Hunting

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sir Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Mundell. I say gently to the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who I know has a very kind heart, that if she got what she wanted, anywhere between 9,000 and 18,000 hounds would be put down. I hope she will reconsider her thoughts on that basis.

I remember when the Hunting Act 2004 was passed, which banned intentional hunting of mammals with dogs. I was a teller, and I was in the Chamber when Tony Banks decided to amend Alun Michael’s Bill, which would have licensed hunting. Banks wanted a total ban, and the Secretary of State climbed along the Back Benches to where he was sitting, which was right in the middle of the Chamber. On seeing this, Nicholas Soames called on the Speaker to protect the hon. Gentleman. Banks replied that he could look after himself. As a result, he pressed his amendment, and we got the ban on intentional hunting. That was the conclusion of hundreds of hours of debate, amendments and emotion, and we ended up with an Act that the Government promised not to revisit. Despite not hunting myself, I would like the opportunity to repeal that Act. However, I accept that the Government have promised not to touch it in this Parliament.

Trail hunting or drag hunting is where an artificial scent is laid down for hounds to follow. It is usually a rag dipped in scent, often aniseed, and it is an entirely legal alternative to hunting. It is overwhelmingly practised in this way throughout the country. There are, as I think the hon. Member for York Central mentioned, 300 packs of hounds in this country, some of which are in my constituency. With the owner’s permission, they follow a drag or trail over land and feed their hounds on fallen livestock—calves that are born dead or cows that die—which is a tremendous help to farmers, who face bills for the removal of their fallen stock at a time when margins are tight.

The debate encompasses two separate petitions. The first calls on Forestry England to stop granting licences for fox and hare hunts. Over the most recent hunting season, it is reported that Forestry England granted 34 licences for trail hunts. The tsunami of lawbreaking that the petition suggests does not appear to have taken place. The petition states:

“Despite hunting wild mammals with dogs being illegal, two of the licensed/previously licensed trail hunts have been associated with convictions under the Hunting and Animal Welfare Acts.”

Being “associated with” seems a bit thin. However, there is another issue with that assertion: no fox and hare hunts are licensed by Forestry England. The only hunting that is licensed is trail hunting. Furthermore, no licensed hunt has ever been convicted of a Hunting Act offence while operating on Forestry England’s land. The premise of the petition is therefore misleading. Good people have been encouraged to sign something that is deliberately designed to mislead them.

The petition harks back to the awful, bigoted, hate-filled nature of the debate on hunting, which always comes back to class war. It may be triggered by people feeling that they are being looked down on by people sitting on horses—I do not know. It is constantly fed with inflammatory stories that are designed to upset kind-hearted, generous animal owners so that they fund nasty and sinister groups.

Forestry England is a public body with the freedom to decide what activity takes place on its land. It can rightly suspend or stop events if illegal activity takes place, meaning that decisions are left in the hands of those who can decide the correct course of action on a case-by-case basis, instead of political activists. Once again, we see pressure being brought to bear or bullying. In reality, it is just another attack on rural people.

The second petition relates to Mini’s law. This is a very sad case. Last year, a domestic cat named Mini was killed by dogs in a residential area. Even the most malicious campaigner is not claiming that that was deliberate. It was an accident—deeply regrettable, but an accident. The petition states that such an incident is reported once every two weeks, as the hon. Member for York Central mentioned. However, the anti-hunting group Keep The Ban, which is endorsed by the League Against Cruel Sports, suggests that in 2019, there were actually 29 incidents—not one every two weeks. Once again, good people are being misled in order to feed prejudices and anger, which is bad for everyone.

Happily, there are 12 million domestic cats in this country. Some 27% of households own one. Cats Matter, a feline campaign group, estimates that, sadly, 230,000 cats are killed each year by car alone, as are hundreds of thousands of foxes—not to mention the cats killed each year by dogs. On the premise of the petition, should we also ban cars and dogs? Of course not. There must be balance when addressing this emotive topic but, sadly, that is rarely the case.

The lobby groups and saboteurs that feed off the subject would have people believe that every hunt and every pack of hounds are lawbreakers. That is wrong. As with any lawful activity, it is possible to break the law. Offences that do take place are prosecuted accordingly. The possibility of lawbreaking is not used as a reason to prohibit other lawful activities. Therefore petitions such as these need to be rejected.

Each year, thousands of people attend Boxing day meets such as the one in Ledbury. It is a tradition that has been going on longer than records show. However, last Christmas, the local town council came under pressure to try to ban the meeting in the centre of town. Thankfully, a vociferous majority came out in defence of the meet.

Hunting is about liberty and livelihood for rural people. It is a chance to meet and enjoy traditions passed down through generations. The class warriors are out of date. They choose to mislead and spin. What better proof is there that they are wrong? We must continue to support the rule of law and not be bullied by those who find the truth inconvenient.

Badger Culling

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sir Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on securing this debate on behalf of the petitioners. I took one of his sentences to heart, which was that we should at all times avoid a “slow, painful death”. I quite agree with him on that.

I would also pick up the point my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) made about tuberculosis. This whole debate started with tuberculosis in human beings, and it is helpful for people to be aware that there are 10 million cases of human TB annually around the world and that 1.5 million people died of TB in 2020. This disease is a killer.

I then listened to the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), who talked about his pet, Dennis and said that it was lucky he could not bring his pet here. At that point, I felt that I should share with this august body the death of my pet on Thursday. His name was Free Fallin’, after the Tom Petty song. He weighed about 1.25 tonnes. He was the best bull in the UK for estimated breeding values—or certainly one of the best. I am not going to cry or anything, but it is upsetting. I lent my bull to a friend who is serving abroad with the Army. His neighbours got TB and it soon spread to my friend’s herd. He could not have artificially inseminated his cattle, because he was not here. Unfortunately, the TB spread to my bull. The Government rightly insist that any animal coming back to a farm from another should be tested, so I insisted that before my bull left he be tested. He failed. I think he is still alive, but he will not be for much longer. It is really upsetting. That was the first time it happened to me.

When we talk about our pets, it is helpful to recognise that as owners we have a responsibility to our animals. If they get a fatal disease—which tuberculosis certainly is—we have to do the right thing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley said, no animal should have a “slow, painful death”, be it a cow, badger, deer or sheep. We must do the right thing by our pets, whatever they are. The right thing is to put them out of their misery before they suffer. I am sure the hon. Member for Weaver Vale would do the same if his badger were ill with an incurable, fatal disease.

In this debate, the emotions escape from the realities. Every year, around 30,000 cattle and about 24,000 badgers are culled in the high-risk, high-infection areas. Last year, 28,000 cattle were culled, of which 1,400 were in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The last Labour Government were reluctant to use gassing, but recognised that sick creatures need to be put down, out of their misery, and that the spread of TB could not be halted without some form of culling. Shooting by qualified marksmen was deemed by the last Government to be the most humane option. The alternative was gassing, and I do not think that anybody would like us to go there. I support the Government’s 25-year eradication strategy and their goal to be free of TB by 2038, but I would like it to be sooner.

The Government must learn lessons from the covid-19 pandemic. There are valuable lessons to be learned in how we deal with TB. We cannot beat this bacteria. It is not a virus; it does not respond as well to vaccinations as viruses do. We will not beat it unless the R number is below 1. We have all learned this from watching TV the last couple of years. Work is being done to approve the proposed deployable vaccine, with field trials starting soon. That is nice, but we have been talking about this for years. When is this vaccine going to be rolled out? With covid, we did not unlock until the vast majority of the population was protected. Stopping the cull now, before the necessary protections are in place, would be counterproductive, irresponsible and impossible to justify.

The evidence shows that the cull is working. My constituency is in a high-risk area for TB. It received its first licence to cull in 2015, and 80.5% of the land in the county is now covered by licences. That is funded and supported by local farmers—not by DEFRA or the civil service or the taxpayer. It is funded by local farmers who think this is the right thing to do because of the point I made earlier that animals, whether badgers or cattle, must not be allowed to suffer from this disease.

Data shows confirmed breakdowns to be the lowest they have been in the county since 2006. Importantly, fewer animals are being slaughtered—down from a high of 3,505 in 2005 to 1,341 last year. This shows that the cull is working—it is not necessarily helpful to people who love badgers, but it does work. It also stops illegal culling. That is critical for perturbation, which is when badgers are frightened and so leave their traditional areas. If they are infected, they spread that disease to healthy badger populations. The healthy badger populations on the eastern side of the UK need to be protected, just as much as healthy cattle. The evidence from Somerset and Gloucester shows, respectively, falls in disease of 37% and 66%, so this works.

The whole House agrees that TB needs to be eradicated, but the majority of respondents to the Government’s consultation felt that revoking, or reducing the durations of, the badger disease control licence would reduce the effectiveness of the strategy and result in regression in the progress made over the years. The problem is that the people doing the culling are volunteers—local people, not civil servants. They cannot be switched on and off; they cannot be re-employed. When they stop, they will stop, and it took an enormous amount of effort to set up those groups. They are doing a tremendous and extremely difficult job for which they have to be highly trained.

Paragraph 5.6 of the Government’s response states:

“Responses from Natural England (NE) and the British Veterinary Association (BVA) broadly supported the decision to retain culling as an option.”

The people who did not accept it were the conservation groups, and it is worth pointing out that including the cost of policing the cull zones distorts the credibility of some of the sensible points that have been made. We cannot add the costs policing of protesters and then acknowledge that the protesters have got the figures right—it does not seem quite right.

The Government have promised a cattle vaccine, which is not approved. They have monitored the data from the cull area and proved that culling is working, so until other viable alternatives are place, we cannot change the policy without doing untold damage to cattle and badgers. Bovine TB is a serious disease for people, as well as for badgers and cattle, and my fear is that, without proper control, sick badgers will infect the healthy badger population. I do not see why we should allow badgers to die slowly and in agony from consumption—that was the old word for TB, because it consumes your body. As these badgers become ill, they are driven out of their social groups and move into other badgers’ territories, where they will fight. Of course, a scratch from an infected badger can pass on the disease, so it is critical that we keep the badgers in the high-risk areas, away from the healthy badger population.

