Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his introduction to this already improved Bill, which I welcome in principle. However, I am not as optimistic as he is that this is the silver bullet needed to save our natural environment; we have been here many times before with legislation that has been touted as the answer to our problems. The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 was enacted to reflect the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, and that on the protection of migratory species. I remember my noble friend, the late Lord Bellwin, introducing the Bill on 16 December 1980, nearly 41 years ago, and saying that the Government recognised the

“awakening awareness, both nationally and internationally, of the need for conservation of our wildlife resources”.—[Official Report, 16/12/1980; col. 983.]

Since then, as your Lordships will know, there have been numerous pieces of additional legislation, including the habitats directive in 1992 and the birds directive in 2009. However, on recent evidence, we have failed miserably to stop the decline in nature and our natural environment; we must ask ourselves why.

Two major contributions to that failure have been the lack of practical wildlife management, which has been overlooked, and the fact that the current rules are often impractical and ineffective. This Bill is just one part of jigsaw legislation and supporting policy statements. Thus, the way this Bill and the Agriculture Act, strategies on tree planting, peatland, food and biodiversity and the industrial strategy work together is key to ensuring that there are no unintended consequences or voids. Looking to the future, the rather feared planning reform Bill will probably undo quite a lot of the good that this Bill will do.

Compliance involves more than just regulation and sanction; it involves understanding motive, incentive, encouragement and soft governance. The latter is part of ELMS, found in the Agriculture Act, while this Bill provides the legal and statutory aspects of environmental governance. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, the two need to marry to deliver the ambition of a very high take-up of ELMS; but is that enough to achieve an improvement in our environment? I am concerned that the long-term environmental target priority areas in Clause 1 are not fully aligned with the policy ambition

“for significantly improving the natural environment”,

given, for example, the goals that the Government have identified in their 25-year environment plan. Just as the Agriculture Act was amended to reflect the value of healthy soil to society, so this Bill needs to address the environmental damage caused by soil loss, such as the impact on riverine and estuarial habitats through sedimentation and eutrophication, flooding due to sediment build-up in watercourses, and loss of organic carbon from the soil bank due to erosion. My noble friend said that he would introduce amendments on this; I will read them with care.

Furthermore, environmental hazard mitigation, such as for the increasingly common and damaging wildfires, is not sufficiently addressed by the priority areas. While I welcome the ambition of setting targets in law to provide a means of holding government to account, these need to be complemented by a robust review framework to provide suitable accountability and ensure that targets are not simply reset as, for example, in the case of the biodiversity 2020 targets. There is justifiable concern that many of the key environmental indicators do not have relevant or robust metrics, a point made by the National Audit Office report, which stated:

“There remains a patchwork of sets of metrics that do not align clearly with government’s overall objectives or with each other.”


It also said that there are “some important gaps”, such as soil health.

It is essential that advice in setting these targets, which will come from those who are independent and have relevant experience, must include practitioners and not just theorists. Like many others, I am concerned that the role and status of the office for environmental protection is much too weak and a significant step back from the situation that we were in as members of the EU. Picking up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has my noble friend seen the evidence from the analysis of the Bill by the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and, if so, what is his response?

Another area of concern is waste. Although it is right to improve how we handle it, I will be tabling amendments on trying to reduce the amount we produce in the first place, as prevention is just as important as cure.

In the forthcoming stages, I will focus on trying to ensure that the Bill really will provide adequate—rather than just nominal—protection for plant species and our natural environment, which are at risk.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. I am speaking in support of Amendment 2 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Clearly, the amendments in this group seek to improve the Bill’s environmental objectives by statute, and that is laudable of them all. But Amendment 2 sets a tone for the Bill, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who indicated the need for an assessment and provided a very good assessment of the current state of biodiversity in Cornwall, which could quite easily be mirrored in other parts of the UK.

The Bill needs to have the purpose and declaration of biodiversity and climate emergency specified in it on an equal basis. It is particularly pertinent to set this in legislation if the Government are serious about the need to protect and nurture our unique biodiversity and to mitigate the problems that the climate emergency is bringing to our planet, with increased levels of flooding, the warming of our planet, and the weekend warning that we now have Mediterranean UV levels in the UK. To take the example of Belfast, Department of the Environment statistics show that on 13 June last week, UV levels reached 9 on the solar UV index. This is due to a number of things, including stratospheric ozone depletion, the position of the sun in the sky at this time of year, and the lack of cloud cover. That is one reason why Amendment 2 is so important and why it must be included in statutory form in the Bill in order to give both areas of climate emergency and biodiversity equal status.

I honestly believe that the PM must take charge of the situation. This amendment provides for him—or for whoever is the postholder—to declare that there is a biodiversity and climate emergency both domestically and globally. It will strengthen the governance regime and give strength and toughness to the need for governmental action to protect our biodiversity and to protect our planet from the climate emergency. It is so important that we agree to do this with COP 15 and COP 26 taking place this year.

As the Aldersgate Group—which supplied us with a briefing—stated, the Environment Bill is a vital opportunity to establish a new, ambitious and robust governance framework that protects and enhances the natural environment. What better way to do that than to ensure that the Government accept an amendment to the Bill which provides for the Prime Minister, with statutory effect, to declare that there is a biodiversity and climate emergency both in the UK and globally and, above all, to enhance and strengthen the Bill to ensure that it becomes an even greater landmark Bill with the legislative teeth to act in such urgent circumstances.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lord Lindsay’s amendments. They help to clarify the purpose of the Bill—which I welcome, as I said at Second Reading. I like the drift of the Bill, but it needs to be strengthened in more than one area. At the moment, it is not going to tackle the problems that we all face.

I like subsection (2) of my noble friend Lord Lindsay’s Amendment 1, where he sets out that the aim is to achieve

“a healthy, resilient and biodiverse natural environment”.

We all want that, and we have failed in the past. There have been all sorts of attempts to get this right but, as I said at Second Reading and will stress throughout Committee, this needs management—it is the people on the land managing nature in its widest sense who will result in an increased and better performance than we have had to date. I want to focus on those people; they are basically landowners and farmers. At the moment, they have very low confidence in what the Government are doing. They are moving from one farming regime to another; they know nothing about the second farming regime through ELMS, and yet their money is being substantially cut. That might be all right for some owner-occupiers, but it is proving a very serious problem for tenant farmers.

Subsection (2)(b) of Amendment 1 goes on to say that the environment must support

“human health and wellbeing for everyone”.

Yes, and I am a great believer in a good footpath system, because I now rely on that for my exercise. But if you talk to any farmer now, they are not in a good position mentally because of the amount of rubbish and harassment they get from people who visit their land. This is a two-way street. It is all very well to encourage people to go to the countryside, but the sad thing is that there is a quite substantial minority abusing that countryside. Anybody who has read the papers or the news recently will know the problems that farmers have had to face, with blocked driveways, blocked entrances to gateways, rubbish, litter, barbecues and wildfires. How are the Government going to help farmers deliver the intentions of the Bill?

Does my noble friend agree that in order to get a good and diverse natural environment in this country, some 21% of agricultural land will need to be planted to trees or bioenergy crops? The counterbalance to that is that there must be an increase of 10% in the productivity of all other agricultural land, otherwise in 10 years’ time we will say, “Yes, we have done something for the environment, but we have done nothing for our food”; our food prices will be going up, and the poorest will be the ones who suffer.

This is a balance; it is an equation that has to be got right. Although I thoroughly support the necessity of the amendments proposed by my noble friend to set the remit of the Environment Bill, we also need to be very careful when discussing it to get the balance right, so that the people who will produce that improved environment are taken with the Government and can also make a living off the land which they farm and manage.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I feel it is only fair to warn your Lordships that you will see quite a lot of the two wonderful Green Peers over the next few weeks. I am sure your Lordships understand that this is a particularly important Bill for us. We have waited a long time, and it is an issue that we both care very deeply about. Having said that, we care about a lot of other issues as well, as noble Lords will have seen.

Of course, a huge amount hinges on this Bill. As I so often do—surprisingly—I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who said that the Bill has to be right. To do that, it has to be amended here in your Lordships’ House. If we get this Bill right, it will mean that we can get a lot of other things right: our farming, our food production and food growing, clean air and clean water supplies, our health and well-being, and our economy. A good Bill will mean no trade deals with countries like Australia—sorry, Natalie—with its awful farming practices, which have been banned here for years, and none of the ecologically and economically illiterate long-distance swapping of lamb and beef when we can buy UK-produced meat right here from our own farmers with higher welfare standards. A good Bill will offer more tech opportunities and more jobs in sustainable industries. A good Bill would be this Bill, heavily amended by your Lordships’ House.

Moving on, this is a perfect group of amendments. I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, for such a brief introduction; his amendments are incredibly valuable and go to the heart of why the Bill exists. Personally, I think that if we get this right, it will be as big and important a piece of legislation as the Human Rights Act.

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[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I think we can count that as the best joke of the Environment Bill Committee so far, so I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for that. I had not intended to speak on this amendment, so all I shall say is that this is a very important issue. It is probably dealt with more specifically and better later in the Bill, but I very much support the thoughts of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend the late Lord Ridley of Liddesdale would be as disappointed as I am that, last year, no English river met the highest chemical standards and only 15% of UK rivers were rated as having good ecological status. That was not the intention when we privatised the water companies in the 1980s. But the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, was absolutely right to say, notwithstanding what I have just said, that the rivers are in a great deal better condition now than they were 30 years ago—and the water Act of the mid-1980s was responsible for that. The rivers would be of better quality now if the National Rivers Authority had continued in existence by itself and not been merged with the Environment Agency. That part of the Environment Agency has not been nearly as effective as it was when it was a single authority.

This is a hugely important issue, and we shall come to it in some more detail. I totally agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said. The issue of water is much wider than just water quality; it includes the whole water environment, abstraction and pollution. To prioritise water, as this Bill does, and then to talk particularly about water quality, defeats the object that the Government are trying to achieve, which is to raise the quality of water across the board. Therefore, although I support the principle of what the noble Duke is trying to do, I hope that it will be dealt with at a later stage rather than at this stage.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I take everybody’s point about the fact that this amendment does not quite measure up to everything that we want from it, but it is a really good start. And I think that this is an issue that we will defeat the Government on. In all my talks with Conservative Members of your Lordships’ House, they have mentioned how concerned they are about rivers; a lot of landowners are massively concerned.

I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, about sewage and water companies. It does her credit that she is so sympathetic towards them but, quite honestly, they make a lot of money and they should be clearing up their own mess. If they cannot take on these contracts, they should not take them on—or they should dig bigger holes to bury the sewage, or whatever it takes. When it comes to cost, we should look at the businesses that make money out of our rivers and our sewage, and we should make them pay.

I shall go back to my speech now. Basically, the issue of water pollution is very much underserved by this Bill at the moment, so I urge the Government to pick this up and run with it, because it is something that they will lose on. The truth is that many of our rivers, lakes and water courses in this country are still filthy and polluted. It is something that the European Commissioner rightly took us to task on—the Government have repeatedly lost legal challenges on the issue. For that reason, it is also one of the big environmental risks of leaving the EU system of environmental laws. The Government could have a convenient opportunity to quietly end their long tradition of losing court battles on water pollution simply by ditching those rules altogether or subjecting them to the jurisdiction of a toothless regulator.

We know that water is life. We cannot do without it and, if we pollute it, many things die, including humans. Water pollution has a long-lasting and pervasive impact on our lives and the natural world around us—it is not always easy to clean up. Most people do not even know how polluted our water is. I have had gastroenteritis from swimming in the Thames; I thought that I was high enough up the Thames for it to be clean but, apparently, it was not.

The Government have to understand that it is not just about chemicals that we should not drink going in; that is only a tiny part of the picture. For example, the River Thames floods with human sewage multiple times a week and also has some of the highest recorded levels of microplastics in the world. It is long overdue for the Government to get a grip on water pollution. Quite honestly, this amendment is a good little start, and I congratulate the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, on this. I look forward to him toughening up future amendments on sewage.

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If I have one criticism of legislation in our country, it is that it is very difficult for most people to take down a Bill or an Act and understand it. We know the reasons, but we have to aim to be more intelligible. I have said before in other contexts in your Lordships’ House that I am a great devotee of Sir Ernest Gowers’ book, Plain Words, and I only wish, as used to be the case, that a copy could be on the shelves of every parliamentarian and, more important, every civil servant in every department in the land. If we cannot make what we are bringing into law understandable, we are failing. Here is the landmark Bill, here is a challenge, let us try to rise to it.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and my noble friend Lord Cormack that legislation has to be precise and intelligible. If we are to take the public with us, which we need to on a Bill as complicated and as detailed as this one, it has to resonate with them, so there is a lot to be said for what my noble friend Lord Blencathra has suggested in his amendment.

However, I am slightly troubled on a couple of fronts. In answering the debate at Second Reading, my noble friend the Minister said:

“As for my noble friend Lord Blencathra’s proposal to change ‘biodiversity’ to ‘nature’, he makes an important point, but the trouble is that those two terms are not exactly the same”.—[Official Report, 7/6/21; col. 1308.]


He then gave an example about the dreaded Sitka spruce, but he did not tell us why they were not the same and what the implications were for the Bill if we were to go down the route suggested by noble friend Lord Blencathra of half the time using “nature” and half the time using “biodiversity” depending on where it is in the Bill. When he said that, I was immediately sceptical, thinking, “Here comes a lawyers’ charter. If we’re using ‘biodiversity’ in one part of the Bill and ‘nature’ in another, the lawyers are going to have a field day”. I wish my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern were joining in this debate, because he would help us.

I go instead to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, who analysed this matter in some detail and came down in favour of “biodiversity”. I am sitting back on the fence where I started, because I was persuaded one way and the legal opinion has pushed me back in the other. I want to hear from my noble friend the Minister what the difference is between biodiversity and nature. If we could get that difference, perhaps we could reconcile it so that we got a Bill that was intelligible.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to participate in this debate. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Blencathra on being so industrious in coming up with such an imaginative way to put forward something that he obviously feels very passionate about. However, I support my noble friend the Minister, who I hope will go on to explain why we have settled on “biodiversity”. I support everything said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, about why “biodiversity” has a specific meaning. We should also look at the history of “biodiversity”. There are a number of international conventions with which I am sure my noble friend Lord Blencathra, particularly wearing his hat with Natural England, will be familiar. Is he proposing that we now try to change all the international conventions which originally referred, even more confusingly, to “biological diversity”? I would put forward “biodiversity” as a compromise between “biological diversity” and “nature” or “the natural environment”, because it has a specific meaning and we have subscribed to a number of international conventions. For those who will have to follow what is asked of them, “biodiversity” has that specific meaning, which I am sure my noble friend will explain.

I support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, in saying that we need a list of species or a better understanding of what is being asked. I am sure my noble friend will explain that when he moves the series of government amendments later today. I accept “biodiversity” as a compromise, but we need greater clarification of the list of species—flora and fauna—which are to be protected.

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[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for giving a definition. He then said it was going to come in regulations. Would it not be better if it were in the Bill?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I am not sure it is necessary to add the definition to the Bill itself, but I will certainly consider my noble friend’s comment carefully as we move through the Bill’s various stages.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this group of amendments is like some sort of dream list that any environment Bill worthy of its name should contain, so I very much hope that the Government will listen to all noble Lords on this. I will speak on only two amendments. First, I signed the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on marine, which he explained extremely well. All I can say, in less parliamentary language, is that it is plain daft not to include it. How can you not include another biosphere that is so important, not only for fishing and other things but generally for the well-being of anybody who ever goes down to the seaside?

I will speak specifically to my Amendment 32, which is about the controversial issue of reducing meat and dairy consumption. I eat both, so I am well aware of how difficult it is, but I have tailored my diet to reduce substantially my intake. I have also tabled this amendment because it was a clear recommendation from the Climate Change Committee to make a significant reduction in our carbon footprint. Sadly, and proving yet again the inadequacy of the scrutiny bodies in having any binding power over the Government, the recommendations have been ignored. Farming accounts for 12% of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK and, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said in publishing the committee’s report:

“Changing the way we use our land is critical to delivering the UK’s Net Zero target.”


Looking globally, the UN predicts that global red meat consumption will double by 2050, which will be a disaster for the climate and ecology. Animal husbandry can be part of the solution to climate change, as good-practice grass-fed livestock can be an important part of building soil health and sequestering carbon. However, the levels of meat currently demanded in our western diets are simply incompatible with these sustainable practices. It is time for the Government to be quite brave and bold and start facing up to this reality. The Prime Minister should use his political capital—however much he has left—to begin this conversation and start this road to a more sustainable diet. It will be a test: is he really the skilled communicator that he and his allies believe? If so, I would like to set him a challenge: persuading the public that modifying our diets is an important step towards net zero.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, it is difficult to speak to an amendment that has not yet been spoken to by its proposer. I therefore ask my noble friend on the Front Bench whether she could make a note of this; we had exactly the same problem during the passage of the Agriculture Bill, which we finally got sorted out. The speakers’ lists should start off with all those who have amendments consequential to the first amendment. I want to speak to Amendment 11, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, but she will speak after me. This is nonsense and it does not help the Committee—I am very glad to see some nods around the Chamber from all sides. I therefore hope that my noble friend will make certain that we get a decent speakers’ list in future.

