Cost of Living and Food Insecurity

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Food insecurity will get worse and it will have an impact on the affordability of food for everybody. This is something that farmers know and, sadly, this is something that consumers will soon discover. It is because of the Government’s direct policies. Most in the House agree in principle with the transition from the basic payment scheme to environmental land management schemes, but the botching of the transition means that farmers lost between 5% and 25% of their income in December, and most of them will see a decline to nothing before they are able to access anything like an equivalent amount of money through the ELMS. That will mean the closure of family farms, the reduction in Britain’s capacity to feed itself, and, inevitably, a spike in the price of food.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

On that issue of feeding ourselves, in North East Fife I am seeing problems in attracting agricultural workers. Migrant agricultural workers are vital and, without them, we will see fruit rotting in fields, farmers making losses and the cost of remaining produce skyrocketing for consumers. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to see more joined-up working between the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Home Office to support our farmers to recruit and therefore ensure our food supply?

[Tim Farron]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend and believe that, in so many ways, the Government are getting it wrong when it comes to the availability of visas to allow people to work. Many businesses in rural communities are not able to function at all because they simply cannot access staff.

In rural areas, the poverty we face is in-work poverty. There is very low unemployment in places such as the Lake District, and I am sure that the same is true in my hon. Friend’s constituency. The issue is businesses that cannot function; they cannot recruit the staff because the Government’s visa rules are so incredibly foolish and damaging. It is also worth pointing out that the BPS to ELMS transition is an accidental mistake that the Government are making, but the deliberate mistake they are making, as I mentioned earlier in an intervention, is their decision, through ELMS, to reward wealthy landowners for kicking off their land hard-working tenant farmers so that they can turn the land over to seed, therefore reducing food production capacity and wrecking rural communities in the process. That is not just morally unjust; it is incredibly stupid for a Government who are meant to be putting food security at the heart of their policy, and clearly are not doing so.

Energy bills are of huge significance. The rise in energy bills for the average household in two months’ time is expected to be £700. I can tell the Minister that Eden in Cumbria has the second highest rise in fuel bills anywhere in the country, while my own district of South Lakeland has the ninth highest. Rural communities are hit hardest, and as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) mentioned, the costs for families with children, people with serious health issues or disabilities and elderly people are higher still.

Shell’s £14 billion profit and BP’s £10 billion profit were unexpected, unearned and clearly unnecessary. It might be a desperate measure at a desperate time, but it would be entirely logical to decide to employ a windfall tax on those huge profits so that people up and down this country could get through this incredibly difficult time and the appalling energy increases could be wiped out.

I know that some Government Members are climate sceptics and think we should get rid of all green taxes and what have you, but I suggest that there is one Brexit benefit that the new Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency might want to take on board: we could cut VAT. That is the only useful thing that we could do as a result of leaving the European Union—the one silver lining—but the Government will not deploy it. Why not cut VAT on fuel bills and give people the relief that they desperately need?

Too little is being done to help those whose need is greatest. With inflation at 7.25%, the 3.1% benefits uprating will lead to utter destitution. It is not just about physical hardship, but about the misery, shame and lack of dignity that go with it and the stress and mental health problems that go with abject poverty, when people cannot afford to feed their children, pay the rent or put fuel in their car to get to work—if they are lucky enough to have a car.

Kendal in my constituency is not a huge town by most people’s standards, yet Linda Sutherland’s wonderful team at King’s food bank in Kendal provided 48,225 meals last year, which was 50% more than in 2020. The massive demand for services from people in desperate need tells us that we are doing something seriously wrong as a country. The local housing allowance is not remotely keeping up with people’s needs, particularly in areas where the cost of living is that much higher. In constituencies such as mine, hundreds of families have been kicked out of private rented accommodation. Council house waiting lists in South Lakeland have increased by 50% in five years; there are now more than 4,500 families on them.

This is the opportunity for the Government to intervene. I understand what it is like to be criticised in government: it is natural to be defensive. I encourage Ministers not to be defensive, but to consider ways to make the lives of people in this country better in these most appalling of times.

Cost of Living and Food Insecurity

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman takes me on to the Welsh Government, who are leading from the front on this. We look on in England and see residents in Wales being given better access to welfare, school meals and prescriptions than people in England. But I share the fundamental concern that corporations in the City of London are buying farmland across the UK for carbon offsetting. That is not right, and it has the implications of undermining British farming production, rewilding and nature. It is really important that this Conservative Government come forward with a UK strategy to deal with that.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a series of good points. Does he share my concern that the Government’s plans for environmental land management schemes provide an incentive for landowners to clear off their tenants from the land, take big loads of cash from the taxpayer and leave those farmers without work, wrecking not only the local environment but the rural economy, and massively reducing our ability to produce our own food, thus increasing food prices in the process?

[Jim McMahon]

Absolutely. We all welcome the fact that we bring in produce from all over the world, as it gives variety and helps maintain consumer price. But it is really important that we do not undermine British produce in that process, and that we understand the importance of seasonality and of food security. If we allow food production here in the UK to be eroded and diminished, the time will come when we cannot feed our own population. That will be the real risk. The Government are watching this now and are allowing wealthy landowners on big estates to get rid of tenant farmers in favour of rewilding, and the Government are paying them for that. It is outrageous.

Environmental Land Management Scheme: Food Production

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I want to say a massive thank you to the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). This is an important debate and he introduced it really well. I pretty much agree with everything he said.

Like the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), my views about the wisdom of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union are on the record; people know what they are. My views on the common agricultural policy are also on the record; if I could find one glimmer of hope or a silver lining about leaving the EU, it is leaving the CAP. That is one of the reasons why I am so frustrated that we are not taking the opportunities that leaving the CAP provides.

In principle, the environmental land management scheme—ELMS—is good. It is good that we should pay farmers with public money for producing public goods. I have no argument with the principle. However, we surely cannot ignore the fact that producing food and being able to feed ourselves as a country is a public good. Also, if we do things that lead us to being able to produce less food, that is a public bad and we should seek to avoid it.

Over the last 20 years, we have seen a 10% reduction in our capacity to feed ourselves as a country. Clearly, that is something that Governments of all colours are responsible for, and that this Government, which now has more power than previous ones to do something about it, should seek to address.

