Bovine TB and Badger Control

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The evidence is extremely obvious. We can see from 1972 onwards that when there is a big increase in the badger population there is an increase in TB. It is very simple. I do not know of a single country in the western world that does not bear down on disease in wildlife and in cattle.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The Secretary of State said that vaccination is only 60% or 70% effective, but is that not an awful lot more than 16% effective for the cull? Secondly, he said that a cattle vaccination and the DIVA test are years off, but that is not the case—that is not what scientists are telling us. Will he use the money that has so far been earmarked for the cull to bring those vaccines to market as soon as possible? Will he start negotiating now with his EU colleagues to make sure that the DIVA test will mean that we can distinguish between infected and vaccinated cattle and that we can, therefore, continue to export beef?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. We are not yet there with a vaccination programme. If this vaccine is only 50% to 60% effective, a significant number of cattle will be either diseased or, perhaps, vaccinated. Until we can differentiate between them, we cannot go to the Commission and no neighbouring country would want to buy stock from us. This is a real, practical problem. I reassure the hon. Lady that I am as keen as her to get to the position of having a vaccine, and I promise that we will work on this over the next year. We are spending £15.5 million over the next four years on top of the £40-odd million that we spent recently. This is a real priority, but we are not in that position yet.

Plastic Bags

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Zac Goldsmith]

I shall provide a few examples of why I do not accept that. I remind my hon. Friend that I did say that 16%, not 100%, of the animals found washed up on the coast that have died as a result of waste have died as a result of their interaction with plastic bags. It is still a significant number. I shall come to that issue in a second.

Despite this being described as a minority or a small issue, every year 8 billion bags are used and thrown away in the UK. Throughout the EU, 800,000 tonnes of bags are used. Only 6% of those bags are recycled. They are used for an average of 20 minutes and can take anything up to 1,000 years to decompose. The vast majority will end up in landfill. Hundreds of millions will litter the countryside, and many will end up in the oceans.

It is an appalling thought—I mentioned this to pupils at a school a few weeks ago—that if Columbus had dropped plastic bags over the side of his ship 500 years ago, there is a pretty good chance that they would still be floating around intact today. Thousands of sea turtles, whales and countless other species mistake the bags for food and, once ingested, they block the animal’s insides and cause a horrible death.

I am sure that hon. Members remember that in 2006 a Northern bottlenose whale swam past this very building. Unfortunately, it died. It was in serious trouble, for all kinds of reasons, but when it was cut open in the autopsy, it was discovered that its stomach was packed with plastic debris. Unfortunately, the bags did not have a logo on them, so we cannot blame the individual companies, but plastic was a major contributing factor.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a compelling case. Does he agree that if the Government care about evidence-based policy, as I am sure they do, the evidence coming from, among other places, Wales, where the tax has already been implemented, shows that it has managed to reduce the use of plastic bags by up to 95%? It also has 70% support among the general population. If the Government care about evidence, there is a lot to support the tax.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I absolutely agree with her—indeed, she has taken the words out of my mouth. I shall come to the Welsh example very soon.

Just to continue on the basic statistics, a 2006 UN report estimated that on every square mile of ocean, there are 46,000 pieces of plastic debris floating around. They are not all plastic bags, but a great many are. The plastic does not disappear, even when eaten; it does not break down. When a creature has ingested a plastic bag, the creature itself decays faster than the bag. When the body of the creature breaks down after death, the bag is likely to be released back into the environment and can be reingested—recycled—continuously. The plastic bag has been described as a serial killer for that reason.

The Minister will know that many countries and regions around the world have already sought to address this appalling waste. We heard about the example of Wales, but there are many beyond our shores. California, Bangladesh, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, parts of India, Taiwan and parts of China have all introduced outright bans. Others have introduced levies. In Ireland, which is one of the best examples, a bag tax, introduced in 2002, has led to a reported 90% reduction in the number of plastic bags used.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

This is a very instructive debate. Members have come armed with a huge number of statistics that they are happy to trade across the Floor, which is all to the benefit of the debate.

We all have the opportunity to change our behaviour to ensure that fewer bags end up in landfill or as litter. Notwithstanding the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey), reducing the number of bags that we use would be a step towards more responsible living that also encourages people to think about the resources that we use. Aside from the potential ecological problems such bags cause when disposed of irresponsibly, it is incredibly wasteful to produce billions of them each year to be discarded after a single use. We continue to encourage the reuse of bags wherever possible.

All bags have an environmental impact, irrespective of their composition. Reusing them as many times as possible and disposing of them appropriately when they cannot be used any more minimises that impact.

