Fishing Industry

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) and others on securing this timely debate. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the debate to take place in the Chamber so that there can be more contributions than there have been in such debates in Westminster Hall.

I welcome the Minister and the shadow Minister to their new responsibilities. I thank them for the contributions that they made as members of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and remind them that they both participated in our excellent report in response to the proposals for the reform of the common fisheries policy.

I join the hon. Member for Aberdeen North in commemorating those who have lost their lives in the fishing industry. Fishing and farming are the two most dangerous industries and they both suffer fatalities and other losses. We should recognise that element of the work that fishermen do in bringing the fish to our plates. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) who, despite the personal loss she suffered, continues to take a great interest in the fisheries industry.

Today’s debate is timely, and I pay tribute to fishing ports across the country. The port of Filey has historically enjoyed coble boats—that is why we have Coble Landing—and when I was first elected, six families still depended on fisheries off the North sea coast from Filey port. Sadly, however, for a number of reasons—not least that they needed a trailer to bring the coble boats on to shore—the cost has been prohibitive, and I understand that they now fish mostly out of Bridlington, which I think is the largest shellfish port in England, if not the UK.

The historic common fisheries policy agreement that was agreed by the European Parliament this week is to be welcomed and paves the way for new reforms to take effect on 1 January 2014. Notwithstanding that, I wish my hon. Friend the Minister well in his overnight negotiations. I hope he will be well equipped with refreshments to keep himself in good order, as he will obviously need to be on top form.

[Neil Parish]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although it is great that the European system is now grinding into place to ban discards—I wish the Minister well in that—the process must be kept going and indeed sped up? My knowledge of the EU, and I suspect that of my hon. Friend, is that it will take an awfully long time to get to a situation where we can stop discarding healthy fish. We need to speed up the system.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I agree with him. The opinion of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on this deal was published in February 2012 and the Government response in July 2012. It has taken three years of difficult negotiations, and I commend the fisheries Minister and his predecessor on the lead we took in securing a significant reform of what was deemed a fundamentally flawed common fisheries policy.

Let me say why the reform is so important. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and the hon. Member for Aberdeen North mentioned discards, and it is key that we do not replace discards at sea with discards on land. The Committee’s report concluded robustly that we must be imaginative about bringing fish on to land—having been born in Scotland, disappeared, and then returned there, I can say that different fish are eaten in Scotland from those eaten in England. If we can extend the palate and consumer taste to different types of fish and create new markets for existing fish, that would be a great way forward. As the report noted, celebrity chefs and others have a part to play in that by creating a novelty feature for dishes such as pollock, which I am sure would not be so widely eaten had it not been for chefs and others paving the way.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Lady calls for us to be imaginative in dealing with some of the problems that fisheries throw up. Twenty years ago I fished for spurdog as a targeted fish, but things have moved on and, as I said earlier, it is now a non-targeted fish often caught in nets. Spurdog comes in on boats, but under the landing obligation it looks as though it can be neither landed nor discarded. We will certainly need some imagination in dealing with spurdog that we cannot land or discard.

[Miss McIntosh]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will join me in tasting some of that to see whether it is edible, and we could look at creating a new market.

As the hon. Member for Aberdeen North said, the key points of the next stage of reform include a ban on the wasteful practice of discarding at sea perfectly edible fish for which there is no current market, a legally binding commitment to fishing at sustainable levels, and decentralised decision making that allows member states to agree measures appropriate to their fisheries.

One of the most exciting parts of this reform is that for once we are going to focus more on the science—I think we have gone wrong with previous reforms of the commons fisheries policy because we have not done that. I am an avid watcher of “Borgen”, the Danish television programme, and I will include in my remarks one or two references to Denmark. I am half Danish—I am very proud of that—and I studied in Denmark. As part of our report the Committee had the opportunity to visit Denmark and see practices that I hope will transform the regional control aspects. Science is particularly important there because Copenhagen is home to the headquarters of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea—ICES—and if we followed more of the scientific base that it spends a long time producing, I believe we would all benefit.

The health of fish stocks is assessed every six months by ICES, and the EU published an overall assessment of its advice in October 2013. It stated—this is from a Library note so it must be true—

“that 39% of EU fish stocks are still over fished,”

but that is down from 86% in 2009. In spite of that reduction in overfished stocks, the assessment goes on to say that trends giving rise to concern include, for instance, the fact that

“the number of stocks under an advice to reduce captures to the lowest possible level… had increased.”

I am sure the Minister will wish to focus on that. Being optimistic, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North concluded, Seafish, the industry body for the UK, has said:

“there is reason for cautious optimism in the industry as we continue to see iconic stocks such as cod in the North Sea move towards recovery.”

We must not rest on our laurels, and it is essential we follow the science. Where I would like the science to lead, and where I believe there is an example we can follow, is regional control, and I have a question for the Minister about that.

I also worked for a number of years in Brussels in legal practice, and we must understand how we can get round the problem of fisheries still being an exclusive competence of the EU. If that situation remains, how shall we achieve regional control in practice? I believe that is a legal problem and not insurmountable. Again, I will turn to Denmark, because Denmark and Sweden have established regional control around Danish and Swedish waters that works extremely well. That is down to the size of the nets and meshing they use, and how they fish particular fisheries—I will not go into too much detail because it is well established. I hope the Minister will confirm that that model will be used. I understand that the new common fisheries policy brings decision making closer to the fishing grounds, clarifies the roles and obligations of each of the players, and ends micro-management from Brussels, and that the Commission will agree with fishing nations in the region about the general framework, principles and standards, overall targets, performance indicators and time frames. Crucially, however, member states within that region will co-operate at a regional level to develop the actual implementing measures. If it can be established, and all member states in the region agree to the recommendations being transposed into rules that will apply to all fishermen in the region, it will be a real game changer.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a superb speech. She mentioned two key elements to reform, but does she agree that there is a third? History might reveal that that third element—a legal requirement to fish sustainably, to fish to maximum sustainable yield—is even more of a game changer. Is that not a key reform that will get our fisheries back on an ecosystem management basis?

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful for that intervention, and it gives me the opportunity to record my thanks to my hon. Friend for the hours he spent on the groundwork to achieve an historic agreement. Sustainability is key, and sustainability will be proved by following the science. We went too far away from the science in the past; we need to hold to it in future.

[Mr MacNeil]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the idea of regionalisation, as described by the EU, is perhaps one of the tremendous ways that the EU misleads us? The first meeting on the regionalisation of the north-west waters took place in Dublin on 12 November. The group includes the UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands—a pretty big region. We had thought that regions would be smaller than states, but at EU level they are multi-state organisations. It is better than what we had, but it is by no means local control—it is still a horse-trading arena.

[Miss McIntosh]

The hon. Gentleman does the House a great service by pointing that out. I had understood that regions would relate to borders contiguous to the sea within which there would be fishing. We cannot get away from the fact that Spain had historical rights to fish in our waters before 1973. That is something the Minister will have heard about, and I am interested to know how Spain manages to muscle in. I pay tribute to my Spanish friends, in case they are reading this or watching it on television—we have an agreement not to discuss fishing, Gibraltar or Las Malvinas.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Is the next logical step to make the regions the traditional fishing waters of each member state?

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[Miss McIntosh]

Much as the hon. Gentleman is my friend, I am always cautious when he tempts me to go in a particular direction. If I may, I think we shall discuss that over a cup of tea.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend talks about Spain’s access to what, historically, were our waters. One problem is that once there is a common fisheries policy everybody muscles in, nobody more so than Spain. Spain will hoover up fish not only off our shores, but off Africa and anywhere she can find them. She is a menace and I am quite happy to say that in this House.

[Miss McIntosh]

As some of my best friends are Spanish, I hope they are not following the debate too closely. I am sure Spain would wish reciprocal access rights for our fisherman in its waters. Perhaps we can reach agreement on that basis.

The new laws will allow countries working together regionally—under my definition of regionally, which does not necessarily include Spain—to move away from micro-management to true regionalisation and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) said, to a legally binding commitment to fish at sustainable levels.

Our report was so good that I would like to highlight one or two points. We called for decentralisation, rather than the Commission handing down, and for more research into selective fishing methods, which are important. We called for a cipher mechanism to reallocate fishing rights away from slipper skippers, and we called, again, for a register. My hon. Friend the Minister would not forgive me if I did not mention again our call for a register of who owns the current quotas.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. My understanding is that the register was due to be published before the end of 2013. I am conscious that we are almost halfway through December. Is it still on track?

[Miss McIntosh]

The Minister and the House will have heard what the hon. Lady says. I await the Minister’s reply with great interest. The House sits for another whole week and I am sure we stand prepared to hear from the Minister on his return not just that he has brokered a good deal for Britain, but that he wishes to publish the register of fisheries.

I am grateful for having had the opportunity to speak. I pay tribute to those who fish our waters and put themselves in harm’s way to bring fish to our plate. I pay tribute, too, to those who called for this debate. I wish the Minister great success in his negotiations on Monday.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

I commend the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) and others for bringing this issue to the House and the Backbench Business Committee for supporting it. It has been a very detailed first fisheries debate for me, and it has provided a welcome opportunity to cover a range of important matters.

As the hon. Gentleman said, it is important that we take this opportunity to remember the four fishermen who have lost their lives in this past year in their line of work at sea and in the harbour. This is a stark reminder that fishing remains the most dangerous occupation in this country, as numerous Members have mentioned, including my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) and the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell). I was particularly struck by what my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) said about Andrew Westaway in her constituency. We must remember the courage and sacrifice of individual fishermen, who put their lives in danger to bring food to our tables, and of their families who support them. I remind people of the plug given to the Fishwives Choir by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray). I know that the House will want to join me in remembering the bravery of our fishermen and the incredibly difficult and dangerous work that they do, and in sending our sincere condolences to all those families and friends who have suffered losses.

Many important points have been raised, and I want to pick up as many of them as I can. First, I want to put on record the sheer importance of this industry to the UK. We have more than 6,400 vessels and nearly 12,500 fishermen, and we produce 627,000 tonnes of fish per year with a value of £770 million. This industry is incredibly important to the UK.

The single biggest development this year has been what I regard as a quite radical reform of the common fisheries policy. I congratulate my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), on his tireless efforts on this front, especially on managing to reform the broken common fisheries policy—a measure that was voted through and agreed by the European Parliament on Tuesday. The reformed CFP, which includes three major UK priorities, has three key elements: first, an end to the wasteful practice of discarding; secondly, an end to the one-size-fits-all approach, with regional decision making; and finally, a commitment to fish at sustainable levels. I want to say a little about each of those important areas in turn.

On discarding, it has been an absolute scandal that we have had these regulatory discards whereby perfectly healthy fish are thrown, usually once dead, back into the sea. A number of Members have raised concerns about the discard ban, but it is important to recognise that to make it work there will be new flexibilities in the quota system. There will be inter-year flexibility so that quota for a species can be moved from one year to the next, and there will be some limited interspecies flexibility so that if a fisherman finds he is catching far more haddock than he expected, he can offset some of that haddock against his cod quota. We also recognise that there is much we can do with improved net gear. Big progress has already been made on this, and organisations such as the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science have done a lot of work on it, but there is certainly further to go.

I have always thought that regional decision making is important, because I am of the view that a small number of member states with a shared interest in a fishery and in seeing it fished sustainably are much more likely to come up with coherent management measures than any haggling among a group of 28 countries. The move to regional co-operation is, therefore, very important. It will make it easier to get agreement and we will end up with more coherent policy making.

A number of Members have raised concerns about how that will work. The fact is that, technically, it will remain a European Union competence. We have seen it work. When I attended the Fisheries Council in October, a similar process took place for the Baltic sea whereby those countries with a direct interest in that water came up with an agreement; they got there in the end. I think that that combination—of individual member states deciding management measures among themselves and the Commission standing behind that process and providing the ultimate check to make sure that they are fishing sustainably—works.

The third point—this is really important, as the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury, made clear—is about the legally binding commitment to fish sustainably. This is the essential bit that makes everything else stand up. All these things together represent a radical change in the CFP. This means that we have flexibility to ensure that a discard ban works, a legally binding commitment to fish sustainably, and more local decision making. We have further to go and I am looking forward to the next one to two years, when we can really work on making sure that we implement the measures properly. This has been a very important step forward.

[Miss McIntosh]

What reassurance is the Minister able to give the House that the Commission accepts that this will now be—dare we say it—a shared competence?

[George Eustice]

It is important to recognise that the setting of the total allowable catch will remain a European competence, but the management measures will be decided by the member states. On the signing of those management measures, the Commission’s role will be to ensure that we are fishing sustainably. There is an issue—my hon. Friend highlighted this—that, legally, a competence can reside either directly with the Commission or directly with member states. A hybrid system is difficult, but I think our agreement enables us to do that. The Commission can use mechanisms to make agreements between member states legally binding.

Water Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I am happy to answer the hon. Lady. We are completely clear that we will not allow the procedure to go ahead if it is going to cause environmental damage. We have to respect a whole range of directives pertaining to water. We are absolutely clear that we will not weaken or dilute—to use a watery phrase—the robustness of our regulation. We will completely lose public confidence if we do that. This has to be done in a robust manner.

The hon. Lady should look at examples that I have cited, such as Wytch Farm, which has been extracting hydrocarbons for decades without any environmental damage at all and which is very close to some very sensitive environmental sites. If this is done professionally and regulated properly, the hon. Lady should have nothing to fear. I am as keen as she is to protect our wetlands, including mosses, and I am clear that we will not dilute in any way the rigour of our regulation.

To return to abstraction, I know that some people—we have heard from some of them—think that we are not moving fast enough. Reform of the regime is complex. It has been in place for 50 years and the changes will affect the businesses of abstractors up and down the country—businesses that require water for public supply, electricity generation, manufacturing and irrigation. We must get this right. Shaping a new regime involving up to 30,000 abstractions is complicated, so we will consult on our proposals soon.

Reform of the abstraction regime is only part of the story. We are taking action now to reduce the damage to rivers, such as the chalk streams that support some of Europe’s unique habitats. We are using and improving the tools we have now to vary and remove damaging abstraction licences. For example, we have already made changes to protect the River Darent and the River Itchen.