It is important that we look forward to a time when culling is no longer needed—I look forward to that very much. There will be a time when both badgers and cattle can be vaccinated effectively in a proven campaign to defeat M. bovis, but sadly, today is not that moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I was very pleased to see the right hon. Gentleman walk in because I expected him to make exactly that intervention; we had a similar discussion during the passage of the Agriculture Act 2020. As I am sure he will appreciate, the DIVA test is well advanced. He is right to say that we need to make progress, exactly as the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) said. Science moves; I am, perhaps, more optimistic about the pace of that movement than others.

The petition has a significant number of signatures. It focuses on the killing of badgers rather than the bovine TB issue, which I shall return to. The view expressed is that the shooting of badgers is poorly monitored and inhumane. Anecdotally, one is certainly told of cases where badgers are not shot cleanly and are left with injuries. According to Natural England’s compliance monitoring report for 2020, badgers were shot at but not retrieved in 11.4% of cases, but only one case of a badger being shot at but wounded and lost was reported; presumably some of the rest may not have been found. As with all such figures, the situation is not clear. I suggest that there is some cause for concern.

Can the Minister say why the number of badgers culled through free shooting rather than cage-trapping has changed so dramatically? According to the figures in the very good briefing prepared by the House of Commons Library, those numbers have increased from rough parity in 2014 to around four in five in 2020, creating a greater risk of inhumane culling. What is the reason for that? It seems that that is directly relevant to the question raised by the petitioners.

The wider question is about the future of shooting badgers in general and the continuance of the cull. I remember when the Government finally responded to the Godfray review while we were sitting on the Agriculture Bill Committee. By complete chance, they responded on the very day that Labour happened to have tabled an amendment addressing this very question—it was one of a number of cases when Government statements appeared miraculously on certain days during the course of the Agriculture Bill’s passage through Parliament. What we took from the Government announcement, the headlines and the spin was that the cull was to end. However, what we have seen since has shown that that was not the whole story.

Despite the points made by the hon. Member for North Herefordshire, given that the cull has been going on for 10 years or so, it is worth asking what the Government’s policy on badger culling has done to get this horrible disease under control. One thing we know for sure is that it has killed a lot of badgers—more than 140,000. That is not in doubt. Every year since 2015, the number culled has grown, with more than 38,600 killed in 2020. Last year’s figures are due any time; they are expected to be larger still.

The Badger Trust tells me that in some areas of Gloucestershire and Somerset, badgers are now all but extinct. It also predicts that, by the end of the cull, the number of badgers in England will have been halved. As I reflected on earlier, the sad truth is that some of those badgers will have had unpleasant deaths. There are then the financial costs. Again, the Badger Trust estimates that, between 2013 and 2019, the cost of the cull was around £60 million—although I hear the points made by Government Members.

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

I was thinking about what the hon. Gentleman said about how half the badgers in the UK will have been lost. If he looks at a map of the country, the western side is where the cattle and badgers live, and that is where the infection is. It is not about losing half the badgers in the infected area, but protecting the other half on the eastern side of the country.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s point. However, he will know, full well, that others will disagree that that is what is actually going on. The worry expressed by the petitioners today, and by many others, is that this looks like a massive cull of an iconic species in our country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Churchill]

Indeed. As every Member said, we need to approach this issue in the most humane way possible.

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

I am interested in what the Minister said about 2025. The Labour party would need to win the next election to bring in its policy: it sounds like it will not be able to do that by 2025. She also mentioned East Sussex, which is the perfect place for a test because it is not surrounded by infected badgers, but that is not an alternative to the culling regime. The alternative is the DIVA test and a cattle vaccination. Is she sure that 2025 is the date that we will get that?

[Jo Churchill]

That is the date that I have been directed to. As my hon. Friend knows full well, as do I as somebody who worked in the Department of Health and Social Care during the pandemic, these things have a habit of not always coming through. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby said, something might be deemed unpalatable or it may not have the degree of sensitivity we need, but it is right that we try to ensure that the vaccine for both cattle and badgers is where we are getting to, so we can drive down and deliver on what the Godfray review said—that we should replace culling with vaccinations and disease surveillance.

We are developing several schemes and initiatives to make it simpler for those who are suitably trained to start vaccinating badgers. There is no single measure that will eradicate bovine TB in England by 2038. That is why we have to continue to have a wide range of interventions. We need to strengthen cattle testing and movement controls, which the hon. Member for Cambridge mentioned. We have to improve biosecurity on the farm and when trading, and we need to develop that cattle vaccine, in addition to building our support of badger vaccine. Cattle controls and measures continue to be the foundation stones on which our TB eradication strategy is based.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords]

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French). I was moved by his kind and thoughtful contribution on his predecessor, who was indeed well respected and admired by Members across the House. I think his constituency sounds beautiful. I liked the talk of the meadows and I had no idea Roald Dhal lived there. Perhaps I should pop down and visit. It is always good to welcome a fellow animal lover to the House of Commons, and I wish him all the best.

It is no exaggeration to say that I am contacted daily by constituents on one aspect or another of animal welfare. The recognition of animal sentience in law has been a consistent question since I became an MP in 2017. Many of us remember the famous amendment on animal sentience tabled during the constant Brexit debates. I certainly remember the flurry of emails, social media, tweets and messages on Facebook that followed, with numerous people telling me how important animal sentience was to them. It is, of course, entirely proper that the Government of the UK, famed as a nation of animal lovers, should act to remedy that issue. I am here to briefly, but carefully, represent the many voices of the people from Hull West and Hessle who contacted me on the issue.

No one who has looked after animals or spent time watching them in the wild can have any doubt that they are aware and can experience emotions. If you will forgive me for one moment, Madam Deputy Speaker, I do have to mention my two cats, Thomas and Serena, who have entirely different personalities. They are absolutely wonderful and dispel the idea that they cannot experience emotion when I can tell by looking at them exactly how they are feeling. One of the greatest inventions of the internet, of course, is #catsoftwitter, which I recommend to all Members. If they are having a bad news day, they should have a quick look at it and it will cheer them up.

It is worth reminding Members that we are animals, too. We are only different by degree, and more and more scientific research is showing us how slim that difference of degree is. Free or captive, wild or domesticated, our fellow animals should be treated with compassion and respect, and it is proper that the Bill recognises that by applying it to all. In fact, the continuing advances in our scientific understanding of animal sentience were what made the Government decide against including a definition of sentience in the Bill. I am pleased to hear that although a definition might not be in the Bill, it is in the terms of reference. That growing understanding has led to the inclusion of cephalopods and decapods, which include octopuses and lobsters, as sentient animals for the purposes of UK animal welfare law.

I want to mention the few small reservations I have. Although my remarks are in support of the Bill and those from the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) were against, we share similar concerns about the composition of the committee. Who will sit on the committee? How will they be chosen? What powers will they have? How independent will they be of Government? My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) made an incredibly useful contribution to the debate, because he detailed his concerns about the committee and the fact that it will have no power even to tell DEFRA how to conduct itself.

[Sir Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I quite agree with the hon. Lady. Why will she not then persuade those on her Front Bench to vote against this nonsense?

[Emma Hardy]

In general, we support the Bill. We hope that in Committee some of our reservations will be looked at and the Bill amended—[Interruption.] I see the Minister nodding at me from the Government Front Bench. So far, during the passage of the Bill, the Government seem to be willing to consider amending and improving it. I hope that that will continue.

The Bill does not propose a duty on Ministers to consider the welfare needs of animals when making policy. I think those points were very well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. I draw attention to the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), who is not in his place. I hope the Government will look again at hunting with dogs and at animal standards abroad.

The points made about free trade deals are very concerning. I have had numerous emails from constituents on that point and they are very worried. Some of the flippant responses such as, “Well, they don’t have to buy that meat, then,” fail to recognise the fact that when price is taken into consideration many families might feel that they have no choice. We need to look at some of the animal standards we are importing.

I agree that we should have an annual oral statement, as a written statement produced for Parliament does not give the same chance for scrutiny. That is a weakness of the Bill that I hope the Minister will address.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) for raising a point about the use of primates in experiments by the Ministry of Defence, because I had no awareness of that whatsoever, so I am grateful that she has brought it to my attention. I hope the Minister can comment, because I find it hugely concerning.

Although I support the Bill, there are a few points that I hope the Government will take away and consider so that when it comes back for its final votes on Report it is much improved.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy).

It is a pleasure and privilege to speak in the debate on a very important Bill that Opposition Members will be pleased to hear this Member of Parliament strongly supports. I declare a strong professional interest as a veterinary surgeon; the Bill will be so important in recognising animal sentience in UK legislation.

In the current political climate I am loth to get into intricate debates about the difference between the words “implicit” and “explicit”, but, as the Secretary of State said, animal sentience has been implicit in UK law since the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822, and it remains implicitly acknowledged in current animal welfare legislation, including the Animal Welfare Act 2006. I feel that this House and the Government missed a trick in 2017 by not transferring into UK legislation the part of article 13 of the Lisbon treaty that recognised that animals are sentient beings, because that would have been easy to do. That said, by not doing it, we now have an amazing opportunity to put animal sentience at the heart of UK legislation, and that is very important. I also welcome it as the Government’s fulfilling of a manifesto promise, which I strongly support.

I very much welcome the fact that cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans are now included in the Bill. That sets a really good example. The Government have commissioned a piece of work from the London School of Economics and they have listened to it. I am very encouraged by that; I just wish they would do it a little more often.

