Environment Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as has become clear from the debates and amendments in the other place, and as is reflected here today, there is potentially a tension at the heart of the Bill and surrounding it. It begs the question: what should society prioritise?

The claim is that the Bill puts nature’s recovery at the heart of all policies by creating binding biodiversity targets, backed up by yet another legalistic bureaucratic body to enforce regulations. All this has the potential to mean that environmental rules will rule and act as barriers to other political priorities, such as levelling up and economic development. In my opinion, we, and the Government, need to put a rocket under industrial growth, especially for left-behind areas. This is even more urgent after the havoc wreaked by locking down society in response to Covid. I dislike the slogan, “Build Back Better”, and I am even less keen on “build back greener”, which is doing the rounds this week, but building is necessary in whatever context, and it is an example of the tensions.

To illustrate these contradictions, look at the way—and how often—it has been argued that the Bill clashes with forthcoming planning legislation. The promise in that legislation to accelerate and boost much-needed mass housebuilding and large infrastructure projects by removing barriers to growth is surely worth cheering. Yet here, and in lobbyists’ briefings that we have received, it has been described as an utter disaster for biodiversity that will destroy swathes of the countryside—that is misinformation, by the way. It has been labelled a “dark age of development”—it is a dark age only if you think that the environment should trump citizens.

In some ways, there is a philosophical clash over what economic growth means and what our priorities should be. The Green Alliance, a supergroup of eco-NGOs, which sent us detailed briefings on the Bill and was quoted uncritically here earlier today, complains that UK consumption is now such that UK citizens create a greater carbon footprint in 12 days than citizens in seven other countries have in a year. We are invited to infer that UK consumption is too high, but the issue is that theirs is too low. The tragedy is that those seven nations of non-consumers are not consuming because their countries are in dire poverty, so under- developed that living in hunger and destitution is the norm. Even if that means that you do not emit too much carbon, that is not something that I will celebrate.

I hope that some of the Bill’s philosophical tensions can be debated in this Chamber. The problem with having a cross-party consensus on environmental issues is that all the arguments feel like a competition to outgreen one another, with no real challenges. That is not helped by a broader crass demonisation of critics, outside of here, who are called deniers who want to concrete over the countryside. I hope that there will be more nuance, and none of that, in this Chamber.

For example, we need proper debates. We should be debating whether we really should institutionalise the precautionary principle. After all, let us remind ourselves that the EU’s rigid adherence to the precautionary principle on vaccines led to fatal delays and a political debacle. Surely we should also debate the dangers of over-rigid targets and bans. Only recently, that much-maligned material, plastic, with the disposability of its products, became not a waste but a lifesaver, in the form of PPE such as gowns and face masks.

One issue that definitely needs to be debated is the plan to force companies to root out illegal deforestation from supply chains. I wonder whether there is a danger that punitive and onerous regulation of UK companies will create hidden victims in the developing world. I am thinking of the many individuals working in commodity supply chains in the developing world, whose livelihoods may be threatened if the complexities of supply chains are ignored in the pursuit of a Westminster-designed topdown eco-agenda. And what about the sovereignty of producer countries? Many of the UK companies affected have tried to remind the Government that we need to remember to respect those countries as partners. They need to be engaged, not imposed on.

The commentary and amendments tabled in the Commons demanding that that part of the Bill be expanded to financial institutions, in an attempt to prevent British banks financing any companies involved in deforestation—that amounted to £900 million last year—seem so hypocritical. I have heard lots of passionate outrage about aid cuts in this House, but surely attempts to curtail productive investment in the name of the environment are far more egregious.

That brings to mind the persuasive arguments outlined in a new pamphlet entitled Greens: the New Neo-colonialists, in which I declare an interest, as it was published by the Academy of Ideas, of which I am director. I shall ensure that I send the Minister a copy. I am wary of the rich world continually curtailing the developing world’s economic growth under the guise of environmentalism. This is just another example of the dangers of a Bill focusing on preserving the natural environment at the expense of human flourishing and economic growth.

A lot of the material sent by green lobbyists takes a pessimistic, misanthropic and catastrophising tone, implicitly suggesting, with much hyperbole, that human activity on the planet is toxic and responsible for crises, environmental damage and so on. Can we have a bit of perspective and balance as the Bill progresses, and remind ourselves that human activity on the natural planet has not, in the main, been destructive, but has been hugely creative in overcoming natural limits? It has brought us from the caves to modernity, it has allowed agriculture to feed billions, it has allowed us, the human species, to build productive economies and technological wonders, and it has brought freedom and democracy. That is what allows us the leisure time that will enable us to join the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, in bumblebee-watching in due course.