However, given where the Government are going over the transition to the new payments system, my fear is that that will make the situation worse—in fact, it will clearly make it worse. If we lose farmers, we lose our capacity to produce food. By the way, those who think that there is some kind of a challenge or contest between farming and the environment do not understand either. The bottom line is that nobody can achieve good environmental policies without farmers. We could come up with the most wonderful environmental schemes through ELMS, but they are bits of paper in a drawer if there are no farmers out there to operate them. Farmers are the frontline warriors in the battle against climate change and the battle to establish biodiversity.

We value our farmers and it is important that we do so. They are often wrongly blamed for climate change. Seventy per cent. of England’s land is agricultural, but only 10% of our climate emissions come from agriculture. Let us remember that our farmers are our friends and allies in tackling the climate catastrophe, and not blame them for it.

My fear is that the Government’s policies seem set to eject farmers from the countryside, partly by accident and partly by design. By accident? The transition from basic payments to ELMS feels like it is being thoroughly botched. In December, we saw the first loss of the basic payment scheme—BPS—to farmers. Farmers will have lost between 5% and 25% of their basic payment in December, and virtually none of them has access to an alternative scheme. ELMS may be available by 2024, but it probably will not be fully available until 2028.

We have seen a poor take-up of the sustainable farming incentive, or SFI. As the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), Chair of the Select Committee, indicated, that is largely because the SFI is unattractive. Therefore, we have not got people into the scheme and, consequently, what will they do? They will either go bust or go backwards. They will decide to do things that are not environmentally positive because they cannot get into the SFI scheme, so they will think, “Why bother? Let’s just pile ’em high instead and go farming”, as people sometimes say. The reality is that if we do not get people into those schemes, they will either be lost to farming altogether or they will certainly be lost when it comes to trying to deal with the environmental challenges ahead of us.

In total, 85% of the profitability of the average livestock farm is basic payment. If any of us were in a situation where we were progressively losing massive chunks of our income, year on year, with no alternative to replace it for up to seven years, we would go bust or we would think of something else to do.

That is the situation that the Government are creating and it is why I call upon them to peg basic payment at its current level. I know that the Minister will need to have a word with the Treasury to achieve that, but the Treasury should care about farming and food security. We need to peg BPS at its current level until ELMS is available to everybody.

Farmers are leaving farming and they will continue to leave, which will reduce our capacity as a country to feed ourselves and undermine the Government’s stated environmental objectives. Without farmers, who will deliver those environmental goods?

As I have said, I feel that the SFI is an accidental mistake. I wonder whether it is perhaps down to the fact that hill farmers and small family farmers in particular do not have time to leave the farm and take part in consultation exercises. So is DEFRA just listening to the big boys? That is my worry, because it is easy to listen to them; they have staff who can leave the farm and talk to Ministers. I do not say that Ministers are being deliberately biased; it is just natural that many smaller farmers, including many of my farmers, simply do not have time to leave the farm to lobby Ministers or make their voices heard in other ways. I pay tribute to the NFU and the Tenant Farmers Association, which are doing their best to make farmers’ case known. The Government’s policies on the transition are pushing farmers out of farming and reducing our capacity to produce food—partly by accident, but partly by design. It almost looks as though some aspects of ELMS will deliberately kill farming and our rural communities.

I have been in many Westminster Hall debates, and when we were in the EU, I would have a go at Ministers of different parties about the fact that money went to the landlord and not the farmer, and the Minister’s response would be, “Well, we’d do something about this, but it’s all the EU’s fault.” Now it is down to us. We could do something about it, but the Government are designing schemes that will incentivise big landlords—some institutions and some private individuals—to kick out tenant farmers, turn the house into a second home, and let the place go to seed. They then brag at their Hampstead dinner parties about doing good for the environment, but they are actually killing rural communities, ejecting tenant farmers and destroying the landscape.

What matters is not just food production, but the heritage of our environment and our landscape. I am proud to represent the lakes and the dales. The Lake district became a world heritage site relatively recently. It will lose that status if farms become wilderness and are not carefully managed.

I ask the Government to think very carefully, and not botch the transition by making the same mistakes the EU did in handing wads of cash to wealthy landowners, who kick out the tenant farmers who are the backbone of our farming economy. The Government’s plans are morally unjust, and would destroy our rural communities, remove the Government’s key partners in the delivery of environmental schemes, wreck our landscape and our landscape heritage, and cut food production. It is no surprise, then, that many people in the countryside think that this Government take them for granted. I would love Ministers to react and prove me wrong.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords]

Tim Farron Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is an honour to follow my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson). He made a comprehensive speech, and, not for the first time, I agreed with the colossal majority of what he said. It is also a huge honour to follow the new hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French), who spoke earlier. I congratulate him on an excellent maiden speech—I know it is customary for us to say that, but it genuinely was an excellent maiden speech. He represents a beautiful part of the country, which he described very well. I had no idea that Kate Bush owed something to his constituency, but that is massively in its favour from my perspective.

The hon. Gentleman also spoke fondly about his predecessor, the late James Brokenshire, who entered the House on the same day as me, and of whom I was always fond. People speak fondly of James because of the way he conducted himself. It is sometimes very easy to say, “I like X”—a member of another party—“because we agree on certain issues”, but it was not that I considered James to be a particularly liberal Tory, although he may have been. That was not the point; it was how he conducted himself in this place, in meetings, and in all that he did. He showed grace and decency, he treated people as he found them, he was utterly honourable and trustworthy, and he was a very competent Minister. We miss him hugely.

We also welcome the hon. Gentleman massively, and I look forward to hearing many more speeches from him. He spoke today with great knowledge of the subject of the debate and with great insight, and, for what it is worth, I agreed with what he said. I think we may have reached a stage at which the number of Conservative Members who have spoken in favour of the Bill matches the number who have spoken against it, which is good to know .

I am broadly in favour of the Bill, because I think that how we treat animals is a moral indicator of how we are as a culture and as a society. It is a measure of our own humanity, so it is right that we as a country are proud of being a nation of animal lovers. Often the way to get any group of people to behave well is to remind them of how good they are, so it is important that we cling to this self-definition; but it is also important that our legislation follows that, so we will of course support the Bill’s Second Reading.

As a member of the European Union, this country, through article 13 of the Lisbon treaty, enshrined the acknowledgement of animal sentience in legislation. I welcome the fact that—following an unnecessary delay that has been mentioned by a number of Members on both sides of the House—we are now closing that gap. However, I think that the Bill represents a missed opportunity. Members do not need me to remind them of my views on whether it was wise to leave the European Union, but in the case of a number of aspects of our departure, we have opportunities to go one better than how the EU left us. In respect of the legislation at least, we have ensured that in theory we will now be no worse than we were in the EU. In practice, though, as several Members on both sides of the House have pointed out, if we sign trade deals with countries whose animal welfare standards are poorer than ours, we will put ourselves into a position where we are worse than we were before.