I support what I believe the noble Baroness will say on Amendment 11, just as she supported me on my Amendment 111, which also refers to soil, so we are as one. Soil is critical to the environment. You cannot get good habitats without proper soil. Unless soil is one of the priorities, we will never get there in the first place. There is a lot more to be said about soil later, but at this stage I just want to support the noble Baroness in her amendment.

On the amendments spoken to by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, he raises some very important points but this also shows the difficulty of having targets, particularly where you have plants and species that can be affected by disease and climate change. It will be very difficult to set a target for tree health, because it can change in a matter of years, as the noble and right reverend Lord said about the ash disease. If you set a target and then have to change it, targets become increasingly meaningless. If we are to have targets, they should have a meaning. I am therefore sceptical. I understand what he is trying to do and part of me supports it, but part of me says that it has to work on the ground—we cannot just tick a box and say that we have done targets, and then keep on changing them. We changed the biodiversity 2020 targets because nobody was going to meet them. It brings the whole concept of targets into disrepute.

The noble and right reverend Lord also mentioned the tree-planting target. I have said before that it is not just tree planting that matters but the maintenance of trees. It is terribly easy to plant trees; I planted lots of trees in the year before I went to agricultural college and I hope that some of them have been clear felled by now—they should have been. However, it is disease and animal destruction of trees, and the planting up after the planting and the support for those trees to grow into mature trees, that really matter. I would rather plant fewer trees and get them all up to maturity than plant x plus 10% when 20% will die, as we end up with a minus quantity. The thrust of the noble and right reverend Lord’s amendment is in the right direction, but again, it is about how it will work in practice; it is the practicalities of the Bill that will make it a success or not.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I welcome this small group of amendments. I will speak in particular to Amendment 6 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. He has been very kind in supporting my later amendment along the same lines, Amendment 113. I say to my noble friend the Minister that I find it extraordinary that we have this omission whereby the marine environment, marine mammals, marine flora and marine fauna are excluded from the remit of the Bill. In responding to a question at Oral Questions last week, my noble friend the Minister accepted:

“In relation to the sustainability of inshore fisheries, there is undoubtedly a tension between those activities and new wind farms”.—[Official Report, 16/6/21; col. 1886.]


If we are not going to embrace and try to resolve those tensions in the context of this Bill, what mechanism will we use?

I commend the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on the evidence we took in the EU Environment Sub-Committee on the ecology of the North Sea. It enabled us to look in some depth at the cumulative impact, as I think it is called, of these rather regrettable tendencies that are building up. It was referred to as the “urbanisation” of the seas, particularly the North Sea, with this plethora of new offshore wind farms growing up in a very short period of time without any concept or research being done—we will debate that later—on what the impact will be on the other uses of that part of the North Sea, such as inshore fisheries, which I just referred to, and shipping.

Nor has research been done on the impact on marine mammals both in the construction phase, with the noise and pollution that will inevitably be caused by a major event such as the construction of an offshore wind farm, and in its operation. I find it overwhelming that there has been no research as to why we are seeing dolphins, whales and other marine mammals banking on our shores with increased regularity—even in the River Thames most recently. I am sure that it has something to do with the sonic boom sent out by these offshore wind farms. It is a constant murmur on the seabed, which must be a distraction and cause some pain to marine mammals. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will look favourably on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and that it will be added to—or else some very good reasons must be given as to why there is no recognition in the Bill of the maritime area and the contents of marine ecology.

Like other noble Lords, I support a number of other amendments in this group. Soil quality is extremely important; we will hear about that in a moment. I always offer a word of caution to those like the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, who is looking to increase the planting of new trees. We must be extremely careful and approach where these trees are going to be planted very cautiously. I personally would like to see the creation of more peat bogs. It gives us a sense of the concept of time when we appreciate that it takes 200 years to create a peat bog, but I understand that the effects can also be replicated through the building of mini-dams and bunds, which should also be looked favourably upon.

For the reasons I have rehearsed before, my hesitation about encouraging the planting of new trees—they do have a role to play, as we have seen with the Slowing the Flow at Pickering pilot project on flood prevention and alleviation—is that, if grown in the wrong places, trees can actually contribute to flooding. That is a reason to be cautious. Also, only landowners and not tenant farmers can benefit from the planting of trees in any commercial way; they will therefore not benefit from this.

I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, realises that I hold her in the greatest respect and affection, but I part company with her on this attack on livestock farmers who face all sorts of onslaughts at the moment, including from the Government’s live transport provisions both domestically in this country and externally. I am sure that she and I can have a little private chat offline and reach some agreement on her amendment. This is an interesting group of amendments looking at all sorts of ways in which we can benefit, but I particularly lend my support to Amendment 6.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I take the opportunity given by my noble friend’s amendments to probe the Minister on government thinking about the relationship between the principles of polluter pays and extended producer responsibility. I do so by using an example that we touched on in the closing remarks in Committee on Monday.

About two years ago, not far from where I live, a well-known fast-food company opened a drive-through restaurant. Since then, the brightly coloured packaging from this company has festooned our lanes. The National Association of Local Councils says that this sort of littering and pollution, much of which is plastic, is a growing problem in rural areas.

Clearly the litterers are the polluters here; they are winding down their car windows and throwing the stuff out. Do the Government therefore think that this is an enforcement or educational matter, or that there is some extended producer responsibility here, given that the originator of the packaging being littered is the one profiting? I wanted to use this example to try to get some clarity from the Government about where they see the relative balance of responsibilities.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I start by repeating something I said in the first day of Committee. This is a hangover from Monday, but the batting order is not satisfactory, because I want to speak to Amendment 28 and none of its proposers has spoken yet, so I cannot follow them. However, I am delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, in her place and hope she can come in after the Minister, because few in this House know as much about the problem as she does.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, covered the problem comprehensively. I was going to raise the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, which is that we must take this opportunity not only to reduce the amount of plastic, but to curb the problem of plastic litter, which is spoiling the countryside in a way it never has before. This is particularly apparent with Covid and the pressures now on farmers, landowners and councils, because of the total disregard that a lot of people have for the countryside. They are happy just to dump their rubbish anywhere. This Bill must be used for that.

I would like to say a lot more about Amendment 28. I like that it does not attack all plastics, as they can be the right solution for the right good in the right place, but they are not great overall. We must find a way to reduce and recycle them better.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to follow my noble friend. Like him, I think it unfortunate that we have not heard from those who have tabled Amendment 28. These three amendments have much to commend them. I also pay tribute to the work of the Government and, in particular, my noble friend Lord Goldsmith, who first took an interest in this in the Quality of Life group’s report, Blueprint for a Green Economy, which he co-authored with my noble friend Lord Deben. I am pleased to see that his messianic zeal continues to this day.

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[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am speaking to Amendment 43 in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones, which is also supported by the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. I am also pleased to be speaking ahead of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, in case he wants to comment on this amendment.

We support the principles of Amendments 15, 16 and 18. It is important that we understand how and why decisions have been taken and are able to ensure that actions and remedies are in place when required. Amendment 43 may be small, but it makes an important point in this legislation. By inserting the phrase “interim targets are met”, in effect it places a duty on the Secretary of State to meet those targets.

As we have heard, the Bill requires interim targets to be set on a five-yearly basis. In the environmental improvement plans, the Government are required to set out the steps they will take over that 15-year period to improve the natural environment. However, environmental improvement plans are not legally binding; they are simply policy documents. This is concerning, because targets are most effective when binding, making it more likely that early action is taken and is sustained by successive Governments.

Indeed, voluntary environmental targets have been badly missed on a number of occasions. I shall give some examples. The target set in 2010 to end the inclusion of peat in amateur garden products by 2020 was badly missed. The target set in 2011 for Defra to conserve 50% by area of England’s sites of special scientific interest by 2020 has been abandoned and replaced with a new target: to ensure that 38.7% of SSSIs are in favourable condition, which is only just higher than the current level.

In the Bill as it stands, an environmental improvement plan, which sets out the steps the Government intend to take to improve the natural environment, needs to be reviewed and, potentially, updated every five years and reported on every year by the Secretary of State. The OEP will also prepare an annual report on progress made towards improving the natural environment and meeting targets, including the interim targets, to which the Secretary of State must respond, addressing any recommendations.

The Government claim that this triple-lock mechanism will be sufficient to drive short-term progress, but this is not the same as legal accountability. Interim targets should be legally binding to guarantee that they will be delivered, and it is vital to have a robust legal framework in place to hold the Government and public authorities to account, not just in the long term but in the short term. As things stand, the Government could, in theory, set a long-term legally binding target for 2037, as suggested in the legislation, but then avoid having to actually do anything about meeting it until 2036.

It is important that the Secretary of State is given a duty to meet the targets, because that then means the Government will have to introduce mechanisms to ensure that they are met. I am sure the Minister will agree that we need to take interim targets seriously, so we must ensure that they are credible, achievable, workable and play a full part in the process of meeting the long-term targets that are set. But there is a lack of focus, drive and certainty. Legally binding interim targets in the Bill would give a sense of direction and be something against which the Government could be held to account.

It is also worth pointing out that environmental targets are interdependent. Because of the complex interdependencies in the natural world, missing a target in one priority area may make it harder to meet one in another. A target to improve freshwater biodiversity relies on meeting water quality targets. Early and sustained action is needed across all priority areas to ensure that long-term targets are met, so interim targets need to be strengthened to avoid the risk of failure.

Politics and government have a notorious reputation for looking only to the short term, yet real environmental improvement requires a long-term focus. The Climate Change Act has demonstrated the difference the existence of statutory requirements can make, strengthening the hand of civil servants, who can tell reluctant Ministers that it is the law to meet emissions targets in the near term.

This is not an issue just for Defra. If we are to meet environmental targets, other departments have to play their part. For example, meeting targets on air quality requires action from the DfT, BEIS, local government and others. Other departments will have their own priorities, so may well need the encouragement of legally binding targets to actually take any necessary action.

To finish, we must not forget about business. The Aldersgate Group, which is a business alliance championing a competitive and environmentally sustainable economy, has said:

“To deliver much needed investment in nature restoration, businesses require legally binding interim targets in the Environment Bill to drive rapid policy action”.


It goes on to say that an amendment calling for legally binding interim targets

“will reinforce the credibility of the Bill’s long-term targets and deliver a much clearer policy and regulatory framework which businesses can invest against.”

Our amendment would hugely strengthen the outcomes of the Bill, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, that it has been extremely useful that she has spoken to her amendment before we all comment on it. I congratulate her on the way she did it and support a lot of what she said.

I thank my noble friend the Minister for sparing the time to have a meeting with me before we started Committee. At that meeting, I said to him that one of my main focuses was going to be how this works in practice on the ground—how it will be implemented in reality, rather than in theory. That is what I want to start to explore with this amendment, in support of my noble friend Lord Lucas. He rightly asked why the targets have been set and how.

We all want better biodiversity—it is on that area that I shall focus in the short time for which I shall speak—but we must have a sensible and practical target for it. If my noble friend issues a target that he wants lapwing and curlew numbers to be increased by 50%, we must look at some hard evidence and facts. Here, I call in aid the work of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust. It has been researching this area for more than 20 years, combining a productive farm at Loddington in Leicestershire with benefits for wildlife. I urge my noble friend the Minister to visit that farm as soon as practicable, and certainly before Report, because he will be fascinated by the research that the trust has done.

The trust has done research into lapwing. It did a pilot study with Peak District farmers. It was backed up by Natural England. The farmers did all the right things: the grass was the right length, the vegetation was absolutely right. They got full marks, they got a lot of funding, but there was absolutely no increase in lapwing; in fact, there was a decrease. That was because other factors, in particular, predation by animals, had not been taken into account. An awful lot of money has been wasted on projects similar to this.

I back that up with the curlew project in Shropshire that it was involved with. For two years, it monitored and looked after sites, but no chicks survived. Mostly, that was due to egg predation by badgers and foxes, which has caused real problems; indeed, it got to the stage where nests were electric-fenced off to protect them. Three nests hatched but, once the chicks had got out from under the electric fence, there was no stopping the predation. Therefore, I thoroughly support the aims of my noble friend Lord Lucas’s proposal and ask my noble friend the Minister: how will these targets work in practice regarding biodiversity? Given the examples I have just mentioned—and I have a lot more to come out during later amendments—how will this work on the ground for the benefit of wildlife?

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I wish briefly to speak on the two principal targets of these amendments—first about reasons and secondly the targets themselves. I warmly support Amendment 15. First, experience throughout my life has shown that if you are required to give reasons, you make better decisions. I do not believe that this will be burdensome because the civil servants advising the Minister will have to set out why particular targets are chosen. Secondly, I support the view that evidence should be provided, because that enables the cogency of the reasons to be examined and their transparency becomes obvious to all. Thirdly, setting out reasons and the evidence will provide a firm basis for certainty about the targets themselves. This is a small but very important amendment and I do not believe that it will add to the burdens of our very hard-pressed Civil Service because this is the kind of thing that it does internally. Why not follow transparency and make it public?

As regards targets, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, may well be right in her view in Amendment 18 that there should be a restriction on the length of the long-term target because there does not appear to be one in the Bill at the moment. That is why interim targets are so important. As is accepted, it is the interim target that the current Government are likely to concentrate on, not the more distant target—if it is more distant than 15 or 20 years away, no one will concentrate on it at all. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, has so eloquently explained, there is so much evidence that targets are missed. In dealing with targets in ordinary day-to-day life, it is accepted that unless there is something behind a target to give teeth to it and impose a clear duty, then it can easily be ignored.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has explained, the Government say that the triple lock will work. I do not accept that that is tough enough. Why not acknowledge a duty? The Government accept that there is a duty in respect of long-term targets, why not therefore a duty in respect of the interim targets? We all know that if you are under a duty—both legally and morally—you will seek to discharge that duty. It will be interesting to hear the Minister’s explanation as to why the Government simply will not accept a duty.

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[Lord Wigley (PC) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow that last contribution, because important points arise in the context of having to balance one risk against another. There will be trade-offs, and we have to establish the priorities. Clearly, some of the global priorities must take precedence, but that may not be the view in every country. Therefore, it is an immensely difficult challenge to legislate in a meaningful way to meet these issues.

I will address Amendments 41A and 41B, standing in my name, shortly, but first I wish to speak to Amendment 17. I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in moving this amendment. As someone who, prior to entering Parliament, was a financial controller in the manufacturing industry, I know full well how easy it is to establish targets and then, with 1,001 plausible excuses, find ways of explaining away any failure to meet them. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, given his background in accountancy, may well share my view.

A target is of no earthly use to man or beast, or to the environment or government, unless there is a means of assessing whether it has been met and, if not, a systematic and detailed analysis of the reasons why and a pinpointing of personal responsibility for allowing that failure to occur. If there is reason to believe that there may be different levels of performance from region to region, and if responsibility is likewise distributed on a regional basis, then a regional review of performance against target is absolutely appropriate. Hopefully, such a systematic approach will lead to identifying the factors that led to failure; determination of the necessary remedies, as rightly stated in the explanatory statement to Amendment 17; a reallocation of resources if necessary; and a better performance in future, with a higher likelihood of hitting targets.

This is all fundamental to any system of management by objectives and is basic in the world of industry. But I sometimes wonder whether the necessary culture and discipline exist in governmental sectors to apply such an approach systematically and rigorously to their responsibilities. It is to the Government’s credit that they are willing to apply a target-driven approach to these issues in the Bill, but that approach will not deliver unless there is a commitment to follow through with remedial action. Amendment 17 tests the seriousness of the Government’s intention to see their targets lead to real change, and I therefore support it.

Amendment 41A seeks to clarify the applicability or otherwise of regulations made under Clauses 1 and 2 to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The amendment states quite simply that any of these regulations shall not apply to the three devolved nations without the prior consent of their respective Parliaments. Environmental matters are overwhelmingly devolved, and if aspects of Westminster policy apply in any of the devolved territories, it is both sensible and courteous to solicit the agreement of the devolved Governments. If the Government wish to legislate in any of the three territories under the umbrella of this Bill, will the Minister give examples of such topics? Surely, he accepts that it would be both sensible and courteous to secure prior agreement, rather than foisting policies on them without agreement.

I realise that Clause 138, the “Extent” Clause, states that Chapter 1 applies to England and Wales but not Scotland and Northern Ireland—that this goes beyond the normal issue of England and Wales jurisdiction. Indeed, Clause 1(9) implies that regulations may be introduced through this clause that will apply to Wales. Can the Minister explain why there is this difference in approach to the Bill’s applicability to the three devolved nations? Can he give an example of where he foresees legislating for Wales under the provisions of Chapter 1? If so, what steps does he foresee being taken to avoid acrimonious disputes arising in relation to the devolved powers?

Amendment 41B relates specifically to the vexed question of the control of water resources in Wales. I will not rehearse the difficult history relating to water abstraction and the drowning of valleys, of which the Minister and the Committee will be well aware. For the avoidance of doubt, will the Minister please accept this amendment or bring forward his own to the same end, so there will be no doubt that control over water resources and attendant water policies in Wales lies firmly and unambiguously with Senedd Cymru? I shall be grateful for his response.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I support the comments of my noble friend Lord Lucas in moving the amendment. I also listened with great care to the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden. I hope the Minister will read his speech with care, because what he said was hugely important to the proper functioning of our aims.

