Environment Bill

Deidre Brock 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—

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[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.”

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

Very briefly, I would like to thank DEFRA officials and particularly the Clerks on the Committee for their help during the progress of the Bill. It has threatened to rival “The Mousetrap” for longevity, and their staying power was quite something in the face of that. The ministerial team who managed to take so long over the thing do not get quite so much gratitude, though. I would also like to thank my researchers, Calum and Josh, whose assistance has been invaluable, and my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson), who participated alongside me in the Environment Bill Committee.

It is worth stating again that this legislation is a missed opportunity, and it will have to be revisited again and again in the near future to add in the bits that are so clearly missing. Despite the Minister’s brave efforts over the many months to defend it, the Bill is not much at all. Although it will pass today, only crumbs are being proffered. I look forward in my capacity as environment and COP26 spokesperson for the SNP to continuing to challenge the Government to ensure that they match their warm words with firm actions that will make a real difference, particularly in the year that the UK hosts COP26. Our world’s future deserves nothing less.