Environment Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

286: After Clause 133, insert the following new Clause—
“Strategy for new economic goals to deliver environmental protection and societal wellbeing
(1) Her Majesty’s Government must prepare a strategy for the adoption of new economic goals to deliver environmental protection and societal wellbeing.(2) “Environmental protection” in subsection (1) means the protection of humans and the natural environment from the impacts of human activity as defined in section 44.(3) The new economic goals must address—(a) the environmental targets in this Act,(b) the Climate Change Act 2008,(c) the United Kingdom’s commitments under international environmental agreements, laws and treaties,(d) the wellbeing of future generations,(e) the overseas environmental impacts of UK consumption and economic activity, and(f) the contribution of the UK’s consumption and production to the state of the global environment, in relation to nine planetary boundaries—(i) stratospheric ozone depletion,(ii) loss of biosphere integrity (biodiversity loss and extinctions),(iii) chemical pollution and the release of novel entities,(iv) climate change,(v) ocean acidification,(vi) freshwater consumption and the global hydrological cycle,(vii) land system change, (viii) nitrogen and phosphorus flows to the biosphere and oceans, and(ix) atmospheric aerosol loading.(4) The strategy must—(a) set out how the new economic goals will replace growth in gross domestic product as the principal measure of national economic progress,(b) set out a vision for how the economy can be designed to serve the wellbeing of humans and protect the natural environment,(c) include a set of indicators for each new economic goal, and(d) set out plans for the application of new economic goals and indicators to central and local government decision-making processes including but not limited to Central Government Guidance on Appraisal and Evaluation produced by HM Treasury (the Green Book).(5) In drawing up the strategy, Her Majesty’s Government must obtain, publish and take into account the advice of—(a) experts in the field of ecological economics,(b) a nationally representative citizens assembly,(c) trades unions,(d) businesses,(e) statutory agencies,(f) representatives of local and regional government, and(g) any persons the Secretary of State considers to be independent and to have relevant expertise.(6) The strategy must be laid before Parliament within 12 months of the passing of this Act.(7) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament an annual report on progress towards meeting the new economic goals and their efficacy in delivering environmental protection and societal wellbeing.(8) A Minister of the Crown must, not later than one month after the report has been laid before Parliament, move a motion in the House of Commons in relation to that report.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause requires the Government to prepare a strategy for the adoption of new economic goals that are designed to deliver environmental protection and societal wellbeing and to report annually on these goals.

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

My Lords, I will be speaking to Amendment 286 in my name in this two-amendment group. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who is following me, will speak to Amendment 288. You can take it as read that I am entirely behind that amendment as well.

I make no apologies for referring again to the New Zealand living standards framework which guides every decision of that nation’s Treasury. That is truly world-leading, and this amendment seeks to take us a long way towards catching up. The amendment might be taken as a continuation of my efforts to help the Minister convince the Treasury that it is operating on flawed assumptions. The Treasury currently acts as though it is there in the interests of that entirely artificial, thoroughly discriminatory and deeply flawed construct, the economy, rather than operating for the well-being and security of people and planet. This amendment would provide a legal framework for change. It is essentially the same amendment that was tabled in the other place by Green MP Caroline Lucas, where it attracted cross-party backing.

This morning I was at an international event talking about how the people are leading on climate and biodiversity crises, with businesses and Governments trailing behind. Our long slog on the Environment Bill—a reflection, as my noble friend said in our last session, of the way the Government have failed to provide the necessary steel in its contents fit for this desperately late year of 2021—means its timing is fortuitous, for today a report was released by the Institute for Public Policy Research, drawing on the views of citizen panels in the South Wales valleys, Essex, Aberdeenshire, Tees Valley and County Durham. All of them offered their views on how the country should reach net zero by 2050 via a series of panels held over 18 months.

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[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I welcome Amendment 286 and the thoughtful and interesting speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. The challenge is that GDP has been used by Governments pretty much everywhere as a proxy for well-being ever since it was developed half a century ago, but GDP was never designed to be an all-encompassing measure of welfare. In basic terms, it simply measures economic activity, indiscriminately—it cannot distinguish between growth that is or is not sustainable, or even good. GDP measures what we produce, but it ignores the cost of what we destroy to make it. It can add, but it cannot subtract.