The most recent example is our trade deal with Australia. It is important to recognise that the Animal Sentience Committee will have no powers, as far as we can tell, to ensure that those deals—and further deals in the future—do not undermine animal welfare. It is not just a question of the treatment of animals and recognition of their sentience within the borders of this country; it is also a question of how countries that we deal with, in our name, treat those animals. If sovereignty means anything, it means our ability to affect other countries in so far as they relate to us; in the trade deal with Australia, we have failed to do that. This is true on three counts. When it comes to husbandry, I do not need to explain much about how the geography and the nature of farming in Australia differ from ours in the United Kingdom. The vast plains and the ranch-style farming in Australia mean that, to a large degree, there is no husbandry there.

[Dr Hudson]

I gently disagree with the hon. Member. Although he and I agree on many aspects of what we are discussing, as a vet who has worked on farms in Australia, I think he is making a very sweeping statement about the calibre and nature of farmers across Australia. He is correct that the geography and environment there is very different, but I can tell him from personal experience that many, many farmers out there farm to the highest standards, including when it comes to animal husbandry. To say that Australia has no animal husbandry is, frankly, incorrect.

[Tim Farron]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He will recognise, particularly having been in Australia, the nature of that husbandry. In Cumbria, the welfare of livestock is tended to week in, week out. As many of my constituents who have farmed in Australia have informed me directly, the first time that someone in Australia knows that one of their animals might be ill is when they find its sun-bleached bones on the plains the following season. That is a different form of farming. Australians are not instinctively cruel people; that is not the point I am making—[Interruption.] I am sure that Members on both sides of the House understand that. I am saying, however, that lower standards are cheaper, including standards that do not require mandatory closed circuit television coverage in abattoirs, which we have here, or the restrictions that we have here on the transportation of live animals.

Given that we know that poorer welfare standards are cheaper, these trade deals—particularly the one with Australia—offer a financial and economic market advantage to countries with poorer standards than ours that export to us. That not only undermines the morality of the UK’s commitment to high animal welfare, but massively undermines our farmers. Every farmer in Cumbria and the rest of the United Kingdom suffers because the UK Government have chosen to do a deal with a country that we have much in common with, but that does not acknowledge the animal welfare issues there. That is why the Animal Sentience Committee and the recognition of sentience in the Bill, which I support, will not have an effect on all the animals affected by decisions taken in this place. This is an abuse of an opportunity—a missed opportunity—and a waste of our sovereignty, but the Bill is good in so far as it goes, so I welcome it and will vote for it.

I do criticise those Members—not my neighbour, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border, but some of his colleagues—who have been critical of the Bill not because it does not go far enough, but because it goes as far as it does. They are wrong in that. People have said that the Bill is a threat to farming, but it is no such thing. I speak to farmers throughout my communities and further afield, and they welcome the Bill. They are committed to animal welfare—it is in their DNA.

We should recognise, however, the threat to farmers from trade deals, and from the Government’s dogged insistence on phasing out the basic payment scheme before the arrival of the new environmental land management scheme. Just last month, farmers lost between 5% and 25% of their basic payment, and there is no sign, even slightly over the horizon, of anything to replace it. That will put small British family farms out of business, and there will be a knock-on effect on animal welfare, because part of the reason for our animal welfare culture and why our standards are as high as they are in this country is that they are based on the model and example of the British family farm.

Although I welcome and will support the Bill, and think that there is much to be said for it, I want to rush through some areas where things need to be improved. First, I hope that the fact that the duty to enforce recognition of animal sentience falls on the committee and not primarily the Secretary of State will be changed during the passage of the Bill. That is not right; it gives less responsibility and power to the Secretary of State.

I am also very concerned that clause 3 requires the Secretary of State only to lodge before Parliament a response to reports from the Animal Sentience Committee. That could be a two-line dismissal, and then what would we do? I guess the Opposition could call an Opposition day debate, and we could ask questions at Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions, but as the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) said, the opportunities for scrutiny are minimised. The task of initiating these things is all put on Opposition Members or Government Back Benchers. Set pieces will not be a part of the process, and it would be entirely possible for the Secretary of State effectively to dismiss any report pretty perfunctorily.

As has been said by a number of colleagues from across the House, we should not treat this matter purely in the negative, although unfortunately at the moment the Bill does that. If we are so proud of our heritage and our high animal welfare standards, why is the committee and its work not about promoting good practice around the country, and in every aspect of our life in so far as it impacts animals, as well as about trying to stamp out bad practice? Again, that feels like a missed opportunity to have gone further and done better. As I have strongly implied, the Animal Sentience Committee should have the power to comment on trade deals. My fear is that, on those matters, it could end up—a bit like the Trade and Agriculture Commission—being a watchdog that may bark occasionally but does not have very much bite. The Government are certainly under no compulsion or obligation to take any notice of it whatsoever.

Many animal welfare charities have expressed concerns to me about the lack of resource for the Animal Sentience Committee. I acknowledge that point, as it goes with our concern about the absence of parliamentary scrutiny and the relegation of these serious issues to a body that is one place removed from this place. The committee chair will be “hired”, for want of a better word, for 20 days a year, and members of the committee for 15. There is no dedicated secretariat—I understand that will be provided by DEFRA staff—and no obvious independent budget. All that adds up to just about ticking the box, and just about copying what the EU did, but without anybody watching over our shoulder. Meanwhile, we are not doing anything. We are meant to be a global trading nation whose footprint and impact is felt around the world. What a missed opportunity to make that impact and do something good when it comes to animal welfare. So this is not three cheers; it is perhaps two, or more likely one, but it is better than nothing, and I will vote for the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

First, let me draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, because I farm. What a delight it was to listen to such a full tribute to my friend James Brokenshire. He was a lovely man and a good friend, and we miss him very much. He has a worthy successor in my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French). What large shoes he has to fill. I am sure that he will do his very best.

Concern for animal welfare is, as everyone has said, something on which we pride ourselves in this country, and on which we already lead globally. The sentience of animals has long been recognised in this country, as is evidenced by the animal welfare legislation passed by Parliaments over the last 200 years. My great-great-grandfather was the MP for somewhere in Birmingham—I think it was Yardley. I asked the Library to look up any speeches he made in 1885, and all it could find was a speech on rabbits and hares. Here I am, 137 years later, still on animal welfare. Nothing has changed because we care about sentience in animals. That is not going to make the Bill necessary. The Bill is completely unnecessary.

