Food Security: Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We want the entire spectrum of British agriculture to benefit from the changes. We recognise that this is a difficult time for farming; it would be even if we were not going through the changes we are with commodity price spikes and the like. We are working closely with them and the food sector to make sure that we are supporting our British farmers and that they continue to produce food at the highest welfare and environmental standards now and in the future.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

Last year’s report from the Committee on Climate Change said:

“Defra still lacks a strategy to ensure the agricultural sector remains productive as the climate changes.”


It went on to say that the focus of the ELMS reforms was on flood risk rather than the broader climate impact. Does the Minister feel that those points have been fully addressed? If so, can he write to noble Lords and put a letter in the Library giving details of that? In particular, can he explain how the new strands of the ELMS programme are now addressing those broader climate change obligations?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I absolutely can commit to a letter that brings noble Lords up to date with our reforms. It is much more than just flood protection. It is about producing sustainable food. It is about soil systems. It is about making sure that farmers are incentivised to protect the environment and reverse the catastrophic decline in species. We are living through one of the riskiest times in terms of biodiversity loss. We want to reverse that but we are trying to do it in a way that supports farming systems. I am very happy to keep noble Lords informed of our progress.

Ukraine War: UK Food Security

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Supporting our friends through liberalising trade is an important way in which we can help a country such as Ukraine. It is just part of a wide range of support that we are giving over and above our defence support; we will continue to do so.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I echo the Minister’s tribute to Lord Plumb, who was respected all around the Chamber. However, does the Minister agree that it is shocking that around half a million people in the UK are now forced to use food banks because of soaring food prices? He talked about the Government putting money into this, but what are the Government actually doing to help hard-pressed families who have to make a choice between feeding themselves and heating their home? Where is the action on that? Families are facing this dilemma every day.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not have time to go through the long list of the many measures we are taking to support families at this time. For example, we are providing £35 million to support schools in disadvantaged areas to provide breakfast, and Healthy Start food vouchers are increasing from £3.10 to £4.25. The reasons why people have to access food banks are many and varied. The issue requires a cross-government approach, looking at all sectors of expenditure; we are working across government to do that.

Game Birds (Cage Breeding) Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Randall, for tabling this Bill and for his comprehensive introduction of its purposes. He is right to pursue the issue. It is a reminder that, although we have good animal welfare standards in the UK, our work is never done and there will always be categories of animals and birds that get left behind when we draw up legislation.

This seems to be the case when it comes to breeding pheasants and partridges. It seems an anomaly that they can be kept in battery cages when their use for hens laying eggs for human consumption has been banned in the UK, along with the rest of the EU, since 2012. It seems that game birds have a particularly dismal life on two counts. They are condemned to live in unsuitable conditions and produce offspring for the sole purpose of being shot for “sport”. I am grateful to the League Against Cruel Sports and Animal Aid for providing distressing accounts of the continuing suffering still being experienced by game birds in battery cages. Some of their evidence was reflected in the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Randall, who illustrated well the scale of the problem and the disgrace of some of the provision that still exists.

As the noble Lord acknowledged, we understand that the Government are looking to issue a call for evidence later this year to examine the case for further reforms to the welfare provisions for game birds; as he said, this is the minimum we should expect. It would be helpful if the Minister could offer further details of the scope and timescale for this review because, with the best will in the world, this commitment seems rather vague. Sadly, this has been a mark of this Government’s approach to animal welfare legislation—a policy of stop/go, and the more recent abandonment of the legislation on banning trophy hunting and the importing of fur and foie gras, show that they succumb all too easily to pressure from the powerful lobby groups among their membership. To be clear, these are all issues that a Labour Government intend to tackle when we come to office.

Of course, the provision for game birds should have been covered by the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which makes it an offence to cause unnecessary suffering to animals. However, if neither that legislation nor the statutory code of practice provides sufficient guarantees that game birds will be housed in appropriate accommodation, clearly, more action is necessary. As the league points out, it is difficult to imagine how the current arrangements conform to the five freedoms that are the basis of UK animal welfare law.

The current code of practice sets out explicit conditions to provide the basic health and welfare that we would all expect to be provided, so there has obviously been a failure of oversight and enforcement if breaches of the code continue to take place. I support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in asking for more information on the statistics on the numbers of inspections that have taken place and enforcement actions that have been followed up.