It is possible to imagine that you could empty the oceans of all fish, chop down every last tree, fill our rivers with poison, pollute every last breath of air that we take, and all the time, GDP could still be rising and the economy still be growing. Ironically, the man who helped develop the concept of GDP in the first place, Nobel Prize economist Simon Kuznets, never anticipated its use as a comprehensive measure of progress. In 1934, he wrote:

“The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income.”


Robert Kennedy said something similar: that GDP

“does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

The problem is that numerous organisations have over the years attempted to develop alternative indicators. I worked for one myself—it feels like many decades ago. The results of their work have often been overly complicated metrics that Governments would struggle to use in a practical way, but we need to find additional ways to measure the health of our economies. It is surely madness that the Amazon rainforest, on which the world fundamentally depends—each and every one of us—and without which the world would be thrown into chaos and turmoil, has no real recognised value until it is cashed in for commodities and throwaway goods. That just does not make sense.

That is something that the Government understand and are grappling with. For example, we are aligning our economic objectives and decision-making processes with our net-zero commitments; we are moving towards nature-proofing our decisions as well, and this Bill is a part of that.

The Treasury’s Green Book, which the noble Baroness mentioned, requires that all impacts on society as a whole, including environmental impacts, are assessed when policy is developed, and that includes monetised and non-monetised climate environmental impacts. The Treasury is currently conducting a review into the application of the discount rate for future environmental impacts, to try to ensure that decision-making probably accounts for the value of the environment. In their response to the Treasury-commissioned Dasgupta review, the Government have committed to ensuring that their economic and financial decision-making and the systems and institutions that underpin it support the delivery of a nature-positive future.

As all speakers so far in this debate have acknowledged, we have a very long way to go. It is not easy, but it needs to be done. Without that, we will fail to reconcile lives and the economy, nature and the economy, in the way that we will need to if we want a sustainable future.

Moving on to Amendment 288, I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that, as the Environment Secretary set out in his response to her Private Member’s Bill on this subject, the Government take their air quality obligations extremely seriously. In this Bill, we have committed to setting ambitious, legally binding targets on air quality, to drive further emissions reductions, which will deliver significant benefits to the environment and human health. Specifically, the Secretary of State, will be required to set a new target on PM 2.5 to act as a minimum standard across the country, and an additional long-term exposure-reduction target to drive continuous improvement, including in areas that meet the new minimum standard for PM 2.5. This novel, dual-target approach is strongly supported by the experts and will deliver significant public health benefits by reducing our exposure to this pollutant in all areas of the country.

The Bill also includes measures to require regular refreshers of the national air quality strategy. The first review will be published in 2023, and we will be looking to develop a stronger support and capability-building framework, so that local authorities have the necessary tools to take the action needed locally to reduce people’s exposure to air pollutants.

Alongside that, the Bill changes the local authority air quality management framework to promote co-operation at all tiers of local government and with relevant public authorities. This will ensure that central and local government and public authorities work together towards achieving cleaner air and a healthier environment for us all. The Government continue to work closely with the Department for Health and Social Care, the Department for Transport, the Air Quality Expert Group, the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants and a wide range of other sector experts to drive concerted action to improve air quality.

However, not all air pollution is under the control of government, either nationally or locally. Significant contributions to UK air pollution can come from other countries, depending on the weather. For example, up to a third of the UK’s current levels of particulate matter pollution comes from other European countries. UK air quality can be affected by distant volcanoes and dust flowing in from as far away as the Sahara. The transboundary and transnational nature of air pollution therefore makes it ill-suited to be a general or formalised human right.

I thank noble Lords for their contributions on these important matters, and hope that they will not press their amendments.

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

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who contributed to the debate and all their expressions of support for the amendments—perhaps even, in intent, at least, from the Minister; and I thank him for his detailed answer. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb asked, “What is the Government for?” Surely, one of the purposes is to ensure we have clean air to breathe and to ensure that we have a healthy life for future generations —something that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, is trying to do by other means.

The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, offered welcome support and said very clearly that we need goals to be identified and made concrete, acknowledging that we must consider the global impact of our environment. The noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, said that we cannot go on just generating greenhouse gases—how could it be better summed up?—particularly highlighting our position of COP chair, and stressed the need for statistical compatibility and credibility in Glasgow. I think perhaps we may just park the emperor with no clothes metaphor, but it is certainly apt.

