Environment Bill

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, sadly, I was too slow to get my name on to this amendment, but I think that it has complete support around the House. I have just one point, which is that this is something that we must be focused on not only in the UK but globally. As the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said, we must have farming that is absolutely hand in glove with nature. When the Select Committee on Environment and Climate Change looked at COP 15 and some of the essential issues that must be tackled, this whole issue of addressing the global food chain was absolutely critical. Therefore, we commend the noble Baroness for all her campaigning on this issue and hope that the Government take the food strategy seriously as all of us in this House know that they should.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to support Amendment 118, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, to which I have added my name. I commend her for the way she so ably introduced it—her knowledge is far greater than mine.

We have strongly welcomed the National Food Strategy and its recommendations that aim to deliver “healthy, affordable food” and build a sustainable agriculture sector in an efficient and cost-effective way. However, we support the noble Baroness’s amendment because it draws government attention to critical aspects of the impact of the ways in which we farm and produce our food, which, as she quite rightly says, are absent from the Environment Bill.

Amendment 118 first looks at the effect on biodiversity. There is no doubt that the precious biodiversity that sustains our food systems is in decline. The first ever global report on the state of biodiversity for food and agriculture, launched two years ago by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, confirms this. The National Food Strategy rightly observes:

“The global food system is the single biggest contributor to biodiversity loss, deforestation, drought, freshwater pollution and the collapse of aquatic wildlife. It is the second-biggest contributor to climate change, after the energy industry.”


The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, explained that, in the UK, agriculture contributes to, and is affected by, climate change. Every stage in the food production cycle—from preparing, growing and harvesting, through to production, storage, processing, packaging, transporting and cooking—releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Methane produced by livestock during digestion has received a lot of media coverage, while nitrous oxide emissions from mineral nitrogen fertilisers are also a problem. The Government have demonstrated that they are working to tackle this through the new ELM schemes, for example, but, as the strategy confirms, this will not be enough on its own.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, spoke up for our farmers and, very importantly, said that never again should nature be separated from farming. The National Food Strategy also contains recommendations to address the major issues facing the food system, including climate change, biodiversity loss, land use, diet-related disease, health inequality, food security and trade. So it makes absolute sense to me that the approach should be reviewed, as proposed in this amendment, to ensure that it is making progress and continues to do so.

Amendment 118 also looks at the effect of greenhouse gas emissions and asks for a review in this area. If you read it, the National Food Strategy has an awful lot to say on emissions. For example, it says:

“Agriculture alone produces 10% of UK greenhouse gas emissions”


and that our

“food system accounts for a fifth of domestic emissions—but that figure rises to around 30% if we factor in the emissions produced by all the food we import.”

So there is no point in making UK farmers do all the hard work necessary to reduce carbon emissions and restore biodiversity, only to open up the market to cheap food produced to lower standards abroad. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, talked about trade and referred to the impact of food miles. If we export all the environmental harms that we wish to avoid, while undercutting and potentially bankrupting our own farmers, we achieve nothing.

It is not a simple task to dramatically reduce emissions from food production or to monitor and review progress. This all needs to be an integral part of the process. So I commend the noble Baroness’s amendments to the Minister and look forward to a positive response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for tabling this amendment and for her very comprehensive introduction. We had an interesting discussion on ecocide in Committee following the amendment then tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and we have done so again today. As the noble Baroness and others have clearly laid out the arguments on this issue, I do not intend to give a lengthy speech; the hour is late.

In her amendment today, the noble Baroness asks the Government to set an objective

“to support the negotiation of an amendment to the Statute of the International Criminal Court … to establish a crime of ecocide.”

In Committee, the Minister said that he strongly agreed “with the premise” of the noble Baroness’s argument. My noble friend Lady Whitaker has noted that he did not seem to really have any strong objections to the proposals. This was then caveated when the Minister said that pursuing this course of action

“would require an enormous amount of heavy lifting diplomatically, with little prospect at this stage of succeeding.”—[Official Report, 14/7/21; col. 1905.]

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, stressed the importance of leadership in this aspect, and I hope that the Minister would agree with him and, as he says, push it a little further. My noble friend Lord Khan, in his response in Committee, called for a “constructive role” for the UK in negotiation and this would be a positive first step.

As the noble Baroness explained in the introduction to her amendment, unlike her amendment in Committee, she is calling for the Government to promote discussion of this. This seems to me to be a thoroughly reasonable request and so, with COP 26 on the horizon and the opportunity it presents the UK for global leadership on the climate and ecological crisis, I ask the Minister—who we know understands the reality of ecocide—to end this debate on a positive note and give the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, some hope in this matter.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and Stop Ecocide International for agreeing to a meeting following Committee stage of the Bill. I found the debate we had in Committee and the subsequent engagement hugely insightful. As the noble Baroness knows and as I have made clear in my contribution during that debate, I very strongly agree with the premise of her argument.

As she knows, ecocide is not a crime recognised under international law and there is currently no consensus on a legal definition. Before the ICC and the crimes it has jurisdiction over could be established by the Rome statute adopted in 1998, ecocide had to be removed in the drafting stages because of the lack of agreement among states parties to the court. The Rome statute provides some protections to 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 a war crime. But ecocide in the broader sense, in the manner in which the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, described it, as an internationally punishable crime, has not yet been recognised by the United Nations.

The UK’s current priority regarding the International Criminal Court, as I said in Committee, is to reform it so that it functions better and can deliver successful prosecutions of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. I know noble Lords on all sides of the House share that ambition. As I understand it, if an amendment to the statute was adopted, it would only bind states parties which have ratified it. If not ratified, the court has no jurisdiction over those states. It is likely, and certainly possible, therefore, that the biggest culprits in relation to ecocide and egregious environmental damage would be exempt.

However, reform of the court is a long and complicated process. The independent expert review of the court made over 300 recommendations to improve the workings of the court, some of them fundamental. It will take time to implement these recommendations and that is a priority not just for the UK but many other states parties to the Rome statute. A significant amendment such as that proposed is currently unlikely to achieve the support of two-thirds of the states parties necessary to amend the Rome statute to make ecocide an international crime. As I said in Committee, pursuing it would require enormous heavy lifting on our part, with—at this stage—little prospect of success. There is a concern it could detract from the goal of improving the court’s effectiveness, which in any case would be a prerequisite for a meaningful application of ecocide.

Although I am afraid that I cannot commit here and now to promoting this campaign or concept internationally, I very much share the noble Baroness’s interest in this area, as she knows. I cannot take action as part of this Environment Bill but I am keen to continue discussions with the noble Baroness on how she and others believe the UK, through these international channels, can better lead in recognising and tackling egregious environmental crimes. In the meantime, I very much hope she will feel able to withdraw her amendment.