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Lady wants to intervene. I shall let her do so before I continue.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the Minister for allowing me to intervene. I was being a little impatient, because he said that he encourages people to reduce waste and not use plastic bags. Could he concretely say how that encouragement finds its way down to ordinary people? It is true that they have the opportunity to reduce waste, but they are not doing it enough.

[Mr Heath]

They are not, and I will return to that in a moment.

There are those who are clear about their obligations and will use reusable bags whenever they have the opportunity. There are some who it will always be difficult to reach, because they simply do not want to hear the message. Then there are what I call the “guilty middle”; they will use reusable bags, and want to do so, whenever they can, but they sometimes turn up—as, I confess, I occasionally do—at a supermarket and find that they have forgotten the bag that they intended to take and have to take a plastic bag. The sort of measure that my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park proposes might affect that large, guilty group in the middle, who want to do the right thing and feel guilty when they do not.

We have had lots of figures already, so I will add a few more. In 2011, around 8 billion thin-gauge plastic carrier bags—single-use carrier bags—were issued in the UK. If you include reusable bags, such as bags-for-life, the total figure is about 8.4 billion bags issued in the UK. Obviously, that is a very large number.

We have made some progress in recent years. The first voluntary agreement with retailers between 2006 and 2008, which has been mentioned, reduced the overall environmental impact of carrier bags by about 40%. Signatories to the agreement encouraged the reuse of carrier bags, increased their recycled content and reduced their weight, among other measures. A second agreement with supermarkets between 2006 and 2009 focused on reducing the number of bags distributed, and achieved a total reduction of 48% against the 2006 baseline. That is progress. We should not forget that.

Supermarkets and shoppers pulled together to reduce the number of carrier bags they were using. Despite some evidence of a reversal in the trend, the latest figures, for 2011, show an overall decline in bag usage of 32% compared with 2006. I hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby said about the contribution that carrier bags make to landfill. He is right that they are not a large part of the total waste stream, but it is not possible to argue that plastic bags, particularly when they litter our towns and countryside, are not an unwanted eyesore. They represent 72,000 tonnes of waste entering the waste stream.

Aside from the impact that carrier bags have on wildlife, marine environments and our countryside and coast, no one travelling around our countryside wishes to see carrier bags in the trees or floating down the lanes. It is all avoidable if we, the public and retailers do the right thing by reducing the use of single-use bags. We all have a part to play.

Some retailers are taking positive action, with initiatives such as voluntary charging, rewarding shoppers for reusing bags by awarding loyalty points, offering front-of-store recycling and increasing the amount of recycled content in the bags. Although recycling is further down the waste hierarchy, after prevention and reuse, it is still important to improve recycling rates for carrier bags, because it also helps to reduce the overall environmental impact and makes use of a valuable resource. I am pleased to see that the number of shops offering front-of-store recycling facilities for bags has increased, but I would like more to do so. I hope that more retailers, particularly the big ones, will be prepared to take up that challenge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

It should be. My hon. Friend is giving an example of exactly why we need to look at the results in the round rather than at a simple indicator. Let us do that and let us be convinced, if convinced we are, that what has happened in Wales is the right way to approach the issue. We will also consider the Scottish consultation on change, which closed on 28 September, and discuss the matter with our colleagues in Scotland. We will balance the benefits of any change with the real, but avoidable, effect on household budgets to ensure that we get the right option.

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park asked me whether I had met the Welsh Environment Minister, and the answer is that I have not, but my hon. Friend will accept, I think, that I would not be expected to have such a meeting because that would be the job of my noble Friend, Lord de Mauley. In fact, it was Lord de Mauley’s predecessor in the Department, Lord Taylor, who met John Griffiths in July 2012 to discuss the matter.

My hon. Friend asked me whether I could confirm that the introduction of a charge would only require secondary legislation. If we did take such action, it would be from powers that stem from section 77 of the Climate Change Act 2008, which makes provision for charges for single-use carrier bags. Therefore, in England, we could introduce such a charge through secondary legislation, but it would be subject to a consultation process because that is the mechanism of government.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the Minister say when we can look forward to a decision coming from Government? He has explained that it is right to evaluate the experience in Wales. Could we therefore expect some kind of Government decision early next year?

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

Nobody disputes that the produce my hon. Friend describes is wonderful, but the challenge for small and medium-sized enterprises is how to overcome the hurdles of exporting to emerging markets such as China and India, which are sometimes quite complex. I am delighted to announce to the House that the Minister of State will visit Cornwall tomorrow precisely to discuss that, and in the following month, he will go to China precisely to advocate the kind of good-quality Cornish products my hon. Friend describes.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

T5. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating Brighton and Hove city council on its resolution to become a One Planet council, which means, for example, that it will be run using sustainable procurement policies, and renewable energy and biodiversity practices? Will she commit to adopting One Planet principles as a step towards keeping sustainability in all policy making?

