Environment Bill

Chris Grayling Excerpts

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

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Hon. Members will be pleased to know that the children of Our Lady of Victories Primary School in Putney have been writing to me about the issue under debate this afternoon. Thirty members of year 6 wrote to me with lovely pictures all about the environment, and most of them said that the most important issue to them was the environment and tackling climate change, so I know the eyes of those children and children across the country are on us this afternoon as we debate this.

I was on the Environment Bill Committee last November. We spent a long time discussing it line by line, with many, many amendments, and this is the third time that I have debated the Bill in the Chamber. I am very glad that it is back. It is not missing in action—it is here today—but I am disappointed because it could have gone further. Despite all our work poring over the Bill and all the evidence submitted by civil society groups, we see a Bill before us that will still fail to tackle the climate and ecological emergency. I am worried that it is just warm words without the back-up of a really strong Office for Environmental Protection, whose remit and powers have been watered down since the Bill was last before the House.

I will focus today particularly on trees. It is welcome that the Government have announced, in the past week, the England trees action plan, but we now need strong wording and a much more ambitious plan in this legislation that will drive the action that is needed across Government, the economy and society. In Putney, Roehampton and Southfields, we love our trees and our green spaces and we know that, across the country, trees are essential for climate reduction, meeting that net zero target, biodiversity and our mental health. However, the UK has one of the lowest areas of tree coverage of any country in Europe. At current rates of planting, it will reach its own target only by 2091, as was pointed out earlier by the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard). That is 40 years off the target of 2050 and it is an example of where we can have a lot of warm words and keep talking things up, but if we do not have enforceable action by the Office for Environmental Protection, as there should be, we will be coming back here in one year, in five years or in 10 years’ time and we will not see the amount of tree planting that we need.

The action plan was originally promised as a 30-year vision for England’s trees and woods, but it has been published as a shortlist of commitments, with three years of funding. Long-term funding is needed for any real environmental action. Clear timescales are needed to ensure that objectives are met, and clarity on that funding beyond 2024 will be absolutely necessary to give the sector long-term security. I welcome the provision for consultation with local people about tree felling that will happen in their roads, and I think that will give people the power they need to stick up for their local trees, which will be very good. However, Ministry of Defence land should have been included in the Bill. We have power over so much of our swathes of land in this country and the armed forces have environmental targets and actions, so they would be able to put such provision into place. Why is MOD land not included, because we could have lots of tree planting? I share the concerns that other Members have expressed today that this Bill will be undermined by the planning Bill.

Despite the progress over the last week, there is an urgent need for a medium to long-term strategy with clear targets to ensure that we protect, restore and expand our woodlands and trees. New clause 25 sets out what targets these should consist of and I hope it will be supported by the House. It will go some way towards rescuing the Bill, as will the other amendments that I will be supporting today, along with my Labour colleagues, and I urge colleagues to support them to improve the Bill.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson). I have sympathy with a lot of what she says about trees, but it is really important for the House to remember that it is also a matter of restoring marine conservation areas and wetlands. Many alternative habitats offer better ways of capturing carbon than simply planting new trees, so we must focus on the full range of habitats and not just on one aspect, however important trees are—and I will be talking later, if I catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, about deforestation.

For this section of the debate, I want to talk about why I tabled new clause 4. I welcome the Minister’s comments and I welcome the announcements from the past week. What the Secretary of State said last week is enormously important if we are to start to reverse the decline of species in this country. It is tragic: back in the 1950s, there were something like 30 million hedgehogs in this country. Now, there are estimated to be 1.5 million. That is a catastrophic loss. When I was a child, hedgehogs were around in the garden all the time. I have never, as an adult, seen a hedgehog in my garden or anywhere near it. This is a tragic loss and one we have to work to reverse.

There is a whole range of reasons why that has happened, including habitat loss and the loss of wildlife corridors. It is enormously important, in looking at planning policies, that we focus on how we ensure we maintain wildlife corridors. It is also about the protections available. As the Minister knows, I have had a lively debate with the Department over the weeks. I welcome the approach she has taken. I understand the shortcomings in the existing law, but the reality is that it is nonsense that the hedgehog, which has had a 95% decline in its numbers, is not protected, whereas species that are much less in danger and whose numbers are recovering are protected.

