Environment Bill (Nineteeth sitting)

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 19th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 19th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Whitehead]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. If someone chanced upon the Bill, flicked through it, looked at the contents at the front and said, “There is a section on tree felling and planting; that’s good, because we want to know about tree planting,” and then found that there was no tree planting, that would be rather an odd outcome, yet that is what we have in front of us. I would like to know, at the very least, what the Minister thinks can be done to rectify that omission and whether she intends, when the tree strategy is mature, to amend the Bill or, if this Bill has already gone through the whole of the House, introduce a subsequent Bill that will match up with what will be in the Environment Act, to give whole-life regulation and protection to tree planting, which is absolutely necessary for our ambitions for the future. Although we do not want to amend these clauses, because we accept that they are within the limitations written into the Bill, we give notice that we intend to proceed to rectify at least part of the issue concerning the heading of the clauses as we move on to the new clauses.

There is an indication, certainly in schedule 15, that the problem of maintenance and stewardship for the future is not anticipated, even on the question of felling and restocking trees. Schedule 15, which is an amendment to the Forestry Act 1967, requires restoration orders to be put in place—a good thing in itself—where people have felled trees when they should not have done or without the proper provisions being applied for.

Schedule 15 provides a welcome advance, in that there is clear regulatory guidance on restocking, but that guidance then starts to fall down, inasmuch as the restocking orders last for only 10 years. The precise problem that we have outlined with replanting could arise for the restocking orders. The person who has knocked the trees down might grudgingly replant more under the restocking order, but 10 years later, he or she can pull them all up again.

That is certainly not in line with the sort of stewardship that we think has to take place for trees, both in general and in particular with regard to the restocking orders. I would appreciate it if the Minister could comment this afternoon on whether she thinks the provisions in schedule 15 for the duration of restocking orders are sufficient in the light of our discussion, or whether she might review that for future reference.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I know that I represent millions of people across the country in wanting to speak more about trees and seek more about trees in the Bill. There are some things in these clauses that we can agree on. I know that the Minister is a lover of ancient woodland and that the clauses are close to her heart as a chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ancient woodland and veteran trees.

[Rebecca Pow]

I am no longer allowed to be the chair.

[Fleur Anderson]

As a former chair, she has said of ancient woodland:

“It is an absolute travesty that only 2% remains and we must ensure that no more is lost.”

We agree on proposed new section 96A(1) of the Highways Act 1980, as inserted by clause 101, in which it becomes statutory for local authorities to

“consult members of the public before felling a tree on an urban road”.

Constituents in Putney will welcome that measure, because in many cases, they do not know why a tree has been felled and they would like to have had a say. It gives our fantastic volunteer tree wardens more power to look at the trees in our urban areas.

We also agree that the Bill is landmark legislation that legislates for urgent action on the biggest environmental challenges of our time. Therefore, it is disappointing that clause 100 is sadly lacking. We will talk about a tree strategy later when we debate new clause 19, but that is where this clause could have come in. Putting an English tree strategy on a statutory footing is key to delivering the commitments in the 25-year environment plan, alongside which the Bill sits.

The 25-year environment plan has targets for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and for planting 30,000 hectares of trees a year across the UK. We need interim and overall targets in the Bill to ensure that we deliver on those targets. Why is that? Trees sequester carbon, support biodiversity, protect against floods, stabilise the soil, improve our physical and mental wellbeing, filter air pollutants and help to regulate temperatures. The Environment Bill seeks to do all of these, and more on trees would enable us to do it better and make it that landmark legislation. However, 53% of UK woodland wildlife is in decline. Woodland expansion is well below the rate necessary for the future. DEFRA has a woeful track record of missing tree planting targets. It cannot be left out of this Bill and just left to happen. History shows that it does not just happen. We really need a statutory England tree strategy.

There is currently no formal mechanism to set targets for protection, restoration and expansion of trees and woodland in England. Here is the opportunity to legislate and address the importance of trees in tackling the climate and nature crisis we face. This Bill aims to restore and enhance green spaces, yet it falls short in not containing a necessary clause about a tree strategy. There should be a strategy with the following objectives: increasing the percentage of tree cover in England, increasing the hectares of new, native woodland creation by planting and natural regeneration, and increasing the hectarage of plantation of ancient woodland undergoing restoration.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the work of the Woodland Trust, which has helped schools in the hon. Lady’s constituency, I am sure, as well as those of all members of the Committee. Does she agree that the sort of projects it leads will help the Government to achieve their goals of planting masses more trees across the country and involving school children?

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention noting the work of the Woodland Trust, which is in agreement with the points I have just made. In fact, this is exactly what it is calling for. Indeed, given that he has talked about the excellent work of the Woodland Trust, I hope he will be supporting new clause 19 when we come back to it. The Woodland Trust would like an English tree strategy to be put on a statutory footing and gave evidence to that effect to this Committee previously, and many constituents from across the country have written in to support this also.

[Richard Graham]

The point I was trying to make was to highlight the good work that the Woodland Trust is doing alongside the Government, rather than to necessarily support the Opposition’s suggested amendments to the Bill.

[Fleur Anderson]

I understand the clarification. I would say that the Woodland Trust is doing fantastic work, but it is also calling for this statutory framework. I put Members on notice that we will return to this issue when we come to new clause 19. Therefore, I ask all Committee members to hastily look that up and, I hope, support it when it comes. Alternatively, as the shadow Minister has mentioned, let us see an actual, whole tree Bill come to Parliament with all urgency. That would be excellent as well.

[Rebecca Pow]

It will not surprise those hon. Members who have spoken that I share their passion for trees and ancient woodland particularly. Indeed, I also praise the work the Woodland Trust does and has done, particularly with young people, schoolchildren and all those who want to get involved with this future environment, as was intimated by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester.

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[Fleur Anderson]

The Bill gives the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs the power to amend UK REACH and the REACH Enforcement Regulations 2008—REACH being the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals, for the benefit of those reading in Hansard. However, specified elements of REACH are excluded, as we said earlier, from the Secretary of State’s amending power. We are referred to the table that the Minister mentioned earlier and told, “It is all there and included.” It is not all there and included.

We would like to highlight some articles that have not been included in the protected provisions—specifically, article 13 in amendment 108, articles 26, 27 and 30 in amendment 109 and—an interesting set of articles—articles 32, 33 and 34 in amendment 176, which are highly important to the REACH regulations actually working for consumers and those within the supply chain of chemicals. The provisions refer to everyday products that we and our constituents would all use, including paints, cleaning products, clothes, furniture, electrical appliances and, as already mentioned, hairdryers.

In article 32, which I would argue should be a protected principle, there is the duty to communicate information down the supply chain free of charge and without delay. In article 33, the duty is to communicate information on substances in articles for the consumer free of charge within 45 days. In article 34, the duty is to communicate information on substances and preparations up the supply chain.

There are duties up the supply chain, down the supply chain and to the consumer. That is all protected, and it absolutely should happen to ensure that, as the Minister has said, when more information, science and data come to light as we go along with new products and chemicals, the consumer and all of those in the supply chain have a right to know what that new information is, and what is up and down the supply chain. The consumer should know what is in the products that we consume.

Under article 33, suppliers of articles that contain a substance of very high concern are required to provide sufficient information in response to consumer requests about those products to allow their safe use, including disclosing the name of the substance that is used. However, that will be taken out of a protected requirement. There are substances that, for example, meet the criteria for classification as carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic to reproduction and persistent bioaccumulative toxic. This is an essential public policy safeguard, and it is unclear why the Government wish to exclude it from the list of protected provisions. Other things are included in that list. It is seen as beneficial to have a list of protected provisions. Why are those provisions not protected?

That is the question we are asking by tabling these amendments. We are saying that it is important to the whole of the REACH regulation that these things are included and cannot be subject to change by the Secretary of State.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank hon. Members for amendments 108, 109, 176, 110 and 111. I understand the desire to protect further provisions of UK REACH in the Environment Bill. However, I do not believe that these amendments are necessary or, in many cases, desirable—shock, horror!

The protected provisions of REACH are intended to ensure that the fundamental principles of REACH cannot be changed, while allowing a flexibility to ensure UK REACH remains fit for purpose. The intention is not to freeze detailed processes. Any proposed amendments by the Secretary of State are subject to consultation, to the consent of the devolved Administrations in respect of devolved matters and to the affirmative procedure, ensuring a full debate in Parliament, which I know Opposition Members will welcome.

Amendment 108 applies to article 13 of REACH, which sets out detailed provisions about alternatives to animal testing, including when animal tests can be waived—I think the hon. Member for Putney was referring to that. She wants us to avoid unnecessary animal testing and to promote alternative approaches. We agree with that aim, but adding this article to the list of protected provisions could make that more difficult. For example, it could prevent us from extending the range of tests for animal testing that may be omitted where there is appropriate justification.

The same objections apply to the articles that would be affected by amendment 109, that is, articles 26, 27 and 30, and by amendment 176, that is, articles 32, 33 and 34. These articles are not just about the principles of information sharing. They also include prescriptive details about how information should be shared with the REACH supply chain and how the agency should deal with inquiries. We should not bind ourselves to these detailed procedures going forward but instead remain free to adopt new ways of working that draw on our experience of applying REACH in the UK. The whole idea is that we will improve and benefit.