Although I welcome the Bill, I very much recognise the contributions from Opposition Members who say that we need to be clearer on some of the details and specifics. I recognise that, by definition, this is a brief and general overarching Bill, which is probably quite sensible. That said, I would very much like it to define the term “sentience” in some way. In the 2017 Bill consultation, 79% of responses called for the inclusion of a definition in the Bill. A useful definition made by the Global Animal Law Project and endorsed by the British Veterinary Association states:

“Sentience shall be understood to mean the capacity to have feelings, including pain and pleasure, and implies a level of conscious awareness.”

The Minister said in the other place, and also before us in the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, that it might well be difficult to put the definition into primary legislation because the science is evolving and so potentially it could evolve. We could get round that by placing it in secondary legislation that would be easily updated, so I think that the Government can move forward on that.

         I very much welcome the formation of the Animal Sentience Committee, but we need to be clear about its independence and to make sure that it has strong expertise and experience in animal welfare, animal health and veterinary matters. It needs to have some teeth and some power, including power to roam across Government. I am very glad that the committee will be based in DEFRA; although I want it to have a roaming feature, I am more comfortable with it being in the Department that is the custodian for animal health and welfare, which I think makes a lot of sense.

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

Given my hon. Friend’s expertise and professional experience, what examples does he have from his own life of such a committee being necessary? Why does he therefore want it based in DEFRA?

[Dr Hudson]

I will come on to some examples of why I think the committee will be important, and how the Government and the Secretary of State respond to it will be useful in formulating policy.

I am glad that the committee will be embedded in DEFRA, but I very much hope that it will be listened to. I draw a contrast with the Trade and Agriculture Commission, which I and many hon. Members on both sides of the House called for, as did the National Farmers Union. We were really pleased to have it scrutinising trade negotiations. It produced a report, but the Government were very slow in responding and were a little partial in their response. I very much hope that the response to the committee from DEFRA, a Department in which I have a lot of faith, will be unlike some of the responses from the Department for International Trade to the Trade and Agriculture Commission.

I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State will respond within three months. There has been a lot of fear that the Bill and the committee might be open to judicial review, but the fact that the Secretary of State needs to respond within three months may go some way towards mitigating that risk. I recognise that there have been concerns, however.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

First, let me draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, because I farm. What a delight it was to listen to such a full tribute to my friend James Brokenshire. He was a lovely man and a good friend, and we miss him very much. He has a worthy successor in my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French). What large shoes he has to fill. I am sure that he will do his very best.

Concern for animal welfare is, as everyone has said, something on which we pride ourselves in this country, and on which we already lead globally. The sentience of animals has long been recognised in this country, as is evidenced by the animal welfare legislation passed by Parliaments over the last 200 years. My great-great-grandfather was the MP for somewhere in Birmingham—I think it was Yardley. I asked the Library to look up any speeches he made in 1885, and all it could find was a speech on rabbits and hares. Here I am, 137 years later, still on animal welfare. Nothing has changed because we care about sentience in animals. That is not going to make the Bill necessary. The Bill is completely unnecessary.

Every Member who has spoken in the debate has listed things that they think are more important than the Bill when it comes to animal welfare. They are right. There are so many things on which we could do a better job. Parliamentary time is not an endless opportunity. This is the place for Governments to bring in changes and improvements to the lives we and our constituents lead. We are elected for fixed periods of time, so every day is precious, and every opportunity to improve, simplify or even tweak our legislation is both a privilege and an obligation. That is why unnecessary tokenism and gestures, although they might feel nice, are a missed opportunity. The Bill is one of the best examples of that—glittering with good intentions, just like the road to hell, but absolutely and completely unnecessary.

First, the Bill creates an open goal for prevention. If someone wants to prevent a planning application, they can refer it to a quango and get a three-month report. There are questions about the proposed committee that will be formed to determine whether the sentience of animals has been considered by Government policy. What happened to the bonfire of quangos? DEFRA has already created a quango in the Environment Act 2021, and now it thinks we need another one. It is not so much a bonfire of quangos as a breeding ground for quangos. While most life forms fall under the scope of the Bill, the taxpayer, that most undervalued of vertebrates, would appear not to do so.

Parliament has always proceeded on the basis that animals are sentient, and has legislated for animal welfare as a result. The definition, or lack thereof, in the Bill is somewhat irrelevant. What animals are considered to be sentient can be changed to suit. All this will do is prevent things. Want to plant more trees, build more houses, improve infrastructure or open a new power station? None of that will be straightforward, just in case we might hurt the feelings of a mouse or a cuttlefish in the process. [Interruption.] Yes, cuttlefish are cephalopods.

The Bill directly contradicts our pledge to level up this nation. My constituency has a moratorium on house building because of phosphate pollution in the River Wye. House building is proven to contribute only a tiny fraction of that pollution, but house builders and aspiring homeowners are being punished. The Bill will be terrible news for those people, as undoubtedly, in the wildest, most natural and beautiful of constituencies, some lovely creature will be discovered in situ. Its sentience will now need to be considered and more unelected bodies will have the power to subvert the building of those much-needed homes. What is conservative about that?

The core aspect of the Bill is to embed consideration of animal welfare into the policy decision-making process, as if we could not manage that by ourselves. That consideration will be made by the Animal Sentience Committee, an opaque body. To the naive, that will appear a noble stance for the Government to take. However, there are serious misgivings about what the committee will set out to achieve. The role of the committee is apparently to scrutinise not the substance of the policy decisions, but the process by which the decisions were reached and whether all due regard has been paid to animal welfare. However, the draft terms of reference suggest that the committee could have a role in scrutinising policies. That would be at odds with the very legislation bringing it into existence.

My question to the Minister, therefore, is who the membership of the committee will report to. Will it be at arm’s length? Most importantly, what safeguards will be in place to ensure that the committee will not act as a vessel by which farming, wildlife management and the rural economy are attacked? If anyone has any doubts that that might happen, they should listen to the contributions of Opposition Members. The way in which the Bill has been greeted should fire off the alarm bells in everybody’s minds. Greater detail is needed on what this committee is truly being set up for and what its aims are. We already have thousands of quangos in this country, and if we are not careful we will descend into the quagmire of anti-democratic legislation.

This is a crucial time for agriculture and rural life in the UK. As we leave the common agricultural policy and move to the environmental land management scheme, many farmers will be concerned about what the future holds. The Conservative party is a party of the farmer, for the farmer, so let us ensure that future animal policy recognises the calibre of our farmers, their land management practices and the deep care they have for their animals. They have not asked for this Bill, and they do not need it. This Bill is a waste of time and utterly unnecessary—

[Tim Farron]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

Yes. I am about to go into one, so I will happily give way.

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Gentleman outlines what he thinks are threats to farmers, but I do not agree that the Bill is a threat to British farmers. However, he alluded to the transition from basic payments to ELMS being a threat, and in that case I think he is right. Would he recommend that the Secretary of State pegs basic payments at their current level and keeps them there until ELMS is available for every farmer?

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

It is difficult for me to answer that, because I am a member of the ELMS pilot scheme, so I am deeply involved in the formation of ELMS. What I would say is that public money for public goods is the right way forward, with carbon captured in the soil and a corresponding payment made to farmers so that we can balance up the subsidy deficit that British farmers will face compared with their European competitors. At the end of the day I do not believe in subsidy for anything other than agriculture, and we subsidise only in order that our goods are competitive globally—if do not pay our farmers enough, our produce will not compete internationally and our farmers will be at a huge disadvantage.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend alluded to the fact that the committee’s work will be retrospective. Any citizen could suggest to the committee that the Government should change policy in a certain area. The committee would then look into that and make a recommendation to the Minister. That is a real gift to lobbying groups to achieve what they want, and the Government would be under difficulty to withhold it.

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

As always, my hon. Friend is absolutely right.

The real shame about this legislation is that here we are at Second Reading and every single colleague on both sides of the House has thought of better things for the Government to deal with, whether it is ELMS, as suggested by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), or any of the other suggestions I have heard from Opposition Members. This Bill is a waste of time; it is utterly unnecessary and therefore wrong. We should not pass Bills that state the obvious and that are hostages to fortune, we should not create more quangos, we should not vote for unnecessary legislation —and we certainly should not vote for this Bill.

Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 25th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

From what we have heard this evening, there is no doubt that we are indeed a nation of animal lovers. I declare an interest as an animal lover—as many in the Chamber are—and as the owner of a dog called Herman. Anyone who has invited a border terrier into their home knows that they never fully own a border terrier; border terriers definitely own their humans.

I am sure nobody in the Chamber will disagree that animal welfare is one of the issues on which we receive the most messages and emails, and thousands of people in Luton North have written to me in the short time that I have been an MP. I want our country to have the highest animal welfare standards in the world. My constituents write to me about protecting bees, and about badgers, animal testing, caging, banning fur, and so much more. Young people in particular write to me worried about the state of the planet and every creature on it. How many of those creatures will have their habitats destroyed and become extinct before those young people are as old and cynical as us?

We have heard much about the Government’s commitment to animal welfare. Unfortunately, for many people, belief in that has been rocked. The Secretary of State mentioned the Government’s manifesto commitments and promises. One commitment was not to compromise on Britain’s high standards in trade deals, but recently we have seen a worrying trend with trade deals, and the risk of a race to the bottom on welfare standards. There was, as has been discussed, a manifesto promise to ban the keeping of primates as pets, but the Bill breaks that promise, too. Instead, people will be able to keep a primate as long as they can afford a licence. We are used to monkey business from the Government, but that is something else. All joking aside, if anyone can give me a valid reason why someone should be allowed to keep a primate as a pet, I will happily give way to them.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

A zookeeper who had to look after their animals at home could be construed as having them as pets. That is why licensing and a case-by-case, “the individual must come first” basis is so much healthier than an outright ban. It is impossible to deal with different examples without having laws that can understand the difference. Does the hon. Lady not understand that?