Environment Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Young. I want to speak to and oppose Amendment 2. Using this Bill to mandate that the Prime Minister should declare that there is a biodiversity and climate emergency, both domestically and globally, strikes me as a form of virtue signalling and almost an imperial version of it by declaring on behalf of the globe. I think that that is a bit too much. I am also concerned that its consequences go beyond wordplay and may play into some anti-democratic trends. In recent years it seems that there has been a competition to up the hyperbole and the catastrophist rhetoric across all parties, perhaps to prove green credentials; I do not know that it helps, and I am not sure that this consensus is healthy either.

We are familiar with the approach on climate and biodiversity being added to the mix. The problem with Amendment 2 is that it follows a certain script, with the emphasis on “emergency”. If the Government keep calling everything an emergency, that will become, “Act now or else command”, and dangerously privileges environmental concerns as trumping all others. That rarely puts those concerns into perspective with other possible emergencies or crises. What about the housing emergency, the jobs emergency and the lack of freedom emergency? By the way, I do not think that the trade deal with Australia is a disaster because it will actually solve an emergency. We do not have enough trade deals and we want more.

I recall back in 2009 the book by James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, in which he wrote that surviving climate change

“may require, as in war, the suspension of democratic government for the duration of the survival period.”

At the time, I thought that that sounded extreme, marginal and farfetched, but after the past 15 months, I feel that it is less farfetched. We have just lived through a public health emergency where exactly these things have occurred. We have suspended democratic governance in many ways in order to survive. I am therefore very wary of allowing a statutory nod to ever more emergencies with similar consequences. Many are worried, for example, that lockdown measures will be used in the future under the auspices of environmentalism. I do not think that that fear is unwarranted.

I note that the independent SAGE group, led by Sir David King, has just announced the setting up of another pseudo-scientific body to be called the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, with 14 experts and10 nations. He has said that it is driven by the urgent need to stabilise climatic conditions and to

“protect vital biodiversity and ecosystem functions for the next generation.”

That is because the biggest challenge we face today are these things. I ask: are they really the biggest challenge? I think it is about the elite PR strategy rather than democracy when Sir David King draws attention to the excess of independent SAGE. He says:

“All 12 members have become media personalities. I hope we get the same level of interest on the climate group.”


I am worried about what is going on and whether it is in good faith.

It seems to me that using the language of crisis and emergency and thus presenting everything as an imminent and existential threat can play fast and loose with democratic accountability. When a state of emergency is declared, as we have seen during Covid, there is no time or space for deliberation or debate. According to Greta Thunberg, the house is on fire.

Civil liberties and democratic freedoms can be suspended, and experts, such as Sir David King, main SAGE, independent SAGE and others suddenly become more important on the centre stage than citizens. When a state of emergency is declared, as would happen in a war, we have to ask who the enemy is. When it comes to biodiversity and the environment, my concern is that the enemy is not the virus, foreign foes or whoever, but us, Homo sapiens, and our nasty overconsumption of energy and demands for decent living standards, cars, homes, industrialisation and development.

My objection to Amendment 2 is not a focus on linguistics and the use of the word “emergency”—my concern is political. Any decision this Bill makes about biodiversity or the natural environment must be concrete, specific, proportionate and avoid the pitfall of whipping up fears about imminent catastrophe. I do not think that declaring an emergency solves anything. I am interested in the details of the Bill, not virtue signalling.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to find myself at this place in the debate and to respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. It was certainly a passionate speech, but perhaps not a cohesive one. She spoke about anti-democratic trends and then about there being a consensus. If there is a consensus and local governments are following it, that seems democratic rather than anti-democratic. To point to some figures, a survey was done by the UNDP around the world, of 1.2 million people in 50 countries, published in January this year. It was interesting that in the UK the highest proportion of people—81%—agreed that there is a climate emergency. That is a consensus and, in declaring it, we would be following a democratic path.

My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb noted that your Lordships will be hearing from both of us a great deal. I promise that you will not be hearing from both of us on every amendment, but you will be hearing from us both on Amendment 2, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who introduced it so powerfully. On democracy, the noble Lord pointed out how many local authorities have declared a climate emergency. In fact, 74% of district, county, unitary and metropolitan councils have done that, plus eight combined authorities and city regions. Sheffield Council has just declared a biodiversity emergency, as have Eden District Council and Dorset, so it is spreading around the country.