[Mrs Spelman]

I am happy to extend a hearty congratulation to the hon. Lady’s council, and I understand that the Isle of Wight is about to declare itself an eco-council, which shows the important role that local authorities can play. She will also know that the UK is playing a leading part in the preparations for the Rio+20 summit—the 20-year anniversary of the original Earth summit—where we will strongly advocate the need to put growth on to a more sustainable footing. We have also given strong support to the Colombian proposal for sustainable development goals.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

It is always a pleasure to put on my walking boots. I stood as a candidate for Bassetlaw in the 1992 general election, and I am familiar with the Attenborough reserve and the excellent work being done there. I will be very happy to visit it. I have encountered huge enthusiasm for the nature improvement areas. There have been 76 bids for NIAs. Although only 12 of them have been successful, I am confident that many of the others will go ahead anyway.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

At the previous DEFRA Question Time the Minister, the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Mr Paice), said that

“there never was any intention to dispose of the whole public forest estate.”—[Official Report, 19 January 2012; Vol. 538, c. 870.]

Yet in evidence to the Lords Committee inquiry in 2010 he stated that

“we wish to proceed with…very substantial disposal of public forest estate, which could go to the extent of all of it.”

Will the Minister now once and for all come clean about the Government’s original intention, and is his confusion on this issue the reason the forestry brief has now been taken off him?

[Mr Paice]

I am happy to confirm that the final proposals we made to the House—the only ones that matter—did not include total disposal. The hon. Lady knows full well the contents of the consultation, and they did not include total disposal. In fact, it could be argued that the amount that would have been disposed would have been much less than that, as there would have been considerable leasehold. Turning to the question of the forestry portfolio, first, this year I will be far busier with common agricultural policy negotiations and, secondly, my noble Friend Lord Taylor has now joined the team, and he has special knowledge of the horticultural sector and plant and tree disease, which is very topical at present.

Rio+20 Summit

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am very grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate, and, as a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, I too want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) for her commitment to do more and more work on the environment across the whole House.

I want to focus in particular on recommendations 1 and 9 of the EAC report and the Government’s response to them. Recommendation 1 rightly observes that

“there has been inadequate progress on sustainable development since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.”

Sadly, I think that that is something of a grave understatement. Although there has certainly been some progress, it has been very slow and incremental, whereas the science demands an urgent paradigm shift. No wonder our report states:

“There is still far to travel. Some ‘planetary boundaries’ having been breached, and others approaching, make the task more urgent than ever.”

I agree very strongly with that. There is enormous urgency behind the agenda as planetary boundaries are indeed being breached. If everybody in the world lived as we do in the rich north, we would need another three planets to provide the resources and absorb the waste. I hardly need to say that we do not have three planets; we have one, and it is already looking pretty degraded.

Recommendation 9, however, claims:

“It would be unrealistic to expect the imperative for economic growth not to be high on the agenda of many countries going to Rio+20, developing and developed.”

My case is that as far as the developed countries are concerned, we need a different imperative high on our agenda. Indeed, the recommendation goes on to state:

“The Government should resist any moves there might be to use the financial situation to dilute the extent of the environmental and social aspects of the green economy discussed at Rio+20. Rather, it should emphasise…that environmental planetary boundaries will ultimately limit the room for growth.”

It is important to state in black and white that there are limits to growth. I know that that is not a popular perception or idea, but it is very clear that on a planet of finite resources with a rising population and rising expectations, infinite economic growth simply is not possible.

[Martin Horwood]

Does the hon. Lady agree with the economist Kenneth Boulding, who said:

“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”?

[Caroline Lucas]

I will forgive the hon. Gentleman for taking one of my best lines, but I think that that is a very important point. I am glad to see that our sources are moving in the same direction.

The source to which I want to refer is a film, “The Age of Stupid”. I do not know whether many hon. Members will have seen it, but it features Pete Postlethwaite as the sole survivor of a climate catastrophe. It is based in 2050 and he is looking back to today. He looks through all the newsreels—real, genuine newsreels with all the evidence that we have around us that climate change is happening—and he says, in words that still make the hairs on the back of my neck go up in a shiver, “Why is it, knowing what we knew then, we didn’t act when there was still time?” To me, that is just about the most important question that we could ask. Given that we have all this evidence that we must act, what is stopping us?

Part of it is to do with the fact that for too long, a shift to a green economy has been portrayed as though we were talking about shivering around a candle in a cave. It has been portrayed too often as being about hair shirts and we have assumed that if we scare the life out of people sufficiently with the terrible stories of what will happen—and it will happen if we do not get off the collision course with climate change—that, on its own, will be enough to motivate people to change their behaviour. Yet, as we have seen, the evidence shows that that is not what will motivate behaviour change.