In this Bill we are making it easier to tackle damaging abstractions in advance of our wider reform by making funding of schemes to restore sustainable abstraction quicker and easier. We will not take any risks with the introduction of upstream reform. We have looked carefully, with both Ofwat and the Environment Agency, at the concerns that have been raised. I am satisfied that there are robust regulatory safeguards in place to prevent upstream competition from leading to environmental damage. We will also co-ordinate implementation. The new upstream markets will not open before 2019 and we expect to implement abstraction reform in the early 2020s so that we can make sure that these reforms are carefully co-ordinated.

Resilience was a central theme of our water White Paper and it is a central theme of this Bill. We listened to calls in pre-legislative scrutiny to make sure that it is also central to the way in which the sector is regulated. We have strengthened Ofwat’s role in safeguarding long-term resilience. The Bill includes a new primary duty to take account of environmental pressures, population growth and demand on our essential services. I know that some are keen for Ofwat’s existing sustainable development duty to become a primary duty. We have looked at the arguments for that change. People want Ofwat and water companies to address longer-term challenges and deliver a better deal for customers and the environment. We want to achieve that, too.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

If we really want to improve environmental stewardship, I would argue, as others have done to the Select Committee, that the statutory duty on sustainable development will put the Government in a better place than resilience.

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to the Committee Chair for all her hard work. We have looked at the issue and believe that resilience means a stronger focus on longer-term planning and investment. By creating a new overarching duty specifically designed to increase the focus on long-term resilience, I think we will deliver what the Committee has been looking for. Resilience also means protecting the water resources that are so critical to current and future supplies. As I have said, ultimately 95% of water runs out to the sea, and the Bill will help to manage it more effectively.

Just as water reform measures will help our supply systems and environment to deal with water shortages, we must also be prepared for flooding. I have seen for myself how devastating it is to be flooded. This time last year, I visited Exeter and Kennford and saw the impact of the floods on people’s homes, lives and families.

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[Maria Eagle]

If the hon. Gentleman is slightly more patient, he will hear what I have to say in the rest of my speech on those and other matters, but the Secretary of State was on his feet for 35-plus minutes, so the hon. Gentleman has not been waiting too long yet.

It is time for a wider review of whether we have the right balance between Ofwat’s regulatory role and the need for a powerful champion for consumers. The review should consider the future relationship between, and roles of, Ofwat and the Consumer Council for Water. I believe there is a need for a proper ombudsman role because adequate powers of redress for customers do not currently exist. The Bill should have established such an arrangement rather than simply arranging for it to be possible at some undefined point in the future.

The Government should also consider accepting the Consumer Council for Water proposal for it to be given enhanced rights to be consulted on each water company’s charging scheme and any changes to it, and a continual scrutiny role to “find and fix issues”, as it puts it, as they arise. I believe there is merit in those proposals and hope Ministers agree.

The second major change the Opposition want during the passage of the Bill is the introduction of a clear legal requirement on water companies to sign up to a new national affordability scheme. When I raised that with the Secretary of State last Thursday, he responded:

“The Government encourage water companies to introduce social tariffs for vulnerable consumers and to reduce bad debt.”—[Official Report, 21 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 1350.]

However, it is absolutely clear that his encouragement is not enough. Just three companies have introduced social tariffs, with fewer than 25,000 customers receiving assistance. Considering that Ofwat estimates that 2.6 million households, or 11%, currently spend more than 5% of their income on water, it is clear that only a tiny fraction of those struggling are being helped.

[Miss McIntosh]

The hon. Lady will recall that the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 contained provisions for social tariffs, but the Department for Work and Pensions refused, as it continues to refuse, to allow the information relating to benefits to be released. I cannot understand why that is the case, but why did Labour Members not push harder for that information to be released when Labour was in government?

[Maria Eagle]

The hon. Lady has a point, and I will shortly say something about what I believe we ought to do about it.

It is not good enough that so few customers can benefit or receive assistance when they have genuine hardship in paying. It is time to replace voluntary social tariffs with a national affordability scheme, funded by the water companies from their excess profits. We need to end the postcode lottery that means that the help one can get depends on where one lives, and we need the Government to set clear eligibility criteria.

In response to my question last week, the Secretary of State said:

“The shadow Secretary of State has to recognise that the schemes that help some water bill payers are paid for by others.”—[Official Report, 21 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 1352.]

Of course, that is the Government’s approach because he is not willing to stand up to vested interests. He is not willing to say to the water companies that they cannot continue to pay out almost every pound they make in dividend payments—£1.8 billion last year—and leave it solely to other customers to fund measures to help those in need. The Government should finally drop their opposition to a national affordability scheme and require the water companies to step up and meet their social obligations.

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[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I welcome the Bill and would like to thank both my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for their kind words about the work that my colleagues and I have done on the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We must have done something right, as no fewer than four of our erstwhile colleagues serve on either the Government or the Opposition Front Bench. We shall obviously continue to maintain our rule of scrutiny with ever-increasing vigilance.

Today is the anniversary of the floods in Malton, Old Malton, Norton, Brawby and elsewhere in my constituency. In fact, I had to take a 10-mile detour because there was a lake outside my office, which I could not access as I normally would. The floods started in November and went on, intermixed with snow, until about March or April. It is therefore timely that we debate the Water Bill today. There is much in it to commend. It has been a long time in progress and, as the hon. Lady said, there remains a great deal of unfinished business from the Pitt review, the Walker review and the Cave review and, indeed, the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. The largest and most significant recent development since 2007 has been surface water flooding. It is a new threat, particularly with water running off the road in just about every constituency of every Member who has spoken in the debate thus far.

[Nia Griffith]

Given that the Flood Re scheme does not apply to properties built after 1 January 2009, does the hon. Lady agree that planning authorities need to be ever more vigilant not only in refusing to build on floodplains but in avoiding the knock-on effects of building in certain places that can have devastating effects on existing properties?

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful for the intervention, but I think the hon. Lady misses the point that so many other people do. Water running off the road in this way is a new development. While the water is on the surface of the road, it is the responsibility of the highways authorities, whether it be the Highways Agency, the county council or the unitary council. As soon as that water runs off the road and goes into a combined sewer, it most frequently becomes the responsibility of the water company.

I believe that the Government should look at the possibility of creating a statutory responsibility on highways authorities—and should be supported by the whole House in this—for surface water while it is on the road. [Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) mutters under his breath, “What will the cost be?” I do not care what it will be: if we are to have sustainable drainage systems, we have to look at creating a system that will retain the surface water on the road and stop it going into the combined drains and sewers. That has been happening since 2007, for nearly seven years. Surface water has been mixing with sewage and coming into homes, such as the home of Mr and Mrs Hinds, causing health-related and very antisocial problems. Successive Governments have failed to deal with the issue, but I believe that the Bill presents us with a unique opportunity to sort it out.

According to the Environment Agency, 2.4 million properties in England are at risk of flooding from rivers and the sea, 1 million of those properties are at risk of surface water flooding, and a further 2.8 million properties are at risk of surface water alone. The agency estimated that the cost of the 2012 floods was £600 million. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that we need not just to grow the economy, but to limit the damage caused to it by floods.

It is regrettable that the sustainable drainage system that was envisaged in the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 has still not been implemented. I understand that discussions are taking place and that it is all very difficult, but we must get our heads around this. It is not impossible, although the difficult aspects may take a little longer to address. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to rise to the challenge, and to introduce SUDS before April next year. It is unacceptable for my constituency and others elsewhere in the country to face a possible flood threat this very week because we have not put secondary legislation on to the statute book.

I am at my wits’ end because we have still not implemented the Pitt recommendation that the automatic right to connect should be removed. Sustainable drains are a significant aspect of that. The Environment Agency is already a statutory consultee, but we have not accepted that water companies should have the same status. I believe that they should be able to say, frankly and honestly, that in the case of major developments, there should be no ability to connect without a significant new investment.

[Andrew Percy]

Proposals for new housing in Goole pose the double threat of river and surface water flooding, and are therefore unacceptable to local communities. Goole has been flooded for about five of the last eight years. We want sustainable drainage systems, so that if the new housing development proceeds, it will have no further impact on our already creaking drainage system.

[Miss McIntosh]

I hope that we will all continue to press the Government to proceed with SUDS.

As for abstraction, I can only support what other Members have already said. Abstraction has an important part to play in resilience in times of drought and, potentially, in times of floods, when there are competing demands for the water supply. I urge the Government to show a greater sense of urgency. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that they would be consulting shortly, and it would be helpful to know when that consultation might take place.

The water White Paper, which we also scrutinised, placed great emphasis on the importance of resilience and the need for innovation to improve it, but I think that the Bill has toned down that emphasis slightly. I hope that the Government will find renewed enthusiasm for resilience. There will always be competing claims from the farming industry and angling, but we must not forget jam-makers such as those whom I visited in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), as well as brewers and other industrial users.

The role of the Environment Agency has been extremely positive, and fewer properties have been built on functional floodplains since it became a statutory consultee. However, I believe that it could do much more to share information, particularly mapping information. It is extremely frustrating for constituents not to be able to access a single map. Sir Michael Pitt—from east Yorkshire—was very clear in that regard, and I think that we owe him a great debt of gratitude for the work that he has done. I believe that there should be a one-stop shop for our constituents, and that they should be able to know exactly where to go.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Does my hon. Friend agree that not only is mapping important, but it is important for maps to be updated quickly? Following the completion of a £3 million flood defence scheme in the village of Burstwick, in my constituency, it took more than a year for maps to be updated, and during that time residents were still being asked for higher insurance premiums because the insurance companies did not have access to the information.

[Miss McIntosh]

My hon. Friend has eloquently re-emphasised the point that I was making.

[Diana Johnson]

Does the hon. Lady share my concern about the fact that the Environment Agency will not be producing its compound risk maps until the end of 2015? It is taking far too long to convey the necessary information to insurance companies and to constituents.

[Miss McIntosh]

I do regret the amount of time that it is taking.

The Select Committee was very disappointed to hear how little maintenance and dredging of watercourses has been taking place. While it is always pleasing to see capital expenditure increase, the evidence that we heard was more than anecdotal: it is an absolute fact that, were there to be regular maintenance and dredging of the main and even the minor watercourses, floods could be prevented. I urge the Government to spend more than just £20 million per annum in England for that purpose. I also urge them to allow the drainage boards, which do such excellent work, to keep the money rather than passing it to the Environment Agency, and to agree a work programme with the agency but use their own drainage board engineers for the maintenance and dredging.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I agree wholeheartedly that drainage boards could do much more work. The money that they spend often goes a great deal further than the excessive amount spent by some public bodies. As the Secretary of State is aware, the Parrett and Tone rivers in Somerset are completely silted up and they need to be dredged quickly.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am sure that the whole House, including the Secretary of State, has heard what my hon. Friend said. Dredging little and often can prevent floods. The drainage boards have an army of volunteers, a huge fount of knowledge and, probably, more engineers than the Environment Agency.

I am delighted that the Government have authorised the pilot schemes, and the Select Committee will observe the outcome very closely. I commend the Pickering pilot project, which is one of those schemes at which this country excels. It has already slowed the flow, it is creating new peat bogs, and it is holding water back so that it cannot flood Pickering. If we can succeed with a combination of slowing the flow and building a reservoir, not only will Pickering be safe from flooding, but the benefits of the pilot can be used elsewhere, and resilience to flooding and possible water shortages can be improved.

I believe that the 2014 price review gives us an opportunity to invite Ofwat to reward innovation, which it is not doing at the moment. Ofwat should invite water companies to show that they can bring positive benefits to consumers by creating innovative flood defence and water supply schemes like the Pickering project, and to include such proposals in their business plans. I regret that that did not happen in earlier price reviews and this is a unique opportunity to do that.

I also invite the Government to engage much earlier with EU directives. I yield to no one in respect of the benefits they can bring, but they can be very costly. If we sign up to very short-term, tight timetables, that adds to the costs. My right hon. Friend will be aware of the EU water framework directive, the bathing water directive, the drinking water directive, the urban waste water treatment directive and others. We have to get in there early and put our views across. Their aims and objectives are laudable, but they must be affordable and done on a realistic timetable.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend made an important point about dredging. It is essential to ensure that unnecessary costs are not imposed on those who try to carry it out. South Holderness drainage board raised money locally to dredge Stone creek and Hedon haven, but then found that the Marine Management Organisation —which, as on previous occasions, would not have charged the EA anything—imposed a cost of several thousand pounds on the drainage board and then at the end more than doubled that amount, imposing a crippling cost on local people raising local money to try to do the right thing.

[Miss McIntosh]

I thank my hon. Friend for that.

I want to mention briefly some new aspects of the Bill and some omissions. On the omissions, bad debt costs each and every household approximately £14 a year. That is unacceptable. We need secondary legislation to progress this matter, and I urge the Government to bring that forward as swiftly as possible.

On social tariffs, I fail to understand why successive Governments have had difficulty in releasing information on benefits. In response to a recent question to the Department for Work and Pensions, the following answer came back from the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning):

“There is no legislation in place currently”—

well, I knew that and I told him that, but it is always good to know I was right—

“that would permit the release of benefits information to water utility companies: it is likely that new legislation would be required to enable the sharing of benefits data with water utility companies on this scale.”—[Official Report, 18 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 681W.]

I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to put pressure on the DWP to release that information so that we can make the best possible tariff available to the appropriate customers at the earliest possible time.

On insurance, the Select Committee came down in favour of Flood Re, but there are a lot of unknowns, and I do not believe we know any more about the known unknowns than we did before this debate started. For example, under Flood Re, why have we chosen household bands as the basis for insurance levy scales? If there is a database, where is it? What is the definition of uninsurable properties? Are small businesses excluded? If they are to be excluded, why are they excluded? It has been put to me that farms might be excluded. Obviously, that would not go down well in my area. I would quite like to know before the end of the evening whether farms and small businesses are going to be excluded.

The memorandum of understanding between the Government and the insurance industry commits the Government to take primary responsibility as an insurer of last resort in an extreme flood event while the fund is growing. We need greater clarity this evening, before the Bill goes on to Committee, on precisely where we are in that regard. The House would also like to know whether the Bill achieves the normal historical value for money requirement in respect of such proposals.

