Water Companies: Pollution

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I refer the noble Lord to the Environment Act as a first measure, probably the most significant piece of environmental legislation that any country has brought forward. That brings with it controls and sanctions, alongside a new statutory policy statement to Ofwat, to give it more powers, higher enforcement fines and many other things that I have already discussed this afternoon. I hope that he can see, on reflection, that there is a plan, and that we are determined to end the shameful situation of illegal outflows into rivers, whether it is from sewage or from illegal pollution coming from farmland.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, those of us who watch this situation closely do not actually think that Ofwat is doing a very good job. A case in point is that it fined Thames Water £50 million, which was great—but Thames Water is now giving each of its customers £3.40 as a sort of recompense. Does that sound reasonable or fair?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

As part of this failure to hit its commitments, Thames Water will be returning to customers next year £51 million. An average household water bill to take all the fresh water into a household and remove all the dirty water is just over £1 a day, which is a lot of money for someone on low income, but in terms of household incomes, it probably sits well below energy costs, for example. This system of being able to return money to customers is absolutely at the heart of the kind of incentives we want to see.

Environment Act 2021: Targets

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I suggest that we hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox.

Sewage Pollution

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The Government are acting resolutely on this matter. The noble Lord will know that we recently passed the Environment Act, when those who supported the then Bill voted to bring in the most dramatic and determined measures ever seen in this country to tackle this problem. Some have decided to use this in a political campaign that is 180 degrees from the truth, saying that MPs voted to allow wastewater to be dumped in our rivers. That has been happening since Victorian times.

What is happening is unacceptable. We now have the toughest regulations; they are much tougher than when we were in the EU. We will make sure not only that we reduce and, where possible, end the release of sewage into our bathing waters, rivers and oceans but that we make water companies responsible. We now have measures that this Government have brought in through the regulator to allow it to link the performance of those water companies, and how they remunerate their senior executives, with their performance in relation to what we as a Government and a society expect of them.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am going to write to the Minister—or whoever the Minister is tomorrow or next week—about this issue because I am afraid that what the Government are saying is complete arrant nonsense. They are responsible for ignoring the Lords amendments that would have brought in a timetable and targets for water companies. They chose to ignore them, which is why we have this mess. I have here a map from 6.30 this morning with loads of red dots, which mean illegal discharges—except the Government made them illegal last month. How can the Minister stand there and say that this is not the Government’s fault?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The Government did not make anything legal. The Environment Agency permits releases of storm overflows. Where they are not permitted, they are illegal. The Environment Agency has had its budget increased and has increased its number of enforcement officers. At the moment, it is carrying out 2,200 investigations into illegal waste being dumped in rivers and is making prosecutions, such as the one that saw Southern Water fined £90 million—a fine that presaged the change of hands of that company, welcome as that was.

On the measures in the Environment Act, one amendment wanted to end the release of any wastewater into rivers. That would have cost up to £600 billion and more than doubled bills, many of them for people on fixed incomes. It is important that we balance a resolute and ambitious plan with affordability for those who have to pay.

Water Companies: Environmental Pollution

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I refer the noble Lord to my earlier Answer: the independent Sentencing Council has agreed to review guidelines to ensure that the sanctions we apply to water companies are appropriate.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister said just now that the fines are not downloaded on to the customer, but in fact that is what happens because companies pay the fines and do not invest in infrastructure. Having visited Cambridge at the weekend, I saw that it is not only sewage discharges but water abstraction, yet the Government had the choice to vote for the amendment moved by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, on the Environment Bill and did not. They gave up any responsibility, which I think is appalling. Does the Minister agree?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Strangely, no. The investment that water companies put into our water infrastructure is agreed with Ofwat. They cannot go away from that in their five-year plan. If the noble Baroness can give me evidence of where they have broken the requirements of the independent regulator, I will be very happy to take it up.

Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 8th July 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

Relevant documents: 4th and 7th Reports from the Delegated Powers Committee

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am not going to lie to the House, nor am I going to be modest: this is an absolutely brilliant Bill, and I think the Government would be very wise to accept it in its entirety exactly as it is.