Such change would be motivated by our painting a much better picture—a much greener, more compelling vision—of what a zero-carbon economy would look like and by our making the point that it is about a better quality of life. We should also make the point that the current economic model is not even working on its own terms, and we need look no further than the financial crash to see that. Not only that—it is not actually making those of us in the rich countries any happier beyond a certain point. There is a lot of evidence that once basic needs are met, beyond a certain point more and more economic growth does not make us happier. The stress on turbo-consumerism is not increasing our well-being. I could not put it better than Professor Tim Jackson, a professor at the university of Surrey who wrote the wonderful report, “Prosperity without growth?” He has said that we

“spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to create impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about.”

To me, that sums up more or less what we are doing wrong.

We need real change. We need to recognise that the economy is a subset of the wider ecology and the environment—not the other way around. We need to recognise that, although technology and efficiency have their parts to play, they are not going to get us there on their own. In a planet with a rising population and rising expectations, to think that efficiency gains and technology alone will get us off the collision course we are on is to be in fantasy land. We need behaviour change as well and more education on population growth—an issue that no one has put on the table yet this evening. Population is a controversial issue but it has to be part of our discussions about a sustainable future. I am talking not about anything coercive, but about education and the provision of family planning for those women who still need and want it in developing countries. I am talking about recognising that the impact of different populations is different in different places. The impact of our fewer numbers in the north is far greater than that of higher numbers in the south, but population still has to be part of the discussion.

Social justice also has to be part of the discussion. The aim of meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs does not apply only to the rich or those in the global north—it has to apply to every citizen. Under current trends, it looks as though there will be 9 billion people by 2050, and the real challenge we face if we are serious about a green economy is how future populations will be able to consume equally on a per capita basis and still remain within resource constraints. I suggest that that could only be feasible if we in the rich north significantly reduced our consumption patterns and our impact on the planet.

We have started to make some policies based on recognising the need for constraint, starting with the Climate Change Act 2008. I believe, and the science suggests, that we in the developed countries need to be reducing our emissions by something like 90% by 2030, so I do not agree with the targets in that Act, but the architecture in it is incredibly important. The Government could do much worse than to mark the 20th anniversary of the Rio summit by amending the Act, first, to set targets that are in line with the science and, secondly, to include traded or embedded carbon. For too long it has been too easy to outsource our responsibility for much of the carbon that is produced in order to make the products that we consume. The fact that the production happily happens over in China, with the impact going on to its balance sheet rather than on to ours, seems grossly unfair to me. If we are importing products from other countries, the carbon that is embedded in those products should be part of our calculations and audits.

There are also biodiversity constraints. Our consumption of resources has a knock-on effect for habitats, so that needs to be strictly regulated to prevent further loss of biodiversity and, where possible, to reverse the losses that have already happened.

Other hon. Members have talked about our current fixation with economic growth, which means that we over-emphasise the measure of that growth—gross domestic product—to the detriment of other measures of success. Really, our policy on growth is no more or less than a policy to increase GDP by a certain percentage each year, but as others have said, GDP measures do not differentiate the social value of different forms of economic activity or revenue and capital. A Government who use up their capital—the country’s natural resources—and treat it as national income, can boast of having delivered growth and increased GDP. We have seen that on a vast scale with the billions of pounds-worth of oil and gas from the North sea that has been treated as revenue with no thought to the fact that that income is a one-off boost to the economy. For 30 years it has made the UK economy look much healthier than it actually has been, and instead of the proceeds being invested wisely in the future—for example, on renewable energy facilities that we can use when the oil and gas run out—it has been used to fund consumer booms that have led to the inevitable busts.

Perhaps worst of all, the use of GDP as a measure does not count the full costs of production, such as the impact on our natural world and on people’s quality of life. DEFRA’s natural environment White Paper suggests that we can produce metrics of natural environmental value for transactions, but we need to be clear that simply saying that the natural environment has a value is not, in itself, sufficient to ensure that it is internalised in decision-making processes. I would also argue, as the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) was in some senses, that it is impossible to put a value on some resources. What value do we put on a liveable atmosphere? That is a public good, not a private good. Relying on the markets to offer protection is therefore insufficient. We need regulation as well.

