Environment Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I start by repeating something I said in the first day of Committee. This is a hangover from Monday, but the batting order is not satisfactory, because I want to speak to Amendment 28 and none of its proposers has spoken yet, so I cannot follow them. However, I am delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, in her place and hope she can come in after the Minister, because few in this House know as much about the problem as she does.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, covered the problem comprehensively. I was going to raise the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, which is that we must take this opportunity not only to reduce the amount of plastic, but to curb the problem of plastic litter, which is spoiling the countryside in a way it never has before. This is particularly apparent with Covid and the pressures now on farmers, landowners and councils, because of the total disregard that a lot of people have for the countryside. They are happy just to dump their rubbish anywhere. This Bill must be used for that.

I would like to say a lot more about Amendment 28. I like that it does not attack all plastics, as they can be the right solution for the right good in the right place, but they are not great overall. We must find a way to reduce and recycle them better.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to follow my noble friend. Like him, I think it unfortunate that we have not heard from those who have tabled Amendment 28. These three amendments have much to commend them. I also pay tribute to the work of the Government and, in particular, my noble friend Lord Goldsmith, who first took an interest in this in the Quality of Life group’s report, Blueprint for a Green Economy, which he co-authored with my noble friend Lord Deben. I am pleased to see that his messianic zeal continues to this day.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the earlier speakers that this part of the Bill needs to be strengthened. I should say to my noble friend Lord Goldsmith with regard to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, why just chalk streams? I know how vital they are but any river will tell you about the environment of that area and its quality within the river.

I have a little bit of good news for my noble friend on the Front Bench. I recently spent three days in Dorset and, driving back, I had to wash the windscreen of my car to get rid of the bugs. It is the first time in many years when I have had to do that. If bugs are getting on to windscreens, it means that something is turning around slowly in nature. It is a good start and I hope that we will all be doing what I had to do on a much more regular basis. I agree that it is desperately boring to do, but it is far better to be bored doing it than not to have nature.

Virtually all land in the UK is managed. There is very little, if any, truly wild land left. When we are considering biodiversity, we must not forget that the land also has to produce food for the population. I again ask my noble friend on the Front Bench the question I asked at Second Reading, or possibly on the first day of Committee—I cannot remember. Does he agree with the figure that 21% of our agricultural land has to be taken out of agriculture and put into bioenergy fuels and trees? If that is the case, it means a 10% increase in the productivity of all the other agricultural land. That will mean a lot of intensification but it can be done if we do that cleverly with supporting biodiversity.

Here I want to talk about something that has almost become a dirty word: management—land management and biodiversity management. We could improve the biodiversity in this country very quickly if we followed the simple rules of getting the right habitat, the right species protection, proper winter feeding and control of predators. That is the four-legged chair on which biodiversity depends. I know that the Agriculture Act will address some of that but it will not necessarily address winter feed and certainly not predator control. The winter feed situation has been hugely compromised by the increasingly efficient agricultural machinery that farmers use and the height at which crops can be cut, leaving little for wildlife.

I mentioned foxes and badgers earlier. It was in that context that I felt that my noble friend the Minister had not answered my questions. What will the Government do to ensure that there is proper predator control carried out in a humane way? I am not talking about the extinction of species but getting a balance. If we are going to get back lapwing, curlew and waders, predators will have to be controlled. It is not just a question of foxes and badgers but deer. They have ruined hedgerows for ground-nesting birds and nightjars, and decimated some trees. In an increasingly urban southern half of England, deer control is becoming a major problem to undertake but if we do not do so we will affect wildlife in a hugely different way. It is not just a matter of our actions as human beings but of nature working within nature.

I know there are certain things over which we have no control, such as climate change. It is bound to affect our biodiversity in ways we do not know. As the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, will know, warmer winters and cooler summers are affecting salmon migration and its appearance in rivers. It is to be hoped that we will do something about that in long term, but it is not a short-term problem that we can solve. Nor can we solve the problem the north winds this spring have caused the bat population—that is not strictly within our hands. My friend, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, talked about the blue butterfly, which is weather-dependent. We have seen a huge increase in the red admiral thanks to a slightly warmer climate, but the other side of that equation is that we have lost a whole lot of butterflies because of the change in the climate. I wonder whether the blue butterfly that the noble Lord mentioned will suffer in the future.

