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.