Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Simon Hoare

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sue Hayman]

Clearly, we cannot grow everything that consumers would like to purchase in this country, but we can do more to increase the production of food that can be produced in this country. It is important that we protect standards too, and any trading deals should protect the standards that our farmers currently work to.

[Simon Hoare]

I think the answer will be yes, but does the hon. Lady agree that it will be a hallmark of success for the whole Brexit process if, 10 or 15 years down the line, we find that we are importing no more foodstuffs than we do today, and preferably less because we are producing more?

[Sue Hayman]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point.

I would like to think about health, because the Bill fails to recognise the importance of food and diet for health. Why, when we spend so much money subsidising our food producers, are so many of them on the verge of bankruptcy or breakdown? Why is there so much wasted food when foodbank demand has never been higher? While the quality of our home-produced food has never been higher, why do we have an epidemic of obesity and diabetes? The Bill completely misses the opportunity to tackle those problems. We need a Bill that strengthens and enshrines support for sustainable food production, promotes healthy outcomes and supports rural economies, because we believe that access to good-quality, healthy food must not be allowed to become the preserve of only those who can afford it.

Ivory Bill

Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Simon Hoare

3rd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 4th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sue Hayman]

It is a shame that the hon. Gentleman did not serve on the Bill Committee, because he could have supported our amendment 12, which proposed much of what he has just said.

Looking at how we tackle the illegal trade effectively, hon. Members will agree that we need international co-operation, as I have said. In debate and in Committee, hon. Members have said that we need to look at how we work effectively with the Department for International Development in the communities where poaching takes place. Poverty and corruption drive the trade. We have seen in recent days a terrible example of that with the poaching of Bella, a 20-year-old white rhino with a young calf. Bella was dehorned in an effort to make her less of a target a week before she was shot dead by poachers at Kragga Kamma game park in the Eastern Cape. However, hunters sliced her face to extract the small amount of horn that remained. The grisly discovery of the mutilated carcase of a dehorned rhino, killed for less than one centimetre of horn stump, lying next to her calf underscores the depths of South Africa’s poaching problem. It also underscores the fact that poachers kill for very little ivory, which is why it is important to extend the scope of the Bill.

Will Travers, director of the Born Free Foundation, told the Bill Committee:

“In my view, there is a common linkage with our clear objectives in overseas development, which are to deal with poverty and to provide opportunity...If we are not investing in the protected areas where elephants and other species live, we are not doing a great service either to the species we wish to protect or to the people who live literally downstream from those protected areas.”––[Official Report, Ivory Public Bill Committee, 12 June 2018; c. 9, Q12.]

International leadership and commitment are needed from DEFRA. I sincerely hope that the Minister will agree to support new clause 2, which would make meaningful the commitment to international action on the illegal ivory trade.

Government amendments 3 and 4 bear an uncanny resemblance to amendment 12, which Labour tabled in Committee, as I mentioned. Labour does not seek to oppose the Government amendments, as it is proper and right that the Secretary of State should have the discretion to include additional species, whether they are CITES-listed or not, at a later date depending on the evidence at the time.

I would like to make clear the difference between Government amendments 3 and 4 and Labour’s new clause 1. They are entirely different and in no way contradict one another. Government amendments 3 and 4 seek to provide powers for the Secretary of State to add CITES and non-CITES listed species to the definition in future if the Secretary of State so wishes. The amendment does not compel or require the Government to do so and it does not specify a timeframe. It is therefore important that both Government amendments 3 and 4, as well as new clause 1, are adopted today to protect the most at risk CITES species as a priority within the next 12 months, as well as providing the Secretary of State with the discretionary powers to include species at an future time if necessary.

This House is united in its determination to clamp down on the ivory trade. Labour’s 2017 election manifesto made a clear commitment to a full ban on ivory sales, and I welcome the Bill today. It is an important step forward in protecting elephants and starting to tackle this appalling trade. The Committee stage was conducted in a spirit of working hard and being constructive together. I recommend both Labour’s new clauses and the Government amendments to the House. We need to close any loopholes in the Bill that might further endanger the walrus, narwhal, sperm whale, killer whale and hippo. I have tried hard to work constructively with the Minister. I ask that he take our concerns and our new clauses very seriously. I urge the whole House to support Labour’s new clauses 1 and 2 today.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

It was a pleasure to serve with the hon. Member for Workington (Sue Hayman) and her colleagues and with my right hon. and hon. Friends on the important Bill Committee. It is great to see the Bill on Report. Since before the days of Hannibal, the elephant has been important, totemic and ritualistic in our psyche and in our history. We want to ensure that the elephant, and man’s relationship with that supremely powerful and totemic animal, has not just a present but a future.

From time to time, I toy with trying to win the lottery. If I did, one of the things I would do is take my children on safari in Africa to see, among other animals, elephants. My children are quite young, so I think to myself that I will do that in 10 or 12 years’ time when they are a bit older. I just hope that the elephants will still be there. That, of course, presupposes that I win the lottery. I fundamentally believe that the Bill will have an important role to play in helping to deter the trade, making it morally reprehensible to trade in ivory and to poach, and to act as a beacon of excellence for other countries to follow.

I do not particularly like to be tied into other agendas and the timetable of other agendas, but I have been entirely persuaded, in Committee and on Second Reading, by the comments and assurances given by my hon. Friend the Minister from the Dispatch Box about the importance of getting the Bill through cleanly and swiftly to ensure it hits the statute book at an appropriate time and in a form whereby it can be cited at the important conference in the autumn.

Ivory Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Simon Hoare

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 14th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sue Hayman]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving us the benefit of his extraordinary knowledge and wonder whether he has thought about joining the V&A staff in the future.

[Simon Hoare]

Does the hon. Lady have a legitimate expectation that that exchange might be heard on the wireless tomorrow?

[Sue Hayman]

It may be, as the hon. Gentleman’s previous very kind comments may be. One never knows.

I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment, because it would not change the focus of or detract from anything in the Bill. All it would do is provide clarification, the need for which I thought was universally accepted when we were taking evidence.

Ivory Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Simon Hoare

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sue Hayman]

Q I am just talking about the Bill at the moment. It could be improved quickly by adding in the CITES species, as I know a number of people were suggesting. You could then consult and look at the non-CITES species and the issue of mammoths separately afterwards. My big concern is that you bring this in just for elephants and you very quickly see a shift. You could protect the other CITES species straightaway, without the need to go to consultation because of the nature of the Bill, being the Ivory Bill, if you see where I am coming from.

David Cowdrey: The built-in flexibility under clause 35(3), and the opportunity for the Secretary of State to add, means you would not need to go through a consultation process. If we were informing the Secretary of State of a shift that has taken place in conservation terms with species that are coming under threat, there should be an ability to provide that evidence for action to be taken swiftly to add those species immediately within the Bill. That flexibility currently exists under clause 35(3).

In relation to the speed of the Bill, I hand it back to you as hon. Members. That is in your remit—your court. As an NGO, we would like to see this Bill completed and into legislation by October, prior to the IWT conference, so we can have a global stage to announce this fantastic piece of legislation. So I hand the ball back to you.

[Simon Hoare]

Q I have two very quick points. The first is, having looked at Wikipedia—that great source of authority and information, as we all know—mammoths are included in the elephantidae family. I am rather anxious that what we are trying to do here is to decommoditise the attractiveness of ivory in all its forms and types. Therefore, I wonder whether mammoth is actually covered within the Bill, as set out in clause 35(6).

The other thing, very briefly, is whether you have had a look at the enforcement regulations, as set out in later clauses of the Bill. Do you think they are about right, too lenient or top-heavy?