I have worked to reduce air pollution for more than 20 years. I was on the London Assembly for 16 years, during which I time I pressed both mayors, Ken Livingstone for eight years and the current Prime Minister for a further eight years. Ken Livingstone took action with the introduction of the low emission zone. I also pressed Boris Johnson for action, and he acted with pot plants lining busy roads and attempts to spray the roads near monitoring stations with a type of glue that would bind the pollution to the road surface so it would not be measured. To be fair, he came up with the idea of the ultra-low emission zone, and it was so brilliant an idea that he left the next mayor to do it. I do not want to kick a man when he is down, but basically he has behaved no differently from most others on this issue.

I have witnessed politicians of all parties fail to deal with this public health emergency when in government. Year after year for the past two decades, I have seen the same press statement from Defra playing down the problem and stating that it is just about solved. Year after year, I have witnessed the Government hiding information about bad air days and air pollution episodes because it might scare the public into demanding action. The result has been an invisible killer being allowed to take victims while the Government sit by and Ministers lose three consecutive court cases over their failure to have a decent plan.

Ella Roberta Adoo Kissi-Debrah was one of those victims. She was nine years old and regularly travelled along the polluted South Circular Road. This Bill is named in her honour after her mother’s amazing fight to get air pollution put as a medical cause of death on Ella’s death certificate. Her mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, is here with us today listening to our debate. Ella was the first person in this country to have that recognised, and the fact that it took a hard-working team of lawyers and an incredibly brave mother to show that it was the case speaks volumes about the official silence regarding the impacts of air pollution.

The most Ella’s mother Rosamund might have heard about air pollution from the Government was the one official warning a year, around spring time. No matter how many times air pollution went over the official limits, the Government issued just one press statement a year. In fact, they even stopped doing that after the 2011 press release coincided with a major air pollution event and made it on to the pages of all the national newspapers. It would be many years before the new London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, started putting pollution alerts on bus stops and other TfL outlets. So it was left to Rosamund’s team to dig up the information and prove that air pollution caused and worsened Ella’s asthma and was a medical cause of her tragic death.

My view is that warning people about air pollution and acting to keep everyone, particularly the vulnerable, safe is what Governments should be doing. The health of the people should be their primary aim. They are not, and no Government since the 1950s have taken it seriously. That is why this legislation to make clean air a human right is so essential. This Bill would enshrine the human right to clean air precisely and explicitly in UK law. It would also require the Secretary of State to assess air pollution in England and Wales and to publish and report detailed information about it, including warnings when needed. If noble Lords are in any doubt about the seriousness of the issues I am raising, please spend a few minutes talking to Rosamund, who is prepared to meet any and all noble Lords. She will explain exactly what happened to her daughter and why it is so important that this Bill passes.

Importantly, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on 8 October 2021 that acknowledged the importance of a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as critical to the enjoyment of all human rights. The UK Government voted in favour of that resolution, as I hope they will again when it comes before the UN General Assembly later this month for adoption globally.

In order to ensure independent scrutiny and continuous improvement, this Bill establishes a citizens’ commission for clean air, which would review annually the Secretary of State’s compliance with this Bill during the previous calendar year and advise the Secretary of State if any methods should be improved from the start of the subsequent year.

Importantly, the Bill deals with indoor pollution in new developments, the Underground and buildings regularly accessed by members of the public, including children. Crucially, it updates the Government’s targets by basing them on the best international advice, including the World Health Organization’s latest air quality guidelines. It would also push the Government and public authorities to act on the Climate Change Committee’s advice. Another big innovation in my Bill is that it follows a “one air” approach that encompasses the health and environmental impacts of air pollutants and greenhouse gases.

I can understand the Government’s reluctance to spend money or impose regulations, but the costs of dealing with this public health emergency are very similar to the costs of solving the climate crisis, because it is the same crisis and both are heading towards a zero-emission solution. In fact, my Bill offers the quickest, cheapest and most effective way to transformative action to address the UK’s largest environmental health risk. Overnight, public authorities would simply have to consider air pollution, including greenhouse gases, in every decision, in the way that equalities are currently considered. Some public authorities are beginning to do something similar when they apply a climate lens when taking decisions, but it will not be enough without this Bill.