The Select Committee welcomes the commitment to open up the retail market to competition by 2017, but we believe the case for upstream reform needs to be made more vigorously. We need to know precisely what the implications are for customer bills. It has been put to us that there might be de-averaging of household bills. We also need to know the implications for national resilience of upstream reforms, including in respect of climate change and population growth. We note that the start date is two years later, but the House would like to know whether it is feasible at all and whether we even need primary legislation.

It is true that the Select Committee came down in favour of functional separation between the wholesale and retail arms and in favour of a voluntary exit strategy. We would like to hear a little more when the Minister winds up about why the Government are against that.

Members on both sides of the House are interested in cost of living issues, of course, and we need greater assurances on the impact on householders. The Flood Re levy has been set at £180 million per annum, which is £10.50 per customer, for the first years. We also need to know the timetable for the application for state aid. It would be helpful to know that we are going to be in a position to have signed off on state aid before this Bill leaves the House and achieves Royal Assent and, more importantly, by the start date of 2017. Concerns have been expressed about stranded assets and the impact on household customers generally, particularly from the Flood Re insurance levy, and the formalising of the cross-subsidy that has existed under the statement of principles.

To conclude, the potential risks of de-averaging prices in respect of household customers and upstream competition must be addressed. On the comparative merits of the Ofwat duty, we would prefer sustainable development as opposed to the Government’s proposal of resilience. That needs to be explored. We also need to look at possible greater resilience in terms of both water supply and the use of abstraction, and we need the review of abstraction policy sooner rather than later. We applaud the sustainable development and wider environmental aims of biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation, but I personally would argue that this should be addressed through Ofwat’s primary duty of sustainable development. The Government need to explain how the transition in the insurance sector from the cross-subsidy being formalised in Flood Re to an eventual free market will be managed. I believe this is too important to leave to secondary legislation and we need more details in the Bill.

I give the Bill a warm welcome. I have highlighted a number of concerns which I hope will be addressed and I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

The Bill does not excite people or generate much interest outside the House. Right hon. and hon. Members who have been involved in previous debates on this issue have shown that they have a depth of knowledge that spans time frames that go back much longer than I have been in the House. However, my constituents have concerns about their rising water bills, and because of their worries and sleepless nights, I am speaking in this debate.

The Bill provides an opportunity to introduce measures to help those who are struggling to pay their water bills and measures to toughen the regulatory regime under Ofwat. In announcing the draft Bill, the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), said that it would ensure

“that the water industry continues to provide an affordable and clean water supply”.

Earlier this month, a spokesperson for No. 10 said that the Prime Minister takes the price of household bills seriously:

“The Prime Minister wants to see household costs across the piece being reduced as low as possible. The intention is to try to reduce the burdens on hard-pressed families.”

It is therefore reasonable to ask why the Bill delivers so little for those people. It will not help families who are faced with rising water costs; nor will it empower Ofwat to become the champion for the consumer that it needs to be.

For those who, like me, are new to Parliament, I will remind the House of some of the history of water affordability. The only time when water charges have been reduced was under the last Labour Government. The average water bill in my constituency is now £359 per year and has increased nationally by almost 50% since privatisation was introduced by the Conservative Government in 1989. At the same time, regional water companies made £1.9 billion profit last year. I and my colleagues in the Labour party have been campaigning hard on energy prices, but the situation with water bills is no better—indeed, some would say that it is worse.

Although households spend less on water as a flat figure, the proportion of a water bill that goes towards company profits is three times higher than for an energy bill. As with energy prices, the rising cost of water far outstrips both earnings and inflation. Water is a natural resource; it is essentially free; and it is essential for our survival. Management of that natural resource therefore needs to be conducted with some kind of social responsibility.

During a cost of living crisis, affordability must be the absolute priority, and the Bill must do more to ensure that water companies’ profits are not put before the needs of consumers. The coalition agreement clearly stated that the Government would

“examine the conclusions of the Cave and Walker Reviews, and reform the water industry to ensure more efficient use of water and the protection of poorer households”.

That is one statement that they have not been able to delete.

In 2009, the Consumer Council for Water stated that

“many low income customers continue to pay their water bills even where it becomes unaffordable to do so”.

It claimed that people tend to

“cut back on water usage or sacrifice other essentials such as food or heating in order to ensure their bill is paid”.

The problem now in my constituency is that people are already cutting back on food, heating and water. Since the Government continue to legislate in a way that exacerbates poverty, what are my constituents supposed to do? What should they cut back on next—fresh air perhaps? They have nowhere left to go.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am following the hon. Lady’s contribution with great interest, and she is a leading member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. Water, however, is not free. Drinking water must be processed, as must the foul water that comes from every home. I hope that she will take the opportunity to go to a waste water treatment plant and see the full gamut of where a lot of the costs come from.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention and I will take up that offer. I was being glib when I said that water is free. I meant that to most people, including my constituents, water falls from the sky and is therefore free, but I understand the hon. Lady’s point.

People in my constituency are clear in the knowledge that water bills are likely to rise in the future due to a growing population, climate change, the replacement of water infrastructure and additional environmental standards. Under the previous Labour Government, the Walker review, which was published in 2009, advocated affordability and made a number of recommendations to ensure that water remains affordable for all. Two years later, the current Government published a consultation on those proposals and rejected universal discounts, which they cited as “unaffordable”, for people on low incomes and minimum discounts for low-income households with children. Instead, the Government opted for WaterSure and social tariffs, and repeated that intention in the “Water for Life” White Paper.

WaterSure intends to cut costs for households that have a water meter and more than three children under 19 years old and that claim a range of benefits including council tax benefit, housing benefit and employment and support allowance. The scheme ensures that those families pay only the average for their region, so adding approximately 40p to the bills of those customers not on the scheme. Water Direct is another scheme whereby the Department for Work and Pensions subtracts money from the benefits of those who are in debt to their regional water company and sends it direct to that water company. What is not clear, however, is how such schemes are likely to be affected by the introduction of universal credit, and that creates uncertainty for a number of families.

Social tariffs allow water companies to develop tariffs in consultation with customers, with the intention of helping the most vulnerable. However, the Government’s implementation of those tariffs falls a long way short of dealing with the scale of the problem. In evidence to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the Consumer Council for Water estimated that to “effectively address the problem” of affordability would cost anywhere between £162 million and £447 million. The Walker review’s estimate was £340 million, yet it predicted that social tariffs would generate only £36 million a year, adding that that was

“significantly short of what is needed to address affordability”.

Even that limited impact may not be felt in the majority of regions.

Rather than take strong action to ensure that companies have a duty of affordability, the Government introduced tariffs on a voluntary basis from April this year. So far, only three companies have taken that up. Northumbrian Water—my local provider—certainly found little appetite among customers for the implementation of a social tariff. That is hardly surprising when so many people are already struggling to afford bills with stagnating wages. In constituencies such as mine, such a tariff would make water less affordable for even more people.

It is no surprise that the Government’s light-touch solutions have done little to help consumers. Citizens Advice has expressed disappointment that the Government’s guidance for social tariffs is “lacking in detail” and that water companies have been given freedom to ignore it completely with little or no justification. It is no coincidence that Citizens Advice has reported increasing numbers of people coming to it with inquiries about water debt. It is not only Citizens Advice that recognises the problem. This afternoon, I spoke with Northumbrian Water, which is anticipating a rise in debt over the next year, linked to the severity of public sector cuts in our region. It now works closely with Citizens Advice, recognising that if someone is struggling with their water bill, they are likely to be struggling with other bills as well. In short, it is a wider problem than just water bills—it is a cost of living crisis.

The Government clearly do not recognise the need for decisive action. Last week at DEFRA questions, the Secretary of State said that he had written to water companies, calling on them to consider the pressure on household incomes and advising that the Government encourage water companies to introduce social tariffs. As Secretary of State, should he not be doing more than just encouraging and advising? Is simply writing to the water companies the best he can do?

The United Nations recognises water as a basic human right that should be

“available, accessible, safe, acceptable and affordable for all without discrimination”.

Why then are the Government not committed to ensuring just that—that water is affordable for all?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Rogerson]

I agree that, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we need to capture more of this water and make it work for us in such a way that we can improve environmental outcomes as well as resilience. That is very much what we want to happen.

[Miss McIntosh]

In terms of capturing water, is my hon. Friend going to deal with SUDS and surface water, because I know that he will care as passionately about this in his new position as he did when he was a member of the Select Committee?

[Dan Rogerson]

I had a premonition that I might get such an intervention from my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee. I know she is pleased that we are, as a Government, making progress towards implementing this process in April 2014. She would like it to be sooner, but we have to make sure that we get it right. The views of the Select Committee have been very useful in making sure that we get it brought in adequately.

We heard a couple of very specific questions on market reforms. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay asked about small charities that operate from residential properties. The reform would affect non-domestic properties, so if a charity is operating from a property that is primarily residential, it will not have access to it, but it will be open to it if it is operating from other premises.

On abstraction reform, I entirely agree with Members’ comments about the need to tackle abstraction, which is damaging our rivers. We are tackling this in two ways. First, we are taking action using the tools already available to address over-abstraction. The Environment Agency has reviewed thousands of abstraction licences and has changed about 80 of them, returning 75 billion litres of water per year to the environment in England. That is equivalent to the annual average water use of a city larger than Birmingham. There is clearly a lot more to do in the individual catchments that have been mentioned, and we have to take account of the stress that is put on them.

The Bill will also help by removing water companies’ right to compensation to ensure that the funding of these schemes moves into Ofwat’s price review process, which is a far better way of tackling over-abstraction. In the longer term, we need a reformed regime fit to face the future challenges, and we will publish a consultation on possible options in December. [Interruption.] These reforms will affect a range of businesses, so we need to get them right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. Unfortunately, he did not listen to my preceding answer, which was that under the watch of his Government—because Ofwat did not do its job and because, as with the banks, the last Government did not regulate properly—bills went up. We are fully conscious of the impact of bills on our hard-working constituents. We have a robust regulator in Mr Jonson Cox. It is clear from his statements and negotiations that he expects water companies to hold or reduce prices, while continuing with the enormous investment that privatisation has brought. Do not underestimate the £116 billion that has been brought into the industry, which will make it efficient and keep bills down.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that a large component of the increase in the cost of water bills comes from European directives, such as the waste water directive, the urban waste water directive, the bathing water directive and the drinking water directive? All of us would support those directives, but will he commit to the earliest possible engagement of the Department and Ofwat in limiting the cost of implementing them?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee for that question. She is absolutely right that we are bound by European law and regulation in this area of competence. We intend to regulate the industry in conformity with those laws. There is a balance to be struck. As I have mentioned, since privatisation, £116 billion has been brought into the industry. We have improved the quality of our rivers and water enormously, but we have to respect the impact of bills on our hard-working constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Tony Baldry]

The pay of clergy and how clergy are organised is a matter for the diocese and the local bishop. The hon. Lady has kindly written to me about this issue, which is causing her concern. I will, if I may, take it up with the Bishop of Lichfield and come back to her.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Local churches are at the heart of rural life. We have parish priests who are asked to look after sometimes four, five or six parish churches. Can we keep that situation under review? We want to keep the parish churches open, but it is more than humanly possible for one person to nurse so many parish churches.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Those are all challenges that we face. How we maintain and keep churches open in rural areas and ensure good ministry for new housing estates in urban areas are the responsibilities of diocesan bishops. We are fortunate in having some excellent new stipendiary clergy coming forward and a large number of self-supporting ministers who support the work of the Church of England. The point that my hon. Friend makes is a good one. Essentially, the Church of England has to be a national church, serving all parts of the country, and we are determined that it should continue to do that.

Natural Capital (England and Wales)

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I refer Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I would normally congratulate the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) on securing the debate, but of course he spilled the beans and said that I was the one, when I was on the Back Benches, who went before the Backbench Business Committee. I congratulate him instead on his excellent speech. I also want to take this opportunity, which is the first I have had, to welcome the Minister to his new role and to pay tribute to his predecessor, the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who was not only unfailingly courteous but totally committed to this agenda.

Every society is defined by two things: what it creates and what it refuses to destroy. The only thing that sets us apart from our natural environment is our ability to reflect on our own place within it, but for all our cleverness we remain dependent on the extraordinary bounty that nature provides. The food and water that sustain us, the air that we breathe, the raw materials that we use as fuel and clothing or to construct our homes are only the most obvious of nature’s benefits. Equally important are the processes and services that purify our water, break down our waste, pollinate our crops and provide us with recreation and aesthetic or spiritual fulfilment. We have the right to use and enjoy the benefits of that natural capital, but that right gives us no licence to prevent our children from exercising a similar and equal use and enjoyment in the future.

It is one of the imperative responsibilities of Government to be good stewards of the present and even better guardians of the future, yet the facts show how far we are from being good stewards. In the UK our native flora and fauna have been in decline for over 50 years. Agricultural intensification in the 1970s is often pointed to as a key turning point, but the truth is that for more than 200 years, as we chopped down our forests and used coal to drive the world’s first industrial revolution, we moved from a pastoral agrarian society to an advanced city-based economy that has failed to value biodiversity. In that time hundreds of species of plant and animal have been lost from our country. We need a radically different approach not just to halt, but to reverse that decline.

One of the great advances in these two centuries is the progress we have made in classical economics. When Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations” or even when Karl Marx wrote “Das Kapital”, they understood capital to mean simply plant, machinery and money. But we have come to understand that there is such a thing as human, social and intellectual capital. We have come to realise that a well-functioning judicial system or an excellent education system are just as much a part of the wealth of a nation as its roads, its ports or its factories. The irony is that economists and economies have not yet caught up with the most important capital of all—natural capital. Virtually every other form of capital is derived in some way from natural capital and we can define it as the benefits that accrue to human society from the different species of life that inhabit the natural world.