Amendment 110 would protect REACH article 40(2). Again, the point is that we do not want to freeze the detail of how REACH operates. Instead, we need the flexibility to amend REACH, to ensure that it works for the UK. In this case, article 40(2) includes specific details, such as timescales for publishing information.

I do not believe that amendment 111 is necessary or desirable. I agree that we may consider it appropriate to amend the REACH annexes to drive the use of non-animal alternatives, but the power to amend the REACH annexes is already within REACH itself, which makes it unnecessary to add an overlapping power to the Bill.

I therefore ask the hon. Member for Southampton, Test to consider withdrawing his amendments.

Environment Bill (Eighteenth sitting)

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 18th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 19th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

There is a range of difficulties in terms of the different levels of protection in different pieces of legislation, and we want those to be resolved, if possible. I apologise for speaking at some length on the matter. They are important amendments that have been introduced late in the process, and we seek reassurances from the Minister that these questions can be answered.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I rise in support of the objections and concerns raised by the shadow Minister about clause 93 and, specifically, new clauses 25 and 26 on species conservation strategies. The strategic approaches to species conservation are essential to preserving biodiversity and enabling nature’s recovery. They should include protecting, restoring and creating habitat over a wider area to meet the needs of individual species. The additional clauses, along with shining a light on species conservation, are welcome. It is clear that current rules are not working and—as already mentioned—46% of conservation priority species in England declined between 2013 and 2018.

I was concerned, however, to read the reports from Greener UK, which is a coalition of 13 major conservation and environmental organisations. It says that the various strategies may be undermined by the way they are written and the way they are enforced, actually resulting in faster development with lower standards. That cannot be the aim of the clauses at all. Were the strategic powers to be managed badly or applied to inappropriate species, they could become the loopholes that developers would use straightaway to put costs before species protection, and to get away with undermining species protection. That would be as a result of these clauses, which cannot be right.

I am concerned that it has been raised by Greener UK that experienced operators of existing licensing systems are not currently providing protection for animals such as great crested newts, so the district licensing does not work at the moment. Has the Minister met those organisations? Has she talked about these issues and the outcomes on the ground?

I ask the Minister to look again at this clause, which must be amended to explicitly state that site surveys should take place when existing data is inadequate. If the barrier is too high to progress with the site survey, it will not be done, except in abnormal situations or when it is too high a bar. It will not be done in all the places where conservation is failing, which is why we are having this decline. Such an amendment would be vital to this clause so it will be enacted in a way that means we can conserve species.

There is no room for error on this. We cannot wait for 10 years then review this, and find out that lots of habitats have been decimated, and that species have not been conserved and have gone because of this. We need to be on it right from the start. What will be the monitoring of the impact of these clauses? Will the monitoring be fast and rigorous, to ensure that the outcome is conservation and protection of special sites, rather than seeing developers riding roughshod over the regulations and using the rules as a loophole for continuing decimation of our important sites?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank hon. Members for their comments. As the hon. Member for Cambridge said, he has raised a large number of points in one go. He has given me a large task, and I will write to him if there are points that I miss out, because it was an awful lot to take in at speed.

The hon. Gentleman is right to be asking these questions because we need to make sure that we have got this right. I give him the assurance straight away that new clauses 25 to 27 will not diminish the Bill, but will add to it. That is what we have in mind and there has been a lot of discussion in order to come to that conclusion. We have listened to a lot of comments. That is why clause 93 strengthens the biodiversity duty, to better effect the ambition set out in the 25-year environment plan and to give public authorities a much better approach to building biodiversity into their core activities, so that that is part and parcel of everything rather than being done on an itsy-bitsy, one-off basis.

Environment Bill (Seventeenth sitting)

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 17th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Before our lunch break, we were discussing clause 81, on water quality and the powers of the Secretary of State. The clause gives the Secretary of State a wide-ranging power to amend the regulations that implement the EU water framework directive, particularly as they relate to the chemical pollutants that should be considered under the regulations and the standards applied to them.

I have some concluding comments to my earlier statement. The amendment would ensure that any changes to water quality regulations would be subject not to the negative procedure, as the Bill sets out, but to the super- affirmative procedure. This would give stakeholders—including UKTAG, the UK technical advisory group, which currently advises on standards and which should retain a lead role in this process—the right to input into any water quality regulations changes. It would also legally require the Secretary of State to have regard to that input, ensuring that standards and targets are altered only in line with scientific advice and following appropriate stakeholder consultation.

A robust, binding legal assurance of non-regression on environmental standards would give further assurance on that point. The Government still have the opportunity to give such assurance through the Bill, and that would be warmly welcomed by the environmental sector and many other stakeholders.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

I thank the hon. Member for Putney for tabling the amendment. I understand entirely the desire to ensure an appropriate level of scrutiny when this delegated power is exercised. The clause creates a narrow power for the Secretary of State to maintain a list of the most harmful chemical substances that could enter watercourses and sets out measures to monitor and tackle them, keeping pace with the latest scientific knowledge. This is a key aspect of our wider regulations that protect and enhance our water environment. The exercise of the power in the clause is subject to consultation with experts in the Environment Agency who provide scientific opinion and have a statutory duty to monitor water.

I highlight the fact that the Secretary of State will take into account the latest scientific evidence when updating lists. In addition to the EA, a lot of that evidence comes through the UK technical advisory group, a working group of experts drawn from the environment and conservation agencies for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland who already derive threshold values for UK-specified pollutants, which are monitored for the purposes of contributing to the ecological status of our surface waters. A statutory consultation requirement could not be placed on the UK technical advisory group as it is not a statutory body, but it offers valued expert advice. The Secretary of State must also consult any person or bodies appearing to represent the interests of those likely to be affected by these provisions.

I understand that the amendment seeks to increase the level of parliamentary scrutiny of the exercise of the power by upgrading to the super-affirmative resolution procedure, as the hon. Member for Putney mentioned. As we have mentioned, this procedure is used extremely rarely for statutory instruments that are considered to need a particularly high level of scrutiny—for example, legislative reform orders under the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, which could be used to abolish, confer or transfer statutory functions or create or abolish a statutory body or office—so we do not feel that that would be appropriate.

The hon. Member was concerned about a lowering of standards, which is absolutely not the case. I know that she has a particular interest in this, and I was so interested to hear earlier that she worked for WaterAid. Lots of Back Benchers engage with WaterAid—I did—when it holds events in Parliament. It does really good work. The wider regulations require the EA to have an extensive and robust monitoring regime for chemicals in the water environment and refer to the priority substances as those that must be used to assess chemical status in surface waters. The EA will monitor for new and emerging harmful substances through an early warning system and, in consultation with the EA, the updates to the list will be based on the latest science and monitoring data, which currently suggest a potential increase in the number of substances of concern, rather than a reduction. An eye will certainly be kept on that, because it is so important.

Although I fully acknowledge the importance of parliamentary scrutiny, a super-affirmative, or indeed a standard affirmative, resolution procedure is wholly disproportionate in this instance. This power can be used only to make relatively narrow changes to existing transposing legislation for the purpose of updating certain water quality standards. The power does not extend to changing the wider regime for assessing and monitoring water quality, which is enshrined in the Water Environment (Water Framework Directive) Regulations 2017. An update to the list of priority substances involves highly technical discussions, as I have mentioned, around emerging pollutants and their threshold values, measured in micrograms per litre, and sophisticated monitoring techniques, including biota testing.

I hope that clarifies the position, and I therefore ask the hon. Member for Southampton, Test to withdraw the amendment.

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[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move amendment 137, in clause 93, page 95, line 1, leave out subsection (5) and insert—

“(5) After subsection (2) insert—

“(2A) the authority must act in accordance with any relevant local nature recovery strategy in the exercise of relevant public functions, including strategic and local land-use planning and decision making and in spending decisions, and in particular in complying with subsections (1) and (1A).””

This amendment would ensure that Local Nature Recovery Strategies are considered in day-to-day planning and spending decisions by public authorities.

Amendment 137 addresses a key issue in the Bill’s current drafting regarding local nature recovery strategies, which we welcome. If they are implemented properly, the strategies can enable a wide range of organisations to contribute to measures needed to address the biodiversity crisis and deliver the Government’s ambitions in the 25-year environment plan, in particular by supporting the creation of a nature recovery network.

By identifying local biodiversity priorities, including restoration opportunities, we think—I am sure that the Government agree—that policy integration and better value for money could be achieved at the same time as saving nature. I suspect that we all have good examples from our areas, but I am sure that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire will join me in praising Natural Cambridgeshire, chaired by Richard Astle, and the excellent work that it is already doing through its nature recovery toolkit. I believe that the hon. Member addressed Natural Cambridgeshire recently. I hope to do so again soon, and I will be keen to bring news of a strengthened Bill.

At the moment, despite local enthusiasm, the duty to use local nature recovery strategies is very weak. It is included in the duty to conserve and enhance biodiversity under clause 93(5), which requires local authorities to “have regard” to the strategies when making plans to conserve or enhance biodiversity, but that risks creating obligations for local authorities to develop local nature recovery strategies, thereby expending precious local resources, only to see that that effort might be wasted through a failure to give the strategies any influence on real decision making. That is a problem.

The duty should be a much stronger requirement to take the strategies into account in the exercise of public functions, including in the statutory planning system and in spending decisions. This mirrors arguments that I have previously made. Unless such a change is made, there is a real risk that local nature recovery strategies will overburden local authorities and once again risk sitting on the proverbial dusty policy shelf.