[Sarah Owen]

I was going to thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but the tone was a little patronising, to say the least. I wholeheartedly disagree, given that any zookeeper who had to look after an animal in their home would be doing so through their work, and under the licence for that job. That was not a valid reason to keep a primate as a pet—it was not a pet.

The Government’s manifesto even promised the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on Earth, yet we have the Prime Minister saying he is worried that COP26 will not be a success. Probably the less I say about the Government’s record on the environment at the moment, the better. We have a duty to protect the planet and the environment for all animals, kept and unkept.

I turn to something more positive and light-hearted. In the recent recess, I visited Whipsnade zoo with my family. It was the first time that I had taken my daughter to a zoo, and the magic in a child’s face when they see in real life an animal they had seen only in books and on the television is a real joy to behold. Whipsnade zoo is much loved by people in Luton North and across the region. During the covid restrictions, I received hundreds of emails from people asking me to campaign and ask the Government to allow zoos to reopen. People are right to be proud of Whipsnade zoo, not just for the happy memories that it provides but because of its proud history of sector-leading work on conservation.

Whipsnade’s freshwater aquarium is home to more threatened and extinct-in-the-wild species than any other in the world. Whipsnade provides significant insights that inform work to help reintroduce and conserve species in their natural habitats, including projects in Madagascar, Greece and Turkey. Its work with elephants directly contributes to protecting the species in the world. It is doing such important work.

Whipsnade zoo’s conservation work also encompasses young people. On-site teachers deliver engaging learning programmes in biology and conservation, inspiring tens of thousands of schoolchildren every year and instilling them with the wonder of and desire to protect wildlife. I will never forget when I saw all these schoolchildren at Whipsnade being hurried around to see the chimpanzees. I explained to my toddler that chimpanzees are not monkeys. Now she points at them and says, “Not monkeys.”

When Whipsnade zoo wrote to me to tell me of its concerns about the Bill, I had to voice them in the House. Removing the definition of conservation work from law and giving the Secretary of State the power to define conservation could easily undermine Whipsnade’s fantastic work and lead to an overly simplistic view of conservation—and, dare I say, a politicised one. We know that the Government have an uncanny ability to turn any old issue into a culture war. I ask them please not to do so with zoos.

I hope that in Committee we will work to protect the brilliant work of our zoos by leaving it to the experts and keeping the politics out of conservation. However, there is one place where politics and animals should meet: the Westminster dog of the year award. I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) in saying, “Please lend your vote to Sir David Amess’s dog, Vivienne.” Please, anyone who was willing or wanted to vote for Herman and me, do not do that—vote for Vivienne instead.

On the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) about fireworks and dogs, and animals in general, I recently presented a Bill calling for tougher punishments for the misuse of fireworks and tougher enforcement of those measures. We know how much that misuse affects animals and animal owners across the country. I hope that there is scope for those measures in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

Despite its being heralded as a ban on keeping monkeys, I actually welcome part 1 of the Bill relating to primates and the keeping of them. Governments should not be banning things; there should be licensing. I apologise to the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen); I did not mean to come across as patronising, but I like the idea that the Government have the flexibility through legislation to take into consideration individual circumstances for higher creatures such as primates. There will never be a one-size-fits-all, so that is really sensible. It means that animal welfare is considered on a case-by-case basis rather than there being a well-intentioned but disastrous blanket ban. When it comes to animal welfare, we should respect the expertise of vets acting for local authorities in determining what is a safe and healthy environment for the animal. If someone wants to keep any animal, they should ensure that they can fulfil its needs. They owe that to their pet—they must take the responsibility.

I also welcome and am truly grateful for part 2 of the Bill, which relates to dogs attacking or worrying livestock. Sadly, that is a regular occurrence in my constituency and it is particularly awful when pregnant ewes are torn apart and lose their lambs. It is devastating for the sheep and farmer and is directly due to the dog owners.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my view that such incidents are very distressing for farmers? It would be far better if livestock worrying were addressed largely through an improvement in the behaviour of dog owners rather than through an increase in destruction orders.

[Bill Wiggin]

Of course I agree with my right hon. Friend; I will come to that in a moment.

At the moment, a farmer has the right to shoot an out-of-control dog, but I have not yet met a farmer who wants to do that. Farmers love animals but sadly these sheep-worrying incidents occur far too often. Livestock are vulnerable and fairly defenceless. Dog walkers want extra access to the countryside; in return, as my right hon. Friend said, dog owners and dog walkers must be more considerate about how their dogs behave and ideally have them on a lead.

The estimated cost of dog attacks on farm animals in the first quarter of 2021 has risen by 50%. As we have already heard, the National Farmers Union estimated in 2020 that £1.3 million worth of animals were attacked by dogs—an increase of 10% on 2019. But when it comes down to it, the issue is not the monetary value of the animals attacked, but the completely unnecessary nature of the attacks and the fact that the dog owner could prevent them.

Research carried out on 1,200 dog owners revealed that 88% walk their dogs in the countryside. Some 64% said that they let their dogs run free off the lead, while 50% admitted that their pet did not always come back when called. We are trying to do what we can to stop livestock worrying, and part 2 of the Bill is entirely welcome.

[Neil Parish]

rose—

[Bill Wiggin]

I was about to talk about zoonotic diseases such as neosporosis, but I give way to my hon. Friend.

[Neil Parish]

The other problem is that dog owners think that their dogs are obedient, but when dogs get excited and see sheep, they are off—they are no longer obedient even if they normally are. When they are really excited by chasing a sheep, they will not come back. That is why they need to be kept on leads, for the sake of sheep especially.

[Bill Wiggin]

Keeping dogs on leads is particularly important with sheep. It is completely the opposite when there are cattle with calves in the field. The dog owner should let go of their lead and let the dog run away, because otherwise it is people who become the casualties. This is complicated, which is why the Countryside Code matters and why us rural MPs must take opportunities such as this to remind people that what they do with sheep, they do not do with cows.

Let me turn now to the banning of exports for slaughter. Supermarkets have a vice-like grip on the provision and price of meat. Our centralised supply chain is narrow, and I am not entirely happy with the introduction of this ban. The beneficiaries will be supermarkets, the Republic of Ireland, and uncastrated ram lambs. As I mentioned earlier, the Government should be in the business not of banning but of licensing. In that way, only the highest level of animal welfare would be allowed. Sadly, instead, these sheep will now go through Ireland and make the much longer journey to France and Spain.

Around 6,400 animals were transported from the UK directly to slaughter, according to Government figures in 2018. Now the country is facing a shortage of abattoirs, abattoir staff and carbon dioxide. We will need to see animals being sent abroad, and they will go as breeding stock. How long does a sheep have to live in France or Spain as breeding stock before the purchaser can decide to eat it without the UK farmer going to prison for up to six months? That is the sort of thing that I am hoping will come out in Committee.

What steps will the Government take to ensure that live animals are not transported through Northern Ireland to the Republic and then onto Spain? This legislation, while well-intentioned, is full of loopholes, which the unscrupulous traders will exploit. These are the same people who do not care about animal welfare. That is why licensing is much safer than allowing the unscrupulous to win through.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Just on that point about the use of Ireland as an access country, I refer my hon. Friend to clause 42(3), which does include the term “British Islands”. To my mind, that provides a safeguard and prevents that type of activity from occurring.

[Bill Wiggin]

I am grateful, as always, to my hon. Friend. I think that if he looks at the bit on the Northern Irish element in the explanatory notes, he will find that that is not in there for this particular element. I am sure that he will be on that Committee and sorting that out, which will be wonderful. None the less, it is important and it does matter.

In much the same way, the dog element in this Bill is important. A total of 843 illegal puppies were seized at the border last year. Again, it is always the unscrupulous who do not care that are ruining it for everybody else. I want to use this little moment in my speech to make this appeal to people: rather than spending huge amounts of money on a puppy, please think about rehoming before you buy your puppy. Just because it is rehoming does not mean that the buyer will get a pit bull with mental health issues—their dog could have come from a home exactly like their own where the owner has simply become too ill to look after their dog.

[Dr Luke Evans]

rose—

[Bill Wiggin]

The buyer might also find that their dog is house trained. On that note, it is entirely appropriate to give way to my hon. Friend.

[Dr Evans]

My hon. Friend’s point could be no more pertinent than at this moment in time given that, post lockdown, we are seeing a rise in animals being given away because owners cannot deal with them. We must get the message out that people looking for pets should please rehome these lockdown puppies.

[Bill Wiggin]

There is no better way of ruining the market for illegal puppies than simply getting them from the plentiful rehoming centres and charities. Finding the right home for our pets is a humane and worthy thing to do, so everyone should please look at this very carefully before they pay large sums of money.

I also urge the Government to look hard at dog theft and all the other animal-related crimes. We have read that they are going to treat such things in a very serious way and I encourage them to do so and I encourage them to iron out some of the minor hiccups in this piece of legislation and continue with the good work they are doing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

We are doing a very detailed piece of work on all the targets we intend to set under the Environment Bill, including on air quality, but also on water, biodiversity, and waste and resource management. We are looking very closely at two particular approaches to air quality. One is a concentration target for PM_2.5— and I know there have been representations from people that it should be 10 micrograms—and the other is population exposure.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con) [V]]

[R] As I understand it, the DIVA test is being piloted at the moment. When can we expect it on farm, and if we must wait for approval, why has the Secretary of State cancelled culling licences before approval has been given?

[George Eustice]

We have not cancelled culling licences, but it is the case that the intensive four-year culls in many parts of the country have run their course and have therefore ended. To answer my hon. Friend’s question, we are running field trials at the moment on that DIVA test, and we plan to have that vaccine in 2025.