The right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), to whom I pay tribute, spoke about pollination services. I remember that in 2006, when I was Minister with responsibility for biodiversity, I put £6 million into the Department’s budget submission for research into diseases in honey bees. When it came to agreeing DEFRA’s budget, the Treasury was not impressed. It insisted that times were hard and that with my £6 million it could create a new community hospital for people’s diseases, rather than worrying about bee diseases. I of course told the Treasury officials that I would be happy to cut the £6 million, but I asked them if they were aware that it would cost them £194 million a year. I explained that a recent National Audit Office report had pointed out that diseases in the honey bee population had reduced the pollination services that bees were able to carry out. This had reduced the yield from our arable crops, which in turn had reduced the revenue paid to the Exchequer by £200 million a year. The Treasury gave us the £6 million.

The thing about Treasury officials is that they are simple beasts. They do not want to know about the environment or ecosystem services, but show them a way to save money and they become entirely reasonable. Classical economics values things in a very simple way. Take forests, for example. Classical economics simply adds the sale price of the timber that can be harvested and the alternative use to which the land may be put and says that this is the value of the forest. What utter nonsense. The true value of a forest lies in far more than that. Forests stop soil erosion. They prevent flooding by absorbing moisture and they control climate, often regulating local as well as global weather patterns. They are a source of medicines and food and they have recreational and aesthetic value, and all that is before we even begin to consider sequestration.

In the millennium ecosystem assessment, 1,360 of the world’s top scientists showed that classical economics captured only one third of the actual value of the services that forests provide. The same is true for rivers, reefs, salt marshes, mangroves and all other natural ecosystems. We fail to factor their actual economic value into our policies and decision making, but because most of the other services that they provide are not bought or sold in markets, they are not normally taken into account, so the forests, reefs and rivers are lost or degraded.

Another important consideration is that those wider benefits, although immensely valuable, do not accrue to an individual property owner. The benefits are experienced by the community at large. They are regarded as free goods by the wider community and the wider economy. In classical economics such free goods are called externalities, and because they are not directly captured by the landowner they do not feature directly in the landowner’s decision of how and whether to dispose of them.

We use nature because it is valuable, but we abuse it because it is free. A nation’s GDP certainly increases every time money changes hands, but a growing GDP does not always create wealth. Many economic activities actually deplete wealth. The irony is that nations count that depletion as income, whereas they should see it as liquidation of capital. In fact, the TEEB—The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity—report, edited by Pavan Sukhdev, has already shown that at current rates of decline the cumulative loss of ecosystem services from 2000 until 2050 will be equivalent to losing 7% of global GDP. Here is the challenge: how do we explain to those focused on GDP growth that they would make better economic decisions if they properly accounted for the very real value of natural capital?

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I bow to the considerable knowledge of the hon. Gentleman, who has just left the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. This Government have been very clear, as indeed were his Government, about wanting to put natural capital at the heart of their economic thinking. With regard to climate change that is very obvious, but in some Departments it is less so, so how do we value the natural capital input?

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Lady, whose chairmanship of the Select Committee is redoubtable, is absolutely right that that is clear in certain Departments but not in others. The way we value the input, as a number of Members have already indicated, is precisely the way contained in the natural capital committee’s first report to Parliament. The first thing we have to do—I will move on to this in more detail a little later—is to get each Department to create an inventory stating what capital it owns, what capital it affects and what capital it influences. Once we get Departments to look at it in that way, they can feed that into the Treasury so that better cost-benefit analysis is done and better economic decisions and policies are made.

Some of our political colleagues act as if they are still living in the 19th century. They believe that economic prosperity and environmental protection are destined to be in conflict with each other, but in fact the opposite is true. In 2011 the green economy made up just 6% of the economy, but it accounted for 30% of all growth.

Those on the economic right fall into the trap of thinking that the environment is the enemy of growth, but it is not. Their conclusion is that we must sacrifice the environment in order to achieve growth. But for those of us on the economic left there is an equivalent trap. Some on the left actually seem to agree with the economic right. Their claim is simply put the other way around: that economic growth is the enemy of the environment. Their conclusion is that we must sacrifice growth to achieve environmental protection. Both are wrong, of course, and they are wrong because they are locked into the same language of economic growth and environmental protection. They have failed to move into the new paradigm of economic wealth and environmental sustainability. There is a reason for that: the new paradigm requires a proper understanding of the value of natural capital, and not just an understanding of it, but a proper accounting of it.

What competent business would fail to carry out a proper inventory of its assets? Yet that is precisely what we as a country have done. We have not looked at the stocks and flows of natural capital and properly assessed them. In the UK we are beginning to introduce a fundamental change in environmental policy. Instead of focusing on individual species or habitats, we are pioneering an approach based on whole ecosystems. We commissioned the UK’s national ecosystem assessment, which has established that 30% of the UK’s ecosystems are in decline and that many others are only just holding their own against an increasingly hostile background of rising population, consumption and pollution. However, the Government have not yet taken the important step of instructing all Departments to create an inventory of the natural capital assets they own, utilise and affect. The Minister should speak to his colleagues in Government to ensure that that happens.

Quantifying the problem is the beginning of a solution. In the national ecosystem assessment, we have begun to put a value on the contribution of ecosystem goods and services to human well-being. The market has long known how to exploit the benefits of nature, whether by dumping waste at sea or chopping down rainforests with no thought for the wider damage that it was doing. But now, the most progressive businesses are beginning to understand the importance of sustainable supply chains. They are beginning to see the business imperative to reduce their own corporate risk profile and are now seeing genuine advantage in being net positive for the environment.

The establishment of the natural capital committee in response to the United Nations convention to combat desertification conference of the parties in Nagoya in 2010 is a significant and positive move on the part of the Government. I welcome it. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Meriden for how she steered the issue through Government. She also established that the committee should report to the economic sub-committee of the Cabinet. Her officials had put to her that it should report to her as Secretary of State, but she decided that it should report elsewhere, knowing full well that a Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was perhaps less powerful than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. She played a significant role in ensuring that the natural capital committee had the prospect of real success and traction. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) was entirely right to say that we should also have had a Treasury Minister on the Front Bench this evening.

Food Contamination

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mrs Osborne. Together with colleagues from the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I am delighted to have secured the debate. I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to his new position and congratulate the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) for retaining his as shadow Minister.

The Minister is new, but we look forward to hearing his remarks in summing up the debate. I take this opportunity to thank him, in his individual capacity, for the contribution he made and excellent work he did on the Select Committee. I remind the Chamber—and, perhaps, the Minister—that he contributed to and supported the conclusions of both the reports and the Government responses, which we received just as he was vacating his position. I hope that he will keep some of his enthusiasm and vigour in summing up today.

I would like to talk briefly about the history—a previous Committee report is also of interest. The United Kingdom decided to impose a moratorium on desinewed meat production in this country, which had huge implications—not only for my constituency, but for parts of Northern Ireland. Newby Foods was told that it could no longer produce desinewed meat, which led to a loss of 30 jobs near Thirsk.

Since we conducted our report and reviewed the UK Government moratorium, which was imposed as a short-term measure at the will of the European Commission in Brussels, the Government have clarified desinewed meat from poultry and pork as being from non-ruminants, so that that process may continue. However, will the Minister continue to make the case to the European Union for desinewed meat production from lamb and beef to be allowed to continue, as well as from pork and poultry?

That information is relevant to the debate, because we concluded, in, I believe, March 2012—this was based on an assertion in evidence from a predecessor of the Minister; it was perhaps two farming Ministers ago—that ceasing production of desinewed meat could lead to mislabelling and the contamination and adulteration of meat, with cheaper cuts of meat substituted for the meat that is on the label.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Miss McIntosh]

Perhaps I could set the scene in terms of the food industry. As of last year, there were more than 490,000 food businesses in England. In 2011-12, spending to protect consumers from food incidents was £241 million, 75% of which was spent by local authorities to enforce food law.

One issue the Committee identified was that the Food Standards Agency reports to three key Departments with responsibility for aspects of food policy. Furthermore, there has been a marked fall since 2009-12 in the number of local authority food samples tested. In addition, there are 12 different national and European databases on food intelligence.

Let me record a little of the history. In November 2012, there was a routine meeting between the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and the UK’s FSA. At that meeting, the Irish FSA mentioned that it was developing a new methodology for checking the composition of meat products. The first question the Committee asked—we are asking it again today—was why it took two months for our own FSA to authorise and conduct any testing.

Tests then found that there had been contamination; it was small in the UK, but it was widespread in the EU. In the UK, horse and pig DNA were found in a variety of beef products, including samples of Findus lasagne, which contained more than 60% horsemeat; Aldi lasagne and spaghetti bolognese, which contained between 30% and 100% horsemeat; and beef products certified as halal and supplied to prisons in England and Wales that contained pork DNA.

Those findings emerged only after extensive testing of beef products across the EU and by local authorities and industry in the UK. The EU tests revealed that 4.66% of products contained more than 1% horse DNA. The UK incidence of contamination in products tested was less than 1%. Although the contamination was small, and the principle was that this was a labelling and a fraud issue, there could so easily have been a food safety scare and a food safety scandal.

Complacency is not the best word to use, but we have seen no sense of urgency among the Government, which is why we welcome my hon. Friend’s appointment as Minister. The Secretary of State or another Minister told us in evidence that the perpetrators of this crime—if it was a crime, and everyone generally understands it is a crime—would face the full force of the law. What arrests have therefore been made? What is the role of Europol and, possibly, Interpol? What charges and prosecutions have been brought by the City of London police to draw a line under this issue?

If we are to boost consumer confidence, which I think we all want to do, we must show there is no further contamination and no prospect of further contamination. We therefore need to know at what stage the contamination and adulteration entered the food supply chain. We talk a lot in the two reports about controls in the food chain, to protect consumers from contaminated and potentially unsafe food, which did not work in the case in question.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the matter, as something following on from the BSE crisis, is that every 10 years we have either a food scare or a food crisis. In the early 1990s, it was BSE; in 2001, it was foot and mouth disease; and in 2012—we know that it started in 2011—it was the scandal to do with horsemeat contamination and pork DNA being found in halal meat. That was completely unacceptable.

One worry is identifying the supply chain, and traceability, and we drew some clear conclusions from the evidence. The chief executive of the FSA told us the contamination and adulteration could have been going on for almost a year, from March 2012, when desinewed meat production in this country was banned—there was also a so-called ban in the EU, although we believe it was being produced in the EU.

We concluded that the system for food traceability, including the requirement that at every stage in the supply chain operators must keep records of the source and destination of each product, has been breached; that retailers and meat processors should have been more vigilant about the risk of deliberate adulteration; and that trust is not a sufficient guarantee in a system where meat is traded many times before reaching its final destination. We have also noted our concern about the length of supply chains for processed and frozen beef products. We welcome the efforts of some retailers to shorten those whenever possible.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing the debate. Perhaps I can bring together two strands of her thinking. There will be public discontent if only a relatively few small players are investigated and prosecuted and become scapegoats for the industry. If larger players—whether they are meat processors, retailers or others—can be proved not to have used due diligence, or to have been negligent, ignorant or downright culpable, the size of the operation or its importance to the European market should not preclude investigation, including by Governments working together, if necessary.

[Miss McIntosh]

I welcome that intervention. The hon. Gentleman’s Front-Bench colleague, the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), led a line of questioning in that regard, and we met a brick wall. I agree that the action taken should not be symbolic, against small retailers. We must go through the supply chain. When a major supermarket takes a supply chain on trust year after year, without inspecting identities and its integrity, there is definitely something wrong. As to traceability and the so-called labelling issue, I confess to being disappointed with the Government response. We have identified a problem of traceability and labelling, and I urge the Minister to go a bit further, so that we have concrete suggestions.

I have mentioned the number of relevant businesses and the food industry’s importance to the economy. We must accept, with respect to testing, the need for a risk-based assessment, but when we are told that there is a risk in a particular country we need, for goodness’ sake, to wake up, liven up and respond, because of the potential for a problem in this country.

The people we need to go out and do testing—the first in line—are food analysts. We learned in evidence that most of those are in the Association of Public Analysts. I want to dwell on that point for a moment. We found out that insufficient testing has been done by local authorities since 2009. We need to accept that, although testing must be risk-based, there should be some random testing to ensure that nothing slips through the net.

We also identified an acute potential shortage of public analysts. I want to take issue with the Government response to our second report at point 13:

“Officials from both FSA and Defra meet regularly with representatives from the Association of Public Analysts and local authorities to ensure sufficient laboratory capacity exists and suitable methods are in place”.

I want to quiz the Minister on that. The Association of Public Analysts has meetings with FSA officials twice a year. That is not “regularly”—it is only every six months. One meeting was attended by a DEFRA official, the implication being that the other was not, and laboratory capacity is not discussed. Even if it were discussed, it is not within the gift of individual public analysts, or the association, to prevent laboratory closures or to ensure sufficient capacity.

The Government response is flawed because it does not deal with the Committee recommendation that they should ensure that there are sufficient properly trained public analysts. Why does that matter? It is not only the Committee, which heard powerful and compelling evidence about it, that concluded that it is important. The National Audit Office report, published earlier this month, leant heavily on—I would like to think—our work and on the report’s conclusions and recommendations. It stressed, as we did, that budget cuts coupled with a two thirds rise in reported food fraud have increased the risk of another horsemeat scandal. The NAO also said that the cuts in testing led to a loss of intelligence information, so that the Government

“failed to identify the potential risk of adulteration of beef with horsemeat, despite indications of heightened risk.”

The NAO report questions whether there will be sufficient capacity to respond to future incidents. I am mindful of what the previous Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), said about DEFRA being the fourth emergency service, and of the possibility that, given the dramatic decline over recent years in the number of public analysts and laboratories, there will not be the capability for detecting food fraud. I urge the Minister to respond to that concern.

I have covered the question of Europol, Interpol and our police bringing people to book, and discussed traceability. I want to make a final point. There is a richesse before us, and I could dwell on every recommendation and conclusion; I am sure that the Minister will remember the passion with which the Committee adopted the recommendations. I want now to focus on what the FSA’s role should be.

In our first report, we conclude:

“Whilst Ministers are properly responsible for policy, the FSA’s diminished role has led to a lack of clarity about where responsibility lies, and this has weakened the UK’s ability to identify and respond to food standards concerns.”

We found that the FSA and Government reacted in a “flat-footed” way and were

“unable to respond effectively within structures designed primarily to respond to threats to human health.”