As the years go by, our expectations of animal welfare standards rightly continue to rise. We have still not banned enriched cages for laying hens, which are glorified battery cages. What consideration is being given to such a ban? Does the Minister agree that this should apply to pheasants and partridges too?

Finally, the British people now expect their laying hens and chickens to have a decent quality of life; this means the ability to roam about, as free-range chickens are enabled to do. We all understand why the current threat of avian flu has required hens to be kept indoors, with the loss of eggs described as free range in the supermarkets. However, now that spring is coming and the birds will be increasingly anxious to get outside, can the Minister update us on when the ban on outdoor access is likely to be lifted?

Sadly, parliamentary time means that this Bill is unlikely to jump through all the hoops before the end of the Session. However, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Randall, will work with us to pursue these issues in the coming Session, and I hope the Minister will be able to commit to giving it government support if he does so. I look forward to his response.

Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I had to send a note via the doorkeeper to wake up the noble Lord.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in my involvement at Rothamsted, as set out in the register.

I thank the Minister for his introduction and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for raising considerable concerns about the impact this SI might have on the environment. We know that these concerns have resonance among the public at large, and it is right that they are taken seriously and seen to be addressed. I am also grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its forensic dissection of the proposals. Again, it is raising serious concerns that must be addressed.

I accept that this SI, in its current form, makes only minor changes to the regulation of GM research, which occurs only in highly regulated and respected research establishments. It is not about releasing GM food into the food chain. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the history of GM development, which was not properly regulated in the past and created a public backlash we are still living with today. The public rightly want to be assured, on both public health and environmental grounds, that the existence of artificially modified organisms in the land and air, and ultimately in their food, is safe. If we are to persuade them that this is the case, we need to proceed with the best independent scientific evidence and the utmost transparency. These principles need to be applied both to determining the fate of this SI and to the more radical proposals that we understand this Government are now developing.

We recognise the potential advantages that scientific progress can make to the agritech sector. Many of these were flagged up in our consideration of the Agriculture Act and the Environment Act. Our knowledge of the importance of biodiversity and the adverse impact of intensive farming comes from some of the latest scientific research. We now understand the huge advantages of eco-friendly farming, harnessing the power of nature to farm in a productive and sustainable way. Again, we learn a lot of that from the scientific community. Using fewer artificial fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides can rebuild the health of our land for the long term. This goes hand in hand with the development of crops that can provide natural resistance to disease and destruction. Science and innovation will continue to have a key role to play in our food systems of the future.

However, one thing that has come to light in considering this SI is that scientists themselves are not all agreed on the approach being taken by the Government. I am grateful to my shadow Defra colleague in the Commons, Daniel Zeichner, for painstakingly reading through all the submissions and highlighting some of the discrepancies among scientists in the Commons debate on this SI. As has been said, this SI attempts to delineate between genetically modified organisms whose modifications could have occurred naturally and GMOs where an external unrelated gene has been introduced. The Government have chosen to define these naturally modified plants as “qualifying higher plants” but this definition has proved contentious among scientists. As Daniel Zeichner said:

“The Roslin Institute says: ‘it is exceptionally challenging to define which changes to the genome could have been produced by “traditional” breeding.’ The Royal Society says: ‘this question is problematic as there is a difference between what could be produced by traditional breeding in theory and in practice’. The Royal Society of Biology says: ‘No clear criteria can be described that would determine whether an organism produced by genome editing or other genetic technologies could have been produced by traditional breeding. This means no clarity can be achieved using this principle, and it is not appropriate as the basis of regulation.’”—[Official Report, Commons, Delegated Legislation Committee, 2/3/22; col. 7.]


These are hugely worrying critiques if the Government are planning to base the whole of the future reforms of GMO on this distinction.

Of course, the Government have quoted the advice of ACRE, the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment, in support of their proposal. However, that brings me on to the second concern, about transparency; this point was made by other noble Lords. It turns out that six of the seven scientists on the board of ACRE have links to commercial companies, and three of them quote Syngenta as an interest. So, although I am sure that these scientists are experts in their field, it does not appear that they have the independence to make a purely scientific judgment on this issue. This is precisely the sort of concern that will fuel public anxiety and objection if it becomes known. Can the Minister provide some assurance that the definition of “qualifying higher plants” will be revisited, given the existing doubts about whether that is the right phraseology to go forward? Can he assure the House that the propriety of ACRE to rule on these issue can be, and will be, reassessed?