Environment Bill

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 26th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP) [V]]

Mr Speaker, you might recall that there used to be a TV game show called “Bullseye”, in which the legendary Jim Bowen consoled failed contestants with that cruellest of catchphrases, “Let’s have a look at what you could have won.” As we come to the end of the long process of this Environment Bill, a lot of folk might be thinking that it was Jim Bowen presenting it.

I will be as generous as I can and say that there were good intentions behind the Bill, or at least the stated intentions were good back when it appeared many, many moons ago. There was admirable ambition to enshrine environmental protections in law, to set proper targets and to establish the Office for Environmental Protection—high aims, except those rules would not apply to one of the most polluting and environmentally damaging parts of the state, the military. They also would not apply to anything that might be classed as national security or taxation or spending. Those are pretty big areas of government: if taxation and the allocation of resources are exempted, a massive part of governance will walk happily by without casting a glance in the direction of the environmental protection regulations.

Then of course in the Bill’s Committee stage the Government introduced amendments and new clauses that limited the power of the Office for Environmental Protection to take enforcement action, creating thresholds for reviews, moving the review from tribunal to court, limiting the OEP’s power to intervene in judicial reviews brought by others, and imposing even greater limitations on its own power to initiate judicial reviews. To top that off, Ministers took the power to be able to direct the OEP on what it should be enforcing. It has gone from a powerful and independent body to a mere arm of the Government before it is even born—a bit sad, really.

There are still things to be welcomed, however, the setting of a species recovery target being one. It should be a declaration of intent—a commitment to reversing some of the harm that has been done—but it needs clarifying and it needs political will behind it to get to any kind of a delivery phase. It also needs cash—plenty up front to get it started, as well as an ongoing commitment to keep funding the work.

We have seen what has happened to Natural England: how the funding cuts stripped that body of its ability to do its job; how its feet got cut away from under it; how a decade of austerity has rendered it unable to function properly. Budget cuts have led to pay cuts, cuts in grants, cuts in staff numbers and cuts in assessed programmes. That is a terrible way to treat staff—a horrendous betrayal of their loyalty and hard work—and I hope Ministers, and those hoping one day to replace them, think on that. Natural England’s Government funding was cut by two thirds between 2010 and last year. Staff numbers have gone down by a quarter since 2010 and those who remain have seen real-terms pay cuts. The ability of the agency to do its work is compromised, if not fatally damaged. Its recovery, if it can recover, would depend on substantial investment in cash and in political capital, but, given how the Office for Environmental Protection has been gutted even before it has been created, I cannot see much hope for Natural England. Perhaps the Minister can tell us in her closing remarks how that will pan out.

This is almost entirely England’s problem of course, because it is England’s Government failing on the environment and this Bill is largely an English Bill, but what is done in England affects Scotland in many ways, including funding, because we are stuck in this constricting Union, for the moment at least. I would be happy to see England sort it out for Scotland’s sake, but even more so for the sake of the environment.

We will, however, of course all be in agreement with amendment 26; who in Parliament would ever think it appropriate to go taking the resources of other peoples and lands without the consent of those peoples? Such pillaging of communities should be beyond the pale.

The UK Government could just for once look to Scotland and the initiatives a Government who are ambitious for their citizens and mindful of their duty to protect and improve our environment can legislate for, such as our commitments to active travel and the restoration of our peatlands, our deposit return scheme soon to be implemented, further planting of new woodlands, implementation of the WHO recommendations on PM_2.5 on air pollution, creation of the largest green space project in Europe, the central Scotland green network, and much, much more, with green recovery placed at the heart of successive policy publications: actions rather than just words.

Even in this year when COP26 is to be hosted in Glasgow, the commitment of the UK Government to sorting out some of the mess is minimal if it exists at all. France managed to create the Paris agreement when it headed the conference of the parties; the UK is busy greenwashing what it can and dismantling the rest. Biden is doing the work the UK Government should be doing: dragging commitments out of other Governments. The UK Government like to pretend that the UK is a world leader, but it cannot even lead a conference.

There are elements missing from the Bill that will have to be addressed in the near future, including the lack of clear and binding plans to reduce waste. The World Health Organisation guidelines on particulate levels reduction are missing, and there is nothing on plastic pollution—many public bodies are exempt from the law. I have already mentioned the military and anything that can be covered by the nebulous national security definition, but there are plenty of other examples. To spare the blood pressure of the ardent Brexiteers, I promise I will not mention the rolling back on existing EU protections, but it is there. As the EU continues to press ahead, keeping to environmental protections that the UK’s Environment Secretary described as “spirit-crushing”, the UK will fall behind.

Protecting the environment and making some progress on addressing the climate emergency takes effort, fortitude and a bit of guts to tackle the unpopular things that need to be done. I do not see any evidence of that kind of grit in Whitehall and that is a great shame. Jim Bowen never had the environment behind that screen, but I cannot help reflecting on the fact that this should have been a big win, but is instead a sorry look at what we have not won.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I tabled new clause 2 to address the proposed general licensing requirements for the release of game birds and the environmental benefits of shooting. A campaign group named Wild Justice is repeatedly challenging DEFRA. As a result, Natural England must make assessments of the potential damage to EU-protected sites before granting licences for the release of game species. The proposed assessments are intended to take years to achieve, thus halting the granting of licences. The new clause would shift the requirement for Natural England from mandatory assessments to doing them on a common-sense, case-by-case basis.

Campaign groups such as Wild Justice would like to end all country sports. Often fuelled by emotive and ill-informed rhetoric, such campaigns do not recognise the importance to the environment of country sports and their contribution to not only the rural economy but the conservation of land. The gross value added of shooting stands at £1.7 billion in England and £2 billion in the United Kingdom—£240 million in the west midlands alone. Shooting adds 350,000 direct paid jobs to the market and accounts for 10% of the total amount spent on outdoor recreation each year.

Every year, 3.9 million work days are spent on conservation —the equivalent of 16,000 full-time conservation jobs. Up to 700,000 hectares of farm land are planted with wild bird seed mixes and pollinator strips as a result of game bird management. That is five times greater than the land owned by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Game shooting estates often have 65% more hedgerows than normal farm land. Most statistics show that the sport is not the preserve of the elite: figures from 31 March show that 159,483 firearms certificates and 567,358 shotgun certificates were on issue in England and Wales. That means that at least 1.6 million people are shooting in the UK.

Pheasants have been in the UK continually for the last 2,000 years. Their release, management and subsequent hunting predates all site protections. Indeed, game bird release and management have largely been responsible for the existence of sites of high nature value that are worth protecting. Some 28% of woodlands in England are managed to some extent for game birds—more than are managed for nature conservation. We therefore need to do considerably more to ensure that, if the new clause does not suit the Minister exactly, such provisions are taken on board.

Natural England has two tools to monitor sites: the improvement programme for England’s Natura 2000 sites—IPENS—and a designated sites view, or DSV. The latter identified game bird release as causing an impact across seven sites of special scientific interest—the equivalent of 134 hectares. For context, England’s SSSI network covers 4,100 sites and that is more than 1 million hectares. The worst impacts on nature, unfortunately, are caused by dogs and walkers, and nobody wants to see them campaigned against, so I hope that DEFRA will adopt the gist of this amendment to protect itself—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I call Kerry McCarthy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin]

I ran out of time.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Yes, well, perhaps the hon. Gentleman can come back for the next debate and make an intervention to show that he supports that amendment. [Interruption.] He can intervene on me, of course.

I would like to speak primarily in favour of amendments 26 and 27, tabled by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish); I believe that birthday congratulations are in order today. Deforestation, which destroys vital carbon stores and natural habitats, is both one of the central drivers of the climate emergency and a driver of the devastating decline in biodiversity. As we have heard, it also plays a role in displacing people from their land and leads to modern slavery and exploitative working practices. It is clear that we need a no-tolerance approach to any deforestation in our supply chains, legal or illegal.

The Bill comes before us in a slightly better state than its many previous incarnations due to the Government’s new proposals on due diligence in deforestation, but unfortunately they fall far short of what is needed. The primary issue is that they act only to eliminate illegal deforestation. That ignores the fact that some nations, most notably Bolsonaro’s Brazil, are chipping away at legal protections on deforestation and enforcement mechanisms to identify and prevent it. For instance, the Brazilian Parliament is set to approve new legislation dubbed “the destruction package” that will accelerate deforestation in the Amazon by providing an amnesty to land grabbers and allowing deforestation on indigenous lands for major construction projects. Preliminary WWF research shows that 2 million hectares of forest and natural ecosystems could be legally deforested in the Brazilian territories that supply soya to the UK.

This Bill is a unique opportunity to send a message to those states that fail to act to protect our planet. That is why I urge the Government to think again and to strengthen their proposals to include legal deforestation to show true climate leadership ahead of COP26. I am sure that, if we do not accept these amendments today, the noble peers in the other place will have strong words to say about that, and I hope they will send the Bill back to us suitably amended.

Amendment 27 would prevent financial services from working with firms linked to illegal forest-risk commodities. We cannot claim to be tough on deforestation if we allow British financial institutions to support firms linked to it. These damaging investments are deeply embedded in our economy and sometimes even in our own personal finances. Shocking analysis from Feedback published today shows that even the parliamentary pension fund has investments in companies such as JBS Investments that have been repeatedly linked to deforestation. It is not good that we are being drawn into complicity in this situation through our parliamentary pension fund. I therefore hope the Government will accept these amendments and begin to show global leadership.

I very much support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friends on the Labour Front Bench, including new clause 25 calling on the Government to prepare a tree strategy for England. We are trying to do this in Bristol in terms of doubling the tree canopy and with our One City ecological emergency strategy, which I encourage other cities and towns to emulate. I also support amendment 22, which would embed the net gain of habitats in perpetuity. I urge colleagues across the House to accept these amendments. If we fail to do that today, as I said, I am sure that the noble Lords in the other place will take up these causes with their customary vigour.