Perhaps I can offer the Government a little political advice, thinking of the situation in which they find themselves with the blue wall. I note that Henley-on-Thames Town Council, in the heart of what is considered the blue wall, is planning to declare a biodiversity emergency this week. It is going further and plans to back the climate and ecological emergency Bill, so the Government might like to think about not just the science of this but the politics.

I will be brief, because my noble friend has already covered much of this ground, but I want to pick up a point from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering; she said that we have not heard enough from business. I refer to the consultancy firm Deloitte and its environment report a month or so back, which said that there is now, in the combination of environmental, pandemic, social and economic changes, a business emergency. It says that we need cohesive government policies and guidance to tackle this.

This group of amendments, particularly Amendment 2, provides the cohesion that is crucial for this Bill. As we have seen on so many issues, the public are leading here; 81% of the public accept the climate emergency. Local government is not far behind and it is time for the Government, as the chair of COP 26, to catch up.

Environment Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

For me, Amendment 34 states the obvious: that the Government must under these circumstances consult the office for environmental protection. What else is it there for? It specifically has this role as part of its remit. The Government might say, “We have the ability to consult the OEP, therefore we are most likely to do that.” However, that is not good enough. The OEP needs to be independent, and at times it will be in conflict with the Government. If it is not, it will not be doing its job properly. For that reason, I believe it is very important that that consultation is mandatory.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

First, I wish your Lordships a happy Brexit day. I am sure that, like me, you all have happy memories of that time five years ago.

[A noble Lord]

Hear, hear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

There are a couple in. Indeed, one of the reasons why so many millions voted to leave the EU—not Europe—inspired by the democratic spirit, was to escape top-down, immovable regulations imposed from on high. What grated was that any challenge to subsequent policies was met with a shrug: “There is no alternative—they are the EU rules”, given an extra moral force when associated with international agreements. In that context I support the very sensible amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, maybe with a different reasoning, but I thought he put forward an excellent explanation of his thoughts.

These amendments all contain the spirit of flexibility and call for us to consider, as well as environmental concerns, what the social and economic costs of meeting targets in the Bill might be, to ensure that they are not disproportionate to the alleged benefits. The amendments ask us to take into consideration the possibility not just that circumstances might change but that evidence might mean a rethink, and that would mean a different cost-benefit analysis. Cost-benefit analyses are essential in a democracy to give both politicians and, more importantly, voters a choice of priorities—a sense that there is always an alternative. I therefore want to address targets, not so much missing them or whether they should be long-term or interim, but rather the dangers of making them overbinding.

It is important to ensure that citizens know what is being legislated for in their name, that the social and economic costs and trade-offs of environmental targets are not removed from public debate with a “There is no alternative; it’s binding and in the law” dismissal. Make no mistake: targets in one area regularly have a cost elsewhere. For example, the net-zero target is regularly bandied about as an aspiration we all agree on reaching at any costs, but when Andrew Neil asked the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, on GB News last week to break down those costs and put figures on them, that was not so comfortable, and there is no transparency when there are no figures. What is clear is that net zero as a target will have a cost, not only for the Treasury—potentially at the expense of other spending priorities such as social care or job creation—but it will land exorbitant costs on householders in terms of making their homes net-zero compliant, such as the compulsory demand to replace gas boilers. I have noticed when I have raised this issue in the House that the regular reply is: “We need to take the public with us. We need to educate the public so that they understand why they need to change their behaviour and why we need to reach net zero”; in other words, reaching the target is treated as a given—a fait accompli. I note that this means the target usurps choice, so I want to reflect a little on choice.

If you say to the public, “You should support this net-zero target because it’s necessary to save the planet from climate catastrophe”, of course it is a no-brainer. However, if you say, “Do you support the net-zero target with its trade-offs, which could mean reducing living standards?”, or if you say, “We’ll abolish every petrol or diesel car and discourage driving in general, but if you insist on driving we’ll make it an expensive electric car”—and, by the way, yesterday I googled electric cars and the cheapest I could find was £18,500, and the most popular UK electric, Tesla, is an eye-watering £42,000, which for most people would be quite a challenge—or if you describe in detail the impacts on individual lives of decarbonising the economy, there may be less enthusiasm for the target once the trade-offs are known. People have a right to know.

With this Environment Bill, if we tell the public that it is about reducing fly-tipping and toxic pollution, stopping sewage being dumped in rivers, reducing flooding or protecting wildlife in the country, I am sure there will be lots of nods of approval, including from me. But if you explain that legal targets throughout the Bill could mean regulatory barriers to economic bounce-back, holding back industrialisation, and creating material limits to much-needed housebuilding and economic development, there might be a different response.