The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, stressed the need for the Treasury to engage in this debate, with which I can only very much agree, and spoke about the need for all departments to be engaged in environmental issues, with which I of course agree. My amendment is focused on the narrow issue of economic measurement, moving away from the failed, damaging emphasis on GDP.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, focused on reprogramming the economy, something we clearly need to do, and said that it needs a rethink at the highest level. As she was speaking, I thought that perhaps the highest level in the Government should be Defra, because that is the place where it all starts. She also stressed the need for leadership from the top.

I particularly have to welcome the Minister’s comments, many of which reflect speeches that I give regularly about the total misalignment of using GDP as a welfare measure. I just wish that we could hear that from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, or Rishi Sunak in the other place, instead of only from the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith. He referred to the Dasgupta report, which is useful and important. At least by using pound values it puts all the issues into terms that the Treasury can understand.

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Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

287: After Clause 133, insert the following new Clause—
“International crime of ecocide
(1) It is an objective of Her Majesty’s Government to support the negotiation of an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to establish a crime of ecocide.(2) In pursuance of subsection (1), a relevant Minister of the Crown must propose, either independently or jointly with other sovereign states, an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court within 12 months of the passing of this Act.(3) In this section “ecocide” refers to harm to nature which is severe and widespread or long-term.”

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

My Lords, this group of amendments is simple and coherent. Both the amendments address the proposed international offence of ecocide. Noble Lords will see that the amendments have cross-party and non-party support. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Whitaker and Lady Boycott, for supporting them.

Amendment 293D sets out the definition of ecocide, which means,

“unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.

The treatment that the planet and many of its people have received is criminal, and it is time that the crime was acknowledged and prevented. We are killing the ecosystems on which we rely and gravely depleting the natural world, putting at risk the many wondrous and beautiful natural systems of which we have so little understanding.

In acknowledgement of that, for more than a decade lawyers have been working on a new international law to protect this fragile planet—a law of ecocide. It is proposed that it becomes part of the Rome statute, which contains the international crime of genocide. Many people will associate this campaign with the late, great barrister and campaigner Polly Higgins. The crime of ecocide has been a topic of debate since the Vietnam War when Agent Orange was used by the US Army to defoliate vast areas of jungle. Since then, incidents of irreversible destruction to ecosystems and the ocean have led to further and ongoing proposals for this crime to be adjudicated by the International Criminal Court.

I first encountered this proposal at a one-day seminar at the British Library in 2008. Work then was already well advanced but, in the decade since, it has advanced much further. The French have already written the crime into their climate law. The Belgians and Dutch are considering doing likewise and nearly a dozen national constitutions include a recognition of ecocide. Research by the European Law Institute seeks to draw up a model law for the EU. In May, the European Parliament encouraged the EU and its members,

“to pave the way within the International Criminal Court (ICC) towards new negotiations between the parties with a view to recognising ‘ecocide’ as an international crime”.

Three of the countries that already recognise this crime are signatories to the Rome statute. Therefore, if, as I suggest, the UK successfully proposed an ecocide amendment, a total of 130 countries would recognise it as a crime, 123 of which could then take a case to the ICC for adjudication. I note, however, that the US, China and India are not state parties. There has also been publicly recorded interest from Bangladesh, Canada, Finland, Luxembourg, the Maldives, Spain and Vanuatu.

Noble Lords will note that Amendment 293D arrived rather late to this Committee. That is because it uses a new, further-developed definition of the law of ecocide that has only just been released by a distinguished expert international panel of jurists. The definition in the amendment, however, differs from the international definition by excluding a reference to outer space. The Public Bill Office declared that that was out of scope of the Bill, and while there is an argument for outer space being part of our environment, I decided to leave that discussion to another day. I note for noble Lords’ interest that the maximum penalty of 30 years’ imprisonment reflects that which applies to genocide under UK law.

When—and I am sure that it is when—the crime is incorporated into the Rome statute, it will eventually make its way into UK law. Surely not even the current Government’s carelessness as regards international law would prevent that. But the world and our nature-depleted, plastic and pollution-choked islands cannot wait, which is why I put forward Amendment 293D.

It is worth noting that, astonishingly, the Bill as it currently stands makes no mention of ecosystems and, therefore, there can be no protection of ecosystems. Amendments contain at least five references to ecosystems, which shows that there is a desire across the House to introduce this, and introducing a crime of ecocide would be a comprehensive way in which to do that.

The lead amendment, Amendment 287, offers the international perspective and calls for the Government to commit to supporting the international Stop Ecocide campaign and within 12 months of the Act coming into force to present—alone or, I expect, with others—a proposal to amend the Rome statute.