Every Member who has spoken in the debate has listed things that they think are more important than the Bill when it comes to animal welfare. They are right. There are so many things on which we could do a better job. Parliamentary time is not an endless opportunity. This is the place for Governments to bring in changes and improvements to the lives we and our constituents lead. We are elected for fixed periods of time, so every day is precious, and every opportunity to improve, simplify or even tweak our legislation is both a privilege and an obligation. That is why unnecessary tokenism and gestures, although they might feel nice, are a missed opportunity. The Bill is one of the best examples of that—glittering with good intentions, just like the road to hell, but absolutely and completely unnecessary.

First, the Bill creates an open goal for prevention. If someone wants to prevent a planning application, they can refer it to a quango and get a three-month report. There are questions about the proposed committee that will be formed to determine whether the sentience of animals has been considered by Government policy. What happened to the bonfire of quangos? DEFRA has already created a quango in the Environment Act 2021, and now it thinks we need another one. It is not so much a bonfire of quangos as a breeding ground for quangos. While most life forms fall under the scope of the Bill, the taxpayer, that most undervalued of vertebrates, would appear not to do so.

Parliament has always proceeded on the basis that animals are sentient, and has legislated for animal welfare as a result. The definition, or lack thereof, in the Bill is somewhat irrelevant. What animals are considered to be sentient can be changed to suit. All this will do is prevent things. Want to plant more trees, build more houses, improve infrastructure or open a new power station? None of that will be straightforward, just in case we might hurt the feelings of a mouse or a cuttlefish in the process. [Interruption.] Yes, cuttlefish are cephalopods.

The Bill directly contradicts our pledge to level up this nation. My constituency has a moratorium on house building because of phosphate pollution in the River Wye. House building is proven to contribute only a tiny fraction of that pollution, but house builders and aspiring homeowners are being punished. The Bill will be terrible news for those people, as undoubtedly, in the wildest, most natural and beautiful of constituencies, some lovely creature will be discovered in situ. Its sentience will now need to be considered and more unelected bodies will have the power to subvert the building of those much-needed homes. What is conservative about that?

The core aspect of the Bill is to embed consideration of animal welfare into the policy decision-making process, as if we could not manage that by ourselves. That consideration will be made by the Animal Sentience Committee, an opaque body. To the naive, that will appear a noble stance for the Government to take. However, there are serious misgivings about what the committee will set out to achieve. The role of the committee is apparently to scrutinise not the substance of the policy decisions, but the process by which the decisions were reached and whether all due regard has been paid to animal welfare. However, the draft terms of reference suggest that the committee could have a role in scrutinising policies. That would be at odds with the very legislation bringing it into existence.

My question to the Minister, therefore, is who the membership of the committee will report to. Will it be at arm’s length? Most importantly, what safeguards will be in place to ensure that the committee will not act as a vessel by which farming, wildlife management and the rural economy are attacked? If anyone has any doubts that that might happen, they should listen to the contributions of Opposition Members. The way in which the Bill has been greeted should fire off the alarm bells in everybody’s minds. Greater detail is needed on what this committee is truly being set up for and what its aims are. We already have thousands of quangos in this country, and if we are not careful we will descend into the quagmire of anti-democratic legislation.

This is a crucial time for agriculture and rural life in the UK. As we leave the common agricultural policy and move to the environmental land management scheme, many farmers will be concerned about what the future holds. The Conservative party is a party of the farmer, for the farmer, so let us ensure that future animal policy recognises the calibre of our farmers, their land management practices and the deep care they have for their animals. They have not asked for this Bill, and they do not need it. This Bill is a waste of time and utterly unnecessary—

[Tim Farron]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

Yes. I am about to go into one, so I will happily give way.

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Gentleman outlines what he thinks are threats to farmers, but I do not agree that the Bill is a threat to British farmers. However, he alluded to the transition from basic payments to ELMS being a threat, and in that case I think he is right. Would he recommend that the Secretary of State pegs basic payments at their current level and keeps them there until ELMS is available for every farmer?

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

It is difficult for me to answer that, because I am a member of the ELMS pilot scheme, so I am deeply involved in the formation of ELMS. What I would say is that public money for public goods is the right way forward, with carbon captured in the soil and a corresponding payment made to farmers so that we can balance up the subsidy deficit that British farmers will face compared with their European competitors. At the end of the day I do not believe in subsidy for anything other than agriculture, and we subsidise only in order that our goods are competitive globally—if do not pay our farmers enough, our produce will not compete internationally and our farmers will be at a huge disadvantage.

Water Companies: Sewage Discharge

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley; thank you very much for calling me to speak. I am hugely grateful to the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for not just securing the debate, but making an excellent start to it. I am sure that Members will forgive me if I focus much of what I say on the situation in my communities—the English lakes in Cumbria. We are probably the wettest part of England. Storm overflow is a daily thing for us, and we need to keep those lakes topped up, so we do not complain. We do complain about the water companies taking advantage of that in order to justify overflows that I think none of us would consider in any way acceptable.

Windermere, the largest lake in England and the reservoir of last resort for Greater Manchester, contains three designated bathing areas, which are of a good standard. I do not want to make the case that Windermere is an open sewer or anything like that; of course it is not. Nevertheless, on 71 solid days last year, United Utilities dumped raw sewage into that lake, and that is utterly unacceptable.

If we look at the other issues affecting phosphate levels in the lake, we see that perhaps a quarter to a third of all the phosphates in the lake are coming via septic tanks. There is a complete lack of registration and regulation of septic tanks, and no help for those people who have them. If we talk to people in the Environment Agency, who do a great job on the ground in Cumbria, they will say that the only way they know where the septic tanks even are is by a process of elimination, because they know what is on the mains and therefore what is not. That is not acceptable; we need to ensure that there is a proper system of registration, regulation and help for people with septic tanks, so that we can preserve and protect our lakes and the quality of them.

It is not just the lakes in south Cumbria that struggle and see the water companies take advantage of the permission that they effectively have to dump sewage into our waterways. The River Kent at Burneside, the Kent and the Gowan at Staveley and the Kent at Wattsfield in Kendal have seen sometimes catastrophic emissions. And in the likes of Burneside and Staveley, it does not even take much of a storm—not even a huge downpour—to see terrible raw sewage on the streets in those beautiful lakes villages. That is not acceptable.