Businesses need to be hugely involved in the project, and in some respects are far more advanced in their thinking on this agenda than Ministers. We could learn from some of the businesses that are already beginning to think about what it would mean for them to live in a steady state economy, rather than one that was based on more and more production and consumption. As others have said, it is incredibly important that we send a very clear message about the importance of the Rio Earth summit, and we would do that by ensuring that our own Secretary of State is there, but I join other hon. Members who have said strongly that the Prime Minister also needs to be there to send a strong message that this matters, that this is urgent. The time that we have in this Parliament—the next three or four years—will be critical as to whether we invest properly in getting off the collision course that we are on with the climate crisis. It falls on our generation to do that. It is a huge responsibility, but it is also an awesome opportunity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

I will come on to that. I said a little earlier that the hon. Lady had misread the mood of the House—and she still seems to be doing so. I will answer her points later.

A key part of Rio will be an agreement on the sustainable development goals—a priority for the UK, on which we are working closely with our EU and international partners. There is a lot to do on fleshing out SDGs, but we want to lead the way in helping to develop this thinking. The Secretary of State met a group of Ministers in Nairobi last week and the Colombian Environment Minister here today. We need a renewed focus on tackling the major sustainability issues of access to food, sustainable energy and water.

We need to focus on global challenges. Agriculture, water and energy are fundamental to our economy, and provide livelihoods for the world’s poorest people. By 2030, the world will need at least 50% more food, 45% more energy and 30% more water. These are massive issues. We have tried to do our bit in government by reflecting the concerns that we know future generations will face—for example in our water White Paper published just before Christmas, which set out how we will approach the resilience of our economy and natural environment to provide the water we need in the future.

We need a clear course of action on food security and sustainable agriculture, which is climate smart, reduces waste and takes into account water resources. We need to be clear that access to clean and safe water is a prerequisite for green growth. Just last week, we were discussing drought here in the UK—a country famous for its rainfall. In China, which has 20% of the world’s population but only 6% of its water resources, half of which are undrinkable, access to water resources will only become more important. The UN Secretary-General's “Sustainable Energy for All” initiative is an important step towards increasing sustainable energy, energy efficiency and the use of renewables.

We want to see outcomes that will put sustainability at the heart of decision making. This includes a commitment to go beyond gross domestic product so as to account for natural and social values, too. Many hon. Members touched on this issue. It is vital that we articulate it not just in the high-level conversations—or high-falutin’ ones, as one hon. Member put it—but at the local level. Several hon. Members stressed that we have to carry people with us in these arguments. I was particularly impressed with how my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood brought the argument down to the household level, as it is crucial to impact on households now and in the future.

The UK has a lot to share at Rio: through our national ecosystems assessment, through the Prime Minister’s work on well-being and through work stemming from our natural environment White Paper, we can begin to put natural value at the heart of decision making. A number of Members referred to the Government’s agenda in that regard. I was particularly taken by what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) and by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion. We are trying to value natural capital in the context of our economic well-being, of which it is a vital element, and we will shortly announce the membership of the natural capital committee. However, it is impossible to value a view: there must still be an element of the spiritual and uplifting benefits of nature that we all experience, and it is important that we articulate that.

The natural capital committee will advise the Government on our natural capital, and our work with the Office for National Statistics will embed it in our environmental accounts by 2020. Our guidance entitled “Accounting for Environmental Impacts” will help Departments to reflect the value of nature in decision making. Our ecosystems market taskforce—led by Ian Cheshire, chief executive of the Kingfisher group—will look at opportunities for businesses in new green goods and services, which form a vital part of our work in the future. Our work with the World Bank on its “Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services” will pilot new approaches to wealth accounting in developing countries.

As has been said we also need greater resource efficiency and a commitment to reducing inefficient and environmentally harmful subsidies, including fossil fuel subsidies. In the UK alone, resource efficiency could provide £23 billion-worth of savings, or £2.9 trillion globally per annum, and the EU is well placed to lead on that through its “Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe”.

As the Government have noted, action by Governments alone will not be enough. Rio needs to engage the private sector actively so that it plays its part in delivering a greener economy through trade, innovation and investment. However, a Government can facilitate the transition by, for instance, reducing environmentally harmful subsidies. A number of Members mentioned fishing. Let me assure my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park that the Government’s agenda on fisheries partnership agreements is right up there in terms of reform of the common fisheries policy. It is entirely wrong that, having failed to put our own house in order, we are now inflicting bad management on some of the people in this world who can least afford it, and I assure my hon. Friend that dealing with that is an absolute priority for me.

We will be able to assist by incentivising research and development and innovation, by increasing resource efficiency, to which we have referred in the context of the water White Paper, by getting price signals right—I have mentioned the carbon floor in that connection—by valuing and accounting for natural resources, by making the best use of standards and voluntary approaches such as labelling and procurement, and by developing indicators of green growth. We have been engaging businesses in relation to possible outcomes from Rio, for example through the Green Economy Council.