The existing law protects primarily against malicious action by human beings, but of course not all species that are endangered have faced malicious action from human beings. A hedgehog does not face that, particularly, but some other animals on the list, such as the lagoon sandworm, valuable though it may be, is not in my view facing direct malicious action from human beings either. It faces threats to its habitat, and so do hedgehogs. We have a situation today whereby if a developer is going to clear a bit of land for development, he or she has to do exhaustive work to establish if newts are present. Much as we love the great crested newt, which is a fine species, it is not actually endangered in this country. We have laws about it in this country because it is endangered elsewhere in the European Union—happily not in the United Kingdom—but there is no obligation to see if other species such as the hedgehog are present. Developers can just bulldoze a hedgerow without checking if there are hedgehogs asleep in it.

I would like to see a holistic approach to any new development, where it is necessary to do a broader assessment of the presence of species and take action accordingly to protect them, and not have a focus on one individual animal as opposed to another. We have too many species that have declined in numbers. We should be protecting them all. Of course, we will need to develop in the future to ensure we have homes available for people in this country, but that needs to be done in a careful way: protecting wildlife corridors, protecting numbers, and ensuring that the steps we take maximise the potential to retain, restore or develop habitats of our species.

I welcome very much what the Minister has said today about hedgehogs. I think everyone in this House will welcome any measures we can take to protect them. I pay particular tribute to the former MP for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, Oliver Colvile, who was the first champion of hedgehogs in this House. I hope we will all be hedgehog champions going forward. We shall be holding the Minister’s feet to the fire to make sure her Department delivers.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We should be going by video link to Mike Amesbury, but we shall come back to him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones]

I do agree with my hon. Friend: Wales is leading the way and I urge the Minister to seek meetings with the First Minister of Wales and his Environment Minister Lesley Griffiths as soon as possible, so that lessons can be learned and rolled over to England.

As we heard in the previous debate, we have seen 44% of species decline over the past 10 years—and that was on the Minister’s and her party’s watch. Now that we have left the European Union, it is vital that we seek to maintain the highest of environmental standards. That is the approach that the shadow Secretary of State—my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport—and my colleagues and I in the shadow DEFRA team have taken to this Bill, from Second Reading through to Committee and to today’s Report and remaining stages. We have proposed fair, balanced and necessary amendments, all of which were defeated by this Government. Not one of them was partisan, and not one of them was done to play games. All were done to make this Bill fit for purpose, and our new clauses 12 and 24 do just that. They are balanced and they are fair, and they reflect the will out there of those in communities across England who want an Environment Bill that will preserve our planet and protect our environment.

That brings me on to another opportunity the Government have missed with this Bill. This Bill, this debate today and this moment were the Government’s chance to tell the fracking companies, “Your time is up”, but given the choice between doing something bold and doing nothing at all, we know what DEFRA under this Secretary of State always goes for.

My position and that of the shadow Secretary of State and the Opposition is clear: fossil fuels need to stay in the ground. This is doubly true when we take into account just how damaging fracking is for our environment. When a third of England’s drinking supply is in the groundwater, do we really want to engage in a risky industry that could poison it for good? Even more disturbingly, fracking is causing earthquakes of up to 2.9 on the Richter scale.

In our recovery from covid, we need to focus on creating good green jobs for the future. Fracking is not green and it does not create jobs. According to the fracking company Cuadrilla’s licence application in Lancashire, for example, just 11 jobs will be created across two sites—just 11. Labour MPs up and down the country are standing up for their areas in opposing this. I want to give a special mention to my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), who has done so much work in this area, and I commend her for all she does. Now is the time to join France, Germany, Ireland, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Scotland and, of course, Wales, and put this destructive industry to bed once and for all.

[Chris Grayling]

I would be grateful if the hon. Lady clarified that. Clearly, I support the principle of our leaving fossil fuels in the ground and not using them for the future, but we are going to need natural gas for the time being, albeit I hope that in time we can phase it out. The Germans are planning to bring it in by pipeline from Russia. We are currently bringing it in by tanker from the middle east. What does she think is the best source of natural gas for the coming years, while we still need it?

[Ruth Jones]

We are in a transition phase, and we need not just to look at natural gas, but to look forward to renewables because that is where the future lies. Renewables are the future. We know already, in this country, that there are certain days when no coal is being burned and some days when just renewables are being used. That is the future for the whole of the UK, not just England, and that is where the Opposition would want to be seeing our future. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention.

I encourage colleagues across the House to get behind Labour’s new clause 12, which would ban fracking and show we really are serious about tackling the environmental crisis that our country and our planet faces—a crisis this Government want to tackle with a 25-year environment plan. Talking about the Government’s 25-year environment plan, it feels as though the last few months have given us less of a plan for the next 25 years and more of an impression that it will take 25 years to develop a plan to preserve our planet and protect our environment. This just is not good enough. While I do not doubt the Minister’s personal commitment, I do wonder if Government Back Benchers really understand what is at stake here and what they need to do.