We did not much care for the Government response, but I am sure that the Minister will try to justify the rather disappointing response that the

“Machinery of Government changes in 2010 led to some changes”.

The response went on to tell us what they were.

In our more recent report, to which we have only recently received the Government response, we reiterate our previous conclusion and confirm that we need greater clarity about the role of the FSA in major incidents. The point is that we accept that this is primarily a food-labelling issue, but there is the suggestion of fraud, to which the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) referred, on a massive scale, and we need the reassurance that the FSA is, in my words, fit for purpose. However, the Government response does not fit the bill.

We are told:

“The Government is concerned that the Committee may have misunderstood”—

I say to the Minister that that is a very dangerous allegation to make—

“the status and constitution of the FSA.”

We know, as the response states, that the FSA,

“as a non-Ministerial government department, does not report to any other department. The FSA is accountable to Parliament and reports…through Health Ministers.”

The National Audit Office confirms our initial conclusion that the problem is that the FSA reports to three different Departments. That is a source of concern. It is compounded by the fact that we are having review after review after review. We came to conclusions quite early on—in March, I think—about our fundamental concerns. We are now hurrying towards the end of the year. We have the benefit of Professor Pat Troop’s response to the incident. Her conclusions back up entirely what we say.

The question for the Minister is why the Government are not responding to our conclusions, to the review by Professor Troop and to the National Audit Office findings, but have called for another review. This is something that we used to say in opposition; it is not unfamiliar to me. Under the last Administration, as I am sure the hon. Member for Ogmore will remember, if there was a problem, we would have a review, then another review and then another review. Now, we need to see some action, so the fact that the Elliott review has been set up, will make an interim conclusion and will report finally only in the spring of next year is very disappointing and missing the point.

I would like to draw the strands together and confirm that this is not the time for another review. We need a fundamental rethink on the infrastructure, composition and role of the Food Standards Agency, what its relationships with the Departments are and who goes out and gives explanations to the public and to the industry in the event of an incident.

We need to see some movement on reducing the likelihood of future contamination by improving the traceability provisions and ensuring the integrity of each supply chain. It is very pleasing that in local butchers’ shops in my constituency and, I understand, across the country and in farm shops and at farmers’ markets, the purchasing of food has gone up incrementally. Everyone is buying local, because they know what they are buying. They know that it is beef or whatever the label says. As I said, that is very pleasing, but we need to restore public confidence in what is a multi-million-pound industry through supermarkets. We also need to look at the vexatious issue of there being a shortage of analysts and insufficient testing to put the consumer mind at rest.

I commend our two reports to the House. I have dwelt on three issues, but I would like to bring to the attention of the Minister and the shadow Minister our main concerns, which are set out in all our recommendations. Those have been supported by Professor Pat Troop’s review. She does not disagree with them one iota. We have also had the very powerful—it uses very strong language—report from the National Audit Office on “Food safety and authenticity in the processed meat supply chain”. I therefore now say to the Minister that this is a call for action, rather than for another review.

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[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The Minister is a collective author of one of the reports, and there is no way in which he would seek, for whatever reason—under pressure from officials or his Secretary of State, or the lure of the red box or the trappings of a Minister—to resile from the positions that he laid out so very recently. He is a good and honourable man and will stand by his words.

This is a timely debate to look back at the lessons learnt to try to avoid repeating the same mistakes and to return confidence to an industry that was shaken badly. To put it bluntly, consumers were tricked, deceived and defrauded by criminals operating within or alongside the food chain. It is the same food supply chain that we trust to supply safe, nutritious, affordable food and drink to our household tables, our schools and hospitals, and our care homes and cafeterias. That supply chain betrayed us—nothing less. It would be wrong, particularly while criminal investigations are ongoing, to delve too deeply into specific companies and individuals. I think the public and consumer organisations will be rightly outraged if the criminals who infiltrated the supply chain are not brought to book. If complicity or duplicity is identified within the supply chain itself, those companies and individuals should also be brought to book.

[Miss McIntosh]

It would be interesting to know what the hon. Gentleman’s potential future Administration would do to check the integrity of the supply chain. I am mindful of the fact that it was a Labour Government who set up the Food Standards Agency, and one of the difficulties that I highlighted is that it reports to at least two, potentially three, Departments. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about the retailers, but we rely hugely on the work of the FSA to test the supply chain.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s intervention and the focus that she and the Select Committee have put on not only the FSA, but the overall issue of food governance and the integrity and coherence of it. We have repeatedly made it clear from the early days when its responsibilities were split up that we had concerns about what might happen. Her Committee’s report and the report of the National Audit Office have made it clear that those concerns did not cause the crisis, but contributed to a delayed reaction, which I will come to in a moment. There is confusion at national, local and intergovernmental level. I shall not call for a review today. I shall echo her call for action and for the Government to introduce proposals to change the structure of food governance.

Tesco, the UK’s market-leading supermarket, notably and admirably fessed up to its responsibilities. It said, “We get it.” It took out full-page advertisements coinciding—coincidentally, I am sure—with the NFU conference in February, and it is seeking to re-engineer its supply chains and get closer to primary producers. It has a way to go, as has already been mentioned. I visited Tesco’s headquarters and we went through this in detail. Although it has a journey to make, I do not doubt its sincerity and ambition to do so. It is consumer-focused; there is a reason why it is doing this. Other large retailers have already developed shorter supply chains or other methods of ensuring the provenance of their food.

In the early stages, many took a different approach and frankly said, “Not us, guvnor.” They pointed to abroad or to smaller suppliers, international criminals, other third parties and, frankly, anybody but themselves. It is clear that the criminal activities of some have damaged public confidence in the whole supply chain. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee spoke for many in the country, when it reported that it could only

“conclude that British consumers have been cynically and systematically duped in pursuit of profit by elements within the food industry.”

Whether that was criminality, negligence, complicity or failure of due diligence through the whole supply chain, from major processors and supermarkets down to the very small players, all were to varying degrees at fault in causing the failures, and all have responsibility in rectifying them and restoring trust and confidence.

I welcome the letter that I received yesterday from ABP, a dominant player in the UK and European beef processing market, which tells me that it supplies more than 20 countries and has a network of over 15,000 farmers. In the letter, the company acknowledges—it cannot deny—the presence of horsemeat in some of its frozen beef products over the past year, but states:

“It was certainly not an activity sanctioned by ABP in any way at any level”.

It goes on to make it clear that the company is not subject to any ongoing investigations.

In some ways, it is unfair to pick out ABP, because it was not alone in a complex and vulnerable supply chain that put beef adulterated with horsemeat and, for good measure, with trace elements—thank goodness, only trace elements—of phenylbutazone or bute into our homes, hospitals, schools and canteens, as well as, through food distribution companies, into Royal Ascot and the royal household. When it comes to food adulteration, we are genuinely—and right royally—all in it together.

As the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton said, those who came out well from the crisis were the butchers, local abattoirs, and those in local food networks and short supply chains, whose customers could prove where their food came from and what it was. The upside of the crisis is that it has reignited a major debate about our relationship with the food we eat, which I hope will lead to changes in how we produce and value our food.

Much of the modern supply chain is long, complex and international, with multiple handling and processing operations and multiple opportunities for adulteration. The lesson for those in wider supply chains, especially the major and dominant supermarkets, processors and distributors, is that no one can escape responsibility for the mess we got ourselves into or avoid responsibility for restoring trust in those supply chains. It is not good enough to say, “It wasn’t us, guvnor,” because as far as the consumer is concerned, it was.

I want to turn to the issues of food governance identified by the Select Committee’s two reports and highlighted in a timely report by the National Audit Office, on 10 October, entitled, “Food safety and authenticity in the processed meat supply chain”.

I tell the Minister that the Government must clearly now take responsibility: they are also in the dock and must fess up. They must answer criticisms of their role in failing to ensure effective governance of the food manufacturing sector. Although I commend the industry for working alongside UK, Irish and EU agencies to strengthen the testing and tracking of food products in response to the horsemeat crisis, I cannot yet commend the UK Government, whose response to the crisis was hampered by structural problems of their own making. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, of which the Minister was a member, put that succinctly in its first report, stating that

“the current contamination crisis has caught the FSA and Government flat-footed and unable to respond effectively within structures designed primarily to respond to threats to human health.”

The National Audit Office’s No. 1 key finding was:

“A split since 2010 in the responsibilities for food policy in England has led to confusion among stakeholders and no obvious benefit to those implementing controls.”

That split in responsibilities is, of course, the one that was devised and implemented in 2010 not by the Minister, who is only just in post, but by his coalition Government. They are the architect of their own misfortune, but more importantly, of what others have described as the flat-footed response to the food adulteration scandal. The food sector and the consumer deserve better. It is not the fault of the FSA, but of the Government who split its responsibilities.

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[Miss McIntosh]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his first outing as Minister. There is some common ground between us, but there are still areas of disagreement. Nevertheless, we have had a very good debate and exchange this afternoon.

It was remiss of me not to thank all those who participated in our inquiry, including the witnesses, who gave both oral and written evidence. I will momentarily point out to my hon. Friend the Minister that his name is recorded in the formal minutes of both reports and we were delighted to have his support.

[Dan Rogerson]

The hon. Lady is absolutely correct. When I was responding to the hon. Member for Ogmore earlier, I thought that he was referring to the NAO report when he talked about “two reports”, rather than the two phases of the work that the Committee did.

[Dan Rogerson]

No—absolutely not.

[Miss McIntosh]

Anyway, a week is a long time in politics.

I will just go through some of the points that have been made. Regarding traceability and the supply chain, I think that the Minister has taken the point, and we need to process that.

On insufficient testing, we concluded—although none of us spelled it out, and it was remiss of me not to do so—that the FSA at the moment does not force the industry retailers to carry out testing. It would be good if we could agree that the Department should look into that and consider giving the FSA a steer on it. Perhaps the Elliott review will do that, and say that large retailers must carry out regular DNA testing of meat ingredients for frozen and processed meat products, with the cost being borne by themselves—the industry—and not by the consumers. That point has been echoed by hon. Members throughout the debate and I think that consumers will respond to it. We insisted, in our conclusions, that the results of the tests ordered by the FSA should be submitted to it and that a summary should be published on the retailer’s website.

There must be change in respect of issuing horse passports. There is a worrying increase in numbers of horses in my county, let alone between Northern Ireland and southern Ireland.

We need to deal with insufficient testing by retailers, including supermarkets, especially those who do not do it at all. I will be pleased if the Elliott review addresses the issue of analysts. I welcome what the Minister said about strengthening intelligence sharing.

[Dan Rogerson]

I should like to mention a couple of points that I did not talk about directly in my remarks. The issue of horse passports will be settled at European level, but the Government are keen to engage in that process and see what can be done, as long as it is proportionate, to ensure that we get it right.

The NAO considered capacity in terms of analysts, although it did not say that there was a lack of capacity. The FSA holds that under review, so we will keep a close eye on that.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am most grateful to the Minister. Although it would be hugely expensive to deal with, there is concern about abattoirs slaughtering both cattle and horses. We need to be aware of that.

There is a real issue about the governance and structural problems. I poked fun at the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ogmore, about how his Government set the structure up. However, it is possible that we have been seen to compound that situation. We will be able to draw a line under this matter only when we can say, hand on heart, where contamination, adulteration and lack of authenticity entered into the food chain. The sooner we can see prosecutions of the perpetrators from the big retailers, the more it will boost consumer confidence.

I endorse comments made about the processed foods that have been a cause of concern. At the heart of our report was concern about processed foods and frozen foods.

I am delighted that the Minister, and the shadow Minister, gave us a hearing today.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

I entirely understand what the hon. Lady has said about the cost of living. We are all aware of the problem. I represent an area in which incomes are very low, and in which water bills are a significant issue. It is clear from our discussions with Ofwat—my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has engaged in some recently—that it understands the importance of the issue, and believes that the benefits to water companies of, for example, low borrowing rates should be passed on to customers. I am pleased that companies are considering the introduction of social tariffs, and I shall continue to keep the matter under review.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate all who have been elevated to both Front Benches. We look forward to the return, in the very near future, of those of them who have served on the Select Committee—[Laughter]—in their ministerial capacity.

Will my hon. Friend use his good offices to press Ofwat to ensure that the 2014 price review enables the necessary investment to be made in the infrastructure and in innovation? May I also tease out of him the date on which the Water Bill will be given its Second Reading, and can be scrutinised by Parliament?

[Dan Rogerson]

I thought for a moment that my hon. Friend, who chairs the Select Committee, was petitioning the Prime Minister to summon us back to it, and that our tenure on the Front Benches might be very brief.

The timing of the Bill is, of course, a matter for those who manage our business. I look forward to debating the issues with colleagues in the House and, subsequently, in Committee.

What my hon. Friend has said about investment in the sector is crucial. We have already managed, through our regime, to deliver huge investment in water infrastructure. We now want to establish a regime which, while being fair to customers, also attracts further investment, so that we can have an industry that is fit for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

The hon. Member for Banbury, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked—

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

5. What recent discussions he has had with Natural England on bats in churches; and if he will make a statement.

[The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Tony Baldry)]

I understand from Natural England that the licence application for St Hilda’s in my hon. Friend’s constituency was submitted last Monday and a decision is expected this week. Following the granting of a licence, the work would start on site next week, blocking the access points of bats. The application is for the exclusion of bats from the interior of the church only, so this solution is intended to allow the interior of St Hilda’s church to be completely free from bats, while allowing their continued use of the exterior of the building.

[Miss McIntosh]

It is a source of some cynicism that the licence was issued or applied for only after my question regarding bats having the run of the church, St Hilda’s at Ellerburn, appeared on the Order Paper. As £30,000 of taxpayers’ money has been spent conducting a survey which has as yet led to no result, will my hon. Friend exert all his influence on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to issue the licence so that the congregation can meet and use the interior of the church free from intrusion by bats?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is worth recording that this one single parish church has had to spend tens of thousands of pounds so far just to get to this position. We have to improve the whole situation in relation to bats in churches. It is not a joking matter. Churches are not field barns; they are places of worship, and it cannot be right that bats can be excluded from reopened railway tunnels and the living spaces of domestic homes, but it is so difficult for active community buildings such as churches to resolve such an issue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman knows that I am a strong supporter of being able to make more decisions on these matters in this House. It might reassure him to know that this reform means that a lot more decisions will be made locally, so there will be, in effect, an English CAP and each of the regions, which were very keen to be able to make decisions, will have power to decide on all four regulations.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The key will be how the reform is implemented in this country. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that the active farmer will remain the main beneficiary, particularly those in the uplands, tenant farmers and commoners whose animals graze on common land?