I turn Amendment 48, in my name, which would amend Clause 6, entitled “Environmental targets: review. I wish to amend subsection (3), which relates to the “significant improvement test.” The clause says the test ticks the boxes if it

“would significantly improve the natural environment in England.”

I do not think “improvement” is good enough. It is not sufficient, as it provides no condition or basis by which to judge the improvement. I take it for granted that my noble friend does not want to encourage a “trash and improve” system, but that is what is going to happen unless this amendment is accepted. An approach like that would be detrimental to biodiversity and the natural environment. Therefore, I have proposed what I think is a much more sensible and appropriate wording. Instead of “improve the natural environment,” I want to insert

“improve the maintenance, restoration or enhancement of the natural environment.”

There are many places where the natural environment is in very good condition at the moment. No significant improvement test will be met when it is in good condition now. But if it is maintained in an excellent and pristine condition, it should meet the significant improvement test.

I hope my noble friend will give more consideration to this amendment than he gave to my comments on the last amendment.

[Lord Teverson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who is dedicated to these issues. I want to speak to Amendment 34, which I put my name to. First, I offer my support to my noble friend Lord Addington, who constantly fights against silo management within government and makes sure that the health aspect is always included in these debates. I also want to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, whose comments I found particularly interesting. As he so eloquently said, the recent meeting between the secretariats of the United Nations climate change organisation and the biodiversity secretariats was a landmark one from which very important lessons can be learned.

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[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the earlier speakers that this part of the Bill needs to be strengthened. I should say to my noble friend Lord Goldsmith with regard to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, why just chalk streams? I know how vital they are but any river will tell you about the environment of that area and its quality within the river.

I have a little bit of good news for my noble friend on the Front Bench. I recently spent three days in Dorset and, driving back, I had to wash the windscreen of my car to get rid of the bugs. It is the first time in many years when I have had to do that. If bugs are getting on to windscreens, it means that something is turning around slowly in nature. It is a good start and I hope that we will all be doing what I had to do on a much more regular basis. I agree that it is desperately boring to do, but it is far better to be bored doing it than not to have nature.

Virtually all land in the UK is managed. There is very little, if any, truly wild land left. When we are considering biodiversity, we must not forget that the land also has to produce food for the population. I again ask my noble friend on the Front Bench the question I asked at Second Reading, or possibly on the first day of Committee—I cannot remember. Does he agree with the figure that 21% of our agricultural land has to be taken out of agriculture and put into bioenergy fuels and trees? If that is the case, it means a 10% increase in the productivity of all the other agricultural land. That will mean a lot of intensification but it can be done if we do that cleverly with supporting biodiversity.

Here I want to talk about something that has almost become a dirty word: management—land management and biodiversity management. We could improve the biodiversity in this country very quickly if we followed the simple rules of getting the right habitat, the right species protection, proper winter feeding and control of predators. That is the four-legged chair on which biodiversity depends. I know that the Agriculture Act will address some of that but it will not necessarily address winter feed and certainly not predator control. The winter feed situation has been hugely compromised by the increasingly efficient agricultural machinery that farmers use and the height at which crops can be cut, leaving little for wildlife.

I mentioned foxes and badgers earlier. It was in that context that I felt that my noble friend the Minister had not answered my questions. What will the Government do to ensure that there is proper predator control carried out in a humane way? I am not talking about the extinction of species but getting a balance. If we are going to get back lapwing, curlew and waders, predators will have to be controlled. It is not just a question of foxes and badgers but deer. They have ruined hedgerows for ground-nesting birds and nightjars, and decimated some trees. In an increasingly urban southern half of England, deer control is becoming a major problem to undertake but if we do not do so we will affect wildlife in a hugely different way. It is not just a matter of our actions as human beings but of nature working within nature.

I know there are certain things over which we have no control, such as climate change. It is bound to affect our biodiversity in ways we do not know. As the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, will know, warmer winters and cooler summers are affecting salmon migration and its appearance in rivers. It is to be hoped that we will do something about that in long term, but it is not a short-term problem that we can solve. Nor can we solve the problem the north winds this spring have caused the bat population—that is not strictly within our hands. My friend, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, talked about the blue butterfly, which is weather-dependent. We have seen a huge increase in the red admiral thanks to a slightly warmer climate, but the other side of that equation is that we have lost a whole lot of butterflies because of the change in the climate. I wonder whether the blue butterfly that the noble Lord mentioned will suffer in the future.

In this debate, on getting an abundance target and improving biodiversity, I hope my noble friend will tell us about the practical problems that organisations are trying to solve. These organisations, such as the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Nature Friendly Farming Network, are doing huge amounts. They will need some more help and some more drive from the Government as well. Rather than just setting targets, it is the practicalities on the ground that matter.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lord Caithness. I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on bringing forward government Amendment 22 and all the amendments in this group. I hope he is not too disheartened by the reaction around the Committee this afternoon. Really, the Government have taken the bull by the horns.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, on his industriousness in all the positions he holds. No wonder we do not see too much of him here in the Chamber, but I congratulate him on all his work, at every level of democracy, which he outlined today. I am delighted that he talked about the plight of chalk streams, which I was heavily involved in at one stage in the other place. The noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, highlighted—indeed, it is a theme of the briefing I was delighted to receive from the Green Alliance—that this is not a problem unique to this country. My noble friend the Minister outlined this when he moved and spoke to the amendments before us this evening. It is not so much that this is a new problem as that we need new solutions to be adopted, but I urge my noble friend to be slightly cautious if we go out on our own limb, as it were, and set very ambitious targets. Is it not the case that we are not the only Government who did not achieve the 20 Aichi biodiversity targets agreed in Japan in 2010? Surely, if we are concerned about being a global leader and about biodiversity in the wider world, he should use his good offices and those of his colleagues in government to ensure that other Governments follow our lead. I was slightly disappointed that my noble friend Lord Randall did not touch on that aspect and took, perhaps, a uniquely domestic approach in the words he used.

My noble friend has set an ambitious target in the amendments in this group. How achievable is meeting those targets by 2030? Obviously, it is something we have signed up to internationally, so I would be interested to know how realistic and achievable those targets are. It is welcome that they will be subject—as I understood him to say—to the same legally binding targets elsewhere in the Bill. Will he use the species abundance provisions set out in these amendments to ensure that there will be timely and regular reviews of all the species, however the Government is going to define them? I am wondering whether we have actually defined these anywhere in the Bill, and I would be grateful if my noble friend would point to where those definitions are.

We all have our favourite species. Mine is the red squirrel, and one of the joys of visiting Denmark each summer is seeing how widespread it still is in parts of Scandinavia and elsewhere. I believe that hedgehogs are under increasing threat; I frequently lift one up and move it from the drive so that it does not make its way on to the main road, where I know that, a few days later, I will see that it is no more. Will my noble friend use this opportunity to look at all our favourite species—I would argue for red squirrels and hedgehogs—and make sure that, where they have been threatened but are now in abundance, we take cognisance of that? I think particularly of the protections that we gave to badgers in 1968. Should these now be reviewed, in 2021, along with those for all species of bats and newts?

I was taken by the arguments made by noble friend Lord Caithness about achieving a balance. He is absolutely correct, and I support him in this, that we should recognise predators such as deer. I hope that the green lobby will bear with me and that I do not get attacked like I did when I said this before: we have to recognise that TB is spread through predators such as badgers and deer and protect our herds of domestic cattle from that. I hope my noble friend the Minister will take cognisance of that balance. This may be in one of the amendments and I have missed it, but I would welcome his commitment to a review of each species, perhaps every five years, being considered. However, I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 28th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received two requests to speak after the Minister, from the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I will call them in that order.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I listened with care to what the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said about the precautionary principle, because this is hugely important to conservation and land management. I note that my noble friend the Minister did not respond specifically to the question he posed. While he is considering an answer to that, I am going to ask him a couple of questions too. How will the precautionary principle be interpreted by government? Will it be on the basis of a hazard approach or of a risk approach? The two are very different. It has to be a balanced approach; I think the courts have indicated that this is the right way forward. He will know that the precautionary principle, depending on how you interpret it, can stop some vital research. His department, Defra, has been guilty of stopping research because it used the precautionary principle. If we are trying to help biodiversity and conservation, we must be allowed to carry out sensible, controlled research to try to get to the right answer. If he is going to use—it is probably the wrong word—political bias against a particular aspect and say, “You cannot do research into that area”, then we are not being of any benefit to conservation or land management.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, on the first question, I felt that I answered the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, in some detail—indeed, in more detail than any other point raised—and I do not want to have to repeat what I said on non-regression. On my noble friend’s question about the precautionary principle, the principles have significant case law and history, as I said. Their meaning and application are clearly understood and defined, and none of them represents a leap into the unknown. The Government’s approach to the precautionary principle includes a proportionate and risk-focused application, respecting the balance with social, economic and other considerations. This was provided for in the draft policy statement which noble Lords will have seen. In response to my noble friend’s question, I say that our view is that the principle should not hinder innovation due to novelty but should instead support innovative policy approaches by providing policy-makers with the tools that they need in order to balance risk.

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[Lord Framlingham (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am very happy to support Amendment 82. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for dealing with it so comprehensively that I feel there is little more for me to say.

I speak to support the view that the office of environmental protection must not only have teeth but must be totally independent from all strands of government. There are many good reasons for this. Independence is, in a way, self-explanatory and a good thing in itself, but it is even more important to spell out that it must be independent of government when the judgments it will have to make may well be on cases in which a government department is involved. Additionally, I suspect there may be environmental transgressions, such as on effluent disposal, where much tougher punishments are required, and in some cases present legislation may be adequate but it is simply not being enforced correctly. The culprits may well have links to the Government, or the Government may, for various reasons, not be prepared to take as strong a line as they should.

In summary, it has been described as a core part of the Bill. I am not too sure what significant difference to the protection of our environment the creation of this office will have. I suspect much will depend on the approach and, more importantly, the resolve of the person appointed to the task. By giving it true independence, we can at least give it the best possible start.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, when the office of environmental protection was mooted, I hoped it would be on the same basis as the Climate Change Committee, and be totally independent of government. When that was not the case, I hoped that the structure of the Bill would be that advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and that that part of the Bill should be within the remit of the Climate Change Committee, which is sufficiently independent.

I remember when I was a Minister, and that was many blue moons ago now, being quite irritated at times by the interference of Brussels. We had perhaps some of the best civil servants in the whole of the EU then; my advice was excellent, and I thought that what we were doing was right. But on reflection, perhaps we were not that right. I remember I once lost a Division and went to the Leader, the late Lord Whitelaw, and said to him, “Willie, I’m terribly sorry, I lost that amendment”. He looked at me and said, “Malcolm, perhaps they were right”. Perhaps the Government are wrong on this occasion. As I see it, the problem is that Defra will remain judge and jury, and there is a route for disaster.

I shall give two examples. One example is the water authorities, which I helped to privatise in the mid-1980s. My friend, the late Lord Ridley of Liddesdale, made a revolutionary change in policy by taking control of pollution away from the water authorities and handing it to the National Rivers Authority. The water authorities were outraged, but it was right. What went wrong was that the NRA was amalgamated into the Environment Agency, and the money for the Environment Agency was reduced so that the controller of the polluting companies did not exercise the brake that was needed. We talked about that a couple of days ago.

The other government department that is a classic example of judge and jury is the Forestry Commission. I know that my noble friend on the Front Bench agrees that the Forestry Commission has been an utter disaster for this country. It has cost the taxpayer a huge amount of money and planted the wrong trees in the wrong places with the wrong policy. I hope that that is beginning to change. I have been banging on in this House on that for more than 50 years, but at long last I am being proved right.

I would really like the OEP to be seen to be independent. Not only does it have to be independent, which it is not under the Bill—as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, said, the schedule is not strong enough—it has to be seen to be independent. My noble friend Lord Cormack was right: this is better done by negotiation. The Government will get defeated on Report on this, but it would be far better if we got an amendment that we could all sign up to, because that would send a message to everybody who will be affected by the Bill—which is the whole of the country—that there is unanimity in Parliament that that is the right way forward. At the moment, as I said to my noble friend when he was kind enough to have a meeting with me, I am unhappy with the OEP. I am not quite certain what the right amendment is, but I know that there is one out there if we all make an effort to get it right.

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, there has been near unanimity in condemnation of what is currently in the schedule to deliver a really independent body of the kind we want. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said in a formidable opening address on the group, we want to create the same degree of fear, almost, in public bodies that the possibility of the European Commission intervening and fining this country provided before Brexit. What is envisaged in the Bill goes nowhere near that.

Frankly, we know that there are precedents for what happens to so-called independent bodies. I had expected to speak after my noble friend Lady Young and just before my noble friend Lord Rooker. It is instructive that one was the chief executive of the Environment Agency and the other the chair of the Food Standards Agency. When the Environment Agency was first set up in the 1990s, to which the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, just referred, there was a lot of talk about independence, but in fact it became part of the Defra family. Its independence was limited by successive Governments over the whole of that period. Under the coalition Government, it was restricted from briefing parliamentarians or engaging in anything that amounted to a campaign in the eyes of the then Government. Subsequently, of course, its funding has been seriously cut. The Environment Agency is doing an effective job on limited resources, but it is not independent of government.

The other example is the Food Standards Agency. The FSA is a non-departmental body, but as soon as it started straying into areas of interest to the Department of Health on diet, health advice and well-being, those functions were taken off it and ploughed back into the Department of Health. It was right to take it out of its origins in MAFF, but in practice it was never completely independent of government, much though the efforts of my noble friend Lord Rooker and others tried to make it so.

We want a truly independent body on the environment to face up to the immense challenge of climate change and biodiversity diminution. This is not it. I agreed with pretty much every word that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said. I do not entirely agree with his amendment—like others, I prefer the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch—but, as recent speakers said, the Government really do need to take notice of the overwhelming view of the Committee that this will not do. To be truly independent, the OEP needs not just a formal position and designation as a non-departmental body; it needs powers, which are insufficient in the Bill; it needs provision for how its composition is established, which is not fully in this Bill; and it needs powers of enforcement, which we will consider later in Committee and which are, at the moment, clearly completely inadequate to the task.

This is the central part of the Bill. The Government have to think again. If they can come up with a better proposition then let us seriously consider it, but what is in the Bill at the moment is not adequate. None of us believes that it is, and I doubt whether the Government themselves—and the Minister in particular, if I may say so—really believe that it is. Let us think again and try to get something better before the Bill completes its course.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

As others have explained, Amendments 105, 106 and 108 also seek to strengthen the OEP’s hand by increasing the efficiency of process, removing the oddity that non-compliance does not affect the validity of an action, and broadening the conditions under which the OEP can seek judicial review. Amendment 104 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and Amendment 107A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, introduce the option of financial penalties. In Monday’s debate, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was most eloquent in describing how the threat of fines by the European court galvanised the Government into action. I realise that that may be a step too far, but Amendments 105 to 108 are much more modest and should surely be accepted by the Government if they are serious about protecting the environment. If the Bill is not amended, the OEP will be a bit like a contestant entering a marathon with their shoelaces tied together.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, before I speak to the amendments, I apologise to my noble friend the Minister for including his name in what I said about the Forestry Commission on Monday. It was quite of wrong of me to do so, and I apologise to him for that. He has confirmed that he does not agree with me, in any case.

As I turn to the amendments, there is now very little for me to say. The Bill has been savaged by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, a former Lord Chief Justice. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern will doubtless similarly savage the existing wording.

My concern is that the OEP must be not only independent but seen as such, and it must be authoritative. If it is not, it is not going to work; it will get into disrepute. The Bill as it stands does not help in seeking to achieve the goals that we all want. This takes me, finally, on to the question of financial penalties. I know how effective the threat of financial penalties has been on the Government, but I actually see little point in the OEP being able to fine the Government, because it comes out of one pocket and goes straight back into another pocket to be recycled. It is not the threat that the Europeans had of a financial penalty on the Government. There has to be a better way of making certain that the OEP’s decisions have the cudgel that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, referred to.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, has withdrawn, so I call the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead.

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Moved by

[The Earl of Caithness]

110: Clause 43, page 26, line 41, after “habitats” insert “(including the soil)”

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, we change topics. We leave behind the OEP, important though that was, and move on to Chapter 3, “Interpretation of Part 1”, which is equally crucial to the success of the Bill. I am extremely grateful for the support for my Amendment 110 from my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury and the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

Clause 43 relates to the meaning of “natural environment”. It begins by saying:

“In this Part the ‘natural environment’ means”


and it lists various things, but there is a glaring loophole or error in the Bill because it misses out the soil. My Amendment 110 seeks to insert, after “habitats” in Clause 43(b), the words “including the soil”. Habitats depend totally on the soil. It was the 32nd President of the United States of America, Franklin Roosevelt, who wrote to all the state governors, after the terrible Dust Bowl there, that:

“A nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”


The destruction of soil is a worldwide problem but it also affects the UK. Many countries in the world have the same problem. We have not looked after our soil in the way that we should and we are now paying the price for that.