I turn to the submission from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which raised a number of critical concerns about the proposals set out in this SI. It reiterated the concerns about the definition of a “qualifying higher plant”, to which I just referred. In response, the Government advised that they are in the process of developing guidance, which will be available shortly. When are we likely to see that guidance? The committee also raised concerns about the researchers creating GMOs having to self-declare whether their product is in this category, and about the fact that the new notification measures do not give details of the location or scale of the research; again, this issue was raised by other noble Lords. It points out that this is a major concern to the organic growers who want reassurance that their products will not be contaminated, putting their organic status at risk. I would be grateful if the Minister could address these concerns in his response.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee also raised concerns about the devolution aspects of these proposals, given that they are England-only, and the Welsh and Scottish Governments have no intention of following suit; again, noble Lords raised this issue. Although this particular SI is focused only on research, does the Minister agree that it would any future commercialisation of products extremely difficult unless there was alignment in the internal market and with the outcome of the review of the EU’s GMO regulations that is currently taking place? It is interesting that even the majority of businesses that responded to the consultation opposed the proposal, so there clearly is no demand for GMO products to enter the food chain on the current basis. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked, how will that work if it is England-only, and how will those products potentially be marketed across borders? Businesses are obviously concerned about that as well.

Finally, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee regretted that we have no further information about the Government’s wider plan for reform. We share that concern, and I hope that the Minister is able to provide more information today.

We are not going to oppose this SI today, given the relatively small changes to research controls which it introduces. However, we will not be supporting the noble Baroness’s fatal Motion, as it is not our practice to do so, except in exceptional circumstances. None the less, I hope that the Minister is hearing the message that any future proposals will need to be underpinned by much more rigorous regulation. We need to have much greater transparency. It will need to be overseen by a truly independent and trusted scientific committee if it is to have any hope of gaining the public support—and the support of this side of the House—which it will need going forward. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

National Farmers’ Union

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We as a sovereign nation are negotiating trade deals with other countries. We recognise that some concerns have been expressed around the impact of new trade deals on our farming and food sectors. I reassure the House that our recent agreements with Australia and New Zealand, and, indeed, those with any future partner, will not compromise our high standards. All products imported into the UK will have to, as now, comply with our import requirements.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, already over 40,000 healthy pigs have been culled and the meat thrown away. A further 200,000 pigs are stranded on farms awaiting slaughter with no one available to slaughter them. Does the Minister agree with Minette that the disaster in the pig industry

“should have, and could have, been avoided”,

and that the situation with pig farmers truly is an utter disgrace?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The situation for pig farmers affected by this is serious. That is why we continue to work very closely with the industry. There was a perfect storm of a loss of exports to the Chinese market, disruption to CO₂ supplies and a temporary shortage of labour in the processing sector. We have been working hard on that with the private storage aid, the slaughter incentive payment and a package of measures to address these unique circumstances. On 10 February, my colleague Victoria Prentis chaired a pig summit and she is doing another one on 3 March. We are working really hard to resolve the problems in this sector.

Climate Change

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

New tree planting is absolutely fundamental to our new ELMS and environmental policies. We have very bold targets for tree planting. However, my noble friend is absolutely right: they need to be in the right place. There is incredibly powerful evidence to show that a tree’s ability to move water underground from the surface can enormously contribute to flood mitigation. It is very much part of our policy.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, over the last fortnight vast swathes of the UK were battered by three ferocious storms in seven days, leading to the heartbreak of many thousands of properties being flooded, some of them for a second or third time. We are told by the Met Office that these extreme weather events will continue and get worse. The Government recognise that flooding is a key risk in their response to the CCC report, but what urgent action is being taken to follow that up and to accelerate building the defences that we will need not only now but for the future to withstand those threats? Can he give an assurance that this action is being accelerated?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I can absolutely do that. We have doubled our investment in flood defences to a record £5.2 billion. with some 2,000 new defence schemes over the next six years. This programme will better protect 336,000 properties, including homes and non-residential properties such as schools, hospitals and transport links. But, as I just said to my noble friend Lady McIntosh, concrete and steel are not the sum total of this; it is also about planting trees and using nature to slow water. That is at the fundamental heart of our new agricultural policy.