[Mr Paterson]

Emphatically, yes: I am very happy to confirm to the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that, as we work out the detail of the implementation of the reform in England, our drive will be to ensure that the agricultural sector gains from it. As I made clear in my comments on pillar two, we want to direct this towards rural areas in a way that benefits the rural environment and rural farmers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Tony Baldry]

My concern with the hon. Lady’s approach and the Bat Conservation Trust is that they seem to think that this is an issue that can somehow just be managed. I have to keep on saying to her that this is not an issue that can be managed. Large numbers of churches are being made unusable by large numbers of bats roosting in them. Churches are not field barns; they are places of worship. Following my debate in Westminster Hall, I had a number of letters from clergy up and down the country saying how distressing it was for them, before they could celebrate communion on Sunday, to have to clear bat faeces and bat urine off the altar and the communion table. That is not acceptable.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

May I take this opportunity to thank my hon. Friend the Second Church Estates Commissioner and the Under-Secretary for helping St Hilda’s, Ellerburn? It is a matter of urgency that the congregation can reclaim their church from the bats.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an important point. [Laughter.] This is not a joking matter. This is serious and people have to understand that. I am grateful for the attention paid to this issue by the Under-Secretary. We are making real progress, but we need to ensure that places such as St Hilda’s, Ellerburn can continue to be places of worship and are not closed as a consequence of bat faeces and bat urine.

Common Agricultural Policy

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman is right that it is a long, hard business to reform the CAP. The sadness is that occasionally within negotiations some member states want to turn the clock back, and even to forgo the reforms that have already been accomplished, so I will not pretend anything other than that this is a long, hard process and the advantages and the movement forward that we gain are not always as far and as quick as we would wish them to be.

We want to see an efficient and responsive agricultural sector not just across the EU, but globally, and the CAP should be central to helping us achieve that. It is therefore essential that the CAP continues to reform and to reduce reliance on damaging direct subsidies that do not offer good value for money or deliver the public goods we want. The UK has worked extremely hard to engage with like-minded member states throughout the ongoing negotiations to ensure that the CAP continues on the path of reform, but we know that other member states and elements in the European Parliament are determined to turn the clock back and reverse some of the hard-won reforms of MacSharry and Fischler. We simply cannot allow that to happen.

I will touch on a few of the priority areas that will be the focus of our negotiating efforts over the next week. First, market intervention remains a prime concern. As we all know, the CAP has made great progress over the years in reducing reliance on expensive and trade-distorting measures that interfere with the market and helped to create the butter mountains and wine lakes of the past. I was therefore very disappointed when in March the European Parliament voted through amendments that would move EU agriculture away from market orientation. Those proposals would increase budget pressures for old-style market support. That is not an acceptable use of taxpayers’ money. It hits consumers twice; they pay for their food once through their taxes and again at the tills.

The EU sugar regime, for example, constricts supply in the market and adds costs for British food and drink producers and ultimately for the consumer. The combined effect of EU beet quotas and high tariffs on cane imports means that the current EU regime has driven up the wholesale price of sugar by 35% and added 1% to the food bills of hard-pressed families. Members states had previously agreed to end the restrictive sugar beet production quotas by 2015, but there has been incredible pressure to unpick that agreement. In our compromise in March, we agreed a partial extension of sugar beet quotas to 2017. I am disappointed that Members of the European Parliament voted to extend the quotas further to 2020. That is unacceptable. The situation is compounded by the lack of a level playing field for sugar cane imports, something we are working to change. We need to remain fully committed to moving the CAP in the right direction towards greater market orientation. Nothing must be left to chance. Butter mountains and wine lakes must remain a thing of the past.

I know that many hon. Members have an interest in the proposed greening of the CAP. The Government believe that the CAP should reward farmers for the public goods they deliver, such as environmental benefits and protecting and enhancing wildlife. Pillar two of the CAP is the best place to fund that, which is why at the European Council in February the Prime Minister secured the additional flexibility to be able to transfer up to 15% of our direct payments budget to fund our rural development and environmental programmes.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will be aware of the concerns of the National Farmers Union and a whole alliance of farming organisations in that regard, and not just in north Yorkshire. Bearing in mind that our farmers already commit to many greening policies through stewardship schemes, 15%, or even 11%, would be unacceptably high and would make our farmers uncompetitive.

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[Mr Heath]

I do not accept the issue of competitiveness, but I entirely accept the figures that my right hon. Friend has cited. That is the correct position.

[Miss McIntosh]

The Minister said that only the devolved Administrations will be allowed to tailor their schemes to the needs of their own farmers, but that would be inherently unfair on the English farmer. I hope that he will agree that this is a wonderful opportunity to revisit some of the schemes, because some of the active upland farmers, who are often tenants, have been disadvantaged by the way in which the current schemes operate.

[Mr Heath]

I hope that I have not misled the House in any way on this. We will bring forward our own proposals that will apply to England. I was simply making the point that the devolved Administrations would not have to conform to an English model. They will be able to devise their own schemes that will work best for them.

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[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on giving the House the opportunity to discuss the Committee’s two previous reports on this matter, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). I congratulate the Minister on the position he has reached in the negotiations, and thank my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) for his sterling work in commencing proceedings. I will stick to English, Mr Speaker, tempting as it is to break into French, Danish or Spanish, as I think your strictures on timing would preclude that. I spent a number of months working on the first ever co-decision procedure on road transport as a Member of the European Parliament, and although I am delighted that the democratic arm of the European Parliament is participating in the negotiations, that obviously adds an extra dimension to those negotiations.

I thank hon. colleagues from all sides for the work they have done with me in looking to the next round of common agricultural policy reforms after 2013, and I will dwell for a moment on the background to our current position. I represent a deeply rural constituency—having moved from the Vale of York to Thirsk, Malton and Filey—and a greater upland area than I represented previously, as well as lowland areas. The backdrop of the wettest autumn, with substantial flooding in my constituency and many other parts of the UK, followed by the coldest spring has had a huge impact on the harvest. We are expecting a smaller harvest and I understand that less milk was produced. Most worrying is that the harvest is expected to be down by potentially 30%, and as I understand it, for the first time in 11 years the United Kingdom will be a net importer of wheat.

Against that backdrop of depressed farming incomes, and the implications for food security, I would like to press the Minister on certain issues, particularly the greening of the common agricultural policy. As a number of hon. Members have said, UK farmers already green to a much greater extent and at some cost to themselves. In particular, I draw the attention of the Minister and the House to the position of tenant farmers across this country—not just those in the uplands of northern England—who seem to have a unique position in the European Union. The Committee’s report “Farming in the uplands” stated that the Committee is conscious that the position of tenant farmers is unique to UK agriculture, and that the impact of any reform on that group should not be overlooked by either the Commission or DEFRA. We concluded that tenants—and indeed commoners, many of whom I represent—might be disadvantaged in accessing agri-environment schemes.

The concerns of tenant farmers about some other reform proposals are wider and reflected by the Tenant Farmers Association. Those concerns include that farmers might be disadvantaged by the proposed entitlement scheme, that only those who made a valid claim on at least one hectare of land in 2011 under the existing single payment scheme will be eligible for direct payments under the new regime, and that some landlords may use that to capitalise inappropriately on changes brought under existing tenancies in order to bank land ahead of any new regime. On the other side, the CLA has said that it is not aware of such things, but I hope the Minister will keep the matter under review.

Tenant farmers have also raised concerns about the active farmer proposals on which the Minister might like to update the House. Wildlife trusts, and others, have said that the proposals are potentially unworkable and catastrophic for the management of the land. The costs of administering some of the present schemes for tenant farmers are prohibitively high, with lawyers being retained and up to 30% of the agreement used just to administer the scheme. This debate is therefore a useful opportunity to review the position of tenant farmers under the CAP.

In response to our debate on interventions and a potential transfer from pillar one to pillar two, will the Minister state whether he proposes that the measure will be subject under pillar two to co-financing? I know it is the view of the NFU and others that it should be, but the question that the House must address, and the Minister answer, is whether the Treasury will be prepared to co-finance. We have a comprehensive spending review next week. Will there be money if there is a 13% reduction in the CAP budget?

That is another argument in favour of the status quo. I am slightly arguing against myself, because Filey and other parts of the Thirsk and Malton constituency receive rural development funds through the LEADER programme, which is all to the good—obviously, I am here to help Filey to receive more in that regard. I hope that the Minister will address that. He touched on the 13% reduction in the CAP, but we have let to learn what the reduction in DEFRA’s budget will be.

I have discussed the position of tenants, the weather conditions and the drop in farm incomes, which in turn has food security implications, which I hope the Minister will address, as well as updating us on active farming.

I shall say a few words about ensuring that there is no discrimination against the UK farmer. I understand that Scotland currently receives 16% of the UK pot of money, yet produces less than 12% of the UK’s agricultural output. We need to be aware of that and restore the balance between Scotland and England, particularly for the border regions of Northumbria, Yorkshire and County Durham, which are affected by the imbalance. Decoupled direct support plays a pivotal role, but we should not put further pressure on farmers in England, and there should be no further modulation. Any increase in voluntary modulation from 9% to 15% would be resisted by farmers. Many of the farming organisations have lobbied vigorously in that regard.

The Minister and his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire, argued that there should be no distortions and no negative impact on competitiveness in any switch from direct payments to rural development. I therefore hope that the Minister can conclude that there will be no extra burdens on English farmers from the negotiations.

The proof of the success of CAP reform for the UK farmer will be in the way it is implemented in England. I am conscious of the roles that DEFRA and the Minister play—they both negotiate on behalf of the UK but have specific roles in relation to English farmers. I make a plea from the heart on behalf of those I represent and the wider farming community that our farmers are rewarded for their toil. The House needs to ensure that it sends the message that we intend to continue to be self-sufficient in food and remain a major exporter. A drift towards being dependent on imports is a drift in the wrong direction.

All power to the Minister’s elbow. We will continue to monitor developments extremely closely. The Committee wants to establish a greener, simpler CAP, with emphasis on the simpler, and a CAP that is competitive and provides for farmers and rural communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

I draw the attention of Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

[Miss McIntosh]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I omitted to refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

[Sir James Paice]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I too apologise for forgetting to refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests?

Common Fisheries Policy

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I thank the hon. Lady for her congratulations. I would also like to pass on my congratulations, and those of everyone in the House, to the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) on his happy event.

On exemptions to the discard ban, we believe that the maximum 5% de minimis contains so many caveats that it will be used only in exceptional circumstances: where the discard plans are part of a multi-annual plan; where they are co-decided; and where there is scientific evidence to support them.

In certain fisheries, changes in behaviour can be driven only through a land-all policy, and we were absolutely determined about that: it is the right approach and one that has proved to be a driver for change in other areas. It should not take away, however, from the fact that the industry has made huge strides in reducing discards. Around the coast in all parts of the United Kingdom, there are wonderful stories of leadership from the industry. I want to build on that.

The hon. Lady asked about a maximum sustainable yield. We have committed to imposing one by 2015, where possible, and by 2020 in any event, and I will be very open with the House about our progress on that, but she will understand that it will have to be on an almost annual basis, as we announce our fishing opportunities each year. There is now a firm driver and legally binding commitment to achieve such a yield.

The hon. Lady also talked about marine conservation, which is an absolute priority for us. We have had conversations with France, through the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, because we do not want to look at this issue through the myopia of an English or UK solution; our approach has to be ecologically coherent, which means talking to countries such as France, Ireland and others. A provision in the text allows us to ensure that any conservation measures we introduce beyond the six-nautical-mile limit will have to be obeyed by fishermen from all countries in the EU. That is a big win.

The hon. Lady talked about the needs of the inshore fisheries sector. She will be aware that we have taken steps to improve the fishing opportunity for this sector, and we will continue to do so, although I am wary about this question of 96% and 4%, because the inshore fleet would not be able to access many of the 96% of quotas held by the larger fishing vessels. She is right that there is a disparity, however, and we are trying to address it. I can also provide confirmation about our plans to publish a register of who owns quota and has access to fishing opportunities in this country—I must correct that: they do not own the quota; the country owns the quota. This is a national resource. However, the register of who holds quota will be published by the end of the year.

I entirely agree about the importance of bearing down on illegal, unreported and unregistered fishing. It is vital that we use every tool in the box to stop people fishing illegally. They are stealing fish from legitimate, law-abiding fishermen. Technology is working in our favour, however: through vessel monitoring systems, e-logbooks and a range of other enforcement measures, we can protect honest fishermen and catch and prosecute those who break the law.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on all he has achieved and on the news that the register of quota will be published by the end of the year, which will help under-10s and others in coastal areas. Alarm bells started ringing when he said that legal effect would be given through either European law or national measures. Can he assure the House that where a regional agreement is reached, the Commission will no longer intervene?

[Richard Benyon]

My hon. Friend raises a very good point about regionalisation—and one that detained us a long time as we tried to find a solution. Under the Commission’s original text, which could have had a centralising effect, if the countries around a sea basin—the North sea, for example—failed to agree, the power to decide on the technical measures would have been taken by the Commission. We thought that that was wrong, so we developed—under the leadership of my Department, I have to say—an idea that found its way into the text. Under this provision, a measure becomes law where there is agreement among all the countries fishing a particular sea basin, and where they cannot agree, the matter is determined by co-decision. That is a much better way forward. Throughout these discussions, I have always said, “I would never start from here”. We are trying to improve something that is very, very wrong. We are going to make it halfway right, however, and there is still much more work to do.

Dog Control and Welfare

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

A very warm good afternoon to you, Mr Turner; I welcome you to your place. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I also welcome my hon. Friend the Minister from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). My hon. Friend is not just an hon. Friend but a reasonable man, and I am sure that he will respond warmly and enthusiastically to our debate.

The Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is pleased to have this opportunity to debate the issues addressed in our two recent documents: the report “Dog Control and Welfare” and the draft Dangerous Dogs (Amendment) Bill, which we have tagged on to the report and which encompassed the Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny of draft clauses that now form part of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill.

Dog control and welfare issues have been central for the Select Committee over the past 12 months. Out-of-control dogs are an increasing menace: hospital admissions due to dog attacks doubled from 3,000 in 1997 to more than 6,000 in 2010, and a conservative estimate of the cost to the national health service is approximately £3 million a year.

Not all episodes are reported. I was bitten in a rather tender place at the top of my thigh—I still bear the scar—but I chose not to report the attack, as I was out canvassing and the dog was owned by a Conservative supporter. There are many reasons why people might choose not to report attacks. Dog offences might go under-reported.

Sadly, nine people have been killed since 2007 by dog attacks in the home. Five of those victims were under the age of four. Opposition Members here have had constituency experience of such cases, and I commend how they have represented those who have suffered such losses. Offences relating to dangerous dogs increased by 39% in one year alone—from 855 in 2009 to 1,192 in 2010. As we know, some eight guide dogs a month are attacked by other dogs. We also know that there are countless attacks on other dogs and protected animals, such as cats, horses and livestock. That has huge implications for rural constituencies such as mine, particularly for livestock—there are sheep-worrying incidents at this time of year, for example.

In May 2012, we launched an inquiry on the Government’s policies for tackling irresponsible dog ownership and improving dog welfare, particularly those linked to breeding approaches. I pay tribute to the charities doing work on the issue, including Blue Cross in my constituency and Battersea Dogs Home in London.

We were fortunate to be able to launch our inquiry at Battersea Dogs Home, see at first hand the impact of policies on dog welfare and hear about the impact of poor breeding practices and irresponsible ownership on individuals and communities. A leading charity, Blue Cross, talks at great length about stray dogs and shares the Committee’s concern about the impact of this financial climate, particularly on dog warden services across the UK. A recurring theme throughout our inquiry was resourcing and ensuring that dog wardens have sufficient resources.

I believe that one event leading to the increase in the number of stray dogs on our streets was the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, which transferred the responsibility from the police to local authorities, not all of which see it as ring-fenced and obligatory. That must be tackled.

Sadly, since we launched our inquiry last summer, four more people have lost their lives in dog attacks, including, most recently, the teenager Jade Anderson, who was attacked just before Easter by four dogs in a private home. A pensioner was also attacked in Liverpool last month. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), who represents Jade’s parents, for initiating in May an Adjournment debate on dangerous dogs. I had the opportunity to meet Jade’s parents through her, for which I was grateful. I thank her and the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) for all that they have done to raise the issue in the public domain.

During our inquiry, we were moved to hear from a constituent of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree —the mother of John Paul Massey, another child killed by a dog. He was just four years old when a relative’s pit bull attacked him at his grandparents’ home in 2009. His mother, Angela McGlynn, and the many others from whom we received evidence want urgent Government action to tackle out-of-control dogs.

We reported in February this year, with a number of recommendations for Government on what improvements could be made to the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 and other legislation. The Committee has also had the opportunity to scrutinise draft clauses on dangerous dogs, published as the draft Dangerous Dogs (Amendment) Bill on 9 April. Subsequently, the Government published the measures with the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill on 9 May, and we published our pre-legislative scrutiny report on 16 May.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

I know that all the families affected will welcome this debate. Does the hon. Lady share my concern and regret that the Government, as she outlined, published the Bill before receiving the Select Committee’s response? Does she share my sentiment that that was highly regrettable?

[Miss McIntosh]

I think that the Committee would like to record our disappointment that it took so long to produce the draft legislation yet the Government were unable to wait. As Members will know, the one time when a Select Committee cannot meet is during Prorogation, between the House rising to represent the end of one parliamentary year and it reconvening.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Could the Government make good that slight on the Committee by introducing draft guidance—they have plenty of time—on the provisions introducing not dog control notices but other measures? Then we could see the draft guidance not on Report but in Committee. There is plenty of time and the Committee could give the scrutiny that it has given to the wider range of measures needed.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I am sure that the Minister will have heard his remarks; I hope he will endorse what the hon. Gentleman has said.

We had only eight sitting days to conclude our work. We are grateful to the 40 or so individuals and organisations who sent written evidence on a tight time scale, and to those who gave oral evidence. That demonstrates the importance that many attach to finding better ways to tackle dangerous dogs. In our pre-legislative scrutiny report, we made numerous recommendations for improving the draft Bill, which we now expect the Government to amend. As I said to my hon. Friend the Minister, the Committee stands prepared to table amendments to improve the Bill if we think fit.

We feel that the Bill shows that the Minister has not fully understood the public concern about dangerous dogs, nor have Government policies matched the action required. Our headline findings are that the Government have failed to respond adequately to public concern about dog attacks and poor dog welfare; that legislation must be amended urgently to protect the public from dangerous dogs; that current laws have comprehensively failed to tackle irresponsible dog ownership; and that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs proposals published belatedly in February are too limited.

The evidence we received from DEFRA and the Home Office did little to reassure us that either Department is giving sufficient priority to dog control and welfare issues. The Home Office approach to tackling antisocial behaviour is too simplistic. Indeed, when we were in opposition, the Conservatives felt that antisocial behaviour was not the right vehicle. The legislation fails to reflect the impact that poor breeding and training by irresponsible owners can have on a dog’s behaviour.

We recommended that DEFRA should introduce comprehensive legislation to consolidate the fragmented rules relating to dog control and welfare. New rules should give enforcement officers more effective powers, and our key recommendation is to include dog control notices, such as those already in use in Scotland, to prevent dog-related antisocial behaviour.

We also found that local authorities need to devote more resources to the effective management of stray dogs or else consideration should be given to returning responsibility to the police. We stand by that recommendation. The Committee agreed that all dogs should be microchipped, as much for animal welfare as for controlling dangerous dogs, and that being able to link an animal to its owner was essential to clamp down on irresponsible dog ownership.

On a personal note, may I remind the House that when we had dog licensing—I am sure the Minister will confirm this—only 50% of dog owners bought a dog licence in any one year? The House and the public expect us to bear down on the irresponsible dog owners who did not purchase a licence and who may not microchip.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee for her excellent speech, and I apologise for interrupting it. She mentioned the issue of dog microchipping, which is extremely important to combat many of the problems that she has outlined with dangerous and stray dogs. It is the Government’s current intention to introduce such a measure in 2016. The position in respect of horses is the same, so should it not be possible with modern technology to accelerate the process?

[Miss McIntosh]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. It is important that we get the measure right. The parallel with horse passports is appropriate, but we need to see the guidance and exactly how the programme will be rolled out. Microchipping is an important tool, but it is not the full answer.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for giving way and compliment her on her report. She makes the point that when dogs were supposed to be licensed, only 50% of owners complied with the requirement. The same will be true of microchipping: the responsible owners will carry it out and the irresponsible will not. Does she agree that it should be a serious offence not to have a dog microchipped and that that offence should be subject to punishment?

[Miss McIntosh]

My hon. Friend reinforces the Select Committee’s point that the microchip is a tool but not the whole answer. We fear that we will find out which are the unmicrochipped dogs when they are left abandoned as strays on the street, when it is impossible to bear down on the irresponsible dog owner. Each and every one of us has a role to play if we see dubious breeding activities or dubious behavioural activities in dogs. I hope that goes some way to answering my hon. Friend’s point.

The Committee agreed with the Government’s proposed amendment of the 1991 Act, which makes attacks on private land the same as attacks on public land, and we welcome the fact that that loophole will be closed. It will go some way to reassuring people, such as the parents of Jade Anderson, that such horrendous attacks will not happen in the future. However, we warned that police and prosecutors must distinguish between intruders and those who are lawfully on a person’s property when enforcing the law. That is reflected in the representations we received for today’s debate from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, Blue Cross, Dogs Trust and other such charities.

Having seen the details of how the measure would be enacted, we recommended in our May pre-legislative scrutiny report a number of changes to the proposed clauses. I hope that the Minister will look favourably on the key recommendation that the proposed clauses be amended to enable the exemption from prosecution for someone whose dog attacked an intruder to apply to sheds and other enclosed buildings associated with the home and not just to the main home. That relates to the vexatious argument of curtilage and other appendages. Perhaps he can update us today on that matter.

The Government give assurances that mitigating circumstances for dog attacks in gardens and other open spaces around the home will be taken into account by the courts and enforcement agencies. To safeguard legitimate visitors to a property, such as postal and health workers, we thought it reasonable for the householder exemption from prosecution to apply only to buildings, not to open spaces around the home. The briefing we have had from the Communication Workers Union highlights the staggering number of attacks on postal workers in any one month, and in any one year.

[Luciana Berger]

As the hon. Lady rightly highlights, the CWU makes that point strongly, because of the number of people who have to go to the front door of a property, whether they are a postman or woman, social worker, health visitor or meter reader. In Liverpool just a few weeks ago, Clifford Clarke tragically lost his life when two out-of-control dogs attacked him while he was cooking a barbecue in his garden, so I very much welcome and support the hon. Lady’s comments.

[Miss McIntosh]

The Committee and I welcome what the hon. Lady says. When I visited the Blue Cross home in my own constituency, which looks after stray cats and dogs, I saw how massive a bullmastiff is. It would easily have pushed me over if it had leapt up. It is a worrying issue, especially for those who cannot enjoy the safety of their own home and garden. We need to distinguish between responsible dog owners, who, for example, secure the gates to their back or front garden, and those who are negligent over whether their dog is allowed to cause injury.

We also recommended that the definition of an assistance dog be amended to prevent the erroneous application of the assistance dog measures to dogs that are not genuine assistance dogs. We are pleased that the Government amended the draft clauses to allow the exemption from prosecution for householders whose dog attacks a trespasser to apply whether or not someone was home at the time of the attack.

The Committee believes that the current legislation before the House has gaps and needs to go further. We concluded that the Government’s proposals were insufficient and that a comprehensive overhaul of the legislation is needed, including the consolidation of the several dozen statutes that impinge on the issues, and that remains our view. I am talking about not just the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 but the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 1953 and a whole host of legislation that pertains to that area.

On Second Reading of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill on Monday, there was unanimous support for our recommendation that targeted dog control notices such as those in place in Scotland be introduced to give police and local authorities effective measures to tackle irresponsible dog owners before their dog inflicts harm. It is that preventive measure that is the key to controlling dangerous dogs and potentially dangerous behaviour.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Once again, I commend the Chair of the Select Committee on her contribution. Does she agree that the Government have listened to many of the evolving concerns and have acted to respond to them, but the one remaining thing they need to do is listen to the Committee and not be governed by the directives of the usual channels? Should there be overwhelming consensus on a point such as dog control notices, they should listen and respond accordingly. We are not daft, because we have based our views on what we see in Scotland and elsewhere.

[Miss McIntosh]

I welcome the intervention by the hon. Gentleman; I am tempted to call him my hon. Friend. On a number of issues, this Government have proved that they listen. As I have mentioned, my hon. Friend the Minister is indeed a deeply reasonable man and I am sure that he will pass the test of reasonableness as the Bill goes through. It is, of course, a Home Office piece of legislation, but the clauses that I have referred to relate to DEFRA.

In our pre-legislative scrutiny report, we made a recommendation that a dog attack that injures any protected animal—such as other dogs, cats, horses or livestock—should be deemed an offence. I pay tribute not only to the dog charities but to Cats Protection, which supports this recommendation. It is very important that attacks on other animals—such as other dogs, cats and horses, whose riders might be seriously injured, and especially livestock—should be addressed.

The Committee was also concerned about the provisions under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 that currently ban certain types of dog, regardless of temperament, while excluding other aggressive breeds. In our pre-legislative scrutiny report, we called for a focus on the owner rather than on dog type, given that any dog can cause harm if it has an irresponsible owner—deed rather than breed.

To tackle stray dogs, we need to have a properly resourced dog warden service in all local authority areas. We also need to be aware of the increasing number of aggressive dogs that are being abandoned and of the additional burden on local authorities and dog charities, which are already overstretched. I have mentioned the provisions of the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 that might be leading to more stray dogs coming on to our streets.

On dog breeding, we criticised the Government for doing too little to tackle poor breeding practices. Relying on voluntary action has not delivered sufficient reform, and the Advisory Council on the Welfare Issues of Dog Breeding should be given a formal regulatory role to enforce standards.

[Luciana Berger]

The hon. Lady has been generous in allowing me to make many interventions. On the point about breeding, she might be aware that in recent weeks an online petition has gathered almost 20,000 signatures from people who are urging the Government to look seriously at the issue. The petition specifically wants to ensure that when people buy new pets they should, first and foremost, get them from rescue homes wherever possible and, secondly, not buy them from breeders that separate a new pup from its mother. There is a big campaign, “Where’s Mum?”

[Miss McIntosh]

Indeed. That was one of our conclusions. One hesitates to use the word “bitch”, but in this debate it is appropriate. No puppy should be sold without the mother—the bitch—being present. That is so important, and I pay tribute to those who have done so much to highlight it.

Again, things should be done on the basis of deed not breed. However, we need to look at the ban on certain types of dog in the 1991 Act. That Act has not prevented attacks. There have been ways of “breeding round” the ban, which should be addressed.

We were especially concerned about the poor welfare of puppies and dogs, due to common breeding practices among puppy farmers and some pedigree breeders. Our report calls for any breeder producing more than two litters per year to be licensed and subject to welfare checks; I hope that goes some way to addressing the concerns expressed by the hon. Lady. That simple change could help to prevent irresponsible breeders from producing more animals than they are able to manage effectively, which are then sold on to unsuitable owners for profit.

To sum up, we welcome the extension of legislation to attacks on private property and to attacks on assistance dogs. However, we believe that it is something of a wasted opportunity not to have pursued a fuller, wider, more comprehensive consolidation of all the laws in this area. Also, I urge the Minister to introduce dog control notices and to persuade his colleagues in the Home Office that those are a much better tool than some other measures.