I said at Second Reading that a tension is already being posited between this Bill and the planning Bill, or planning reforms. I fear that the result of the Chesham and Amersham by-election may fuel this, with an unholy alliance of shire nimbyism and green activism. I am very much on the side of relaxing planning regulations and releasing land for new building, infrastructure and housing and, yes, even some building on the green belt. That is not because I want to concrete over the countryside or because I am opposed to protection of green spaces per se but because the green belt is being treated as sacrosanct or untouchable, yet is 13% of England’s total land and is much larger than the 7% of developed land. So it at least needs to be looked at again.

For me, the social priorities are solving homelessness, tackling the problem of young people excluded from the housing ladder, and the distorted and ever-growing costs for renters. But that is all just my opinion. Many people here do not support it, and that may not be a popular set of opinions outside of here. However, it is precisely these sorts of arguments, weighing up the costs and benefits and the trade-offs of policies, that we need to have in the public sphere. I fear that immovable and overbinding targets in law can only obscure transparency and rule debate on the implications of this Environment Bill off limits.

My final thought is that targets can too easily become the end, not the means to an end. During the 15 months of the pandemic we have seen targets taking an almost Soviet-style command and control form, with daily reports of numbers tested and Nightingale hospitals built—even if not used. Too easily, targets can be bean-counting exercises: the impression of activity but often a cover for the lack of transparency over detail.

I therefore hope that these amendments are adopted and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, does not mind me backing him. I am sure we will not agree on many things but I thought they were very important. These amendments could at least remind the Government to conduct cost-benefit analyses of actions associated with the legislation, and they are an important acknowledgement of the importance of social and economic challenges, as well as solving the practical problems in relation to the environment. It is also an antidote to the ubiquitous demand here, in every amendment that I have heard, that there should be ever more binding targets, because I fear that these could undermine democratic accountability.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, I should briefly offer a defence of targets—particularly the target of ensuring that everyone in the UK has a warm, comfortable and affordable-to-heat home. I hope that no one would disagree with the target of ending our utterly disgraceful excess winter deaths that come largely as a result of the poor quality of our housing stock. I also wish to defend the targets that we are talking about here in terms of our natural environment, on which our entire economy and lives depend.

I will be fairly brief. I want to speak in favour of Amendment 34 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, that would seem to be an easy, obvious amendment for the Government to accept. As the noble Baroness said, their ability to ask the office for environmental protection for guidance on the targets is simply not good enough and does not reflect the provisions of the Climate Change Act. We are very much creating a parallel here between action on climate and action on biodiversity. To mirror those two things would seem to be an obvious, simple and not difficult step.

On Amendment 19 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I would go broader than consulting the Department of Health and Social Care. The noble Lord in his introduction spoke particularly about recreation and the value of the natural environment to recreation. When we think about the health of human beings, the health of the natural environment is related in much deeper ways. I should point noble Lords to an interesting United Nations scheme called HUMI—the Healthy Urban Microbiome Initiative—which addresses a fast-growing and developing area of science: understanding the human microbiome and how it is related to our physical and mental health, and how what is happening around us in the natural world is utterly integral to a healthy microbiome.

I also wish to speak in favour of Amendments 41A and 41B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. Again, we are in what could be described as no-brainer territory. We surely should not be imposing anything in terms of environmental regulation on the devolved nations without their “prior consent”—words that are important. This matter also raises a subject that we have not broadly discussed and might like to think about further. As the noble Lord said, rivers and waters do not suddenly get to a national border, stop and turn around, saying “Oh, I’m Welsh water and am staying in Wales”. That is also true of birds, insects, mammals and the whole ecosystem. A question to the Minister, either for today or a future date, is on how the Bill, this Act-to-be, will fit within the common framework and co-ordinating efforts of the nations of these islands. How will that work? I think also of many of our debates on the internal market Bill, now an Act.

Environment Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 28th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. Guess what—I am going to argue the opposite.

Dame Sarah Gilbert received a well-deserved standing ovation at Wimbledon today for her pioneering work on vaccines. I echo those cheers and that standing ovation, but I note that that achievement required experimentation on monkeys and mice. I oppose these amendments—a whole range from Amendments 97 to 297 and in between —because, in one way or another, they seek to make animal testing ever more regulated. There is even an inference, by positing it in an animal welfare context and with this emphasis on the last resort, that this vital part of scientific research is somehow a necessary evil that should be abolished and is morally dubious.