We have to look at what the Government are willing and able to do to ensure that water companies do the right thing to keep our waterways clean and at a level that we would consider acceptable. I hear what has been said about the Environment Bill. I am massively sceptical about the Government’s amendment at the last minute. It does indeed take the Duke of Wellington’s wording about progressively reducing harmful emissions, and the duty on water companies. And there is a timescale for a report, but there is no timescale for improvement and there are no volume references when it comes to improvement, either. How much sewage is acceptable, for example? I can tell the Chamber that 40% of the phosphates in Windermere are down to United Utilities. Will 39% be acceptable, after five years—two years? These are the things that leave people sceptical about the amendment that the Government made last week, providing good cover for Conservative Back Benchers and a free rein for the water companies to effectively carry on doing what they have already and always been doing.

The hon. Member for Gower asked really important questions about fines that the water companies have paid. I submitted a written question to the Minister and I am very pleased that she answered a very similar question. The answer to the question of how many water companies in the last four years have been prosecuted and fined is that there have been 11 successful prosecutions in four years. Four of those prosecutions were for less than £50,000. In the north-west of England, there has not been one single prosecution since 2018. United Utilities nevertheless was guilty of five of the 10 longest discharges in the last year. We are seeing here a pattern of water companies being allowed to get away with murder and not being held to account.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene; he is making a very important point about enforcement. On Friday of this week, Thames Water will appear in court—I will not go into the details, for obvious reasons—for a case that it has taken the Environment Agency five years to bring to court. It had known that it was serious enough to require prosecution. Why does it take it so long?

[Tim Farron]

I am very grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention and for his work in this area highlighting this issue. We have much to be grateful to him for. The point that he makes is absolutely right. We can have policies, but what good are they if they are not enforced or the water companies can factor into their spending plans that a fine of perhaps less than £50,000 is a small price to pay when they are able to dish out to their shareholders £2 billion in dividends each year?

I am absolutely proud of the English lakes and of our waterways. We have glorious lakes, rivers and streams in our community, and I want to keep them clean, but at the moment the water companies have permission to take advantage of the fact that they are allowed to have these emissions, and they are not being held to account via the legal process.

I would like the Minister to reflect on the issues raised today and to tell me what plan she has to help us in the Lake district to ensure that the best visitor attraction in the country, and the biggest outside of London, is kept clean and pristine, and something that we can all remain proud of.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

To get the remaining 12 Back-Bench speeches in, I will have to cut the time limit for speeches to four minutes.

Environment Bill

Tim Farron Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I will be brief, because I know we want to end. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) and my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) for articulating what I would have wanted to say, had I had longer to speak. I also thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for their accessibility in this ongoing negotiation on sewage storm overflows.

This issue has been a passion of mine since childhood, when I grew up on the Yorkshire coast and swam in said sewage. Now I have the great privilege of representing two coastlines in Cornwall, as well as inland waterways, and to have been a member of Surfers Against Sewage since before I moved to Cornwall. It has been a great regret that the organisation has been at the centre of a very nasty campaign, supported by hon. Members on the Opposition side, accusing me of having voted to pump raw sewage into the oceans, which I have not. All of us in this Chamber can agree that we want to put an end to that. If anybody accuses me of that again, I would be grateful if they wrote to my office so that I can provide them with a detailed answer.

I look forward to seeing Truro and Falmouth benefit from the myriad of measures within the Bill, which I do not have time to go into. I am grateful to Members of both Houses of Parliament, of all political persuasions, for showing how well this House works and how it is possible to get the Government to move on something that is extremely important to everyone. I will leave my comments there, because I know that we are short of time.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I will finish within a minute and 20 seconds, Madam Deputy Speaker. Let us just focus on the sewage, then, given that that is the time available to us.

We have, thanks to the Government amendment, now a duty on water companies to progressively reduce the amount of sewage discharged through storm overflows —but there are no targets for either volume or timescale. That leaves water companies with the power to continue doing what they do now. This amendment is something to get Conservative Back Benchers off the hook, rather than to give water companies the direction they need.

I represent the English Lake District. I am disgusted that there is raw sewage being dumped into Lake Windermere for 71 days, collectively, in any given year. This amendment will do nothing to stop that. Currently, a water company dumps 40% of all the phosphates in Windermere. If that goes down to 39%, there is no measure to say whether that is okay, so I assume the water companies will think that it is okay.

What about timescale? What if the amount goes down over five years or over 10 years? All the Government amendment does is give the Back Benchers of the Conservative party an excuse to write to their constituents and say, “There has been further movement in the right direction.” It allows the Government to let the water companies off the hook, while doing nothing at all to demand what is necessary to clean up our lakes and our rivers.

[Rebecca Pow]

We have been two and a quarter years bringing this enormous Bill through Parliament. I want to thank all hon. Members and hon. Friends for their contributions, particularly those who have approached me personally over the past few days: my hon. Friends the Members for Redcar (Jacob Young), for Workington (Mark Jenkinson), for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), for North Cornwall (Scott Mann), for Devizes (Danny Kruger), for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton), for Yeovil (Mr Fysh), for Havant (Alan Mak), for Keighley (Robbie Moore), for Hertford and Stortford (Julie Marson), for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford), for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) and for Watford (Dean Russell).

I also thank many others from all around our coasts, including my hon. Friends the Members for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory), for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray), for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) and for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie). If I have left anybody out, I will be writing to them—[Interruption.] And my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely). Yes, we will be looking at ecological sites and bathing waters first when we bring in the storm overflows legislation. That should placate the wild swimmer from the Opposition Benches, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard).

I have outlined in enormous detail why we should vote for these amendments—

Thames in Oxford: Bathing Water Status

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered bathing water status for the river Thames in Oxford.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela. Achieving bathing water status for the stretch of the River Thames in Port Meadow is something that I have long campaigned for. The Minister will be aware, I am sure, of the early-day motion that I tabled last year on this very issue. It called on the Government to work with Thames Water to protect the Thames in Oxford, so that the river could remain clean and enable Oxford’s residents to swim safely.

A year on, our application for bathing water status is now in the hands of the Department, but there is of course also a renewed national focus on cleaning up our rivers in the Environment Bill. I will reassure the Minister that that will not be hijacking this debate. Of course, the Environment Bill does return to the House on Monday and it will give us the opportunity to improve water quality in our rivers everywhere—not just in Oxford—by placing a duty on water companies to ensure that untreated sewage is not discharged into our inland waters. The public backlash following the defeat of the Duke of Wellington’s amendment surely made clear how important that issue is to people up and down the country. The Government say that they want to act, and I look forward to seeing any strengthened amendments that might come back next week, but whatever happens, I hope that our application gives the Government an opportunity to demonstrate further their commitment to that cause.