I now want to move on to the issue of peat burning and to speak to Labour’s new clause 24. I fully accept that soil does not always grab the headlines—it is not particularly sexy—but the impact that peat burning has on our environment is profound, and that is why Labour has tabled this new clause. I want to thank stakeholders, such as Matt Browne at Wildlife and Countryside Link, for all the passionate campaigning on these important issues.

The Government’s peat action plan came three years late. In the meantime, our peatlands have been continuously burned and degraded, releasing approximately 10 million tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere each year. The Government have committed to restoring 35,000 hectares of peatland by 2025, which is great, but that is only one tenth of the 355,000 hectares that need to be restored in England, and we have no clear targets for peatland restoration after 2025. What is going to happen then?

The Government have committed to ban some peat burning, but, again, it is not enough. All we get from this Government are words and hot air, and we need cool, focused and comprehensive action. Labour’s amendment would prohibit the burning of peat of any depth in upland areas. We cannot wait for action any longer. We need a foolproof strategy to restore and protect this vital carbon sink. I hope the Minister will do the right thing and get her colleagues to do what so many out in the real world want us to do, which is to provide action to stop burning peat. It is as simple as that.

Today, we have the chance to improve a weak Bill—a Bill that is lacking in ambition, in focus and in delivering a real and tangible plan to preserve our environment and protect our planet. I encourage the Minister to send a message to the Secretary of State—I wonder where he is today, because this is supposed to be his landmark Bill— and to the Government Whips and tell them that the time has come to get real, to act and to deliver by supporting Labour’s new clauses 12 and 24. There is no better way than by supporting us in the Lobby tonight to show that this Government are finally willing to act, to get real, and to deliver on their rhetoric. The future of our environment and the preservation of our planet demand no less.

--- Later in debate ---

[Deidre Brock [V]]

I will be brief, because as I have already laid out, this is almost entirely an English Bill, but I wanted to touch on new clause 12.

The new clause is a good addition that the Government should welcome. Scotland banned fracking some time ago and Wales has made it very difficult to get the permissions needed. Adding a fracking ban to the Bill would complete the set, and we in the SNP certainly support that, because when our neighbours keep trying to set their house on fire, we want to help them to stop.

Fracking releases gas—at a greater input cost than other types of gas well, I might add—and not all the gas is collected for commercial exploitation. Fracking is associated with a greater escape of gas to the atmosphere than other forms of gas production, which in itself contributes to the climate crisis. The seismic effects may cross borders, of course, and the large amounts of road traffic needed for frack wells gets in the way of other transport needs and themselves contribute to the climate chaos. It is in everyone’s interest to make sure that neighbouring countries do not frack the place up, but responsibilities for the licensing of oil and gas development since the Scotland Act 2016 was passed rest with the Scottish Government; the clause therefore impacts on devolved powers.

Finally, I want to correct a statement the shadow Secretary of State made earlier. He said that the UK was the first country to declare a climate emergency. It was not. The climate emergency petition started in Australia—many very good things come from Australia—and dotted around the world for a while before the Scottish Government became the first to declare a climate emergency, closely followed by Wales. England caught up a wee while later—aye ahint.

[Chris Grayling]

I will focus my remarks on the issues I raise in new clause 19. We have talked about deforestation this afternoon and I pay tribute to the Minister in particular, because she has been a driving force in ensuring that the Bill takes significant steps on deforestation, in effect making it illegal and much more challenging to bring the fruits of illegal deforestation to the United Kingdom. That is absolutely right. The stronger the law on that front, the better.

What the Bill does not do, and what it is difficult for any Government to do, is prevent the fruits of legal deforestation arriving in the United Kingdom. Only now do we see the issues in Brazil, where the Bolsonaro Government are looking to pursue further legislative change that could lead to further deforestation in the Amazon—something none of us can afford to let happen. Through the new clause and its underlying principle, I am encouraging the Government to take a step that I believe would make a real difference to those who seek legally to deforest in other parts of the world—to put the power not in the hands of regulators, but in the hands of consumers. I passionately believe that if consumers around the world say no to the consequences of deforestation, it will be much more difficult for Governments or individuals to pursue deforestation, whether it is legal or illegal.