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I hope I have answered the questions put to me today and provided some reassurance. I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this very interesting debate of just over an hour and a half. I have to say that I was saddened by my noble friend Lord Framlingham: when he started talking about how much soil had been lost to development, he did not mention HS2. We know my noble friend’s thoughts on HS2, and I thought that might well be top of his list—but it is in there too, I am sure. I have received a lot of support for my amendment. I agree with my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge; I do not really mind whose amendment wins at the end of the day. The important thing is that we get it in the Bill.

I am very grateful for my noble friend the Minister’s reply to me. There were some very good things in what he said, and we seem to have hit a good day to discuss soil, with the announcements that are going to be made by his fellow Minister. As for his final remark to me, that soil is already covered in the Bill as it stands, that is the same reply we had during the passage of the Agriculture Bill. We put soil on the face of that Bill and this Bill must tie up with it.

The brief from the department has a strangely familiar ring, even though it was 25 years ago. I seem to recognise quite a lot of the wording my noble friend used.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned the good work done on soil by my right honourable friend Michael Gove, who was Secretary of State. I think it would be wrong not to mention the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, in this debate. I remember that when my noble friend Lord Gardiner of Kimble was taking the Agriculture Bill through, he referred to the “Krebs amendment” when it came to soil. It is a pity that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, is not with us.

This leads me to a general point. My noble friend the Minister said that the “business end” of a Bill is done on Report. That never used to be the case in this House. We used to divide a lot in Committee, and we got rid of a lot of amendments that way. I am really very worried about this Bill now. There has been no ground given by my noble friend, and we are not even halfway through the Bill. I have no doubt that we are going to be under very severe time constraints on Report and at Third Reading because of the urgency to get this Bill on to the statute book before 1 November and the COP in Glasgow. We are, in effect, going to have a guillotine put over our heads, and there is an awful lot of stuff coming back. I tell my noble friend that this amendment is coming back too. I say to him and my noble friend the Whip: there must be some way we can progress this slightly better than by leaving everything to Report. I want a good Bill and I want the House to work well. I am not trying to be obstructive, but the way it is going will cause a lot of problems in September and October. I think there is a better way for us to get the Bill going at the moment.

With that, I thank everybody who took part. I thank my noble friend but, again, warn him that I will be back with this amendment. In the meantime, I will discuss it with my noble friend Lord Randall to see in which of the two places in the Bill it ought to go. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 110 withdrawn.

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[Lord Carrington (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I thoroughly support the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, together with everything said by the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. They correctly identify the largely ignored victims of fly-tipping, in the shape of farmer and landowner. A recent survey by the Environment Agency shows that farmers as a group are the most affected by large-scale, illegally dumped rubbish. The NFU rural crime survey revealed fly-tipping as the most prolific crime reported by members, with 48% of those surveyed experiencing it in 2020.

Farmers will often break the law by moving fly-tipped rubbish from private land to the public highway and thereby avoid the need to pay for the disposal. This is very unsatisfactory but understandable in the circumstances.

Many suffer appalling mental anguish as they see the countryside they love spoiled and degraded. One can argue that they should have fenced the land or secured the gate, but this is often not a practical solution, depending on the nature and topography of their land. In any event, fly-tipping should not happen and the only person to shoulder the blame should be the perpetrator. You only have to pick up a copy of the farming press to understand the grief and cost involved.

I have had asbestos dumped in woodland; others have had quantities of car tyres chucked over steep banks. Fridges, mattresses, deep freezers, gas bottles, sanitaryware—one could go on. This can be an expensive cleaning and disposal exercise. The asbestos cost me a four-figure sum, with the need to bring in specialists and a licensed skip. Education and financial sanctions are the answer, and the latter is covered perfectly by these amendments. Education is separate, but might eventually change behaviour for the better and more lastingly.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I have spoken on fly-tipping many times before in your Lordships’ House, so I will not repeat that. Given what other noble Lords have said, there is little left to say. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for introducing these amendments. She has my total support.

My noble friend Lord Ridley is absolutely right: the problem has got worse in the last 15 months. It was bad when I talked about it on the Agriculture Bill, but it is considerably worse now. I can only add to what the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, just said, and that, if a farmer finds somebody dumping stuff in their field, they are often threatened. I know of a farmer who accosted somebody who was dumping rubbish in their field. The person turned on him and said, “Don’t do anything. We know your children. We know your children’s names and where they go to school”. These amendments are very necessary.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I join every speaker in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for tabling these amendments and offer my support. Rather than repeating what has been said, I will make a few extra points.

The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, referred to fridges. There is a term I am not sure I have heard mentioned in this debate and an issue that needs to come up the agenda, which is planned obsolescence. We have seen many products last less and less time. I had a fridge that died after seven years, and I went on social media to have a big grumble about it. Lots of people told me I was lucky it had lasted that long. We are seeing lots of fridges being dumped, but for how long were they made to last? If we go back to the manufacturer or maker of the product, we are heading in the right direction.

How much farmers are suffering from this problem has been stressed already. According to a 2020 NFU survey, nearly 50% of farmer respondents had suffered from fly-tipping. So it is a huge issue for farmers, but also for many other people responsible for land. Since the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, is not speaking on this group, I will refer to the Woodland Trust which, in the seven years to June 2020, had spent more than £1 million cleaning up fly-tipping. We are looking at organisations like that.

We also have not mentioned manufacturers and commercial companies—not just fake disposal companies but companies not disposing of industrial waste appropriately. I refer to a case that just came up in the last few days. For the third time, in a similar location, Colchester council found a leaking drum containing what was clearly a noxious substance. It cost £2,000 each time to dispose of that drum properly—I should declare my vice-presidency of the LGA here—costs that the council has to bear. We have a widespread problem. We tend to say that it is individual householders but, as this debate has brought out, it is important to say that this problem is much broader.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 134 proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She has put the case for a variable rate dependent on container size most forcefully. There is nothing I can add without repetition, so I would like the Minister to comment on the reason given by the Minister, Rebecca Pow, in the other place. When she gave evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee, Rebecca Pow, who is the Minister responsible for the DRS, said that the department was inclined to introduce a variable rate of deposit.

However, Defra currently wants to leave it to the scheme administrator to make the ultimate decision. The concern is that the administrator may not assess the need for a variable deposit independently and impartially, as it will be run by the industry itself, with all its vested interest to take into account. Can the Minister assure us of the independence of the administrator and how the appointment process for the administrator will work? A variable rate should be mandated in the legislation at this stage to avoid these potential problems.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 133A, to which I have put my name, which was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and is also supported by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. This amendment is about what is known as an all-in deposit scheme, which means it catches as many items as possible. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, is absolutely right that our priority ought to be to reduce waste in the first place and so, if we are going to reduce waste, we need a comprehensive deposit scheme. We must stand back and look at what we are trying to do, which is to protect the environment. The bigger and wider the deposit scheme, the more chance we have of keeping the environment in the state in which we would like it to be.

However, I know this causes an awful lot of worry for those who have set up return or deposit schemes at the moment, have invested money in them and do not want to change. It is the nature of industry that there will always be vested interests, but I hope that my noble friend will stand back from them and say that this is needed in the interests of the environment.

My noble friend Lord Trenchard rightly mentioned that any scheme must be pretty much the same across the whole United Kingdom. However, I challenge him on one thing. He said that Scotland had rushed ahead; no, I think that England is the laggard. Why should Scotland have to wait until England finally gets its house in order and its act together? Scotland has once again led the way, and it is time that England got on and followed suit.

Getting a UK comprehensive plan will be very important. There was a consultation on an all-in deposit scheme in 2019, which was overwhelmingly endorsed as the right way forward. All I ask my noble friend the Minister is that, when he introduces a scheme, he keeps it as simple as possible; I ask him please to use the KISS principle with this if he is going to get us to participate in this scheme and make it work in the best way possible.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 133 and 133A because the DRS is one of the most important parts of this Bill. It will have a seismic effect on consumer behaviour, improve our environment and strengthen the circular economy. I and many noble Lords have already spoken about the blight of litter. Two-thirds of roadside litter is estimated to be made up of drinks containers.

The scheme is so important that it needs to be wider in scope and swifter in implementation. The present target of late 2024 at the earliest is far too slow for such an important measure. It was first announced by Michael Gove in October 2017; the initial consultation promised implementation at the start of 2023; now we are told it will be the end of 2024 at the earliest. This chronology means that the present target for the much-anticipated DRS will mean at least six and a half years before implementation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said.

I know this scheme is complicated, but it is so important that all speed is needed to implement it. I ask the Minister to listen to the words of his colleague Michael Gove who, in praising this scheme in his 2019 speech at Kew Gardens, cautioned:

“Time is running out to make the difference we need; to repair the damage we as a species have done to the planet we have plundered.”


Does the Minister agree with the Environmental Audit Committee, which described the 2024 target as “disappointing”?

I also support Amendment 134 as the Government need to ensure that the scope of the scheme is as wide as possible, as the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said. They need to embrace the all-in scheme; I can see why the on-the-go 750-millilitre criterion has been posited as an option, but a recent survey of stakeholders in the beverage container sector, which includes supermarkets, manufacturers and consumers, shows 69% support all-in while a mere 15% support on-the-go. To quote Michael Gove’s Kew Gardens speech again,

“I believe an ‘all-in’ model will give consumers the greatest possible incentive to recycle.”


The UK’s recycling record has been dire in recent years. This is an opportunity for us to slack off that shocking record and lead the world in recycling.

It is not hard to understand why all-in is the preference of so many. It allies simplicity and maximum benefit for the environment, and goes to the heart of the circular economy. Studies estimate that an all-in scheme will recycle 3.2 times as many drinks containers as an on-the-go one. The Minister knows only too well the limitations of kerbside collections. Recycling centres have problems separating out the wide variety of materials, and often there are problems finding ways to use the recycled material effectively. I ask the Minister to listen to manufacturers, which say that the specially designed reverse vending machines in the scheme must be much more effective at separating different materials and consequently creating a much higher quality of material for recycling. As a result, the use of recycled material will increase. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, reverse vending machines are proving effective in other countries; obviously, the more types of materials and sizes of drinks containers included in the scheme, the more material will be recycled.

The extra materials covered by the amendment would allow clarity for both manufacturers and consumers and conformity with other nations in the UK. The cut-off point of 750 millilitres for drinks containers could distort the market in unthought-of ways. It could encourage consumers to buy bigger bottles of unhealthy fizzy beverages to cover the deposit’s charge, and manufacturers could invent methods to avoid the scheme. A distortion in the market leads to all kinds of unintended consequences. I will give an example from Germany: the exclusion of milk products from such a deposit scheme resulted in soft drinks companies introducing milk protein into their drinks to make sure they were excluded from the scheme. As a result, Germans who were lactose intolerant suddenly could not buy or drink soft drinks. Surely it would be better to make this deposit scheme as simple and wide-ranging as possible to avoid such a distortion.

One of the aims of the Bill is to dazzle the COP 26 with our world-leading environmental legislation. What better way to do that than by the Government putting a DRS on the face of the Bill which would be quick to take effect and wide-ranging in its impact? It would be a statement to the world that Britain intends to reduce its carbon emissions and litter problem and become a recycling superpower.

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[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am very happy to put my name to the noble Baroness’s amendment. She has moved it extremely well and there is very little for me to add, except to say that I want to go a bit further than she does. Therefore, I have also tabled Amendment 149A in my own name, which focuses specifically on supermarkets.

Noble Lords might very well ask why I am focusing on supermarkets when they have very little waste. I am focusing on them because I want supermarkets to take responsibility for their supply chains, and not just the food on their premises. To do this, we need mandatory reporting at farm level, which is currently not reported at all, and could account for as much as 25% of all UK food waste. Transparent reporting will reduce the food waste by big retailers, benefitting the environment, the climate and natural resources. A levy ought to be charged on supermarkets proportional to the food waste in the UK supply chains.

Why is mandatory reporting so important? There has been voluntary reporting, but it does not work; the firms are not reporting. Only 60 companies are reporting their data publicly, and more than 500 large companies are not reporting at all. It has to be mandatory reporting. The targets also need looking at because, under the voluntary commitments, UK food businesses have carefully achieved measurable food waste reductions of just 0.23 million tonnes between 2011 and 2018. It is estimated that between 3.78 million and 6.38 million tonnes of food waste occurs in primary production, manufacturing, retail, and hospitality and food services. The saving that has happened—which everyone will praise—is less than 1% a year. That is not satisfactory; that is not good.

The Government’s timetable is slow. It could be speeded up, and I recommend that it is. The Government have been inactive for far too long. Indeed, Tesco itself says that mandatory reporting and a speeded-up programme are absolutely vital to meet sustainable development goal 12.3. My amendment is an important addition to the one moved by my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. In conclusion, it is worth just pausing to think that Tesco makes £4 billion annual profit from food that its customers waste at home. The point of my amendment is to try to reduce that.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to follow my noble friend and I support both him and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, in the sentiments behind their amendments. In looking at the factsheet that was circulated by the department in connection with this Bill, I welcome the fact that the Government are minded to introduce regulations to, in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, move food waste further up the hierarchy, so that there will be less left at the end. I particularly welcome the two amendments in this group as probing amendments, and ask my noble friend: is there not a degree of urgency that we need to do this?

I may have one point of disagreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. She and I both have family living in Denmark, I understand, and I have been immensely taken by the contribution that the Danes, other Scandinavians and Austria and Germany have made to enhancing energy from waste. I prefer to call it “energy from waste”; I know others call it incineration. I had beer poured over me once in my surgery when I was a Member of the other place; since then, I have called it “energy from waste”. This is the ultimate circular economy, because you are taking potential food waste and putting it into the system—the residual; I accept the hierarchy, and it should be the absolute minimum. The community benefits because it would go, ideally, into the local grid. There is a now a big incinerator in what was my original constituency, the Vale of York. The gripe I have with it is that it goes into the National Grid, whereas, as north Yorkshire is very cold, it should go into the local grid.

The factsheet also set out the importance of reducing the amount of food waste—as do both the amendments in the names of my noble friend Lord Caithness and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott—which is currently estimated as producing 25 million tonnes of CO₂ gas emissions every year through 9.5 million tonnes of food and drink which is wasted annually post farm gate. I take those figures as being accurate, as I understand that they are in the factsheet we received.

I press my noble friend when he sums up that there is a sense of urgency here: however we address it, we need to reduce that waste. I pay tribute to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, not just on feeding Britain, as I think she called it, but for the national food strategy, as one of the team with its author, Henry Dimbleby. I look forward to hearing the official government response to Part 1 of that report.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

This is our last opportunity to make these recommendations real and end the dreadful experience of householders waking up to sewage because, in the current circumstances, there is nowhere else for the wastewater to go.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I support many of the amendments in this group, and my Amendment 194A is on exactly the same theme.

I liked what the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, said on Monday and what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said on Monday about grey water. He is absolutely right, of course: there is no reason why this could not be included in every new building. Indeed, my noble kinsman and his noble friend, the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, and I were involved in a project at the visitor centre at the Castle of Mey 15 years ago, and we did exactly this. It is perfectly feasible, has worked extremely well and is very beneficial for the environment.

All these amendments deal with a common theme: resilience to climate change. The Climate Change Committee has pointed out how behind the Government are on meeting the problems of resilience. The resilience needs to be improved, not only because we are building more and more roads, houses, commercial buildings and railways but because the weather is changing. The rain is getting heavier and often more localised. I refer again to the floods in the West Country 10 days ago, when whole roads were ripped up by the force of water coming down the hill. Most of that water should have been dealt with in a different way.

My amendment seeks to make surface water management more adequate. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend on the Front Bench for the amendment he has put forward but, like many others, I do not think it goes far enough. It is a good start, but on Report we need to strengthen it.

We have been quite critical of how our water has been dealt with, but one ought to just pause and thank our Victorian ancestors for building in the way they did. The fact that we can still use most of their system and get away with it in a reasonable fashion is a huge tribute to our ancestors. I hope that in 100 years, future generations will say that this generation was as good as the generation I am talking about, that of our great-great-grandfathers.

My amendment is to take away surface water, whether from new buildings or roads, from the sewage system. There is absolutely no need for it to go into the sewage system. As my noble friend Lady McIntosh said—I thank her for supporting my amendment—there is an automatic right to connect to a sewage system. The water companies are not statutorily consulted but told that a development is taking place and somehow have to meet it. If their system cannot meet it, that is where we have the floods, pollution and destruction of the environment.

My amendment is really very simple. It combines with various others to allow the Government to take a slightly different path. You cannot deal with the whole question of water unless you look at surface water. My amendment is to allow the Government to

“amend the drainage provisions of the Water Industry Act 1991 … to ensure they remain fit for purpose”.

At the moment they are not fit for purpose. There are other, better ways of dealing with it. Considering how much new development is taking place and about to take place, and how much more will take place when we get the—as far as I am concerned—dreaded planning Bill next year, now is the time to nail this problem before it is too late.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, just as in the previous group, in this group there are some really forward-thinking amendments that can go a long way to ending our devastating impact on rivers and the wider environment. Some are so good that I have amendment envy and wish I had thought of them—but obviously two Greens cannot be everywhere, although we do our best.

We all seem to agree here that we currently use water in an extremely illogical way. So much clean, drinkable water is flushed down the loo when there is a really obvious alternative: to not use it. The separation and capture of grey water should be routine, and the Government should make it a requirement in building regs, because the benefits are so blindingly clear.