I am also heartened that the water companies themselves recognise that more must be done. The chief executive officer of Thames Water, Sarah Bentley, admitted during her recent appearance before the Environmental Audit Committee that Thames Water’s track record on sewage has been unacceptable. It is worth noting that it already has alerts when it intends to release sewage. She went on to commit that Thames Water would spend £1.2 billion over the next five years on improving the overall network and ensuring that sewage is not released during heavy rain.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Just last year in the Lake district, United Utilities, the north-west water company, dumped raw sewage for the equivalent of 71 full days into Windermere, England’s largest lake. Does my hon. Friend agree that bathing site status, which I am asking for Windermere and the Rivers Rothay, Brathay and Kent, would be a way of ensuring quick action so that water companies do not carry on doing this outrageous stuff?

[Layla Moran]

I could not agree more. No doubt many other places in the country would want the same thing.

It is worth noting that our application has the support of Thames Water. In fact, it paid for a staff member to help to put in the application, so it is determined to do something about the issue. However, on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) made, we also need an effective Environment Agency, because it is the regulator and it needs the resources and the teeth to hold the water companies to their promises. Therefore, I urge the Minister to assess its ability to do that important work and to ensure that it is well funded to do it. The will is there, and things are moving in the right direction, but we now need as much action from the Government as possible to keep up the momentum and keep water safe.

I am sure that I cannot have been the only one who, during the pandemic, contemplated the natural beauty around me. Indeed, I even bought a wetsuit, hoping that I would get into the river. I did not quite make it, but a lot of people did. In a survey of residents in Oxford, 21% said that this was the first year that they had ever dared to go in the river. They reported that it helped their mental health and wellbeing. There is a truly national movement for wild swimming, and it is wonderful.

Last month, I had the opportunity to meet activists at a bathing site in Wolvercote, just on the edge of Port Meadow. They told me how important it was for them that the designation was made. It would mean that the river that they loved would be subjected to a strict testing regime based on public health requirements. The number of people swimming or picnicking there peaked at an impressive 2,000 a day. It is a very popular spot and there are many like it across the country, as we have already heard. Shockingly, however, there is only one other river in the whole of England that has been granted bathing water status: the River Wharfe in Ilkley, Yorkshire.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

Thank you very much, Dame Angela, for getting us back on track and enabling us to get back to Oxford. However, my hon. Friend made a very good point and we genuinely understand everybody’s strength of feeling about swimming in their local area.

[Tim Farron]

I am very much guided by your words, Dame Angela. I was very interested to hear what the Minister said about the number of applications made by local authorities; the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) made the point that other people can also make applications. However, is the Minister saying that—whether it is the Thames, Windermere, a river in Kent or any other river or waterway—if local authorities make a request for bathing site status for one of their waterways, that request will be taken seriously and considered?

[Rebecca Pow]

I had hoped that I had already made that clear. There is a process, which is set out on the gov.uk website. What has to be done and the procedures that have to be gone through are set out very clearly. Then there is a consultation and consideration of the feasibility of an application.

However, I must reiterate that there are other requirements, which the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon mentioned. There is also a particular emphasis on safety; for example, will life-saving equipment be provided? Is there space for all the people who might turn up and will they be provided for, with parking spaces, cafés and toilets? All those things then become part of the whole discussion about whether a site is a suitable area for bathing. As I say, safety—keeping people safe when they are swimming—is obviously a really key issue.

I will wind up there. As a Government, we recognise the real health benefits of healthy waters and the importance of managing them well. Of course, all this links in to everything we are doing this very week at COP26 to have a healthy, sustainable planet on which we can all live and thrive.

Question put and agreed to.

Environment Bill

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I would just like to inform the House, further to the points of order raised previously, that I understand that the gallows has been taken down and arrests have been made under the Public Order Act.

[Tim Farron]

I am pleased to hear that, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Let me also say a quick word about James Brokenshire and Sir David Amess. First, their families can be assured of my ongoing prayers for them in the months ahead. We talk about the importance of disagreeing well. Sometimes we think that means that we have to agree and be all mushy and all think the same things. The great thing about Sir David and James is that they held really firm convictions but were able to hold them with grace and kindness. There is a little lesson for all of us in that. In that spirit, I thank the Minister for her engagement on this Bill and how open and accessible she has been. It has been a lengthy affair, but that applies very recently as well, and I thank her for it.

I will quickly rattle through three bits of the Bill: first, the World Health Organisation target set out in Lords amendment 3. As we head out on this new adventure outside the European Union, the aim should be to have higher standards, or at least standards as high as those that we set as members of that union, but it looks as though we are going for those that are lower, and that is very regrettable.

We have already heard about the enormous health impact of poor air quality, and it is not just in big cities. In Kendal—in my community and on the edge of the Lake District—Lowther Street has been rated as one of the 200 most polluted streets in the United Kingdom. It is everywhere that this issue matters. We know the impact on asthma, on lung function and on people being hospitalised for cardiovascular and respiratory conditions. Sadly, we heard accurately about the appalling impact and the loss of life, particularly of Ella, but also of thousands of others each year. I do not see why the Government, much as I respect what the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) said, would set themselves unambitious targets that they could achieve when they could set harder targets that would be more of a challenge. The Government should not be disagreeing with Lords amendment 3.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

There is a lot covered in this group of amendments, but in the interests of time I will limit my remarks to the three Ps of pollinators, pesticides and poo. We are beekeepers at home. As I speak, my husband is processing the honey from our seven hives in our kitchen. For reasons I have never fully understood, this seems to involve coating every single implement in said kitchen in honey, so I am quite resigned to going back on Friday evening to a kitchen that resembles the aftermath of a house party thrown by Winnie the Pooh. Wish me luck.

Starting with pollinators and pesticides, the UK already has legislation that regulates pesticides that was transferred from the EU. It takes a tougher, hazard-based approach to regulation rather than the risk-based approach that many other countries use. The Bill requires that pesticides have no unacceptable effects on the environment, having particular regard to its impact on non-target species, which of course includes all pollinators, not just bees. Amendment 43 would replicate part of this existing framework, which sounds to me like a recipe for confusion. It also seems to be jumping the gun on the new national action plan for sustainable use of pesticides, which I look forward to seeing before the end of this year.