In this debate, on getting an abundance target and improving biodiversity, I hope my noble friend will tell us about the practical problems that organisations are trying to solve. These organisations, such as the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Nature Friendly Farming Network, are doing huge amounts. They will need some more help and some more drive from the Government as well. Rather than just setting targets, it is the practicalities on the ground that matter.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lord Caithness. I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on bringing forward government Amendment 22 and all the amendments in this group. I hope he is not too disheartened by the reaction around the Committee this afternoon. Really, the Government have taken the bull by the horns.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, on his industriousness in all the positions he holds. No wonder we do not see too much of him here in the Chamber, but I congratulate him on all his work, at every level of democracy, which he outlined today. I am delighted that he talked about the plight of chalk streams, which I was heavily involved in at one stage in the other place. The noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, highlighted—indeed, it is a theme of the briefing I was delighted to receive from the Green Alliance—that this is not a problem unique to this country. My noble friend the Minister outlined this when he moved and spoke to the amendments before us this evening. It is not so much that this is a new problem as that we need new solutions to be adopted, but I urge my noble friend to be slightly cautious if we go out on our own limb, as it were, and set very ambitious targets. Is it not the case that we are not the only Government who did not achieve the 20 Aichi biodiversity targets agreed in Japan in 2010? Surely, if we are concerned about being a global leader and about biodiversity in the wider world, he should use his good offices and those of his colleagues in government to ensure that other Governments follow our lead. I was slightly disappointed that my noble friend Lord Randall did not touch on that aspect and took, perhaps, a uniquely domestic approach in the words he used.

My noble friend has set an ambitious target in the amendments in this group. How achievable is meeting those targets by 2030? Obviously, it is something we have signed up to internationally, so I would be interested to know how realistic and achievable those targets are. It is welcome that they will be subject—as I understood him to say—to the same legally binding targets elsewhere in the Bill. Will he use the species abundance provisions set out in these amendments to ensure that there will be timely and regular reviews of all the species, however the Government is going to define them? I am wondering whether we have actually defined these anywhere in the Bill, and I would be grateful if my noble friend would point to where those definitions are.

We all have our favourite species. Mine is the red squirrel, and one of the joys of visiting Denmark each summer is seeing how widespread it still is in parts of Scandinavia and elsewhere. I believe that hedgehogs are under increasing threat; I frequently lift one up and move it from the drive so that it does not make its way on to the main road, where I know that, a few days later, I will see that it is no more. Will my noble friend use this opportunity to look at all our favourite species—I would argue for red squirrels and hedgehogs—and make sure that, where they have been threatened but are now in abundance, we take cognisance of that? I think particularly of the protections that we gave to badgers in 1968. Should these now be reviewed, in 2021, along with those for all species of bats and newts?

I was taken by the arguments made by noble friend Lord Caithness about achieving a balance. He is absolutely correct, and I support him in this, that we should recognise predators such as deer. I hope that the green lobby will bear with me and that I do not get attacked like I did when I said this before: we have to recognise that TB is spread through predators such as badgers and deer and protect our herds of domestic cattle from that. I hope my noble friend the Minister will take cognisance of that balance. This may be in one of the amendments and I have missed it, but I would welcome his commitment to a review of each species, perhaps every five years, being considered. However, I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I restate my interests: I chair the Cawood group, which carries out analytical testing of soil, water, waste et cetera; and I am a trustee of Clinton Devon Estates, which is involved in ELMS trials and testing. I fully support the Bill and am enthusiastic about its potential. As has been stated numerous times, it needs to sit in sync with the Agriculture Act and I will comment on that later. I absolutely understand the need for the suite of amendments tabled by the Minister, beginning with Amendment 22.

There is clearly a need to have appropriate targets; otherwise there is a serious risk of not being able to measure success. As I said earlier in the debate, it is important to have a clear sense of direction to motivate all involved in delivery. I listened carefully to the Minister’s response, in an earlier debate, on why soil quality is not included as a target in the Bill. I have to say that it was not very convincing. If the determinants are still a work in progress, the Government should commit to introducing soil when these have been resolved. The setting of targets is, potentially, one of the most controversial parts of the Bill, as is clear from interest in the topic and comments so far. I will issue a cautionary note, so far as the farming sector is concerned. My old farming business participated in stewardship schemes for about 30 years before I retired two years ago; it was one of the first to enrol in stewardship management. We did halt decline in some species and saw a revival in others.

Modern agricultural practices encouraged by the common agricultural policy and, to be clear, by successive Governments in the UK, to produce cheap food—particularly the move from spring to autumn cropping during the 1970s and 1980s—have had an influence on species loss. Farmers have been following government policies and have been subsidised to produce cheap food for the past 70 years, which is why the Government have an obligation to adequately support family farms through the transition period, as outlined in the Agriculture Act, over the next seven years. The Government also need to incentivise those same farmers to deliver measures within the ELMS to address species loss and help deliver the targets that will be set as a consequence of the Bill. This is where the two pieces of legislation need to be absolutely compatible. I stress again that the Government have an obligation and these family farms are vital to the management of the countryside. They are crucial in delivering economic and social sustainability, as well as environmental sustainability and the outcomes that the Government hope to achieve through the Bill.

I am sure that the Minister will reassure the House that the Government intend to support farmers through the ELMS, but everything depends on the values attached to public goods, including the measures required to deliver biodiversity gain, which are as yet unknown. Establishing the value needs careful consideration. Even though farmers have been pilloried in the past by the environmental lobby as the culprits for ruining the environment in the pursuit of cheap food, in my experience, the vast majority of farmers care deeply about their environmental responsibilities and want to see well-functioning ecosystems.