Environment Bill Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateBarry Gardiner
Main Page: Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent West)Department Debates - View all Barry Gardiner's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(3 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberIt is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I am very proud of the Government’s leadership on the environment. I commend the Minister for all the work she has done so far.
Madam Deputy Speaker, you would not think that my constituency of West Dorset has the worst place for air pollution in the entire country, but environmental issues affect us all. The village of Chideock, between Bridport and Lyme Regis, has the highest levels of nitrogen dioxide in the entire country from traffic on the A35. The pollution is more than double the Government limit. This issue is not new—it has been ongoing for years—but urgent cross-departmental action is required, and I would welcome the Minister’s assurance that she will look at this issue in Chideock as a matter of priority with the new powers the Bill will provide.
Plastic was once seen as the saviour of the rainforests, but it has become the scourge of the sea. Half of all plastics ever made have been produced in the past 15 years. Less than a third of plastic in Britain is recycled, and British supermarkets still produce 114 billion items of single-use plastic. Those supermarkets are devoid of real environmental responsibility for plastic packaging once it leaves their stores, which is contributing to an environmental disaster.
Greenpeace has just released its “Checking Out on Plastics III” report, which ranks the UK’s biggest supermarkets on their plastics credentials, and is recommended reading. A reader will find out, for example, that on a per market share basis, Tesco’s total plastic use has increased by 2.2% between 2017 and 2019. It is for this reason that I have tabled new clause 11, which would require the Government to set specific targets and reduce the volume of non-essential single-use plastic products sold by a designated date. This amendment is intended to work alongside the measures already set out in this Bill, to complement the Government’s ambitions to end this systemic over-production and over-consumption of polluting plastics.
I have greatly appreciated working with the West Dorset Environmental Alliance, a brilliant local group providing much-needed insights and momentum. I am also grateful for the support from the Conservative Environment Network and Friends of the Earth. This Bill is key to achieving a green future. It will unleash our nation’s potential to make our environment better for us all.
I am pleased to support the amendments in the name of the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas).
The Government said they had a desire to have a “world-leading watchdog”. I wonder whether there was a misprint and it should have said a “world-leading lapdog”. Do they really mean it? I was on the hearing that met Dame Glenys Stacey, and she is a robust regulator, with a proven record of independence, and I trust her. The Secretary of State should set the criteria and the parameters that he expects the Office for Environmental Protection to work to, but he should then leave it to the regulator to regulate. Dame Glenys, I believe, has been appointed as the right person, so let her do the job without further interference. Let her also have the benefit of interim targets, because for someone regulating, targets can be really helpful. I listened to the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and he is absolutely right. We need interim targets to be able to hold people to account, but also to be able to incentivise businesses and give them clarity about what they have to achieve.
When we are talking about enforcement, it is perhaps salutary if I remind colleagues of those who were there when, as chair of the then all-party group on biodiversity, I worked with Friends of the Earth to organise a photo opportunity for colleagues who came to support ensuring there was no relaxation of the ban on neonicotinoids. It was incredibly well supported: over 100 Members of Parliament came to support that campaign, and I have the photos to prove it. So for those Members who go into the Lobby tonight saying they will support the Government on lifting the ban, perhaps we, with Friends of the Earth, should dig out those photographs and start publishing them one by one to show just how much Members meant it when they had their photograph taken with that bee.
On deforestation, the Government are saying that there should be an imposition on companies to look at the legality of the sourcing of their materials, such as soy and timber. Legality is not enough. Yesterday I met a number of people representing the Brazilian interests as well as the commercial interests, and it is clear that what has happened already in Brazil is that the laws have been reduced because of the pressure. Companies must be asked to look at the sustainability of their supply chain, not just the legality of it.
The Office for Environmental Protection concerns me greatly, because I think it is going to offer us very little protection. Its powers include the terrifying capacity to point out that the Government have failed to safeguard environmental protections or to maintain standards, but it cannot force the Government to comply, it cannot fine and it cannot prosecute. It can shame the Government, but if I could be so flippant, Madam Deputy Speaker, this appears to be a Government who know no shame, as demonstrated by the last-minute decision to delay this already criminally overdue Bill by maybe six months or more.
