Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, this amendment and the others grouped with it seek to add to the list of those who have a crucial part to play. None of us has anything but great respect for the work of the Environmental Audit Committee in the other place, which has done a tremendous job in reviewing invasive non-native species and highlighting what needs to be done and how we can improve the situation. It would surely be hugely beneficial to have it involved in the process of issuing, revising or replacing the codes of practice for invasive non-native species. That committee is on record as being very supportive of the implementation of the Law Commission’s proposals and some time ago highlighted the need for this to be a priority for the Government. We think that there is a clear role for that committee, particularly against the background of there being more limited resources to hand for the Government in carrying out this crucial evaluative work.

Our remaining amendments involve the local authorities and local nature partnerships. The simple fact of the matter is that most local authorities do not have the capacity or the ability to assess biosecurity risks and to take a proactive or intelligence-led approach to reducing them. Two-thirds of our local authorities no longer employ any ecologists, according to the Association of Local Government Ecologists. The evidence suggests that ecological capacity within local government is stretched very thin indeed, but it has a very wide policy agenda. We are here debating this Bill because that agenda is extending, and we are trying to respond to those difficulties. There is clearly an ecological skills gap within the planning system and a clearer understanding of the specialist ecological competence is required, especially in understanding exactly what the discharge of statutory obligations involves. Having that clearer understanding would enable local government to allocate better its resources against the risks associated with the fact that it no longer has the level of technical expertise that it once had. When dealing with biosecurity issues such as diseases, pathogens and invasive non-native species, 75% of local government ecologists indicate that only “basic” or “capable” levels of competence are required at that stage. There is a worry about the ability of local authorities to play their part effectively, and that is why we would like a reference to local authorities in the Bill in addition to the crucial role of the Environmental Audit Committee.

It may be thought that I am putting enormous stress on a committee of the other place, but so much competence for dealing with these areas has been swept away that inevitably we have recourse to those obvious locales where expertise exists and can be called upon. The Environmental Audit Committee report has been of the greatest significance in the development of policy. I am seeking to strengthen the role of those who have some capacity to assist the Government, with their limited resources, in carrying out the necessary functions under the Bill. I beg to move.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, the comments that I wish to make may have some relevance to the codes of practice that will accompany the Bill. Amendment 71, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, which has already been debated, could have been a cue in its own right for a wide-ranging and interesting debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, proposed the definition of a species. A species is commonly defined as the largest extent of a group of organisms that is capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. That is similar to the definition that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, was advocating, which also mentioned the exchange of genes. However, his definition did not include the fertility of the offspring as one of its conditions. Moreover, we know that bacteria of widely differing species can exchange genes via plasmids, which are small DNA molecules that can be separated physically from the chromosomal DNA. One might wish to exclude bacteria from the definition.

These are abstruse matters and I do not wish to pursue them further. Instead, I propose that in place of “invasive non-native species”, the legislation should be talking simply of “pests”. I assert that it is inappropriate to talk only of non-native species. The objection might be raised that the word “pest” is too vague to serve the purposes of this legislation. What is a pest in one context might be a harmless organism in another context. However, this is one of the realities that ought to be taken into account. I will mention the well known example of the English rabbit. When transferred to Australia, it became a major pest that threatened the viability of Australian agriculture. Rabbits destroyed the grazing land and by eating native plants and grasses exposed the top-soil and left it vulnerable to erosion. One way of overcoming an infestation is to alter the ecology by introducing a predator of the pest, or by some other means. In Australia in the 1950s, the ecology of the rabbits was altered radically by the introduction of a malign myxoma virus, which causes myxomatosis in rabbits.

The point I wish to make is that we need to consider pests within their ecological contexts, and ecology can be severely disturbed by inadvertent human interventions. Often the effect of a human intervention is to diminish the diversity of the ecology by eliminating some of its organisms, which may allow others to propagate without restraint. Thus an organism that has hitherto been regarded as harmless may become a pest as a consequence of such disruption. This is an ever present hazard in intensive modern agriculture. The matter of whether an organism is native or non-native is beside the point.

An ancient example will serve as an illustration. It is provided by a variety of grasshopper that was originally confined to the Middle East, which has latterly invaded the entire African continent. This is the locust, of which the pestilential effects emerged when the advent of agriculture upset an ecological balance. The Book of Joel in the Old Testament provides a graphic description of a locust plague in the Middle East.

The point that I wish to make is that we should approach the problem of ecological imbalance not by programmes of localised pest control but in a holistic manner that takes a far wider ambit. Instead of relying on local pest control officers to deal with outbreaks of invasive species, we should be relying on our public sector research establishments to monitor our natural—and our unnatural—environments so as to guard against pestilential outbreaks and to suggest the necessary countermeasures. This reinforces a point that has already been made by my noble friend Lord Davies, and I hope that his comments might be taken into account at a later stage when we come to review the Government’s deliberations.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, those of us who were privileged to participate in the Defra visit the other day—an opportunity that many of your Lordships took up—will have been very impressed to see the care and control and the deliberate and constant testing and assessment that Defra uses before enabling any biological controls to be used for some of these invasive species. Obviously, that is one direction that is under examination for Japanese knotweed, that much-hated plant, but it sits outside the scope of this legislation, which focuses very much on new invasive species that are not ordinarily resident and where there is a potential for eradication to succeed. The Bill has a narrower target, but other pieces of legislation sit alongside it that tackle, for example, invasive non-native species that are a threat to plant and animal health. So the Bill sits within a much broader context.

The amendments focus on the need for wider consultation on the code of practice. It has always been the Government’s intent to engage a great deal with expertise, with stakeholders and with others on the code of practice, which will be a substantial and complex document that will certainly need a great deal of thought and care. We continue to think about how we should carry out that engagement, and we would like to take a little more time to consider those issues, including the option of undertaking a full public consultation on the code. I can commit that I will have a response on the issue before Report, but I assure your Lordships that it is our intent to have that kind of intensive engagement, including with a number of parties that have been named today. We would like to take this away and think a little more on it, as the code of practice will be complex. However, it is indeed the Government’s wish to be able to tap into that expertise and thinking in order to make the code as effective as possible.

On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.