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Richard Benyon]

I am sorry; I cannot give way.

We know that UK businesses are world leaders in green growth. Marks and Spencer saved more than £70 million last year through a combination of efficiency savings and new business. That compares with £50 million the year before.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

The hon. Gentleman puts his finger on an important point. As he knows, the Welsh Government have decided to take forestry into the remit of their own organisation. The Scottish Government are looking at the possibility of doing the same thing. That has implications for Forest Research and, indeed, for certain other Forestry Commission activities. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a definitive answer, because we are still in negotiations, but we will ensure that any devolved Administration who take on a forestry role make sure that any costs on the English commission are properly funded.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The Government were deeply misguided in viewing our woodlands as assets for stripping, and the public told them so. Can the Minister assure the House that this lesson has been learned, by reassuring us that the Secretary of State will not dispose of the 15% of the public forest estate she was hoping to get rid of without legislation before she had to abandon the rest of her disastrous plans?

[Mr Paice]

The hon. Lady, as always, gets a bit hysterical. In fact, there never was any intention to dispose of the whole public forest estate. Nevertheless, as we have repeatedly said, all sales, of any scale, are suspended until we get the final report. When we get the final report, we will then consider future policy, and not until.

Bovine TB

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

As I have said, this is a difficult decision and it is not one that I have found easy to make. Having spoken and listened to all the stakeholders involved, I understand that the cost of training someone to take part in the vaccination programme is significant, so I hope that with the money that I have announced today, we will be able at least to halve the cost of that training.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Rather than pursuing this cruel and counter-productive cull, what consideration did the Secretary of State give to reducing the trend towards increasing intensive dairy farming? Around 80% of bovine TB transmission is thought to be caused cattle to cattle and that happens far more easily in crowded conditions.

Water White Paper

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We hope to legislate in the near future on a number of these matters, not least that of South West Water, which does require primary legislation. The guidance that we are consulting on will be made available when the results of the consultation are known in January—in the new year, to be precise. We will very much take his concerns into account. We want company social tariff schemes that really work and get to those who are in water poverty.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I welcome the publication of the White Paper, although I am disappointed that in some respects it is not more ambitious, particularly as some of the measures that we need could be very simply achieved. To give one specific example, are there plans to include a mandatory requirement to have rainwater harvesting in all new homes, and if not, why not, given that it is a very simple measure that could nevertheless have a significant impact?

[Richard Benyon]

There are great incentives to be given in the construction of new homes. In terms of the wider debate on development, sustainable development will put the onus on developers to show that the construction of these dwellings will have as minimal an impact as possible on the environment. This will be a real driver towards using water-conserving measures such as greywater schemes, sustainable drainage systems and a whole host of others that we will be bringing forward as this process goes further.

Environmental Protection and Green Growth

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the hon. Lady think a little humility might be in order, given that when we take into account the UK’s share of international aviation and shipping emissions, under Labour’s three terms of office, greenhouse gas emissions rose, rather than fell?

[Mary Creagh]

A little humility might be in order for the hon. Lady, who ignores the fact that we were the first Government in the world to legislate for binding emissions targets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pat Glass]

I absolutely agree with that, but it ultimately comes down to us. I do not want weekly bin collections to be restored and nor do any of my neighbours. They are a waste of time and of our natural resources. There is virtually nothing in my waste bin; almost everything goes into the recycling bin. If I can do it, so can everybody else.

[Caroline Lucas]

Does the hon. Lady agree that although recycling is important, it is third on the so-called waste hierarchy? Reusing resources and reducing the number of resources that we use in the first place are also critical. On those matters, we need Government action as well as local authority action.

[Pat Glass]

I absolutely agree. We need a proper strategy on recycling and waste, and we need to stop obsessing about bin collections.

On flood defences, I know that DEFRA has taken a massive 30% cut and that some of that has been passed on to flood defence schemes. The Government have rejected the Pitt report on improving flood defences and have cancelled major schemes that were scheduled to take place in towns and cities such as York, Leeds and Morpeth in Northumberland. That will cause massive concern not only for people who have suffered from flooding in the past, but for anyone who lives in a city or town that had hoped to be included in the flood defence scheme. We all acknowledge—even the Government acknowledge—that the flood risk is growing and that flooding will affect more communities across the country in the future.

In the summer, I was visited in my constituency surgery by constituents who live halfway down Blackhill bank in Consett. They came to see me about flooding. Anyone who knows Consett will know that it is 885 feet above sea level. According to Wikipedia, it is the second highest town in the country. We have never had flooding in places such as Consett before. Those people told me that it is not only water that comes through their house, but black water—sewage. It can take up to two years for home owners and businesses to get back into their properties.