The UK system of regulating animal testing and experiments is already the tightest in the world, and researchers complain that they can obtain licences only if they clearly demonstrate that there are no alternatives. Some have to wait so long to secure approval for small amendments to research licences that the research becomes outdated and has to be abandoned. The whole field is too heavily bureaucratised; certainly, no more bureaucracy is needed. I am worried already about the Bill, without it being tightened up by these amendments.

I have long felt queasy about the “reduce” and “replace” elements of the three Rs. Endless attempts at placing restrictions on the types or numbers of animals used in experiments can, I fear, only stifle medical and human safety progress, with their positive benefits for humanity. For the record, and I know this is medical research but I want to remind people of the kind of benefits we mean, the use of dogs to extract insulin to treat diabetes, the experiments on armadillos that helped develop a cure for leprosy, and the wonder drug levodopa used on people with Parkinson’s—if you know anyone who has had that disease and taken that drug, you will know what a wonderful gain it is—would not have been developed without the insights gained from research involving animals. Think of a world without pacemakers, heart transplants, open-heart surgery, safe anaesthetics, polio vaccines and cancer treatments that mean survival rates have doubled over the last 40 years. So many people alive today—in fact, so many in this Chamber—are here only because of the role of animal research in the battle against nature and natural diseases. That is even before we talk about Covid vaccines.

Reducing the use of animals in testing or medical science would be a backwards step. The truth is that, if we are to fully understand and find more treatments for Covid-19, we will need to do more animal research, not less—not reduce the number of animals, but use multiple species. There will be lots of failed experiments, which some will say is a waste, but that is what will eventually mean that we find answers and cures. As outlined in Nature magazine recently:

“Monkeys and mice tell researchers different things about infection, shedding light on factors such as … the immune system or how the virus spreads.”


Whatever the testing is for, we have to say that this is one result of human ingenuity, of life-saving problem-solvers, and it should be celebrated and encouraged.

Instead, there is a faintly misanthropic whiff to this constant demand to reduce animal research, as well as a focus on animal welfare rather than human welfare. We all know how animal rights activists have adopted anthropomorphic language to discredit animal research: mice are “tortured”, pigs are “sacrificed” and dogs are “mutilated”—we have heard about “barbarity” today. This leads to a narrative of scientists portrayed as though they get perverse pleasure from sadistically experimenting on animals.

I am not trying to sugar-coat vivisection or this kind of testing. I know that it involves gore and, ultimately, destroying animals. But this is not wanton animal cruelty; it is driven by a desire to save human life and have a safer society. That is why I have so objected over the years to the way that these scientists and researchers, and the research institutions and the chemical and pharmaceutical companies, whether private or public, have been vilified and harassed—named and shamed in a culture of fear. These scientists and researchers should have nothing to be ashamed of; indeed, I want not only to reject these amendments but to go on the offensive about the moral good of research on animals. If Sarah Gilbert deserves a standing ovation, so do they. I rather feel as if these amendments are a bit of a dispiriting slow handclap.

Let us not get muddled up here. We should not allow rhetoric about animal welfare to stand in the way of human welfare and the alleviation of human suffering or making the world safer. Some may think this human-centric and unsympathetic to animals but, rather, I am rather worried about affording a moral equivalence between animals and humans. I refute the caricature that this equates to indifference to animals.

As it pays attention to wildlife and with its focus on biodiversity, the Bill inevitably also has a focus on animal protection policies. That means our gaze is on animals, but we must resist seeing issues through an animal rights framework that upgrades and exaggerates the capacity of animals, while logically and philosophically down- grading and diminishing the agency and consciousness of humans—capacities that animals do not possess. This careless interchangeability between human and animal rights and capacities has been raised as a problem in relation to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill by a number of noble Lords.

I hope that the Minister and the Government will reject these amendments and, without rehearsing Cartesian dualism, note that it is precisely human consciousness that allows us to legislate for how we should better organise our relationship with the natural world. It also allows us so much progress and scientific innovation, so necessary to much in the Bill and vital to post-Covid prosperity and health.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I listened to that speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, with great interest. It was a Second Reading speech for the animal sentience Bill, but I do not know that it argues against any of these amendments, which are just about avoiding the use of animal testing except as a last resort. I do not see that contribution as entirely relevant to the Bill, but I am sure it will be repeated in that other Second Reading later in the year.