I should love to think that the Government will embrace both these amendments but I am a realist. I am aware also that creating a whole new legal offence is something our legal eagles and those across the country are likely to want to chew over for some time. I am very much looking forward to the thoughts of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, on Amendment 293D, which I am sure will help inform future thinking on the UK offence. There is a definite opportunity for a stand-alone Private Member’s Bill here. So I am unlikely to pursue that amendment to Report but regard it as a start to the UK debate.

However, that is not the case with Amendment 287. As countries, campaign groups and lawyers across the globe line up behind the call to amend the Rome statute, the UK needs to be on board. As the chair of the COP 26 climate talks, how could we be anywhere else?

I am almost finished, but I have one final question for the Minister. Will he agree to meet with the ecocide campaign and have his officials look at the outputs from the Independent Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide? I thank other noble Lords who are taking part in this debate and those who have already offered their support. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

It is a great delight to support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in the amendment. I, like her, believe that ecocide will be introduced as a crime on an international basis and will join the Rome statute alongside the more familiar crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The point about ecocide is that it has to be wanton and deliberate. Here are just a few examples that might be able to have that label attached to them. In Jack Harries’s new powerful film “The Breakdown”, he shows us a closed-door meeting with Exxon executives in 1977. Their scientist James Black delivers a presentation called “The Greenhouse Effect” in which he warns that carbon dioxide from the world’s use of fossil fuels is warming the planet and will eventually endanger humanity. He is quoted as saying:

“Present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”


Exxon in 1977 took his report seriously and over subsequent years invested millions upon millions of dollars into cutting-edge climate change science and hired the world’s top scientists and engineers to help to get to the bottom of the inconvenient truth. Therefore, weirdly, a lot of early science was done by the fossil fuel companies, in part to understand the impact of their work but in part to understand where their new drilling opportunities might be. It was, strangely, the first golden age of climate research.

However, quite quickly—by 1982—the research had piled up, and it did not look so good. The impact of fossil fuels on climate change was now unquestionable. In a leaked document addressed to “Exxon personnel only”, environmental affairs manager MB Glaser wrote:

“Mitigation of the ‘greenhouse effect’ would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.”


He suggested that if this was not done—again, this was in 1982—there could be “potentially catastrophic events” such as the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet, which would cause a sea level rise in the order of five metres.

The men in charge did not like what they were hearing—it was too big and too bothersome and it was going to threaten their livelihoods—so, in 1983, a year later, they decided to stop listening to the scientists and listen to their accountants instead. Overnight, the troublesome little hitch called climate change effectively ceased to exist in the annals of the coal industry. Overnight, Exxon cut the funding for climate research from $900,000 a year to $150,000 a year—out of a total research budget that stood then at $600 million—and those pessimistic sponges in lab coats stopped being invited to meetings. A culture of denial was born, lifted straight from the tobacco industry—the one that said, “Cigarettes won’t give you lung cancer, keep buying them”. In this case, the industry said, “No, climate change isn’t real, so fill up your tank”.

I know that it is not within our remit—and never will be within anybody’s remit, I think—to prosecute ExxonMobil, which, as Channel 4 revealed a couple of weeks ago, is still at it. It has been pressurising President Biden over his green economy and new deal, to the extent that a lot of the investment in new green jobs has been taken away. As the lobbyist on “Channel 4 News” said, “We’re really happy because he’s sticking to infrastructure and roads and highways as a way of creating new jobs”.

Coming back to our own climate disaster, after the death of young Ella Kissi-Debrah a couple of years ago, the law did find that her death had been made possible or enhanced by the fact that she was breathing bad air. The fact that the fossil fuel companies played a part in this starts to make two parts of the story come together.

As I say, the question of ecocide is a question of intent. The £90 million fine handed out to Southern Water last week is a great step; £90 million is a lot of money. Even so, the company’s profits that year were about £200 million. Its pollution has killed countless fish and destroyed habitats and wildlife, not to mention the sea creatures whose homes have been irreparably damaged by raw sewage. As the Guardian reported:

“Andrew Marshall, appearing at the sentencing hearing for the regulator, told Canterbury crown court that Southern Water, which is ultimately under the control of Greensands Holdings”—


a private company—

opened storm tanks to release raw sewage into coastal waters in north Kent and the Solent to increase its own financial benefits. The company also allowed storm tanks to be kept full and to turn septic, instead of putting millions of litres of raw sewage through the treatment process as required by law.”