This is outrageous, but the Government will tough it out and will probably bear no consequences for doing so. However, there will be huge consequences for our environment, for biodiversity, for future generations and, indeed, for farmers and food producers. No formal regulation over these months and pretty much toothless enforcement thereafter will mean the steady erosion of animal welfare and environmental protections just, as it happens, as the Government are engaging in negotiating trade deals around the world. Some might consider this to be a rather convenient hiatus that will allow them to throw British farming under a bus once again. Farmers will lose the ability to look at our regulation as something that they can use to strengthen their hand when it comes to those negotiations. The undermining of our land management community—of our farmers—is a massive threat to our environment. Without them, we lose the practical capacity to deliver biodiversity gains.
The UK creates the second highest amount of electronic waste in the world, and we export 40% of that waste to other countries, most of them developing nations. How crazy is that, when that waste contains the rare earth metals and the other valuable metals that we need for our wind turbines, our mobile phone batteries and our car batteries? It is insanity. That is why I support new clause 8, which aims to ensure that the Secretary of State implements the waste hierarchy with specific emphasis on waste prevention, rather than simply waste management.
I turn to amendment 24. Since 2007, the REACH directive has provided a database to assess the risk of more than 21,000 chemical substances in the UK, and it obliges manufacturers to manage the risk of dangerous chemicals. This amendment is very simple. It means that there is a risk that the UK could become a dumping ground for hazardous chemicals unless we maintain the same standards that we had previously.
While talking about risk, let me turn to air quality. We have got used to understanding risk much better with covid and the statistics that we have seen every night on our television screens, but let us imagine if, on our television screens every night, we saw that in many areas of our country, one in 19 deaths can be linked to poor air quality—to air pollution. That is the level of risk. I tend to agree with what the hon. Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) said about new clause 6: what difference will it make for the Secretary of State to report to Parliament once a year, given that the Government were not prepared to meet the legal obligation by 2015 and had to be taken to the Supreme Court twice? But perhaps we should at least try.
This whole Bill is about our 25-year environment plan and leaving our environment in a better state than we inherited it. That means that we have to understand the whole nexus of connections that exist. That is why the Dasgupta report coming out later this month on the economics of biodiversity and the value of natural capital is so vital, to understand that we must balance the burden of costs that each part of society pays for our public goods.
It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) in this important debate. Hundreds of residents from Pontypridd and across Rhondda Cynon Taff have contacted me over the last few weeks urging me to speak up today, and I know that people’s passion for the environment is certainly not limited to the south Wales valleys. I will, however, take this opportunity to mention the fantastic work that Friends of the Earth Pontypridd does to raise awareness of environmental issues; long may its work continue.
On a personal note, I am the very proud co-chair of the all-party group on water, and I sincerely hope, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you will indulge me the brief opportunity to invite and encourage Members across the House to join the all-party group today. We are always open to new members.
Members may not be aware, but my love for all things water began long before I became a Member of this House, as I was previously an employee of Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water, the not-for-profit water company. Through my work, I have seen at first hand the impact of waste on our environment and also the benefits of investing in our infrastructure to ensure that we have a fit-for-purpose waste water network, both now and into the future. It is because of this that I would like to place on record my support for new clause 10, tabled in the name of my friend, the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden). Items may be marketed as flushable, but I can assure Members that disposable nappies, wet wipes and all manner of items flushed down toilets can cause utter devastation to people’s homes and our environment.
This Environment Bill is very welcome as it could make real change that could improve our ecology both now and for future generations. I represent a constituency that was decimated by flooding nearly a year ago. Storms Jorge, Dennis, and Ciara devastated businesses in Pontypridd and they are still trying to recover. This highlights the urgency of the climate emergency that the planet is in. We can build all the flood defences possible, but unless we seek to tackle the root causes of climate change, then they will be the equivalent of King Canute trying simply to hold back the tide.
It seems quite obvious to me that the protections for our environment should be included in legislation. While I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill today, I believe that, in its current form, there are some alarming gaps. The Bill does not go far enough to replace the EU’s environmental protections, and, in its current form, the Bill allows the Secretary of State far too much discretion in changing certain environmental benchmarks or targets. That is why I am encouraged by new clause 8, tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones), who is a very good friend. As previously mentioned by others, this clause would ensure that the Secretary of State has a specific responsibility to take into account the requirements of the waste hierarchy. Additionally, this clause prioritises the importance of waste prevention—a move that we should all be unanimously in support of.
I would hate for this Government to apply the same approach to some of the amendments today intended to improve our environmental protections and I hope to see cross-party support for this amendment. I urge Members across the House to support the amendments, because we must act now before is too late.