Hazardous Substances and Packaging (Legislative Functions and Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very clear explanation. I will focus primarily on the first of these two instruments, although I express concern that, as he has just told us, there is not full devolved consent to the second one. I hope that can be resolved very quickly.

I begin with the department’s response to the submission from ClientEarth to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, specifically on the point about the transferring of the competent national authority position in England. The departmental response says that the Environment Agency will continue to act as the competent authority.

I note that in October this year, just a couple of months ago, the chair of the Environment Agency called for greater funding from the Government to help the enforcement body to better prevent pollution—the issue that this SI addresses. In response to an article published in the Times on 24 October which reported that there had been a sharp rise in serious breaches of pollution rules designed to protect people and wildlife, the chair of the Environment Agency said in a Defra blog:

“We constantly innovate to do more with less. But ultimately we will get the environment we pay for. A core part of that is funding the Environment Agency properly. The government has an opportunity to do that in this year’s spending review. We hope it will.”


I have checked the spending review documents and, so far as I can see, there is none of the extra funding that has been asked for—you might say begged for—but I would be delighted if the Minister could tell me I had missed something. It would have to be a very big offering in the spending review, given that in March a report on Greenpeace’s Unearthed blog revealed that a surge in pollution incidents driven by climate change was “overwhelming” the staff. That came on top of data showing that teams tasked with responding to pollution incidents have seen their numbers decline by 15% since 2015.

All the SIs that we are debating now seem to create extra responsibilities and extra work, so the question is where the resources are going to come from, given that we have a huge regulatory gap already. I note the invaluable report in 2019 by the Institute for Environmental Management and Assessment, in coalition with 19 other organisations. It revealed that funding for 10 environmental and social regulators fell by 50% on average between 2009 and 2017 in real terms, with the Environment Agency budget down by 62%. The total number of full-time staff working at these regulators was down by 30% over the period, with spending by local authorities and fire authorities down by 35%. Before these regulations and before the end of the transition period, we had, however limited it may have been, oversight through the EU and, as ClientEarth has successfully used, the legal mechanisms through that.

The departmental response said that once the office for environmental protection is established and functioning, it will take over these roles. That is a debate for another day, but it highlights the importance of the independence and funding of that body, as a crucial body in maintaining our environmental health in the UK. In the meantime, as ClientEarth put it, we will have the Government regulating themselves. We have a period of uncertainty—a hiatus, rather like we have in your Lordships’ House’s Forthcoming Business at the moment.

Since we have just had a report from the Environmental Audit Committee, I want to turn to the broader issue of electronic waste in general. In this very Committee last week I referred to a need for a right to repair, as the committee in the other place has done. The report notes that the UK creates the second highest level of electronic waste in the world after Norway—we are almost world-leading, but not, I hope, in a way that the Government would intend. A lot of the electronic waste that these regulations refer to currently goes to landfill or incineration, and some 40% of it is dumped overseas. The MPs on the committee noted that the Environment Agency was again not doing nearly enough to monitor where that waste was going and how often it was going abroad illegally.

The committee also noted the fact that we have online retailers making massive profits but not taking responsibility for the products they get those profits from. I have so many things to mention that I am going to run out of time.

Finally, if we are to be practical, let us bring this down to earth. Here in Sheffield, where I am talking to noble Lords from, there are no bins in local areas for electronic waste. There are no bins that you can walk to and put electronic waste in. There is no range of bins in supermarkets and hardware stores, as there is in many parts of the continent, where electronic waste, such as light bulbs, can be deposited. Here, we are dealing with the detail, but I ask the Minister to make sure that the Government consider the huge and wide-ranging problem—the tsunami, as the Commons committee described it—of electronic waste, which we must deal with and get a grip on very soon.