This is not a criticism of local authorities, but a reflection of the fact that many are already hard pressed and will not have the capacity to do what is asked of them. When I raised this previously, the Minister reassured me that all necessary funding will be made available under the Bill. I liked her reassurance, but she was not able to point me to where that was specified. I invite her to do so again, but I do not think she will be able to do so, because it is not specified—it is just an aspiration. This is not a party political point, but anyone who has been in local government well knows the problem that while central Government frequently make promises, the outcomes rarely transmit. They often end up in general funding, and we are told that it is in there somewhere, without clarity that it is enough. It is important to note that the success of the measures in general will be dependent on the Government making those funds available. I recognise that at this stage it seems difficult to predict the costs—there was some discussion in the impact assessment about how it was not entirely clear how much would be needed—but I ask the Minister how the Government intend to carry out an assessment of how the new duties operate and how they can ensure that resources are available to make the duties work.

The strategies are potentially a very useful tool. If they work well, they could effectively co-ordinate the actions of multiple stakeholders and direct local use of biodiversity gains from the planning system, environmental land management systems and other sources, helping to build and maintain ecologically coherent networks and nature recovery sites. That leads me back to the 25-year environment plan, particularly page 58, which is littered with “we will”, “we shall” and “it will happen”, including the statement that we

“will coordinate our action in England with that of external nature conservation…as well as farmers and land managers.”

That is great, but I have to ask when that will happen.

I had the pleasure of being an Opposition spokesman on the Agriculture Bill, and we were begging constantly, and tabling amendments, for an integrated approach between this Bill and the Agriculture Bill. I am afraid that we were constantly knocked back. Here we are, just a few weeks from the beginning of the phasing out of basic payments, and we do not have ELM schemes in place. The Secretary of State will have to deliver a fix in 10 days’ time. I am happy to be corrected by hon. Members on the other side if that is not correct, but that is what I hear. While the sustainable farming initiative sounds fine, it is a missed opportunity to link to the local nature recovery strategies that we are discussing today. Because of this weak duty to apply the strategies in decision making, I am afraid the potential that these have may well fall short.

Amendment 137 aims to strengthen the duty to use local nature recovery strategies by requiring all public authorities to “act in accordance with” any relevant local nature recovery strategy in exercising their duties, including the statutory requirements, planning and spending decisions. That would make a big difference and deliver real change, and that is why I worry that it is not in the legislation as it stands at the moment. It is essential to ensure that the local nature recovery strategies actively influence important day-to-day decisions that affect nature.

[Fleur Anderson]

I, too, would like to support amendment 137. I can picture the scene in the drafting committee. One group wanted to have “act in accordance with”, to make the duty very strong so “we would definitely put this into action”, and on the other side was the “must have regard to” group. I would like to speak on behalf of the “act in accordance with” group, and it was a mistake that the “have regard to” group won the day.

The provision for planning to work for nature is very welcome, but there is a risk that it will be stalled indefinitely if we do not have the amendment in the Bill. The duty to use local nature recovery strategies is very weak. The environmental coalition, Greener UK, has similar concerns. The amendment would embed biodiversity in public authority decision making, because here the rubber hits the road—or the hedgerow or the greener area of a siding. The amendment includes complying with spending decisions, and that is what will ultimately decide whether this is put into action.

There is great potential for these strategies to be a highly effective tool, and I welcome the five pilot schemes, as I know the Minister does. However, as it stands, the potential will not be realised because the duty is so weak. The amendment would ensure that local nature recovery strategies actually influence day-to-day decisions that affect nature. There are two examples of how that would work out in my constituency. We have many wonderful green spaces which have “friends of” groups, and they are knocking on the door and trying to get the attention of the local authority all the time. It is not a given that that will happen. Those groups really care about biodiversity, but the day-to-day work of the local authority is not reflecting that.

I have a very active save our hedgehogs group, and I am surprised that they have not been mentioned this afternoon up to now, so I want to put that straight. Those vulnerable mammals have been in decline by 30% in urban areas and 50% in rural areas since 2000. That is dreadful. If the local authority will have regard to the local nature recovery strategies, rather than acting in accordance with those strategies, there is a danger that the work to reverse the decline of hedgehogs will not happen. There is a mention of hedgehogs in the environment plan, but this amendment would cement action to save hedgehogs and all other biodiversity in our planning system.

Environment Bill (Sixteenth sitting)

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 16th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 9, in clause 75, page 66, line 11, leave out “may” and insert “must”.

We start this morning with an amendment relating to clause 75. It will not be a surprise to any member of the Committee. The suggestion is to replace the word “may” in the line under the heading “Plans and joint proposals: regulations about procedure”. Proposed new section 39F of the Water Industry Act 1991 states:

“The Minister may by regulations make provision about the procedure for preparing and publishing—

(a) a water resources management plan,

(b) a drought plan, and

(c) a joint proposal”.

It seems to the Opposition that it is very important that these things—a management plan, drought plan and joint proposal—are actually published and that provision is made about the procedure for publishing them. That is a central part of this clause.

As we have said in this Committee previously, no aspersions are cast in any direction concerning the present intentions of Ministers, but I remind the Committee that we are making legislation for a very long time and that there might conceivably be circumstances in which Ministers less well inclined towards the process light upon this clause and decide that it is not really so important that regulations are made, hence we think that the word “must” should be inserted in the Bill.

We have pointed on a number of occasions to the lack of “musts” in the Bill. I think that this is one of the more important ones and I hope that the Minister, even if she is not prepared to consider a number of the other “musts”, will have laid by a little store of sympathy for this “must” proposal, because it relates, as I think she would agree, to a very important feature of this clause.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I would like to add to the argument about the fact that this legislation will stand for a long time. Even the fact that clause 75 amends the Water Industry Act 1991 is a reminder to us of how long we expect this legislation to be in force and people to be acting on it accordingly. The Water Industry Act became law 29 years ago and we are still discussing it, and how we will amend it, now. Many years from now, we will still be discussing this legislation, and therefore it is so important to get it right. That is why a “must” instead of a “may” is very important, especially in this clause.

This amendment seeks especially to talk about regional plans. Currently, planning on a regional rather than a company-by-company basis is non-statutory, and so to put this on a statutory basis would be a gear change in terms of water resource management. I would welcome any moves to put regional plans on a statutory footing, but the Government have to be clearer on the circumstances in which the Secretary of State would use the powers and how adherence to the regional plans would be encouraged if it were not clearly set out here. The current drafting is too weak and does not give this clause the teeth that it needs.

By changing “may” to “must”, amendment 9 would tighten up the clause considerably and make it far more effective. It would require the Secretary of State to make provision setting out the procedure for preparing and publishing water resources management plans, drought plans and joint proposals. I would like the Minister, before rejecting the amendment and dismissing it as unnecessary, to answer the following questions. Under what circumstances would the Secretary of State expect to use the powers created by clause 75 to direct water companies to prepare and publish joint proposals—the regional plans? There is a concern that that will not become standard practice if it is not expected. If the powers are not used and regional water resources planning remains on a non-statutory footing—if it is just a “may”—how will the Secretary of State ensure that companies produce water resources management plans that are aligned with the regional plans?

In the absence of a commitment to using the powers created under clause 75 to direct regional planning, can the Minister assure us that the Secretary of State will direct the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to set out the need for company plans to align fully with regional plans in its strategic policy statement to Ofwat? Otherwise, many who are listening to and reading this debate will remain concerned that companies’ individual plans could deviate from regional plans, affecting our ability to provide sustainable water resources for society in the light of the worrying projections set out in the Environment Agency’s national framework for water resources.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I want to make a general philosophical point about “mays” and “musts”. We have been talking about this matter a lot over the past couple of weeks. Obviously, our end objectives are the same: we all want a Bill that strengthens environmental protection, and a strong and independent Office for Environmental Protection.

I realise that this clause is slightly different from earlier clauses, but I will make the generic point that when we say that something should be a “must” rather than a “may”, we are often prescribing what the OEP can do. I realise that this amendment is about Ministers, but if we accepted all the amendments on this point, the OEP would end up with a whole list of things that it must do, as prescribed by the Committee, and it would spend all its time ticking those boxes. We would take agency away from the OEP.

As a parent, if I go around telling my children, “You must do this, and you must do that,” they do not feel very independent. If I tell them that they have to be grown up and make their own decisions, they feel more empowered. Throughout this whole process—we have another couple of weeks to consider amendments—it is worth thinking about what being so directive towards the OEP would do to its agency and independence.

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[Dr Alan Whitehead]

I beg to move amendment 130, in clause 75, page 66, line 22, at end insert

“including persons or bodies representing the interests of those likely to be affected.”

I will give the game away straight away by saying that this is a probing amendment, as I am sure the Minister will be pleased to learn, and we seek her comments on it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Putney said, the 1991 Act has been with us for a while. Does the Minister think that bodies that represent those who are likely to be affected by a water resources proposal or a drought plan should be included in the process of preparing and publishing regulations? There is a distinction to be made between the Government deciding to make a plan, and those who would be particularly affected by that plan—for example, the hon. Members who would be affected by a drought plan in Cambridgeshire—having input into the process. There is a relationship between a high-level plan and the reality of any changes on the ground, and it is important to have both perspectives.