On sentencing, it has been put to me by a constituent that a sentence of two years is insufficient for a fatal dog attack. Death by dangerous driving carries a 14-year prison sentence, whereas death by careless driving carries a five-year prison sentence. Where prosecutions under these new laws on dogs are brought, perhaps somewhere between a five-year and a 14-year jail term would be a more fitting tribute to those loved ones who have been lost rather than the two-year term that is being proposed.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

As with driving offences, we must differentiate between those people who are deliberately setting their dogs on other people and deliberately training their dogs to be vicious and to be attack dogs, and those who have not cared for their dog appropriately, with the result that the dog becomes vicious. Two years in jail is inadequate, as the hon. Lady said, particularly for those people who have deliberately set out to use their dog as a weapon.

[Miss McIntosh]

Indeed. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for those comments. I do not know if that was what the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ogmore, had in mind when he said that the guidance should be published. However, it is obviously for the Sentencing Council to direct what the sentence should be. Nevertheless, I hope that the message will go out from the House today that we are united in our concern in this regard, and that the sentence should be appropriate for what is judged to be effectively a new crime.

To conclude on sentencing, I refer to our concern about resources in relation to local authorities. There should be dog wardens in each area. Also, the police should be properly funded and resourced with a tool more akin to a dog control notice, which we know already works successfully in one part—Scotland—of the United Kingdom.

I will conclude by saying that action is urgently needed on these key issues. Clearly, there is a balance to be struck between the freedoms of responsible dog owners—I wish to record that the vast majority of dog owners in this country are indeed responsible—to enjoy their pets, and the need to protect the public from those who are not responsible and who do not control their dogs responsibly. The welfare of dogs, other animals and local communities must be protected from the actions of irresponsible dog owners. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to rehearse these arguments, and I urge the Government to act on the Committee’s recommendations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling]

I agree. My hon. Friend raises some important points.

The dog control notice could say, “Keep that dog on a lead”, “Keep it muzzled”, or “Keep it away from children”. I hope that it would state, where necessary, that the dog owner needed to reduce the number of dogs in the household, because the home was not suitable for them. A range of actions could be taken.

We still cannot talk about Jade’s case in detail, but the one complaint we know of was about noise. Had a properly trained person who understood dogs been able to go round at that point, perhaps action could have been taken. I would be the last to say that action could have saved Jade, but the fact that we do not take action at all, apart from saying, “Keep your dogs quiet”, means that we are liable to have more and more of those terrible attacks and tragedies.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am a little concerned that in the debate about dog control notices, which, for the reasons the hon. Lady has given, are specific to a particular dog owner and dog, we will lose the argument because of that business of a dog being muzzled. The dog does not need to be muzzled all the time. It is important to show that we are being reasonable in what we ask.

[Julie Hilling]

Absolutely. I agree that people may be concerned that it is cruel to keep a dog muzzled. However, that is only in specific situations and with specific instructions about what to do with a specific animal. There is also concern that the proposed legislation will get rid of dog control orders as well. Such an order is a good, simple mechanism whereby local authorities can introduce exclusion orders in parks orders about clearing up after dog fouling, orders about keeping dogs on leads in particular areas and orders about people having to put their dog on a lead, if instructed to do so by a responsible person. I am concerned that, again, we may lose those measures in a much larger piece of legislation that does not allow such detail.

I agree with the hon. Lady that we should extend this welcome legislation to other protected animals, including assistance dogs. I see no reason why it should not be extended to other protected animals. If someone’s dog, or other animal, is attacked while they are behaving responsibly, they have to face all the trauma and expense of an injured animal. One indicator of a dog being dangerously out of control is that it attacks other animals. We should take account of that and extend the legislation.

I agree with what has been said about breeding. A dog is much like a child, in that it needs to be properly educated and know its place in the hierarchy. It needs a proper beginning in life, and should not be taken away from its mother too soon. I appreciate that there is now consensus that people breeding more than two litters a year should be registered, but I was interested to hear the comment from the ex-chief vet of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who believes that anyone who breeds a litter should have their dog registered, even if it is an accidental breeding. That is his personal view, not the RSPCA’s.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss McIntosh]

To put the hon. Gentleman’s mind at rest, I can tell him that when we looked at the issue in our second bite of the cherry, we focused much more, as I and hon. Members have said this afternoon, on the deed rather than the breed, for the simple reason that people can breed round a particular breed, so we would only be creating another loophole.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I welcome that intervention, and the fact that the Committee’s thinking has evolved based on more evidence. That is the right approach. We should explore such things to get the right evidence-based policy outcomes.

I want to spend a little time on the detail in dog control notices. The other day, I pointed out on the Floor of the House that we are not convinced by the Government’s explanations why dog control notices are not necessary and will not work. I will go through some of the reasons. Neither the Secretary of State for the Home Department nor her Minister could respond in detail to some of my questions, but my point was that they need a pretty compelling case why the Government’s approach is better than the one everybody else has lined up behind—all the organisations I spoke about. Everybody is arguing against it on the basis of not only what the Scottish Government have done, but the other examples of similar animal welfare measures that are used effectively in England already, and to which I alluded in the debate the other day.

We will have to test the measure to the point of destruction in Committee and test the Government on why they are sticking with it. We will try to persuade the Government of the arguments and persuade them to go further, and I shall explain why. We are far from being convinced that the Government’s proposals based around community protection notices and public space protection orders will deal with the individual circumstances of problem dogs and problem owners, rather than tackling all dogs and all owners in an area, district or region and so on, or that the proposals can be individualised to allow for early intervention.

We need to see that the proposals can be personalised and individualised, including aspects such as an individual dog needing to be muzzled in certain circumstances, a fence around a garden being maintained to an adequate condition, an owner being sent on a training course, a dog being neutered or restrictions placed on off-lead activity. We will be testing all those things.

We also need to see that the response before there is an attack and public safety is compromised is flexible and proportionate, so that the proposal does what all the organisations have been asking for: protects public safety and the dog’s welfare, rather than steps in afterwards. We are trying to get at the owners who are repeatedly termed “irresponsible”, which could be for a number of reasons, such as ignorance, lack of awareness or general malicious intent. We need to go towards them and their dogs, rather than having a blunderbuss approach.

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[Mr Heath]

Lord de Mauley has certainly been working closely with others, including the devolved Administrations, but particularly with the Home Office. There is a shared responsibility with the Home Office, and it is important that we speak with one voice, and come to the same conclusions. I assure the hon. Gentleman that such liaison has happened.

A Bill is before the House that will enact parts of our response to the undoubted issue raised by hon. Members, on which some have campaigned for a long time. I welcome the support that the Committee has been able to give to the Government’s position. There are several aspects of the matter on which we have gone further than was perhaps originally intended, in recognition of the strength of the Committee’s arguments. There are some areas on which we still do not have 100% agreement, and I shall deal with those.

The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which amends the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, had its Second Reading on Monday, and there was an excellent debate. The House broadly endorsed the Government’s approach. The Bill includes provisions that will extend the 1991 Act to all places, including private property. It provides legislative backing for the police and Crown Prosecution Service to pursue prosecutions for attacks on private property. That will reassure victims and their families that the law is on their side. I hope that once the Bill is passed the circumstances that the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) is all too familiar with, and which she spoke about forcefully in the House, will never again arise.

The Bill for the first time incorporates an aggravated offence, under the 1991 Act, of an attack on an assistance dog, recognising the terrible consequences of such an attack. That is important: an assistance dog is almost an extension of the person with whom it works. It is part of that person’s being, and an attack on a guide dog or hearing dog makes a huge difference to their life. It is right to clarify and extend the law in that way.

The Bill will also clarify the fact that courts should consider the character of the owner when taking decisions about dogs of prohibited types, and dangerously out-of-control dogs. That point was raised by several hon. Members: it is not the breed, but what the individual dog is doing, that is important. There is no breed that cannot be dangerous in the hands of an irresponsible owner. Sometimes that fact is taken to considerable lengths, because there are people—a very small number—who deliberately have dogs that they use as weapons, to intimidate and on occasion actually cause hurt to another person.

That leads me to a point raised by the hon. Member for Bolton West: new legislation is not needed to deal effectively with a dog being deliberately set on a person to injure them. It would be covered by the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, and the maximum penalty would be life imprisonment. The question of the appropriateness of the maximum fine level does not apply: the law treats such action as a very serious offence, and the prosecuting authorities have the capacity to deal with it.

The Bill would also provide the police with discretion to use the civil route in cases involving prohibited types of dog, with improved welfare, reduced kennel time and police savings in time and money. It would provide comprehensive powers for the authorities to take preventive action to stop dog attacks and nip issues in the bud, through, for example, a community protection notice.

That issue was raised by many hon. Members in the debate, and we need to discuss the fundamental question whether our proposed measures in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill treat the same issue and have the same rigour as the so-called dog control notices that many advocate. My answer is that they do. In fact, they are an even more flexible tool.

I accept, however, that we need to substantiate that position and satisfy people’s concerns. One thing I would say to everyone involved in the debate is, “Please let us not get hung up on the label of dog control notices.” It is profoundly unhelpful to the debate about providing protection if the only thing people are arguing for is something with that name, rather than something that does what they want to see done. That is my first point.

Secondly, many people have pointed with approbation to what is available in Scotland, saying, “That is the answer. Why on earth are the UK Government so stupid or obstinate as not to follow the Scottish route?” Of course I respect what the Scottish Government do and the measures they introduce, but we need carefully and critically to consider whether the dog control notice legislation in Scotland achieves the objectives it was set. There is some evidence from Scottish local authorities that the notices are not working as well as hon. Members would believe—if, indeed, they believed everything that was sent to them.

At the 21 May meeting of the cross-party group on animal welfare in Edinburgh, Scottish local authorities expressed a number of concerns, which highlighted the ongoing problems with the dog control notice—or DCN—system. The meeting was also attended by a number of dog welfare organisations from across the UK, and a series of detailed problems were identified.

A dog control notice in Scotland must be served by two officers, and any breach needs corroborated evidence from two officers to pursue a case, which is a limiting factor in bringing successful conclusions. A person who is served a dog control notice must attend the council offices, or two officers must visit their home, so it is hardly the on-the-spot mechanism that some have suggested it is. A dog has to have been out of control on at least one occasion before a DCN can be served, so the measure does not nip the issue in the bud. Since some people have strongly advocated that we need to be able to identify the problem before it happens, I am not sure that the notices satisfy that test.

Another problem is that the police in Scotland have no powers to serve DCNs; only local authorities do. Importantly, there is no requirement for a dog owner to advise their local authority if they re-home a dog with another owner, or to inform it of the new owner’s address. A potentially dangerous dog, therefore, can easily appear in a different local authority area with absolutely no recourse.

We need to make clear what the DCNs in Scotland do that we do not and, likewise, what we can offer that DCNs do not. When we have done that critical comparison, I hope that hon. Members will take a view as to whether we are working on the right lines. I perfectly understand the concerns, but I ask people to treat the arguments with the necessary respect and care, rather than simply adopting the slogan that this is the only possible solution to the problem.

[Miss McIntosh]

I should declare that I am a Scottish advocate, albeit non-practising. I am aware of the criticism that the dog control notices in Scotland are labour and resource-intensive, but I think that the Minister has just walked into a situation where he has given very good grounds for the dog control notice legislation to be reviewed, to allow the police to administer the notices.

I do not think, however, that the Minister has answered the question about prevention that has been put by a number of hon. Members. Although there has to have been one incident, I think that the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) said correctly that it has to be a proven incident and not just a malicious report. I think that the Minister has just made the case for a review of dog control notices, and I do not see in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill anything that comes close to a preventive measure.

[Mr Heath]

That is where we need detailed and careful examination of the proposals. I accept the point that the hon. Member for Ogmore made—that part of that process will be to consider the guidelines—but I cannot give him an absolute commitment that the guidelines will be ready for Committee. I wish I could, but there is a very good reason why I cannot: we are working carefully through the issues, with the various dog welfare interests, the police, the local authority associations and everyone with a professional interest in the matter, so that we get the guidance and the compass of the notices right, and the hon. Gentleman’s demands are met.

I do not want to speak out of turn or put words into the mouths of other organisations—that would be inappropriate—but we have generally found that when we have been able to explain the benefits to interested organisations, and have done a “compare and contrast” between what they hope could be achieved through dog control notices and what we believe we can achieve through the new orders, they acknowledge the facts.

I hope that hon. Members do not see this as patronising, because that is not my intention, but there is sometimes a lag between what hon. Members are aware of as concerns and the solutions to those concerns. I hope that there will be a catching-up regarding the briefings that some people have received—from the Local Government Association, for instance, which now welcomes the antisocial behaviour measures and accepts that they will enable local authorities to do a lot for dogs.

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[Miss McIntosh]

With the leave of the House, I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Brady. I thank the Liaison Committee for allowing us to debate the two reports, including the Government response, and all who contributed. I give special thanks to the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) who has carefully followed the debate all afternoon and who makes a major contribution to the work of the Committee. I also want to thank all colleagues on the Committee for cramming in the work in such a short time. There will be disappointment, not least among charities and practitioners, that the Minister has repeated that there will not be consolidation of the legislation.

I want to dwell on two or three points in our report. The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) and especially the Minister gave bravura performances, summing up all the points that have been raised. There is an issue about the definition of curtilage of a dwelling or ancillary buildings, but that is something that we can consider during the passage of the Bill. When a dog is a danger to public safety, we would like to see clear guidance on the test to determine

“whether someone is fit and proper to own or keep a dog, as well as to how the temperament of the dog is to be assessed. Those advising the courts must be required to have appropriate training in dog behaviour.”

I echo the points about resources and proper sentencing.

Dog control notices, or whatever we call them, must reassure the public that some up-front savings will be made by managing out-of-control dogs in a much more appropriate way in England, and that savings will be recouped from the police, local authorities, the health service and individuals in the community if dog attacks are reduced. Finally, let me reiterate that we concluded in our second report that it is not helpful for policy to focus on the breed type, as any dog may become aggressive in the hands of an irresponsible dog owner.

Question put and agreed to.