This flagrant and wanton act was carried out with the full knowledge of the damage that could ensue. So, yes, £90 million is terrific from one point of view, but is it not also something more? Should not a crime that would send people to prison or really shame them, such as ecocide, be attached to Andrew Marshall, the boss of Southern Water? The threats to nature and wildlife that our current practices present are talked about a lot these days. Finding someone responsible is never easy; we have not even managed to hold anyone responsible for Grenfell yet. Yet here is a case where we are damaging and threatening our natural world every day.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, many countries in Europe are already debating whether to introduce an ecocide law into their home legislation. A number of countries already have their own ecocide laws. For instance, Article 358 of the Russian criminal code states:

“Massive destruction of the animal or plant kingdoms, contamination of the atmosphere or water resources, and also commission of other actions capable of causing an ecological catastrophe, shall be punishable by deprivation of liberty for a term of 12 to 20 years.”


Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and Armenia have also passed laws which mean that the country can send someone to prison for a wanton and knowing act of ecological disaster.

Frankly, it is uncertain how many people will die in the next few years because of climate change and nature depletion, or how many more millions of people will be forced to leave their homes, looking for sanctuary in the remaining kinder climates—but it will be a lot. It will dwarf previous acts of genocide and crimes against humanity. We must start to hold individuals accountable. Obviously, this law needs to be international —I urge the Government to work with others to make it so—but could we start by at least discussing it as a possible national offence, too? We cannot expect the world to adopt this if we do not apply it here. As we all know, on the eighth day of this long and wonderful environment debate, we have only one home; it is very precious and we need tougher laws to protect it.

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[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for Amendments 287 and 293D on ecocide. I strongly agree with the premise of her argument. The appalling fact is that we are currently destroying life on earth. Each minute we lose around 30 football pitches-worth of tropical forest. We have seen a 70% decline in key species since 1970, which is a mere nanosecond in evolutionary terms. Nowhere is spared: a third of marine mammals are threatened with extinction; an estimated 35% of the world’s marine and coastal wetland areas were lost between 1970 and 2015, at three times the rate of forest loss; and half the world’s seabird species are already affected by ocean plastic. At the same time, we are destabilising the world’s climate. Although there is no computer model in the world sophisticated enough to fully predict the effects, we know that they will be dire.

It is of course a tragedy in and of itself, but it is also a human tragedy. A billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods. As those forests are destroyed, so too are their livelihoods. Around 200 million people depend on fish for their livelihoods. As we exhaust the oceans, those people and their families are often left destitute. When ecosystems fail, so too do the many free and hopelessly undervalued services that nature provides. Because it is the world’s poorest people who are likely to depend most directly on those free services, it is they who will suffer first and worst. I say that in response to comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox.

Ultimately, we all depend on the health of the planet, and its destruction has grave implications for us all. Indeed, as we sit in this Chamber, metres apart, it is worth reflecting that coronavirus itself is likely a symptom of our dysfunctional relationship with the natural world. Even if that is wrong and in this instance it is not, it is certainly the case that most pandemics are.

Objectively, it must be the case that killing ecosystems on which so many people depend has to be among the most serious of crimes. I recognise that not everyone will agree with that, but I ask those people to consider what their response might be to someone pouring poison into another person’s water supply, pumping toxic gas through someone’s window, or setting fire to a person’s farm. No one, I think, would doubt for a second the gravity of such crimes, so it should not be seen as any different when it is done by a multinational corporation in a foreign land, except, of course, at a bigger scale.

We have strong environmental laws in England, which carry fines and potential imprisonment for the most serious offences. There is a whole ecosystem of enforcement authorities: the Environment Agency, Natural England, the Forestry Commission, the Marine Management Organisation, Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, local authorities, the police and Defra itself. In particularly egregious cases, significant sanctions are sought. For example, as has been mentioned, only last week Southern Water was fined £90 million for pumping raw sewage into protected waters around the south-east coast. There were also convictions against several employees of Southern Water, who obstructed Environment Agency investigators. But there is no doubt that our regulatory framework can be improved. That is one of the things we are trying to do with this Bill, not least with the new OEP.