That is the reason for this amendment, and the Minister may wish to comment on whether she agrees with the principle behind it, even if the wording is not quite right. I would particularly like to hear whether she is signed up to the idea that I have set out and, if so, whether there are other ways of ensuring that the drawing up of these plans and proposals is a two-way process.

[Fleur Anderson]

I would like to unpack the amendment slightly more and highlight some areas that may be affected by the Government’s proposals. We would be very interested to hear from the Minister how this Bill will be enacted on the ground after it has progressed through both Houses.

Consultation is key during any planned preparation. The plans to clean up our water across the country are essential and, unless they are done correctly and with the full engagement of all the representative bodies, they will not work. If that happens, the current plateauing of environmental protection, which many people find very concerning, will continue.

The removal of section 37A(8) from the Water Industry Act 1991will remove a list of other bodies. The Act states:

“Before preparing its water resources management plan…the water undertaker shall consult”—

the use of the word “shall” is interesting. Following on from the comments of the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire, I think that our job in this Bill is to say what is within the OEP’s remit, what must happen and what the OEP, with its flexibility, can decide should happen. We need to set that framework, and an essential part of that is engagement with all the right agencies. The proposed deletion will remove the Environment Agency; Natural Resources Wales; the Water Services Regulation Authority, or Ofwat; the Secretary of State; and any licensed water supplier, as listed in the 1991 Act. These bodies will not be included in this Bill unless we add the text of the amendment, which is, I think, very reasonable,

“including persons or bodies representing the interests of those likely to be affected”.

I do not think that that is overly restrictive, because it would give the OEP the ability to decide who those persons or bodies are. It does, though, say that they must be consulted. Has the Minister considered how to ensure that the new provisions on the preparation of plans by water undertakers will retain stakeholder engagement requirements? Does the Minister believe that the proposals are sufficient to ensure that the Environment Agency, in particular, is fully engaged in plan development? Its involvement is crucial to ensure a high level of environmental scrutiny of water resources options. That is essential for both the working of the Environment Agency and the effectiveness of any plans.

The Minister may suggest that this is dealt with through other requirements such as the customer challenge groups. However, those arrangements are typically extremely narrow and do not enable the wide engagement of the stakeholder that is necessary for the best plans—world-leading plans. Amendment 30 would ensure that consultation rights for stakeholders—

[The Chair]

It is amendment 130.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fleur Anderson]

Thank you, Mr Gray. Amendment 130 would ensure that consultation rights for stakeholders could be created under such regulations and allow these provisions to include a requirement for

“persons or bodies representing the interests of those likely to be affected”

by a plan to be consulted during the plan preparation. This requirement should be included in the Bill to make it as clear as possible and to ensure that full consultation with stakeholders takes place, so that we have the best possible water resources management plans and the best likelihood of increasing water quality across the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

I beg to move amendment 199, in clause 76, page 70, line 4, leave out “may” and insert “must”.

When a minister chooses to make a drainage and sewerage management plan, this amendment obliges them to consult on it.

Yes, this is another amendment. By the way, I thought that last bit was really exciting. I am sorry that hon. Members did not vote our way on amendment 200 this morning, but I appreciate the effort that everyone put it to make it almost get there.

Amendment 199 relates to the amendments to the Water Industry Act 1991. This is about how regulations “may” make provision about consultation, which is a particularly weak “may”. I would have thought that consultation is an essential element of the process. In particular, we are talking about consultation to be carried out by sewerage undertakers—that is, water companies—who are required by regulation to make provision about the person to be consulted, the frequency and timing of the consultation and the publication of statements.

There is a pretty tight requirement on water companies to be clear about what their provision is, except they do not have to do it. That seems to me to be a suggestion that holds the entire subsection. There is quite a fierce thing in this subsection about consultation. This is a good thing. It covers not just consultation, but who it should be carried out by—the sewerage undertakers—as well as instructions on who should be consulted and so on. It is all spoiled by the “may” at the beginning of the sentence. I think this is another important “must”, which ought to go into the Bill. Again, I will not push the amendment to a Division, but I hope the Minister will take careful note of our strong feelings on the issue and will put it in the box of reconsiderations for when she gets around to deciding whether there should be drafting amendments to the Bill in the future.

[Fleur Anderson]

I welcome the Minister’s earlier comments about taking action on sewage pollution, of which this is an additional part. I welcome the aims of the clause, and I believe it is vital that a strategic approach is taken to waste water management. However, I have a couple of issues with it that I would like to point out.

Sewage pollution is a very important issue for constituents across the country, including in my constituency of Putney, next to the beautiful River Thames, where we are extremely concerned about it. Some 39 million tonnes of sewage is dumped into the River Thames every year, with an estimated 50 epic dumps of pollution. The Tideway project is making great headway—it is making amazing progress, and I commend it. It will result in a real difference being made. However, there are still extreme concerns. One is about the use of the term “sewerage” in the clause, whereas the industry would prefer to use the term “wastewater”. Wastewater is a much larger section of domestic, industrial, commercial and agricultural production, of which sewerage is only a small subsection.

I slightly digress from the amendment—

[The Chair]

Which you should not do.

[Fleur Anderson]

Which I should not do. I acknowledge that, but I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that.

Clause 76 amends the Water Industry Act 1991 by adding new section 94C. There are a whole rash of “mays”, and we have chosen modestly, and I think correctly, to identify one that should be a “must”. It is in new section 94C(3), which, again, talks about consultation on plans. We have talked about that previously, and it is absolutely vital for ensuring that those plans work and that they tackle the 39 million tonnes of sewage going into the River Thames and the similar incidences across the country. The Bill places obligations on water companies only for something they are already doing; it does not reflect the scale of the challenge from climate change or the fact that drainage is universally recognised to be a shared responsibility with other organisations that are also responsible for managing service water.

Water UK is concerned that, as written, clause 76 will exclude significant bodies that are involved in drainage and will eliminate much of the potential benefits that customers, society and the environment could otherwise gain. It is a fundamental feature of drainage and wastewater planning that water companies cannot do this in isolation, because drainage is shared with other risk management authorities, as defined in the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. For example, large numbers of drainage assets are not under the ownership of water companies, the management of which needs to be integrated into the drainage and wastewater management plans. That has been recognised by the National Infrastructure Commission in its recommendation that water companies and local authorities should work together to publish joint plans to manage surface water flood risk by 2020. Ensuring that such consultation is done as a “must” rather than a “may”, which is the aim behind the amendment, is absolutely essential.

As a minimum, all flood risk management authorities should have a duty to co-operate in the production of drainage and wastewater management plans. There should be the ability to require other flood risk management authorities to provide the information needed for the production of such plans. Clause 76 would ensure that that would happen as a directive to the OEP, which is needed to ensure that we have the best sewerage management plans and wastewater management plans that we can.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for Southampton, Test for the amendment. It is amazing that we have managed to get him excited—for me, that is a massive milestone in the Bill’s passage. I hope he does not mind my saying that.

I understand that the intention behind the amendment is to give certainty that Ministers will pass secondary legislation about the consultations to be carried out by sewerage undertakers on their drainage and sewerage management plans. Under proposed new section 94A of the Water Industry Act 1991, sewerage undertakers will have a duty to prepare drainage and sewerage management plans. Ministers understand that sewerage undertakers need to know the procedural requirements for fulfilling their duties in good time. Ministers require flexibility on when and how the provision is given effect so that procedural requirements for plans remain proportionate and current.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

These amendments all make the same point about there being no compensation for certain licence modifications in water abstraction. Should licences be modified as a result of environmental considerations, especially with the uprating of environmental legislation, water companies and other organisations will have to undertake additional actions to ensure that their licences are adhered to, but they will not receive compensation for those modifications. That is all well and good, except when those licences come to be revoked or varied, in pursuit of a direction under a section of the Water Act.

The no compensation clause comes in on 1 January 2028, so it could be argued that that gives the water undertakings a reasonable period to adjust to the changes, but it may have the reverse effect of what is intended. If companies were to make changes that might need to be undertaken before 2028, they would get compensation. I am not sure whether the clause requires a period of notice for changes caused by increased environmental protection—it is reasonable to give water companies time to adapt—or is it a device that allows water companies to get some money for environmental changes that they should be doing anyway, if they do them before 2028? It is a pretty long run-in for changes. I ask the Minister—and this goes for all these amendments, because they all seek to change the date from 2028 to 2021—whether she thinks that the 2028 date is satisfactory in terms of a run-in for the water companies to make their changes.

If they make the necessary changes before 2028, would they be protected from a legal requirement to enter into and discuss compensation? I would suggest that that is less than satisfactory. The Minister faces a choice this morning on which way she jumps; or perhaps, with great dexterity, she could jump in both directions.

Not only is there potential confusion about the precise intention of this clause, but the 2028 date itself seems to be excessively generous by any measure. If the Minister is not able to at least give us an indication that that date might be considered for foreshortening, we may wish to divide the Committee.

[Fleur Anderson]

I would like to speak in support of the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the shadow Minister about the long deadlines of this Bill, which would be rectified by amendments 132, 133 and 134.

Clause 80 amends the Water Resources Act 1991 to improve the way in which the abstraction is managed. This additional Environment Agency power, to act on licensing that causes environmental harm, is welcome. However, the timescale proposed in the Bill is too long, as the changes will apply to licenses revoked or varied on or after January 2028. With compensation remaining payable on any license changes opposed by the agency before that time, budgetary constraints will significantly limit its scope to act, which cannot be the aim of this Bill.