I take a particular interest in UK REACH because, when I had the privilege of chairing the EU Environment Sub-Committee, we did a number of reports on REACH. Of course, it is not UK REACH at all; it is called that, but it is actually “GB REACH” because Northern Ireland is still part of the single market. UK REACH does not apply to the Province.

With that clarification, I welcome the speeches of all the noble Baronesses and was very pleased to add my name to the first amendment. However, I want to come to something a little deeper and test the Minister on it. We can talk about animal testing being a last resort but also change the bar of where that last resort is. That is probably far more important than this amendment, although I support it absolutely. Duplication of this testing is necessary because of the existence of UK REACH. Given the hard Brexit that we had and the decision to come out of the single market, we had no alternative. Even if we had wanted it, the EU Commission and Mr Barnier would not have liked or allowed it. However, that will cost British business—this is undisputed by the Government—£10 billion, or something like that.

Environment Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

I will not detain the Committee further, except to say that this is a key area which will be increasingly important because of our renewable energy programme, much of which is based offshore. We are going to be moving ever more from ground-based or sea-based turbines to floating wind turbines; I am sure there will be differences there in ecological impact, so how will that be taken into consideration, in terms not just of research but of planning and, particularly, keeping our marine plans up to date and helping us make the right decisions in this area?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am here to speak against Amendment 285. It seems to me that making fracking effectively illegal is an extreme reaction. That seems short-sighted. It closes down any possibility of looking at the issue again or objectively, and potentially feeds into an atmosphere in which we cannot have a sensible debate on energy policy because we start criminalising innovations every time they come along. We have heard that the Government have a moratorium on fracking. I feel that is overcautious and potentially unhelpful but, regardless of that, to make it illegal feels completely over the top.

I understand that fracking is controversial as a method of drawing shale gas from the ground. Certainly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, explained, environmental activists have been hyperactive in ensuring that there is a popular image of fracking as dangerous and dirty, but I do not know that that should pass for science or evidence. I am not for or against fracking, but I am against moralising on the issue and, right from the start, I have been shocked by the venomous demonisation of what, after all, is just an energy source. There has been a lot of misinformation and scare stories around the issue.

I call, rather, for a calm discussion about the kind of tremors caused—they would be caused by any mineral extraction, whether quarry blasting or any major civil engineering project. I worry about a tendency to portray the worst-case scenario, with scary stories of earthquakes, water contamination and poisoned water tables. I feel that is a distinctly evidence-free approach and I do not feel the Bill should be associated with something quite so ideological in that way. I am calling for a more neutral and nuanced cost-benefit analysis approach.

I remember when the former Labour MP and fracking tsar, Natascha Engel, said that government policy was being driven by environmental lobbying rather than science, evidence and a desire to see the UK industry flourish. Indeed, I was shocked by how many rejoiced at what Ms Engel described as a “perfectly viable” industry being wasted, regardless of that industry’s massive potential for jobs and local prosperity in places such as the north-west, North Yorkshire and north Derbyshire. It promised to bring energy prices down. If it did not work out, fine, but to celebrate that as a big gain seemed to me inappropriate.

I also worry about the billions being spent on importing gas, which could be better spent. I have plenty of ideas, particularly in health and social care and in rebuilding post-Covid society. I am not keen on dependence on Russian gas, but even beyond the question of energy security, it seems to me that, even within the terms set by net zero—even though that is not a target I am particularly obsessive about, as others are—shale gas production could have had few carbon emissions, far fewer than hydrocarbons. It always surprises me, when we talk about reaching carbon emission targets, that we would rule out getting gas out of the ground in the UK, rather than importing it. It feels, with nuclear power as well, that every time a new energy solution is proposed that is not wind or solar, we get a kind of moral panic led by activism.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, talked about the problem of finding any energy source that will not disrupt the environment and nature. I was involved in an argument some years ago after Lancashire County Council rejected an application for exploratory drilling—not in relation to the safety of fracking per se, but based on the negative visual impact, increased traffic on rural roads and that kind of environmental disruption. Would not such concerns condemn industrialisation in general? How can there be economic development without traffic, or some changes to the skyline or, indeed, to the environment? I think we need that.