National Food Strategy

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

It is this side. The national food strategy recognises that farmers need greater help to transition to more sustainable land use. Does the Minister understand the frustration of Minette Batters, who said at the NFU conference this week that rather than having a clear plan and vision for sustainable and productive farming, the Government are “repeatedly running” into short-term crises in the sector which they could have foreseen and pre-empted if there had been a proper food strategy backed up by the proper resources?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We are putting enormous resources into supporting farmers, incentivising them in a different but less prescriptive way than under the common agricultural policy. We are supporting an industry-wide attempt to ensure that we are eating better, healthier, more sustainable food. There will always be problems, but we have a remarkably resilient food supply system in this country which has ridden out some very difficult bumps in the road recently. We are not complacent. We are putting enormous resources, human and financial, into ensuring that we have a sustainable, long-term, well thought-through food system in this country.

Microchipping of Dogs (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction and for his time, and that of his officials, in providing a briefing for this statutory instrument. The microchipping of dogs, which was introduced in 2015, has made a tremendous difference to the owners of the dogs and to the dogs themselves. The safety and traceability of dogs are made easier by this process. Dogs are often lost or stolen but are reunited with their owners through the information stored on the microchip, and reducing the number of stray dogs is to be welcomed.

The sunset clause on this regulation terminates on 24 February this year. I note that the Government conducted a consultation on extending this clause, the results of which were due to be published in December 2021. Presumably this has happened. Given the instrument expires in February, the consultation was somewhat late taking place.

A second targeted consultation, to 36 stakeholders, took place in November 2021. Just over half responded. Given the level of support from those responding, I am surprised that the Government have not removed the sunset clause altogether, instead of extending it by two years. However, I understand the need to take this opportunity to rectify the anomalies in data collection and to include the compulsory microchipping of cats in future microchipping legislation. Can the Minister say what the database issues are and whether they will all be addressed in the new regulations?

Nottingham University undertook a lengthy report on the post-implementation review of the 2015 legislation, but unfortunately, probably due to my own incompetence, I could find no reference to this when I searched on the internet. Can the Minister say whether this report has been published and, if not, whether it is likely to be? Is this likely to be before the next consultation, which, according to the Explanatory Memorandum, is likely to cover areas for improvement in the existing regulations?

Currently, when you take your dog along to the vet for their routine health check or vaccinations, your vet will routinely scan the dog for their microchip. However, there is no enforced regulation on veterinary staff to report to the authorities dogs that have not been microchipped. Is this one of the anomalies which the revised legislation will include in future?

There was no updated impact assessment in the EM for this SI. As the 2015 impact assessment was still extant, can the Minister confirm that, when this new regulation has been updated to include the compulsory microchipping of cats and provisions on other database issues, an updated impact assessment will be issued to cover all aspects of the new regulations? Can he confirm that there will also be no sunset clause?

My husband and I took on a rescue dog in the spring of last year. The dog had not been maltreated, but its owner was suffering from dementia and could no longer look after it. Through the microchip, we were able to estimate roughly how old the dog was and to see that it had been vaccinated and well cared for previously. I am sure that many others who have done the same are grateful for the information provided on the microchip, but it is important that there is adequate enforcement.

Pet theft is an invidious crime and extremely upsetting to families with children and the elderly, whose only companion may be a dog or a cat. Therefore, it is important that microchipping of dogs should continue without interruption, and I would like the Minister’s reassurance that the new regulation will be laid well before the nine-year sunset clause runs out in 2024.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction and for the helpful briefing he organised. On the face of it, this seems a straightforward proposal, and we certainly do not want to see the sunset clause come into force on 24 February as a result of our inaction, so we clearly support this regulation.

The question arises as to why a sunset clause was added in the first place. I have been covering this department for so long that I probably contributed to the original decision back in 2015, although I do not remember the arguments put forward at that time. But we are where we are. Of course, as the Minister said, the first report on the implementation of microchipping was due to be held within five years. I appreciate his recognition that there has been a delay, which has caused this SI to be necessary, and his apology.