The current timescale does not appear to fully grasp the severity and immediacy of the problems facing UK waterways and the poor performance of water companies to date. Four out of nine companies assessed by the Environment Agency require improvement. We cannot wait until 2028 to start revoking licenses and take action, when there is clearly systemic underperformance in the water industry.

Moreover, water companies in England were responsible for their worst ever levels of environmental pollution in the five years up to 2019, leading to condemnation from Ministers and the Environment Agency. In the agency’s annual assessment of the nine privatised water and sewage companies, its chair, Emma Howard Boyd, said that their performance continued to be unacceptable.

Unsustainable abstraction can do serious environmental damage, particularly by changing the natural flow regime. This results in lower flows and reduced water levels which, in turn, may limit ecological health and result in changes and reductions of river flows and groundwater levels. This is about far more than just hosepipe bans.

The Government’s own analysis has shown that 5% of surface water bodies and 15% of groundwater bodies are at risk from increasing water use by current license holders, which could damage the environment. With the Environment Agency recently warning that in 25 years, England’s water supply may no longer meet demand, we will have to clamp down on over-abstraction now. Before becoming an MP, I worked for the aid agency WaterAid, where I saw the result of over-abstraction and how damaging that was for communities around the world. We do not want to face that here.

Abstracters are unlikely to give up these abstraction rights voluntarily and forfeit potential compensation payments. This means that over-abstracted rivers and groundwater-dependent habitats will continue to suffer for at least another eight years under the clauses of this Bill, putting threatened habitats and public water supplies at risk. Further clarification could then ensure that the new date would not impose unrealistic time pressures on water abstractors. 

Variations to licences could then be made, setting out a reasonable compliance period for changes to be put in place before the abstractor would be in breach of the new conditions. That would give fair notice to abstractors, which I understand is a concern for the Minister and is the original purpose of the 2028 date, while also enabling swift action on the mounting environmental harm caused by damaging abstraction. It would put environmental risks in the driving seat, not the concerns of water companies, which is what the Bill does at the moment.

Does the Minister agree that without bringing forward the date from which environmentally damaging abstraction licences could be amended without compensation, we are unlikely to achieve the existing Government targets for the health of the water environment, which require us to bring our waters into good status by 2027 at the latest? Bringing the date forward to 2021 will allow action to be taken within the final cycle of the river basin management plans for 2021 to 2027, and allow us to reduce abstraction damage in line with Government targets set under the water environmental regulations of 2017. The dates need to add up.

In its report, “Water supply and demand management”, published in July, the Public Accounts Committee advised:

“The Environment Agency should write…within three months setting out clear objectives, and its planned mitigation actions and associated timescales for eliminating environmental damage from over-abstraction”.

The Committee wants immediate action and we should, too. Has the Environment Agency yet been able to outline how it will eliminate the environmental damage in line with statutory deadlines, given that this power will not come into effect until after those deadlines have passed?

I support these amendments, in order to put the Government’s own targets in line with each other and make sure that we take action against over-abstraction as urgently as necessary.

[Rebecca Pow]

The hon. Member for Putney has highlighted why we need to control water abstraction, which is why these clauses are so important. The Government would strongly prefer that solutions are found at a local level between abstractors and the Environment Agency, before these new powers are utilised. A lot of work is already going on to look at abstraction licences, to find different ways of working and to reduce quantities of water abstraction. Indeed, the Government’s 2017 abstraction plan sets out the Government’s commitment and actions to protect our water environment, and it is already beginning to have some effect. Since 2014, a total of 31 billion litres of water has been returned to the environment, and a further 456 billion litres has been recovered from unused or underused licences.

The implementation date of 2028 will afford the Environment Agency the time to engage directly with abstractors to resolve situations without the need to use these powers. That is one of the main pieces of work in progress, as I have outlined. It will also allow time for a catchment-based approach to water resources, to produce solutions. There is a lot of catchment-based work going on. Opportunities will come through the new environment and land management scheme and its systems of new environmental management, where farmers and catchments work together, which is crucial in a holistic approach to the water landscape.

Finally, the date allows time for the transfer of abstraction licensing into the new environmental permitting regime. The powers are more of a big stick, but we are hoping that these other things will swing into place before they have to be used.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

I beg to move amendment 135, in clause 81, page 80, line 28, leave out subsection (9) and insert—

“(9) Regulations under this section are subject to the super- affirmative resolution procedure.

(10) In this subsection, ‘super-affirmative resolution procedure’ has the same meaning as it does in Section 18 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006.”

I will not detain the Committee for long. Our amendment suggests that instead of regulations under this section being subject to the negative procedure, they should be subject to the super-affirmative procedure. There is a real difference between the two because, as hon. Members will know, the negative procedure for secondary legislation requires merely that the legislation be laid before the House, and if no one objects to it within 21 days, it automatically becomes law. The affirmative procedure, on the other hand, means that under normal circumstances, the House is entitled to a debate on the legislation, in which the Minister is required to take part, at least to air the reasons behind the introduction of the regulations.

The affirmative procedure is potentially an important protection for Parliament to hear properly what is happening with secondary legislation. The super-affirmative procedure guarantees a 90-minute maximum debate on a piece of secondary legislation, and that is the procedure that we would prefer for this clause. We will not press the amendment to a vote, but we would be grateful if the Minister reflected briefly on why she thinks the negative procedure is the right way to go.

[Fleur Anderson]

Although there is some justification for a power to make technical updates to regulations, as my hon. Friend the shadow Minister has set out, the clause could provide a licence for the Secretary of State to weaken, via secondary legislation, the standards of our waters, and their chemical status in particular. Secondary legislation has caused a huge amount of division between the Opposition and the Government, as we have asked that much more of it be put into primary legislation. If there is more secondary legislation, and “may” does not become “must”, it is really important that it is debated under the super-affirmative procedure.

That is particularly worrying in the light of Sir James Bevan’s speech, which suggested possible reform of the way in which the status of our water is considered. What is behind that suggestion? The last thing we need now is a regression of water quality standards. According to data released by the Environment Agency last month, not a single lake or river in England that has been recently tested has achieved a good chemical status. We are experiencing a five-year high for environmental pollution by the water industry.

Stakeholder concerns about the unmitigated power in the clause would be unlikely to evaporate if there were a commitment to non-regression of environmental standards. Given the public support for environmental protection, which I am sure the Committee will acknowledge, why are the Government reluctant to provide assurances and to agree to the amendment? That goes to the heart of many of the issues at the centre of the Bill. Time and again, we have heard assurances of non-regression, but the Government have so far avoided every single opportunity to put those promises into statute. That persistent refusal makes us all highly suspicious.

At the heart of the water framework directive is the principle that the water environment is a system and that all its parts need to be in good working order for it to operate effectively. That principle remains true. The clarity of the one in, one out rule should not be abandoned, and any weakening of chemical standards would be a backward step in the light of growing public concern about water pollution and the new data showing the extent of water quality failures across England.

I urge the Committee to support the amendment, which goes some way towards addressing that significant risk, and would ensure that any changes to water quality regulations would be subject not to the negative procedure, as the Bill currently states, but to the super-affirmative procedure—as a new MP, I had to go and look it up and have learned a lot about it—as defined in section 18 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. That would give stakeholders the right to input into any water quality regulation changes, including UKTAG, the UK technical advisory group that currently advises on standards—

Environment Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 13th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Ruth Jones]

I beg to move amendment 158, in schedule 4, page 151, line 16, after “waste” insert

“, reducing the consumption of virgin materials,”.

This amendment is about taking strengthened measures on tackling waste. It refers to virgin materials, which the Minister mentioned previously. For the benefit of those outside these walls who are maybe not as knowledgeable as the Committee, these are materials like new paper or plastic.

This amendment, although specific and focused in its approach, seeks to ensure the Bill includes the strongest possible measures to tackle waste. The wider focus on the obligations and responsibilities of producers is important—not because the Bill will directly impact those parts of the world outside the UK, but because of the need to get our own house in order in the UK, and in England specifically. We need to do this because it is important to set an example to others, and the Minister alluded to this in discussions about COP26 next year.

We want a strong Bill. If colleagues support this amendment, we will help deliver a strong Environment Bill with a strengthened schedule 4. It would make clear to the producers of materials used in everyday life that they have responsibilities and we are going to hold them to account.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I welcome the intention behind the schedule, which is to shift the burden of disposal costs from local authorities and the taxpayer to producers; the burden on them has historically been too low. I also welcome the shift in this Bill towards tackling food waste. I have been campaigning on this in Wandsworth borough for many years, and to see that it will be in the legislation and has to be addressed by the council is very welcome. However, in some ways, the drafting is too loose; as often in this Bill, it needs some tightening up, and I hope that these Labour amendments will be useful in doing that.

In terms of virgin materials, it is not good enough to focus on the end-of-life solutions for materials. The schemes introduced under this schedule need to incentivise producers to make the right decisions at the start of the process, as well as ensuring that they fulfil environmental responsibilities at the end. As the UK Environmental Law Association recommends, the Government need to clearly signal that extended producer responsibility covers the full life cycle, not only waste disposal. Reducing virgin material use is key to this, and to the Bill being as ambitious as we want it to be. Amendment 158 adds some words to ensure this.

