifically to tackle road and rail.

Soil Health

Debate between Baroness Coffey and Mary Creagh

Thursday 17th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the First Report of the Environmental Audit Committee, Soil Health, HC 180, and the Government response, HC 650.

May I say what a pleasure it is to be here with you today, Mr Bone, to discuss the vital issue of the nation’s soil health? I believe this is the first time that the UK Parliament has ever discussed the health of our soil, which is a vital part of the nation’s ecosystems. I warmly welcome the Minister to her post—I know we will have a good discussion today—and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who is the Labour Front-Bench spokesperson on this issue. I am grateful to Mr Speaker and to the House for this first ever debate, which is on the Environmental Audit Committee’s report into soil health.

I begin by thanking my Committee colleagues for their work and all the other hon. Members across the House who have a long-standing, informed interest in protecting the environment. One of the first findings of our report is that soil is a Cinderella environmental issue. It is an earthy subject; it is not clear like water, and it receives a lot less attention than air pollution, water quality and climate change. Yet whether we realise it or not, society relies on healthy soil for the food that we eat, for flood prevention and for storing carbon. The UK’s soils are only about 10,000 years old, which is one of the fascinating facts we learnt as we went through our inquiry. Soil supports 95% of the world’s food production —the other 5% is probably fish and perhaps stuff from trees, although trees grow in soil as well—so if soils start going down, human life will follow soon after.

The Government say they want our soil to be sustainably managed by 2030, but we found no evidence that they are putting in place the policies to make that happen. Although healthy soil is a vital tool in the fight against climate change, degraded soils harm the environment and can even contribute to climate change by emitting carbon into the atmosphere, so it is vital that robust mechanisms are put in place to promote soil health and reverse soil degradation. We welcome the Government’s aspiration for UK soils to be managed sustainably, but we need ambitious targets, effective policy and strong enforcement mechanisms to make sure that happens, and we did not see that action.

Let me turn first to the vexatious issue of contaminated land. This is absolutely vital if we are to have a resource-efficient country that uses everything well. That includes brownfield land, rather than taking more land from our beloved greenbelt, which, as we all know as constituency MPs, is a deeply controversial issue.

A key area of concern was the fact that 300,000 hectares of UK soil are contaminated with toxins, including lead, nickel, tar, asbestos and radioactive substances. Those contaminated sites can be a public health risk and can even pollute our water supplies. The contamination is the result of the UK’s proud industrial heritage in areas such as mine and that of the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk). That is not a problem in areas with very high land values, where sites are mostly dealt with through the planning system, so that developers can see what the cost of remediating and cleaning the soil—washing it, which is what actually happens—will be, and they are happy to do that. That happened, for example, at London’s Olympic park: the soil was actually lifted up and washed before the development began. I am sure we are exporting that amazing technology all round the world.

In areas where land values are low, where the local authority owns the land or where rogue developers have failed to clean up before construction, local councils have a statutory duty under part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to clean up contaminated land. However, the Government have withdrawn capital grant funding, which enables councils to do that.

Let me give an example from Wakefield of a housing estate in Ossett. It was built in the 1970s on the site of an old paintworks, when environmental regulations were much less stringent than they are today. In 2012, the council discovered that people’s back gardens were contaminated with asbestos, lead, arsenic and a derivative of coal tar, which can cause cancer. Cleaning up that toxic legacy would have cost residents £20,000 to £30,000 each, leaving their homes blighted and unsellable. Thankfully, Wakefield Council secured more than £300,000 from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in contaminated land grants to clean up the toxic mess.

However, our inquiry heard that the cut to the capital grant has severely undermined local councils’ ability to tackle the problem. It means that sites such as Sand Hill Park in Gunnislake in Cornwall, Upton Court Park in Slough and McCormack Avenue in St Helens will be left untreated. Many councils simply do not have the resources to investigate contaminated sites, and we heard that councils would be reluctant to investigate a site—rightly—knowing that they could not secure funding for remediation.

There is a real danger that contaminated sites are being left unidentified, with potential harm to public health. Ministers have been clear that relying on the planning regime alone does not solve the contaminated land problem and could exacerbate regional inequalities. There is a risk of no remediation being done, and in some cases the houses were built in Victorian times, so there is no developer to pursue. The Government have not produced an impact assessment that we have seen—I am happy if the Minister wants to correct me—on the cessation of the capital grant scheme, but it is wrong to state, as Ministers have, that contamination can be addressed through the revenue support grant. Correspondence published by my Committee from December 2013 shows the then DEFRA Minister, Lord de Mauley, saying that the Government never intended the revenue support grant to take the place of capital grant funding.

The Government have cut £17 million of funding since 2009-10, leaving just half a million pounds, with the funding essentially being phased out in 2016-17. Capital support grants, not revenue support grants, have financed 80% of the cost of cleaning up contaminated sites. Fewer than 2% of cases have been remediated through other public funding, suggesting that the revenue support grant has rarely been used to meet councils’ statutory responsibilities under part 2A.