There is no doubt that, around the world, the true cost of serious environmental crime or ecocide is not reflected in our response to it. Sadly, ecocide is not yet a crime recognised under international law and there is currently no consensus on its legal definition. Indeed, before the ICC and the crimes it has jurisdiction over could be established by the Rome statute, which was adopted in 1998, ecocide had to be removed in the drafting stages due to a lack of agreement among the states party to the court. The Rome statute provides for some protections for the natural environment in armed conflict—it designates international attacks that knowingly and excessively cause

“widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment”

as war crimes—but ecocide as a stand-alone crime is not yet recognised.

The UK’s current priority regarding the International Criminal Court is to try to reform it, so that it functions more efficiently and effectively and can deliver successful prosecutions of crimes in its jurisdiction and bring accountability for victims. I know that noble Lords on all sides of the Committee will share that ambition. Reform of the court is a long and complicated process, driven by the states party to the Rome statute. Their involvement is fundamental to success. A significant amendment such as that proposed by the noble Baroness is unlikely to achieve the support of two-thirds of the states party, which is necessary to amend the Rome statute to make ecocide an international crime. The view, therefore, is that pursuing it would require an enormous amount of heavy lifting diplomatically, with little prospect at this stage of succeeding. That would likely also detract from the goal of improving the court’s effectiveness, which, in any case, would be a prerequisite for any meaningful application of ecocide.

I will end there. We are unable to accept the noble Baroness’s proposals. I therefore ask her to withdraw her amendment.

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

My Lords, I thank everyone who has participated in this very informed and informative debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, stressed the basis of this crime as being wanton and deliberate action, using two very clear examples. The first is Exxon in 1977 in terms of its understanding of the climate emergency then. Secondly, flagrant breaches of the law are occurring on our own shores with the treatment of our water supplies and the spillages of sewage into them. Those are two useful examples of how we think an ecocide law would operate in practice.

Can we imagine, for a moment, being in a boardroom and hearing the chief legal officer saying to the chief executive officer, “If we took this action, the law of ecocide might just be used” and what a powerful force that would be? As the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, says, it is a powerful word and a rightfully powerful word for destroying the natural world, on which we all depend. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, made a very important point by saying that we cannot expect the world to go forward if we are not prepared to adopt this law and take action ourselves.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, suggested that this was looking at human interaction with nature in a wholly negative way. I am not sure how she could regard the two examples given by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, as anything but wholly negative. She also suggested that, at times, this term has been used metaphorically. But of course, that is not what we are talking about here; we are talking about law. The term “murder” is often used metaphorically but that does not stop it being an essential legal charge used in a legal way.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, also referred to the needs of the global south. It is the global south that has suffered probably the largest amounts of environmental damage, human rights abuse, poverty and inequality from our extractive, exploitative approach to nature. All around us, we have the products of the global south’s land and, of course, the global south’s labour and ingenuity—most often insufficiently remunerated.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for her support and commend her on championing the issue of ecocide through Written Questions. She highlighted the international support for the creation of this crime and the fact that the Briton Philippe Sands QC is working very much in the leading role on this, reflecting the UK’s long-term position as a leader in international human rights law and legal protection.

I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, for his hugely informed and thoughtful contribution and expression of support for the principles. The historical perspectives that he provided were also particularly useful, acknowledging that international law has evolved with international standards and highlighting the developing impetus towards a crime of ecocide. He stressed the global role and the need for leadership and called for the UK to step forward and take a lead.

The noble Lord, Lord Khan, called for a constructive role for the UK in negotiation. I appreciate that call, which very much reflects the content of my Amendment 287. He spoke very effectively, saying that the law of ecocide is defending the land itself and made the link to the many declarations of climate and nature emergencies.

The noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, gave us a very full account of the sixth great extinction and the way ecological damage does not impact just on nature but on human health and life—as we have seen with Covid. He said that there was no consensus, but surely the UK could and should be providing that leadership. As a nation, global Britain aims to be world-leading. I acknowledge his concern about the reform of the International Criminal Court, but that is a separate issue from the nature of the Rome statute. The Minister suggested that there was little prospect of this international drive succeeding. That is clearly not the view taken by the EU.

Before we come to the conclusion of this group, the Minister was asked a couple of questions that were not answered. I would like to put them to him again. First, I asked if he would be prepared to meet Stop Ecocide campaigners and ask his officials to take a look at the proposed new international definition. Secondly, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, asked whether the Government would ask the Law Commission to consider this issue. May I put those two questions to the Minister before we proceed?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I am happy to agree to both requests.