Virgin materials include timber, plastic resin derived from the petroleum refining process and mined materials. This amendment would ensure that the producer responsibility scheme considers upstream measures that tackle consumption and production as well as waste minimisation. Although waste minimisation is important, it is not sufficient by itself to guarantee a reduction in virgin material use. Without adding this amendment, we cannot be sure the outcome will be the reduction that we need to see.

Manufacturing products with virgin materials usually requires much more energy and depletes more natural resources than using recycled materials, so when we reduce their use, there is also an offset for other processes. Action to reduce usage of virgin materials is essential to tackle overall depletion.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for her interest in this provision and for this amendment. I reassure her and the Committee that the amendment is not needed.

Reducing the consumption of virgin materials is important; we all agree on that. In our 25-year environment plan, we stated our long-term ambition of doubling resource productivity by 2050. That is about maximising the value and benefits we get from our resources, and managing these resources more sustainably to reduce associated environmental impacts.

I can assure the hon. Member for Putney that we are tackling this issue in the Bill. We have powers in schedule 5 to require producers to pay the disposal costs of the products or materials they place on the market, and for these costs to be varied according to the design or consumption of the products. Through the costs that producers pay, they can be incentivised to design and manufacture products that use fewer materials, that include more recycled materials, and are much easier to recycle and break down, so that the parts can be reused elsewhere.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones]

I beg to move amendment 159, in schedule 4, page 151, line 32, after “be” insert “prevented, reduced,”.

As you might notice, the amendment is very similar to others put before the Committee today. It focuses on the strength of the language that Ministers have chosen to use in the Bill. In recent days, my hon. Friends the Member for Southampton, Test and for Cambridge and I have said that we will hold Ministers to their promise to deliver a once-in-a-generation Bill. “Once in a generation” means it has to be big, bold and comprehensive. That is why we are calling on the Minister to use the strongest language in the Bill. I implore the Minister to be ambitious and bold in the text that is used.

I want to be helpful. I want the Minister to be able to sing from the rooftops about the Bill. I hope she will acknowledge the Opposition’s willingness to make it an even better Bill that really delivers for people across the whole UK. Let us not limit ourselves to moving things around, or shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic. Let us use this Bill to deliver real, long-term change.

The amendment would add “prevented” and “reduced” to the Bill, so that it does not just say “reused” and “redistributed”. We want the country to cut its reliance on plastics and paper, and to tackle waste in a meaningful way. Once again, the amendment will help deliver a strong Environment Bill with a strong schedule 4.

[Fleur Anderson]

As my hon. Friend has described so well, the amendment would widen the powers, so that producer responsibility regulations allowed targets for waste prevention and reduction, not just reusing and recycling. That is absolutely vital to achieving real carbon reduction and real waste reduction.

Waste prevention focuses on reducing the amount of waste generated from the source. It involves looking at manufacturing, processing, packaging, storage, recycling and disposal processes, to identify opportunities to manage waste and minimise the impact on the environment.

Although this looks like a minor amendment, the two words to be added would create another dimension to the powers of the Bill and the impacts it covers. activities would include mapping packaging and production waste to inform and develop good practice, and developing recommendations and strategies for prevention, recovery and reuse. The words “prevention” and “reduction” are essential for doing that. An example from real life is utensils. The measures would look not just at plastic utensils and how to deal with them when they are thrown away, but reusing utensils from the start, so there is no re-packaging to look at. I have been campaigning about nappies, which form a huge part of our landfill. Preventing the use of disposable nappies would incentivise producers. “Prevention” could be a game-changing additional word in the Bill. A home composting scheme run by my neighbouring borough of Lambeth looks at the prevention of waste right from the beginning, in the home.

This provision would enhance the Bill. I endorse the addition of the words “prevented” and “reduced” .

[Dr Whitehead]

I want to add a little bit of context to amendment 159. As my hon. Friends the Members for Putney and for Newport West have already mentioned, it increases the dimension within which these issues can be considered in terms of targets. It does so not by an accidental addition of words, but essentially by adding what is in the Government’s White Paper “Our waste, our resources: a strategy for England”, which was published in 2018.

In that White Paper, the Government fully embrace the notion of the waste hierarchy, and the document contains lots of good charts to illustrate it. At the bottom of the waste hierarchy are things such as landfill. Moving up the hierarchy, we find energy from waste, which is still pretty low in the hierarchy; after that, it is necessary to start recycling. From a policy point of view, measures should always drive waste as far up the hierarchy as possible. If it is possible to recycle waste, rather than putting it into an incinerator as an alternative to burying it in the land, that is what should be done. If, however, there is residual waste that cannot be incinerated or recycled—there is some of that in the waste stream—it should be put into landfill, but only on a residual basis. We would hope that over time, the amount of waste going into landfill will be virtually nil, because we have moved up the waste hierarchy in terms of how the system works.

In the waste hierarchy, there are two other categories above recycling: reducing and preventing. The best way to handle a waste stream is to make sure that there is less waste in it in the first place, and that it contains only things that cannot be reused or prevented from arising. At that point, we would be dealing, pretty much, with a residual waste stream when it came to volume and climate change energy considerations. In the whole waste stream, the only waste to be addressed would be residual waste from a largely circular economy, in which products are designed to come apart so that the parts can be put to other uses, and, through industrial symbiosis, products that one company views as waste are presented to other organisations as raw material.

That process is possible only if product design or articulation allows it to happen. For example, the expectation would be that a vehicle could be taken apart and all the components—even if they are made of different elements, and they are not all metal or plastic—would be sufficiently pure and reusable to be used as the raw material for something else straight away. As we will discuss later, that is particularly important with the coming upon us of electric vehicles. If electric vehicles cannot be taken apart—in particular, if their batteries cannot be taken apart to recover the rare earth elements, lithium and other materials for use in other batteries, so that they are not put into the waste stream in the first place—we are not very far down the line of recycling.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones]

I beg to move amendment 161, in schedule 5, page 157, line 13, leave out from first “the” to end of sub-paragraph (2) and insert

“social costs incurred throughout the lifecycle of the products or materials.”

As the Committee will know, schedule 5 allows the relevant authority to make regulations that require

“those involved in manufacturing, processing, distributing or supplying products or materials”

to

“meet, or contribute to, the disposal costs”

of those products. This is all about the journey, from start to finish, of the materials that we all rely on every day, even when we do not think about it. We have already had ample examples of the kinds of recyclable things we need to consider. I have to say to the Minister and her colleagues that the issues covered by this amendment will be mentioned both now and in coming days, because the Bill lacks foresight in a number of areas, but particularly when it comes to assessing the whole life cycle. That is particularly important, and it should be part of this Bill.

Thinking through this amendment and the background to it reminded me of recent events in Sri Lanka. That reminder was further reinforced when I received the answer to a written parliamentary question that I tabled to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—for those who may be interested, it was question 109651. I asked the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

“what discussions he has had with his Sri Lankan counterpart on the 21 containers of waste returned to the UK from that country in September 2020.”

The answer I received from the hon. Member for Taunton Deane was as follows:

“The Environment Agency (EA), as the competent authority for waste shipments for England, is proactively engaging with the authorities in Sri Lanka on these containers and is leading the response on this matter.

The 21 containers arrived back in England on Wednesday 28 October. The containers, which were shipped to Sri Lanka in 2017, were found by Sri Lankan authorities to contain illegal materials described as mattresses and carpets which had been exported for recycling. With the shipment now back on English soil, EA”—

that is, the Environment Agency—

“enforcement officers will seek to confirm the types of waste shipped, who exported it and the producer of the waste. Those responsible could face a custodial sentence of up to two years, an unlimited fine, and the recovery of money and assets gained through the course of their criminal activity.”

That was the answer I received from the Minister, and the issues it covers show why this amendment is so necessary. There are some parts that I will be following up on outside this Committee, but its arrival in my inbox was timely for today’s debate.

The Minister’s answer to the question demonstrates that waste and the issues that go with it simply do not disappear. Containers that left the United Kingdom in 2017 and travelled across the world are now coming back to cause trouble. This Bill can design out some of those issues if Ministers want it to, and this amendment would help to ensure that it does. We need to ensure that the life journey of the materials used is followed through by their producers from start to finish, focusing not just on the waste element but on the production and useful lifetime element of these issues. I urge the Minister to think about the social costs of the issues we are discussing, not just the environmental costs. Many of these issues require a cohesive and coherent approach that deals with a number of different factors, and I hope the Minister will give proper consideration to this.

As the Committee will know from the papers, this amendment is relatively self-explanatory, but it is important, and I hope the Minister will give it serious consideration. Once again, our amendment will help to deliver a strong Environment Bill with a strengthened and more comprehensive schedule 5.

[Fleur Anderson]

We moved this amendment to urge the Government to go that bit further in their ambition for this Bill. We have gone this far—we have set up the office, and have put in place all of these schedules and provisions—and by going just a little bit further, we could achieve so much more. Including

“social costs incurred throughout the lifecycle of the products or materials”

in schedule 5 would make a great difference.

The Local Government Association also believes that this schedule does not go quite far enough. It is concerned that litter and fly-tipping of discarded packaging is not included in the schedule, and that greater clarity on what producer responsibility will cover is needed. It also questions why the Bill does not currently include the term “full net cost”. There is a commitment to pay local authorities, but it should set out clearly that producers will be required to pay the full net cost to councils. To achieve that, the schemes should seek to reduce consumption of materials in the first instance, reducing the full life cycle impacts arising from sectors and product groups.