I have seen the medical evidence accumulate regarding the benefits to our health and the NHS finances of taking action on air pollution: the link with long-term conditions such as heart conditions, lung damage, organ failure and Alzheimer’s. The more the scientists look, the more dangers they find from polluted air. These cost the NHS money and bring tragedy to families. If the Government take action on emissions, not only do they save lives but we help save the planet, which is why this green agenda makes so much sense.

The Environment Agency and Climate Change Committee would be required to review the pollutants and limits annually and advise the Secretary of State if they need tightening. The standards may be only tightened, not loosened. This legislation has a vision of a cleaner future and a modern approach to how we achieve that. It would support continuous improvement on an annual basis.

The Bill requires new regulations to enable the sale of appliances generating wholly renewable energy and enables energy efficiency improvements that reduce energy use and emissions of greenhouse gases. Part of this approach is to restrict the sale of combustion appliances that emit pollutants to the air, including wood-burning stoves. If the Bill becomes law, I will happily get rid of my partner’s wood-burning stove.

In passing, I thank the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for scrutinising my Bill and confirm that I am willing to propose amendments to the Bill to address its three recommendations. In essence, these amendments would align parts of the Bill relating to the tightening of future standards more closely to mechanisms in the Climate Change Act 2008 that require the Secretary of State to comply or explain to Parliament.

A lot of the responsibility for current clean air action falls to mayors and public authorities, yet they do not have the powers and resources to match that responsibility. The Bill seeks to change that by giving duties and matching powers and resources to national and local authorities, including metro mayors, to achieve clean air within five years, with annual reviews thereafter.

Finally, my Bill also has teeth. Where the Secretary of State or others have not achieved clean air by this deadline, nor otherwise complied with their duties under the Bill, the citizens’ commission for clean air may issue a notice requiring them to comply with their duty, take specific steps to achieve compliance and provide written information on the steps taken, or proposed to be taken, for the purpose of complying with their duty. This citizens’ commission for clean air is the new organisation set up to support people such as Rosamund by helping them to get justice via the courts.

The citizens’ commission for clean air may apply to the court for an order requiring a Minister to comply. The Bill would also allow it to institute or intervene in legal proceedings if relevant to the duty to achieve clean air. My Bill therefore proposes a practical and proportionate approach to enforcement. All this is underpinned by fundamental environmental principles that must be followed.

I give your Lordships a Bill that is detailed and comprehensive but, above all, necessary. If we could pass this Bill, Ella’s law, before the 70th anniversary of the great smog in December this year and the 10th anniversary of Ella’s death, on 15 February 2023, I think the country would thank us. It is too late to save Ella, but I hope this Bill will honour her memory.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I have taken a lot of notes from today’s debate, and it is always difficult to reply to everybody, but I will do my best to do so outside the Chamber. I see a lot of meetings in my future—including with the Minister, I hope.

I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate, which I thought was incredibly positive; many mentioned things that I did not think about mentioning. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for example, said that he had no doubt that Rosamund Kissi-Debrah was going to get the law changed and I think he is absolutely right. It seems like an awful lot of Members here in your Lordships’ House will help her to do just that.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for talking about the impact on children and, of course, her personal story. It always makes everything very relevant when one hears a personal story. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, also told us a personal story about her daughter and twins, and she raised the danger of biomass and of labelling other fuels environmentally friendly when, in fact, they are not. The noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, talked about targets not being specific and told her personal story about her mother—I understand that that is clearly a concern.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, talked about hidden emissions, and he gave us his legal wisdom on this. My own paternal grandfather was killed in a coal mine in the 1913 mining disaster in Senghenydd, so I have a history of understanding about coal mining. The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, talked about the mental health impact, which I had omitted to mention so I thank her very much for that—it was quite unpleasant to hear. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, wants me to make this Bill even bigger and I thank him for that. I really thought I was being ambitious here, but he has inspired me to be perhaps more ambitious in the future. I also liked his comment about the polluter pays, which is a principle for which I have advocated for a very long time.