So, on to poo. Storm overflows designed for emergencies are now being used as a daily method of sewage management. In Rushcliffe in 2020, Severn Trent recorded storm overflows at three points in the village of Radcliffe-on-Trent alone, totalling 6,854 hours, while in the village of East Leake, the sewage treatment works there discharged 58 times for a total of 715 hours. Yet Severn Trent has still not acknowledged the need for a new pumping station. I welcome the measures in the Bill that will require water companies to publish data on storm overflows both on an annual basis and in real time, especially because it took my team months to extract the data that we needed from Severn Trent.

The Bill also puts a duty on water companies to produce comprehensive statutory drainage and sewerage management plans, including how storm overflows will be addressed. Those plans will cover a minimum 25-year horizon, which is crucial, because much of the problem in Rushcliffe comes from investment in drainage and sewerage not keeping pace with development and new homes.

The Bill also puts a duty on Government to produce a statutory plan to reduce discharges from storm overflows next year. I believe that is the right approach, because it acknowledges two things. First, it acknowledges that reducing storm overflows is the responsibility of a wider range of actors than just water companies. As the Rivers Trust has said, delivering a plan will require contributions from the whole of society, and in particular landowners, developers, highway constructors and homeowners, to divert surface water away from sewers. I am concerned that proposed new section 141A of amendment 45 covers only sewerage undertakers, leaving other significant stakeholders off the hook. We need a comprehensive strategy that addresses the problem from all angles.

Secondly, as implied by the first point, and as has been discussed today, this is going to cost a lot of money. Initial estimates, as the Minister said, range between £150 billion and £650 billion, and it will probably require some fundamental changes to how we do things. Neither of those is reason not to tackle the problem. I firmly believe we should do so, and the Bill makes a first, important step towards doing that, but we need to ensure that we understand the costs, the likely customer bill increases and the trade-offs against other areas that we want to see water companies investing in. While I support the aims of the amendment, and I acknowledge and thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) for all his work in this area and in strengthening the Bill to date, I will not be voting for the amendment tonight. We need to go further, but we need to make sure that is based on data.

The final thought I offer is that although debates such as this naturally focus on what is not in the Bill, I join my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) in recognising all the great things that are in the Bill and the huge, fantastic job that the Minister has done, including on strengthening protection for ancient woodlands, the conservation covenants, the scrutiny of forest risk products in the supply chain and a legally binding target to halt species decline by 2030. That is just in the part of the Bill we are discussing now, and I think those things are worth celebrating.

[Tim Farron]

I want to say very briefly that I am deeply concerned that the Government have chosen to disagree with Lords amendment 43. We recognise that there is a gap in the authorisation process for new pesticides, which does not look at the long-term impact of pesticides on bees and other wild pollinators. Others have spoken about the vast importance of bees and wild pollinators to biodiversity and, frankly, to our capacity to feed ourselves as a country. I am yet to be convinced that the Government are acting in the wisest long-term interests of our environment and our agricultural economy by refusing to accept that entirely reasonable amendment from the other place.

Like others, I am about to talk poop—not for the first time, as I am sure others would add, and nor for the last. Lords amendments 45 to 48 are a collection of reasonable amendments that seek to add pressure on the water companies and Ofwat to ensure that we do not see the dumping of untreated or poorly treated sewage into waterways and lakes without significant penalties or the possibility of local communities getting action quickly to rectify those matters.

In my community in south Cumbria, we suffered as a consequence of Storm Desmond. We saw the River Kent polluted so very badly by a storm overflow from the Wattsfield treatment works just outside Kendal, and it basically killed the entire fish population of that river. That was Storm Desmond, which, by the way, was meant to be a one-in-200-years event. I can tell the House that in a 10-year period, we had three at least one-in-100-years events. As other hon. Members have mentioned, the idea that storms are the only time there are sewage overflows is absolute nonsense and the water companies hugely abuse that loophole.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I will be brief. I would be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this particular issue in relation to customs.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD) [V]]

The reason why Cumbria’s farmers feel betrayed is that the Australian trade deal gives Australian farmers an unfair advantage over British farmers, because their production costs are lower due to significantly worse animal welfare and environmental standards in Australia compared with those in our country. Given that this sets an appalling precedent for all future deals, will the Secretary of State ensure that farmers’ representatives in this House get the final say and a veto before this deal is signed off.

Environment Bill

Tim Farron Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 26th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will restrict my remarks to amendments 47 and 49, which stand in my name, and amendment 29, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). The amendments have in common the aim of protecting the landscape and the environment both in very rural areas like mine and in urban and suburban parts of the UK that are threatened by the Government’s planning reforms.

Amendments 47 and 49 would ensure that environmental land management schemes contain a mechanism to deliver adequate financial support to our farmers for delivering landscape benefits, in particular species conservation and protected site strategies, and so rewarding our farmers for maintaining the beauty of our landscape. We have done that inadvertently through various funding schemes over the past few decades, but it is about to drop by the wayside. It is hard to put a price on landscape beauty, but it is vital that we do so.

In the lake district and the Yorkshire dales, in a normal year our Cumbria tourism economy is worth more than £3 billion and employs 60,000 people in our county—tourism is comfortably the biggest employer in Cumbria. Underpinning that economy is the beauty of the landscape.

[Neil Parish]

I agree very much with the hon. Gentleman. Farming, landscape and tourism are closely integrated. As we deal with the Environment Bill, we have to remember that agriculture and tourism are interlinked, especially in the rural parts of this great country of ours.

[Tim Farron]

The Select Committee Chair is absolutely right, and I completely agree. We have to find a mechanism to make sure that we reward those who maintain the beauty of our landscape.

I have often been in places such as Barbondale, Dentdale, Langdale, Kentmere, Longsleddale and other glorious bits of my part of the world. I almost feel compelled to express envy of the hill farmer I am with in his or her glorious environment, but often the response is a slightly sad look that says, “I can’t eat the view.” It is all very well having a beautiful place, but if those who work there make a pittance, what good is it to them? That is what is happening in the uplands, where people are steadily moving away as farms fail and close. The Government’s plan to offer early retirement to farmers offers no mechanism to get young people in to replace them, and just in the last few days, the only agricultural college in Cumbria has closed.

I am desperate to ensure that the ELMS rewards farmers for landscape value, but there is currently no effective mechanism to do that. That should be added, which is why the amendment matters. I am also concerned about what the Bill means for the status of some of the beautiful parts of the United Kingdom. UNESCO awarded world heritage site status to the lake district just a few years ago. The report that resulted in the award of that status gave as much credit to the farmers as it did to the glaciers. These are managed, crafted landscapes, and we should reward the farmers who provide them.