That is why I urge the Minister and her Government colleagues to consider supporting amendment 161, which would address this omission by factoring social costs into the fees, alongside environmental effects. It would also ensure that fees are implemented across the full life cycle of products and packaging, rather than just, as we have said in previous amendments, the end of life impact. Such a change would incentivise responsible and sustainable design to minimise these costs in the first place and enhance the environment for us all.

[Dr Whitehead]

Just to add to my colleagues’ excellent expositions, I draw the Committee’s attention to the wording of the schedule. It is headed “Producer responsibility for disposal costs”—fair enough. Paragraph 1(2) talks about

“the disposal costs of the products or materials”.

It is then as if the framers of the schedule thought, “Hang on a minute, is that what we really want to do?”, because paragraph 2(2) says:

“In this Schedule the ‘disposal’ of products or materials includes their re-use, redistribution, recovery or recycling.”

In order to continue with the way that the schedule is set out, the framers have had to mangle the English language to such an extent as to make it unrecognisable. A reasonable dictionary definition of “disposal” is “the action or process of getting rid of something”. The whole point about the circular economy and the waste hierarchy is to avoid doing that as much as possible in processing waste. Rather, one should try to recycle it, reuse it and keep it in life. It should go round the circular economy for as long as possible.

This schedule therefore looks like it is facing the wrong way in its whole outlook. The amendment goes some way to putting that right by emphasising that it is about the whole life of the product: what happens after it has been used the first time and how it can best fit into the circular economy definition of continuing with its use in the economy, so that new materials do not have to be brought in because the previous materials have been disposed of.

I suggest that the amendment is tremendously helpful, because it puts right the mangling that has gone on to get the schedule into existence in the first place. While paragraph 2(2) goes some way to un-mangle the phrase, the amendment completely un-mangles it. It emphasises what we should all emphasise—indeed, it is policy to emphasise—namely the whole life; the circular life of products that go round and round in the economy.

I hope the Minister will accept the amendment in the positive spirit in which it is intended. Among other things, it will restore to the Bill what most members of the public would consider to be the meaning of the word “disposal”. It is quite important that we ensure that legislation is not just intelligible to the general public, but can be received by them in the spirit in which it was put forward—that is, that they understand a particular phrase to mean what they think it means, not what someone somewhere in a building far away has invented it to mean because they could not get it right in the first place.

Environment Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 12th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Whitehead]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point but it is not a question of the OEP having to take on the mantle of English Heritage, or a national monuments commission, and assiduously sweeping the leaves off ramparts and other things. Hon. Members will see that clause 41 is simply a meaning clause: it defines what we mean elsewhere in the Bill. It is important inasmuch as it provides a serious context in which other measures in the Bill can be seated. That is its only function. When we are seating those meanings within other parts of the Bill, it is important that we are clear about the extent of those meanings or indeed the limits of those meanings. That is all that the amendment seeks to do. It does not seek to do anything more, and does not give the OEP any obligation as far as these monuments and buildings are concerned, nor the changes in the landscape to which I refer. The hon. Member can rest assured that there would be no duty of care on the OEP, and it is merely a matter of including that in the definition.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share with me concerns that the National Trust—one of the custodians of our British landscape—is also concerned about that very clause? They say that heritage and the natural environment “go hand in hand”. They will be looking to the clause to put them together in the correct way, as my hon. Friend said, for the very nature of our British environment. Nobody in this room would disagree with that.

[Dr Whitehead]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, which I had not fully covered. The National Trust is, indeed, responsible for sweeping the leaves and various other things from these monuments, and it is among the bodies expressing concern that the meaning of clause 41 will not adequately serve the purpose of guiding the clauses that go before it. I hope that the Minister can provide a good explanation for the meaning in parenthesis being as it is. It is not that it should not be there—it will cover a number of issues, and if it was not there then we might start considering a modern block of flats part of the natural environment. Clearly, we would not want to go that far. I hope that the Minister accepts that amendment 126 strikes the right balance, ensuring that we have a much better definition to work with and that we make a distinction between buildings and other structures that are clearly not part of our natural environment and those that have become so, certainly in the public’s view, and deserve to be included in this meaning clause.

Environment Bill (Ninth sitting)

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 9th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Deidre Brock]

It is important to establish a principle that no area of Government should be exempted from its responsibilities to the environment. The amendment brings the activities of the Ministry of Defence, the armed forces, defence and national security into the scope of the Bill. I have been talking at length on this subject for some time now, and have submitted numerous parliamentary questions on it. Some of those questions actually received answers, but sadly I am still awaiting a letter from the Minister for Defence People and Veterans outlining the environmental impact assessment of the MOD’s operations at Cape Wrath, which he promised me in February of this year. Perhaps mentioning that today will jog his memory a little.

We have swathes of munitions dumps up and down the UK coast, still imperilling our fishers and others on our waters. There are also large chunks of land in the UK currently outside the scope of the Bill. Yes, hundreds of nuclear safety incidents on the Clyde were acknowledged by the MOD, but only because of written questions I had submitted. We have no idea what impact military fuels are having. Scientists for Global Responsibility estimates that 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions result from military-related activities.

I understand that the percentage share of the UK’s emissions total is lower for defence here, but our omissions from the military are still higher than those of some entire countries. By taking this action, the UK really could act as a world leader and role model. We have no idea what impact weapons testing or training efforts have. I know because of my parliamentary questions that assessments are made, but they are not published. It must be possible to make such assessments transparent without compromising the safety of our forces and their interests.

A number of witnesses to the Committee, when I asked them about the issue, seemed to agree that it was something of an anomaly. Lloyd Austin of Scottish Environment LINK, while accepting that exceptions will exist, said that they

“should be based…on a degree of justification for why…the environmental issue has to be overwritten. Nobody thinks the environment will always trump everything but, on the other hand, where the environment is trumped, there should be a good reason, and that reason should be transparent to citizens.”

John Bynorth of Environmental Protection Scotland said:

“It is a bit arbitrary and unjustified that the military…should not be subject to the same conditions as everyone else.”––[Official Report, Environment Public Bill Committee, 12 March 2020; c. 143, Q202.]

Ruth Chambers, from Greener UK, speaking about the fact that this duty will not apply to the Ministry of Defence, said:

“Already, we seem to be absolving quite a large part of Government from the principles.”––[Official Report, Environment Public Bill Committee, 10 March 2020; c. 71, Q112.]

The environmental principles, that is.

I am not going to speak for long—we have many amendments to get through—but I have been raising this issue for a long time. I was delighted to see Labour come on board too, although disappointed to see that they still want to keep the exemption for national security. We have to ask what kind of national security will be left to us if the environment goes belly up.

From answers received from the House of Commons Library, I know that there are so many pieces of primary legislation containing exemptions relating to the armed forces that it is not possible to list them all. If we are going to start stopping these exemptions for the military, the place to start should be in the Environment Bill. I am interested to hear the Minister’s response, but I am going to press the amendment to a vote.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Clause 18 makes the armed forces, defence or national security exempt from due regard to the policy statement on environmental principles. It is detrimental to leave this whole section of Government out of the Bill’s provisions. If we want this Bill to be a legal framework for environmental governance and to have all the correct people in one room, why leave out one of the biggest polluters, the biggest spenders and the biggest landowners? It just does not make sense in terms of achieving ambitious net zero targets.

Were the exemption to be confined and constricted to decisions relating to urgent military matters and those of national security, it is of course entirely reasonable. I fully accept that there will be occasions when national security has to take precedence over environmental concerns. We do not want to impede the work of our armed forces or compromise our safety and security in any way. However, the clause is not drafted as tightly, cleverly and smartly as that. Rather, it is a blanket exclusion for the Ministry of Defence, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation and the armed forces from complying with the environmental principles set out in the Bill.

The carbon footprint of UK military spending was approximately 11 million tonnes of CO₂ in 2018—very significant. Some £38 billion was spent on defence last year alone—more than 2% of our GDP. Bringing how that is spent in line with our environmental aims is essential to achieving our overall national environmental targets. If it is not in the Bill, it is just going to be left to goodwill and to hoping that it will work.

I hope that the Minister will shortly argue that the principle is important and, if it is, the armed forces and defence must not be exempt—that is how we show it is important. The Ministry of Defence is one of the largest landowners in the country, with an estate that is nearly equal to 2% of the UK landmass. Last week I was on Salisbury plain, which is the size of the Isle of Wight. It is where significant military work is carried out, but it is also where a significant environmental advantage could be held.

The Defence Infrastructure Organisation manages 431,400 hectares of land within the UK. The sites are used for training, accommodation and large bases and the organisation has a remit to ensure the safety, sustainability and rationalisation of the estate. It states that:

“MOD has a major role to play in the conservation of the UK’s natural resources. Stewardship of the estate means that the MOD has responsibility for some of the most unspoilt and remote areas in Britain; with statutory obligations to protect the protected habitats and species that they support.”

I am not arguing that the Ministry of Defence does not care about the environment. I am saying that, if we all care about the environment, the MOD should come within the legal framework of guidance. We can have an amendment specifically tailored for the armed forces. Much of the land used by the MOD for training and operations is in highly sensitive environments and many parts are located in areas of outstanding natural beauty, including Dartmoor, Lulworth, Warcop and the Kent downs. They are subject to a number of associated policy processes, such as bylaw reviews, planning applications and so on, which means that they are subject to environmental protection. They should be joined up and come within the remit of the Bill as well.

