Environment Bill (Sixth sitting)

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th March 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Service on a Bill Committee such as this might seem like doing porridge, but—[Laughter.] Before we proceed, the normal convention is that whoever moves the motion speaks first. There is then a pause, not because I have forgotten what to do, but so that I can see whether anybody else is excited by the debate. If I pause and nobody bothers to indicate that they wish to speak, I call the Minister. Two Members have now indicated that they wish to speak. That is perfectly in order, and I have no problem with it, but traditionally, the Minister speaks last to summarise the debate. There is then the possibility of prolonging the matter further, but that is how it is usually done.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I apologise for not rising quickly enough before the Minister spoke. I will try to do so more quickly in future.

I reiterate that under our current regime, it took three court cases, brought by a voluntary organisation, for Government to bring forward the clean air measures that are now being introduced. Obviously, a lot of other targets are included in amendment 178, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test—my name is not on that amendment, but I will be supporting it—but the ones about air quality are particularly close to my heart.

The fact that we had to go through those court cases under the European regulations, and that those clean air targets are not in the Bill, is deeply worrying. I am sure that we have ceilings, but for a lot of people, those ceilings are too high, and people are still going to die of breathing-related and other lung-related conditions. The ceiling in this Committee Room, for example, is very high; knowing what we now know, we would not again build this room with this ceiling height; we would have a far lower ceiling. The same is true for levels of particulate matter.

When we took evidence from ClientEarth last week, Katie Neald said:

“The cases that ClientEarth has taken against the UK Government have been key both to driving action to meet the legal limits we already have and to highlighting this as a serious issue and highlighting Government failures so far. It is really important that the Bill allows people to continue to do that against these new binding targets.”––[Official Report, Environment Public Bill Committee, 12 March 2020; c. 95, Q136.]

This amendment creates that framework. Without it, the Bill is insufficient.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I apologise, Sir Roger, for not indicating earlier that I wished to speak. I want to make a very quick point, which underpins quite a lot of my criticism of many of the amendments that have been tabled to this Bill.

This Bill is a framework measure. The Government have already set out their priority areas, which are listed in the Bill. To get into the level of specificity in the amendment presupposes that we could know, theoretically for 15, 20 or 25 years, all the measures we may wish to choose. There are some that might seem good now, but in future may not seem so good. Flexibility is very important and something any Government of any colour or description, or any Minister, would need in future because, as we are seeing, the science and advice can change quite quickly. Having priority areas around the broad themes set out in the Bill makes sense because air will not cease to exist—if it does, we will cease to exist. Within that, however, we need Parliament and the Government to have flexibility. On those grounds, I do not support the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I call Alex Sobel.

[Alex Sobel]

I was not expecting to be called quite so soon, so I will move amendment 24 formally.

Amendment proposed: 24, in clause 3, page 3, line 20, leave out “31 October 2022” and insert “31 December 2020”.—(Alex Sobel.)

This amendment is intended to bring forward the deadline for laying regulations setting the PM2.5 target to December 2020.

[Rebecca Pow]

I could cut my speech short and just say that I am very pleased the hon. Member has withdrawn his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Sobel]

I thank the Minister for giving some reassurance that the date is not absolutely set in stone and that measures could be introduced earlier, although obviously the date given in the amendment is ideal from my point of view and that of the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4

Environmental targets: effect

[Dr Whitehead]

I beg to move amendment 82, in clause 4, page 3, line 24, at end insert

“and,

(c) interim targets are met.”

This amendment places a duty on the Secretary of State to meet the interim targets they set.

For the Committee’s further enlightenment, I can say that amendment 24 was in a different place in the provisional grouping. I landed my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West in it slightly by assuming that it would be debated under clause 2; it is actually a separate discussion. I am sorry to my hon. Friend for that, but he did a brilliant job under the circumstances.

Amendment 82 is deceptively small but makes an important point about interim targets in this piece of legislation. The Bill requires interim targets to be set on a five-yearly basis. In the environmental improvement plans, the Government are required to set out the steps they will take over a 15-year period to improve the natural environment. However, environmental improvement plans are not legally binding; they are simply policy documents.

Although the plans need to be reviewed, potentially updated every five years and reported on every year, that is not the same as legal accountability. Indeed, voluntary environmental targets have been badly missed on a number of occasions. The target set in 2010 to end the inclusion of peat in amateur gardening products by 2020 will be badly missed. The target set in 2011 for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to conserve 50%—by area—of England’s sites of special scientific interest by 2020 has been abandoned and replaced with a new target to ensure that 38.7% of SSSIs are in favourable condition, which is only just higher than the current level. A number of voluntary, interim and other targets have clearly been missed because they are just reporting objects; they do not have legal accountability.

Interim targets should be legally binding to guarantee that they will be delivered, and it is vital to have a robust legal framework in place to hold the Government and public authorities to account—not just in the long term, but in the short term. As things stand, the Government could in theory set a long-term, legally binding target for 2037, as suggested in the legislation, but then avoid having to do anything whatever about meeting it until 2036.

Amendment 82 would insert the phrase, “interim targets are met.” That would effectively place a duty on the Secretary of State to meet the interim targets that they set. In that context, it is no different from the provisions of the Climate Change Act, which I keep repeating as an example for us all to follow. Indeed, how the five-year carbon budgets work is an example for all of us to follow. They were set up by the Climate Change Act effectively as interim targets before the overall target set for 2050, which is now a 100% reduction; it was an 80% reduction in the original Act.

Those five-year targets are set by the independent body—the Committee on Climate Change—and the Government are required to meet them. If the Government cannot meet them, they are required to take measures to rectify the situation shortly afterwards. Therefore, there are far better mechanisms than those in the Bill to give interim targets real life and ensure they are not just exercises on a piece of paper.

It is important that the Secretary of State is given a duty to meet the targets, because that means that they will have to introduce mechanisms to ensure that they meet those targets. That is what we anticipate would happen as a subset of these measures.

We need to take interim targets seriously, as I am sure the Minister would agree. Indeed, it is not a question of whether we take them seriously; it is a question of how we take them seriously, in a way that ensures that they are credible, achievable, workable and play a full part in the process of getting to the eventual targets that we set at the start of the Bill.