Despite that, flood defence schemes have been cut. That means that many home owners and businesses will no longer be able to get insurance when Labour’s agreement with the insurance industry runs out in 2013, because that agreement was based on continued Government investment in flood defences, not on cuts.

The Government’s strategy on the environment is simply not working. It is not supporting the countryside, it is not delivering for the majority of people in this country, and it will leave communities that are vulnerable to flooding to fend for themselves.

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[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am gratified by the extent to which successive Governments have sought to brand themselves as green—after all, imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery. However, I also see it as part of my role to scrutinise the authenticity of any promises made and, most importantly, to inquire whether fine and noble rhetoric is backed by fast and ambitious action.

It is important to say at the outset, as the Green party always has, that environmental policies cannot be just bolted on to business as usual. We have always said that to judge the greenness of a Government, we should look not so much at their environmental policies, but at their economic programme. If a Government’s economic policies are simply about promoting more and more conventional economic growth based on the production and consumption of yet more finite resources, it does not really matter how many green trimmings they add to their manifesto. The direction of travel will still be fundamentally unsustainable. Judged by that measure, sadly not one of the main parties has come close to understanding the true nature of green politics.

Therefore, although I welcome the fact that Labour has chosen the Government’s green record as the subject for today’s debate, and although I am heartened by the commitment that I have heard in the Chamber today, it is interesting to contemplate why those aspirations, commitments and statements are not made when we discuss the Budget or growth, for example. In those debates, all the “business as usual” economic arguments are trotted out, as ever. We do not marry up all the nice words about the environment that we have heard today with the arguments that we hear in those economic debates, which is when it really matters. To say that this shows remarkable inconsistency would be a kind way of putting it.

Over a year ago the Prime Minister pledged that this would be the greenest Government ever. The first thing to say about that aspiration is that it is sadly not particularly ambitious, given Labour’s poor record on the environment in the preceding 13 years in office. At the end of that Labour term, the UK was getting more of its energy from fossil fuels than in 1997, when Labour came to power. Everyone rejoices in a sinner who repents, but one cannot help but think that, at best, Labour’s criticism of the Government’s record today shows an almost heroic degree of collective amnesia.

It is significant that one of the first acts of this Government, who aspire to be the greenest ever, was to abolish the very body that could have had a role in judging whether they could achieve that. I refer, of course, to the Sustainable Development Commission—I support the comments that the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) made about that. As a critical friend, the commission was a vital in providing well-informed scrutiny of Government policy. The commission also saved the Treasury around £300 million over 10 years, against running costs of just £4 million a year. The scrapping of that commission undermines the Government’s assertion that they are committed to green issues. It is also the first of many examples of ideology trumping common sense, economic sense and environmental sense.

Much has been said today about the green investment bank, and of course it is a good idea to have such a bank. It is very badly named, however, in that it is not very green and, so far, it is not even a bank. The Government are actively considering using it to subsidise nuclear power, and its wings are being clipped from the outset through insufficient capitalisation and no initial borrowing capacity for several years at least.

I could refer to many other issues, but I would like briefly to mention the complete chaos that the solar industry is now in, thanks to the way in which the Government keep moving the goalposts in relation to the level at which the feed-in tariffs are going to be secured. That is a tragedy not only for the environment but for some of the fantastic solar industries in this country that could be at the forefront of solar power internationally. Because the Government keep changing their level of support, however, the industry has been left in great confusion.

In conclusion, I shall return to my first point. Slavish adherence to the same economic model that has created the economic crisis and the climate crisis will not empower us to build a sustainable future and make the transition to a zero-carbon economy, yet that is what the Government and the Opposition are relying on. Yes, efficiency gains can help, and yes, technology will have a vital role to play, but there is a real risk—which has not been addressed today—that, with a rising population and understandably rising expectations from a growing middle class around the world, those efficiency and technological gains will be undermined by the overall level of net growth. That means that behaviour change will have to be a far greater part of the solution when it comes to adopting sustainable development, yet the dogma that we can carry on with business as usual provided that there is more and more economic growth to get us out of this economic crisis—never mind the long-term environmental, social and economic consequences—is barely questioned by politicians. Professor Tim Jackson states:

“Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries. But question it we must.”

We must—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.

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[Richard Benyon]

With the leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will address the House again at the conclusion of this superb debate. The last comments made by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) amused me greatly. They sounded desperate. They sounded as if he was in complete denial of the 13 years of failure, of which he was part. I, like my DEFRA colleagues, feel that we are in a Department that deals with emergencies. One of the emergencies we are dealing with is the great sense of failure that the previous Government imposed on the countryside and on the environment. We are having to work our socks off to repair the situation, but it is a challenge that we take and take seriously. We look forward to achieving on it in the coming months.