Environment Bill

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

In this second debate on the Environment Bill, I will speak to my amendment on air quality and in support of the amendment moved by the Opposition Front Bench.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has done three inquiries on air quality in the last five years, and we are just about to publish our new air quality report. We need cleaner air across the UK, particularly in the hotspots of our cities, to improve public health. The Government are starting to take this issue very seriously, and I am glad that we have a clean air strategy that aims to cut air pollution significantly.

I am also pleased that the Bill places a duty on the Government to set two air quality targets by October 2022, one of which is for particulate matter in ambient air. However, we can and should act sooner, with an ambitious target. PM_2.5 is one of the most dangerous particulates because of its size, which means that it can be deposited in our lungs. The covid-19 pandemic has also likely resulted in a new cohort of people with ongoing breathing problems who may be more vulnerable to the harmful effects of air pollution. That is why I tabled my amendment on PM_2.5. My amendment has cross-party support and seeks to put World Health Organisation guidelines for particulate matter into law, with an attainment deadline of 2030 at the latest. Ministers have said in the past that we should not accept such an amendment because we can be even more ambitious; so why not put the target in law today and then improve it afterwards, if we can do better?

It is important to work practically across the Government to improve air quality, because an ambitious target by itself is not going to fix the issue. In 2018, we did a Select Committee inquiry across four Select Committees to show how this issue can be solved by joined-up policy. DEFRA, the Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government, the Department for Transport and the Treasury need to work closely on this issue, and I believe that they are starting to do so.

The Government are now investing huge amounts of money in greener transport including electric cars. I welcome the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. With more ultra-low emissions vehicles, we need more charging stations, rapid chargers and other incentives to build confidence and help people to switch over to electric cars in the next decade. Road transport is one of the biggest causes of poor air quality, so this will help to reduce nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxide in the air we breathe.

We also need more walking and cycling in urban areas, because it is not just the fuel that is dangerous, but tyre wear and brakes. That is why I am glad that more help is being given to local authorities so that they can plan and implement clean air zones. I know that Bath and North East Somerset Council is meant to be introducing a clean air zone in March, with Birmingham City Council doing the same in June. But in Bristol, for example, the Mayor has no control of the M32, which goes straight through the middle of the city, because it is run by Highways England. This is exactly why we need a joined-up approach across Government to solve the issue of poor air quality.

The Government should amend the Bill, and accept this cross-party amendment on air quality as it comes back in the next Session. We have done so much work to improve air quality and the environment already. I know that the Minister is passionate about this issue. Let us not go backwards. Let us go the extra mile and put ambitious air quality targets in law today.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con) [V]]

I tabled new clause 3 to draw attention to the environmental challenge and penalties facing Herefordshire. First, let me be absolutely clear: nobody wants to see more pollution or phosphates in the river—nobody. However, due to the levels of phosphate in the Wye, we have an ill thought out and ineffective housebuilding moratorium, imposed on us by a Dutch court through EU law. Implemented in October 2013, this moratorium was enacted to try to address the phosphate pollution in the Rivers Wye and Lugg. This is a serious issue that requires proper and effective action. It was hoped that Herefordshire Council, Natural England and the Environment Agency, and their Welsh equivalents, could come up with a tangible solution by which the threat could be stopped. After recent calls that I have had with these bodies, it is clear that there is still some way to go. I therefore tabled this new clause to have the subject heard in the House.

The threat of phosphates in watercourses is well known. Herefordshire is by no means alone, nor is it the worst polluted area in the country. Indeed, the river winds its way out of Powys into Herefordshire, then back into Monmouthshire where it forms the border with Gloucestershire, yet only Herefordshire has a moratorium. In the Environment Agency’s 2017 “State of the environment” report, 86% of English rivers had not reached good ecological status. High phosphate levels in the water can result in toxic algal blooms. These blooms deplete oxygen levels in the water by blocking out the light, resulting in fish and other organisms dying. The phosphates enter the watercourse through two primary means, the first being point source, where the main offender tends to be the sewage outlets—so called because it can generally be traced back to a wastewater pipe that is discharging into the river. The second means is diffuse sources, typically caused by run-off from agricultural land.

The ruling in Herefordshire occurred as a result of an EU legal case. On 7 November 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union gave its judgment in two joined cases, which were related to the habitats directive and became known as the Dutch nitrogen case, or simply the Dutch case. The case in the Netherlands found that through their fertiliser application techniques, farmers were having a negative effect on EU-protected habitats. Assessments were required to be carried out to determine how to reverse and prevent further environmental damage. As a result of this ruling in a different country, Natural England updated its legal advice, which has since created significant problems for house builders in England, particularly those in Herefordshire.

This ruling has disproportionately affected the River Wye and the River Lugg. The Wye is a special area of conservation; the Lugg is a tributary of the Wye, and is designated as a site of special scientific interest. The Wye is the fourth longest river in England, and is home to plants such as water-crowfoot and wonderful Atlantic salmon stocks. It is a wonderful river that we need to protect for the future, and the way that that is being done at the moment is ineffective. It is by no means the worst-performing river in the country when it comes to phosphate pollution, and this problem can and must be solved. We have had meetings with the council, the Environment Agency, and Natural England and its Welsh equivalents. We need collaboration, and we need to make sure that the Government will support an improvement to the phosphate levels so that we can get our river back to where it needs to be.

[Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin). As I indicated on Second Reading in February last year, I very much support the Bill and the focus that the Government are placing on our environment.

In February, I referred to flooding that had recently occurred in my constituency. Very regrettably, I must report that the heavy rainfall of Storm Christoph has brought further disruption to local residents and businesses. Last Wednesday, high waters flowing down the River Clwyd destroyed the 19th-century Llanerch bridge, connecting Trefnant and Tremeirchion. I have already raised the issue of that bridge’s future with my hon. Friend the Minister, the local authority, and the Welsh historic environment service, Cadw. Such devastating events highlight the need for serious consideration of issues relating to water management. Increasing the responsibility of water companies and local authorities to plan how to manage flood risk more effectively is one way to reduce the impact of future floods, and I ask the Government to seriously consider the value of amendment 42, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker).

I am pleased that the Bill further contributes to the Government’s commitment to tackle air pollution. Clean air zones and the clean air strategy are important, as are the provisions in this Bill, but I believe that more can, and perhaps should, be done. A number of amendments that have been tabled seek to push the Government to improve air quality, including new clause 6 and amendment 2. The legal duty set out in the Bill to set a target for concentrations of the fine particulate matter known as PM_2.5 could reduce the 36,000 annual deaths in Britain, primarily through cardiovascular and respiratory disease, that are linked to air pollution. Air quality will improve as a consequence of our national move towards net zero by 2050, but setting a bold target can act as an important driver in the interim.

Agriculture Bill

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 12th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I rise as a Member of Parliament for a very agricultural constituency, and as the product of a farming family—in fact, I think I still have a place on offer at Harper Adams if this career does not work out—as well as a former Minister for agritech, former trade envoy, and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on science and technology in agriculture.

This is a major moment, when we take back control of our farming policy from the EU after 40 years, and of our trading destiny and sovereignty. It is on a par with 1947—the last great reset of agricultural policy—or, indeed, the corn laws. I welcome the Agriculture Bill, and the work of DEFRA Ministers and officials in setting out a framework that supports commercial British farming—a great British industry that is leading in the world—and recognises that its important environmental work, which involves managing 70% of our land area, requires additional support. In broad terms, I strongly welcome the Bill.

I welcome even more strongly the Conservative party’s commitments, both in our manifesto and over the last 18 months from the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), who was the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs at the time of the general election. I also welcome everyone who asked about our commitment to ensuring that we do not in any way undermine those standards. The Prime Minister put it beautifully when he said,

“we will not accept any diminution in food hygiene or animal welfare standards… We will not engage in some cut-throat race to the bottom…We are not leaving the EU to undermine European standards”.

He could not have been any clearer.

For that reason, I welcome the comments of my friend and neighbour, the Secretary of State for International Trade, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), her agreement to the Trade and Agriculture Commission and her personal commitment to ensuring that we do not negotiate away any standards. This really matters: to the great industry of British farming and agriculture; to consumers watching today, who want to know that we are looking after their interests; to voters, to whom the Conservative party gave those solemn commitments last year; and, dare I say it, to this party, which I have always seen as a party of the countryside, of stewardship, of rural community, and of high standards in animal welfare and environmental farming. That is what is on the table when we vote tonight. Either we are that as a party, or, in the countryside, we are very little.

This should be a hugely exciting opportunity for us to set out an ambition and lead globally, to use our trade leverage to promote fair trade around the world, to give our farmers a level playing field, to embrace variable tariffs, and to ensure that we support growers around the world to follow the standards that we need them to embrace. We have to double world food production on the same land area with half as much water within 20 years. That is a massive opportunity for our agritech industry. Imagine if we used our tariffs variably to say, “We won’t accept food that breaches our minimum standards. We will lower tariffs on decent food, but we’ll zero tariff food produced in ways we know we need as a global community.”

But there is a major problem: the Government, despite endorsing all of that vision, are today stripping out the proper establishment of the commission that the Secretary of State for International Trade herself agreed to, carefully negotiated in the House of Lords. They are asking us to rely on CRaG—a process agreed decades ago that was not designed for this purpose, and which will mean that this House will not have a say on trade deals—and asking us to rely on the WTO, which specifically prohibits animal welfare and food production standards as a legal basis for any trade restrictions. We are saying that we defend farming and the standards that we support, but denying this House the means to guarantee them.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

What else has my right hon. Friend done about how he feels about this matter? Has he written to anyone about it?