There are many bad things about our not being in the EU, but one good thing is that we do not need to borrow EU measures. We do not need to borrow the plan for funding ELMS through the mechanism of income forgone. We should be rewarding farmers for the value of what they do, not paying the pittance they were paid in the first place.

In the time left, I will speak to amendment 29. Local nature resource strategies are a good idea. They are welcome, but they are weak, and they will not be worth the paper they are written on if they are not material to the considerations and decisions made by local planning committees. If we are to protect our green belt, whether it be in such places as the constituency of the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda), other parts of the ring around London, or indeed a very rural area like mine, we must not put planners in a situation where they have no power to prevent developers from damaging the countryside or, as is the case in a place like mine, to prevent developers from delivering up to 50 houses without having to deliver a single affordable property.

Nine out of 10 planning permission applications get passed. More than a million planning applications for homes have not been delivered. Planning is not the problem; planning is the protection for our communities and our environment. That is why this amendment is important to try to undo and mitigate some of the Government’s attack on our rural communities.

[Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), and it is a real pleasure to speak in this debate. It was over a year ago that I made my maiden speech specifically so that I had the opportunity to contribute to the Second Reading of this Bill, so it is a pleasure to be back here again.

It is worth reflecting on the context of where we are now, because in the intervening time, the pieces of our country and the world have been almost thrown into the air, and we still do not quite know where they will land. The pandemic makes the Bill even more important than it was over a year ago. It is fair to say that all of us have had time to reassess priorities. We have considered our priorities in life—our quality of life, our family, our health and our friends—and this Bill has become even more important, because many of us, with the roads quiet and having limited time to get out, have reflected on the importance of our natural environment and what is around us. Our appreciation of nature and the need to focus on species loss and the things that make our environment unique to our localities are even more important than they were.

With respect, I must disagree with the shadow Secretary of State’s characterisation of this as not being a landmark Bill, because it is a landmark Bill. It is a bold Bill. I particularly reject the characterisation that it is a mark of a Government or, indeed, any Member on the Government Benches not caring about the environment, because it absolutely is not that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I put on record my thanks and pay tribute to the officials and Clerks who have been involved throughout this whole lengthy process. I will not be churlish; I will say thanks to the Ministers as well. Whether we agree with everything in the Bill or not, it is a tough job to pilot a Bill, particularly over the period of time we have been discussing it in this place.

I suspect, as the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) said, that this is not the last we will hear of this, because I think our friends in the other place may have a thing or two to say about the Bill and seek to strengthen what, in principle at least, is not a bad Bill. There are plenty of things in it where there is great consensus and where we can agree. I shall focus on three areas where I do not agree so much. In particular, I will focus on my concerns about where the Bill is good in theory, but may be very weak in practice. Those concerns relate to regulation, the delivery of environmental goods through land management, and our ability to control and protect local environments.

First, on regulation, I am greatly concerned that the Office for Environmental Protection looks to be a relatively weak watchdog with few teeth and whose key figures are to be directly appointed by the Government. It will be funded by and not sufficiently independent from Government. It will therefore always be considered to be speaking with some level of restriction. The power, independence and penalties available to it do not look anything like as strong as what we had before we left the European Union. We could have easily been able to match that level of independence and robustness. The protections and firewalls have not been put in, so I fear very much that we will have perhaps great policies, poorly regulated.

Nothing highlights that more than the current discussion we are having about the potential Australian trade deal. If we are deeply committed to protecting almost uniquely high-level British animal welfare and environmental standards, how can we go ahead and do a deal with a country with significantly lower environmental and animal welfare standards? That surely undermines our ability to enact those standards throughout the whole United Kingdom and undermines British farming. British farming is the best in the world. We say that a lot, don’t we? It is important to understand why it is the best in the world. It is the best because of the regulation, but it is the best mostly because of our culture of the family farm and the unit of the family farm, which means we have close husbandry—almost hefted human beings, never mind hefted Herdwicks.

That is of massive importance to my second area of concern. Poor protections that would allow a trade deal with Australia could be a precedent for trade deals with other countries that undercut the quality of British produce and undermine British farmers. The concern is about not just weak regulation and a lack of independence, rigour and sanctions in that regulation, but the delivery of environmental goods through land management. The amendment in my name that I spoke to earlier is about ensuring that environmental land management schemes include significant and adequate rewards for maintaining the aesthetics and the beauty, as well as the biodiversity, of our landscape. That is crucial, but so far it is missing. Mr Deputy Speaker, I worry about your constituency, mine and many like them. They are absolutely natural environments, but they are managed, crafted landscapes that have been worked by our farmers over centuries. They are as beautiful as they are because they are managed. If we have a situation where they are not rewarded through the new scheme directly for the preservation of those landscapes, the risk to the world heritage site status of the Lake District is there, the risk to our tourism economy is there and the risk to biodiversity is there.

I would add that the Government’s movement towards ELM, which in theory we are all in favour of, is potentially risky because they are insisting on phasing out the basic payment scheme much more quickly than they are going to bring in ELM. That will leave upland farmers, for example, losing half their income in the next few years. Many of them will leave the industry. Indeed, the Government wish to facilitate them leaving the industry through the retirement package they announced last week, but they have no plans to bring anybody new and young into the industry to replace them. As they preside over the closure of Newton Rigg College in Penrith, for example, where are we getting our young farmers from to deliver these environmental goods? All the best environmental policies in the world are meaningless if we do not have the hands to enact them. It is like the England manager Gareth Southgate drawing a fantastic strategy in the dressing room and then having no players on the pitch. The danger is that the Environment Bill may be a great strategy, but with no players on the pitch we will not score any goals.

My third and final concern is that, when we look at the Government’s plan for local nature resource strategies, it is a good plan and it is a weak plan. There is no mechanism to ensure that those strategies have any impact on decision making locally. That is of particular relevance, given the Government’s plans to undermine planning, democracy and local communities, and to surrender the local environment to developers without proper accountability. In a community such as mine that depends so much on the beauty of our environment, that is a danger. The average number of homes built in a new development is usually fewer than 50 and the Government are looking to give developers the opportunity to do pretty much what they like up to a development of that size.

Put together, all those things draw a picture of a Bill that is broadly well-intentioned and does a lot of good, but, when it comes down to it, it does not provide itself with the mechanisms to actually deliver what it says in the first place. Good in principle—weak in practice.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.