In this country, if I go to the supermarket and want to know whether the product I am buying contains anything that has damaged forests, it is pretty difficult to tell. If I do not want to buy a product with palm oil in it, I have to scrutinise the small print of the ingredients on the back to establish whether it contains palm oil. If there is palm oil, it is even more difficult to work out whether it comes from a sustainable source. Some aspects of our supply chains are invisible, such as whether the soy meal fed to the animals whose meat we eat came from a sustainable source or—much, much more likely—from an unsustainable source. We have to address that issue, and I think one of the ways to do that is to have a proper system of food labelling in this country that indicates whether a product comes from a sustainable source.

There is a lot of work taking place right now in the private sector, by retailers and others, and in the academic sector to look at how we would assess the sustainability of a product. It is about not just the food we buy in a shop, but the ingredients that go into that food. I think labelling should be placed on the sacks of soybean meal that go to feed pigs in our pig farms, as well as on the products that we buy in the shops, to indicate very clearly to buyers and consumers when a product comes from a carefully thought-out, sustainable source and when it does not. Work is being done by big supermarkets, academics and some really innovative smaller food companies to try to ensure that there is a good way of tracking the sustainability of a food source.

In the end, what we cannot have is the wild west of food labelling. What we need is a coherent, single approach that enables a consumer, in an easily recognisable way, to say, “I know that I can buy that in good conscience,” or “I know that that’s a product that creates problems for the environment.” The truth is that that label alone will ensure that the buyer does not buy the product and that it never appears and there is no market for it. My request and message to the Secretary of State and the Minister—I will follow this up over the coming months—is please to follow the path of introducing a single system of sustainable food labelling, sending the message to consumers, “You are empowered to make the right choices.”

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I want to address most of my remarks to new clause 12 and fracking, but before I turn to that specifically, I want to put on record my concerns about flooding, because we are in a climate and ecological emergency and we are seeing increased instances of flooding. I have certainly witnessed that in my Lancaster and Fleetwood constituency, and it concerns me that at the same time the Environment Agency budget has been cut by a third and the fire and rescue service by a fifth. It is simply not enough to wring our hands while making these cuts, when we cannot respond to the flooding emergency, so I urge the Minister to look again at these cuts and at investing in upland water management.

The Environment Bill is the Government’s first opportunity to bring in equivalent standards to those in the EU regulations, so, frankly, if we cannot secure strong environmental protections in this Bill, it certainly bodes ill for securing workers’ rights and workplace protections. New clause 12 would revoke current fracking licences and prevent the Oil and Gas Authority from being able to provide future licences for hydraulic fracturing, exploration or acidification. Fracking is a big deal in Lancashire. When Cuadrilla started, in just two months 57 earthquakes were detected. Cuadrilla stopped fracking five times because it triggered earthquakes bigger than the Government rules allowed. Even more disturbingly, a year later, an earthquake measuring 2.9 on the Richter scale led to a review by the Oil and Gas Authority, which, worryingly, concluded that it was not possible to predict the probability or size of the tremors caused by fracking.

My Lancashire constituents and, indeed, much of the country were relieved when the Government got around to launching a moratorium halting fracking and exploration with immediate effect, but in the past two years the Government have failed to deliver the legislation that is needed to give effect to their promise. If the Minister is not willing to support new clause 12 today, when will that come? It was a relief that the Government got as far as the moratorium almost two years ago, but we need something concrete—something solid—behind that. If the Minister is to assure my constituents that the Bill is not just empty words, will she accept Labour’s new clause and legislate to ban fracking once and for all?

We know from the Lancashire experiment on fracking that it is a risky way of extracting dirty energy. We have seen that France, Germany, Ireland, Bulgaria, New York state and the Netherlands, as well as Scotland and Wales, all agree, so this is our opportunity to bring England into line. There are so many risks surrounding fracking, and the Government know that or they would not have called the moratorium in the first place. The British Geological Survey is very clear:

“Groundwater may be potentially contaminated by extraction of shale gas”.

In England, groundwater supplies a third of our drinking water.

In addition, the assertion that fracking will lead to a jobs boom is simply not true. Cuadrilla’s application in Lancashire talked about starting just 11 jobs, and that is before we start looking at the jobs that would be put at risk by fracking happening on the Lancashire coast, because so many of our jobs on the Fylde coast are in the tourism industry, and people are not keen to holiday next to fracking wells.

Most importantly, scientists agree that if we are to avoid dangerous levels of global warming, fossil fuels need to stay in the ground. With every application comes huge environmental concern. There is a risk of additional carbon emissions, as well as the understandable anxiety for local people about the impact of earth tremors and water contamination. When will the Minister listen and finally take action? Now is our chance, once and for all, to tell the fracking companies that time’s up, and to put the future of our planet and our communities first.