[George Freeman]

I am grateful to my distinguished hon. Friend. The truth is that we can talk about standards, but if we expose UK farmers and growers to imports coming in at a lower price because they are not fulfilling those standards, they will not be able to compete and we will be throwing away the opportunity of having a great industry that leads the world. Lord Curry, who tabled the amendment in the other place, said:

“Under the current terms, the commission will set up for six months and will submit an advisory report to the Secretary of State, which will be presented to Parliament. It will then be disbanded and disappear into the mist. There is no obligation on the Secretary of State to take its recommendations seriously”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 July 2020; Vol. 805, c. 145.]

If we, as a Government and as a party, are seriously committed to honouring our commitments, I would like us to go further. Why do we not commit to enshrining our standards properly in some form of schedule—the standards that we will not undermine or allow any Minister of any Government to negotiate away? Why do we not give this House the power to ensure that it can scrutinise properly? Why do we not embrace a trade policy that is fit for this 50-year opportunity, which puts the British flag at the top of the mast for standards, and go out into the world and say, “We’ll use our trade leverage and variable tariffs to support the good, benign practices that the world urgently needs”?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

In following the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), I will try not to resort to impolite comments such as that which he directed at the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). He could not see the embarrassment on his colleagues’ faces when he made that comment.

I rise to speak in favour of amendment 16. The clarion voice of the people is at issue here and it is our responsibility as MPs to convey the horror with which our constituents view the Bill and its in-built opposition to their ambitions for food safety that respects the environment and safeguards the welfare of our animals.

The people of Scotland have spoken clearly in rejecting the Bill and its aims, and Ministers would do well to listen. If the Minister is listening for the voice of Scotland, I can assure her that she will find it over here on the SNP Benches, not over there on the Tory Benches. Scottish Tory MPs do not even speak for Scottish Tory voters, 95% of whom backed calls for food standards to be maintained, according to Which? People are asking why the Tory Government and the majority of their Back Benchers do not listen to the people—[Interruption.] That includes those who are chuntering from a sedentary position right now. Perhaps if the risk was of chlorine-washed chanterelle mushrooms or hormone-injected foie gras, Tory Ministers would have less of a deaf ear than the one they have turned to those of us who are happier dining on chicken fried rice and mince and tatties.

So much for taking back control, the newly independent, yet strangely impotent UK cannot specify the standard of food we will import going forward: John Bull under the heel of Uncle Sam right enough. That pitiful transatlantic asymmetry rings truer now than at any stage in Anglo-US history. The Tory Government have demonstrated in the most humiliating and unedifying way possible that nothing will get in the way of a US trade deal—in and of itself a highly questionable negotiating position.

The Government have betrayed civil society across these islands and ignored valid evidence and well-documented concerns about the Bill and its shoddy back door, leading to a food standards horror show. The will of the people of these islands is ignored by a Government who have purposely allowed the DIT tail to wag the DEFRA dog on food standards.

That highlights a betrayal that will take some beating—all in the name of breathing life into the Brexit myth of no global trade without Brexit. Meanwhile, Mercedes, Zara, Airbus, Heineken, Volvo and L’Oréal all sell big from within the EU to the US without the need for European Governments to betray their populations and farmers through the food that they produce and feed to their children.

The Government are capable of listening to industry as we saw during covid, when they listened intently to the supermarkets about food supply and to the private supply chains about food distribution. So why will they not listen to farmers on this issue? Farmers have been very clear on matters of provenance, the risk to their business of an any-price trade deal, and the supply of seasonal labour.

Why do the Tory Government seem to hold our farmers in such contempt? The question is rhetorical. We all know that it is because of the twin Tory totems of Brexit and immigration, which, for the hard of thinking, are one and the same thing. On a post-Brexit trade deal, the DIT speaks for Government. The Home Office speaks for Government on immigration, specifically their disastrous approach thus far to access to seasonal labour from abroad. No wonder many are beginning to ask what exactly DEFRA speaks for.

If the Government persist in proscribing the most basic protections for our food supply from the Bill, no amount of watery, weasel words will hide the simple fact that a Government that cannot act as guarantor for the food we eat cannot act as guarantor for anything. Scotland is taking a different route.

[Bill Wiggin]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan), just as I did after his maiden speech. May I say that he needs to allow a little more of his Scottish charm to seep into his speeches? I need to declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, particularly as a breeder of Hereford cattle. Some 88% of Herefordshire is farmland, and 10,200 people work on our 2,812 farms.

On amendments 12 and 16, let me say that farming is not a religion; it is a business. We need to increase farm incomes, cut NHS expenditure on obesity, lose the need for food banks, and ensure that we behave towards our livestock in the way that we behave towards one another: with respect, kindness and, most of all, understanding of the huge challenge all this presents. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Green party, Extinction Rebellion and many others have their own agendas on how to run the landscape, so their contribution is not surprising, but the NFU’s is surprising, because it has gone far too far in trying to wrongly frighten people. We must remember that the Agriculture Bill is primarily a continuation Bill. The amendments would put strict conditions in place when the EU negotiates a free trade deal, whereas when we, as part of the EU, negotiated free trade deals with other countries, none of those restrictions were in place. If we impose strict food requirements, America will challenge and win at the WTO. Opposition Members may rejoice at that, but the EU will not be able to accept those terms either.

[Robbie Moore]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the whole House wants to achieve better standards across the board, but we must look at the detail that amendment 16 brings?

[Bill Wiggin]

I agree not only with my hon. Friend but with my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), who said he made an excellent speech—he did. Our two largest trading partners would be gone, threatening £22 billion-worth of exports of food, drink and feed—everything we are selling. The EU has already threatened to ban animal products, a trade worth £3 billion, only last year. That should be no surprise. Trade deals with non-EU countries would be gone too: the hard-fought trade deal with Canada and 43 trade agreements with 70 other nations. We think that our food standards are very high, yet we allow religious slaughter, we are gassing pigs in our abattoirs, we do not insist on catering or welfare standards labelling, and we fudge our grass-fed labelling—

[Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)]

In 2018, 25% of the sheep slaughtering in this country was done without stunning. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is totally unacceptable and that, before we start preaching about other nations, we should look at our own animal standards after animals have left the farm?

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin]

Rightly or wrongly, it would become illegal, if we follow these rules, to bring anything from the EU that did not allow that into this country. My hon. Friend is right to raise that; it is wrong. Food labelling is the solution, and to have a grass-fed label that allows 49% of the feed to be grain is just not right.

We need to be an outwardly global, free trade-friendly but sensible country. These amendments are much more to do with stopping subsistence African farmers rather than Texan ranchers. It might surprise some of the supporters of these amendments to learn that we are already importing illegally produced food through the EU. Supermarkets sell Danish bacon—with English-sounding farm names, to fool customers—from pigs whose mothers are kept in sow stalls, which were banned in the UK in 1999, on the grounds of cruelty.

[Neil Parish]

Does my hon. Friend also accept that when we banned those sow stalls and tethers, Europe did not, and it decimated our pig industry in the meantime? Therefore, if we do not get the trade considerations right, we will trade away all our food production, like we have already.

[Bill Wiggin]

I do not get any extra minutes for that intervention. I ask Members also to think about our stocking density for chickens, which is 39 kg per square metre, as opposed to 42kg in the EU. German hop growers use chemicals that would not be allowed in this country, and apparently the French will give a derogation for neonicotinoids so that their farmers can produce oilseed rape. That is outrageous. Where are the objections to buying Danish bacon? Where are the people kicking off to protect our pig farmers? My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) is absolutely right: when we did the right thing, we were decimated.

I want us to achieve everything that my hon. Friend the Minister talked about. We should have proper food standards and better labelling. The people we should be putting our faith in are the consumers. They do not want hormone beef; they want to know that what they are buying is good, clean and proper, and they are grown up enough to make their own decisions.

There is room for everybody. We produce 61% of food eaten in this country and 75% of that which we are able to grow here. The remainder—more than £47 billion-worth—is all imported. We have the capacity to pay our farmers more, import from international markets without substitution for lower standards, and ensure that we produce the best and healthiest food at a cost-effective price.

The Prime Minister has called on us to find the inner, or thinner, hero inside us and shed those pounds. That is spot on. If we can lower the price of healthy food in this country, we could not only see our nation lose weight but address the need for food banks. With better food prices, innovation can progress in the agricultural sector, and we can have what we always wanted: farmers receiving public money for public goods.

I want the Minister to commit to ensuring that farm incomes grow on the back of the environmental land management scheme, and not be diminished. I want the Bill to allow us to protect the environment and produce food, while ensuring that our food producers’ incomes rise, consumers buy healthier food and the need for food banks goes. These amendments will not achieve those goals or what our great farmers, consumers, constituents and future trading partners want: prosperity and a better diet.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Flood Defences: Tenbury Wells

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, and thank you for allowing this twice-postponed debate to be held on flood defences for Tenbury Wells. We have just gone through the driest May on record and the pandemic is taking so much of the country’s bandwidth, so it is hard to believe that less than four months ago, we suffered some of the worst flooding in recent years in the Severn valley and elsewhere. We were very badly affected by Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis, and many people, homes and businesses were and indeed still are affected.

In West Worcestershire, we have the confluence of the River Severn, the River Teme and the River Avon, so we are used to regular winter flooding. After particularly bad floods in the summer of 2007, I started campaigns to build more flood defences in our area. Since 2010, we have had seven new flood defence schemes built with the help of the excellent team at the Environment Agency. Those schemes are in Uckinghall, Pershore, Powick and Kempsey, with two schemes in Upton-upon-Severn. The seventh, a community-based scheme, is in Callow End. Throughout the regular winter floods that have continued to affect the area, these flood defences have proved their worth time and again, and protected many homes on many occasions. The Upton-upon-Severn permanent flood defences alone have been called into service over 30 times and have allowed the town’s shops and pubs to remain open for residents at almost all normal times. The cumulative amount spent on these schemes has been over £9 million. They have largely been funded by the local flood levy budgets, with the flood wall in Upton-upon-Severn calling on about £4 million of the billions in capital spend on flood defences in this country in the last decade.