The Government can show leadership in protecting our environment, which is exactly what this Government are doing. However, the Government alone cannot protect our environment. We believe that having communities, business, civil society and Governments working together is likely to have the greatest impact on protecting and improving our environment. We are providing new opportunities for local people to play a bigger role in protecting and improving the environment in their areas. We have some of the world’s best civil society environmental organisations to help us to protect and improve our natural environment, and we have provided the tools for them to work with us.

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Richard Benyon]

No, I will not give way.

We welcome the “Nature Check” report. It is very important that the organisations that took part in it have an edgy relationship with government. They frequently come to the Department and we work closely with them, and we will get green lights on the items as we progress. When that report was produced we had been in government for 15 months, dealing with abject failures created by the hon. Member for Ogmore and the Labour party in government, for which he has to take responsibility.

Let me deal with some of the excellent points made in the debate. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) was missing the point. Just dealing with recycling does not deal with the whole waste problem; we need to look at this the whole way up the waste hierarchy. Unlike her Government, we will introduce proposals to ban wood from landfill next year.

I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) on a customary visionary speech. The leadership he is giving in his community on broadband, on local housing initiatives and on improving mobile coverage for his constituents is matched by this Government’s commitment to do the same for rural areas right across this country.

The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) again showed that Labour Members just do not get the whole waste issue. I urge him to look at our waste review and see what we are achieving.

My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) made an excellent speech in which she pointed out the failure of Labour councils. It is councils that deliver and it is coalition party councils that are achieving.

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[Richard Benyon]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

There have been some excellent initiatives all around the country, not least in my hon. Friend’s constituency, that have shown how we can unlock more money for flood relief and coastal erosion resilience. I commend the points she made. The total environment concept that we are rolling out around the country is showing that we can work with local government, other organisations and the wider DEFRA family to achieve a better result for the rural communities she represents.

I remind the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) that when her party was in power it was selling off forests at quite a dramatic rate with very little protection for public access. She said that we have rejected the Pitt report, but nothing could be further from the truth: we have implemented all but one of its recommendations and I had a meeting on that recommendation today.

I appreciated the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George). There is much that is consensual about this debate although it might not feel like it at this precise moment. My right hon. Friends and I had a meeting with Sir John Beddington when we took office and he told us that we had to do something that is hard for politicians to do—look beyond the horizon of four or five years that we are accustomed to looking at in the electoral cycle. What is required is a horizon shift to deal with the possible storm that could be approaching from a shortage of energy, water and food. That requires initiative, vision and a proper approach to these issues; that is what we are doing.

The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) made a fascinating speech. It is good to see that deficit denial is alive and well and living in Swansea. What he and others fail to understand is that sustainable development is now mainstream in government; it is not parked in some organisation that is peripheral—it is central to what we do.

I appreciate the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael). He is right that what we are looking for is joined-up policies across government. The benefits of localism come from an understanding not just in silos, as it was considered in the past, but with support from across government to the benefit of constituents.

I hope that the scepticism of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) about the green investment bank will wither as we introduce it and she sees its benefits for new green technologies. She talked about business as usual, but this Government are not about business as usual on green technologies. This is about a horizon shift and taking a new approach.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the Minister give way?

[Richard Benyon]

I do not have time—I apologise.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) made an excellent point about the failures of the past that have put us 25th out of 27 in the EU on recycling. We have to improve on that. People ask what our ambition is: it is for a zero-waste economy, which is a high ambition indeed.

The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) talked about dark conspiracies, but I assure her that they do not exist. She should move on from that idea and stop watching those programmes.

Bovine TB

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

Perhaps more than anyone in the Chamber, I understand how difficult this decision is to make—because the Secretary of State has to make it. I have weighed the arguments and deliberated carefully. I am, of course, sympathetic to those who always have animal welfare uppermost in their minds. So do I, and that is one of the factors that I weighed in my consideration. However, I do feel that the decision we have announced today is the right one.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Is the message that the Secretary of State is sending out today not highly likely to be seen as a green light to an increase in small-scale illegal badger killing that in turn is likely to increase the incidence of cattle TB, and will she acknowledge that there is significant scientific evidence countering the evidence that she has cited today?

[Mrs Spelman]

I want to make it perfectly clear that the badger remains a protected species and that those caught culling them illegally face severe penalties. That remains in place. Today we are asking Natural England under licence to consult farmers consortia to undertake a controlled reduction of the badger population in a careful, effective and humane way. On the science, I think that we have been through this argument several times already. I recommend that the hon. Lady read the latest scientific evidence, peer reviewed, by Christl Donnelly, on the outworking of the random badger culling trial post-2007.