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

I thank the Minister for that one answer. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.

Amendment 287 withdrawn.

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[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support this amendment. Clearly, it is unsatisfactory if local authorities cannot deploy this Bill’s prescriptions.

As is here implied, such failure might simply reflect lack of local government staff and financial resources. If so, it is up to the Government to redress that deficiency.

Yet at every given and relevant moment, central funding might well not be considered to be affordable at all, even if the Government might equally lament that their own legislation could not be deployed as a result.

However, that anomaly is prevented by this proposed new clause, which would make it obligatory for a future Government to provide funds so their own laws and prescriptions are properly carried out at local levels.

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

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and to offer the Green group’s strong support for Amendment 293C. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley, for his clear introduction and explanation. I also declare my position as vice-chair of the Local Government Association.

The noble Lord, Lord Khan, referred to the waste recycling problem, which gives me an irresistible chance to plug the need to reduce costs by promoting reusable nappies, an issue already discussed and which we will come back to. On the broader issue, it is worth noting that the National Audit Office, in its 2018 report on the financial sustainability of local authorities, found that recent government approaches had been

“characterised by one-off and short-term funding fixes”

and a

“crisis-driven approach to managing local authority finances”.

Earlier this year, the NAO said that at least 25 councils were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, which is hardly surprising when in the past decade the spending power of local government has been cut by one-third, while demands in many areas, notably adult social care, have grown.

If we are to give local authorities additional roles and responsibilities, this direction comes from Westminster, and the money has to come from Westminster too. I note that last December the Blueprint Coalition, formed from local government organisations, environmental NGOs and academics and supported by around 100 councils, warned that our 2050 net-zero target could be achieved only with the

“full participation of, and support for, local authorities”.

That report was specifically focused on the climate side of the environmental equation but, of course, as this entire debate has acknowledged, these two issues are interlinked. I note that that Blueprint Coalition report stressed what the Minister might like to call nature-based solutions—the need to accelerate tree planting,

“peatland restoration, green spaces and other green infrastructure”.

Those are all things that the Government say that they plan to support, but the delivery vehicle that is most effective and cost effective will very often need to be local authorities.

This is also happening in the context of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. The Green Alliance highlighted the need for training to ensure that, in local government, climate skills are embedded in all roles and there is widespread access to specialist skills, as the Committee on Climate Change recommended. That Green Alliance report found that many local authority representatives were terribly concerned that this was not available and that instead they were forced to rely on consultants—which, again, was a far more expensive option. This amendment is not only essential but could save money. How could the Government possibly oppose that?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I rise to speak to this amendment in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. This is because I agree with them that it is important that local authorities are prepared to deliver the many new duties provided for in this Bill; they will, of course, be key to its success. I am always pleased to follow the energetic noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, but more particularly to have my first opportunity to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley, who is adding a great deal to our proceedings, especially in his knowledge of how things actually work in local government.

The proposers of this amendment appear to want to see a review, three months after the Bill’s passage, of the funding and staffing required and of how additional costs should be covered. I am afraid that I am more impatient; I would like to hear now from my noble friend the Minister how the burdens on local authorities will be dealt with. Will it be through the rate support grant? Will special funding be provided from the Defra budget, and will it be ring-fenced, as my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering asked? Does he have a feel for the total likely to be needed, in terms of hundreds of millions of pounds?

Improving skills is probably more important to productivity growth than any other investment we can make. There is already a skills and staffing gap in local government, partly because of the needs of environmental measures in planning and building, at which the Built Environment Committee, on which I sit, is already looking. The Bill will make that gap a great deal bigger.

The noble Lord, Lord Khan, mentioned ecologists and recycling but there is, of course, a broader challenge. Competition for talent, from Natural England and others, as the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, said, is also likely to cause problems. What is the plan for gearing up the skills we need in local government in preparation for their new duties? Also to return to an earlier theme of mine, how will this be communicated?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support this amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for it guards against lowered standards while still enabling the United Kingdom to do much better. It also requires transparency on any change from EU standards on the control of chemicals.

No one would argue in favour of slippage of standards. However, many of us believe that, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has just outlined, for technical and other reasons such standards can slip very easily all the same.

This amendment prevents that. Yet its expedients should not wrongly be viewed as a restrictive measure of conformity to the EU, of which we are no longer a member, but instead as an opportunity for the United Kingdom to take a lead internationally by setting even higher standards of our own.