I am pleased that, since the February floods, the Environment Agency has committed to reviewing the Powick flood defences, as they were overtopped then. It would be good to see whether they can be raised without having a detrimental effect elsewhere. However, I will not stop campaigning until two further schemes are built in West Worcestershire. One is a bund in Severn Stoke, which is progressing well and has reached the planning permission stage. The cost is significantly lower than at Tenbury Wells and has been further reduced through the local supply of the material needed to build the bund. That leaves the final scheme—the big challenge —at Tenbury Wells. I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), who was the Member for Tenbury Wells at the time of the 2007 floods, here to support my request today.

Tenbury Wells is a wonderful market town on the River Teme. A market has been held there since 1249. The town has always been prone to flooding. The current bridge was built in 1795 by Thomas Telford, after the older one was washed away. The town is built on a flood plain and water can rush down incredibly quickly from the hills in Wales and Shropshire. The Kyre brook also flows right through the town and can fill up very quickly.

After the 1947 floods, which are still the worst on record, plans were drawn up to protect the town with flood defences, which would have cost less than £200,000, albeit in 1947 money, which I believe would be worth about £2.4 million today. Sadly, that scheme never went ahead.

During the three summer floods in 2007, the town’s toilets were washed away. They have since been replaced by an award-winning scheme, and a lot of further work has been done, with individual property-level protection, new culverts and some work on the drainage. The Environment Agency is making sure that the Kyre brook vegetation is regularly cut back and has recently drawn up a feasible and deliverable scheme for a full flood defence around the town. I know that exhibits are not allowed in the Chamber, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I have with me a copy of what the Environment Agency has drawn up.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I would like briefly to share with the House the misery caused by the flooding in 2007, when the residents of Tenbury Wells were hit three times by something that was evil in its outcome. I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent campaigning and wish her every success and more power to her elbow in a wonderful place that has suffered so badly.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I very much appreciate my hon. Friend and neighbour’s support for the campaign.

The Tenbury Wells scheme is feasible and deliverable, incorporating some wall around the church and a bund around the burgage and in other key places. Under the existing cost-benefit rules, the scheme would attract only about £1 million of flood defence grant in aid. Sadly, it was not built in time for the floods that struck this February, which were the worst for 13 years. The community did a remarkable job. They helped everyone affected, as did the local councils—the town, district and county councils—the local emergency services and the highways and waste collection teams. They were all outstanding, but the fact remains that 190 homes and businesses were again damaged and many closed, including the newly opened post office. As there was no time to repair the flood damage before the lockdown started, some people have had to spend the lockdown in flood-damaged homes. Central parts of the community’s fabric were also badly damaged, including the famous Chinese gothic pump rooms where the town council meets, the town’s swimming pool and the beautiful Tenbury Regal Theatre. In fact, the only thing that was not damaged was the amazing, resilient spirit of the town.

So we need to act. This wonderful market town serves a rural area for miles in every direction. It cannot help the fact that hundreds of years ago it grew up on a floodplain. If we want Tenbury Wells to thrive for hundreds of years to come—and we do—it needs a permanent flood defence. The temporary barriers that are deployed in Bewdley will not suit Tenbury Wells because the flood waters rise too suddenly and unpredictably. The Environment Agency says in its own report that the variable terrain, combined with the flood depth and the length of barrier required, mean that temporary barriers would not provide an effective or robust solution. Of course, the cost has risen to nearer £5 million, although I am sure that, just as in Severn Stoke and Callow End, local farmers and builders would be happy to help to bring down the cost of the booms. Because Tenbury Wells is a small town of fewer than 4,000 inhabitants, it will never meet the national formula, which puts so much weight on houses protected. It is a formula that cannot capture the key role that this market town plays in the much wider area around it.

So Minister, let us agree a plan of action tonight. The Environment Agency should start a consultation on its already drawn-up plans. They have been widely welcomed, but there are those whose objections and suggestions must be heard. And let us do it in a socially distant way—remotely, even: by post and internet if need be. I also welcome the interest shown in the scheme by the Woodland Trust, which has some good ideas about building leaky dams at the source of the Teme and planting trees along the catchment—the kind of natural upstream solutions that will be the kind of public goods that the Agriculture Bill will enable farmers to be paid for. The evidence is that, while these measures will not stop the flooding, they can reduce the peak of flood events by about 20%, although they would clearly only complement a permanent flood defence.

Let us bring together all the sources of funding: the county council capital budget, the local flood resilience levy fund and the £120 million in capital announced for schemes that do not meet the formula. I would welcome some clarification from the Minister this evening on how to bid for that fund. This is something that the town itself would be prepared to contribute to, and the Heritage Lottery Fund is going to be approached to help to protect the town’s heritage. There will be section 106 money from the new housing in the town and, of course, that help in kind from local farmers and builders. The Environment Agency does a wonderful job of supporting this process, and then we can put the scheme in for planning permission—this year, I hope. Once that process is complete, I believe that it is ambitious but feasible for the scheme to be shovel-ready next year. So Minister, I urge you to ask your officials—

Flooding

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for mentioning Tenbury Wells, which was in my constituency in 2007 when it flooded three times. The fact that somebody lost their life there is a proper tragedy, and when one talks about flooding, there is only one thing worse, and that is efforts to politicise it.

In just two days, we had a whole month’s worth of rain, on 15 and 16 February, which has caused about £10 million of damage in my constituency. Some 110 properties have been flooded, and 389 people were evacuated or led to safety. The fire brigade has done a phenomenal job. It also rescued 30 dogs, 12 cats, 55 sheep, a pony, a parrot and a snake, believe it or not. The village of Hampton Bishop in my constituency was very badly affected. We saw the Lugg and the Wye rise to their highest levels since recording began 200 years ago, so people who think that this was a normal flood are wrong. We had 700 tonnes of water per second going past the bridge on the Wye in Hereford. The Environment Agency pumped water out of Hampton Bishop, but the problem is of the one-in-100 year floods meeting one-in-25-year defences, and we need to do considerably better.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My hon. Friend is outlining the devastation that Herefordshire suffered during the recent floods. We of course experienced similar problems in Shropshire, but the leader of my council is telling me that the Bellwin scheme is not proving sufficient to meet all the demands that the council has in clearing up the mess. Could he say something about that?

[Bill Wiggin]

My council has had the same problem. I would ask the Government to think very carefully about training local authorities in how to manage the Bellwin scheme. Certainly, councillors in Herefordshire have been panicking because they do not necessarily understand how the scheme works, they do not know how much they can spend, and they do not know who to turn to. I think the Department that is managing this scheme needs to reach out to the affected local authorities so that at least the officers there know what they are talking about and can advise elected councillors properly.

[Craig Whittaker]

Calderdale is the second smallest local authority in the country, and we have to spend about £750,000 before we get £50,000 back from Bellwin. Does he agree with me that the scheme needs reviewing and bringing into the modern age?

[Bill Wiggin]

I do agree.

In my constituency, we have had the Holme Lacy Causeway inundated. We knew it would flood: it flooded last October, and it has flooded again. Nothing was done to protect that stretch of road. The worst case is the B4224, which is the main road through Fownhope. The damage there is so severe that the wall supporting the road has collapsed into the garden of my own parliamentary assistant, so not only could I not find out what was going on, but she could not get to work. She is about to get married and could really do without this, but worst of all, the people of Fownhope and the businesses there are not able to get the passing trade. Again, the council has been worrying about whether it is going to get the money, instead of getting on with repairing this road. However, even if it moves as quickly as possible, it will still take a long time.

I do think that local authorities need considerable training in understanding the Bellwin scheme, and if it is not fit for purpose, we need to make sure that it is. When we get a situation such as the one I have described, vehicles have to be sent round other roads, which damages them and means that they are not necessarily in a fit state at the end of such a diversion. The potholes are already bad; everybody has the same problem with them. We therefore need to get a much better understanding of the problems local authorities go through when dealing with flooding, just as the Government did with Flood Re, when they understood some of the challenges people faced in getting home insurance. Obviously I agree with what I heard earlier about how that needs to be extended to local businesses, because in my constituency businesses are damaged by floods again and again, and we need a more robust system for assisting and helping those people.

One cannot simply put into words the praise required for the fire brigade, the Army and the Environment Agency when such floods take place, and indeed, as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, for the way that our constituents rise to the challenge. The people of my constituency, and indeed all of Herefordshire and I suspect the whole country, have been fantastic in the way they have supported one another; they have risen to the challenge of understanding what a community is and have united in trying to deal with this horrendous problem of flooding. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) has been having trouble with Toronto Close, which was under water; he has asked me to mention that because, as a Minister, he is not able to speak himself. There, once again, residents were left to deal with flood defences themselves. It is tough enough when we know that we are going to flood, but not getting the support and help that we need from the Environment Agency makes it even worse.

Every year—every summer—I go around my constituency with the Environment Agency to make sure that all the preparation we can possibly do is done to ensure the flooding alleviation systems work. It is worth doing; those who do not do it should do so, because that preparation makes a world of difference. We saw it with the Somerset levels, when the Environment Agency thought it was all right to let trees grow in the rivers, and then all that happened was that the wildlife and the species it was hoping to protect simply drowned when the rivers backed up, because branches got caught in the overhanging trees.

We really do need to manage our waterways properly. We need to ensure that the people who understand that are listened to, and we need to ensure that the communities that suffer again and again and again are protected. That is why I welcome some of the things the Government have done. I think that local authorities could do more, and they need the help and training to make sure that that happens.

My heart goes out to anybody who has been flooded. I lost my car in 2007. I do not think people can understand until they have been through it the smell, the filth and the vile nature of a flood, and I would wish it on no one.