The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, talked about intangible and invisible pollutants and that is a part of the problem: the smog was so visible and so unpleasant that people felt quite justified in bringing in a Bill, whereas at the moment all these pollutants are difficult to see, so it is harder to push the whole concept. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, talked about my being witty and gracious—you know, I love compliments, though I do not think of myself as gracious. I am glad he welcomes the principles and I would be very happy to meet with him—in fact, I would be happy to meet any noble Lord who wants to comment further—but I have accepted the points made by the Delegated Powers Committee that were part of what he talked about. Also, he said that the Bill is limited to England and Wales; that is out of courtesy to the other countries. Obviously, I would like to make it global but that is beyond the powers of this Parliament. My feeling is that Brexit allows us to do our own thing, so it is absolutely perfect to do it for England and Wales.

The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, seemed to suggest quite a few more amendments—if we can avoid those, I would be grateful. There are always other opportunities with the Bill. But her idea to stop burning things is just so simple—that is exactly what we have to do. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, talked about unfinished business and Labour’s own clean air Act. I am a proud Green and have been for decades so it is very hard for me to share credit, but here I want to say that I have been incredibly touched by the Labour Party’s support for this Bill. I will freely give up all my credit if Labour would like to take my Bill and enact it. The same goes for the Lib Dems, I would be happy to support any way I can get these issues through.

The Minister raised a lot of issues and said things such as, “The Government are on the case”, “The Government have these targets” and “We are doing our best”, but this Bill will improve things for people and the planet. It will improve what the Government are doing, and I give it to them freely; it is oven-ready in the sense that I understand it and not, perhaps, as the Government understand it. It is actually ready to go. It will be, I think, something that the Government could be proud of.

The Office for Environmental Protection is such a good idea, but it is so weak—we can do better than that. The Minister mentioned all these monitoring sites and I do not know whether he has ever visited any of them, but the one at Edgeware Road has its intake pipe eight feet high. That means it cannot take in all the pollution at exhaust pipe level, so perhaps he could fix that.

In closing, this Bill is not just down to me; Rosamund and I are the tip of the volcano. Hundreds and thousands of people are supporting this Bill and have supported writing it, so I want to thank the team. I also thank Sadiq Khan, who has been fantastic about supporting this when he really did not have to. I would like to keep all the credit but I cannot. I thank the Government very much for allowing this debate to go forward; I hope they will accept the Bill.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Sewage Disposal in Rivers and Coastal Waters

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it has been a good debate, with some divergent views. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Oates, and apparently the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, for bringing this here. I disagree with the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who thinks that this is the wrong time to have this debate. We should have this debate every single week, all the time that we are sitting, until the Government actually respond to the fact that we have given a devastating analysis of what is happening. They have to respond to this. They should do what we say—that is what I think. Perhaps the next Government will understand a little better the expertise that your Lordships’ House brings to debates like this. However, I liked the noble Earl’s idea about sewage being an asset. I genuinely had not thought of that before, but other countries use sewage—sometimes raw sewage—as an asset. Perhaps we should think along those lines too.

What irritates me is that we have a Victorian sewage system but do not have a Victorian road system, though both were developed at a similar time. That is because the road system is updated every year: when a new development is built, a new road network is built to go with it. However, there is no such event for the sewage system when we have new developments. There has been continuous investment in roads, but there has been very spasmodic investment in sewage treatment. Obviously, road and rail tend to grow with population, but not as much as they would if we had Green voices in government—I stress that to the other political parties here.

It is now households that are expected to pay for our sewage system, and I do not see how that is workable. I cannot remember which noble Lord it was, but somebody talked about greed, and that is at the root of the problem we have. I disagree completely that privatisation is ever a good thing; I just cannot see it. Again and again, we see that rapacious companies and shareholders damage the companies they are running, so why on earth would we privatise any more? They make big profits and do not plough them back, which is why we have the problems we do at the moment. So I am definitely in the society of admirers of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka. I loved his solutions, and I hope that they have gone properly into Hansard so that the Government can take them up at the next opportunity, whenever that is. Perhaps it will be after the next election.