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

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, with another message on the need for environmental protection. I will speak briefly in support of Amendment 293E and thank the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for moving it and for his long-term concentration on the issue.

We are yet again in a non-regression cause—I feel something like a broken record. We were promised non-regression; we heard it again and again through the whole Brexit debate and subsequently. We need to consider this amendment in the light of the debate that was conducted publicly in February and March, when the industry initially proposed a light-touch registration of chemicals that were already on the EU REACH registration at the end of the transition period, effectively allowing a rubber stamp on those already in use. In response to that, environmental groups warned that this would contravene the principles that are apparently contained in the Environment Bill, which commits to maintaining the “no data, no market access” principle on which REACH is based.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, made some very important points about how the EU is progressing with investigations of the impacts of cocktails of chemicals—something that is highly relevant to Amendment 152, which we debated some weeks ago, also in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, about the impact of pesticide applications near homes.

If we do not have full data on each and every chemical, the Health and Safety Executive will simply not be able to do its job and will be at risk of legal challenge. The data being out there somewhere is not enough. Regulation is an ongoing and continuous process that requires access to high-quality, up-to-date data. I note the response in March from Breast Cancer UK, which said that such an action would weaken the Health and Safety Executive’s ability to protect public health.

This is my final contribution to this very long Committee, and indeed the final contribution of the Green group. So, if the Committee will allow me a couple more sentences, I will say that it has been a long and fruitful haul, at least in the airing of issues and the identification of many flaws in the Bill. That is not surprising, perhaps, as this is such a fast-moving area and we have been dealing with a Bill so long in gestation. We have given the noble Lord the Minister a busy Recess in terms of meetings and, we hope, the drafting of government amendments reflecting our debates. The noble Earl, Lord Devon, back at Second Reading, said that this was the Green Party’s Bill. We have done our best to make a positive, constructive contribution to this Bill, and we hope that we will see some results. I will see all noble Lords in September.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for whom I have a great deal of respect, is about the REACH directive, which brings us back to the vexed issue of Brexit and how we take things forward independently. This is a part of the Bill—especially the wide enabling provisions for regulation tucked away in Schedule 20—that really shocked me. On this occasion, I do not agree with most of the noble Lord’s amendment.

My criticism is not to do with animal welfare and testing, which was dealt with at an earlier sitting. My concern is that the REACH directive—short for the grand-sounding registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—has had a damaging effect on our industrial base since its implementation in June 2007. The directive has had a burdensome impact on most companies, including the most responsible. It applies to all chemical substances, not only those used in industrial processes, but also to those used in our day-to-day lives, such as cleaning products, paints, clothes, furniture and electrical appliances. If you handle any chemicals in your industrial or professional capacity, you may have responsibilities. REACH is compliance heavy and has made many UK companies operate in very different way. Again, the Roman system of law prevails over a more objective-based common-law approach. We have apparently had that in spades with the dual system that has been adopted since Brexit, described by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty.

I remember visiting an excellent small paint company in the Midlands, serving the advanced engineering industry, when I was a Minister. They were tearing their hair out over rules that were slowly bankrupting them, partly because of the heavy-handed way in which the big multinationals they supplied were loading all these new EU costs and responsibilities on to them. I raised their concerns with Defra, but to no avail. The attitude that the environment must take precedence over every other concern lives on, and that is unbalanced. Companies established outside the EU have not been bound by the obligations of REACH, even when exporting to the EU. Registration and everything else is the responsibility of the importer, and that makes life easier for third-country competitors. That sort of unfair, burdensome regulation helped to fuel Brexit.

What amazes me is that, now that we have left the EU, I have heard nothing about steps to help our industrial sector on this sort of detailed regulation; indeed, very much the reverse, as today’s debate suggests. Will the Government agree to a business-led review of REACH with a view to using the new powers to improve productivity and competitiveness without, of course, undermining essential environmental safeguards? Although we come at this from a different direction, this might actually appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, because it could be a constructive way of getting rid of the problem that we have. The grace-period provisions in REACH that the Minister alluded to on 28 June are not enough and are probably no good to the innovators and new entrants that we need in our engineering industries. The Minister might become very popular with small businesses in the Midlands and, indeed, in the red-wall industrial areas, if she agreed to a new post-Brexit review of this burdensome regime and how we can make it better.