My priorities are to generate wealth—not personally; I have never been able to do that—to see that society is able to generate wealth and, in the process, make people’s lives more comfortable and open opportunities for humanity. We need industrialisation in general, and more energy production in particular, and that will involve infrastructural environmental disruption. Shale gas might not be the energy we need, but we should note that the wider ideological rejection of economic growth and progress sometimes afflicts this discussion and we should avoid it. We definitely do not need an amendment to the Bill that would make fracking, or any energy source, illegal. I would even urge the Government to look again at the moratorium.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 280 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. This is a very interesting area and it is important that we continue to carefully research the impact of individual wind farms, as well as—perhaps more importantly, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned—their cumulative effect on many species, from benthic invertebrates through sand eels and fish to birds and the larger sea mammals. I shall start by highlighting the approach taken on this subject by the National Audubon Society, the equivalent of the RSPB in the USA. It says, and I gather that many scientists here agree, that climate change is the biggest enemy of our avian population. As wind farms are one of the best weapons in our arsenal to fight climate change, we must be careful about putting too many barriers in the way of their development, albeit with a clear understanding of their effects and what mitigation could be put in place.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, is right that research on the effect of offshore wind farms on marine mammals and cetaceans is still, shall we say, in its infancy. However, the research on wind farms and their effects on birds is reasonably well advanced, so I shall focus on that. The Scottish Government, through their all-encompassing research programme on marine energy, ScotMER, have taken a very good strategic approach to this issue, working with research institutions, notably the UK’s CEH, which I happen to chair, alongside some important private-sector players; the Swedish company Vattenfall and the Danish company Ørsted being two good examples.

On the question of where offshore windfarms should be situated, we are pretty well aware of their effects during the seabird breeding season. By putting GPS tags on birds during the breeding season, we now know precisely where wind farms should not go, which is a very good start. The winter season is more difficult, however. GPS tags are not yet light enough or durable enough to provide reliable long-term information during this highly sensitive period. I call it a sensitive period because most seabird mortality happens during winter, and winter deaths are the critical factor in the survival of their colonies—more so, it seems, than their breeding success.

The main problem encountered during winter by our seabirds is the lack of food. The main food they eat are sand eels, which, as their name indicates, live in the underwater sands of the North Sea, let us say, where most wind farms are. Maybe the abundance of sand eels is affected by the sands themselves being disturbed by the building of wind farms and, more importantly perhaps, by the submersion of miles and miles of cable. But we do not yet have the data on that.

However, I should point out at this stage that, where you have wind farms, you will probably not get fishing boats, because of the likelihood of drift and getting the nets entangled in turbine towers. In the long term—we do not yet know—by building wind farms, we might well be creating the equivalent of what should be happening in our marine protected areas in terms of no-go fishing areas, where many species, including sand eels, could be given a real chance to flourish. Wind farms could be the best thing for both our abundance of fish and our birds. Who knows?

Coming back to the existence of offshore wind farms and their effect on birds, it is notable that the worst effects are on high-flying birds such as gannets and kittiwakes, whereas low-flying birds such as razorbills, guillemots and shearwaters tend not to be too troubled by them. Kittiwakes seem to be the worst affected species, and it is good that Ørsted, for instance, is building artificial kittiwake nesting sites at the Hornsea Three development off the Yorkshire coast by way of mitigation.

Returning to the amendment, I am not sure that its emphasis is right. Private companies already have to carry out basic environmental monitoring exercises both before and after their developments. As I have said, some of them go very much further, with Vattenfall actually paying for a PhD student to assist in the ScotMER research project I mentioned just now.

In many ways, having private companies judge the environmental viability of their own project is not as good as getting them to contribute to more strategic research into the overall cumulative effects of offshore wind farms and the best ways of mitigating their effects. The current view is that having lots of small turbines placed close to each other is more damaging than having modern large turbines placed a kilometre or so apart, but we do not yet really know. Is it best to leave 2-kilometre-wide corridors through wind farms or does this only confuse the situation? Further research has found that if you paint one blade of each turbine all black, the birds seem to keep away—but again, more data is needed on this.

Coming back to the kittiwake issue, and on the subject of strategic planning, there is a big question as to whether we should be thinking of the kittiwake population as a local problem or, as they do in the United States, thinking of the kittiwake population as a whole. In other words, if a colony on the Yorkshire coast is threatened, maybe it would be better to encourage more kittiwake growth in Wales or Cornwall, and not in Yorkshire. We might have more overall success that way. Again, more research is going on in those fields. If overwintering is the main problem, as I said, we should definitely combine our research strategies, not only with all the UK nations involved but also, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, with other countries such as Iceland, Norway, Denmark, et cetera.