I operate a grey water system at home, which means flushing the loo with my washing-up water. It is very sophisticated. I walk with the bowl from one room to the other, and it works extremely well. The water out of our sinks is likely contaminated with eco-friendly soap, perhaps dirt from our hands, bits of food and things like that, but it is fine for washing our toilets, watering our gardens, even washing our cars—if you have one—and doing a whole host of other things. This relatively simple system will of course hugely cut down on our water usage and the stresses placed on the sewage system, because we automatically cut down our wastewater by almost half.

When we combine this separation and reuse of grey water with the separation of sewage from drainage, we have a much more sustainable water system. I hope that not very long into the future we will look back on the idea of using clean water to flush our toilets and then mixing it with rainwater, before spending huge amounts of money getting the sewage back out, as almost as illogical and disgusting as throwing our toilet contents out of the windows into the open streets, as used to happen a couple of hundred years ago. In truth, we have actually just made it a bit more complicated and put the sewers underground, but in essence it is the same: we are throwing our sewage into our streets.

This should be a priority for the Government, both at home and around the world. The same solutions that will clean up our sewage system in the UK will help clean, safe water systems elsewhere in the world. We have a responsibility to make sure that other countries have safe water supplies. This does all sorts of things, including reducing the risk of disease for millions of people in other countries. Of course, it also significantly reduces our disastrous impact on the earth’s rivers, lakes and seas.

I keep raising the issue of COP 26 but, quite honestly, we have to have something to take there that we are actually proud of. The rest of the world will be watching. It will not be like the G7; it will be a completely different situation in which other countries will judge us on what we are doing here, and I just hope we can measure up.

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[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

It is impossible to answer the question, because it depends on the site and the type of ecosystem created, which determines the kind of protection that applies. My point is that there are protections for natural sites already, although I am not suggesting that there are enough. It is not easy to get permission to destroy important ecological sites. As I have said in this and in many other debates, we intend to build on those protections. The idea that, in 30 years, it will not be significantly harder to grub up valuable ecosystems—even 30 year-old ecosystems, which are important—is highly unlikely or virtually impossible to imagine.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend, as others have done, on getting this amendment into the Bill. It is a major step forward.

I have two questions for him. He was again critical of the UK’s performance worldwide on nature and biodiversity. We know that it is not good. I remember being heavily criticised when I was a Minister, but I then discovered that most countries criticising us were not using the same basis of measurement. I recall that, not so long ago, we were portrayed as being very bad on Covid, only to find that the countries doing better us were assessing Covid on a totally different basis. Can my noble friend say that his comments will apply universally across all other countries?

My second question follows on from what my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe said about securing good use of public funds. I thoroughly approve of biodiversity net gain, but what happens if nature destroys one of the projects subject to support for biodiversity net gain? Perhaps my noble friend wants to restore a bit of peatland and get some sphagnum moss back. Everything works well for 10 or 15 years but, due to climate change, the land changes and can no longer support sphagnum moss. Therefore, the whole point of that bit of net gain falls down. Does my noble friend envisage having some sort of remedy to achieve a different type of net gain? How does he foresee that sort of situation being remedied?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

On the first point, my noble friend is absolutely right. My comments relate to the fact—it is a fact, there is no doubt—that our biodiversity has decreased very sharply in recent decades and continues to go down. That is why our goal is to bend that curve so that, instead of going down, we start to increase biodiversity.

At the same time, the UK is, I believe, doing more work internationally—not just by wagging its finger but through example—than any other country in the world. If you compare what we are doing on nature with, for example, what is proposed by the new Administration in the United States or any other country in Europe, I would say that we are miles ahead in our ambitions and in what we are doing with our international climate finance and ODA. We were the first country to deal with things such as our fossil fuel subsidies and our land use subsidies. Our campaigns internationally, not least the 30by30 initiative, are changing the debate around nature. I am very proud of where we are in the debate but, like everywhere in the world, we have an enormous amount of work to do to translate that into action on the ground.

My noble friend’s second point is very interesting, and one that I shall have to come back to him on for any details. My only observation would be that a proper net gain project is not going to be about one species, it will be about the habitat that supports that species. Even if climate change were to render the conditions too difficult for that particular species, you will not have no gain—you will still have gain on that side as a consequence of the habitat improvement. He raises a very interesting point; it is one that merits thought and I will think about it.

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This is an important amendment, and I am not saying that because I am bringing it forward. If we want to deliver what the Government want, which is to make these fantastic new local nature recovery strategies have the bite they need and to bring in all the various players—landowners, farmers and local communities—then local authorities have to have regard to them. Otherwise it is a complete waste of time and, not only that, it will alienate the public, who will believe that these things are going to help them protect their environment, and there will be a whopping political backlash.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I listened with care to what the two noble Baronesses have said, and I support their arguments. They made some very valid points.

I am speaking to my two amendments in this grouping. Amendment 210A simply requires that Natural England has particular regard to nature-friendly farming. It has to

“have regard to … local nature recovery strategy, and … any relevant species conservation strategy or protected site strategy prepared by Natural England.”

One thing that has been missing in a lot of our debate over six days is the role of the human being in all this. We have talked a lot about biodiversity and what we can do to increase it, but what matters just as much is the role of the farmer and the landowner, because they are going to implement the policy. I was thrilled when my noble friend Lord Goldsmith, said on the amendment we have just discussed on biodiversity net gain, words to the effect of: “We are able to farm in a nature-friendly way.” I thought: “Good. My noble friend and I are on the right track together.” It is hugely important.

At the moment there is a Nature Friendly Farming Network that thousands of farmers have joined; it is doing tremendously good work for the environment at very little extra cost to the taxpayer—and sometimes at a cost to their own pockets. These are exactly the sort of people we need to encourage. The farmers are not particularly pleased with this Government at the moment. There is far too much uncertainty and change and, as we all know, the age of the average farmer is so high that they are finding it hard to adapt to all the pressures. I was really pleased by what my noble friend said, and I hope he will consider the amendment about biodiversity. The Bill cannot just be seen in isolation. We have to involve the human being—the farmer and the landowner. They are the people who will alter things on the ground.

Besides the Nature Friendly Farming Network, there is of course the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust. We often talk about the UK being a world leader. We have on our own shores a world leader in this organisation. It has demonstration farms in Scotland and England, and has farmed for biodiversity for many years. It advises individual farmers and clusters of farmers, and does an awful lot of work for Defra. I urge my noble friend to visit its Allerton project. He and I have spoken about this before. The work and scientific research it does are so important. We cannot now take for granted everything I learned when I was a boy and a young man, working on the farms and the land. To convince the rest of the country, we have to have it scientifically proven. This is what the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust has been doing so well. I hope that my noble friend, besides talking to us, will spare time between now and the next stage to visit it in Leicestershire. It would be an easy half day for him, and I think it would be very beneficial.

I turn now to Amendment 293, to which I am a signatory. It is in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and is on a subject that both she and I have been going on about for quite a long time: the land use strategy for England. Perhaps we need no better excuse for introducing this amendment than what the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said about Horsham District Council and the problems it faces. I have said it before, and I will just briefly repeat myself: the Climate Change Committee reckons that we will have to transfer about 21% of our agricultural land out of farming. To feed ourselves, we will have to increase productivity by 10%. We all know that productivity has been flatlining in agriculture for many years, so this is going to be a hugely serious problem to try to tackle.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, will wax much more lyrical than I will on this, so I will not say very much except that it is again about the human input into this. There are so many pressures now on the countryside: the building of new railways, new developments and housing schemes and, I repeat yet again, the threatened planning Bill, which is coming our way next year. That frightens me because it will undo quite a lot of the good in this Bill and in our climate change agenda. We will have to support these farmers and accept that they have got to increase their productivity.

We have talked about land being lost for biodiversity net gain. That is another pressure on the countryside. Surely, it is high time that England followed the lead of the other countries in the UK—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—in producing a plan of how it will use the land. It is the only way that we will make progress in a sensible way without having constant fights at all levels. We need a strategy from the Government: should we actually be farming our grade 1 Lincolnshire fen farms, which we are told have very few harvests left? Every time they are farmed, they are perhaps one of the greatest emitters of carbon in the agricultural sector. It is a terrible thought that our grade 1 land might not be farmable or should not be farmed, but we need to address that now before it is too late. I therefore give my full support to the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, to get a land use strategy for England.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to be part of this group and to be supporting the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, in her Amendment 209. If we are to have nature recovery strategies, they have to be followed. I touched on this in a previous group in relation to biodiversity gain and planning consents. If that great source of nature improvement is done willy-nilly, with no reference at all to the nature recovery strategy, what is the point of the nature recovery strategy? This is one of the main ways in which things are going to improve. Why is it disconnected? Amendment 209 from the noble Baroness would reconnect it and other things in a most useful way.

My own amendments in this group are aimed at seeking remedies to things which seem to me, from my experience locally, not to be working as well as they might be and which could be made to work better, under the structures proposed in this Bill, with a bit of additional power. First, I observe that, within the land owned by the local council, there are substantial SSSIs which are supposed to be chalk downland and which are actually largely bramble. How has that come about? I think it has come about because the negotiations on what should be done are conducted between a council that is extremely willing but short of money and Natural England, which understands that and does not see the purpose of pushing a long-term relationship harder than it reasonably can. The net result is that things go gently backwards.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has requested to speak after the Minister.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the reply my noble friend the Minister gave, but I am slightly perturbed by his answer to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, to which I put my name. He said we need a lot more Knepps. Yes, but where will they go?

He went on to say that the Government have a strategic approach. I do not think they have. My noble friend is battling with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on many issues at the moment, and he will be battling with the Treasury and the Department for Transport. This goes across government. The Government might think they have a strategy but, without a strategy that we can all look at, it will be dependent on the budget and annual spending plans of each department. It will be a horrible annual battle.

I hope my noble friend will reconsider this between now and another stage, because the more I have listened to on the Bill and the more I have talked to farmers, the more I am absolutely convinced that the only sensible way forward is for us to have a strategy to which we can have our input and support the Government. That will make life clearer and better for everybody in future. Not only will it protect our environment much better but it will help produce the food that we want. The way we are going, we will have to import a whole lot more food than we do at the moment; that will be the downside of the Bill.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I think we are agreed. In the past, I have heard the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, agree—as most people in this Committee would agree—that we need to do all we can to reverse biodiversity loss. We cannot do that without the measures that I have described today and that we have been debating over the last seven days in Committee. We can bank that as something we all agree on and put it to one side.

We also know that we need to produce food, and that we probably have to produce more food. The only answer to that is to maximise the use of land that is not highly productive, to increase productivity on land that is productive and to ensure that the farming we do does not undercut or undermine the work we are doing on areas that are not farmed. That means reconciling farming with nature. No one is pretending it is easy, but that is what we have to do. If we do not do that, we fail with nature, food security and pretty much all the ambitions we set ourselves. It is difficult, but that is what we are trying to do. Things such as ELM and the other mechanisms that exist will, I hope, create the incentives we need to take us down that route.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th July 2021 Lords Chamber

I support the intention behind the amendment because, despite clear advice from their expert advisory group, the Government adopted a voluntary approach, and we know from a paper published by Rhys Green and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge in February this year that no progress whatever has been made since nine hunting and shooting organisations said that they would aim to reduce the use of lead shot. Equally, retailers—I have spoken to two of our major food retailers about this over the past few years—are still selling game killed with lead shot. A very small warning says, “May contain lead shot”, rather than, “May reduce the IQ of your children”. I shall not speak any further on this, because I am sure others will speak at greater length, but I support that amendment.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lord, I am delighted to follow my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, because the 10 amendments I have in this group very much follow the line of thinking that he just enunciated. Before I speak to my amendments, I will comment on Amendment 293A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton. I support what he is trying to do; it is time that the shooting interests got rid of lead shot in shotguns and we moved to a different form of ammunition. I know that my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury will wax more lyrical on that than I can, but I support what the noble Lord is trying to achieve.

I can break down my 10 amendments into different groups, but their purpose is to try to make this part of the Bill work better, in the same way as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, is trying to do with his amendment. It is right that the Government are adopting strategies to protect nature. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned district-level licensing of the great crested newt.

My Amendments 237 to 240 are designed to make certain that the measures are integrated into local nature reserve strategies and are fit for purpose. By that, I mean that we need to look to wider considerations than just surveying, zoning and compensating or mitigating measures against impacts from activities such as development. My amendments suggest that species conservation strategies need to encompass all factors, as identified by scientific evidence, not just habitat, and that management measures need to reflect that. I have gone on before about management being the forgotten part of the way to improve nature and biodiversity, but it will be hugely important in areas such as this.

There ought also to be a defined basis for favourable conservation status, so that progress can be judged against it and a timescale for the strategies’ application established. That seems logical. Without that, species cannot continue to receive special protection, despite success in improving their conservation status. As we all know, managing nature is difficult to get absolutely right. In some cases, a species may be a factor in the decline of another at-risk species, so if the conservation status target has been achieved, that could make its management in support of the conservation of a more threatened species more acceptable. There is undoubtedly a role for us humans in all this.

I turn to Amendment 242. The Explanatory Notes to Clause 102(4)(e) suggest how Natural England applies the mitigation hierarchy in relation to activities such as development. I am concerned by the clause’s wording of

“adverse impact … that may arise from a plan, project or other activity”,

because I think it could limit the use of management tools that, based on scientific evidence, are needed. My amendment would include more than just the development impacts and merely requiring Natural England’s opinion on a matter.

Amendment 244 is similar to my Amendment 236, which is an amendment to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. As I said, I support his amendment, but I believe the Secretary of State should publish

“and make available for consultation”

his guidance. It is all very well the Secretary of State publishing guidance, but unless it is properly consulted on, it might not be as effective as it should. Both my amendments require consultation on the guidance. I do not mind whether it is reflected in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, he supports me, or we support each other, as long as we get this clause changed.

Amendments 248 and 249 are to Clause 103. The point of Amendment 248 is that the conservation and management of protected sites need to be based on science rather than opinion. I hope that the Minister will agree with me on that. His fellow Minister, my noble friend Lord Benyon, certainly agrees on that, because, when he answered a Question on pesticides—I do not have the quote with me—he said that scientific evidence was essential to get it right. If scientific evidence is right for pesticides, it is also right in this instance. Amendment 249 seeks to include “landowners”. It is right that everybody with any legal interest is properly covered in this clause, and the omission of landlords does not help.

Amendment 252 to Clause 104 refers to new subsection (3B), which applies to all species licences issued under Section 16(3) of the previous Act. I feel that the existing wording of “no other satisfactory solution” is weak and without meaning. I suggest a different form of words, taken from the general licence, so I hope it will be acceptable to my noble friend. I also feel that

“detrimental to the survival of any population”

needs legal definition, so I propose the use of “status” instead of “survival”. “Population” can mean anything from an individual site colony to the total number of that species in the UK. Therefore, scale should come into any definition of “detrimental to the survival”, as reducing a population at local level may not have a bearing on the overall population due, for example, to infill from the current year’s young of that species.

I have not put down an amendment on my next point, but I raise a question for my noble friend, for clarity. Could he tell me—as it is not clear in the Explanatory Memorandum or when I read this part of the Bill—what are the Secretary of State’s powers? Does the Secretary of State retain the power that he needs? This has not happened in Wales, and there has been a major problem, because the Secretary of State has not been able to retake control, as has been seen here in England in 2019, for general licensing relating to Sections 16(1)(c) and 16(3)(c). I support the Secretary of State being able to take control and I hope that my noble friend will be able to confirm that this is in fact the case.

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[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is very difficult to follow the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, with his expertise and knowledge—much as previous speakers. I share his love of the Chilterns, not only because of the hanging beech woods, where I have often wandered around looking at the orchids, butterflies and other biodiversity, but because, about four generations ago, my family sold furniture that had been made from the beech in those Chiltern woods.

I speak, first, to Amendment 258. I was initially attracted to this because, as we have heard, the importance of ancient woodland is well understood. I was fascinated to hear the epiphany of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, following his excellent chairmanship of the HS2 committee—I am glad that something good has come out of HS2 for once—which was almost matched by the Damascene conversion of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in his previous incarnation as a purveyor of peat. However, to me, this is about protection; whether it is a SSSI or ancient woodland, this is about whether we can protect them adequately.

As they say on news programmes, “While we’ve been on air,” though I think it was probably earlier today, I have discovered that 553 acres of privately owned woodland—I do not know if it is ancient woodland—is going to be taken, it is reported, by Center Parcs to open a new site. This area is, I think, a SSSI; it has Schedule 1 breeding birds such as honey buzzard, goshawk, firecrest, hobby and crossbill nesting there, as well as threatened species such as redstart, nightjar and lesser spotted woodpecker. I do not know how protected this will be—we heard in the previous debate from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, about Swanscombe peninsula and the threats there. If the designation means protection, that is obviously a good thing, but if it is just another designation that does not help, is it necessary? I have listened to the other arguments and I am not sure whether this is necessary. Normally, when it comes to woodland issues, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has a lot going for her, so I am tempted by her amendment.