Revenue support grant—the clue is in the name, is it not? It is there to help councils with their revenue needs, not these sorts of big capital needs. Some councils facing the biggest problems with contaminated sites are coping with the most severe budget cuts. Wakefield Council is cutting £27 million of spending this year. We believe it is essential that DEFRA provides a dedicated funding stream to decontaminate sites, to use brownfield properly and to have a resource-efficient approach to the planning system. It should be set at the level of the previous scheme—around £19.5 million in today’s prices.

I was concerned to learn that since the publication of our report both DEFRA and the Department for Communities and Local Government have proposed amendments to planning regulations in the Neighbourhood Planning Bill that will curtail the right of local planning authorities to attach pre-commencement planning conditions to brownfield development approvals. The requirement for these conditions to be agreed with developers in advance or be subject to appeal will prevent local authorities from ensuring that site investigation, risk assessment and clean-up works take place before development begins. Furthermore, the CL:AIRE national quality mark scheme, which aims to speed up approval for development on brownfield sites, risks negating or potentially replacing the independent, rigorous and accountable role of the local authority’s contaminated land officer. It is wrong for DEFRA to be relying on local authorities to remediate contaminated land while cutting their funding and introducing new legislative measures that reduce their ability to act effectively.

Let me turn to soil degradation, peat lands and climate change. I was unaware before this inquiry that soil is a massive natural carbon capture and storage system. We hear a lot about CCS, but we do not actually understand that the soil around us is capturing and storing carbon all the time. It stores three times as much carbon as the atmosphere, and we want it to stay there. The UK’s arable soils have seen a widespread and ongoing decline in peat soil carbon levels since the ’70s. Soil degradation increases carbon emissions and contributes to climate change. Each tonne of carbon retained in soil helps us to meet our carbon budgets and slows climate change.

At the Paris conference on climate change last year, the Government pledged to increase soil carbon levels by 0.4% a year. That is a great pledge, and we welcome the ratification today of the climate change treaty, but the Government need a plan to put that pledge into action. I would like to hear from the Minister where that plan is. Without a national soil monitoring scheme to establish a baseline for the nation’s soil, we will not know whether the target is met. The carbon content of soil is vital for growing food—95% of food, apart from fish. Soil degradation could mean that some of our most productive agricultural land, particularly in East Anglia, becomes unprofitable to farm within a generation.

The degradation and decline of peat bogs is particularly troubling, given that peat lands store about 40% of our soil carbon. The Government need to crack down on land use practices that degrade peat, such as the burning and draining of bogs. I welcome the Government’s commitment to publish their report on the carbon and greenhouse gas balance of low-lying peat lands in England and Wales before the end of the year. That research will fill an important knowledge gap, and the Government should use the report to accelerate and improve their peat land restoration programme.

The upcoming 25-year environment plan—we are keen to hear the latest timings for that from the Minister—should set out measurable and time-bound actions that will halt, then reverse, peat land degradation while minimising the impact on farmers. DEFRA’S single departmental plan contains £100 million for the natural environment. Will the Minister tell us how much of that money will be spent on improving soil health? I am concerned that a majority of the projects are based in upland peat land areas, whereas our report highlighted that the problem is in the lowland peat areas. They are the emissions hotspots, and that is where the Government should target their efforts.

I mentioned the need for a proper soil monitoring system. Again, because soil is earthy and dark, we do not tend to see it as something that is important to us as an ecosystem. DEFRA’s ad hoc approach to soil health surveys is inadequate. We would like the Government to introduce a rolling national monitoring scheme, very similar to the one in Wales that we heard about, to ensure that we get a rich picture of our nation’s soils. Data collection is a cornerstone of effective policy, because what gets measured gets done. Without a national soil monitoring scheme, we do not know whether our soils are getting healthier or sicker. Ad hoc studies are just not enough; one survey in eight years is not enough.

A proposal to undertake a repeat of the soil sampling carried out in 2007, which would cost just £156,000 a year, has been submitted to DEFRA since the release of our report. Is the Minister aware of that and does she have any comments about that proposal? Compared with the costs of monitoring air and water quality, this is very small beer, but it is a crucial platform for knowledge building. Soils receive nowhere near equal status with water, biodiversity and air.

The Government have suggested that we could use farmers’ own soil analysis to monitor soil health. That is fine. That approach may provide useful additional data, but it is not a solution because it would be an unrepresentative sample. I know the Minister has a degree in these—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

In chemistry.

[Mary Creagh]

Yes, the Minister has a degree in chemistry, so she will know about the importance of representative sampling. Such an analysis would only deal with agricultural soil, but would neglect conservation land, urban and coastal land, forests and most peat lands.

Let me turn to the cross-compliance regime. The Government’s reliance on cross-compliance rules with farm payments to regulate agricultural soil health is not sufficient to meet their ambition to manage our soil sustainably by 2030. The regime is too weak. The rules are too loosely enforced and they rely only on preventing further damage to soil, rather than on promoting activity to encourage the restoration and improvement of our soils.