In conclusion, the problem is a very good one to raise in the context of this Bill. It is an important issue and I thank the noble Baroness for raising it, but I am not sure that the amendment as it stands quite puts its finger on the right solution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was actually disappointed—but perhaps not surprised—to see this amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. For some time, I have been following the way in which “ecocide” has become a fashionable term to hype up human engagement with nature in a wholly negative way. I am not as familiar as the noble Baroness is with the legal definitions that she explained, but I feel that “ecocide” is an especially emotive word cynically designed to invoke thoughts of evil genocide. It implies that our relationship with nature and the different ways in which we interact with the environment are as heinous, deliberate and destructive as the Holocaust—which, to be frank, I find distasteful.

The term I am more familiar with is on the level of cultural discussion and the way in which the term “ecocide” has been used to criminalise, even if metaphorically, a whole range of human activities that have an impact on the environment. There is an unpleasant misanthropic aspect, as well, in associating human impact with wanton ecological destruction—something that I raised in my remarks at Second Reading.

Reading the literature on ecocide over the years, I have seen humans described as “a cancer on the environment”, “a parasite species on the planet” and “a virus infecting the earth’s body”. This emphasises the negative aspects of human culpability and destruction, rather than seeing humanity and civilisation as a source of creative solutions, which is more helpful. Civilisation and development have allowed our species to use knowledge, reason, ingenuity and innovation to aspire to improve the conditions of life. I would rather we celebrated the huge gains of the progress, political change and technological innovation that have driven humanity from the Stone Age through to the 21st century, yet “ecocide” and the discussion around it focuses wholly on humanity as an agent of destruction.

I worry that the whole discourse on “ecocide” expresses a disillusion with those gains—the fruits of modernity and the economic growth that we have benefited from and witnessed, particularly in the West. It views the rapid development of the rest of the world in a wholly negative way, as though somehow the use of fossil fuels in order to grow is potentially akin to mass murder, as the comparison with genocide suggests. It flirts dangerously closely with romanticising Stone Age lack of development elsewhere. In debates on earlier groups of amendments, I heard a number of noble Lords criticise GDP and say that it does not represent very much. Well, in my view, we do not have enough GDP. I want more of it for the masses of the world. Certainly, without it, well-being is nigh on impossible, and I have worried throughout this discussion on the environment that a clash is being set up between GDP—that is, economic development and growth—and matters around the environment.

It certainly seems to me that charges of activities typically dubbed ecocide are too easily levelled at countries and people trying to develop to escape immiseration, poverty and hunger. China, India and Brazil are often discussed in these terms, and I wonder who will be charged with ecocide. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, listed a number of big bad companies—in her view. That anti-corporate “They should be held responsible and blamed for the people killed” is something we are familiar with.

But I worry that ordinary people in Brazil and other parts of the developing world are implicated and criminalised for felling forests and clearing land for agriculture, as we in the West have done before and benefited from, in industrial revolutions and modernisation. I get nervous, in this discussion of ecocide, of a rather arrogant neocolonial instinct about who will be accused of ecocide, who will police those accused of it and even whether it will become a justification for western intervention, with all these green-helmet lawyers going around the world saving nature from the destructive activity of ordinary people. I totally reject this amendment.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is interesting to hear the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, but I take a different line. As a member of Peers for the Planet, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, on introducing the concept behind these amendments to your Lordships’ House and I am pleased to add my name to them.

I confess I was disappointed when my questions to the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, about adding the crime of ecocide to the Rome statute received, first, the answer that there were no such plans. His next answer, which I have just received in time—for which I am grateful—adduced various traditional diplomatic reasons, but I still hope we can make a start. I think we should.

Of course, ecocide is an innovatory idea, and innovations are disturbing and disruptive. This one requires different thinking about human rights. The Rome statute and, for that matter, the United Nations human rights instruments have a specific human focus on what is needed to establish and maintain well-being. We in the UK have taken an even narrower view, in that we have not implemented the economic and social rights set out in the convention, only the civil and political ones. But the concept of ecocide is hardly dangerously revolutionary; it was mooted by Olof Palme in 1972 and, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Boycott, say, France and others are in the process of incorporating it into their laws.

Our environment is so critical to our well-being that we need to think in new ways about how to protect it from the damage being done to it. I think all your Lordships value our natural environment. That clearly emerges from the debates on this Bill and the answers of the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith. We should put that into practice by cherishing its biological and botanical elements and, therefore, ought to support efforts to get this into international law.

Already one of our most distinguished human rights lawyers, Philippe Sands QC, is working on how this value can be made justiciable at the International Criminal Court. The definition has now been agreed by all 12 of the eminent international lawyers in the group he chairs. For once, I hope our Government can be a bit ahead of the curve and support these amendments.