I move on to Amendment 259. Again, we have talked a lot about biosecurity. The idea that this should be British trees initially appeals. However, the arguments about climate change and the amount of capacity that we have with British growers—as the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and others mentioned—are also compelling. The problem is not so much that they are being imported and grown elsewhere but in the actual word “biosecurity”; it is about what they may bring with them. One thing that is a problem is whether we have enough inspections for such things. There are a lot of bad things that are brought in—not just viruses or plant diseases but parasites as well. I am sure that many noble Lords know about the Obama worm, Obama nungara, which is a South American species that is very bad for invertebrates that are very helpful to horticulture. They came over, there are large numbers in France and we have now found them here. They have been coming in the soil; they are not necessarily visible. I do not know what the answer is—perhaps quarantine or something else—but it is too simplistic, I fear, to say that we must restrict ourselves to British-grown trees, however inviting that might seem.

Finally, I would like to say a few things about Amendment 260A. I agree entirely about the problem of grey squirrels. My noble friend Lord Blencathra mentioned muntjac, which not only have been a terrible curse for my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe’s roses—we suffer from that in our own suburban garden here in Uxbridge—but have been devastating the habitat of many birds. I think they are attributed to the decline of the nightingale, certainly in Norfolk and elsewhere, because they are eating that habitat.

I have a solution, possibly for the grey squirrels and the muntjac—and that other invasive species we are not talking about because it has nothing to do with trees, which is the signal crayfish—and that is that they are all excellent to eat. If we could just get the muntjac and grey squirrel shot, but not with lead, we could probably do a good service. Muntjac is particularly tasty.

I think it was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, who talked about plastic tree guards. There are now surveys looking at jute and wool tree guards, which may be the answer to that. Certainly, there is a problem. Some people will say that too many deer is a reason to introduce lynx—I am not sure whether that would be very popular in Sussex, or elsewhere, but I have a great deal of sympathy with Amendment 260A. I am very interested to hear what the Minister has to say, and I will not detain the Committee any longer.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I have added my name to three amendments: Amendments 259 and 260 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and Amendment 260A, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I have listened carefully to this very interesting debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, put his finger on it when he talked about the need for commercial forestry in this country. I have spoken a lot in the past about forestry. We are not good foresters in this country—we have the ideal climate for growing trees, and we do grow trees, but we are not good foresters, and that is why our timber is in the bad condition that it is. In Amendment 260, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, proposes that the Government introduce a tree strategy. That will be hugely important because whenever we have mentioned trees recently my noble friend Lord Goldsmith has said, “Well, there is plenty of room beside riverbanks and stream-banks and unfarmed bits of land.” Yes, there is, but those are amenity trees and nothing to do with commercial woodland. We are the number two world importer of timber, which is a very bad statistic for the UK to have.

The problem with the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, for commercial woodland was rightly exposed by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, who said that commercial woodland is unprofitable: nobody is growing hardwood timber commercially any more. You cannot, because of pests and diseases. That is why Amendment 260A is so important, as is Amendment 259, which deals with biodiversity.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, said that there are pests and diseases for every native hardwood. If that is the case, and the Government’s strategy is what it is, commercial hardwoods have seen their day in this country. That is a terrible thing to have to say but, sadly, it is the truth. Not only do we need a tree strategy; for that we need a land strategy, because 20% of agricultural land will come out of production to go into forestry and biodiversity. Where is it going to happen? We do not know; this is all a bit pie in the sky from the Government.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, the House owes the noble Earl, Lord Devon, a great debt of gratitude for bringing to our attention some of the shortcomings of the existing proposals in the Bill, with regard to this whole new concept of property law, as it relates to the land. My initial reading of it was not clear, and I obviously received a brief from the NFU and others. I am grateful to the noble Earl; his amendments are eminently sensible, and I urge the Government to support them.

I will speak at greater length. I welcome back the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, to his place—it is good to see him back in person. However, I caution my noble friend the Minister most strongly against accepting this amendment for a number of reasons. I was closely involved with some issues relating to common land, particularly grazing rights on it in the part of North Yorkshire that I represented between 2010 and 2015. The role of graziers there is very important. They are granted rights, again, in perpetuity and have existed for many generations.

There are sometimes tensions with others in the hierarchy of interests, we might say, on common land, particularly with those involved in grouse shooting. I happen to have been brought up very close to two of the best grouse-shooting moors in the country, in Teesdale in County Durham, and I believe that, for the most part, the overgrazing problems, where they exist, have been managed extremely well through voluntary arrangements via stewardship schemes.

The main issue that I have is a potential hidden agenda here that it is very important to put in the public domain, appealing to the best instincts of my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, in this regard. However, we need to see a balance in the countryside, and, among the hierarchy of interests, I place on record my particular concern about the plight of the small family farm. I would place that at the very top of the hierarchy, with grouse shooting and other interests perhaps towards the middle—or, in my case, the lower end. It has become of far greater economic importance than it had 20, 30 or 40 years ago. I pay particular tribute to the work of the NFU and the Tenant Farmers Association in regard to the rights of graziers to graze in perpetuity on common land. I was struck today by, and pay tribute to, the work of the Prince of Wales in this regard. He said today, on the BBC Radio 4 “Today” programme, that we lose them at our peril, and I echo that.

I hope that my noble friend Lady Bloomfield will confirm that there is a role for graziers going forward and that their rights will be protected in perpetuity and will not be at the expense of other, perhaps larger, farming—or, dare I say, shooting—interests in this regard. We should have respect for existing property rights, as defined in relation to land under the Law of Property Act 1925 and other legislation. We should recognise that these rights of commoners go back as far as the Magna Carta of 1215 and the Charter of the Forest of 1217.

I welcome the opportunity that my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington— I call him my noble friend because we served together on the EU Environment Sub-Committee—has given us in this regard, but I urge my noble friend to approach this cautiously, particularly as it would potentially shift the balance in the countryside, without even meaning to do so.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, the Committee will be extremely grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Devon, for tabling these important amendments. I confess that I have not given them the attention that I should have done, and it is clear that a lot of attention needs to be given to this part of the Bill between now and Report. The fact that we are on the eighth day does not mean that these amendments are any less important than the first amendment on day 1—they need careful scrutiny.

To my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, I say that I am not a landowner, but I was a land agent, and the implications of what the noble Earl said in moving his amendment fill me with some trepidation. He made a perfectly plausible case—it was not extreme—about a situation where a farmer hurriedly enters into a conservation covenant to boost his income at a time of stress, when his basic farm payments system is collapsing and he needs the money. That is not an unlikely scenario in the future, but the consequences of what he does are terrifying for the future because they are in perpetuity and binding on his successors. This could go disastrously wrong for the Government. This is the way that we will improve biodiversity, but, should it get off to a bad start and should some notorious cases hit the press, that will stop any chance of this becoming the full-blown operation that it should.

I have a number of questions for my noble friend on the Front Bench. If this a covenant in perpetuity, a farmer may enter into one on what is at the moment an outlying field but then ceases to be so, given the proposed massive housing development in this country, with the local authority wishing to develop it or use it for amenity purposes, as part of the increased use of that area. As I understand it, it will not be able to do so—but, when it has built houses all around that field, there is absolutely no way that the covenant will be able to be maintained. Is there a way in which this could be changed so that there is more flexibility?

When the noble Earl was talking, I wondered about the case of landlords and tenants. I presume it will be the landlord who enters into the covenant, and with the agreement of the tenant, but that could have serious consequences for the future letting of that land and keeping it in a tenancy. If for any reason the covenant was unable to be fulfilled, no tenant farmer would wish to take on that bit of land again in the future.

It would also affect the price and balance of farmland, because if it goes wrong and the land becomes of little value, it will upset the whole biodiversity and nature balance in that area. If one is talking of a landscape issue—for instance, a valley in the south-west or north-west where the whole area is properly managed but there is a conservation covenant in the middle of it that goes wrong—that could be utterly detrimental. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will reflect on this so that he is absolutely confident that the balance is right for the future.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I wish to speak principally about Amendment 276A, which relates to common land and which I have discussed with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. The reason for that is that there is a very large amount of common land in the bit of north-west England where I come from, currently known as the county of Cumbria. I should declare that I am president of the Uplands Alliance and I own on my own account a few common rights and a very small area of registered common. I am also a farmer in his late 60s looking into the future.

I begin by reassuring the noble Earl, Lord Devon, that one of the advantages of speaking remotely is that I can, and do, have a copy of Megarry & Wade to hand. I urge your Lordships to take seriously the points that he has raised, because he is talking not merely as somebody who understands the way land works in the real world but as a property lawyer. His indictment of the implications of what is currently in the Bill is significant. There are massive potential problems here, starting with the definition of “responsible body” and going through the saga of how disaster can strike. It is not merely a matter of disaster hitting the particular owners or successors in title of owners of bits of land; it is potentially a disaster for the countryside and the environment as well. For what it is worth, my advice to the Government would be to tear these proposals up, start again and, if necessary, bring them back in another place and we can vote on them again at a later time after a period of reflection. It is not the aspirations behind what is contained in the Bill which are flawed; it is the mechanisms that they put in place to try to bring them about.

As has already been said, common land is a very complicated legal and administrative matter, as the discussions on the most recent Bill to pass through your Lordships’ House, in 2005, show. In that Bill, a balance was struck between a range of interests which do not always see eye to eye. Common land is as legitimate a form of land tenure as the more usual form found across much of lowland England and Wales. While it was at one time more widespread than it is now, it is still an entirely appropriate basis for farming and land management in a number of upland and lowland, particularly wetland, areas of England and Wales. It is not a hangover from feudal England, although its ancestry lies there, nor is it an anachronism in the 21st century. The various rights which exist under it are in legal terms qualitatively no different from those that exist elsewhere in land law. Furthermore—and this is important—it is a cultural phenomenon which is part of the basis of the rationale for the Lake District National Park having been designated as a world heritage site.

I can see what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, is trying to do, and I have no criticism of it. However, I feel that he has oversimplified some things in a number of ways. Issues relating to conservation and the environment are not the only part of the story; there are other aspects—for example, grazed habitats; cultural landscape, which I have already mentioned; traditional farming systems; rural communities and so on. Furthermore, one thing we can learn from the history of commons is that the interests of the owner of the soil and those of the owner of the common rights are not necessarily the same. Indeed, the interests of different owners of rights, which are not all the same, are in turn not necessarily the same. I must confess that I am not happy that the owner of the soil could gain a kind of advantage over all the other legitimate legal rights involved in it in the way that has been described, particularly in respect of the long-established rights of commons, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. It seems to me that if someone involved in common land wants to buy up some other land or rights or soil, they should do so in the ordinary way in the open market.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened carefully to the very powerful arguments that have been made. I believe that what is happening with biodiversity is more of an emergency than the climate. I am not certain that I like subsections (2) and (3) of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and I do not like Amendment 21, which is grouped with Amendment 1 but is not consequential on it. That would make it harder for the Government to pursue their environmental improvement plans and 25-year plan. There would be unnecessary duplication with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bird. I am very happy with subsection (1) of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. The purpose of this Act is to address the biodiversity and climate emergency domestically and globally. Once that is in print, it will be acknowledged by the Government as an emergency. Surely that meets the noble Lord’s point, and if my noble friend the Minister accepts subsection (1), I will be perfectly happy.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a curious experience to be standing up without being called.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has made the classic Conservative error of separating biodiversity from climate. It is all interconnected: you cannot talk about either without accepting that each has an impact on the other. Every noble Lord must understand that we have a climate emergency, and therefore this government Bill is not good enough. We all know that–it is why there are so many amendments at Report. It is our job to improve the Bill and it is the Government’s job to listen and, I hope, accept our improvements.

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[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

Perhaps I have misunderstood my noble friend. If he is asking me to acknowledge, as I have done many times in this House and outside it, that we face a biodiversity and climate emergency then I believe I have already done so. However, it is not for me to unilaterally accept an amendment on behalf of the Government that would have no material impact. As my noble friend says, we have made some big commitments; accepting the amendment would not change our commitment to net zero or to reversing biodiversity loss by 2030, or indeed in relation to any of these issues. I am afraid I have to come back to my noble friend and others by saying that if the feeling is strong then this issue needs to be put to a Division.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

I would just like to get clarification on this. Since it is now so difficult to table an amendment at Third Reading, it needs my noble friend to say that he would consider it before Third Reading. As I understand it, that would allow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, to bring it back at Third Reading. If my noble friend is point blank saying that he will not even consider it, then the noble Lord has no alternative but to divide the House.

As I said, I like subsection (1) of the proposed new clause but not the rest of the amendment, which puts me and indeed quite a lot of us on the Benches behind my noble friend in an extremely difficult position. I think it is essential, as my noble friend Lord Deben said, that we get subsection (1), but we would have to vote for the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in order to get it into the Bill.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

Could I summarise what I think I have heard the noble Lord say?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I urge the noble Lord, Lord Randall, to be of good cheer and believe that this is the solution—because it seems to me that we have heard, from many noble Lords of high esteem, just how important soil is as a fundamental part of the environment. Indeed, two of the Government’s priorities in Clause 1(3), “water” and “biodiversity”, are crucially dependent on soils, apart from anything else. It is true to say that, as well as very many noble Lords being able to lay down the case very clearly for soil being part of the Government’s priority list, the Government themselves have said that: in their 25-year environment plan, they mentioned soil quality 17 times, so it does not seem to me to beyond the wit of man to believe that that looks like a bit of a priority and probably ought to be in this list.

I know that, in Committee, the Minister said that the science will not let us measure soil health, but there has been research on soil quality for the last 50 years, and lots of measures have been put forward as indicators of soil health, ranging from microbes to organic matter to earthworms. The Government just need to make a stab at a basket of indicators and get on with measuring and incentivising improvement.

Although I have banged on for many years about government needing to incentivise people to produce outcomes, in this particular case I want to recant from that and ask for the reverse practice, which is to incentivise practices that have a proven effect for good on soil health. If we can get farmers, land managers and others who have an impact on the soil to do the right things, good soil quality will result.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, talked about a few of those things, such as minimum tillage, crop rotations, applications of manures and composts, use of cover crops and effective management of field margins. If farmers and land managers were incentivised to do all of those, we would be almost absolutely guaranteed to be improving the health of the soil. As such, I urge the Minister: soil health is too important to say, “It is too difficult” and to leave it out of the Government’s priority list.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Randall for pointing out that my Amendment 18 is coming up, complementing this amendment in that it asks the Government to “prepare a soil … strategy”. No one could have put it better than the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, just now, and much of what she said is reflected in the wording that I have in Amendment 18, which we shall come to.

However, the Government must include plans for the integration of soil management with environmental objectives, such as climate mitigation, flood-risk minimisation, water-quality measures and policies relating to food production. All of this is so integrated that, unless one has a comprehensive approach to it, one will fail. In my view, it is very sad that the Government have got policies for air and water but no statutory policy for soil. My Amendment 18, which I will not speak to at length because I am speaking to this amendment, is equally as important as this amendment.

My noble friend Lord Deben mentioned that soil is a great sequestrator of carbon. Indeed it is, but saying “soil” is like saying “fruit”—there are so many different types of soil that a different approach will have to be taken on most farms, probably, because the soil varies so much. Some of the sandy soils are not terribly good sequestrators; they could be made much better with improved farm management, but, if you have a heavy clay soil, you have an inbuilt advantage for sequestration from day 1.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said how little Defra spent on soil. It is rather frightening that only 0.4% of the environmental budget is spent on soil—that is a catastrophically low amount of money, which is why this amendment is so important and why my Amendment 18 is equally important. The whole question of soil and research needs much more expenditure and we need to be clearer on it, but let us have one basic fact in mind: about 25% of our biodiversity is in our soil. That is why we need to get this amendment—and mine —in the Bill.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, I should note, for the record and for the whole of Report, my interest as a Devon farmer. For many years, we have been adding organic matter to our porous red sandstone soils to increase sequestration, combat run-off, build resilience to drought, decrease the need for chemical fertilisers and provide Teignbridge District Council with somewhere to put all the garden waste.

In Committee, we debated a number of potentially priority areas in Clause 1(3). I am glad that this one in particular has returned, and I will strongly support it. I would have added my name to it if it had not been so eminently oversubscribed. I am less keen on Amendment 3, the light-pollution amendment, which pales in comparison and importance to this one.

The prior debate on these amendments only explained how important this is. In Committee, the Minister confirmed that our understanding of soils is

“not as complete as it should be.”—[Official Report, 21/6/21; col. 95.]

He begged for more time to gather the necessary data. There is simply no more time to do so: our soils are in a crisis and have only a few harvests left, as we have heard from a number of noble Lords. If it is not a priority, how will we ever gather that data? How will Defra be instructed to gather it? The absence of data is seriously damaging the debate on environmental matters, and it is encouraging a number of extremes.