There are two overall solutions to this: either we take the water companies back into public ownership, or the Government use some of these ideas—for example, about not paying out shareholders until investment plans have delivered the changes that are needed. As I am sure everybody in your Lordships’ House does, I want clean rivers and clear water flowing and encouraging the fragile and very precious ecology of all our chalk streams. I want water that is healthy enough for children, adults, local wildlife and even dogs to be able to paddle or swim in. I want to be able to swim in the Thames without getting gastroenteritis, which is what happened to me last time. I do not think that these are big expectations. We think of clean water as a basic human right, just as clean air ought to be. If our water system is in a bad state, the rest of the environment is in a bad state as well.

I want to focus on one aspect of the potential side-effects on human health. The noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, mentioned this, and I think somebody else did as well. Apart from the obvious health threats from raw sewage in our waterways, it also encourages the spread of antibiotic-resistant organisms and antibiotic pollution, which is incredibly serious. When they release this sewage, the water companies are not only increasing the amount of resistant bacteria in our environment but guaranteeing that they will stay there, because the untreated sewage is laden with antibiotics that allow bacteria to survive.

We need clean water as a human right, just as we need clean air. I have wanted this, along with many others, for the last 30 years, and I am shocked that the Environment Agency has only just realised what a state our rivers are in. I do not understand where it suddenly got this idea from. But if you think about the amount of public outcry there has been about the raw sewage dumped all over our landscapes, you might begin to understand that perhaps the Environment Agency is waking up. I would argue that the monitoring system has completely failed to deliver clean water and clean air because the Environment Agency is not fit for purpose, and neither is Defra. They all need to be scrapped and replaced with something more robust—something that actually holds these organisations and companies to account.

As for Ofwat, it has prioritised short-term consumer interests while losing sight of the longer-term and much bigger picture. I am glad that Ofwat and the Minister have new enforcement powers. The Ministers’ power of direction makes it their personal responsibility for setting the pace of change, and any delays are really down to the Government not driving things forward. Your Lordships’ House has done our best here. We can be very proud of pushing this agenda—for example, the amendments from the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, which were huge fun to be associated with. Even when he watered them down, I was still very happy to give my support to them.

Without systematic change and rigorous monitoring, the investment programme will not deliver change. It will continue to be a screen behind which senior managers get larger bonuses, as ever, for delivering larger profits. This is a really bad system. Is the Minister happy with water companies raising water bills, or borrowing large amounts of money that will be loaded on to future water bills, while shareholders get their usual dividend payments? Essentially, is he happy that these organisations keep paying out when they are not actually spending money on investing in the infrastructure? Do the Government think it is fair that ordinary people pay extra while the shareholders get their usual cut of the profits? I just do not understand how this makes economic sense. Will the Government consider delivering a moratorium on shareholder payments until long-term investment is delivered? This has been a devastating analysis. I do not understand how anybody could listen to this debate and not feel that we have got things drastically wrong.

Household Waste Recycling

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, there is never a silver bullet; I do not understand why this Government do not understand that. You need a range of options. The Minister said that recycling has plateaued. That is not true: the Government’s statistics from May suggest that it has in fact declined. Why not talk about incineration? As incineration increases, recycling declines, so will the Government bring in a moratorium on new incineration plants?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that rates dropped by about 1.5% over the pandemic, as I think I said. I am not sure whether there are any incinerators planned at the moment but I will take her point away because I agree with it.

Water Companies: Sewage Discharge Monitoring

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I think that was a very good choice of geography. The noble Lord will accept that this is an absolute priority for this Government. People who live in that part of the world, in places such as Tiverton and Honiton, are right to want a Government who will clean this up, but who have a plan to do it without raising their bills to unaffordable levels. That Government are this one.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Labour!

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

We have better policies than Labour, do not worry.

I am really sorry to hear that these volume monitors are so expensive, but let us remember that the water companies are not short of a penny or two. For example, Liv Garfield, the CEO of Severn Trent, has just been paid £4 million a year; Anglian Water has just today paid shareholders a £92 million dividend; and of course £72 billion was paid out in dividends by water companies, while also raising bills by 31% and cutting investment in infrastructure by, in some cases, almost 40%. These are all facts and figures from Feargal Sharkey, and I thank him very much. Can the Minister tell me how much these volume monitors cost?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I cannot tell the noble Baroness precisely. I can tell her that, 11 years ago, the then Water Minister was quite stunned to discover that we knew of only 10% of sewage outflows into rivers. He required all water companies to identify them and, by the end of next year, we will have identified 100% of them, with real-time monitors, so that the public will know. I know who that Minister was, because it was me.

