Environment Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

I would just like to get clarification on this. Since it is now so difficult to table an amendment at Third Reading, it needs my noble friend to say that he would consider it before Third Reading. As I understand it, that would allow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, to bring it back at Third Reading. If my noble friend is point blank saying that he will not even consider it, then the noble Lord has no alternative but to divide the House.

As I said, I like subsection (1) of the proposed new clause but not the rest of the amendment, which puts me and indeed quite a lot of us on the Benches behind my noble friend in an extremely difficult position. I think it is essential, as my noble friend Lord Deben said, that we get subsection (1), but we would have to vote for the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in order to get it into the Bill.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

Could I summarise what I think I have heard the noble Lord say?

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid the noble Baroness cannot summarise. The rules in the Companion are quite clear that interruptions on Report are solely for points of clarification. I think we should let the Minister move on with this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)]

My Lords, I added my name to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and I was pleased to do so because I, like others who have spoken, realise the importance of soil. In fact, I doubt that there is anyone in this Chamber today who does not appreciate that.

The question is whether we should put this where it is on the face of the Bill. As has already been said, my noble friend Lord Caithness’s amendment about a soil strategy will come later. I am very taken with the idea of putting this in the Bill. However, I have one note of caution. The next amendment, which I will speak to, will put in something else that I think is a priority, and I dare say that there are plenty of, or quite a few, others that people could put forward as priorities—we have our own pet subjects. I really want to hear from my noble friend the Minister—I know that he believes in this—what Defra and the Government are taking seriously about this and how they will deal with it. This may not be the way to put it forward in the Bill, but at the moment it seems like the best way. I am very taken with my noble friend Lord Caithness’s amendment that we will come to later, which might be a better alternative. That said, I shall listen to what my noble friend says.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I urge the noble Lord, Lord Randall, to be of good cheer and believe that this is the solution—because it seems to me that we have heard, from many noble Lords of high esteem, just how important soil is as a fundamental part of the environment. Indeed, two of the Government’s priorities in Clause 1(3), “water” and “biodiversity”, are crucially dependent on soils, apart from anything else. It is true to say that, as well as very many noble Lords being able to lay down the case very clearly for soil being part of the Government’s priority list, the Government themselves have said that: in their 25-year environment plan, they mentioned soil quality 17 times, so it does not seem to me to beyond the wit of man to believe that that looks like a bit of a priority and probably ought to be in this list.

I know that, in Committee, the Minister said that the science will not let us measure soil health, but there has been research on soil quality for the last 50 years, and lots of measures have been put forward as indicators of soil health, ranging from microbes to organic matter to earthworms. The Government just need to make a stab at a basket of indicators and get on with measuring and incentivising improvement.

Although I have banged on for many years about government needing to incentivise people to produce outcomes, in this particular case I want to recant from that and ask for the reverse practice, which is to incentivise practices that have a proven effect for good on soil health. If we can get farmers, land managers and others who have an impact on the soil to do the right things, good soil quality will result.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, talked about a few of those things, such as minimum tillage, crop rotations, applications of manures and composts, use of cover crops and effective management of field margins. If farmers and land managers were incentivised to do all of those, we would be almost absolutely guaranteed to be improving the health of the soil. As such, I urge the Minister: soil health is too important to say, “It is too difficult” and to leave it out of the Government’s priority list.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Randall for pointing out that my Amendment 18 is coming up, complementing this amendment in that it asks the Government to “prepare a soil … strategy”. No one could have put it better than the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, just now, and much of what she said is reflected in the wording that I have in Amendment 18, which we shall come to.

However, the Government must include plans for the integration of soil management with environmental objectives, such as climate mitigation, flood-risk minimisation, water-quality measures and policies relating to food production. All of this is so integrated that, unless one has a comprehensive approach to it, one will fail. In my view, it is very sad that the Government have got policies for air and water but no statutory policy for soil. My Amendment 18, which I will not speak to at length because I am speaking to this amendment, is equally as important as this amendment.

My noble friend Lord Deben mentioned that soil is a great sequestrator of carbon. Indeed it is, but saying “soil” is like saying “fruit”—there are so many different types of soil that a different approach will have to be taken on most farms, probably, because the soil varies so much. Some of the sandy soils are not terribly good sequestrators; they could be made much better with improved farm management, but, if you have a heavy clay soil, you have an inbuilt advantage for sequestration from day 1.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said how little Defra spent on soil. It is rather frightening that only 0.4% of the environmental budget is spent on soil—that is a catastrophically low amount of money, which is why this amendment is so important and why my Amendment 18 is equally important. The whole question of soil and research needs much more expenditure and we need to be clearer on it, but let us have one basic fact in mind: about 25% of our biodiversity is in our soil. That is why we need to get this amendment—and mine —in the Bill.