Take the debate on grass-fed meat and dairy. It is a topic close to the hearts of all Devon farmers. We all agree on the negative impact of indoor lot-fed meat and dairy consuming grain and soya in terrible welfare conditions, but no one knows the net environmental impact of beef and sheep fed on the ancient green pastures of the West Country because the data and the science are not there and everybody has an argument. This was confirmed to me just last week in discussions with an eminent environmental scientist at Exeter University. We really need that data, and this amendment needs to be made to encourage Defra to collect it.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 8th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[The Earl of Caithness]

18: After Clause 16, insert the following new Clause—
“Soil management strategy for EnglandSoil management strategy for England
(1) The Secretary of State must prepare a soil management strategy for England.(2) The soil management strategy for England must set out Her Majesty’s Government’s objectives, priorities and policies for the sustainable management of soil in England during the period to which the strategy relates.(3) That period must not be shorter than 10 years.(4) The soil management strategy for England must include—(a) a commitment to the long-term monitoring of soil quality and health,(b) a definitive open access map identifying the different soil types,(c) plans for the integration of soil management with environmental objectives such as climate mitigation, flood risk minimization and water quality measures and policies relating to food production, and(d) targets for achieving the sustainable management of soil on Grade 1 and Grade 2 agricultural land (and other soils where necessary).(5) The Secretary of State must publish—(a) an annual statement on progress against the soil management strategy for England, and(b) after a period of three years beginning on the day this Act is passed, a review of the effectiveness of the soil management strategy for England including any necessary revisions of the strategy.(6) Before the end of the period to which the soil management strategy for England relates, the Secretary of State must prepare a new strategy for a new period that must not be shorter than 10 years.”

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 18. Some of your Lordships will remember a BBC radio comedy series called “Beyond Our Ken” in which there was a gardener, Arthur Fallowfield, played by the late Kenneth Williams. His stock reply to any question was, “The answer lies in the soil”. Arthur Fallowfield was more right than he could possibly have imagined, because the answer to many of our problems lies in the soil, as we discussed in Committee and on the first day of Report when we discussed the amendment on soil of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. That is why I have tabled Amendment 18, which asks the Government to prepare a

“soil management strategy for England”.

I am extremely grateful for the support of my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. That is cross-party support, and it is clear that such a strategy is needed.

I will be brief, as I said I would be on Monday, because I said most things then, but may I reiterate a couple of points? Why are there strategies for water and air when there is not a strategy for soil? My noble friend the Minister will be aware that in 2020 a survey showed that 16% of our arable soils were being lost through erosion at such a high rate that they are likely to become unproductive. Some 25% of biodiversity lives in the soil. My noble friend the Minister has stated on many occasions that he wants Britain to be a world leader. I give him the opportunity now with soil. By including this amendment in the Bill, we will become a world leader and we will be able to point to it when we come to COP.

My final point, as an ex-Treasury Minister, is on cost. It will not cost the Government anything to prepare a soil strategy. If it is prepared and implemented, it will actually save the Government money. It will improve our environment and farming, which will benefit us all.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to support the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, in this amendment. If anything needs a strategy, it is the soil. As was talked about on Monday night, the air, the water and the soil are the three pillars on which we exist, and I would say that the soil is the most important. It is a magical world that we know very little about. People can name the planets, but they cannot name a single thing that lives in the soil. Indeed, it is a whole complex world that lives on a different timescale and on a different planet, as it were, from us because it is all so tiny, but that does not make it any less complicated. As the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said, 25% of our biodiversity lives in the soil.

As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, pointed out, soil is already degraded, and the five a day we have to eat is now probably four, because we have so weakened this magical substance. We also give it a very bad press. We talk about the dirt beneath our feet; every single laundry advert has someone coming back muddy, as though this is something that we do not like. We treat our soil—this extraordinary world—in the most amazing way, because twice a year, a plough goes through, which, if you can imagine it, is literally like your town, your house and your landscape being bombed to pieces. Despite that, our soil struggles on.

As I pointed out the other day about rivets in planes and when biodiversity starts to turn in the wrong direction, our soils are depleting. Various figures have been given, but most people in this House were nodding when it was said we have maybe 50 harvests left. That may be an exaggeration, but we cannot live on chemicals any more. The soil is also our most valuable means of storing carbon if we treat it right.

Soil is there to help us, to enable us to live on this planet and thrive. It seems to me that this needs a strategy. This is where government should come in. There are lots of people out there campaigning about water and clean air. The soil gets a seriously poor look-in, and if the Government are there to protect the most precious elements of our life, we need a soil strategy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate regarding Amendment 18, tabled by my noble friend Lord Caithness. I thank him for his correspondence on this issue over the summer, for the discussions we have had and for his passionate speech earlier. I assure him that we of course remain committed to sustainably managed soils by 2030, as laid out in the 25-year environment plan and the action we are taking to get there. I will not repeat the case for soils, because we touched on that on Monday but also because we have heard some compelling speeches from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, my noble friend Lord Caithness in introducing the amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Khan, who made the critical point about the carbon values of soils.

I want to start by emphasising the actions I outlined in our debate on Monday which the Government are undertaking to improve soil health. We will produce a baseline assessment of soil health, which could inform a potential future long-term soils target. We are currently identifying soil health metrics to complement a future soil health monitoring scheme. The Path to Sustainable Farming: An Agricultural Transition Plan 2021 to 2024 sets out examples of the types of actions that we envisage paying for under the schemes, including soil management, such as the use of cover crops. I described in Monday’s debate the England Peat Action Plan, which we published in May. This sets out the Government’s long-term vision for the management, protection and restoration of our peatlands, which are crucial carbon stores, as well as—to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester—our commitment to end the use of peat in amateur horticulture by the end of this Parliament.

However, I would like to add to my remarks from Monday. The Government recognise both the strength of feeling expressed by many noble Peers from across the House and the critical importance of this issue. Soils matter of course in and of themselves, but they underpin, quite literally, the improvements that we will have to see right across the environment, as well as being critical for agriculture and, by extension, food security.

I am therefore pleased to announce that the Government will publish a soil health action plan for England. The plan will be a key plank in our efforts to halt the decline of species by 2030, as well as meeting our long-term legally binding targets on biodiversity. As we have heard from a number of noble Lords in this debate and in the debate on Monday, our soils are in a perilous position. The action plan will be crucial in driving progress across government to restore the health of our soils. We will set out further details of what the plan will contain by the end of this year.

I repeat my thanks to my noble friend Lord Caithness for having applied the pressure on this issue in the way that he did. To quote the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, campaigning works from time to time. I hope that this new announcement and my comments in our earlier debate reassure my noble friend and others in the House. I beg him to withdraw his amendment.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken and given me support. It is always nice to have unanimous support when one moves an amendment, and on a subject such as soil it is also good to have at least three farmers supporting one. As the Minister said, the case for this amendment is very sound.

I need to answer the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. The reason I included only grades 1 and 2 is that those are the two soils most likely to be ploughed. The noble Lord is absolutely right to say that grassland is equally important, but there is less erosion on grassland, particularly pasture grassland. Given the amount that Defra has to do, if it starts with grades 1 and 2, it can go on to grades 3 and 4 afterwards. However, I take the noble Lord’s point.

What the noble Lord said has been overridden by the Minister, and I am extremely grateful to the Minister for his commitment to introduce a soil action plan by the end of the year. I noted with care what my noble friend Lord Deben, my fellow ex-Minister, said on Amendment 11. He said that if it was not in the Act it would not get done. I am going to back my Minister and not my noble friend Lord Deben; I shall trust my Minister to introduce the soil action plan by the end of the year. I am sorry that it is not in the Bill, because being able to wave that bit of paper at COP 26 would be good. However, if he could write a letter confirming what he has done, or at least wave Hansard in front of people at COP 26, we might get a little bit more. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend on the Front Bench and to all noble Lords, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 18 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I share the view around the House that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, have made a compelling case for their amendments on a fundamental issue. It would be of enormous assistance if the Minister when he comes to reply would identify which part of Amendment 24 he objects to. Is it really the Government’s case that the OEP should not have

“complete discretion in the carrying out of its functions”?

Is that the Government’s case? I would be surprised and very disappointed if it were. If the Government accept that the OEP should have complete discretion, surely a matter of this importance should be in the Bill.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, no Minister likes an authority such as the OEP, because the Minister is undoubtedly convinced that his policy is absolutely right. However, when one stops being a Minister and looks back, one realises the importance of bodies such as the OEP.

I think my concern was summed up beautifully by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, when he said that this is the one thing we have to get right. We were promised a totally independent body, equivalent to that which operated when we were in the EU. I accept that the Government should not be fined for not doing the right thing, but the OEP not only is—but has to be seen to be—totally independent. The Bill as drafted at the moment does not cover that. I hope that my noble friend will not be intransigent and stand out against this amendment but will go back for one more go with the other people in the department and the Secretary of State, understanding the enormous support there is in this House for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. It would be so much better if the Government solved this problem rather than having a Division. My noble friend was very good to me on my amendment on soil and has made a promise; I hope that he will be able to do the same thing again.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I will not detain the House for long because the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has made a compelling case for his amendment, to which I was very happy to add my name. I just want to add a reflection on the point which I think all of us feel very strongly about. There will sometimes be occasions when the OEP will have to take Ministers to task. There has to be not only a degree of separation between the OEP and the Government but also public confidence in that degree of separation.

I ask the Minister to reflect on the fact that the public will see what is happening in Scotland, where the body they are setting up has no such curtailment of its powers. Indeed, Environmental Standards Scotland has the powers to take the steps it considers appropriate to secure public authorities’ compliance with environmental law. The public need to see that there is independence between the Executive and this body. If they look to Scotland and see what is happening, that is another reason to support the case that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has made so compellingly. Therefore, I support him and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie. If they should be pushed to a vote, our Benches will support them.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I just want to say a few words about these chemicals and to talk about it from the point of view of the industry and cheap food.

In 1947, the manufacturers of DDT ran an advert in Time magazine showing smiling cartoon farm animals and a rosy-cheeked housewife who sang “DDT is good for me-e-e!”, along with the claim that DDT was the “benefactor of all humanity”. That same year, they had a British colonialist sprinkling DDT over a bowl of porridge and then eating it in a bid to persuade local people in east Africa that this chemical was harmless.

We can see, if we cut forward to today, that Silent Spring was written in 1962 and DDT became recognised as something that was harmful to animals, nature, biodiversity and, indeed, humans. Yet, today, we see a very different story. In 1990, we treated 45 million hectares with pesticides. By 2016, this had risen to 73 million hectares, although the actual area of crops had remained the same. However, we were putting many times more pesticides on to those same crops, on to a weakening soil, in our attempt to keep producing ever more cheap food to feed our population.

There are very familiar names in the industry—Bayer, Monsanto and Syngenta—and it is reckoned that they make about 35% of their total global revenue by selling these sorts of pesticides around the world. Farmers get trapped into that same cycle. It is something that we have to break.

This amendment is very important to me, because I feel a great distrust of the Government at the moment, for instance over the ban of neonicotinoids. They are now banned in America and across the whole of Europe; indeed, when we were still within the European Union, we banned them as well. However, we have now let them back in and they are allowed to be used on sugar beet. This feels to me like a small open door that could get bigger. I quote Dave Goulson, from the University of Sussex, who wrote a fantastic book about the decline of insects. Mentioning neonicotinoids, he says:

“The toxicity takes your breath away—just five maize seeds treated with neonicotinoids are enough to kill a grey partridge.”


No one can spray 17,000 tonnes of poison across a landscape without doing massive damage as it spreads. As the noble Lord, Lord Randall, so wisely said, we now know about DDT—and, actually, we know about this stuff too. It is no accident that it kills animals, insects and every single small thing around.

These amendments are absolutely imperative, right across so many parts of this Bill: biodiversity, habitats and human health. Also, there are other ways of doing it; there are intelligent, responsible uses of gene editing and many natural solutions to keep crops safe and ensure that we have good, healthy food that does not destroy either our planet or ourselves.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness; she has made a very powerful speech and covered a lot of the points that I wanted to raise. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, also made a powerful and passionate speech. We all know that some pesticides are lethal when applied badly or in the wrong conditions. A lot of farmers do it absolutely correctly but, sadly, a minority do not necessarily adhere to the rules or the conditions. As the food section of the United Nations has reminded us, we also need to bear in mind that crop yields currently drop by 26% to 40% if one does not have the right chemicals.

The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, was absolutely right that there are alternatives coming through in gene editing; that must be the future. It would be an ideal situation if we could get rid of most harmful pesticides through gene editing, to keep food production up. The noble Baroness also reminded us what a complete mess we have made in our farming over past years, which has affected biodiversity, the soil and nature. A serious revolution is taking place now to correct that.

I turn to Amendment 123 and support what the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, has said. Yes, there is an informal agreement to phase out lead shot within five years, but that is too long a timescale. It is perfectly possible to do it to an earlier timescale. It would be inconvenient for some industries, I agree, but my mind goes back to when I was a Minister and we started to phase out CFCs. Industries came to my door in their droves, saying, “You cannot do this”, “We will have to rejig our plant”, “We can’t possibly do it in the timescale you are proposing.” In fact, they did it in a quicker timescale than I wanted at the time. If one gives industries a set date, they can do it; they will meet it. It is a pity that most of the steel now has to come from China, but that is another story. I support the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, has said, and I so agree with my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury: it is for the good of shooting that this amendment is necessary.

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I am afraid that I will add a little un-unanimity to this debate, which seems to have been completely one-sided so far. I declare my farming interests as set out in the register and note that there is a thriving apiary on my farm, to which the greatest threats are from weather and woodpeckers—if noble Lords want to know why woodpeckers, it is because they break into the hives during the winter and eat the queen bee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

The arguments have been very well and fulsomely made, building a consensus. Will noble Lords who still wish to speak make their speeches as short as possible and introduce some new arguments?

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

Indeed, I have a new point to add, which has not been made—there is no point in frowning, I say to my noble friend.

I thank the Minister for bringing forward the government amendments and for his commitment to reviewing Schedule 3. That was something that I asked for in Committee and I am delighted that he is going to do it. Has he been briefed on the latest research from the University of Manchester, which has demonstrated a direct link between poor wastewater management and high levels of microplastic pollution in the United Kingdom? When we have these overflows, the microplastics go out into the water system—not only the rivers, but the sea, thus negating a whole lot of good that the Government have been trying to do in reducing microplastics. If this were not enough of a bad situation before, it is now really bad.

My noble friend’s Amendment 63 proposes including a report

“on elimination of discharges from storm overflows”.

I merely ask, what next after subsection (3)? It is good to have a report and lay it before Parliament, but what action will be taken? That is the only thing that matters now. I support these amendments, and support very strongly what my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern said: we should be aiming to separate the sewage from the wastewater. No new developments should be allowed to discharge automatically into the current sewerage system unless agreed by the water authority; there must be other alternatives.

I have one final comment for my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering. If she expects a developer to make a commitment towards future expenditure on one of these systems, I am afraid she is whistling in the wind. The developers will not do so; if necessary, they would go into bankruptcy and set up a new company to avoid any liability.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, this is a groundbreaking Bill in many ways but, from the perspective of English property law, no provisions are more revolutionary than Part 7 and the introduction of conservation covenants. This is a seismic shift, meaning that, for the first time since the Normans introduced common law, owners of land will be able to bind successors in perpetuity to positive obligations to manage land in a particular way. More radical still, and in a departure from the recommendations of the Law Commission, the counterparties to these obligations will now include for-profit companies—private enterprise. As a farmer and a former property barrister now practising at an agricultural law firm with clients in this space, I support this scheme and want it to succeed, but there are glaring imperfections in Part 7, causing major concern to, among others, the NFU, the Bar Council and the RICS. Because of that I have tabled Amendments 109, 110, 112, 113, 114 and 115.

Amendments 109 and 110 focus on the formalities by which conservation covenants are created, ensuring that they say what they are and what they do on their face and are created by deed rather than, as currently drafted, by a simple exchange of emails. Amendment 112 ensures that for-profit responsible bodies are conservation- focused, not distracted by other, competing duties, such as making profits for their shareholders at the expense of the environment. Amendments 113 through 115 resolve the untenable position when a responsible body defaults, such that the Secretary of State steps in and, in perpetuity, binds a landowner to a positive obligation without any reciprocal duty to pay the fees covenanted. Since Committee, I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, the noble Lord, Lord Oates, and the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, and many others, including the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, indicating a very broad consensus across your Lordships’ House for these modest but vital amendments.

I am also grateful to the Ministers in Defra and the Bill team for their engagement, although I remain concerned that there is a failure to grasp the significance of the issues raised. Given the time, I do not propose to restate the hypothetical parade of horribles that I set out in Committee, but I note that no one has argued that those hypotheticals are wrong. The Government erroneously asserted that conservation covenants needed to be executed by deed in order to be registered as local land charges, but they have since accepted that that was inaccurate. That is appreciated; however, this only reinforces the sense that this radical change to property law is being rushed through without due consideration or understanding. It is our duty to build in necessary safeguards to protect farmers, the environment and future generations from the threat of zombie covenants blighting our green and pleasant land in perpetuity.

Key to resolving these concerns is Amendment 110, requiring that conservation covenants be executed by a deed which contains its key terms as to duration and payments on its face. This is the traditional and best way to ensure that advice is taken such that the potentially punitive and perpetual implications of entering a conservation covenant are properly understood at the outset. The Government say that their draft guidance recommends legal advice, and this should be sufficient, but anyone willing to enter a perpetual covenant by a mere exchange of emails is hardly going to sit down and read the guidance first. Defra wants no brake on the uptake of these covenants and, rather unusually, it is farmers seeking greater formality and not the Government. Defra has directed me to other statutory covenants created without necessarily using a deed, but none of these contains positive covenants, perpetual in nature, with a for-profit private counterparty. These are largely restrictive covenants with trusted statutory authorities.