Farmers

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I have been absolutely determined to facilitate much more access to the countryside on my brief watch in this post, but the truth is that we could spend ELMS 20 times over on different schemes. We have a crisis of species decline and are one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. We therefore have to use ELMS to do that. There are many other things that we could be and are doing, but I want us to focus on how people want to access the country. Some people do want to walk right round the coast of England but some just want to walk out of their town on a circular route. I want to ensure that we are working with farmers and landowners to deliver for those sorts of people as well.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned incentivising farmers. I would like to know how he thinks that the Government are incentivising farmers when they do environmentally unfriendly trade deals with places such as Australia, which come in and undercut our farmers’ produce on animal welfare and environmental value?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We have a firm commitment that, in all trade deals, we will not compromise on environmental and animal welfare standards. We also have to recognise that, if you are going to bring food right across from the other side of the world, there is a carbon price to pay for that. We want to make sure we are favouring local food, produced sustainably by British farmers, and that is what we are working to achieve.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 7th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on bringing the Bill to this stage. My concerns about it have not changed, but we are where we are. I want to lend my support to and associate myself in particular with Amendment 1. In doing so, I repeat that I am a fellow of the British Veterinary Association and share some of the concerns outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Trees, regarding its practice.

I seek reassurance from my noble friend as to the response of the devolved Parliaments to the amendments. Have the Government had the chance to square the amendments with them? I further seek reassurance that in the operation of the Bill the Government, particularly my noble friend’s department, will be mindful of the role that farmers and especially livestock producers play in rearing our farm animals, and perhaps recognise that they are best placed to respect animal welfare and are masters in their own right of animal husbandry.

I hope that, in light of the short debate we had elsewhere in Questions this week, the Government will be mindful of the fact that there is still a severe shortage of seasonal workers which is impacting on abattoirs and the slaughter of animals. I hope that there will not be any undue concern over potential animal welfare consequences of that. I realise that it is not entirely within the scope of the Bill, but I wish to draw it to my noble friend’s attention. I congratulate him on accepting the two amendments before us today.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I had thought that the Government had completely forgotten this Bill, because it has been so long threading its way through both Houses. Anyway, I am glad that it is happening. It is not the Bill that I would like to have seen passed, but I guess that we have to accept it, since it is better than nothing—although that is not exactly glowing praise. I hope that we can see some effectiveness coming from the Bill and real action, so I say well done for bringing it back and getting us to this point.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I want first to thank my noble friend the Minister, who has put an inordinate amount of effort into discussing concerns about this Bill with those of us who have them. I congratulate him not only on becoming a grandfather but on landing this Bill, as he does today.

However, it remains a very bad Bill and I think it is worth repeating why. It is not because it entails a huge administrative reorganisation; in this House, we take huge administrative reorganisations in our stride. We have been reorganising the National Health Service over the past few weeks, which is possibly the largest organisation in the world, certainly in Europe. The Government’s defence of the measure is essentially that it is administratively very minor: it just sets up a committee; it is an advisory committee, and Ministers will make final decisions—“There is nothing to see here; move on”. But the important part of the Bill is not its administrative effects but the fact that it is a declaratory Bill. It declares something in the law of the United Kingdom for the first time to be true—that is, that animals, vertebrates and certain non-vertebrates, are sentient. I know that this appeared previously in a treaty that we were party to, but it moves it on a considerable step to incorporate it into domestic law in this way.

It is worth asking why that declaration matters. It matters because it is very much part of the agenda of the animal rights movement to achieve agreement on three things. The first is that animals are sentient; the second is that sentience is the sole basis for judging moral conduct; and the third, as a consequence of that, is that humans and animals are to be treated on the same basis in moral terms. That is a complete upturning of our established view of moral conduct; it is a completely new anthropology. This Bill is therefore profoundly anti-human. It opens the door to a moral calculus in which people can ask the question: how much chimpanzee suffering is equivalent to a human baby suffering? That is why it remains a very bad Bill. It is a Bill that we will come to regret.