Environment Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, like all noble Lords, I welcome this Bill and congratulate the Minister on his passion and conviction on this. However, there are a number of concerns.

The first is about the office for environmental protection. If the Government take the environment as seriously as they say they do, I do not understand at all why this cannot be an independent body, of the nature of the National Audit Office. However much the Government choose to stretch the definition, its independence will always be constrained because of its nature as a part of Defra. I fail to understand why the Government think it would be constitutionally inappropriate to allow this body to have the power to initiate legal enforcement proceedings against the Government. Just the other day, I was speaking to someone who lived on and looked after the upper reaches of the Test. This is looked after by Southern Water yet, at the same time, that company is siphoning off money from the water, which is damaging the river course further down and reducing the wetland. We are going against each other—who is going to sort this out?

I am also concerned that the OEP will not have enough funds. A lot of this is about investigation—looking, visiting, seeing and monitoring. A whole series of attention-grabbing green headlines will become meaningless if we cannot enforce the good environmental rules we need.

I would like to talk about a couple of things that are very scary right now. One, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Cameron, is the UK’s rivers. I declare my interest as someone who swims in rivers a lot; I have swum in three in the past week. But I take my life in my hands, because I know that agricultural pollution is rampant and we release untreated human sewage directly into our waterways. This is due not to a lack of laws but to the inability to enforce these laws. There are regulatory agencies in England and Wales, but they have been drastically weakened by cuts to their funding and resources.

The EA’s environment and business budget, which covers agricultural regulation, waste crimes and incident response, has been cut from £117 million in 2010 to just £40 million in 2020. Even if you do not allow for inflation, that equates to an effective quartering of what we spend per year. The net effect is that in many critical areas our regulators are completely impotent. For example, in 2019-20, the total budget for agricultural enforcement across England was just £320,000, equating to 0.65 full-time staff in each of 14 areas. Such drastic cuts to regulatory agencies mean that polluters can continue, secure in the knowledge that they are unlikely to be caught or prosecuted. Staggeringly, each farm in England can now expect an inspection just once every 263 years. It is useless. The number of court actions against river polluters fell from 235 in 2002 to three last year.

Currently, the state of many of our farming and policing policies means that on the River Wye—a place I am concerned about and a place where I swam—you can erect sheds containing 40,000 birds. These are usually paid for by big multinationals, which get tax breaks, as the sheds are classed as farm buildings although they are factories. There is almost no authority to stop them putting the slurry, the chemicals, the phosphates and the sewage back into this amazing river, which is now almost without fish in large chunks.

As has been brought up by many noble Lords, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Oates, I am also concerned about the planning permissions. The proposals on net gain and protecting habitats will become much more difficult.

In my remaining couple of minutes, I would like to bring the House’s attention to something very current; it happened last week. Noble Lords may or may not like Knepp rewilding estate in Horsham, but it is a beacon of an attempt to bring rewilding into this country. It is visited by hundreds of thousands of people; it has set a fantastic standard. Yet the owners of Knepp lost a case just last week. Horsham District Council declared by six to three that it will allow a housing estate of 3,500 new houses right on the border of this extraordinary natural wilding achievement. The Minister just said that we want 30% of land to be maintained for nature, so what on earth is happening? Horsham District Council, which has its own nature recovery programme, has been leaned on by the Government to produce more houses. It appears, staggeringly, that this project will go ahead.

I believe the Minister: having visited Knepp, he knows how wonderful it is. We, with Natural England, want to encourage more such places around the country—little ones, big ones and ones that entrance adults, children and teachers about the flora and fauna that are so precious to us all. Yet 3,500 houses will block the nature corridor, bringing pollution, noise and light right to the edge of Knepp, not even separated by a road. Something has to be done. I am pleased with the Bill but, my gosh, it needs a lot of work, and I will be supporting all the amendments I believe in.