Amendment 111 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, sets out at considerable length the full formalities to be considered in executing a conservation covenant, formalities the RICS would no doubt recommend. Such extensive formalities may not be warranted within the legislation, but they are exactly what will be considered by properly advised parties executing such a covenant by deed.

The Government suggest that Amendment 112 is unnecessary because Defra will ensure that responsible bodies are truly responsible, but I have read the draft guidance and nowhere does it state the objective parameters against which responsibility will be judged. Indeed, it appears that foreign entities can be responsible bodies, so long as they have a PO box in the UK, and entities directly connected with the landowner could be responsible bodies too—there is no prohibition.

I was also surprised in Committee that the Minister cited the example of for-profit water companies as the type of body the Government consider to be responsible. Would that include Southern Water, recently fined £90 million for environmental degradation on an industrial scale in the pursuit of shareholder profits?

Amendments 113 to 115 solve the intolerable impact of the responsible body becoming bankrupt or deregistered and passing its role as counterparty to the Secretary of State, who then has no obligation to pay anything to the landowner, whatever the cost of the landowner’s conservation commitments. These amendments strictly limit the duration for which the Secretary of State is holder of last resort to 12 months, after which, if no responsible body is willing to take the covenant on, it is simply discharged. This has the effect of killing a zombie covenant and protecting the landowner and the land from the risk of a perpetual obligation with no payments in return. Without this change, the scheme is fatally flawed, as anyone advising on such covenants would have to identify this very real risk and advise against it. Of course, if landowners do not take advice, they will not know of this risk, as I note that no mention is made of it in Defra’s draft guidance.

I could go on, but time is short and the arguments are clear. For these reasons and the myriad others I set forth in Committee, I beg to move.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I support the noble Earl, Lord Devon, in his amendments. They are hugely important. I am a great supporter of conservation covenants and I want them to work effectively. As he just said, I have a number of amendments in this group.

I am looking at conservation covenants in something akin to a divorce situation. One can enter into marriage with the very best of intentions and it is all going very well, but then it starts going sour. Divorce can be extremely costly and brutal. A conservation covenant could be entered into with the very best of intentions, but here the situation is complicated because the parties entering it could be different parties when it comes to a conclusion. There could be very different interpretations and a great deal of costs.

The noble Earl, Lord Devon, did not actually mention costs so much today as he did in Committee, but in Clause 126 the final remedy is the Upper Tribunal and that can cost £50,000 to get started. Can farmers really afford that, particularly tenant farmers? The average size of a farm in England is 87 hectares and the cash flows are bare at the most. They might be a little better with the wheat price at the moment but, sure as anything, we have seen wheat prices go up and come down. You cannot expect farmers to have that amount of ready cash to fight in the courts.

I therefore seek to spell out in some detail the sort of things that need to be taken into account. I do not expect many conservation covenants to be undertaken by tenants but, if one is, all the freeholders of the land should be signatories to that agreement. I hope my noble friend will confirm that. It is a very un-Conservative thing to deprive the beneficiary of a reversionary interest of the full value of that interest, which could easily be done if a tenant enters into an agreement which prejudices the farm at the end of the tenancy. Not only does a conservation agreement affect one property, but it could very easily affect the neighbouring properties and surrounding farms if that conservation covenant involves the re-wetting of the land, which can take many years to undo.

I hope we can get a simpler way to modify and change the tenancies. When negotiation has failed, we need a simple system. I suggest in my amendments that there is an alternative dispute resolution which is simple, cheap, and which farmers, tenants and landowners are used to. I am hugely concerned by the impact that outside bodies might have. As the noble Earl, Lord Devon, has just reminded us, all you need is a PO box. You could get foreign investment companies coming in, taking over these conservation covenants and making life extremely difficult for the occupier.

I very much hope that the Government will be sympathetic to the amendments tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Devon. His Amendments 109 and 110 cover all the points I have raised, but I have spelt them out in a different way because they are of extreme concern to farmers.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly. When I first looked at these amendments, I decided to leave them well alone because I did not know what covenants were. Looking at them a little more closely, my working-class bigotry kicked in and I thought that if three hereditary Peers were dealing with this then I ought to be careful. But, in fact, I am convinced, soothed and reassured, and I will be voting for the amendment.

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[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, my Amendment 117 requires the Secretary of State to create a land-use framework for England. I am conscious of the hour and the fact that this was also raised during debates on the Agriculture Bill and in earlier stages of this Bill. I am also conscious that it is extremely cold in the Chamber and dinner looms, so I will be brief.

I have had considerable support from noble Lords from all parts of your Lordships’ House on this issue. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Boycott, who have also put their names to the amendment. It has become even more important since we last discussed it. Pressures on land from all sides continue to grow, and that is reflected in land prices, which are rocketing up. In particular, the pressures that are really growing and coming into focus include the need for more land for carbon sequestration, for food production and increasing our food security, for tree planting and for forestry, to reduce our reliance on imported timber. There is also pressure for land to halt and reverse the decline in biodiversity, provide green open spaces post Covid and help communities and people protect their health and their mental health.

There are other pressures as well: by 2050, we will need land to house 7 million more people in this country, if the population estimates are correct. That will also mean land for development and infrastructure to support the jobs for this population increase. If we add together all of those things, plus other land uses, the calculation shows that, to meet all of society’s needs for land over the next two decades, we will need a third more land than we have. We desperately need a framework to allow land to be used in the most effective way, for multiple functions—both public and private—to be met by the same piece of land and for decisions on competing land-use pressures to be made on a rational basis, at national, regional and local levels. The three other nations of the UK have all seen sense and have land-use frameworks—England does not.

In addition to all that, the list of land-use schemes that the Government are introducing is growing. Noble Lords have heard about many of them during the course of the Bill: local nature recovery strategies, Nature4Climate and other carbon schemes, biodiversity net gain, the new range of agricultural support schemes in ELMS, major tree-planting initiatives and whatever designations of development land that will come out of the Government’s planning changes, when we see them. There are lots of government schemes. A land-use framework would set all of these in an integrated and logical framework that would act like the glue between them to allow them to operate successfully together, rather than in their current silos. In Committee, the Minister said that local nature recovery strategies would do that job, but they do not include planning and development land uses.

More and more organisations are advocating the need for a land-use framework. I have previously mentioned the Climate Change Committee, the House of Lords Select Committee on the Rural Economy and the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, on which I should declare an interest as a commissioner. Since we last discussed this topic, another bunch of folk have decided that a land-use framework would be a good idea: the food strategy report that Henry Dimbleby produced for the Government called for such a framework, and the forthcoming Royal Society report will do the same. So I believe that the case for developing and implementing such a framework is undeniable and pressing. For example, it is crucial that the Government’s forthcoming planning reforms are informed by such a framework.

What we are faced with is like trying to do one of these awful jigsaws that well-meaning people give you for Christmas. It is a complex land-use jigsaw where there is no picture on the box and you have a third more pieces than will actually fit into the jigsaw. I do not know about noble Lords’, but I hate those offerings —they are impossible to do—and that is what we are trying to do with land use at the moment. I hope that the Minister will hear the rising tide of support for a land-use framework and accept my amendment.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I have put my name to this amendment. I have supported the noble Baroness in her cause of a land-use framework for England for many years. Indeed, if I remember rightly, one of the recommendations of the House of Lords Committee on the Rural Economy was that we needed a land-use framework. That was some years ago and, as the noble Baroness has said, the case is even more pertinent now. The Bill increases the need for one with the conservation covenants. There is no limit to what land these covenants could be on. If they are going to be in perpetuity and they take all the best agricultural land, then we might well be doing ourselves a disservice in the long term when we need that land to grow food for a starving population.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has set out all the points. It is desperately important for the Government to integrate all their policies; at the moment, the pieces of the jigsaw are all over the place. Their strategies, including the new soil strategy, would work so much better if there were a structured plan for them to work under. I just cannot understand why the Minister and Defra are so reluctant to do this when the devolved Administrations have seen the logic of it.

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register.

I also want to speak about this interesting clause, which I have been scratching my head about for some time. The need for some top-down planning was clearly identified by Henry Dimbleby in the recent national food strategy report. However, top-down planning on its own and on the scale envisaged is not practical, as there is always a need for local factors to be considered at the same time. While there is some merit in the concept of focusing public funding on the right thing in the right place, it is neither realistic nor desirable to micromanage what happens right down to parish level. As food producers and environmental guardians, farmers and land managers should be at the core of any approach to developing a framework. A framework for land use should be about joining up policy on the ground, not dictating what is done on the land in a very prescriptive way. Any land-use framework should be positive and enabling—allowing land managers to deliver more from their land, whether for the environment, food or other economic activity—rather than negative and restrictive.

The most interesting objective of the clause recognises the need to consider agriculture and food production. Farmers and landowners have often asked for a more strategic approach to land use, particularly now that land may be taken out of production for carbon-offsetting purposes, housing or whatever, so a clause along these lines helps to deal with the issue. However, this clause has much wider ambitions that could greatly restrict the progression of farming and the diversification of farm businesses, let alone other rural businesses. Zoning would almost certainly make it harder or more expensive to get planning permission for a new or different enterprise.

A land-use framework can never succeed in circumstances where there are going to be changes in technology, climate conditions, consumer demand and business viability, to name just a few considerations, all of which could happen in very short order. Furthermore, there are also likely to be major, currently unforeseen implications for land values and tax considerations that need much more research. I therefore cannot support the amendment.

Environment Bill

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and to agree with every word that he just said. I thank the Minister for his introduction to this debate and thank him and his officials for the very detailed and useful discussion this morning, particularly with such a lively avian accompaniment.

I shall take a second to reflect on the place of your Lordships’ House. I had a discussion a couple of days ago with a Cross-Bench Peer for whom I have the greatest respect, who expressed great frustration at the huge amount of work done in your Lordships’ House, which so often—as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has just said—gets casually dismissed in the other place. Yet we are so often told, “Oh, we can’t send too many things back to them; we can’t resist too hard; we’re the unelected House.” That, of course, raises a whole other question about the constitution. None the less I fear—and we have seen some cases of this already—that many of our strong, fine Peers are getting fed up and really considering whether they are going to continue to devote their time to your Lordships’ House. It is crucial that we recognise that we are in a different political time and that we are crucial to the future of this country, its environment and people, and we need to stand firm.

I have come under strong pressure, as I am sure many are aware, not to push forward with the soils amendment. Those looking closely will notice that I have not pushed forward with the same amendment as was sent to the other place. My amendment in lieu simply refers to soil quality rather than soil quality and soil health, as in the amendment sent to the other place. Health very often talks about the biology of the soil; quality is frequently used to refer to the structure. I am guided here particularly by the Sustainable Soils Alliance but also by academics, independent experts and farmers, who say that it is possible to use the metrics from the soil structure monitoring scheme to establish a target specifically for soil structure which would fit the definition of quality. As the Minister said on Report, targets can be iterative—they can be developed, evolved and finessed over time.

I acknowledge that the Minister here and those in the other place have spoken often and very clearly, and clearly are engaged with the issues of soil that are so crucial, but we all know that Ministers change. The only thing that will guarantee a way forward is with soil being on the face of the Bill. I put it to noble Lords that this Bill will be fundamentally deficient if we do not have soils there with equal weighting and place alongside air and water. I am afraid that the Minister in debate also said at one point that, if we were looking after air and water, we will sort of be looking after soils as well. I am afraid that very powerfully makes the argument for me—that soil risks falling into a second order unless it is given the same status.

I note that, in your Lordships’ House on Report, the margin by which this vote was won was equal top with that for the amendment on sewage tabled by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. This was a very clear voice from your Lordships’ House on Report.

I also particularly wish to acknowledge the very strong efforts in this area by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who has done a tremendous job and has seen some steps forward from the Government. But those steps are still not enough.

I finish, given the pressure of time, by noting that I do not believe that the amendments we are looking at today are either/or. All the amendments that have been retabled today are crucial. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb will address interim targets in more detail, but I stress that that is crucial as well. I also want to acknowledge the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, in supporting my amendment last time. I urge your Lordships to show that we are really here to make a difference. I give notice of my intention to push this Motion to a vote.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment on soil from the noble Baroness who has just spoken. This is a crucial issue. But first I want to ask my noble friend the Minister a question about what he said when he introduced the discussion on this. He quoted the Prime Minister, who said that there is a climate crisis that will be solved but not by panicked measures. That seemed to indicate that he thought some of the amendments put forward by this House were “panicked measures.” If that is the case, I would be grateful if my noble friend could tell us which of these amendments, which we so carefully debated in Committee and on Report, could be classed as a “panicked measure”.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, was absolutely right to tell us that the Prime Minister did not acknowledge that there is a biodiversity crisis. One-quarter of the world’s biodiversity crisis is in the soil, and that is a major problem for us. There ought to be an alignment between the Environment Bill and the Agriculture Act. We got soil into the Agriculture Act and we were then told that that was not the right place for it and that it ought to go in the Environment Bill; now we have got to the Environment Bill and my noble friend tells us it is not necessary in this Bill. It is necessary in this Bill. It should be put into this Bill.

Only 0.4% of 1% of England’s environmental monitoring budget is spent on soil. That is derisory. Could my noble friend tell me what he anticipates that spend to be within one year and within five years? Soil is the basis of everything. The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, which has done a huge amount of research over many years on soil, says that we cannot reach net zero without dealing with soil. That has been taken up by the Climate Change Committee, which has said exactly the same thing, and even my noble friend the Minister has said that we cannot solve the problem without addressing soil; yet soil is not going to be in this Bill.

I remember my noble friend Lord Deben said something on Report to the effect of: unless it is in the Bill, it is not going to be done. At that stage, I backed my noble friend the Minister against my noble friend Lord Deben’s advice. This time, I back my noble friend Lord Deben and say that this ought to be in the Bill.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I merely say this: I really wanted to support the Minister and I thank him for the conversations we had. I understand the argument that says soil cannot be exactly parallel with water and air because we have an agreed measure for both which enables us to put a date, but there is no reason we could not have a date, but a different date, to make sure that this Bill actually covers soil. I say this to my noble friend: I have been very disappointed that the promises made by the Government on trade have so clearly not been fulfilled. Therefore, it is very difficult to ask this House to accept the Minister’s personal support for this—which I entirely believe; I do not think there is any doubt about that. But we now have to accept that, unless we have soil in the Bill, it will not have the incredibly important emphasis that it needs.

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[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I apologise; I thought I had answered. I will certainly reply on any questions that I have not answered—I commit to that. I am afraid I cannot do so now as I am not sure which questions are unanswered.

I understand the strength of feeling and thank noble Lords for the amendments they have put forward. I would be grateful if, in return, they could carefully consider the arguments made today.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

Before the Minister sits down, he has not answered the points raised by my noble friend Lord Deben. Notwithstanding the evidence that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and I have received that you can in fact set a target by the appropriate time limit within Clause 1, my noble friend Lord Deben raised the point that you could have a different date for bringing in soil quality targets. As I understand it, the only way that that is possible is for the soil amendment to be passed by your Lordships and for the Government to bring in an amendment in another place to meet the specific concern. If the Minister is convinced that his advice is right and the advice I had is wrong, he could at least bring soil into the Bill with a deferred date by which the target ought to be brought in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Quin (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much congratulate the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, on all the work he has done on this issue. As a co-signatory of a similar amendment he moved on Report, I welcome the fact that he has retabled it to ask the other place—the House of Commons—to think again. Like him, I welcome the fact that there was a sizeable rebellion of the Government’s own supporters in the House of Commons; I hope that they will be joined by others if we return this amendment today, or that the Government will move even more in the direction that they have already signalled to us they are considering.

Of course, I deplore abusive tweets and messages and know the misery that they can cause, but I am glad, and welcome the fact, that people across the country are waking up to the extent of the problem of sewage discharges—which they certainly are. I hope that this proper public pressure will be brought to bear effectively in order to remedy this situation.

I will not repeat further what has been said but will simply make two points. The water industry itself seems to be behind other UK business sectors in its use of technology, yet if British expertise could be harnessed more effectively to tackle the problems of sewage discharges here at home, there is the consequent potential of being able to export environmental technology and equipment elsewhere, and thereby gain some economic benefits for the country as a whole.

My final point is to flag up an issue that has been touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and about which I will write further to the Minister, rather than detaining the House. I think that planning authorities need to take much greater account of the state of sewers, drains and discharges into rivers when looking at applications for more housing. My neighbours are already having problems with the present inadequate draining and sewage systems and the problems of overflows and numerous sewage discharges into a very sensitive river, the River Coquet. This is happening at the same time as new housing developments are being planned. This is not about objecting to housing as such, but objecting to schemes that will overload and overwhelm already fragile and inadequate drainage and sewage systems.

As I say, I will write to the Minister further about this, but I hope that, in the meantime, a very clear message in support of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, will be given by your Lordships’ House today.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend for Motion M and what he has done on conservation covenants. I was a great supporter of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, because, having been a surveyor, I know just how difficult those conservation covenants would be for some farmers, so the new wording is very much appreciated.

My second point is to support very much what my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering said about automatic connection for new developments. This is absolutely crucial. I spoke about it in Committee and on Report. Given the amount of new development there will be, the new regulations need to be brought in as quickly as possible.