A reason for adding this matter to the Bill is that the Ministry of Defence is already deeply committed to environmental protection and to tackling climate change, but a major rethink of defence policy is needed to achieve our ambitious environmental aims. New approaches to procurement are needed in particular. The Air Force, for example, is looking at different types of aircraft fuel. That should come within the Environment Bill, not without.

It prompts the question of why there is a blanket exemption, as it does not give credit to the armed forces and to the newly formed strategic command for all the work they are doing to achieve our environmental goals. The clause should be tightened up considerably. Rather than separating them, here is an opportunity to link the Bill’s environmental principles to the armed forces’ environmental objectives. We are in a climate emergency. There is no time to wait around for the goodwill of enormous Departments to get in line—certainly not one with such significant spending, carbon emissions and land ownership. I urge the Minister to support the amendment, or to come back with a smarter amendment that enshrines our national security at the same time as enforcing the speed of environmental action that we need and expect the armed forces to be able to deliver.

[Dr Whitehead]

What the Committee needs to understand is that the inclusion in the Bill of the application of policy as set out in subsection (1) does not apply to the armed forces. Subsection (1) states:

“A Minister of the Crown must, when making policy, have due regard to the policy statement on environmental principles currently in effect.”

The Minister must, therefore, have “due regard” to policies on environmental principles except where it relates to anything to do with the “armed forces”, as my hon. Friend the Member for Putney said. She mentioned that it is particularly important when the land that the MOD has under its control is considered, which we indeed know from the handy “National Statistics” publication which states what land is owned by the MOD. The issue, however, is not only the land owned by the MOD but also the further 207,400 hectares over which it has rights in addition to its freehold and leasehold-owned land. A reasonable interpretation of that is to consider what is controlled by the MOD and the armed forces. Is that a total of 431,000 hectares, as mentioned by my hon. Friend? That is the size of Essex plus half of Greater London, to put it into context. That is the amount of land that is under no jurisdiction at all as far as environmental principles are concerned.

There may be good reasons for that huge amount of national land resource being exempt from these environmental protections, but none are immediately apparent to me. Not only are they not apparent to me, what is apparent to me is that an organisation that undertakes actions that prejudice the environmental quality or environmental protection of UK land is often required to mitigate those actions elsewhere in any other sector. If a new port berth is being decided upon, then one of the first things to happen is that a consideration of environmental mitigation takes place for the land that has been despoiled by the new port, even if the berth is regarded as necessary. Even that principle does not appear to apply as far as the MOD is concerned.

As my hon. Friend said, I accept that when a person drives across Salisbury plain, for example, they occasionally see great big tracks on the plain where tanks have driven around it, and that on the Lulworth ranges there is weaponry practice that has environmental impacts. Of course, that is a part of MOD defence activity, and it may be necessary for that activity to be carried out. However, it does not seem beyond our imagination to consider that the MOD and defence should be in a different position as far as environmental mitigation is concerned. It would be quite reasonable to suggest that within the necessary undertakings that the MOD has to go about doing, environmental mitigation should be part of that process, if necessary. To just give the armed forces a blanket let-off as far as any environmental principles are concerned seems, to me, a bridge too far.

Environment Bill

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 26th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I am pleased to speak in this very important debate, and I congratulate everyone who has made their maiden speech.

After years of Government inaction on the environment and of facing an increasing climate emergency, the eyes of the nation—not only young people, but especially young people—are on this debate and on us today, asking: is this going to go far enough, is this going to go fast enough, and is this what Brexit was really all about? I do not think the Bill does any of those things, and I will outline a few of the areas I think my constituents in Putney are very concerned about, but which are also of real impact for people not only across the country but the world.

The first area is air pollution. New figures from Public Health England have revealed that the risk of dying from long-term exposure to London’s toxic air has risen for the third year running. King’s College research shows that, by the age of 10, children in London have a missing lung capacity the size of an egg for each lung. That will not grow back: it is permanent damage. It especially affects the poorer people of London, who often live on the most affected roads.

Putney High Street in my constituency is one of the most polluted streets in London, and I think we would find that many more were polluted if there were more air monitors. Green buses have made a huge difference to Putney High Street and to reducing air pollution, thanks to support from the Mayor of London and the Assembly, but more must be done. I am delighted that the Mayor is committed to meeting World Health Organisation targets for London by 2030.

There are many ways in which this Bill fails to be ambitious enough on air pollution. It should include a legally binding commitment to meet World Health Organisation guideline levels for fine particulate matter pollution by 2030 at the very latest. Why have the Government chosen not to commit to WHO recommended guidelines in this Bill? They should strengthen the Office for Environmental Protection, making it independent and robust, and granting it the ability to levy fines and to make binding recommendations. It needs to have teeth, otherwise it will not be the effective body we need it to be, and we will not go far enough fast enough.

The Bill should include more of a modal shift towards cycling and walking, which is absolutely essential to cleaning up our air.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree with Cycling UK, which is calling for an amendment to the Bill that would bring back the Road Traffic Reduction (National Targets) Act 1998 and amend it to require the setting of targets for road traffic reduction? That could make a big contribution to a modal shift, and to improving air quality and indeed carbon emissions.

[Fleur Anderson]

I absolutely agree with cycling campaigners across the country who are asking for this. I know this Bill has an annual reporting mechanism on air quality, but I would like it to include this so that our roads become safer and to make it easier to store our bikes as well—two things that are absolutely essential to increasing cycling in the country.

The second area is Heathrow airport. Tomorrow the Court of Appeal is due to rule on a legal challenge to plans to build a third runway at Heathrow airport. The expansion of Heathrow is fundamentally at odds with the aims of this Bill. The two are completely incompatible, and expansion cannot go ahead. An expanded Heathrow will increase the UK’s carbon emissions by between 8 megatonnes and 9 megatonnes of CO₂ per year, with much of it being dumped on green spaces such as Putney Heath in my constituency. It will dwarf a huge number of other carbon reduction areas that we might consider and that might be introduced by councils across this country.

Heathrow expansion will worsen air pollution levels in Putney. The Government have accepted that it would have a “significant negative” effect on air quality, and they have provided no evidence to show how Heathrow can both expand and comply with legal limits at the same time. It will also result in jobs being drawn away from other regions by 2031. According to analysis by the New Economics Foundation of the Department for Transport’s own data, jobs would be drawn away from regions—for example, 2,360 jobs would be drawn away from Bristol, 1,600 from Solihull, and 1,300 from Manchester. This is not just a London issue and problem. Heathrow expansion will result in an additional 260,000 flights per year, which is not compatible with the climate crisis we face. I therefore implore the Minister to intervene and reverse the Government’s decision to allow the expansion to proceed, and to use the Bill to legislate against all airport expansions that cannot clearly demonstrate that environmental targets will be met.

My third point is that the Bill must strengthen, rather than dilute, the European Union environmental framework that it replaces. The EU possesses one of the most comprehensive and effective environmental legal frame- works in existence. Currently, 80% of our environmental laws come from the European Union, and those laws have brought many benefits, such as a 94% drop in sulphur dioxide emissions by 2011. We were losing 15% of our protected sites a year, but thanks to EU regulation that is now down to 1%. More than 90% of UK beaches are now considered clean enough to bathe off. My constituents in Putney are concerned that the Bill will water down the protections that the EU has given us, and I have been inundated with emails about that. The Bill must include a straightforward and substantive commitment to the non-regression of environmental law.

My fourth point is that the Bill does not go far enough to protect our oceans. Right now, 93% of fish populations are overfished, and only 1% are properly protected. Next month is a huge opportunity to take action at the Global Ocean Treaty negotiations, and I implore a senior Minister to attend those negotiations and set ambitious targets—I would like to know whether that is being planned.

Communities in Putney experience some of the most acute environmental problems facing the UK. They suffer from some of the highest levels of air pollution in the country, and they will be some of the biggest losers following an expanded Heathrow. They cannot afford to have environmental standards go any lower. For that reason, I believe that the Bill fails them, and I implore the Secretary of State to do better. This long-awaited Bill is just not good enough—it is not good enough to say that it is okay. It will not tackle the climate emergency. It must include targets and more resourcing for local councils, and it must go further and faster on air pollution and carbon reduction. Only then will it be worthy of the label “world leading” on environmental action.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Theresa Villiers]

I will, indeed. Our departure from the European Union gives us the opportunity to introduce a new farming policy—a new system of farm support—that has sustainability and the environment at its heart. We can use that to support our farmers in the brilliant work they already do as stewards of our environment and countryside.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

T6. Putney High Street is one of the most polluted streets in London and the country, although electric buses have helped a lot. Ammonia emissions, predominantly from farming, are rising and are above World Health Organisation safe limits. In London, particulates derived from that ammonia are the largest contribution to imported background or particulate pollution. Will the Secretary of State commit to tackling this issue of ammonia pollution in the Environment Bill?

[Theresa Villiers]

We have a strong focus on these matters. The measures we will be bringing forward in the Environment Bill will help us to set challenging and demanding targets on those issues. Our new system of farm support will also provide support to farmers in reducing ammonia emissions. I know they are determined to do it. I understand completely the importance of delivering on this.