I am grateful to the departmental official Craig Lee for sending me a copy of the review into the legislation. I got round to requesting it slightly before the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, had a chance to do so. It was very interesting reading, as was the report from Nottingham University that underpinned it. I was pleased to see that microchipping had achieved the desired outcomes of improving animal welfare through the increased traceability of owners and reducing the number of stray dogs.

However, the review also identifies some challenging issues, which have been echoed by noble Lords today. There is, for example—I do not know whether anybody would have foreseen this—the new plethora of microchip database companies that have sprung up. As we have heard, this has made ownership tracing more complex. Like other noble Lords, I think it would be helpful if the Minister could shed a little light on how the Government intend to deal with this. By any stretch of the imagination, having 17 databases seems impractical when trying to monitor and keep up with the ownership of individual animals.

Did we anticipate that this would happen, and is the Minister satisfied that we have the right standards for these databases and are scrutinising them before they are set up, or will that come from any new regulations? Are there any constraints on how much somebody can charge for using a database? Is that why we suddenly have so many—because they are easy money, if I can put it that way, without having to do a great deal? Noble Lords have made a case today that on the face of it seems quite sensible: that we should have a single portal of access, or indeed one database, which could be agreed through some sort of nomination process. It would certainly make people’s lives easier when trying to trace the owners of dogs, or to check the dogs’ history.

Wet Wipes: Disposal

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Like every Member of this House, I was repulsed by the fatberg found under the streets of London a few months ago, which was largely created out of wet wipes. The Marine Conservation Society says that wet wipes were the third most common type of litter found on beaches in Great Britain in 2020 and that 93% of the material that causes sewer blockages comes from wet wipes, so there is an urgency in dealing with this issue. We really want to get rid of the plastic that exists within wet wipes and to make sure that parent groups’ fears are alleviated, but we also do not want to cause other environmental problems by replacing plastic with other materials that would then be damaging to the environment in how they were harvested. There are complications that we need to deal with, but I share the noble Duke’s concerns.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has just said that this matter is urgent but he has also asked us to be patient. We know that, in addition to what the noble Duke has said about blockages in sewers piling up on our riverbanks and foreshores, it is costing water companies about £100 million a year to clean up these blockages and the pollution, and those costs are being passed on to the consumer. It is not a question of being patient; this is a very particular issue. We know that there are sustainable non-plastic alternatives so I cannot understand why it is taking the Government quite so long to process this when there are alternatives and the issue needs urgent action now. Can he reassure us that there is urgency in the actions that he is taking?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I hope I can. This issue is an absolute priority for us and fits in very well with a string of measures that the Government have taken in recent years to tackle plastics and the pollution effects that they have caused. In some cases the plastics in wet wipes are polyester, in some cases they are viscous—that is, they bind the fabric together—and sometimes they are spun into it.

Concerns have been raised by health organisations that wish to continue to use wet wipes because they see them as fundamental to hygiene in hospitals and other places. I hope that this year we will find a solution that reflects the results of our call for evidence, that we will move forward and that everyone supporting the Bill in the other place and here, and everyone who shares my concerns about this pollution problem, will find a solution that we can all be happy with.

Pesticides: Thiamethoxam

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The Government have a pollinator strategy and work closely with the bee sector to make sure that our policies reflect the needs of pollinators right across the piece. The sustainable farming incentive, the key part of our ELMS announcement, has an integrated pest management part. These are the sorts of policy products that have come out of work that we are doing to enhance bee health across the country.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that this policy is making a mockery of the promise in the Environment Act to replace the use of toxic pesticides with integrated pest management techniques and low-toxicity solutions? How does the decision comply with the current need under law for pesticide products to have no unacceptable effects on the environment, when this clearly does?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I do not take that view, because we have massively increased the condition that we have applied this year. Last year, the derogation was not used because it did not reach of the already high 9%; we have raised that to 19% this year. There is a wider factor. If there is a catastrophic loss of yield, that sugar will have to come from other countries. Spain, France, Belgium and other EU countries have derogations with very few of the conditions that we have applied. We could damage our sugar infrastructure in this country—the factories that we need to produce sugar for our own population—and export the problem to countries that do not have our conditions and our determination to move towards integrated pest management.