Draft Conservation of Habitats and Species (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2019 General Committees

[Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. The Minister helpfully explained that, following concerns from the RSPB, Greener UK and Wildlife and Countryside Link, and from the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, the original SI was withdrawn and re-laid with changes. While some welcome changes have been made, I am concerned that not all the issues raised seem to have been adequately addressed. I therefore have a few questions that I will be grateful if the Minister will address. I will also highlight the severity of the biodiversity crisis and the urgent need for effective action to reverse the catastrophic decline in species that we are seeing.

I stress that the Opposition continue to take a dim view of the Government’s conduct of the entire process of EU exit secondary legislation. They have recruited thousands of extra civil servants and lawyers and spent £100 million on consultants, and the result of their work is now being dumped on Parliament in hundreds of SIs, most of which have not been scrutinised or debated at all. We believe, quite frankly, that the citizens of this country deserve better.

On the draft regulations, regulation 8 deals with reporting requirements. Will the Minister set out what the reports will cover and explain the apparent differences in the reporting information required between protected species and habitats and between special areas of conservation and special protection areas? We agree with Greener UK that the draft instrument is wrong to omit the requirement for independent review and recommendations on any further action and/or measures needed. How will simply making reports public and sending them to the Bern convention ensure the timely identification of concerns and the taking of additional measures? Will the Minister look at whether the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, for example, could exercise independent review until the new environmental watchdog is established?

Regulation 13 inserts new regulation 16A into the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017. Will the Minister explain whether the use of “proportionate” in the new regulation diverges from the habitats directive, as Greener UK contends, and will therefore permit less stringent management of species with a smaller natural range in the UK? Regulation 30 gives Ministers the power to amend the list of prohibited methods of taking or killing wild animals as necessary, to adapt to technical and scientific progress. What consultation and scrutiny, if any, will such changes be subject to? Will the Minister formally pledge that expert input and advice will be both sought and taken into account, including by the devolved Administrations, before any changes are made?

Greener UK and Wildlife and Countryside Link both point out the potential for confusion in introducing a new term, “national site networks”, into the already crowded vocabulary of protected sites. We already have national sites—sites of special scientific interest—as notified under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and international sites listed under the Ramsar convention. The draft instrument includes Natura 2000 sites, which the Scottish amending regulations have redefined as “the UK site network” to include terrestrial, marine and offshore European sites. Greener UK and Wildlife and Countryside Link sensibly recommend the term “international sites network”, to recognise the status of the sites and to include Ramsar sites. This would avoid any confusion with the current national network of SSSIs and marine conservation zones. Will the Minister consider that?

The explanatory memorandum refers to the Bonn and Bern conventions but omits other relevant international conventions to which the UK is a signatory, such as the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, the convention on biodiversity and the convention for the protection of the marine environment of the north-east Atlantic, or OSPAR. How will the Minister ensure that the need to reference these agreements is clearly understood when the regulations are being considered and applied?

Loss of habitat is one of the main contributors to the decline of bees and other insects across the world, causing great environmental concern. Buglife says that without sufficient action to tackle this fragmentation of our landscapes, between 40% and 70% of pollinator species could become extinct. It is critical to biodiversity and the whole ecosystem food chain that we take urgent action to protect insect habitats.

How will the policy framework established by this SI support steps to reverse the decline of pollinators and insects, as well as the alarming rate of species decline in the UK? Will the Government reverse the severe cuts to Natural England in particular, to enable it to halt and reverse species decline while taking on the additional responsibilities being brought back from the EU by this and other Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs SIs?

I hope the Minister will take these concerns very seriously and look again at the matters I have raised. Having said that, we do not intend to vote against the SI on this occasion.