Crucial elements of soil health, such as soil structure and biology, are not assessed at all in the cross-compliance regime, and there is a minimal inspection regime. Two figures really illustrate the changes in the past couple of years. In 2014 there were 478 discovered breaches of the cross-compliance soil regime, but in 2015, under the new common agricultural policy rules, there were just two discovered breaches of the new conditions, both on the same farm. I am pretty certain that the only reason those breaches were discovered was because there was soil run-off, which probably went into a watercourse. It was not Government inspectors, but the Environment Agency, that saw a polluting incident in a river, allowing the breach to be discovered. In theory, an outcome-based approach is fine, but we need adequate inspection and monitoring. Rules with greater scope, force and ambition are required to meet the Government’s goal to manage soil sustainably by 2030.

I turn briefly to subsidies for maize production and anaerobic digestion. We heard that maize production, when managed incorrectly, also damages soil. This is not just a question for fans of “The Archers”, in which Adam is trying to restore the soil structure in the face of opposition from evil Rob Titchener, who is evil not just because of what he did to Helen, but because of his approach to soil monitoring and restoration. We send Adam every good wish in his low-till approach to improving the land.

Maize production can increase flood risk and contribute to soil erosion. My Committee heard evidence that up to three quarters of a field could be sealed to—or become impervious to—rainfall in maize stubble fields over the winter, which results in the soil run-off that, as I said earlier, damages rivers. There is a very simple method to avoid that, which is roughly ploughing back in the maize stubble. If the Government could think of ways to incentivise farmers to do that, we would be only too happy to hear about them. We need effective regulation of high-risk practices.

Maize produced for anaerobic digestion receives a double subsidy: first through the CAP and then from the UK’s own renewable energy incentives. That is counterproductive and has contributed to an increase in the land used for maize production. The Government’s plan to restrict the subsidy for energy generated using crop-based feedstock is a move in the right direction, but it fails to prevent maize from being grown on high-risk soils. I would be grateful if the Minister set out whether she has any specific plans on that issue.

Before I finish, Mr Bone, I would like to say a few words about the referendum result, a topic that I know is very close to your heart.

Air Quality

Debate between Baroness Coffey and Mary Creagh

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport referred to that issue when he came to the House to discuss the Heathrow decision. The Government believe that the Heathrow north-west runway scheme can be delivered without it having an impact on the UK’s compliance with air quality limit values, and with a suitable package of policy mitigation measures. Policies at national, London and local level will help to ensure that the scheme can be delivered in line with our legal obligations in respect of air quality.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The Minister rightly says that this is not straightforward, but documents revealed to the court showed that the Treasury is blocking measures proposed by her Department and the Department for Transport that would actually tackle air pollution. The Environmental Audit Committee published a report on sustainability in the Department for Transport, in which we concluded that we had no confidence that the Department would meet either its 2020 or its 2030 target on low-emission vehicles. Given that the autumn statement is imminent, will the Minister now go back and work with the Department for Transport, and, critically, the Treasury, to unblock the pipeline and ensure that we stop dirty diesel?

[Dr Coffey]

The Environmental Audit Committee does important work in monitoring those ongoing issues. The Department for Transport and DEFRA have been working together, and we established the joint air quality unit earlier this year. I am also meeting public health and DCLG Ministers. As I have said, I am absolutely committed to trying to make a difference in this area.

The hon. Lady will be aware of the scheme that we launched last month to fund more charging points for low emission vehicles, focusing on taxis as well as cars. Those measures are well under way. I assure her that the Department for Transport takes this issue very seriously and that we will be making further progress, and I am sure that the Treasury has also heard her pleas. Moreover, the Prime Minister gave an undertaking in the House yesterday that we would do more in relation to air quality.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Coffey and Mary Creagh

Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

1. What progress she has made on increasing soil carbon levels by 0.4% each year.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

Our ambition is to be the first generation to leave the environment in a better state than we found it, and I am proud that that was in our manifesto. The Government are pleased to be supporting the COP21 Paris initiative to which the hon. Lady refers to promote a 0.4% average growth rate of carbon storage in soils worldwide. Opportunities are rather limited for most UK soil types to increase carbon stores, except for peat land, of which the UK has a high proportion. Our focus therefore is their restoration through Government funding and support for private sector initiatives, in which we are investing millions of pounds.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank the Minister for that reply and welcome her to her new role. Soil is a Cinderella ecosystems issue, yet it is vital for growing food, preventing floods, and capturing and storing carbon. The Environmental Audit Committee’s recent report welcomed the Government’s commitment to increase soil carbon levels by that 0.4% a year as part of our Paris climate commitments, but we could not find any evidence of Government policies to support that goal. With the environment plan and the carbon plan delayed, can she set out as a matter of urgency specific, measurable time-bound plans to improve the nation’s soil and peat lands?

[Dr Coffey]

I thank the hon. Lady for her welcome. I agree that soil health is absolutely critical and I note the inquiry of the Select Committee. The 25-year environment plan, which I hope will be out shortly—or at least the framework of it—will provide an opportunity for people to contribute to that. Meanwhile, the Government are investing in research to understand better how we can work more closely with farmers to improve soil health in the forthcoming years.